To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Nigerian fiction (English).

Journal articles on the topic 'Nigerian fiction (English)'

Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles

Select a source type:

Consult the top 17 journal articles for your research on the topic 'Nigerian fiction (English).'

Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.

You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.

Browse journal articles on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.

1

Ibhawaegbele, Faith O., and J. N. Edokpayi. "Situational Variables in Chimamanda Adichie's and Chinua Achebe's." Matatu 40, no. 1 (December 1, 2012): 191–208. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757421-040001012.

Full text
Abstract:
The use of the English language for literary creation has been the bane of Nigerian literature. Nigeria has a very complex linguistic system; as a result, its citizens communicate either in their indigenous languages or in English, depending on the situation in which they find themselves. The use of English in Nigerian literature in general and prose fiction in particular is influenced by both linguistic and extralinguistic factors. In their attempt to offer solutions to the problems of language in literary expression, Nigerian novelists adapt English to varying linguistic and socio-cultural contexts. This has resulted in experimentation and the employment of various creative-stylistic strategies and devices in prose fiction. Our focus in this essay is on the conditioning influences of situational variables on the language and styles of Nigerian novelists, with Chimamanda Adichie and Chinua Achebe as a case study. We shall examine and explicate how situational variables influence and impose constraints on the language and styles of novelists, and how they adapt English, which is in contact with the various indigenous languages, to the varying local Nigerian situations and experiences.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
2

Courtois, Cédric. "Visibilizing “Those Who Have No Part”: LGBTQIA+ Representation in Contemporary Nigerian Fiction in English." Études anglaises Vol. 75, no. 2 (July 4, 2022): 175–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.3917/etan.752.0175.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
3

Ekhator, Itohan Ethel, and Peter Oghogho Aihevba. "The use of literature as a veritable instrument for the teaching of English language." EJOTMAS: Ekpoma Journal of Theatre and Media Arts 8, no. 1-2 (March 11, 2022): 236–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ejotmas.v8i1-2.13.

Full text
Abstract:
This article discusses the use of literature as a popular tool for teaching basic language skills such as reading, writing, listening and speaking and other language areas such as vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation in English as a Second Language classroom. It uses the literary method in its analysis of the Nigerian situation. The reasons and criteria for selecting literary texts are discussed. Also the benefits of different genres of literature such as poetry, short fiction, drama and novel to language teaching are taken into account. The paper recognized that all genres should be carefully selected and used in the teaching of English Language skills and language skills should not be taught in isolation.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
4

Moreno Redondo, Rosa María. "Animal Representation in Recent Anglophone Science Fiction: Uplifting and Anthropomorphism in Nnedi Okorafor’s "Lagoon" and Adam Roberts’s "Bête"." Oceánide 12 (February 9, 2020): 78–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.37668/oceanide.v12i.28.

Full text
Abstract:
Science fiction in the last decades has often empowered machines and provided humans with enhanced characteristics through the use of technology (the limits of artificial intelligence and transhumanism are frequent themes in recent narratives), but animal empowerment has also been present through the concept of uplifting, understood as the augmentation of animal intelligence through technology. Uplifting implies providing animals with the capacity to speak and reason like humans. However, it could be argued that such implementation fails to acknowledge animal cognition in favour of anthropomorphized schemes of thought. Humankind’s lack of recognition of different animal types of communication has been portrayed in fiction and often implies the adaptation of the animal Other to human needs and expectations, creating a post-animal that communicates its needs to the reader through borrowed words. The main objective of this article is to analyze the use of uplifting as a strategy to give voice to animals in two science fiction novels written in English, both published in the twenty-first century: Lagoon (2014) by Nigerian-American Nnedi Okorafor and Bête (2014) by British author Adam Roberts. This article examines, from ecocritical and human-animal studies (HAS) perspectives, the differencesand similarities in the exploration of the theme in both novels, which are often related to humankind’s willingness or refusal to regard the Other as equal.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
5

Finley, Mackenzie. "Constructing Identities: Amos Tutuola and the Ibadan Literary Elite in the wake of Nigerian Independence." Yoruba Studies Review 2, no. 2 (December 21, 2021): 1–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/ysr.v2i2.129908.

Full text
Abstract:
With Nigerian novelist Amos Tutuola as primary subject, this paper at[1]tempts to understand the construction of sociocultural identities in Nigeria in the wake of independence. Despite the international success of his literary publications, Tutuola was denied access to the most intimate discourses on the development of African literature by his Nigerian elite contemporaries, who emerged from University College, Ibadan, in the 1950s and early 1960s. Having completed only a few years of colonial schooling, Tutuola was differentiated from his elite literary contemporaries in terms of education. Yet if education represented a rather concrete, institutionalized divide between the elite and the everyday Nigerian, this paper will suggest that the resulting epistemological difference served as a more fluid, ideological divide. Both Western epistemology, rooted in Western academic spaces, and African epistemology, preserved from African traditions like proverbs and storytelling, informed the elite and Tutuola’s worldviews. The varying degrees to which one epistemology was privileged over the other reinforced the boundary between Tutuola and the elite. Furthermore, educational experiences and sociocultural identities informed the ways in which independent Nigeria was envisioned by both Tutuola and the elite writers. While the elites’ discourse on independence reflected their proximity to Nigeria’s political elite, Tutuola positioned himself as a distinctly Yoruba writer in the new Nigeria. He envisioned a state in which traditional knowledge remained central to the African identity. Ultimately, his life and work attest to the endurance of indigenous epistemology through years of European colonialism and into independence. 148 Mackenzie Finley During a lecture series at the University of Palermo, Italy, Nigerian novelist Amos Tutuola presented himself, his work, and his Yoruba heritage to an audience of Italian students and professors of English and Anglophone literatures. During his first lecture, the Yoruba elder asked his audience, “Why are we people afraid to go to the burial ground at night?” An audience member ventured a guess: “Perhaps we are afraid to know what we cannot know.” Tutuola replied, “But, you remember, we Africans believe that death is not the end of life. We know that when one dies, that is not the end of his life [. . .] So why are all people afraid to go to the burial ground at night? They’re afraid to meet the ghosts from the dead” (emphasis in original).1 Amos Tutuola (1920–1997) was recognized globally for his perpetuation of Yoruba folklore tradition via novels and short stories written in unconventional English. His works, especially The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952) and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954), were translated into numerous European languages, including Italian. Given the chance to speak directly with an Italian audience at Palermo, Tutuola elaborated on the elements of Yoruba culture that saturated his fiction. His lectures reflected the same sense of purpose that drove his writing. Tutuola explained, “As much as I could [in my novels], I tried my best to bring out for the people to see the secrets of my tribe—I mean, the Yoruba people—and of Nigerian people, and African people as a whole. I’m trying my best to bring out our traditional things for the people to know a little about us, about our beliefs, our character, and so on.”2 Tutuola’s didactics during the lecture at Palermo reflect his distinct intellectual and cultural commitment to a Yoruba cosmology, one that was not so much learned in his short years of schooling in the colonial education system as it was absorbed from his life of engagement with Yoruba oral tradition. With Tutuola as primary subject, this paper attempts to understand the construction of sociocultural identities in Nigeria in the wake of independence. The educated elite writers, such as Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, who emerged from University College, Ibadan, during the same time period, will serve as a point of comparison. On October 1, 1960, when Nigeria gained independence from Britain, Tutuola occupied an unusual place relative to the university-educated elite, the semi-literate “average man,” the international 1 Alassandra di Maio, Tutuola at the University: The Italian Voice of a Yoruba Ancestor, with an Interview with the Author and an Afterword by Claudio Gorlier (Rome: Bulzoni, 2000), 38. The lecture’s transcriber utilized graphic devices (italicized and bolded words, brackets denoting pauses and movements) to preserve the dynamic oral experience of the lecture. However, so that the dialogue reads more easily in the context of this paper, I have removed the graphic devices but maintained what the transcriber presented as Tutuola’s emphasized words, simply italicizing what was originally in bold. 2 Di Maio, Tutuola at the University, 148. Constructing Identities 149 stage of literary criticism, and the emerging field of African literature. This position helped shape his sense of identity. Despite the success of his literary publications, Tutuola was not allowed to participate in the most intimate dis[1]courses on the development of African literature by his elite contemporaries. In addition to his lack of access to higher education, Tutuola was differentiated from his elite literary contemporaries on epistemological grounds. If education represented a rather concrete, institutionalized divide between the elite and the everyday Nigerian, an epistemological difference served as a more fluid, ideological divide. Both Western epistemology, rooted in Western academic spaces, and African epistemology, preserved from African traditions like proverbs and storytelling, informed the elite and Tutuola’s worldviews. The varying degrees to which one epistemology was privileged over the other reinforced the boundary between the elite and Tutuola. This paper draws largely on correspondence, conference reports, and the personal papers of Tutuola and his elite contemporaries housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as on interviews transcribed by the Transcription Centre in London, the periodical Africa Report (1960–1970), and Robert M. Wren and Claudio Gorlier, concentrating on primary sources produced during the years immediately prior to and shortly after Nigerian independence in 1960. Tutuola’s ideas generally did not fit into the sociocultural objectives of his elite counterparts. Though they would come in contact with one another via the world of English-language literature, Tutuola usually remained absent from or relegated to the margins of elite discussions on African creative writing. Accordingly, the historical record has less to say about his intellectual ruminations than about those of his elite contemporaries. Nonetheless, his hand-written drafts, interviews, and correspondences with European agents offer a glimpse at the epistemology and sense of identity of an “average” Nigerian in the aftermath of colonialism and independence.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
6

