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Authors:Daniel Yaw Fiaveh, Eyo Mensah Pages: 7 - 19 Abstract: This issue examines the role of language and/or cultural expression in discourses around gender and sexuality. We explore the expressions used to describe people in relation to their gender and sexual configurations and practices. The contributions are from scholars writing from West and Eastern African perspectives, and the findings are useful for ongoing discourse and for informing policy direction. We first present an introduction to this issue, where we highlight the problematic areas of gender and sexuality research in Africa and the aim of the study, taking into consideration how spaces in language expressions make us gendered and sexual beings. We also discuss some historical research trajectories in African sexuality, followed by some future prospects. We conclude with a brief overview of each of the papers in the issue. PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.24323 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Daniel Yaw Fiaveh Pages: 21 - 43 Abstract: This article offers an original analysis of the sociocultural and political situation of same-sex (LGB) and queer (Q) people in Ghana, especially in the context of political repression. There is a lack of literature on Ghana’s LGBQ politics in various edited collections on African sexualities, so this article fills the gap from anthropological and sociological perspectives, emphasising the cultural-sociolinguistic nuances of gender and sex as well as the politics of same-sex and the contradictions in them. Drawing on personal biographies and media reports of power dynamics in local and (post)colonial frames of reference to LGBQ rights, I argue that regardless of the cultural and moral antics in local politics that bedevil the LGBQ community, LGBQ rights cannot achieve any enduring success if discourse continues to be spearheaded by the West since the devil is in the details. Therefore, the need to reconsider the role of the West in local discourse about LGBQ rights and to promote narratives that highlight indigenous cultural and character strengths (e.g., neighbourliness, love, work ethic, hard work, philanthropy, and honesty) in celebrating diversity and individual expression has never been more imperative. This could be a critical mass to revolutionise Ghanaian queerness and related West African homophobic and xenophobic behaviour. At the same time, the queer and LGB communities should be sensitive to the cultural milieu in which they operate and rethink ways of organising because culture and the moral community can be agentic depending upon knowledge pathways and continued resistance may lead to backlash. PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.24050 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Ernest Yaw Ako Pages: 45 - 65 Abstract: Most Ghanaians conveniently ignore or vehemently deny the existence of homosexual relationships in precolonial Ghanaian cultures. The denial of these relationships in precolonial Ghanaian cultures has gained attention due to section 104 of the Criminal Offences Act of Ghana which criminalises ‘unnatural carnal knowledge’ and the ‘promotion of proper human sexual rights and Ghanaian family values bill, 2021’ (anti-LGBTQI+ bill), currently being debated in Ghana’s Parliament. Historical evidence suggests, however, that Western European researchers who first visited Africa and Ghana suppressed evidence of homosexuality, while indigenous people unwittingly concealed homosexual relationships because of a ‘culture of silence’ surrounding sex and sexuality in precolonial Ghana. From a decolonial theoretical perspective, this article argues that the non-appreciation of precolonial Ghanaian (homo)sexual history partly accounts for the criminalisation of same-sex sexual relationships, homophobia, violence, and violations of the rights of sexual minorities in contemporary Ghana. The paper connects the presence of same-sex sexual intimacies in the Gold Coast (now Ghana), and the absence of criminal sanctions as a basis for rethinking current attempts in Parliament to recriminalise homosexual relationships, in order to chart a path of the equal legal protection of every person, regardless of their sexual orientation. PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.24077 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo Pages: 67 - 95 Abstract: Like other young people, and indeed everyone all over the world, Kenyan university students find reasons to talk about sex and sexual intercourse. In doing this, they naturally find themselves constrained by the societal dictates, which preclude direct reference within the sexual domain, thereby restricting themselves to the creative, euphemistic, and periphrastic terms. This article reports the findings of a study conducted to determine how Kenyan university students, in their efforts to engage in sexual discourse, circumvent such societal and cultural dictates, which prohibit direct sexual reference. Using a Sexual Synonyms Scale (SSS) as the main research instrument, this study surveys how lexical choices in sexual discourse shift in different contexts. The study adopts the tenets of Cognitive Sociolinguistics to attempt to understand why Kenyan university students make the lexical choices regarding sexual discourse they do. The study reports that lexical choices in sexual discourse is constrained by various sociological, demographic, and linguistic factors. It is further argued that an understanding of how young people view sexual intercourse is reflected in the lexical choices that they make as they talk about their daily sexual