DeColonizing the Mind - Chapter 1 (Parts IV-V): The Language of African Literature Summary & Analysis

This Study Guide consists of approximately 43 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of DeColonizing the Mind.

DeColonizing the Mind - Chapter 1 (Parts IV-V): The Language of African Literature Summary & Analysis

This Study Guide consists of approximately 43 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of DeColonizing the Mind.
This section contains 893 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the DeColonizing the Mind Study Guide

Summary

In Part IV of Chapter 1, Ngũgĩ addresses the relationship between human experience, human culture, and human perception of reality, Language becomes the means of communication and a carrier of culture, he explains. In Kenya and Tanzania, Swahili is both of these things, while in England, English serves both purposes. As communication, language is the language of “real life,” a Marx-inspired idea in which language establishes the relations people enter into with one another and with labor. Meanwhile, speech, which imitates the language of real life through “verbal signposts” (14), allows humans to negotiate their relationships, while written forms of language imitate the spoken word by representing sounds with visual symbols.

To this Ngũgĩ adds that communication is also the “basis and process of evolving culture” (14). As certain actions and thoughts accumulate, they create certain value systems...

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This section contains 893 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the DeColonizing the Mind Study Guide
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