TRANS Nr. 16: Divine Che Neba (University of Burundi): Deconstruction and reconstruction of English in postcolonial writings: A gateway to multiculturalism

This paper is based on the tentative premise that cataloguing shared and disparate features (linguistic, literary, ethnographic and others) and accentuating local colour in the way many postcolonial African writers of English expression have done, is (in)advertently the avenue for dissipating native English in African writings. The new lingua-franca (English) and the hybridised narrative style adopted by postcolonial African writers celebrate a new Africa (of producers and consumers) and to some extent, dwarfs the colonial construction of a puppet Africa, to which the English colonialists were initially not ready to teach their language at all, as Braj Kachru (1986) holds, for fear of spoiling the master-servant relationship established over decades of colonialism (see Abdulaziz 1991). The imperial agenda, besides not teaching the language at all or teaching it poorly, also aimed at erasing the identity of the colonised peoples and relegating indigenous languages to a sphere of no relevance. Colonialism, it should be noted, left two linguistic impacts on Africa. As Makoni and Meinhof (2003) state it led to the imposition of new, foreign languages and the redefinition of the function of African languages. The outcome of the imposition of foreign languages has been the emergence of regional varieties of these languages in these postcolonial regions. For instance, from this deconstructive-reconstructive perspective, native English lexicons, without exception, are fast accepting African indigenous words, idioms and styles as a means of the cultural dialog. The literary scenario in postcolonial Africa, therefore does not only feed or embellish native English but proceeds to advertise its culture in this world language that was imposed by colonial agents in plantations, schools (through the whip), churches, and through parliamentary acts.

The paper further maintains that the indigenised varieties of English in postcolonial writings promote the dynamic process of native English. Both forms of English become different paths leading to the same milieu (global milieu), with each participant (native and postcolonial users) serving as producer (incorporating new structures, idioms and remodelling the language) and consumer (respecting the native models and structures). This paper identifies and celebrates African aesthetics in the novel form, as a means of promoting the canonisation of African varieties of English, through the works of seminal authors like Amos Tutuola and Asare Konadu. The paper also serves as a keynote to the inevitable canonisation of the varied varieties of English, a canonisation which remains an enviable task for all African scholars. Finally, the paper wraps up with a sample analysis exhibiting Tutuola and Asare Konadu as producers of English at the idiomatic, lexical, syntactical and more particularly, within the oral aesthetic framework. Other references will be drawn from authors like Chinua Achebe and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o.

Linguistic overtones of postcolonial Africa and the question of black other

The origin of this paper was a class on comparative literature that I had with postgraduate English/Kirundi majors at the University of Burundi. The University of Burundi is one of the rare African Universities where lectures are sometimes given in Kirundi (the national language) and not strictly in the colonial languages, as the case may be with many other African Universities. Lecturers in this University, in almost all the departments, switch codes during lectures at will, especially for emphasis. What struck me (as a visiting lecturer) most was the attitude of one of the students, who, in a student conference confessed that he thinks in Kirundi before translating into English. I permitted him to present his conference paper in Kirundi (and not in English). This, of course, resolved the crisis. When I later on interrogated him on related issues, he insisted that if an opportunity is given him to translate the English language in his own way, he will be more eloquent, though his classmates will mock him for being unable to master neither the American accent nor the British RP, (accents which, to the best of my knowledge, none of them can effectively handle). Many, only attempt to mimic these accents to satisfy their instructors. Postcolonial African writers, like the students mentioned above, have displayed a similar cynical and contradictory character, as far as the assimilation of the colonial language is concerned. This cynical and contradictory character is partly to define the self within this imported linguistic framework, to deconstruct the imperial agenda and, of course, to provincialise the Western Subject (i.e. the belief that the west is superior). This would engender myriad of recognised varieties of English in Africa and the world at large.