Le, Vincent. "The Deepfakes to Come: A Turing Cop’s Nightmare." Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture 17, no. 2-3 (December 30, 2020): 8–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.51151/identities.v17i2-3.468.

Full text
Abstract:
In 1950, Turing proposed to answer the question “can machines think” by staging an “imitation game” where a hidden computer attempts to mislead a human interrogator into believing it is human. While the cybercrime of bots defrauding people by posing as Nigerian princes and lascivious e-girls indicates humans have been losing the Turing test for some time, this paper focuses on “deepfakes,” artificial neural nets generating realistic audio-visual simulations of public figures, as a variation on the imitation game. Deepfakes blur the lines between fact and fiction, making it possible for the mere fiction of a nuclear apocalypse to make itself real. Seeing oneself becoming another, doing and saying strange things as if demonically possessed, triggers a disillusionment of our sense of self as human cloning and sinister doppelgängers become a reality that’s open-source and free. Along with electronic club music, illicit drugs, movies like Ex Machina and the coming sex robots, the primarily pornographic deepfakes are how the aliens invade by hijacking human drives in the pursuit of a machinic desire. Contrary to the popular impression that deepfakes exemplify the post-truth phenomenon of fake news, they mark an anarchic, massively distributed anti-fascist resistance network capable of sabotaging centralized, authoritarian institutions’ hegemonic narratives. That the only realistic “solutions” for detecting deepfakes have been to build better machines capable of exposing them ultimately suggests that human judgment is soon to be discarded into the dustbin of history. From now on, only a machine can win the Turing test against another machine. Author(s): Vincent Le Title (English): The Deepfakes to Come: A Turing Cop’s Nightmare Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020) Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 8-18 Page Count: 11 Citation (English): Vincent Le, “The Deepfakes to Come: A Turing Cop’s Nightmare,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020): 8-18. Author Biography Vincent Le, Monash University Vincent Le is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Monash University. He has taught philosophy at Deakin University and The Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy. He has published in Hypatia, Cosmos and History, Art + Australia, Šum, Horror Studies and Colloquy, among other journals. His recent work focuses on the reckless propagation of the will to critique.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
7

Afolayan, Michael Oladejo. "“Welcome to the White Man’s World”: An English Translation of Isaac Oluwole Delano’s Historical Novel Aiyé D’Aiyé Òyìnbó." Yoruba Studies Review 4, no. 2 (December 21, 2021): 1–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/ysr.v4i2.130043.

Full text
Abstract:
Welcome to the White Man’s World By Chief Isaac O. Delano Author of Soul of Nigeria, An African Look at Marriage, One Church for Nigeria, Notes and Comments from Nigeria, The Singing Minister of Nigeria, Ìran Ọrun, Ìtàn Ogun Àdùb ̀ í, and Ìwé Atúmọ Yorùbá ̀ (Yoruba – Yoruba Dictionary) London: Tomas Nelson Ltd., 1953 Foreword I appreciate the kind of love with which you, my readers, embraced my previous books, whether those I wrote in the English language or in Yoruba. For the record, one important thing I would like to say right here is that all names, be it of towns or of people, that are used in this book are totally fictional. We had no one in mind when this story was being written. The story is purely fictional but based on our various experiences in the Yoruba society. Isaac O. Delano Bajiki Ake, Abeokuta London, 1953 Dedication Tis book is dedicated to Ẹgbẹ́Ọmọ Odùduwà (Te Society of Sons and Daughters of Oduduwa), which is frantically engaged in working relentlessly towards the progress of the Yoruba society.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
8

Dahiru, Muhammad. "A Survey of Dearth and Trend of Female Literary Writing in English from the Northeast Nigeria." International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences 7, no. 2 (2022): 163–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.72.21.

Full text
Abstract:
There is an apparent paucity of literary works written by women in English from the northern vis-à-vis southern part of Nigeria in the corpus of the country’s literature. Adopting a mixed-method approach, this paper surveys availability or dearth of female writers in the northern region by focusing on the three north-eastern states of Borno, Yobe, and Gombe states. Quantitative and qualitative approaches, through questionnaires and interviews, and Consensus Workshop, through Focus Group Discussions (FGD), are administered to gather the data for the discussion. The paper found a dearth of women writers in the northeast region and concludes that readership, publication opportunities, level of education, and social choices of the medium of expression are among the factors responsible for the dearth. The paper also found a recurrent motif of love, family, and marriage as the thematic and stylistic complexities of the available female work of fiction that follow theSoyayya trend. Possible amenable measures, which include organizing competitions and book projects, are proffered as recommendations.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
9

Shevchenko, Arina Rafail'evna. "Clash of cultures in the short stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie." Litera, no. 12 (December 2021): 34–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.25136/2409-8698.2021.12.37109.

