African Linguistics After #Rhodesmustfall: Contextualising the Role of African Languages in Higher Education in Times of Global Change

This open access book explores the link between African languages, decolonisation and transformation. It has its origins in a survey of students and instructors at higher education institutions both inside and outside Africa, and takes as a starting point the 2015 student-led #RhodesMustFall movement which spread across universities in South Africa. Many of the questions being asked by #RhodesMustFall found parallels in ongoing discussions across in Europe and North America. This book presents findings from the survey, set against the broader backdrop of calls for decolonisation and transformation, drawing specifically on linguistics teaching, scholarship and research. The findings provide new insights into how African languages and linguistics are framed and engaged with, amidst decolonial struggles in higher education. This book will be relevant to readers with an interest in African languages, social justice, higher education, and decolonisation.

Hannah Gibson is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Essex, UK. Her work is primarily concerned with linguistic variation with a focus on African languages, language contact, multilingualism and the link between linguistics and social justice.

Jacqueline Lück is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Applied Language Studies and Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Humanities at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. Her research interests are language, knowledge and academic Literacies; identity, discourse and ideology; decolonisation of linguistics and the curriculum.

Kristina Riedel is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Linguistics at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Her research is focused on the syntax of the Bantu languages, and also the decolonisation and transformation of Linguistics in South Africa.

Savithry Namboodiripad is an Assistant Professor in Linguistics at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, USA. Her research concerns contact-induced change and syntactic typology, and how language ideologies and use in multilingual and recently colonised contexts contribute to language change.