exploits, aspirations, and fantasies. PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.24049 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Liwhu Betiang Pages: 97 - 117 Abstract: Language is the ‘seed of culture’ and has been used variously for character construction in literature and the performing arts, and as a signifier of social identity. But when ‘gendered’ as in the Ubang linguistic context, it becomes a cultural construct to mark sexuality and cultural exclusion/inclusion. The Ubang people of Obudu, Cross River State, in southeastern Nigeria are famed for their unique ‘language of the sexes’ where the male child grows up speaking the ‘male language’ of the father, while the female speaks the ‘female language’ of the mother within the same sociocultural environment. This linguistic phenomenon draws attention to ingenious uses and possibilities of language beyond traditional usage. Using participatory methods of theatre-for-development, personal observations and key informant/interviewing among participants in the indigenous Ubang community, qualitative analysis of data shows that while ‘language of the sexes’ is used to define sexuality and appropriate gender/cultural roles, and even though both sexes cross-communicate, the ‘male language’ in Ubang is also strongly related to the patriarchal cult of masculinity which tends to exclude the female. The study concludes that the female variant of the language, which needs preservation, may also be a counter-cultural tool used by women against social segregation and gender exclusion in the Ubang community. PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.24066 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Samson Nzuanke Pages: 119 - 140 Abstract: The Ubang language in Obudu, Southeastern Nigeria, is asymmetric because communication among males and females or between them flows through two distinct linguistic codes. This phenomenon tends to challenge the nature of occurrence and use of language(s) in any given community. Is it a natural or a societal phenomenon' How does such intergender communication occur' To seek responses to these questions, this study sets out to interrogate the nature of male-female discourse in Ubang by observing 18 Ubang language speakers (nine males and nine females) in naturally occurring communication in their physical environment and analyzing their conversations using Peircean semiotics, the interpretative theory of translation and Susan Petrilli’s (2003) tripod of intralingual translation. It was discovered that male-female communication in Ubang is more a function of intralingual translation. PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.24059 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Edgar Fred Nabutanyi Pages: 141 - 158 Abstract: There is an emerging Ugandan queer writing tradition that adopts an activist stance to imagine an alternative Ugandan queer subjecthood beyond popular and polarising perspectives of this subjectivity that were instantiated by the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014. This emerging archive of Ugandan writing, often deploying the short fiction genre, weaves intricate tales of queer Uganda that sidestep the censorship of an ostracised sexuality deemed sinful, dangerous, and unUgandan to claim the agency and humanity of Ugandan homosexuals. While this archive of Ugandan queer short fiction has attracted significant critical attention from scholars such as Edgar Fred Nabutanyi (2017, 2018), Ken Junior Lipenga (2014) and Ben de Souza (2020), who focus on the political activism of these texts in Ugandan sexuality debates, little critical attention has been paid to how writers deploy sociolinguistic tools to empower their characters to author their agency and life experiences as same-sex loving Ugandans. Using sociolinguistic discursive tools, I refer to a textuality that includes illocutionary techniques such as letter writing, dialogue, and stream of consciousness that subversively empower excluded and muted subjects to articulate their essence and humanity. Deploying textual analysis of selected short stories, their analyses, and Ugandan queer theoretical treatises, I read Monica Arac de Nyeko’s ‘Jambula tree’ (2006) Beatrice Lamwaka’s ‘Pillar of love’ (2016) and Anthea Paleo’s ‘Picture frame’ (2013) using a sociolinguistic lens to unveil how the selected writers’ subversion of patriarchal tropes of an amorous letter, an ideal heterosexual family, and a romantic date critique the ostracisation of a sexual orientation. PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.23998 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Stephen Olabanji Boluwaduro Pages: 159 - 179 Abstract: A growing body of literature interrogating the voluptuous rendering of human sexuality in popular culture has focused on sex scripting in Western films and the commodification of women and their representations in popular media. However, exploration of how linguistic metaphors and innuendoes are deployed to affirm or contest expressions of desires that are sacred, sensitive, or taboo in Fuji music has received little scholarly attention. Of what significance is contesting social structure on sexuality to Fuji as a Nigerian popular musical genre' This empirical study explores this question while drawing on an ethnographic and interpretive literary analysis. Drawing from Hakim’s notion of ‘erotic capital’, the analyses and discussion operationalize the sexual scripting framework, Black feminist thought, and African/Black revolutionary art. I argue that sexual narratives and connotations in Fuji performance are often generated as powerful resources to contest sexual sensitivity and push back on