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Lynda Balloni

HUM 2371: Popular Culture in Africa

Dr. Shoup

5 November 2014

Colonial Language Legacy in African Literature

The majority of the nation-states in Africa today fall into the category of one of three

colonial legacies of an imposed unifying language: Francophone, Lusophone or Anglophone

(Lalami 139). The three colonizers whose imposition of these languages is traced to used

conflicting methods regarding the integration of their language into the culture of their colonies,

with France and Portugal tending to force their language upon their colonial societies to varying

degrees of intensity and success while Great Britain encouraged the use and even further

development of the various indigenous African languages within its colonies (Westley 159). The

colonizer’s two different methods each have roots in Eurocentric if not blatantly racist ideals,

with the former reflecting France and Portugal’s feelings of linguistic (and more generally

societal) superiority over its African colonies and the latter method of England being a product

of their desire to maintain a distinction between Europe and Africa (Michelman 218). The effect

of this imposition of colonial languages upon the whole of Africa is touched upon in four essays

within the collection of African literature titled Gods and Soldiers: “The Senghor Complex” by

Patrice Nganang (from the formerly French Cameroon), “The Politics of Reading” (from another

formerly French colony, Morocco), “Languages We Don’t Know We Know” by Mia Couto (of

the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique), and “The African Writer and the English

Language” (from previously British controlled Nigeria). These, and an abundance of other,

African writers stand at odds with each other about the usefulness of and connotations that come

with using colonial languages in literature. Interestingly enough, the opinions presented about

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the use of colonial language by each of the four authors seems to be correlated with the use way

the language was imposed upon their respective states of origin.

Francophone Africa experienced the most intense forcing of the colonial language upon

the former colonies due to France’s commitment to the importance of knowledge and usage of its

culture, history, and of course, language, to any part of its territory. Specifically within its

African colonies, France also saw these cultural impositions as a necessary “civilizing factor”

that was integral to incorporating them into the French empire (Michelman 218). Language was

particularly key to this transition as it was viewed as the “supreme civilizing force” for their

colonies (217). The use of French within its colonies education systems (first run by its Catholic

missionaries and later taken over by the French government itself) was one of the most important

tools in its pushing its language throughout its African territory, to the point where the use of any

indigenous home-spoken languages was banned within their schools. The severity of their

commitment to integrating the French language into its colonies is shown through a method used

in their primary schools: “beyond this prohibition of was the intimidating ban imposed on the

students themselves by means of the infamous system known as ‘le symbole’: an object (such as

a box of matches) was circulated from student to student as each was caught by his classmate

speaking his native tongue. At the end of the day, the unlucky holder of the ‘symbole’ was

subjected to corporal punishment by the teacher” (219). Compared to the conflicting education

used by its British counterparts (to be described later), French colonies has lower literacy rates

and enrollment in school, showing a relative failure of their system in educating its colonial

population, due at least in part to resentment expected to be felt by people who are forced to

abandon their culture for one of their oppressors (220).

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In addition to the severe resentment appropriated by France’s forcing of its language

upon its colonies, another problem of using its language in African literature arises from the

dynamics of the language itself. Due to the rigidity of French grammar and structure, it is

inherently more difficult than other colonial languages (particularly English) to adapt to African

speech patterns (216). Francophone writers have still tried their hand at imposing their own

language patterns to the French language, but at times more so for an act of defiance against their

former colonizer and its supposed-to-be-rigid language than out of their developed appreciation

for the language (223).

Portugal applied a system that worked to replace any native languages with the use of

Portuguese (which was the first European colonial language to enter Africa), at least within

administrative and intellectual spheres, but to a less severe extent than that of the French as they

do not hold quite the same amount of national pride and importance through the use of their

language as France (but who does?). The use of Portuguese amongst the native population also

failed largely failed, ironically, until after it gained its independence in 1975 when it became the

state’s national language for the sake of fostering unity within its territory, where as in most

African states, a plethora of different languages are spoken (Coute 235-236). The nationalist

intellectual movements within Portuguese colonies were also ridden with irony as they were the

members of society who rejected their colonial heritage more than any others, but they were

granted an advantage within their colonies due to the fact that as members of the upper and

intellectual class, they were some of the few Africans who could actually speak Portuguese at the

time (Hamilton 316). Portuguese was also much more commonly spoken by Africans in urban

areas than rural ones (319). Varying levels of “correctness” within Portuguese speakers in

Africa also divided the colonies’ populations (within the African population as well as

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Portuguese settlers); “Standard” Portuguese was (relatively) widely spoken whereas “Scholastic”

Portuguese (that of the highest intellectuals and elite) (318). Similar to some French speaking

African authors’ attempts to adapt the colonial language to their native languages’ structures,

poets in Mozambique and Angola experimented with combining words from the mother-tongues

with Portuguese diction (316-317).