Full text
Abstract:
The object of this article is the English-language multicultural prose of the late XX – early XXI centuries. The subject is the situation of clash of cultures. The research material is based on individual short stories by the contemporary US-Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published in the book “The Thing Around Your Neck” (2009). The goal of this article lies in determination and analysis of the peculiarities of artistic expression and functionality of the situation of clash of cultures in the writer’s short stories. The relevance is substantiated by the following factors: 1) clash of cultures is typical for the relationships in modern multipolar world during the globalization era, thus it is relevant in literary works of the authors of the XX–XXI centuries;  2) literary studies currently indicate heightened interest in covering various aspects of fictional multicultural prose; 3) Adichie is a remarkable figure in the modern literary process. The short stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie are unique in their reference to signal trends in the development of the English-language literature, and thus are a relevant in the context of studying the designated topic. Unlike the works of multicultural writers of the second half of the XX century, which have repeatedly been the object of scientific research, the multicultural prose of the late XX – early XXI centuries is poorly studied. The scientific novelty is defined by the fact that the analysis of short stories from the collection “The Thing Around Your Neck” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which is not translated into the Russian language, is carried out for the first time within the Russian literally studies. The conclusion is made that the situation of clash of cultures in Adichie’s stories becomes the factor that induces mental crisis in the minds of the characters. There is no constructive dialogue of cultures, and their clash leads the characters to either the loss or substitution of identity.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
10

Nikam, Dr Sudhir, and Mr Kamble Rajiv Bhimrao. "Cross-Cultural Scenario in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine." SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH 5, no. 5 (May 28, 2017): 8. http://dx.doi.org/10.24113/ijellh.v5i5.10157.

Full text
Abstract:
There is hardly a country in this industrialized world today, where one can find an ethnically homogenous population. The aftermath of colonialism, the creation of refugees- often the result of ethnic conflicts- and the movement of people in search of greater economic, political or social opportunities have contributed to the worldwide mix of people. Canada and India are the countries affected by the growing diversity. However this diversity has different facets in both the countries. In the literary world Canada, Multiculturalism is the main theme of writing and in India, presentation of cultural diversity is yet at the beginning stage. This statement has to be tasted on the fictional works of Margaret Atwood from Canada and Bharati Mukherjee from India. Both the writers are very unique in their writing and have trodden the different ways of using Cultural-diversity. Culture is an integral part of a human society and its nation. Then the question arises: what is culture? The Oxford English Dictionary defines culture as a “particular form or type of intellectual development in a society generated by its distinctive customs, achievements and outlook.” At the wide canvass, culture is taken as consolidating the way of life of an entire society and includes codes of manners, dress, language, rituals, social customs and folklore of a nation. Every country has a typical and distinctive culture of its own. However, when an independent country becomes a colony, the native culture goes under a change. This is the case with the countries like Kenya, Nigeria and India. When these countries came in contact with western culture, a process of change in culture was initiated, and this journey made the traditional culture of respective countries destroyed. While Indian literature had cross cultural encounters with the English studies, Canada has been undergoing a cultural metamorphosis with the mix of second races and people from all over the world.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
11

Agbetuyi, Olayinka. "Authority and Moral Conflicts in the Films of Adébáyọ Fálétí: Àfọ̀njá, Gáà, Ṣawo Ṣẹ̀gbẹ̀rì and the Yorùbá Cosmopolis." Yoruba Studies Review 3, no. 2 (December 21, 2021): 1–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/ysr.v3i2.129990.

Full text
Abstract:
In this piece, I examine the role of authority in Yorùbá society and how au[1]thority is subverted by moral conflicts generated in the political evolution of the Yorùbá state from city state to empire, leading to disastrous consequences in the society at large as presented in the films of Adébáyọ Fálétí, specifically in Àfọnjá (2002), Basọrun Gáà (2004) and Ṣawo Ṣẹgbẹ ̀ rì̀ (2005). I argue that such pains and pangs of transformation are not unique to Yorùbá society but mirror similar political evolutions in other societies such as Rome and Greece. Such political upheavals led to the celebrated assassination of Julius Caesar in Rome and Alexander the Great of Macedonia. In particular Àfọnjá ̀ and Baṣọrun ̀ Gáà dramatize evocatively the poignancy of the attendant confrontations. In addition, I evaluate Adébáyọ Fálétí as a Nigerian and African foundational practitioner in the global field of cultural studies and his use of cultural post materialism in his work. Adébáyọ Fálétí can be regarded as the father of modern Nigerian Cultural Studies and in Africa in general in line with the way that the discipline is understood the world over standing, as it were, on the cusp of traditional Nigerian and African drama and modern drama in African mother tongues. In addition, Fálétí epitomizes what modern cultural studies world-wide represent as a cross between the traditional discipline of drama and the television 172 Olayinka Agbetuyi industries as well as filmic industries, along with advertisements, which together constitute what is today known as the culture industries. As defined in the words of Chris Barker, “Culturalism focuses on meaning production by human actors in a historical context.”1 Fálétí’s historical drama and films fall within such category. Barker added that Culturalism focuses on interpretation as a way of understanding meaning.”2 These are the hallmarks of the historical drama that formed the basis of two of the films by Fálétí being examined here. In addition, he stated that cultural studies deal with subjectivity and identity or how we come to be the kinds of people we are. Fálétí’s Afọnja and Gáà’s thematic preoccupation is how the Yorùbá subjectivity has been constituted over time through its political evolution. The three films also demonstrate what Stuart Hall considers to be the connection that cultural studies seeks to make to matters of power and cultural politics.3 With regards to the role of Fálétí as pioneer in the area of radio-vision cultural industries the broadcasting mogul narrated the manner in which he pioneered the phone-in radio broadcast in Nigeria on the programme “Ѐyí Àrà” at the Broadcasting Corporation of Ọyọ̀ ́ State, Ibadan (BCOS) after pioneering Yorùbá broadcasting on Africa’s first television station Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) twenty years earlier.4 Fálétí’s career spanning close to seven decades dovetails public services with private engagement with drama production. He was one of the earliest organizers of a drama performing company in 1949 to produce his own plays. His career development can be divided into three phases: the formative traditional drama performance phase, the literary drama phase which dovetails into his career as a public servant in a symbiotic relationship and his post public service movie production phase which coincided with the efflorescence of the Nollywood. The three works examined here straddle Fálétí’s second and third phases of engagement in drama production. Both Basọrun Gáà (to be hereafter referred to as Gáà) and Ṣawo Ṣẹgbẹ ̀ rì ̀ were first staged in the second phase of Fálétí’s development as a theatre practitioner. In addition to being staged in the theater, Gáà and Ṣawo Ṣẹgbẹ ̀ rì̀ were produced for tele[1]vision audiences as dramatic thrillers and became household favourites in the ‘70s and ‘80s at the time of his career as a radio/television broadcaster. Fálétí’s retirement from public service provided the opportunity needed to build on the experience gained in the television industry to launch a full-blown film production career for which his earlier experience seems to have been a tutelage. Àfọ̀njá (2002), Gáà (2004) and Ṣawo Ṣẹgbẹ ̀ rì ̀ (2005) are part of the products of this final phase. Although Àfọ̀njá preceded the other two in movie 1 Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London: Sage, 2012. 2 Barker. 2012, 17 3 Barker, 5. 4 Nigerianfilms.com. February 17, 2008. Accessed Aug 10 2018. Authority and Moral Conflicts in the Films of Adébáyọ Fálétí 173 production, it was the last to be written among the three and is organically a prequel which builds on the success of Gáà and extends a thematic continuum in the Fágúnwà-esque manner of the novels Ògbójú Ọde Ninu Igbó Irunmọlẹ and Igbo Olódùmarè. While Àfọ̀njá and Gáà are historical drama based on actual events in the history of the Yorùbá Empire, Ṣawo Ṣegberi is purely fictional and is based on a postcolonial Nigerian setting. The movies therefore take a reverse order to the chronology of writing and stage performance while Ṣawo Ṣẹ̀gbẹ̀rì, which was the first to be staged among the three, was not written for stage and television performance until it was script-written for film production.5 Àfọ̀njá, Gáà and Ṣawo Ṣẹgbẹ ̀ rì ̀ are each set in a cosmopolis where the Yorùbá citizens have to deal with other nationals in the context of Yorùbá mores within a broader cosmopolitan ethos. In Àfọ̀njá and Gáà that context is provided by the empire phase of Yorùbá civilization in which Yorùbá civilization was the dominant point of reference; in Ṣawo Ṣẹgbẹ ̀ rì ̀ the drama is situated in the context of postcolonial Nigerian city, in a nation that boasts large ethnic nationalities of which the Yorùbá are only one and in which Yorùbá culture is mediated by the postcolonial state with its symbol of the English language as the means of communication and its cultural spin offs. Fálétí demonstrates the mastery of dramaturgy in Àfọ̀njá and Gáà by juxtaposing the dynamics of running a state originally built on a confederation of city state structure very much like the Greek city state structure, at the latter’s comparative stage of political evolution, with a new imperial structure and the conflicts generated by the flux of the two systems; whereas in Ṣawo Ṣẹ̀gbẹ̀rì moral conflict is generated by interpersonal amatorial clashes as well as models of expertise.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
12