silence on sexuality, negotiate and solicit artistic identity, and exact influence on public conversations on sexuality. By and large, this article affirms the engagement of sensual lyrical content as constitutive of revolutionary art and a social transformative site in which the body is negotiated as a catalyst for sexonomics in the contemporary ‘ear-tearing pant-and-bra’ musical evocations. PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.24125 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Eyo Mensah, Utomobong Nsebot, Eyamba Mensah, Lucy Ushuple, Romanus Aboh Pages: 181 - 203 Abstract: This article explores the layers of signification and interpretive frames of female adolescents’ nuanced experiences of virginity loss in heterosexual relationships in Akpabuyo and Bakassi Local Government Areas of Cross River State in southeastern Nigeria. This study is theoretically anchored in the social constructionist perspective of doing gender, which conceptualises it as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction. Drawing on qualitative data using semi-structured interviews with 25 female adolescents who were purposively sampled, we investigate the social, cultural, and structural factors that informed participants’ sexual debut and romantic life trajectories from their nuanced perspectives and experiences. We investigate virginity-based discursive subjectivities under three thematic tropes: coercive/consensual sex, stigma, and patriarchal affordances. The results, based on linguistic evidence, show that participants have ambivalent perceptions of virginity loss and/or preservation: while some were overwhelmed with guilt and tended to align with traditional prescriptions about female sexuality, others viewed it as an extension of patriarchal subjugation of women and interpreted their experience in terms of agency and resistance. In this way, virginity loss discourses provide a prominent site for doing or undoing gender. The study recommends intervention programmes for young rural women to reduce the risk of unplanned pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and HIV/AIDS acquisition as a result of their lack of sexual competence, economic security, and educational empowerment, which have contributed to their vulnerability, victimhood, and exposure to unhealthy sexual practices. PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.24048 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Uchenna Oyali Pages: 205 - 228 Abstract: This study investigates how the translation of the word ‘virgin’ in the Igbo Bible has expanded the Igbo lexicon and how this lexical enrichment has spread among Igbo speakers. Although prior to their encounter with Christian missionaries in the 19th century and the subsequent translation of the Bible into Igbo, Igbo people had words that referred to virgin, these words were polysemous as they were also used for young and unmarried persons. In the course of translating the Bible into Igbo, Christian missionaries transferred the biblical euphemism for sex, ‘to know’, into the Igbo Bible and used same to innovate terms for ‘virgin’, thereby distinguishing a virgin from an unmarried or young person who might have had sex. Adapting the concept of language elaboration, this study analyses the lexical processes involved in creating these new terms. Then it presents findings from a questionnaire survey on the spread of the innovated terms among Igbo speakers. The survey findings demonstrate that the biblical innovations have not only spread among Igbo speakers but also became a springboard for further lexical innovations. This article accentuates the impact of Bible translation in reshaping the Igbo language. It also reveals the involvement of the language users in the process of language change. PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.24055 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Charles Prempeh Pages: 229 - 251 Abstract: The purpose of this article is to discuss the cultural creativity that Nana Kofi Abuna V, the Chief of Essipun Traditional Area in the Western Region of Ghana, is investing in transgressing gender boundaries as a woman chief. Deploying an ethnographic research approach and biographical narrative, feminism as a methodological framework, I argue that Nana is breaking the boundaries of gender to chart new pathways as a woman chief. Nana is one of the few women chiefs in contemporary Ghana. Nana’s ascent to the stool as a chief diverges from the ‘conventional’ practice of male political rule in Akan traditional societies. Since Nana is a woman who bears a male name (Kofi), she acts as a male chief of her Traditional Area. But as a deaconess (church officer) of the Church of Pentecost (CoP), Ghana’s largest Protestant denomination, Nana did not submit to the performance of the rituals of chieftaincy during her installation. Similarly, Nana’s Pentecostal leaning does not permit her to perform ‘chiefship’ rituals. This goes contrary to the centrality of Akan chieftaincy as an ancestral cult and its attendant rituals. Nana, as a Pentecostal woman chief, therefore, breaks through culturally-induced gender boundaries to perform chiefship roles. PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.24052 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Gulbahar H. Beckett Pages: 253 - 268 Abstract: Script effects as the hidden drive of the mind, cognition, and culture Hye K. Pae (2020) Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Pp. 267 ISSN 2214-0018 (electronic) ISBN 978-3-030-55151-3 (eBook) ISBN 978-3-030-55152-0 (eBook) PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.23457 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Maya