LING-L210:
African Communication and Culture

This course introduces the student to aspects of communication
practices within cultural groups in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ethnic
groups in Africa (sometimes called “the land of culture”) are well
noted for their skillful control of words and the course gives the
student an opportunity to explore, within the framework of
ethnography, folklore, religion, and aesthetics, how language and
speech play an organizing and central role in the socio-cultural
life of the African. Various strategies such as speaking
the ‘unspeakable,’ listening so the chief may hear, saying it
without saying it, proverbial dog names, women and rhetoric, etc.
will be discussed. At the end of the course students will have a
clear intellectual understanding of the cultural norms of African
communication and they will be able to describe the various ways in
which speech is accomplished within the selected region of Africa.