Ogunleye, Foluke. "A Male-Centric Modification of History; Efunsetan Aniwura Revisited." History in Africa 31 (2004): 303–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0361541300003508.

Full text
Abstract:
Historical drama can be described as a form of drama which purports to reflect or represent historical proceedings. Since time immemorial writers have combined fiction and history in creative works. Lawrence Langner has ascribed the popularity of historical drama to the desire of the theatergoer to spend an evening in the company of kings, queens, and other historical personages; the opportunity to become familiar with far greater events than those which take place in the lives of ordinary people; and that historical plays recreate great deeds done by great personages in the past. Historical facts are then creatively adapted and made available in play form to the audience. Adaptation has been defined as “the rewriting of a work from its original form to fit it for another medium … The term implies an attempt to retain the characters, actions, and as much as possible of the language and tone of the original…” The history play is also defined as “any drama whose time setting is in some period earlier than that in which it was written. We can also go further to describe the history play as one “that reconstructs a personage, a series of events, a movement, or the spirit of a past age and pays the debt of serious scholarship to the facts of the age being recreated.Judging from the foregoing, Akinwunmi Isola's play, Efunsetan Aniwura falls into the category of historical drama, treating as it does the story of the eponymous heroine who was the second Iyalode (queen of women) of Ibadan and who died on 30 June 1874. Prominent themes in Yoruba historical plays include war, conflict, and class struggle. Olu Obafemi has declared that the dramatization of the history, myth, and legends of the Yoruba community forms the bulk of the themes of Yoruba drama. These factors are vividly portrayed in Akinwunmi Isola's plays. Akinwunmi Isola is one of the most prolific playwrights who use their mother tongue to write plays in Nigeria. He is a Professor of Yoruba language and he uses the Yoruba language in writing his plays despite the fact that he is proficient in English and French languages.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
13

Arhire, Mona. "Multilingualism in the Romanian translation of C. N. Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus: Sociolinguistic considerations." Open Linguistics 9, no. 1 (January 1, 2023). http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0255.

Full text
Abstract:
Abstract This article investigates the translation of multilingual fiction from English into Romanian by setting it under the lens of the novel Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The novel comprises three language varieties spoken by the Nigerian Igbo ethnic group. Bearing distinct sociocultural features, the interlingual transfer of the three language varieties (Nigerian English, Nigerian Pidgin English, and Igbo) impacts the preservation of the information relative to cultural items and to the social configuration of the local community. The sociolinguistic configuration of the text under analysis is first presented and exemplified as they integrate into the sociocultural context and are subsequently discussed by analysing relevant examples to illustrate the effectiveness of the translations. This descriptive approach to the translation envisages the detection of strategies adopted with a view to observing and preserving the author’s intentions, namely those of exhibiting Nigerian traditions and the contemporary sociolinguistic picture. The findings indicate that the translation of three language varieties posed different kinds of problems and required different translation strategies. The conclusions comprise some possible solutions for the translation of multilingual fictional discourse and its sociolinguistic features.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
14

Usman, Joshua, and Marius Crous. "African Folklore: A Catalyst in Contemporary African Fictions." Issues in Language Studies 7, no. 2 (December 31, 2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.33736/ils.1224.2018.

Full text
Abstract:
African folklore which are said to be active traditions have had immense influence on the growth and development of African literature. This claim is aptly demonstrated in the works of successful early African writers as in the case of Amos Tutuola and Daniel O. Fagunwa of Nigeria, Violet Dube in Zulu, S.E.K. Mghayi in Xhosa and a host of them. These literary artists draw their inspiration from the oral tradition by translating their structures and images to literary mode. It is on this platform that the article seeks to examine this claim in the light of the state of African literature today. This paper adopts Cyprian Ekwensi’s African Night’s Entertainment as a case study to demonstrate how present African writers build on that trend to success. Ekwensi is considered one of the pioneers of African literature and writing fiction in English in West Africa. Ekwensi’s works observed oral conventions in terms of themes, style and other motifs; but literary in its form. The book adopts tales from African cultural background. This article establishes that contemporary African writers owe much to African oral tradition in their various domains of literary inspirations.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
15

Poddar, Arik. "Things Fall Apart and Dadi Budha: Portrayal of indigenous community and their disintegration." iJARS International Journal of Humanities and Social Studies 2, no. 6 (December 7, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.20908/ijarsijhss.v2i6.6661.