Use of the English language of course permeated into British colonies in Africa, but in no

part due to its imposed educational system as within Francophone and Lusophone territories. In

contrast, use of African languages in schools was encouraged and the first modern-written

African languages can actually trace their origins to students within British colonies being

encouraged to produce original compositions in their native languages. In addition, any

possibility of forced imposition of the English language upon its African territories was shunted

away by the report by the Phelps-Stokes Fund after the First World War which in part stated that

“no greater injustice can be committed to against a people than to deprive them of their own

language” (Michelman 218). Allowing more extensive the use of native languages apparently

also fostered more positive feelings towards colonial languages, as most of Nigeria’s authors

have chosen to write in English and they have produced the most abundant and well-known

writers in Africa (Westley 161). As mentioned in the discussion of colonial language in the

former Francophone colonies, English could also be inherently more flexible than French and

thus more conducive to African’s ability to translate their ideas into this language (Michelman

223).

As previously mentioned, Patrice Nganang, Laila Lalami, Mia Coute, and Chinua Achebe

each provide an argument about the use of colonial languages which appears to have an

association with the levels of imposition used by their colonizers to incorporate their language

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into their colonies. Nganang shared his very explicitly bitter feelings towards most everything

French, including the language, while Lalami wrote about French linguistic imposition with less

hostility but still emphasized the regretability of the greater accessibility of literature written in

French in North Africa over that which is written in Arabic or Berber. Coute focuses more on

universal issues in using language, but still nods briefly to the specific linguistic struggle within

Africa. Finally, Achebe writes on how colonial rule was obviously a dark time for the entire

continent of Africa, but it is better to focus on the usefulness of English within the former

Anglophone colonies than brood over the colonial past.

Nganang personally accredits at least part of his negative feelings towards the French and

his preference for books written on topics of either Cameroonian nationalism or pro-African (and

thus anti-colonial) ideals to his birth within the generation immediately following Cameroon’s

independence in 1970 (88). Within the newly independent state, the youth were bound to assert

their national identity particularly pitted in contrast to their former rulers. He was confused as to

why many Francophone Africans still held a positive and familial-like relationship with their

former colonial oppressors, which he called “fraternelle amitre”. He continues to refer to those

Africans who not only spoke French but asserted their esteem for the language and culture as

“the ultimate bastion of tyranny in Africa” (100). His sentiments are shared and applied more

specifically to the topics of literature and language by Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who

argues that literature written by Africans in colonial languages is “Afro-European” at best and is

cut off from a large portion of the African population today who cannot read these European

languages (Michelman 223). Outside the continent of Africa, the feeling expressed by Nganang

that French language has “strangled” citizens and specifically writers in the state’s former

colonies exists. “In 1915, Edmond Leforest, a prominent member of the Haitian literary

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movement called ‘La Ronde’, […] stood upon a bridge, calmly tied a Larousse dictionary around

his neck, then preceded to leap to his death by drowning” (216).

Lalami provides a more in-depth look at how the French language and culture has

intruded upon its former African colonies through literature. She mentions that at least in the

earlier stages of her childhood, she was brought up reading French literature rather than that of

her home in North Africa. She is eventually exposed to North African literature, that was written

in French, laments how she “did not begin to read the literature of [her] country until later in life

--- not because of lack of taste of laziness, but because of the vagaries of history” (137). She

also comments on how Moroccan authors were for the most part left out of reading for her

school curriculum, at least in part due to their tendency to write criticisms of the government

(138). She expands on this idea by warning her fellow North African writers that it is necessary

to be aware of censorship. There is also the issue that writers all around Africa are fleeing the

continent due to oppression, war, and/or lack of economic opportunity and that these authors are

choosing to write in the languages of their host countries (139-140). Although she mentions the

problem of western tendency to generalize Africa, and mentions that “one legacy of colonialism

in an artificial division of Africa between Francophone, Lusophone, and Anglophone regions”

(138), she also acknowledges that due to their shared history of colonial oppression, many

African novels do share themes including their struggle for freedom, pain of exile, plight of

immigrants, and asylum-seekers (141).

