Chapter 8. “They look hostile from afar”

Abstract

This contribution analyzes “small stories” with a focus on language ideologies to shed light on underlying beliefs about how “Northernness” is constructed and negotiated as a persistently significant identity category in contemporary Ugandan discourses. While the ideologies revolving around Northernness mainly reflect colonially established attributions, the article introduces colorism as a further ideological base, alongside purported ethnic and linguistic criteria fostering the marginalization of “Northerners” or those perceived as such. Individuals either strategically employ these ideologies or find them ascribed to them, often resulting from negotiations of Otherness and Sameness from multiple and situated social positions. Furthermore, the paper presents a case in point to show how a focus on language ideologies can link small-scale utterances or narrations with socio-political and historical contexts on a larger scale. Finally, it also reflects on the role linguists’ ideologies have played and continue to play in the production of knowledge in (post)colonial African contexts.