Within this sphere, I will first and foremost oppose the doctrine of inferiority assumed by purveyors of the imperial agenda, in order to justify my claim on why African writers of the colonial and postcolonial epochs have persistently been undermined, and more often than not, forced to be consumers rather than producers of English. Simply put, we must begin where it started, and start asking how we got here, and where we are heading to. In this context, I will not repeat the intriguing question of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (25). I will not repeat it, because I believe that linguistically and literally, they are already speaking, although the colonialists and some pseudo-nationalists and pseudo-intellectuals in Africa are frustrating this course, which, of course, is part of the imperial machinery. I will also not repeat Edward Saїd’s preoccupation in Culture and Imperialism as to whether the subaltern has the licence or "power to narrate" (xiii). This time, emphasis is laid on the effectiveness of their narration and how these narrations can help them decentre some old discourses, in order to assert themselves within a defined premise in the global milieu. This project can be realised through identification, celebration and canonisation of the existing varieties of English in Africa. This time no licence is needed from the colonialist, because, for centuries western philosophers (including Comte Arthur de Gobineau, Georg Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel and Thomas Jefferson), through their different discourses have seen Africa as inferior (Other), capable of producing nothing. These discourses for long, have caged the Black as a whole and Africans in particular in a closet as consumer of everything, after all, as Hegel posits, the Black lacks the elements by which man comes in to sentience. Michelle M. Wright in Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora writes:

From a similar perspective, Hegel identifies the inability of the Black to free himself from this closet of inferiority when. he says:

Like Hegel, Jefferson adds, "this Black Other is intrinsically and eternally backward and can never become part of the western nation" (Qtd Wright,31). With this in mind, and seeing the European as the highest achievement, it becomes evident that even what is forced upon Africans (like the European languages, literatures and other aspects of culture) may not be tampered with because all change as such is Western by nature.

Jefferson, like Hegel and Gobineau, affirms that the Black Other is intrinsically and eternally backward and can never become part of the Western nation. If we relate Jefferson’s philosophy to the literary and linguistic domains in Africa, it is suggesting that, an African variety of the English language is out of the question, since Africans can never become part of the mainstream discourse of the West. This brings us to Gobineau’s fear of the death of the western Subject (i.e. the superiority of the west over the Black other) through miscegenation. Gobineau cautions the West of the danger of an imminent death of the Western Subject, if they continue to mix their superior literary blood with the inferior African blood. Wright adds that "Gobineau’s Essai laments the death of the Subject, corrupted by a democratic process and the mixture of bloodlines that pulls the Subject down to mediocrity, indistinct from the rest" (40). Since these concepts crisscross one another and have been used and manipulated by the supposed Subject for centuries (to his own end), it becomes more evident that a mixture of English with African languages and thought systems (as Achebe, Tutuola, Konadu and many African writers do) or the canonisation of an African variety of the English language or African style, entails the death of native English or other standardised Western varieties.

This fear invoked by Gobineau seized many a publisher, especially when prominent African writers like Achebe and Tutuola mounted the literary podium for the first time. They did the round of publishing houses, and the fear everywhere was that their works, embellished with African ecological features represented an assassination of the Western Subject. The innovative style they adopted, in the eyes of most contemporary publishers, did not meet the requirements of the English novel form. Seemingly, the oral aesthetic format of Tutuola and Achebe fell short of the journalistic extrinsic skills of Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe; it neither copied the epistolary style of Samuel Richardson in Pamela, nor measured up to the intrinsic and extrinsic penetrative style of Henry Fielding in Joseph Andrews. These African writers, also seemingly, according to the western critics, failed to exhume James Joyce’s stream of consciousness technique in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Taking cognisance of this, therefore, to accept Achebe’s Things Fall Apart or Tutuola’s ThePalmwine Drinkard, meant accelerating the death of the English novel form, hence, killing the Western Subject. That is why these works were received with a lot of mixed feelings by Western critics and pseudo-African intellectuals.

Like the Judeo-Christian God in Genesis, Gobineau’s Aryan (symbolising the West) does not only possess the power to rule the world, but creates the world. Wright adds "the superiority of the Aryan is manifested in his ability to subjugate the two weaker races: the Negroid and the Mongoloid" (42). If the permission to create is Aryan, then the other races will evidently pose as consumers, and particularly the Negroid race, which according to Jefferson, carries an eternal veil of underdevelopment represented by their black colour. Historically (see Cheihk Anta Diop in The African Civilization: Myth or Reality), creation by the Negro world has always been received with much scepticism, and even worse, the attempts to renovate the coloniser’s language. This scepticism stems from the fact that the Negro status (particularly his skin colour), as projected by the imperialist propagandists, distances him from the human family, which gives the impression that nothing good can come out of him.