Khemlani David Pages: 279 - 288 Abstract: Multilingual Singapore: Language policies and linguistic realities Ritu Jain (ed.) (2021) Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Pp. 224 ISBN: 978-0-367-23519-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-00043-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-28014-6 (ebk) PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.23288 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Rizwan Ahmad Pages: 289 - 293 Abstract: Graphic politics in Eastern India: Script and the quest for autonomy Nishaant Choksi (2021) London: Bloomsbury Academic. Pp. 224 ISBN: 9781350215924 (pbk) ISBN: 9781350159587 (hbk) ISBN: 9781350159594 (Ebook) ISBN: 9781350159600 (Epub) PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.23360 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Jiayi Xiao, Weiping Wu Pages: 301 - 306 Abstract: Language in a globalised world: Social justice perspectives on mobility and contact Khawla Badwan (2021) Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Pp 230 ISBN: 9783030770860 (hbk) ISBN: 9783030770891 (pbk) ISBN: 9783030770877 (eBook) PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.24633 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Hung Phu Bui, Huy Van Nguyen Pages: 307 - 311 Abstract: Sociolinguistic variation and language acquisition across the lifespan Anna Ghimenton, Aurélie Nardy, and Jean-Pierre Chevrot (eds) (2021) Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pp 319 ISBN: 9789027209078 (hbk) ISBN: 9789027259752 (eBook) PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.23759 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta Pages: 313 - 319 Abstract: Urban contact dialects and language change: Insights from the Global North and South Paul Kerswill and Heike Wiese (eds) (2022) New York: Routledge. Pp. 368 ISBN: 9781138596092 (hbk) ISBN: 9780429487958 (eBook) PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.23728 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Zichen Guan Pages: 321 - 326 Abstract: Professional development in Applied Linguistics: A guide to success for graduate students and early career faculty Luke Plonsky (ed.) (2020) Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pp. 204 ISBN: 9789027207111 (hbk) ISBN: 9789027207128 (pbk) ISBN: 9789027260970 (eBook) PubDate: 2023-08-07 DOI: 10.1558/sols.23217 Issue No:Vol. 17, No. 1-3 (2023)
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Authors:Aurora Donzelli Pages: 435 - 460 Abstract: Emblematic of late capitalist modes of value creation, place branding draws on semiotic processes as well as on affective mobilization both to structure the representation and fruition of specific locales and to produce publics. Such governmental projects of people and places, however, are always open to possible acts of recontextualization. This article discusses the complex forms of social and semiotic regimentation (and subversion) underlying place-branding projects by exploring two social media campaigns that involved the city of Milan during two key moments of the Covid-19 outbreak. Revolving around different moral discourses of speed, both campaigns resulted in a partial or failed uptake. The initial (February 2020) celebration of fast-paced metropolitan work ethics evoked by #MilanoNonSiFerma (‘Milan doesn’t stop’) – a marketing and political faux pas – was followed (in May 2020) by a reparatory campaign #UnPassoAllaVolta (‘One step at a time’), aimed at endorsing the meditative quality of slow temporality. These morally inflected shifts in kinetic intensity materialized alternative forms of ethical sociality and disciplinary practices, showing how the semiotic regimentation of affects through moral registers and chronotopic formulations plays a key role within the fusion of media and capital characteristic of our post-Fordist present. Keywords:Articles
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Challenges of multilingualism across times and places
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Authors:Maria Yelenevskaya Pages: 547 - 560 Abstract: Chronotopic Identity Work: Sociolinguistic Analyses of Cultural and Linguistic Phenomena in Time and Space Sjaak Kroon and Jos Swanenberg (eds) (2020) Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Pp. 217 ISBN: 9781788926614 (hbk) ISBN: 9781788926607 (pbk) Decolonising Multilingualism: Struggles to Decreate Alison Phipps (2019) Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Pp. 112 ISBN: 9781788924054 (hbk) ISBN: 9781788924047 (pbk) ISBN: 9781788924078 (ebk) Keywords:Review Essay
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The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of Language Rosemary Salomone (2022)
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Authors:Sanita Martena, Heiko F Marten Pages: 579 - 591 Abstract: Linguistic Landscapes and Educational Spaces Edina Krompák, Víctor Fernández-Mallat and Stephan Meyer (eds) (2021) Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Pp. 312 ISBN: 9781788923859 (pbk) ISBN: 9781788923866 (hbk) ISBN: 9781788923873 (eBook) Keywords:Book Reviews
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When Words Trump Politics: Resisting a Hostile Regime of Language Adam Hodges (2020)
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Authors:Cedric Deschrijver Pages: 601 - 606 Abstract: Research Companion to Language and Country Branding Irene Theodoropoulou and Johanna Tovar (eds) (2021) London: Routledge. Pp. 434 ISBN: 9780367343590 (hbk) ISBN: 9780429325250 (eBook) Keywords:Book Reviews
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Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
