Language and Colonial Power

by Fabian, Johannes

• ISBN13: 9780520076259
• ISBN10: 0520076257
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1991-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr on Demand

Summary

Among the preconditions for establishing colonial authority was communication with the colonised. Verbal exchanges depended on a shared communicative praxis providing common ground on which unilateral claims could be imposed. Use of, and control over, verbal means of communication were needed to maintain regimes - military, religious-ideological, economic - in power. In the Belgian Congo brutal physical force never ceased to be exercised. In this study Professor Fabian examines the more subtle uses of power through controls on communication, by looking at the history of Swahili as it spread from the East Coast to Central Africa and demonstrating connections between -changing forms of colonial power and the development of policies towards Swahili. Using a wide range of sources, including numerous and sometimes obscure vocabularies, he combines concepts derived from literary theory and sociolinguistics to uncover, through the flaws and failures of these texts, deep-seated attitudes to language and communication.

Author Biography

Johannes Fabian is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Acknowledgements	p. viii
A note on names and orthography	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Prelude: expeditions and campaigns	p. 13
Polyglotta Africana	p. 15
Swahili guides for the road	p. 19
On the road: language and travel	p. 24
End of the road	p. 33
Questions and queries	p. 42
A question of law and rights: language and the Colonial Charter	p. 44
A question of facts: language in an early government survey	p. 49
Responses from businessmen and administrators	p. 53
Responses from missionaries and educators	p. 58
A question of power: warnings from Katanga	p. 63
Some general conclusions	p. 65
Settling in: colonization and language	p. 70
Missions, education and the oeuvre civilisatrice	p. 71
Missionary linguistics	p. 75
Religious and secular colonization: common ground	p. 78
Language guides and teaching aids	p. 84
Colonial language training in Belgium	p. 88
Labor and language in Katanga	p. 92
Labor in Katanga: a complicated story	p. 92
Swahili as a symbol of 'reorientation': consolidation of Belgian rule in Katanga	p. 100
Swahili as a work-language: some structural determinants	p. 106
Talking tough and bad: pidginization in Katanga	p. 112
Missionaries teaching colonists	p. 112
Colonists teaching colonists: a guide for farmers in Katanga	p. 114
The most common words in Katanga: a curious early manual	p. 124
Conclusion: no missing link	p. 133
The end: illusions of colonial power	p. 135
Swahili and symbolic power	p. 136
Codified Swahili in the eastern Congo: an inventory 1918-38	p. 142
'Improved Swahili': Union Miniere and A. Verbeken	p. 148
A voice not heard: A. Melignon and the 'rehabilitation' of Swahili in Katanga	p. 157
Notes	p. 163
Bibliography	p. 188
Index	p. 201
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