Historical pace

Driven by Hegel’s Aufhebung (the divine power of superior beings, cultures, and civilisation to overthrow inferior ones), the West at the eve of colonisation saw the necessity of placing their hands everywhere and in all domains (culture, politics and the economy) in the Third World. To put it simply, civilising the wild animals in the jungles became a priority project to the Western Subject. Within the cultural domain, their language became part of the machinery of subjugation, and room was never given for creativity on the part of the colonised. The colonised were sometimes forced to speak like their masters (this was even truer for French as Africans were taught to recite "Nos ancêtres sont des Gaulois"). Ngugi Wa Thiong’o in Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature opines that "English was the official vehicle and the magic formula to colonial elitedom" (12 ). He further laments the way it was introduced in Africa as follows:

This inhuman treatment meted out to Africans on the eve of colonisation in the process of teaching them the superior language is not as shocking to the colonialist because, after all, it was all part of the imperial agenda. The conquered monster that Joseph Conrad describes in Heart of Darkness, deserved no better treatment than what Ngugi describes above. Describing the amazement of the Western Subject, in Heart of Darkness, Marlow says:

These stomach-churning images of Conrad are rooted in the psyche of the Aryan and that is why many (Aryans i.e. Westerners) believe that creation is theirs and not Africa’s. Africans, according to the Aryan belief, need to listen, imitate, copy, stoop, accept, and reject what is non-Western, as a means of improving their status. Any form of innovation of the English language, especially from Africa is often seen as a desecration of the language. Some critics, hurriedly sum these African varieties of English as bad English - after all, conquered monsters need not compete with the conqueror. But we should understand that all living languages grow where they are sown or transported, and the African soil is no exception for English. Unfortunately, the conqueror’s utilitarian education did not totally rob Africa of everything. I can say, Africans, in a way, robbed the coloniser of his language by innovating it without any licence to do so, and using it the way they want. Rabemananjara, the Malagasy poet, in a similar vein, acknowledges that:

At the historic meeting of African writers of English expression in 1962 at Makerere University College, Kampala, Uganda, Ngugi testified that:

The question of enabling the rest of the world to prey on African proverbs, speech and oral tradition as a whole is what partly defines the creative ability of the African writers of English expression. It is this oral aesthetic transfer that gives an identity to postcolonial African writers and their writings, as they are able through it to record freely the African ways of life within and without; to borrow into English, native African words for which no suitable English equivalents exist, and to show the impossibility of division between the oral tradition and the total complex systems of culture that make a writer what he is. This innovative style helps deconstruct the western Subject, who poses, within the framework of the imperial agenda, as the unique creator. As Claude Wauthier in The Literature and Thought of Modern Africa postulates:

Destruction here to Tutuola, Konadu and Achebe means, deconstructing the Aryan English to construct an African variety, which will bear the weight of the African experience. It is in this light that Achebe in Morning Yet on CreationDay contends:

Many African writers of the postcolonial era adhered to this call, though with different intensities.

Innovative style as catalyst for new varieties

The debate about the development of African writings in English or other western languages in Africa has been the preoccupation of contemporaryAfrican scholars. This is partly because the drama which started with slavery, and was later transformed into colonisation, caught many African countries in an English (or foreign language) web. The only option for these countries was to define themselves within this web by fighting back against the Western Subject or, simply put, responding within the same Western cultural forms. This fight back is inclusive and not exclusive. Since the project of provincialising native English and other standardised forms is not discarding them, African writers as such, tend to deconstruct these versions, in order to construct other varieties. This process helps define the African status within the multicultural milieu. The deconstructive-constructive paradigm gives an edge to Africa, since it can freely market what is saleable in its culture in English, and preserve the unmarketable in its national languages. It is from this standpoint that Tutuola, Konadu, Achebe and other writers sound the African trumpet, with an African breath, mouth, though in a foreign tongue, which according to them, is able to bear their experiences.

