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Paper short abstract

Issues of "tradition" and its political role are often implied in debates over nationalism and nation-building. This paper considers the Sierra Leonean experience of these issues via a discussion of the relationship between language, class and nationalism in Sierra Leone's post-colonial context.

Paper long abstract

Language, Class and Nationalism: this triad has played a key role in contemporary political phenomena. In the case of Africa, nation-building has often been perceived as difficult due to the heterogeneity of African populations, which includes linguistic heterogeneity. Development, has meanwhile, been considered a matter of class, whether in the Marxian sense, or in the sense implied in the hypothesis that new "middle classes" will provide a basis for politically stable and economically growing nation-states. This paper, which is part of a work in progress, will discuss the real complexities involved in the language-class-nationalism triad, with regard to the specific case of Sierra Leone. In that West African state, over 12 languages exist in a "language ecology", emerging issues of social class coexist with older forms of social identification and stratification, and the project of building a Sierra Leonean nation-state continues as the country moves into an uncertain future. This paper will contend that possible outcomes of this project cannot be understood by models imported from other contexts, but that the nature of that outcome will be shaped by the particular nature of the language-class-nationalism relationship.