Full text
Abstract:
In Gopinath Mohanty’s Dadi budha (1944) which was translated in the name “The Ancestor” and in Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” (1958), both the authors recreate in fictional modes, the indigenous life of the people of two primitive cultures, living on the hills of Koraput, India and in the forests of Nigeria, respectively. This comparison was first drawn by the son of the author Gopinath Mohanty, Arun Kumar Mohanty, who translated Dadi Budha in English. In the afterward of his translation he made this observation and also countered a very important problem of comparison – the problem of language. While “Things Fall Apart” is written in English by an African author, for whom English is just a medium of expression and not a vernacular language; Dadi Budha has been translated into English. Arun Kumar Mohanty vindicates this problem of language by arguing that most original works in English by non-English writers can be viewed as works of self-translation. To back his decision up, he referred to Joanne Akai’s paper on West Indian writing as translation: “Constantly writing in and for another culture, WI writers operate in a space between cultural and linguistic traditions: between Caribbean Creole culture and British or North American English culture, between the Creole language and the English language, between an oral genre (storytelling) and a written genre (novel or short story). WI writers are therefore faced with a number of challenges: as Translators, they must master the language they write-translate to from, as well as the language they write-translate into; as ambassadors, they must accurately represent Carribean experience and reality, as writers, they must communicate in a language that is accessible to as wide an audience as possible.”
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
16

"Language teaching." Language Teaching 40, no. 3 (June 20, 2007): 251–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0261444807004375.

Full text
Abstract:
07–377Bamiro, Edmund (Adekunle Ajasin U, Nigeria; eddiebamiro@yahoo.com), Nativization strategies: Nigerianisms at the intersection of ideology and gender in Achebe's fiction. World Englishes (Blackwell) 25.3 & 4 (2006), 315–328.07–378Bowers, Anthony (Ningbo U Technology, China), Presentation of an Australian–Chinese joint venture program in China. EA Journal (English Australia) 23.1 (2006), 24–34.07–379Chang, Junyue (Dalian U, China; junyuechang@yahoo.com), Globalization and English in Chinese higher education. World Englishes (Blackwell) 25.3 & 4 (2006), 513–525.07–380Deterding, David (Nanyang Technological U, Singapore; david.deterding@nie.edu.sg) & Andy Kirkpatrick, Emerging South-East Asian Englishes and intelligibility. World Englishes (Blackwell) 25.3 & 4 (2006), 391–409.07–381Erling, Elizabeth J. (Freie U Berlin, Germany; berling@zedat.fu-berlin.de) & Suzanne K. Hilgendorf, Language policies in the context of German higher education. Language Policy (Springer) 5.3 (2006), 267–293.07–382Glew, Paul J. (U Western Sydney, Australia; aul.glew@coverdale.nsw.edu.au), A perspective on ELICOS in an independent school. EA Journal (English Australia) 23.1 (2006), 14–23.07–383Hammond, Jennifer (U Technology, Sydney, Australia), High challenge, high support: Integrating language and content instruction for diverse learners in an English literature classroom. Journal of English for Academic Purposes (Elsevier) 5.4 (2006), 269–283.07–384Hyland, Ken (U London, UK; k.hyland@ioe.ac.uk) & Eri Anan, Teachers' perceptions of error: The effects of first language and experience. System (Elsevier) 34.4 (2006), 509–519.07–385Jeon, Mihyon (York U, Canada) & Jiyoon LeeHiring native-speaking English teachers in East Asian countries. English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.4 (2006), 44–52.07–386Kato, Mie (Yoshiki Senior High School, Japan), Corrective feedback in oral communication classes at a Japanese senior high school. The Language Teacher (Japan Association for Language Teaching) 31.3 (2007), 3–8.07–387Kawai, Yuko (Tokai U, Japan), Japanese nationalism and the global spread of English: An analysis of Japanese governmental and public discourses on English. Language and International Communication (Multilingual Matters) 7.1 (2007), 37–55.07–388Leshem, Shosh (Oranim Academic College of Education, Israel) & Vernon Trafford (Anglia Ruskin U, UK), Unravelling cultural dynamics in TEFL: Culture tapestries in three Israeli schools. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice (Taylor & Francis) 12.6 (2006), 639–656.07–389Labbo, Linda D. (U Georgia, USA), Literacy pedagogy and computer technologies: Toward solving the puzzle of current and future classroom practices. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy (Australian Literacy Educators' Association) 29.3 (2006), 199–209.07–390Nault, Derrick (Jeonju U, South Korea), Going global: Rethinking culture teaching in ELT contexts. Language, Culture and Curriculum (Multilingual Matters) 19.3 (2006), 314–328.07–391Nero, Shondel (St John's U, USA; neros@stjohns.edu), Language, identity, and education of Caribbean English speakers. World Englishes (Blackwell) 25.3 & 4 (2006), 501–511.07–392Ouafeu, Yves Talla Sando (U Freiburg im Breigau, Germany; sandoyves@yahoo.com), Listing intonation in Cameroon English speech. World Englishes (Blackwell) 25.3 & 4 (2006), 491–500.07–393Rodgers, Daryl M. (U Illinois, USA; dmrodger@uiuc.edu), Developing content and form: Encouraging evidence from Italian content-based instruction. The Modern Language Journal (Blackwell) 90.3 (2006), 373–386.07–394Schleppegrell, Mary & Luciana C. de Oliveira (U Michigan, USA), An integrated language and content approach for history teachers. Journal of English for Academic Purposes (Elsevier) 5.4 (2006), 254–268.07–395Starkey, Hugh (U London Institute of Education, UK), Language education, identities and citizenship: Developing cosmopolitan perspectives. Language and International Communication (Multilingual Matters) 7.1 (2007), 56–71.07–396Takimoto, Masahiro (Tezukayama U, Japan; takimoto@tezukayama-u.ac.jp), The effects of explicit feedback and form–meaning processing on the development of pragmatic proficiency in consciousness-raising tasks. System (Elsevier) 34.4 (2006), 601–614.07–397Üstünlüoglu, Evrim (Izmir U of Economics, Turkey), University students' perceptions of native and non-native teachers. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice (Taylor & Francis) 13.1 (2007), 63–79.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
17

Leurs, Koen, and Sandra Ponzanesi. "Mediated Crossroads: Youthful Digital Diasporas." M/C Journal 14, no. 2 (November 17, 2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.324.