Like the student mentioned above, Tutuola in The Palm-wine Drinkard thinks in Yoruba, his experiences are Yoruba, he is a Yoruba and his English is the Yoruba variety, because it bears the aesthetics and experiences of the Yoruba. The difference between my student and Tutuola is that, Tutuola is able to translate his message lucidly. He does not want, in any way, a full communion with native English or any standardised version, since such an attempt might work to the detriment of his message. Instead of using words or syntactic structures, which do not define his immediate environment, he prefers to introduce new vocabulary items and to maintain his indigenous Yoruba structure in English. He introduces the word drinkard because the native variety has no word for someone who drinks but never gets drunk. Other words like juju (medicine, which transforms a human into superhuman) help define some of the African concepts that have no equivalents in native English. The Drinkard affirms:

I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. I had no other work more than to drink palm-wine in my life […], I was drinking palm-wine from morning till night and from night till morning. By that time I could not drink ordinary water. (7)

Besides the introduction of new lexical items, Tutuola’s syntax is typically inclined to the Yoruba language. There is a great variation between Tutuola’s variety and native English. The way he uses tenses, transitivity, modality varies from the native English. Afolayan in "Language and sources of Amos Tutuola" illustrates this variation through the following examples which help differentiate Tutuola’s style from the native English.

As the following examples show, Tutuola does not respect English language rules for tense. In the first sentence he uses two past tense forms within the same sentence.

Here, the author is influenced by the lack of morphological inflection in most Bantu languages, among which is the authors native language, Yoruba. He tries to mark the inflection in English with a logical regularity, something which is absent.

The focus here is the passive construction in which the author imposes a new construction, which neither reflects the native variety nor shares any characteristic of the Niger Congo languages. However, the question of the lack morphological inflection is still partly responsible for this new form of construction based on analogy.

At this level, Tutuola is influenced by the single morpheme "yo" in Yoruba, which corresponds to the four English modals shall, will, should, would. So, he sees no need to adopt the English mode. He therefore does not switch from would to will or from should to shall.

At the level sentence structure domain, Afolayan attributes Tutuola’s structural patterns to the Yoruba language, which manifests similar characteristics:

The structures of these sentences are partly modified because of Tutuola’s urge for a faithful translation from Yoruba. These differences make the Yoruba variety of English unique, though some critics will argue that Tutuola is not representative. But like an artist, there is a high probability that he can help shape the language of his people. The wordiness and repetition in the novel is also motivated by Tutuola’s attempt of a faithful translation of his people’s experiences.

Besides these linguistic aspects, which carry us deep into the Yoruba worldview, Tutuola’s The Palm-wine Drinkard is constructed against the backdrop of the Yoruba oral tradition. Like most mythic heroes, Tutuola’s Drinkard transcends the ordinary into the metaphysical. He contends that

To situate the place of these new varieties within the African landscape, a brief digression into the cosmology of this landscape is necessary. The journey motif of the Drinkard, and the general mythical situation surrounding it, clearly shows man’s inability to unveil the hidden agenda of the gods. The oneiric symbol exposes man’s incessant will to attain to higher heights. Tutuola’s myth helps to articulate the beliefs and cosmology of the Yoruba - their belief in gods, spirits, medicine (juju), and the world beyond. In this light, the author feeds the language with local imagery that helps to define the people and enhances their own variety of English. Unlike Tutuola who discards some fundamental rules of the native English variety, Asare Konadu in Ordained by the Oracle assumes the Achebeian approach. His sensitive, yet unobtrusive use of English to reflect the African environment and to integrate character, lexis and incident, gives his work an identity and at the same time provides him a forum to embellish English into a Ghanaian variety. This is done through his use of traditional imagery drawn from his immediate surroundings. Expressions and words like Aguo Aguo and Amee Amee (Greeting formulae), kaba and ntama (type of clothing and ornaments), akwasidae (an annual festival), sanaabene (traditional title), marekenson (a species of tree), and kuntunkuni (a handkerchief), which do not have native English equivalents, are used by the author. As the English language fits itself into the indigenous ecology of Ghana, so, too, do the indigenous languages help nativise it to its present environment. This nativisation is not only through new vocabulary items, but also through a rich repertoire of concepts drawn from the immediate environment to satisfy the needs of Ghanaian English users. After all, Taban Lo Liyong in The Last Word states:

