Abstract
This chapter focuses on the idea that in Mozambique, multilingualism, commonly understood as the co-existence and juxtaposition of more than one language, is one mechanism whereby essential features of colonial social logics are reconfigured in contemporary ‘postcolonial’ societies. They interrogate how multilingualism, whilst ostensibly promising a trope for linguistic (and cultural) diversity, is best seen, in common with other forms of neoliberal governance, as a response to ‘the effects of anti and postcolonial movements in the liberal world’. They conclude that this constancy is not accidental, but a key dimension of how multilingualism as a particular political regime of language organization has been used historically and in contemporary time as a technology of liberal governance. The paper highlights the meaning, the significance and the indexical values that African languages have vis a vis Portuguese, in a context where African languages are subordinated.
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Notes
- 1.
We wish to emphasize at the outset that ‘multilingualism is a complex and invested notion in serious need of deconstruction. It is not unusual for a cognitive notion of multilingualism to be used to argue for a political-educational order of languages; or for a political arrangement of languages to motivate a cognitive –learning arrangement of multilingualism (e.g. separation of languages; one person-one language). Although these notions are interlinked, and invite fascinating research to untangle, they are not the same notion.
- 2.
Also as ‘languages of the dogs’, an interesting enlightenment twist relevant to the dehumanizing of the Other.
- 3.
The Portuguese government has established an alliance with the Vatican in the process of administration of the colonies of Mozambique and Angola.
- 4.
There is a consensus opinion that the Concordats are part of international law, so that the concluded agreements among States and a Church, in this case Catholic, are of supranational importance (Gomes 2004: 1).
- 5.
I Seminário sobre a Padronização da Ortografia de Línguas Moçambicanas.
- 6.
Povinelli (2011) has coined the term ‘social tense’ to refer to how difference is managed, as social divisions of time in ways that “help shape how social belonging, abandonment and endurance are enunciated and experienced within late liberalism”.
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Stroud, C., Guissemo, M. (2017). Linguistic Messianism: Multilingualism in Mozambique. In: Ebongue, A., Hurst, E. (eds) Sociolinguistics in African Contexts. Multilingual Education, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49611-5_3
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