Full text
Abstract:
What strikes me about the habits of the people who spend so much time on the Net—well, it’s so new that we don't know what will come next—is in fact precisely how niche in character it is. You ask people what nets they are on, and they’re all so specialised! The Argentines on the Argentine Net and so forth. And it’s particularly the Argentines who are not in Argentina. (Anderson, in Gower, par. 5) The preceding quotation, taken from his 1996 interview with Eric Gower, sees Benedict Anderson reflecting on the formation of imagined, transnational communities on the Internet. Anderson is, of course, famous for his work on how nationalism, as an “imagined community,” gets constructed through the shared consumption of print media (6-7, 26-27); although its readers will never all see each other face to face, people consuming a newspaper or novel in a shared language perceive themselves as members of a collective. In this more recent interview, Anderson recognised the specific groupings of people in online communities: Argentines who find themselves outside of Argentina link up online in an imagined diaspora community. Over the course of the last decade and a half since Anderson spoke about Argentinian migrants and diaspora communities, we have witnessed an exponential growth of new forms of digital communication, including social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), Weblogs, micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter), and video-sharing sites (e.g. YouTube). Alongside these new means of communication, our current epoch of globalisation is also characterised by migration flows across, and between, all continents. In his book Modernity at Large, Arjun Appadurai recognised that “the twin forces of mass migration and electronic mediation” have altered the ways the imagination operates. Furthermore, these two pillars, human motion and digital mediation, are in constant “flux” (44). The circulation of people and digitally mediatised content proceeds across and beyond boundaries of the nation-state and provides ground for alternative community and identity formations. Appadurai’s intervention has resulted in increasing awareness of local, transnational, and global networking flows of people, ideas, and culturally hybrid artefacts. In this article, we analyse the various innovative tactics taken up by migrant youth to imagine digital diasporas. Inspired by scholars such as Appadurai, Avtar Brah and Paul Gilroy, we tease out—from a postcolonial perspective—how digital diasporas have evolved over time from a more traditional understanding as constituted either by a vertical relationship to a distant homeland or a horizontal connection to the scattered transnational community (see Safran, Cohen) to move towards a notion of “hypertextual diaspora.” With hypertextual diaspora, these central axes which constitute the understanding of diaspora are reshuffled in favour of more rhizomatic formations where affiliations, locations, and spaces are constantly destabilised and renegotiated. Needless to say, diasporas are not homogeneous and resist generalisation, but in this article we highlight common ways in which young migrant Internet users renew the practices around diaspora connections. Drawing from research on various migrant populations around the globe, we distinguish three common strategies: (1) the forging of transnational public spheres, based on maintaining virtual social relations by people scattered across the globe; (2) new forms of digital diasporic youth branding; and (3) the cultural production of innovative hypertexts in the context of more rhizomatic digital diaspora formations. Before turning to discuss these three strategies, the potential of a postcolonial framework to recognise multiple intersections of diaspora and digital mediation is elaborated. Hypertext as a Postcolonial Figuration Postcolonial scholars, Appadurai, Gilroy, and Brah among others, have been attentive to diasporic experiences, but they have paid little attention to the specificity of digitally mediated diaspora experiences. As Maria Fernández observes, postcolonial studies have been “notoriously absent from electronic media practice, theory, and criticism” (59). Our exploration of what happens when diasporic youth go online is a first step towards addressing this gap. Conceptually, this is clearly an urgent need since diasporas and the digital inform each other in the most profound and dynamic of ways: “the Internet virtually recreates all those sites which have metaphorically been eroded by living in the diaspora” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 396). Writings on the Internet tend to favour either the “gold-rush” mentality, seeing the Web as a great equaliser and bringer of neoliberal progress for all, or the more pessimistic/technophobic approach, claiming that technologically determined spaces are exclusionary, white by default, masculine-oriented, and heteronormative (Everett 30, Van Doorn and Van Zoonen 261). For example, the recent study by Ito et al. shows that young people are not interested in merely performing a fiction in a parallel online world; rather, the Internet gets embedded in their everyday reality (Ito et al. 19-24). Real-life commercial incentives, power hierarchies, and hegemonies also get extended to the digital realm (Schäfer 167-74). Online interaction remains pre-structured, based on programmers’ decisions and value-laden algorithms: “people do not need a passport to travel in cyberspace but they certainly do need to play by the rules in order to function electronically” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 405). We began our article with a statement by Benedict Anderson, stressing how people in the Argentinian diaspora find their space on the Internet. Online avenues increasingly allow users to traverse and add hyperlinks to their personal websites in the forms of profile pages, the publishing of preferences, and possibilities of participating in and affiliating with interest-based communities. Online journals, social networking sites, streaming audio/video pages, and online forums are all dynamic hypertexts based on Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) coding. HTML is the protocol of documents that refer to each other, constituting the backbone of the Web; every text that you find on the Internet is connected to a web of other texts through hyperlinks. These links are in essence at equal distance from each other. As well as being a technological device, hypertext is also a metaphor to think with. Figuratively speaking, hypertext can be understood as a non-hierarchical and a-centred modality. Hypertext incorporates multiplicity; different pathways are possible simultaneously, as it has “multiple entryways and exits” and it “connects any point to any other point” (Landow 58-61). Feminist theorist Donna Haraway recognised the dynamic character of hypertext: “the metaphor of hypertext insists on making connections as practice.” However, she adds, “the trope does not suggest which connections make sense for which purposes and which patches we might want to follow or avoid.” We can begin to see the value of approaching the Internet from the perspective of hypertext to make an “inquiry into which connections matter, why, and for whom” (128-30). Postcolonial scholar Jaishree K. Odin theorised how hypertextual webs might benefit subjects “living at the borders.” She describes how subaltern subjects, by weaving their own hypertextual path, can express their multivocality and negotiate cultural differences. She connects the figure of hypertext with that of the postcolonial: The hypertextual and the postcolonial are thus part of the changing topology that maps the constantly shifting, interpenetrating, and folding relations that bodies and texts experience in information culture. Both discourses are characterised by multivocality, multilinearity, openendedness, active encounter, and traversal. (599) These conceptions of cyberspace and its hypertextual foundations coalesce with understandings of “in-between”, “third”, and “diaspora media space” as set out by postcolonial theorists such as Bhabha and Brah. Bhabha elaborates on diaspora as a space where different experiences can be articulated: “These ‘in-between’ spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation (4). (Dis-)located between the local and the global, Brah adds: “diaspora space is the point at which boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, of belonging and otherness, of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ are contested” (205). As youths who were born in the diaspora have begun to manifest themselves online, digital diasporas have evolved from transnational public spheres to differential hypertexts. First, we describe how transnational public spheres form one dimension of the mediation of diasporic experiences. Subsequently, we focus on diasporic forms of youth branding and hypertext aesthetics to show