Tracing Language Movement in Africa

Tracing Language Movement in Africa PDF

Author: Ericka A. Albaugh

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-01-10

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0190657561

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The great diversity of ethnicities and languages in Africa encourages a vision of Africa as a fragmented continent, with language maps only perpetuating this vision by drawing discrete language groups. In reality, however, most people can communicate with most others within and across linguistic boundaries, even if not in languages taught or learned in schools. Many disciplines have looked carefully at language movement and change on the continent, but their lack of interaction has prevented the emergence of a cohesive picture of African languages. Tracing Language Movement in Africa gathers eighteen scholars together to offer a truly multidisciplinary representation of language in Africa, combining insights from history, archaeology, religion, linguistics, political science, and philosophy. The resulting volume illuminates commonalities and distinctions in these disciplines' understanding of language change and movement in Africa. The volume is empirical -- aiming to represent language more accurately on the continent -- as well as theoretical. It identifies the theories that each discipline uses to make sense of language movement in Africa in plain terms and highlights the themes that cut across all disciplines: how scholars use data, understand boundaries, represent change, and conceptualize power. The volume is organized to reflect differing conceptions of language that arise from its discipline-specific contributions: that is, tendencies to study changes that consolidate language or those that splinter it, viewing languages as whole or in part. Each contribution includes a short explanation of a discipline's theoretical and methodological approaches to language movement and change to ensure that the chapters are accessible to non-specialists, followed by an illustrative empirical case study. This volume will inspire multidisciplinary conversations around the study of language change in Africa, opening new interdisciplinary dialogue and spurring scholars to adapt the questions, data, and method of other disciplines to the problems that animate their own fields.

Zambia

Zambia PDF

Author: Jan Kees van Donge

Publisher: Oxford, England : Clio Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13:

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Since the launch of the Human Genome project in 1990, understanding molecular and clinical genetics has become an essential aspect of modern medical education. Solid knowledge of genetics is now crucial to a host of healthcare professionals, including primary care physicians, nurses and physician assistants. This third edition takes this information and incorporates it into a student-friendly format that focuses on the core concept of human genetics. Each chapter uses the same problem-based approach as the previous editions, and addresses the important role of genetics and disease by integrating molecular and clinical genetics.

Angola

Angola PDF

Author: Richard Black

Publisher: Oxford, England ; Santa Barbara, Calif. : Clio Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13:

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Dictionary of Languages

Dictionary of Languages PDF

Author: Andrew Dalby

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-10-28

Total Pages: 754

ISBN-13: 1408102145

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Covering the political, social and historical background of each language, Dictionary of Languages offers a unique insight into human culture and communication. Every language with official status is included, as well as all those that have a written literature and 175 'minor' languages with special historical or anthropological interest. We see how, with the rapidly increasing uniformity of our culture as media's influence spreads, more languages have become extinct or are under threat of extinction. The text is highlighted by maps and charts of scripts, while proverbs, anecdotes and quotations reveal the features that make a language unique.

The Ritual Process

The Ritual Process PDF

Author: Victor Turner

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1351474901

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In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Victor Turner examines rituals of the Ndembu in Zambia and develops his now-famous concept of "Communitas." He characterizes it as an absolute inter-human relation beyond any form of structure.The Ritual Process has acquired the status of a small classic since these lectures were first published in 1969. Turner demonstrates how the analysis of ritual behavior and symbolism may be used as a key to understanding social structure and processes. He extends Van Gennep's notion of the "liminal phase" of rites of passage to a more general level, and applies it to gain understanding of a wide range of social phenomena. Once thought to be the "vestigial" organs of social conservatism, rituals are now seen as arenas in which social change may emerge and be absorbed into social practice.As Roger Abrahams writes in his foreword to the revised edition: "Turner argued from specific field data. His special eloquence resided in his ability to lay open a sub-Saharan African system of belief and practice in terms that took the reader beyond the exotic features of the group among whom he carried out his fieldwork, translating his experience into the terms of contemporary Western perceptions. Reflecting Turner's range of intellectual interests, the book emerged as exceptional and eccentric in many ways: yet it achieved its place within the intellectual world because it so successfully synthesized continental theory with the practices of ethnographic reports."

Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual

Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual PDF

Author: Victor Turner

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-05-31

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 1501717197

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Drawing on two and a half years of field work, Victor Turner offers two thorough ethnographic studies of Ndembu revelatory ritual and divinatory techniques, with running commentaries on symbolism by a variety of Ndembu informants. Although previously published, these essays have not been readily available since their appearance more than a dozen years ago. Striking a personal note in a new introductory chapter, Professor Turner acknowledges his indebtedness to Ndembu ritualists for alerting him to the theoretical relevance of symbolic action in understanding human societies. He believes that ritual symbols, like botanists' stains, enable us to detect and trace the movement of social processes and relationships that often lie below the level of direct observation.