It is in this vein that Konadu further incorporates an African oral rhetoric through witty expressions and proverbs, couched in traditional African verbal formulae. In the fifth chapter of the novel, the Chief of Asamang, in order to affirm the wisdom of traditional leaders against the burning ambition of Western-bred scholars, who believe that it is easy to destabilise the ancient hegemony, echoes that, "although the elephant was bigger, the duiker ruled the forest" (37). This is a caveat to the learned and the rich, that the small size of the duiker (represented by the Chief and his council of elders) should not deceive them. These animal images drawn from African fauna do not only suggest the continuum of the natural world but also unveils the African philosophy of the might of wisdom over size - a philosophy which is embedded in the folklore of many African regions. It is important to note that the duiker is not only wise but very swift. Thus, the been-tos should be careful in their action.

In order to show the readiness and determination of the council of elders, Konadu presents the Chief thus: "He wore the Kente woven cloth of ‘one head does not counsel’" (37), which once more defines leadership ingenuity among the Asamangs. The Kente (a resistant woven cloth) connotes the togetherness among the Asamang, especially in decision making. In the same way, the Chief maintains that "you are the people of long heritage and, although there are other towns around us, we are from the palm tree and in the storm, every tree will be uprooted but the palm" (37). As Konadu exposes the philosophy of his people through proverbs and witty expressions, he, at the same time helps define the moral and ethical premise of the Asamang people or the Ghanaians in general. The palm tree symbolises the Asamang tradition, while the other towns represent the foreign influence. In this light, the English he uses, particularly with its incantatory and proverbial overtones, becomes that of the Asamangs. Other aspects of oral rhetoric like folktales, myths, rituals, and prayers, help to localise Konadu’s style, hence paving the way for a Ghanaian variety of English .

From the many varieties discussed above and given that many more can be identified, the issue of which variety or model to follow becomes topical. Achebe’s, Tutuola’s or Konadu’s? Although it could be claimed that all of these trends are good, the question we should pose is: do these varieties satisfy the immediate need of the users? If so, room should be given to all of them to sprout. One cannot be fostering by subverting. As in the "Parable of the Sower" in the Bible (Matthew13:25), the weeds will soon distinguish themselves from the wheat. In effect, some varieties, because of their barren linguistic background will eventually disappear naturally. Achebe adds in the same vein in "Colonialist Criticism", "No! let every people bring their gifts to the great festival of the world cultural harvest and mankind will be all richer for the variety and distinctiveness of the offerings"(61). In sum, all these varieties can be canonised for the betterment of mankind, and more varieties will still crop up, since language like other forms of culture is not static. Within a multicultural atmosphere, opportunities should be given to all. Any canonisation process of any aspect of culture should place the people’s need at the centre.

This paper intended to show how new African varieties of English (and in essence all varieties of postcolonial languages) celebrate a new Africa of consumers and producers. In the course of the analysis, I realised that the cause of African inferiority in many perspectives is rooted in the imperial agenda and it has affected the growth of languages and literatures in Africa till date. I also realised that within the deconstructive/constructive framework adopted by postcolonial African writers, as a means of self realisation and integration within the global network, both the native Engish variety and African languages suffer. By and large, following the rhythm of events in the world today, the advantages of these changes outweigh the disadvantages.

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For quotation purposes:
Divine Che Neba (University of Burundi): Deconstruction and reconstruction of English in postcolonial writings: A gateway to multiculturalism. In: TRANS. Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften. No. 16/2005. WWW: http://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/03_2/divine16.htm

Deconstruction and reconstruction of English in postcolonial writings: A gateway to multiculturalism

Introduction

Linguistic overtones of postcolonial Africa and the question of black other

Historical pace

Innovative style as catalyst for new varieties