28 th WALC & 26 th CLAN 2013

1. 28th WALC & 26th CLAN 2013 AFRICAN LINGUISTIC ASSOCIATIONS, AFRICAN LINGUISTS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Ayo Bamgbose Emeritus Professor of Linguistics University of Ibadan July 30, 2013

2. INTRODUCTION • As this 28th West African Languages Congress (WALC) marks the 52nd Anniversary since the first West African Languages Congress was held, I have decided to present my address to this gathering in two parts: • Part I is to take us down memory lane to draw attention to the history and achievements of West African Linguistic Society (WALS), and • Part II is to remind us as African linguists of the debt we owe to the community in which we live or work.

3. ORIGIN OF LINGUISTIC ASSOCIATIONS IN WEST AFRICA • Ford Foundation and the founding of the West African Languages Survey, 1960 (with Joseph Greenberg as Chairman and Robert Armstrong as Field Director) • The Survey was responsible for the founding of WALS at the 5th WALC in Accra in 1965 (with Joseph Greenberg as President and Ayo Bamgbose as Secretary-Treasurer) • Other members of Council were: Robert Armstrong, Maurice Houis, Eldred Jones, Marcel BotBa-Njock, CoulibalyBakari, Serge Sauvageot, and Gilbert Ansre.

4. ORIGIN OF LINGUISTIC ASSOCIATIONS IN EASTERN AFRICA • Ford Foundation and the Survey of Language Use and Language Teaching in Eastern Africa (SLULTEA)(with Professor C.H. Prator as Field Director) • Unlike the West African Languages Survey, which concentrated on descriptive and comparative historical research, SLULTEA’s work was mainly on language use, language spread and language teaching, with each country having an autonomous team: Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Zambia. • First country survey started in Uganda in 1968 and the last was concluded in Zambia in 1970.

5. SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN LINGUISTIC ASSOCIATIONS IN AFRICA • The West African Languages Survey founded WALS. Similarly, SLULTEA founded the Language Association of Eastern Africa (LAEA) by encouraging existing country associations to come together. • Both Associations enjoyed the generous support of the Ford Foundation. • Unlike WALS and LAEA, other associations in Southern Africa such as the African Language Association of Southern Africa (ALASA) founded 1970 and the Southern African Applied Linguistics Association (SAALA) founded in 1980 were self-sponsored by linguists in universities.

6. MORE ABOUT HISTORY OF WALS (I) • Why is WALS a Society and not an Association (WALA) like the other Linguistic Associations, including even the West African Modern Languages Association (WAMLA) founded in 1975? Think of the Survey and W-A-L-S. Think also of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA). • WALS, founded in 1965, is 48 years old this year. LAN, founded in 1980, is 33 years old this year. Why bring this celebratory conference to Ibadan? For LAN, most people know that it was founded in Ibadan. For WALS, most people may not know that its origins can also be traced to Ibadan.

7. MORE ABOUT HISTORY OF WALS (II) • The idea of a West African Languages Survey was conceived in Ibadan in 1955 by Jon Uldall, a phonetician at the University College, Ibadan. • A meeting sponsored by the West African Institute of Social and Economic Research (WAISER) was held at Ibadan in 1956 at which a Council headed by Professor Joseph Greenberg was set up. This Council held its inaugural meeting in 1957, and in 1960 when the Council met again at Ibadan, it received the good news of a substantial grant by the Ford Foundation to the Survey. • In 1986, Ibadan also hosted 17th WALC, marking the 21st anniversary of the founding of WALS.

8. ACHIEVEMENTS OF WALS (I) • Annual Congresses: Historic 1st WALC held at Accra, Legon in 1961. Historic 5th Congress at which WALS was founded held also at Accra, Legon in 1965. • A list of some of the early Congresses: 1961 (Accra, Legon), 1962 (Dakar), 1963 (Freetown), 1964 (Ibadan), 1965 (Accra, Legon), 1966 (Yaoundé), 1967 (Lagos), 1968 (nil), 1969 (Abidjan), 1970 (Freetown), Since 1970 Congresses have become biennial: 1972 (Accra, Legon), 1974 (Yaoundé), 1976 (Ile-Ife), 1978 (Freetown), 1980 (Cotonou), 1982 (Port Harcourt), etc. • Fellowships lasting two to three years

9. ACHIEVEMENTS OF WALS (II) • Publication of Journal: The Journal of West African Languages was started by the Survey in 1964 and inherited by WALS. In addition, the Survey also had a Monograph Series (now defunct) which assisted in the publication of doctoral theses, which otherwise might not have found outlet with commercial publishers. • These three activities: conferences, fellowships and journal publication were common to both WALS and LAEA. • Capacity building through travel grants to attend conferences, grants for fieldwork, grants for theses. Outcome: more African students and teachers, more departments, more publications.

