Language and colonial power : the appropriation of Swahili in the former Belgian Congo, 1880-1938 / Johannes Fabian ; foreword by Edward Said.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 188-199) and index.

Cover -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgements -- A note on names and orthography -- Introduction -- 1 Prelude: expeditions and campaigns -- Polyglotta Africana -- Swahili guides for the road -- On the road: language and travel -- End of the road -- 2 Questions and queries -- A question of law and rights: language and the Colonial Charter -- A question of facts: language in an early government survey -- Responses from businessmen and administrators -- Responses from missionaries and educators -- A question of power: warnings from Katanga -- Some general conclusions -- 3 Settling in: colonization and language -- Missions, education and the oeuvre civilisatrice -- Missionary linguistics -- Religious and secular colonization: common ground -- Language guides and teaching aids -- Colonial language training in Belgium -- 4 Labor and language in Katanga -- Labor in Katanga: a complicated story -- Swahili as a symbol of 'reorientation': consolidation of Belgian rule in Katanga -- Swahili as a work-language: some structural determinants -- 5 Talking tough and bad: pidginization in Katanga -- Missionaries teaching colonists -- Colonists teaching colonists: a guide for farmers in Katanga -- The most common words in Katanga: a curious early manual -- Conclusion: no missing link -- 6 The end: illusions of colonial power -- Swahili and symbolic power -- Codified Swahili in the eastern Congo: an inventory 191838 -- 'Improved Swahili': Union Mini232;re and A. Verbeken -- A voice not heard: A. M233;lignon and the 'rehabilitation' of Swahili in Katanga -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.

Print version record.

In this study, inquiry will be directed to the past, and it will, for many reasons, have to reach into a past which is rather remote from present-day Shaba Swahili. The author's principal concern remains with a contemporary situation, namely the role of Swahili in the context of work, industrial, artisanal, and artistic. When it was first formulated, the aim of my project was to describe what might be called the workers' culture of Shaba, through analyses of communicative (sociolinguistic) and cognitive (ethnosemantic) aspects of language use.

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