Language,ideology and power in Uganda.

详细信息   

• 作者：Miner ; Edward Anthony.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2001
• 导师：Bokamba,Eyamba G.,eadvisor
• 毕业院校：University of Illinois
• ISBN：9780493274775
• CBH：3017164
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：13060082
• Pages：278

文摘

In Ugandan public discourse,language is frequently invoked as an indicator of political legitimacy and competence. Personal attributes widely perceived as linked to linguistic variety include things like intelligence,objectivity,rationality,ethnic neutrality,cultural authenticity,civic spirit,moral nature,and above all,"literacy". Schooled linguistic practice,of which literacy in English remains the exemplar,is represented as if it brings with it the cultivation of all the aforementioned characteristics. In this way,perceived linguistic respectability often comprises a foundational element of social respectability more generally. This dissertation analyzes the ways in which competing models of linguistic respectability are implicated in an oppositional identity politics which centers largely on the role of the state as an instrument of national integration and development. One pervasive idea is that the sociopolitical instability of the post-independence years can be attributed to a decline in the inherited colonial educational system,and a replacement in governance of the value of the degree with that of ethnicity and the gun. "Illiteracy",together with "tribalism",are worked up in reformist discourses as forces underlying a pervasive decay of social and moral values over the last thirty years. These forces are perceived as especially entrenched in the government and its associated military elites. Since coming to power in 1986,the National Resistance Movement of President Yoweri Museveni has attempted to distance itself from perceptions of historic ethnocratic corruption by invoking regional,Pan-Africanist conceptions of linguistic respectability and political legitimacy. These include the widespread association of standard Kiswahili,as historically used in East African trade-union and military activity,with national integration and development. While the NRMs detractors tend to draw their models of linguistic respectability from Anglo-Kiganda discursive practice,which ultra-valorizes English and to some extent Luganda) over Kiswahili and other Ugandan languages,the state tends to draw its models from Anglophone East African discursive practice more broadly,which value English and Kiswahili more equally. Emerging from partially overlapping sociohistorical contexts,however,Anglo-Kiganda and Anglophone East African discursive practices construct alternative linguistic identities which come into contention primarily in the context of other sociopolitical stakes.