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Item Expulsion from Eden: Towards the Story and Theory of the Early Ghanaian Novel(2018-10-18) Amissah-Arthur, J.B.While significant literature exists on the early Ghanaian novel, many of the interpreters of the genre – Danquah 1943; Angmor 1996, 2010; Salm and Falola 2002; Newell 2002; Yitah and Dako 2011; Wehrs [2008], 2016 – provide accounts of only the history and “existential thematics” (Culler 2002: 32). Such analyses look at only the trajectory and veridical matter of the novels in isolation of the important formulaic structural patterning which should properly constitute the basis of interpretation of the novels. Situated within the context of the scholarship outlined above, the present study provides a structural analysis of the four Ghanaian novels written during the colonial period: A. Native’s Marita (1886), J.E. Casely Hayford’s Ethiopia Unbound (1911), Kobina Sekyi’s The Anglo-Fanti (1918) and R.E. Obeng’s Eighteenpence (1943). As regards methodology, we shall first summarise the plot of each novel with a series of clauses. The delineated clauses shall be treated as a linguistic system and re-ordered according to Levi-Straussian paradigmatic logic of structuralism to discover the real underlying structure of the novels. Our interest is in identifying the recurring functions and how they lend themselves to the process of re-formulation as a structure. At the end of the study, we shall conclude that the same structural pattern exists in the entire corpus of the early Ghanaian novel, and that the structure represents the grammar of story. We shall indicate that the pattern is not visible on the level of superficial reading, but represents a structural mechanism embedded deeply and unintentionally in the fabric of the story of the early Ghanaian novel. We shall interpret the grammar as representing the Edenic myth of the expulsion: the collapse and sacking of a well-appointed pre-colonial primordiality after the emergence of the archetypal snake (coloniser) and the introduction of the apple (colonisation). Finally, we shall suggest that the grammar is an unconscious story residing in the deepest recesses of the psyche of the early Ghanaian novelists as they grappled with the brutal angst of powerlessness, emasculation and loss of a hitherto perfect African world under British colonisation. We shall conclude that the grammar is a paradox for two reasons: first, it remains seemingly unexpressed and hidden in the abstract, psychological plane of the writers, and yet it sneaks its way undetected by them into the fabric of their novels; second, it represents the real concerns, and truest meaning of the early novels, and yet the writers themselves are unaware of it. We shall proffer the grammar as the theory of the early Ghanaian novel.Item “Ethnicity, conflict and language choice: the sociolinguistics of development communication in Ghana’s Northern Region”(2018-03-01) Kerswill, P.; Anderson, J.A.This talk will illustrate the kinds of latent ethnic conflicts that exist in many societies by taking the case of two Ghanaian villages, both located in the Northern Region and both highly multilingual. They differ in the relationships between the ethnolinguistic groups residing within them. In one, Daboya, the land is held by the Gonja following invasions in the eighteenth century, and members of other local groups generally assimilate by showing allegiance to the local Gonja chief and by becoming proficient in the Gonja language. In the other, Pong-Tamale, the land belongs to the Dagomba, a situation which is undisputed. Other groups are not expected to switch to Dagbani or to change allegiances. Ethnic conflicts in the Northern Region in the 1980s and 90s, both between and within several different ethnolinguistic groups, led to many deaths followed by a sharpening of the ethnic divides. This situation exists today. Our case study is a questionnaire-based and ethnographic investigation of language use in the two villages (Mahama 2005). The study thus deals with language choices on two levels, between local people and between members of external elites and local people. The study found that language choices varied between the two villages in ways which uncovered the latent conflicts, and that preferences for communication with development agencies differed considerably, tooItem From Dystopia to Utopia, Mythopoeia to Ethiopia: The Narrative of Dis/Placement and pan African Zionism in the Root Reggae Lyrics of Joseph Hill(2017-04-20) Masamaka, J.; Kambon, O.This paper discusses the poetics of the lyrics of the Jamaican root reggae star, poet and cultural icon, Joseph Hill, within the purview of postcolonial diaspora critical concepts such as: dystopia writing, mythopoeia and utopia. While critical discourse on diaspora literary expressions often privilege high canon literary outputs of mainstream authors like Samuel Selvon, Derek Walcott, V. S. Naipaul etc., the passionate pan African rhetoric and lyrical aesthetics of pop culture reggae icons such as Bob Marley and Joseph Hill are either underrepresented (in the case of the former) or overlooked (in the case of the latter). Claiming affinity between black diaspora and the Jewish dispersion, Rastafarian reggae artistes have adopted Nathan Birnbaum’s neologism, “Zionism,” to reconstruct a pan African “alter/native” narrative that embodies the anguish of “displacement” and the burden of identity construction in their lyrics. This enterprise has been labelled black Zionism by Marcus Garvey. Proclaimed as the “Keeper of Zion Gate,” one of the foremost disciples of Marcus Garvey, Joseph Hill, established himself as the most doctrinal pan African reggae artiste and lyrical aesthetician. This paper is a discourse on how the prolific lyrical outputs of Hill offer rich insight on postcolonial narrative strategies of dystopia, mythopoeia and utopia. Indeed, the enterprise of “dismantling… structures of colonial control” (Childs and Williams 1997) is not the preserve of high canon literature. To the Rastafarian reggae poet/singer, singing to destabilize Western hegemonic metanarratives is a way of life, a culture, a religion, an obsession. I conclude that Hill’s lyrics constitute a postcolonial “alter/native” narrative which aims at deconstructing the “master codes” (Ato Quayson) of western cultural universality, and reconstructing an “alter/native” pan African narrative of authenticity and liberation.Item Who is this ignorant soldier boy?: A postcolonial reading of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy(2016-03-17) Awelewa, A.; Amfo, N.A.This paper is an attempt at a postcolonial reading of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s novel, Sozaboy, which in the author’s words is written in “’rotten English’, a mixture of Nigerian pidgin English, broken English and occasional flashes of good, even idiomatic English” (Author’s Note, Sozaboy, 1994). In this piece, I identify Saro-Wiwa’s novel as an indifferent account of the historical happening in Nigeria between 1967 and 1970. I also consider the characterization of Mene (herein referred to as Sozaboy) as a deliberate attempt to re-create history from the point of view of a partisan judge, the author. My reason for these strong views is foregrounded in the inherent and perennial struggle for relevance by perceived minority ethnic groups of Nigeria brought under the control of three main or dominant groups by a colonial fiat through Lord Lugard in 1914. The three major groups identified by their languages are: Hausa/Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo. Nigeria, being a country of as many as two hundred and fifty ethnic groups, is currently credited with a population of about 170 million people and regarded as the most populous black nation on earth. This paper also considers the role of colonization and the discovery of oil in the Niger Delta area of the country towards the end of colonial rule as major factors that contributed to the struggle for supremacy among the people of Nigeria in the early years of independence. It also examines the incursion of the military into governance of the newly-independent state as a catalyst for internal struggle, political instability, corruption, mutual hatred and wanton destruction of life and property that the new country witnessed in the early years, leading unavoidably to the civil war, otherwise known as Nigeria-Biafra War. I conclude that Sozaboy is not a true canon for the postcolonial rendition of Nigeria’s history, and if it must be considered for its “anti-war” flavours, there is need to make it walk alongside other ‘reliable’ fictional accounts of events of that era.Item Predication in Editorial Language: The Example of the Daily Graphic(2019-03-28) Wiredu, J.F.This paper explores the language of Ghanaian newspaper editorials with a focus on the structure of predication within the sentence. Taking the predicate as the part of the sentence (beginning from the verb) which states, affirms or asserts something about the subject, this paper proposes to investigate, therefore, what syntactic structures occur after the Predicator in a typical sentence in an editorial. The interest in this area of study has been inspired by Frimpong’s Mellon-funded project on the nominal group. In one of his seminars, he has argued for the NG to be studied closely for its pervasive nature in the syntagm of the sentence. In his presentation, an important issue emerged which has served as the motivation for this study - that NGs in subject position are, strikingly, structurally simple, involving single pronouns or nouns and two or three-worded premodifying structures. Therefore, if, as has been pointed out in other studies, editorial language is complex, then the source of its complexity does not lie in the Subject but elsewhere in the sentence. For the purpose of this study, January 2016 editorials of the Daily Graphic will be analysed using the combined methods of quantitative and qualitative principles. This is a stylistic investigation of the grammar of newspaper editorials which, we hope, will provide insights about the use of English in specific domains of second language multilingual contexts