10. ACHIEVEMENTS OF WALS (III) • Linguistic Research: In terms of linguistic research, WALS encouraged not only individual research but also joint research through a number of Working Groups devoted to Benue-Congo Languages, Chadic Languages, Data Sheets and Linguistic Map, Language Policy, Language in Education, Oral Literature, and English/French Research. Most of the groups worked hard and a few even had to their credit valuable publications.

11. SOME REMINISCENCES (I) • WALS Headed Paper: West African Linguistic Society translated into French correctly as ‘SociétéLinguistique de l’AfriqueOccidentale’. Printer’s devil resulting in ‘Occidentale’ printed without the final ‘e’. All hell broke loose! • Discussion on WALS Constitution dragging on till the time when the French Ambassador was expecting his invited guests. The respected poet, HampatéBa,saved the day by proclaiming, “On reste”! meaning: we should stay on and complete the work.

12. SOME REMINISCENCES (II) • Military disturbance on the hill in Yaoundé during WALC in 1974. Shooting throughout the night in government quarters leading to serious consideration to abandon the Congress and return home. But we continued with the Congress. • WALC 1970 during the Biafran war. Because of the sympathy that the Government of Sierra Leone had for Biafra, all Nigerians attending the Congress were considered as non-persons. Even reports in newspapers about the Congress excluded the name of Nigeria in the list of countries attending the Congress.

13. SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY • The question of what we, as linguists, owe our community is one that has agitated my mind in the last few years. In 2006, I addressed it in relation to linguists in Nigeria, and I now want to expand the scope and relate it to the African context. • Social responsibility (SR) refers to a situation in which the welfare of society is the basis for human and institutional policy and actions. • It embraces care for the welfare of citizens by persons, companies, and governments. Its best known form is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) which enjoins companies to adopt best practices and contribute to social causes.

14. SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF AFRICAN LINGUISTS • According to Himmelmann (1998:172), as quoted in Thierberger and Musgrave (2007:28), it is a given that “the interests and rights of contributors and the speech community should take precedence over scientific interests”. • Social Responsibility is relevant in several areas of our work as African linguists. Consider, for example, discriminatory practices in language use. However, for the purpose of this Address, I wish to focus on six areas: language research, theory and language description, language teaching, adult literacy, language-induced educational failure, and language policy and planning.

15. LANGUAGE RESEARCH (I) • Language research today is more complex than before, with researchers doing in-depth study of narrow areas of a language. • Earlier language research was done by two categories of researchers (non-professional and professional) and it was devoted to providing as much information as possible on as many aspects of the language as a whole. • Non-professional linguists were mainly missionaries, explorers, colonial officers, educationists and anthropologists whose main concern was not language as such, but whose interest in language was a byproduct of their jobs.

16. LANGUAGE RESEARCH (II) • The missionaries, for instance, were interested in making the Bible available in African languages so as to facilitate evangelization, while colonial officers and explorers often included language in their anthropological reports. • It is commonplace to cast aspersions on non-professional linguists because of their lack of linguistic sophistication. Evidence of infelicities in language descriptions include inadequate differentiation of vowels and consonants, poor or inconsistent orthographic conventions, Latin or English-based parts of speech, faulty lexicographic entries, and mistaken contrasts and distinctions at all linguistic levels.

17. LANGUAGE RESEARCH (III) Objectionable Statements: • “There are three cases, the nominative, objective and possessive as in the English language; but in none of them is there a change of form” Johnson (1921:xxxviii). • “No article has been discovered, and probably there is none” Crowther (1852:6). • “The individual words , too, as a rule have a perfectly clear meaning and the use of metaphor is uncommon” Migeod (1911:75). • In spite of constant missionary bashing in linguistics, it is to their credit that they laid the foundation for the more sophisticated descriptions that were to follow.

18. LANGUAGE RESEARCH (IV) • Specific contributions made by them include the following: compilation of wordlists and vocabulary which facilitated studies in language relationships, rudiments of a writing system that emerged from the early grammars and dictionaries compiled, collected texts and translations which formed the basis of written literature in African languages, and some valuable insights in some of the early works which served as an input to some modern descriptions. • Three outstanding missionary linguists who worked in West Africa are Rev. S.W. Koelle, Bishop Samuel Crowther, and Rev. J.F. Schön.

19. LANGUAGE RESEARCH (V) • Early professional linguists of the calibre of Christaller, Westermann, Ward, and Abraham could easily be said to have matched the passion and commitment of the earlier non-professional linguists. Like them, they were acutely aware of the need to make available information in as many languages as possible as well as cover as many areas of the same language as possible. • This is a practice that the present generation of linguists can learn from.

20. LANGUAGE RESEARCH (VI) Some minuses in Language Research: • Diminishing attention to fieldwork. Compare field and instrumental work by Bill Welmers and Peter Ladefoged respectively • Reliance on single informants in the Diaspora • Shift in focus of conferences from Africa to Europe and the U.S. (WOCAL as a better model) • Beyond pure research and academic publications: giving something back to speakers. Example of Kay Williamson in the Rivers Readers Project and my own experience with Mbe in the Mbube Division of Ogoja in 1964.

