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LNGS 204: LANGUAGES IN GHANA Department of Linguistics; University of Ghana,

Legon; Second Semester 2014/2015

COURSE INFORMATION

Time: 9:30 – 11:20 Thursday Venue: JQB22 Office Hours: Thursday 12:30 – 1:30 (By appointment) Course Instructor: Dr. Seth Antwi Ofori (saofori@ug.edu.gh)

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COURSE OBJECTIVES This course provides an overview of languages in Ghana, their formal characteristics, classification, and functions, within the broader context of Africa. The course will give students a working knowledge of the term “language” as used by linguists, and the different approaches to its documentation and study in the field of linguistics. It will also expose students to published works (by linguists) on the different social manifestations of some languages in Ghana. Other issues of how language and society influence each other, such as language planning, language standardization, functional compartmentalization of languages, codemixing among others, in Africa and Ghana in particular, will also be examined. Map of Africa

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Regions in Africa

Cape

Verde

Sao

Tome &

Principe

Seychelles

Comoros

Mauritius

Northern Africa (Blue = 7)

1. Algeria; 2. Egypt; 3. Libya; 4. Morocco; 5. Sudan; 6. Tunisia; 7. Western Sahara

Western Africa (Yellow = 16)

8. Benin; 9. Burkina Faso; 10. Cape Verde; 11. Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory

Coast); 12. Gambia; 13. Ghana; 14. Guinea; 15. Guinea-Bissau; 16.

Liberia; 17. Mali; 18. Mauritania; 19. Niger; 20. Nigeria; 21. Senegal; 22. Sierra Leone; 23. Togo

Eastern Africa (Green = 18)

24. Burundi; 25. Comoros; 26. Djibouti; 27. Eritrea; 28. Ethiopia;

29. Kenya; 30. Madagascar; 31. Malawi; 32. Mauritius; 33. Mozambique; 34.

Rwanda; 35. Seychelles; 36. Somalia; 37. South Sudan; 38. Tanzania;

39. Uganda; 40. Zambia; 41. Zimbabwe

Middle (Central) Africa (Purple= 9)

42. Angola; 43. Cameroon; 44. Central African Republic; 45. Chad; 46. Democratic Republic of the Congo; 47. Equatorial Guinea; 48. Gabon; 49. Republic of the Congo; 50. São Tomé and Príncipe

Southern Africa (Red = 5)

51. Botswana; 52. Lesotho; 53. Namibia; 54. South Africa; 55. Swaziland

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Map of Ghana

COURSE REQUIREMENT(S) AND EVALUATION:

(a) You will not be allowed to take the final examination if you miss three or more lectures. (b) There will be in-class group discussion of course materials, if necessary. Students will be required to read the relevant course materials to participate in such discussions. (c) Thirty percent of your grade will come from interim-assessment and seventy percent from the end-of-semester examination.

TENTATIVE COURSE TOPICS 1. Introduction to Language and Linguistics: What is linguistics? What is language? 2. Approaches to Language Study: Formal, Historical, Contextual (and Applied) Linguistics 3. Formal/Structural Linguistics: Levels of formal/structural linguistics; (language typology) 4. Historical Linguistics: Genetic classification of African languages; the Language situation in

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Africa today (go to https://playingintheworldgame.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/africa_langs.gif) ; Language contact and Innovation (e.g. borrowing at the different levels of formal linguistics, language birth – pidgins and creoles); Language contact and language death. 5. Contextual linguistics, or Sociolinguistics: Variational Linguistics, Institutional sociolinguistics (macro- sociolinguistics), and Interactional sociolinguistics (micro-sociolinguistics): (a) Variational Linguistics: (i) Variation within a language – Idiolect, Regiolect, Sociolect, Accent, Dialect, Dialect continuum, Standardization; (ii) Multilingualism: How multilingual communities emerge; language birth – ‘pidgin and creole; language endangerment and extinction; functional compartmentalization of languages – diglossia/Triglossia; functional leakage – codeswitching/codemixing (b) Institutional sociolinguistics: Language and national integration; Language and education; Language and development; Language planning (c) Interactional sociolinguistics: Linguistic repertoire – what is it? How is language used in a given social interaction? What are the (social) forces that affect a person’s linguistic choices in a given communicative setting? 6. Languages in Ghana – their number, names, distribution and functions; Multilingualism in Ghana. (a) Dakubu, Kropp. 1988. The Languages of Ghana. New York: International African Institute. (b) Amonoo, Reginald. 1989. Language and Nationhood: Reflections on language situations with particular reference to Ghana. Accra: Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. (c) Hill, Edward. 1983. Ghanaian Languages. Accra: Asempa Publishers. 7. Language use in some Ghanaian communities (a) Essegbey, James. On assessing the ethnolinguistic vitality of Ga in Accra. In The Languages of Urban Africa. 115

– 130. Edited by Fiona Mc Laughlin.