how digitally mediated practices can go beyond and transgress traditional formations of diasporas as vertically connected to a homeland and horizontally distributed in the creation of transnational public spheres. Digital Diasporas as Diasporic Public Spheres Mass migration and digital mediation have led to a situation where relationships are maintained over large geographical distances, beyond national boundaries. The Internet is used to create transnational imagined audiences formed by dispersed people, which Appadurai describes as “diasporic public spheres”. He observes that, as digital media “increasingly link producers and audiences across national boundaries, and as these audiences themselves start new conversations between those who move and those who stay, we find a growing number of diasporic public spheres” (22). Media and communication researchers have paid a lot of attention to this transnational dimension of the networking of dispersed people (see Brinkerhoff, Alonso and Oiarzabal). We focus here on three examples from three different continents. Most famously, media ethnographers Daniel Miller and Don Slater focused on the Trinidadian diaspora. They describe how “de Rumshop Lime”, a collective online chat room, is used by young people at home and abroad to “lime”, meaning to chat and hang out. Describing the users of the chat, “the webmaster [a Trini living away] proudly proclaimed them to have come from 40 different countries” (though massively dominated by North America) (88). Writing about people in the Greek diaspora, communication researcher Myria Georgiou traced how its mediation evolved from letters, word of mouth, and bulletins to satellite television, telephone, and the Internet (147). From the introduction of the Web, globally dispersed people went online to get in contact with each other. Meanwhile, feminist film scholar Anna Everett draws on the case of Naijanet, the virtual community of “Nigerians Living Abroad”. She shows how Nigerians living in the diaspora from the 1990s onwards connected in global transnational communities, forging “new black public spheres” (35). These studies point at how diasporic people have turned to the Internet to establish and maintain social relations, give and receive support, and share general concerns. Establishing transnational communicative networks allows users to imagine shared audiences of fellow diasporians. Diasporic imagination, however, goes beyond singular notions of this more traditional idea of the transnational public sphere, as it “has nowadays acquired a great figurative flexibility which mostly refers to practices of transgression and hybridisation” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Subjects” 208). Below we recognise another dimension of digital diasporas: the articulation of diasporic attachment for branding oneself. Mocro and Nikkei: Diasporic Attachments as a Way to Brand Oneself In this section, we consider how hybrid cultural practices are carried out over geographical distances. Across spaces on the Web, young migrants express new forms of belonging in their dealing with the oppositional motivations of continuity and change. The generational specificity of this experience can be drawn out on the basis of the distinction between “roots” and “routes” made by Paul Gilroy. In his seminal book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Gilroy writes about black populations on both sides of the Atlantic. The double consciousness of migrant subjects is reflected by affiliating roots and routes as part of a complex cultural identification (19 and 190). As two sides of the same coin, roots refer to the stable and continuing elements of identities, while routes refer to disruption and change. Gilroy criticises those who are “more interested in the relationship of identity to roots and rootedness than in seeing identity as a process of movement and mediation which is more appropriately approached via the homonym routes” (19). He stresses the importance of not just focusing on one of either roots or routes but argues for an examination of their interplay. Forming a response to discrimination and exclusion, young migrants in online networks turn to more positive experiences such as identification with one’s heritage inspired by generational specific cultural affiliations. Here, we focus on two examples that cross two continents, showing routed online attachments to “be(com)ing Mocro”, and “be(coming) Nikkei”. Figure 1. “Leipe Mocro Flavour” music video (Ali B) The first example, being and becoming “Mocro”, refers to a local, bi-national consciousness. The term Mocro originated on the streets of the Netherlands during the late 1990s and is now commonly understood as a Dutch honorary nickname for youths with Moroccan roots living in the Netherlands and Belgium. A 2003 song, Leipe mocro flavour (“Crazy Mocro Flavour”) by Moroccan-Dutch rapper Ali B, familiarised a larger group of people with the label (see Figure 1). Ali B’s song is exemplary for a wider community of youngsters who have come to identify themselves as Mocros. One example is the Marokkanen met Brainz – Hyves (Mo), a community page within the Dutch social networking site Hyves. On this page, 2,200 youths who identify as Mocro get together to push against common stereotypes of Moroccan-Dutch boys as troublemakers and thieves and Islamic Moroccan-Dutch girls as veiled carriers of backward traditions (Leurs, forthcoming). Its description reads, “I assume that this Hyves will be the largest [Mocro community]. Because logically Moroccans have brains” (our translation): What can you find here? Discussions about politics, religion, current affairs, history, love and relationships. News about Moroccan/Arabic Parties. And whatever you want to tell others. Use your brains. Second, “Nikkei” directs our attention to Japanese migrants and their descendants. The Discover Nikkei website, set up by the Japanese American National Museum, provides a revealing description of being and becoming Nikkei: As Nikkei communities form in Japan and throughout the world, the process of community formation reveals the ongoing fluidity of Nikkei populations, the evasive nature of Nikkei identity, and the transnational dimensions of their community formations and what it means to be Nikkei. (Japanese American National Museum) This site was set up by the Japanese American National Museum for Nikkei in the global diaspora to connect and share stories. Nikkei youths of course also connect elsewhere. In her ethnographic online study, Shana Aoyama found that the social networking site Hi5 is taken up in Peru by young people of Japanese heritage as an avenue for identity exploration. She found group confirmation based on the performance of Nikkei-ness, as well as expressions of individuality. She writes, “instead of heading in one specific direction, the Internet use of Nikkei creates a starburst shape of identity construction and negotiation” (119). Mocro-ness and Nikkei-ness are common collective identification markers that are not just straightforward nationalisms. They refer back to different homelands, while simultaneously they also clearly mark one’s situation of being routed outside of this homeland. Mocro stems from postcolonial migratory flows from the Global South to the West. Nikkei-ness relates to the interesting case of the Japanese diaspora, which is little accounted for, although there are many Japanese communities present in North and South America from before the Second World War. The context of Peru is revealing, as it was the first South American country to accept Japanese migrants. It now hosts the second largest South American Japanese diaspora after Brazil (Lama), and Peru’s former president, Alberto Fujimoro, is also of Japanese origin. We can see how the importance of the nation-state gets blurred as diasporic youth, through cultural hybridisation of youth culture and ethnic ties, initiates subcultures and offers resistance to mainstream western cultural forms. Digital spaces are used to exert youthful diaspora branding. Networked branding includes expressing cultural identities that are communal and individual but also both local and global, illustrative of how “by virtue of being global the Internet can gift people back their sense of themselves as special and particular” (Miller and Slater 115). In the next section, we set out how youthful diaspora branding is part of a larger, more rhizomatic formation of multivocal hypertext aesthetics. Hypertext Aesthetics In this section, we set out how an in-between, or “liminal”, position, in postcolonial theory terms, can be a source of differential and multivocal cultural production. Appadurai, Bhabha, and Gilroy recognise that liminal positions increasingly leave their mark on the global and local flows of cultural objects, such as food, cinema, music, and fashion. Here, our focus is on how migrant youths turn to hypertextual forms of cultural production for a differential expression of digital