While South Africa has been lauded as a multilingual country that accorded official status to 11 languages, the academic notion of multilingualism has always been conceived from a monolingual perspective. Monolingual ideologies, which inadvertently favoured European languages to the detriment of local languages, were passed on to African countries…

Most academic discussion on the role of language in education in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) supports the extended use of African languages as media of instruction (MoI), while most practice preserves a monolingual role for European languages. Many ministries of education maintain the belief that African languages are not appropriate as MoIs beyond…

This volume brings together research carried out in a variety of geographic and linguistic contexts including Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe and the United States and explores efforts to incorporate linguistic diversity into education and to "harness" this diversity for learners' benefit. It challenges the largely…

Discusses the pedagogical functions of bilingual education in Africa and outlines a tentative classification of African states according to the respective situations of the linguistic communities living in them. (Author/DB)

The paper draws attention to communication in multilingual states which may be said to exist at three levels: sub-state, state, and inter-state level. Communication at the sub-state level may involve an "in-group" language or a regional one, and hence a multilingual model is required at this level. At the state level, on the other hand,…

Responds to an article on aspects of African language policy and discusses the following issues: multilingualism and monolingualism, proposed changes in language policy from the Organization for African Unity and South African initiatives, the language of literature, bilingual education, and whose interests English-language teaching is serving.…

A survey is presented of the status and usage patterns of the lingua francas--common languages used as a medium of communication between ethnically and linguistically diverse peoples--of the African continent. The survey gives an overview of the general language situation and briefly describes the major languages: Swahili, Hausa, Fufulde,…