21. THEORY AND LANGUAGE DESCRIPTION • Theory has led to useful insights in language description and language description has led to enrichment of theory. However we must note: • Tendency to elevate the theoretical at the expense of the descriptive • Tendency to minimize data in descriptions, e.g. elaborate rules based on a few sentences. • Lower prestige for the descriptivist as compared with the theoretician. • Linguists “should make the results of their research available to the general public, and should endeavor to make the empirical bases and limitations of their research comprehensible to nonprofessionals” (LSA Ethics C’ttee 2008)

22. LANGUAGE TEACHING • Low prestige of teaching a language as opposed to the linguistics of it. • Low prestige of teaching materials as compared with articles in journals, especially in respect of promotions. • Even if it does not bring commensurate rewards, it is an aspect of SR to teach language and devise materials for language teaching, when necessary. • Language Teachers’ Association and Linguistic Associations (e.g. ALTA and ACAL in the U.S.). If they can collaborate, for example in terms of joint conferences, the tendency to consider one as less prestigious than the other will be reduced.

23. ADULT LITERACY • The incidence of illiteracy in Africa is very high, yet adult literacy in many African countries is poorly funded or left to volunteer community effort. • Linguists have a crucial role to play in literacy, not only by supplying authentic language material but also in the grading and phasing of course books. • Some organizations such as SIL have literacy built into their programmes, but nothing stops a linguist in the field complementing literacy efforts by others. A linguist must not turn a blind eye to the high incidence of illiteracy among the community in which he or she works.

24. LANGUAGE-INDUCED EDUCATIONAL FAILURE • A major problem with the educational system of most African States is educational failure, which may be traced to the language of instruction. • What should be the response of the African linguist to this state of affairs? SR demands that he or she should not just look on unconcerned, but join in the effort to ensure that a better system is evolved. • Fortunately, some linguists have been active in this regard, mounting pilot projects involving the use of African languages as media of instruction. One can point to such projects in Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, South Africa and Burkina Faso.

25. LANGUAGE POLICY AND PLANNING (I) • Many linguists tend to restrict their work to purely formal language description and steer clear of the quasi-political aspect of language policy. Yet language policy is at the root of educational failure. • Is avoidance of involvement in language policy by linguists justified? • Even for researchers from outside a country, such is the wide scope of language policy and planning that they can be involved without being accused of interference. For example, the following activities can be engaged in by all: • A detailed study of the language situation in a country

26. LANGUAGE POLICY AND PLANNING (II) • Analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of possible models, from which policy-makers may make an informed choice. • Providing policy-makers with recommendations on policy by international bodies. • Participation as consultants in pilot projects • Participation either as advisers or active collaborators in language development effort, particularly terminology work and teaching materials. • The one activity which non-nationals may wish to avoid is ADVOCACY.

27. LANGUAGE POLICY AND PLANNING (III) • However, there is no reason why researchers who are not outsiders should feel reluctant in advocating policies or practices which they believe to be right. The alternative to doing so is looking on while less knowledgeable people push through disastrous policies. • SR in language policy implies that whatever an African linguist may be by training, he or she should be ready to be a sociolinguist at heart, being sensitive to the problems and challenges of language in society, including the role and status of African languages.

28. IMPLICATIONS FOR TRAINING (I) • Unlike earlier generations of linguists who came into the discipline from a varied background of different disciplines, later generations majored in Linguistics as undergraduates and so tended to be narrowly focused on application of theory to language description. Consequently, they lacked the ease with which their predecessors applied their training to specialized areas of linguistics. • Often, coupled with the single discipline is the absence of a broad base of survey of different theories before adopting one for analysis. The result is often a mechanical mouthing of poorly-understood theoretical concepts.

29. IMPLICATIONS FOR TRAINING (II) • For those being prepared for work on African languages, there should be: • 1. A broad base of training in structural linguistics before introduction to modern theories. • 2. Emphasis on fieldwork, an aspect of which should be an awareness of the responsibility of the researcher to his or her community. • 3. A re-orientation of the mindset that considers practical language research as inferior research. In fact, the SR-minded researcher on African languages should be able to combine both theoretical and practical research.

30. CONCLUSION • Several years ago, a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Ibadan gave a Valedictory Lecture after over thirty years’ service and, for his lecture, he chose the title (with a pun intended), “What does it all add up to?”. • Borrowing a leaf from this title, linguists working on African languages should be able to ask themselves what their work amounts to in light of pervasive underdevelopment that characterizes most communities on the African continent. • Clearly, it is not enough for us to bring out scholarly papers in learned journals. We need to take our social responsibility equally seriously.