Coute’s view of colonial language conflicts with those of his French-speaking and

resenting counterparts, with his argument based in the idea that every writer must struggle with

their language to fit their ideas into the confines of its vocabulary and conventions. He frames

the issue of language within the bounds of a search for identity that is not unique to African

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writers. He defines this point on page 240 with his statement that “it is true that a high

proportion of African writers face challenges in order to adjust their work to different languages

and cultures. But this is not a problem that is exclusively to those of us who are African. There

isn’t a single writer in the world who doesn’t seek out his or her own identity among multiple

illusive identities” (240). His also makes a point that African authors are often subject to tests of

“authenticity” with their writing due to the resistance of use of colonial languages and search for

Western audiences caused by their disdain for the oppression by their former colonizers, but now

they are working on breaking out of this constraint of trying to prove that their writing is

“African” (240). In addition to his claims about how authors can effectively work within the

constraints of language, argues that in order to be used effectively and survive, languages are

required to evolve to their surrounding just like living things (236). Coute’s argument comes to

a close with a final assertion that despite the oppression under colonization and its effects of

fostering identity crises amongst the populations of former colonies, the tendency of these

populations to be at least bilingual if not proficient in several different languages is actually one

gift that was brought of colonization. Knowing more than one language gives people an

advantage over those who not, at least for the purposes of communication and expression if this

ability is not translated into a useful skill in other aspects. He writes that everyone should seek

to know at least two languages: “Alongside a language that makes us part of the world, there

should be a language that makes us leave it. On the one hand, a language that creates roots and a

sense of place. On the other, a language that is a wing upon which to travel. Alongside a

language that gives us or sense of humanity, there should be another than can elevate us to the

divine” (241).

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Coming from a former British colony, Achebe articulated a positive outlook on the

colonial language that he and his fellow Nigerians inherited that can perhaps be attributed to the

fact that the English language was not forced upon this population. He prefaces his argument by

referring to the attempts during a “Conference of African Writers of English Expression” he

attended in June 1952 to find an answer to whether African literature could or should be written

in colonial languages and, more broadly, how to define “African literature” (3). The definition

that he reports does allow for the use of colonial language in “African literature”, contrary to the

belief of some of his fellow African authors. He and his colleagues settled on its classification as

“creative writing in which an African setting is authentically handled or to which experiences

originating in Africa are integral” but he mentions his own issues with how this allowed for

authors from any part of the world who write about Africa to fall into the category whereas any

literature by African authors who choose to place their work in another setting did not fit the

category. He then went onto expand on his own view of African literature in terms of language

as falling into two categories: “national” literature which utilizes a language (often a colonial

one) that could be understood by (generally) the entire population of one (or more) African states

and “ethnic” literature which is written in a language native to Africa that can thus only find its

readers within the binds of one ethnic living within a state or multiple states (4). Although he

clearly appreciates the horridness of colonization and many of the effects it had on the states

born from it within artificially constructed boundaries, he also appreciate what he sees as the

positive outcome of this legacy: the unification of diverse groups of people that was forced upon

and given a language for the purpose of communication between them which would not have

occurred if it weren’t for their colonial past. He thus argues that any African authors who write

in colonial languages are not unpatriotic sympathizers of their former colonizers but merely

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using a language that is more understood by the people of their state and those which share its

colonial linguistic legacy as a whole (6). He asserts this claim when he writes that “I have

indicated somewhat offhandedly that the national literature of Nigeria and many other countries

of Africa is, or will be, written in English. This may sound like a controversial statement, but it

isn’t. All I have done is look at the reality of present-day Africa” (5). He goes on to reject the

idea that African authors are not able to use English as effectively if it is their second language,

and stresses that African writers should hope to use world-wide languages not in the same

manner of its native speakers, but in a way that sticks to their patterns of thinking and speech so

that they may effectively use it to convey their ideas (8-9). “The price of a word-wide language

must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use” (10). The last point he

makes is that despite his defense of the use of English and other colonial languages by African

writers, he does hope that there will always be authors who continue to use their mother-tongue

and acknowledges that using Western language does, in a way, symbolize the abandonment of

their heritage (11).

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Achebe, Chinua. "The African Writer in the English Language." Spillman 3-12. Print.

Coute, Mia. "Languages We Don't Know We Know." Spillman 233-241. Print.

Hamilton, Russel G. "Lusophone Literature in Africa: Language and Literature in Portuguese-

Writing Africa." Callaloo 14.2 (1991): 313-23. JSTOR. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Lalami, Laila. "The Politics of Reading." Spillman 137-141. Print.

Michelman, Frederic. "French and British Colonial Language Policies: A Comparative View of

Their Impact on African Literature." Research in African Literatures 26.4 (1995): 216-

25. JSTOR. Web. 3 Nov. 2014.

Nganang, Patrice. "The Senghor Complex." Spillman 87-104. Print.

Spillman, Rob, ed. Gods and Soldiers. New York, New York: Penguin Group, 2009. Print.

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Westley, David. "Choice of Language and African Literature: A Bibliographic Essay."Research

in African Literatures 23.1 (1992): 159-71. JSTOR. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.