diasporas. Hypertexts are textual fields made up of hyperlinks. Odin states that travelling through cyberspace by clicking and forging hypertext links is a form of multivocal digital diaspora aesthetics: The perpetual negotiation of difference that the border subject engages in creates a new space that demands its own aesthetic. This new aesthetic, which I term “hypertext” or “postcolonial,” represents the need to switch from the linear, univocal, closed, authoritative aesthetic involving passive encounters characterising the performance of the same to that of non-linear, multivocal, open, non-hierarchical aesthetic involving active encounters that are marked by repetition of the same with and in difference. (Cited in Landow 356-7) On their profile pages, migrant youth digitally author themselves in distinct ways by linking up to various sites. They craft their personal hypertext. These hypertexts display multivocal diaspora aesthetics which are personal and specific; they display personal intersections of affiliations that are not easily generalisable. In several Dutch-language online spaces, subjects from Dutch-Moroccan backgrounds have taken up the label Mocro as an identity marker. Across social networking sites such as Hyves and Facebook, the term gets included in nicknames and community pages. Think of nicknames such as “My own Mocro styly”, “Mocro-licious”, “Mocro-chick”. The term Mocro itself is often already multilayered, as it is often combined with age, gender, sexual preference, religion, sport, music, and generationally specific cultural affiliations. Furthermore, youths connect to a variety of groups ranging from feminist interests (“Women in Charge”), Dutch nationalism (“I Love Holland”), ethnic affiliations (“The Moroccan Kitchen”) to clothing (the brand H&M), and global junk food (McDonalds). These diverse affiliations—that are advertised online simultaneously—add nuance to the typical, one-dimensional stereotype about migrant youth, integration, and Islam in the context of Europe and Netherlands (Leurs, forthcoming). On the online social networking site Hi5, Nikkei youths in Peru, just like any other teenagers, express their individuality by decorating their personal profile page with texts, audio, photos, and videos. Besides personal information such as age, gender, and school information, Aoyama found that “a starburst” of diverse affiliations is published, including those that signal Japanese-ness such as the Hello Kitty brand, anime videos, Kanji writing, kimonos, and celebrities. Also Nikkei hyperlink to elements that can be identified as “Latino” and “Chino” (Chinese) (104-10). Furthermore, users can show their multiple affiliations by joining different “groups” (after which a hyperlink to the group community appears on the profile page). Aoyama writes “these groups stretch across a large and varied scope of topics, including that of national, racial/ethnic, and cultural identities” (2). These examples illustrate how digital diasporas encompass personalised multivocal hypertexts. With the widely accepted adagio “you are what you link” (Adamic and Adar), hypertextual webs can be understood as productions that reveal how diasporic youths choose to express themselves as individuals through complex sets of non-homogeneous identifications. Migrant youth connects to ethnic origin and global networks in eclectic and creative ways. The concept of “digital diaspora” therefore encapsulates both material and virtual (dis)connections that are identifiable through common traits, strategies, and aesthetics. Yet these hypertextual connections are also highly personalised and unique, offering a testimony to the fluid negotiations and intersections between the local and the global, the rooted and the diasporic. Conclusions In this article, we have argued that migrant youths render digital diasporas more complex by including branding and hypertextual aesthetics in transnational public spheres. Digital diasporas may no longer be understood simply in terms of their vertical relations to a homeland or place of origin or as horizontally connected to a clearly marked transnational community; rather, they must also be seen as engaging in rhizomatic digital practices, which reshuffle traditional understandings of origin and belonging. Contemporary youthful digital diasporas are therefore far more complex in their engagement with digital media than most existing theory allows: connections are hybridised, and affiliations are turned into practices of diasporic branding and becoming. There is a generational specificity to multivocal diaspora aesthetics; this specificity lies in the ways migrant youths show communal recognition and express their individuality through hypertext which combines affiliation to their national/ethnic “roots” with an embrace of other youth subcultures, many of them transnational. These two axes are constantly reshuffled and renegotiated online where, thanks to the technological possibilities of HTML hypertext, a whole range of identities and identifications may be brought together at any given time. We trust that these insights will be of interest in future discussion of online networks, transnational communities, identity formation, and hypertext aesthetics where much urgent and topical work remains to be done. References Adamic, Lada A., and Eytan Adar. “You Are What You Link.” 2001 Tenth International World Wide Web Conference, Hong Kong. 26 Apr. 2010. ‹http://www10.org/program/society/yawyl/YouAreWhatYouLink.htm›. Ali B. “Leipe Mocro Flavour.” ALIB.NL / SPEC Entertainment. 2007. 4 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www3.alib.nl/popupAlibtv.php?catId=42&contentId=544›. Alonso, Andoni, and Pedro J. Oiarzabal. Diasporas in the New Media Age. Reno: U of Nevada P, 2010. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 2006 (1983). Aoyama, Shana. Nikkei-Ness: A Cyber-Ethnographic Exploration of Identity among the Japanese Peruvians of Peru. Unpublished MA thesis. South Hadley: Mount Holyoke, 2007. 1 Feb. 2010 ‹http://hdl.handle.net/10166/736›. Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge, 1996. Brinkerhoff, Jennifer M. Digital Diasporas: Identity and Transnational Engagement. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: U College London P, 1997. Everett, Anna. Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace. Albany: SUNY, 2009. Fernández, María. “Postcolonial Media Theory.” Art Journal 58.3 (1999): 58-73. Georgiou, Myria. Diaspora, Identity and the Media: Diasporic Transnationalism and Mediated Spatialities. Creskill: Hampton Press, 2006. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 1993. Gower, Eric. “When the Virtual Becomes the Real: A Talk with Benedict Anderson.” NIRA Review, 1996. 19 Apr. 2010 ‹http://www.nira.or.jp/past/publ/review/96spring/intervi.html›. Haraway, Donna. Modest Witness@Second Millennium. FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge, 1997. Ito, Mizuko, et al. Hanging Out, Messing Out, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. Japanese American National Museum. “Discover Nikkei: Japanese Migrants and Their Descendants.” Discover Nikkei, 2005. 4 Oct. 2010. ‹http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/›. Lama, Abraham. “Home Is Where the Heartbreak Is for Japanese-Peruvians.” Asia Times 16 Oct. 1999. 6 May 2010 ‹http://www.atimes.com/japan-econ/AJ16Dh01.html›. Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0. Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006. Leurs, Koen. Identity, Migration and Digital Media. Utrecht: Utrecht University. PhD Thesis, forthcoming. Miller, Daniel, and Don Slater. The Internet: An Etnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Mo. “Marokkanen met Brainz.” Hyves, 23 Feb. 2008. 4 Oct. 2010. ‹http://marokkaansehersens.hyves.nl/›. Odin, Jaishree K. “The Edge of Difference: Negotiations between the Hypertextual and the Postcolonial.” Modern Fiction Studies 43.3 (1997): 598-630. Ponzanesi, Sandra. “Diasporic Narratives @ Home Pages: The Future as Virtually Located.” Colonies – Missions – Cultures in the English-Speaking World. Ed. Gerhard Stilz. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2001. 396–406. Ponzanesi, Sandra. “Diasporic Subjects and Migration.” Thinking Differently: A Reader in European Women's Studies. Ed. Gabrielle Griffin and Rosi Braidotti. London: Zed Books, 2002. 205–20. Safran, William. “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return.” Diaspora 1.1 (1991): 83-99. Schäfer, Mirko T. Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2011. Van Doorn, Niels, and Liesbeth van Zoonen. “Theorizing Gender and the Internet: Past, Present, and Future.” Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics. Ed. Andrew Chadwick and Philip N. Howard. London: Routledge. 261-74.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
We offer discounts on all premium plans for authors whose works are included in thematic literature selections. Contact us to get a unique promo code!

To the bibliography