Language Practices and Identity

The book engages with the concern that African learners attending English medium, multicultural schools are losing their proficiency in African languages. The book serves to show how the learners use language both as an identity building resource and to position themselves and others. In contrast it is shown that some learners in fact retain their African languages and use these as a primary marker of ethnic identities and ideas of ethnic purity. This purity is not constructed in a staidly 'traditional' manner, but is negotiated through joking and satire. Notions of purity are discursively constructed through the use of English, illustrating the contradictory nature of identities.