Multilingualism in late-modern Africa: Identity, mobility and multivocality

Abstract

This paper is a summary of the four papers presented by the invited panel on African multilingualism to ISB8. The presenters and the respective countries they represented were panel chair Charlyn Dyers (South Africa), Felix Banda (Zambia), Feliciano Chimbutane (Mozambique) and Omondi Oketch (Kenya). The four papers in this panel apply the notion of multilingualism as social practice to the urban African context in a post-modern era characterized by intense mobility, not only across spaces but also across linguistic and other semiotic systems. In particular, they reveal how identities are performed through harnessing multiple semiotic systems, different practices and modalities, and how different semiotic resources are adopted, reconstituted and adapted to different contexts and communication needs, leading to the transformation and reconstruction of everyday discourses.