(b) Obeng, Gyasi Samuel. 1997. An analysis of the Linguistic situation in Ghana. In African Languages and Cultures 10, 1: 63 – 81. 8. Language contact (a) Borrowing: Agbedor, Paul. 2006. Lexical borrowing: The case of Ewe. In From Linguistics to Cultural Anthropology: Aspects of Language, Culture and Family Issues in Ghana (West Africa). Pages 85 – 110. Editors Samuel Gyasi Obeng and Cecilia Sem Obeng.) (b) Pidgin in Ghana: Obeng, Gyasi Samuel. 2004. West African Languages in Contact with European Languages. In Africa Meets Europe: Language Contact in West Africa. Pgs. 9 – 22. New York: Nova Science Publishers.) 9. English in Ghana (a) Sackey, John A. 1996. The English Language in Ghana, a Historical Perspective. In M. Kropp Dakubu (ed.) English in Ghana. 126 – 139. Accra: Black Mask Publishers. (b) Dzameshie, Alex. 1988. Language Policy and the Common Language Controversy in Ghana. In Research Review MS 4.2; 16 – 27. (c) Owu-Ewie, Charles. 2006. The Language Policy of Education in Ghana: A Critical Look at the English-

Only Language Policy of Education. In Selected Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference on African

Linguistics. 76-85. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

(d) Dzameshie, Alex. 1996. Towards a communicative approach to teaching English as a second language in Ghana. In M. Kropp Dakubu (ed.) English in Ghana. 173 – 194. Accra: Black Mask Publishers. 10. Anyidoho, Akosua and M.E. Kropp Dakubu. 2008. Ghana: Indigenous Languages, English, and an Emerging National Identity. In Andrew Simpson (ed.) Language and National Identity in Africa. PAGES. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

11. The classification of languages indigenous to Ghana. (Dakubu, Kropp. 1988. The Languages of Ghana. New York: International African Institute.); Map from Ethnologue

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REFERENCES Anyidoho, Akosua and M.E. Kropp Dakubu. 2008. Ghana: Indigenous Languages, English, and an Emerging National Identity. In Andrew Simpson (ed.) Language and National Identity in Africa. PAGES. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Amonoo, Reginald. 1989. Language and Nationhood: Reflections on language situations with particular reference to Ghana. Accra: Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. Bamgbose, Ayo. (1991). Language and the nation: The Language Question in Subsaharan Africa. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Bauer, Laurie. 2007. The Linguistics Student’s Handbook. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dakubu, Kropp. 1988. The Languages of Ghana. New York: International African Institute. Dzameshie, Alex. 1988. Language Policy and the Common Language Controversy in Ghana. In Research Review MS 4.2; 16 – 27. Dzameshie, Alex. 1996. Towards a communicative approach to teaching English as a second language in Ghana. In M. Kropp Dakubu (ed.) English in Ghana. 173 – 194. Accra: Black Mask Publishers. Fasold, Ralph. (1987). The sociolinguistics of society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Fishman, Joshua A. (1999). International Journal of the Sociology of Language. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Holmes, Janet. (1992). An introduction to sociolinguistics. New York: Longman Publishing. Heine, Bernd, and Derek Nurse. (2000). African Languages: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hill, Edward. 1983. Ghanaian Languages. Accra: Asempa Publishers. Hudson, R.A.(1996). Sociolinguistics, Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. Mc Laughlin, Fiona. 2009. The Languages of Urban Africa. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Owu-Ewie, Charles. 2006. The Language Policy of Education in Ghana: A Critical Look at the English-Only Language Policy of Education. In Selected Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. 76-85. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Sackey, John A. 1996. The English Language in Ghana, a Historical Perspective. In M. Kropp Dakubu (ed.) English in Ghana. 126 – 139. Accra: Black Mask Publishers. Simpson, Andrew. 2008. Language and National Identity in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stockwell, P. (2002). Sociolinguistics: A Resource Book for Students. London:

Routledge. Wardhaugh, Roland (2006). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 5th Edition. Oxford:

Blackwell Publishing. Wardhaugh, Ronald. (2010). An introduction to sociolinguistics. 6th edition. MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Winford, Donald. (2003). An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.