Paper short abstract:

Against the backdrop of postcolonial linguistics I argue that the role of linguistics’ linguistic ideologies, theoretical underpinnings and analytical practices in the colonial “invention” of Africa need to be analysed before understanding the urban and the rural as two different linguistic settings.

Paper long abstract:

Following the recent history and development of research on urban languages in Africa it can be seen that socio/linguistics struggles with the disciplinary heritage of linguistic description and terminology that has contributed to the "invention" of Africa, such as the naming of languages, their artefactualization, and ethnification. At the same time, a wealth of empirical findings on urban languages has troubled received inner-linguistic assumptions such as the constitution of the linguistic object of knowledge through abstraction and reduction, a focus on stability and boundedness, or the relevance of the origin and classification of languages. The ensuing terminological innovation in sociolinguistics such as superdiversity, translanguaging or metrolingualism are certainly owed the observation of the dynamics of urban contexts, which seem to contrast with the perceived stagnation of rural areas.

From the perspective of postcolonial linguistics, however, we have to ask whether the analytical apparatus of linguistics emerged from and is restricted to the rural setting of pre/colonial Africa and for that reason fails to adequately describe the dynamics of contemporary urban linguistic practices. Or, as a second possibility and in order to salvage the underlying universalistic claims of linguistics we could also explore that linguistics' linguistic ideologies and theoretical underpinnings have been problematic all along because they should be able to explain both urban and rural language practices. In deconstructing in such a way important assumptions about language I hope to be able to open the way for seeing more clearly what makes the difference between rural and urban linguistic settings.