African Multilingualisms

Although multilingualism is the norm in the day-to-day lives of most sub-Saharan Africans, multilingualism in settings outside of cities has so far been under-explored. This gap is striking when considering that in many parts of Africa, individual multilingualism was widespread long before the colonial period and centuries before the continent experienced large-scale urbanization. The edited collection African Multilingualisms fills this gap by presenting results from recent and ongoing research based on fieldwork in rural African environments as well as environments characterized by contact between urban and rural communities of speakers. The contributors—mostly Africans themselves, including a number of emerging scholars—present findings that both complement and critique current scholarship on African multilingualism. In addition, new methods and tools are introduced for the study of multilingualism in rural settings, alongside illustrations of the kinds of results that they yield. African Multilingualisms reveals an impressive diversity in the features of local language ideologies, multilingual behaviors, and the relationship between language and identity.

"This is an authoritative volume on facets of multilingualism in rural Africa written generally by Native linguists. It debunks two myths in particular: that multilingualism is a peculiarity of urban ecology and it necessarily disadvantages minority languages. Congratulations to the editors for helping enrich and decolonize knowledge of my home continent.", “Di Carlo and Good have broken new ground by showing that multilingualism flourishes well beyond the African city. In addition to inspiring a new generation of linguists and Africanists, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of African multilingualism and of multilingualism everywhere.”, “Whether you still think multilingualism is a recent and urban phenomenon or you are already familiar with rural multilingualism in the Global South, you need to read this book. This volume presents dazzlingly diverse multilingual settings in Senegal and Cameroon, and, importantly, combines the perspectives of Northern and Southern researchers in their description.”, “Di Carlo and Good have assembled a set of detailed studies contradicting the general belief that multilingualism is an urban rather than a rural phenomenon. Complex communities of practice govern linguistic behavior in the country as well as in the city, yet previous studies have neglected the former. This book, rich in ethnographic detail, presents a challenge to prevailing orthodoxies.”, “This book is an important step toward decolonizing linguistics in Africa. This superb collection of informative chapters shed light on rural multilingualism, individual and societal language repertoires, linguistic ideologies, and language vitality in Sub-Saharan Africa. The contributions show that if linguistics had been born in Africa, the discipline’s theorizing on multilingualism could have been radically different.”

Pierpaolo Di Carlo is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Linguistics at University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. Jeff Good is professor in the Department of Linguistics at University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.