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NECROLINGUISTICS: Linguistic-Death-In-Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2006

John Mugane
John Mugane
Affiliation:
Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
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Abstract

Necrolinguistics refers to linguistic-death-in-life, a situation in which languages are incarcerated, leaving folk in linguistic limbo. It names the process by which people come to lack the ability to use at least one language well, and includes those who are tongue-locked because their languages are incarcerated in one or more ways. In illustrating how and why the linguistic experience of Black folk inspires the term necrolinguistics, examples from slavery, colonialism, apartheid, imperialism, and neocolonialism are provided to document the reality of linguistic-death-in-life. The main assumption of this study is that we can investigate the humanism of institutions belonging to any epoch, regime, or society through its linguistic posture and practice. It is noted that many sub-Saharan African languages are on death row, with many of its speakers stranded in semilingualism (or plummeting linguistic competence), peculiar kinds of monolingualism, or a kind of unilateral bilingualism, asymmetrical bilingualism. Each of these states is elaborated using examples: a native American, “White Thunder” (semilingualism); Jacques Derrida, a Franco-Maghrebian Jew (discordant monolingualism); and the august personality of Léopold Sédar Senghor (unilateral bilingualism). But the paper ends on a bright note, recognizing that, though the linguistic muzzle muffles Black culture and humanity, the resilience of Black folk is evident through their development of patois, pidgins, and creoles.

Keywords

LinguisticsLanguageMonolingualismBilingualismMultilingualismSemilingualismDominant LanguagesMuzzleLanguage DeathPidginPatoisCreoleSlaveryColonialismNeocolonialism
Type
STATE OF THE DISCIPLINE
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , September 2005 , pp. 159 - 186
Copyright
© 2005 W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research

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Footnotes

This essay is part of a larger work on the same topic supported in part by a grant from the Clark and Cooke Fund at Harvard University. A portion of this paper was presented at the 35th Annual Conference on African Studies sponsored by the Department of African and African American Studies of Harvard University, on April 2, 2003. The paper has benefited from the comments generated at that presentation.

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