Sinfree Makoni
Biographic Data
| ID | 87751 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sinfree Makoni |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sinfree |
| FAMILY NAME | Makoni |
| SIGNATURE | MAKONI S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pennsylvania State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4493-1750 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 75 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 311 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 74 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Language and Identity in Africa
A central theme in discussions about language and identity is homogeneity and dissimilarity based on categories such as language, ethnicity, nationalism, and, to some extent, religion, all of which are highly contestable in their own right.
On Northern, Southern, and entangled cosmopolitanism
This article explores migrants’ English language ideologies, focusing on their views about preferred English varieties in intercultural communication in Australia, specifically, on their concerns about the use of (non)native or (non)standard English in different interactional settings. Drawing on the Southern theory, it re-explicates several concepts of cosmopolitanism in relation to English and suggests that people’s ideologies about language us…
Language policing and the discourse of English normativity
This article examines language policing as experienced by Asian migrant youth in Australian schools and the discourse of English normativity underlying such policing practices. Drawing on a Foucauldian perspective and using interview data, it investigates how these young people's English competence and language manners were policed by the school system, their teachers and their peers. Findings suggest that the participants' certain levels of Engl…
Critical Applied Linguistics
Within a sea of dominant and counter voices, applied linguistics experienced a surge in publications that express unease with the exclusionary practices of the discipline and indicate that declared values of diversity and inclusion were nothing but strategic hyperbole. Applied linguistics has seen a significant increase in publications that call out practices that sustain inequality within applied linguistics. Research in CAL also has grappled wi…
Ethics in Qualitative Applied Linguistics Research
This chapter problematizes the concept of ethics in qualitative applied linguistics research by considering Southern epistemologies. This means that we avoid a universal ethical approach applied to research by arguing in favor of a radical, situated approach of research. This concern also includes a shift in the extractivist nature of fieldwork toward a responsive and dialogical approach that includes other voices as authors in the process of kno…
Translingual Practices
Bringing together work from a team of international scholars, this groundbreaking book explores how language users employ translingualism playfully, while, at the same time, negotiating precarious situations, such as the breaking of social norms and subverting sociolinguistic boundaries. It includes a range of ethnographic studies from around the globe, to provide us with insights into the everyday lives of language users and learners and their l…
Translingual Practices
Decolonizing applied linguistics in Africa and its diasporas
The decolonization of applied linguistics is a critique of applied linguistics (see Phillipson, 1999; Phipps, 2018 and Pennycook & Makoni, 2020). We argue for a shift toward the Global South, in particular Africa, and for the importance of paying attention to ‘race’ as a significant category of analysis in applied linguistics in Africa. The challenges transcend an agenda that redresses exclusions, and the colonial past of linguistics and location…
From Southern Theory to Decolonizing Sociolinguistics
From Southern Theory to Decolonizing Sociolinguistics
Língua e raça no Brasil colonial
Neste artigo, exploramos e analisamos o processo de racialização da língua portuguesa e dos sujeitos africanos no contexto colonial brasileiro. Para tal, exploramos a relação entre as dimensões econômica e política do colonialismo e as práticas linguísticas dos povos africanos escravizados no Brasil. À luz do aparato colonial português - que combinava interesses religiosos, políticos e econômicos - este artigo analisa o papel desempenhado pelas l…
The Routledge Handbook of Language and the Global South/s
Sociolinguistic Protests for Decolonial Future Making
In scholarly discussions on “language” and “diversity,” much critique has been offered as to how research on languaging is implicated in perpetuating coloniality and pursuing decolonial options, including the white-gaze understanding and approach to the term, “diversity” (Heller and McElhinny 2017; Mignolo 2009; Rosa and Flores 2017; Walcott 2018). Extending these discussions, this article calls for centering languaging in the “streets” as an imp…
Integrationism and language ideologies
The present special issue goes back to the online conference entitled Integrationism and Language Ideologies (March 15-20, 2021), which was organized by the Language Policy Group of the Federal University of Santa Catarina in conjunction with the International Association for the Integrational Study of Language and Communication (IAISLC). The contributions in this issue are for the most part revised versions of the conference papers presented at …
Proverbial futures
Examining references to proverbs in African political discourses in light of Integrational semiology and Southern Theory, we find not fossils of ancient wisdom but the creative construction of desired futures that may grow out of the present situation in light of what has been learned from the past. Proverbial discourse, always speaking to the present situation and commenting on available possibilities while being open to multiple interpretations…
Routledge Handbook of Language and the Global South
Language Practices in Afro-Brazilian Religions
This chapter articulates and argues that language is a multilayered and intersemiotic sign with social and political and religious significance in Afro-Brazilian contexts. We argue that there is no way to imagine what counts as Brazil – and Brazilian languages – without reference to Africa and its cultural legacy and the impact of slavery on Brazil. We evoke a number of concepts in our analysis particularly the notions of Southern multilingualism…
Decolonial Voices, Language and Race
Postcolonial Language Policy and Planning and the Limits of the Notion of the Modern State
In this review, we discuss the limits of the concept of the modern nation-state to explore language issues in postcolonial contexts, as in Africa. We argue in favor of a revision of the history of the field of language policy and planning (LPP) and sociolinguistics, paying attention to how the colonial issue has been erased and downplayed. We first explore the colonial history of LPP and how this field contributed to frame African multilingualism…
The politics of southern research in language studies
In this epilogue we connect contemporary discussion concerning Southern epistemologies and methodologies in language studies with decolonizing Higher Education. This means that we cannot divorce Southern epistemologies from the regimes of truth that guide the modes of production, dissemination and appropriation of knowledge in the global world, which also includes the discussion concerning ethics and positionality in research. We argue that this …
Southern perspectives of language and the construction of the common
Sinfree Makoni
Cet entretien informel mené avec Sinfree Makoni prolonge une discussion entamée en mars 2021 par visio-conférence. Il s’agit de faire entendre une voix peu connue en France. Dès les années 1990, Sinfree Makoni commence à mettre en cause la notion même de langue dans ses articles. Il considère que la conception du langage en Afrique en termes de langues indigènes résulte de la projection coloniale d’un concept occidental sur une réalité communicat…
Southernizing and decolonizing the Sociology of Language
In this short article we call for decolonization strategies in the Sociology of Language through a focus shift towards the global South, in particular Africa and a heightened attention to "race" as a significant category.
A Partnership of Un-Equals
With the realisation that institutions of higher learning may play a powerful role in transforming the world, research partnerships between institutions in the Global South and North have gained popularity. These partnerships are meant to empower and strengthen the contribution of higher learning institutions and bridge the North/South knowledge divide. Considering the limited access to research resources in the Global South, it is anticipated th…
Translanguaging in the Global South
(2020). Translanguaging in the Global South. Scrutiny2: Vol. 25, Multilingualism and Translanguaging in Higher Education Institutions, pp. 104-109
Disinventing and (Re)Constituting Languages
In this paper we argue that although the problematic nature of language construction has been acknowledged by a number of skeptical authors, including the recent claim in this journal (Reagan, 2004) that there is no such thing as English or any other language, this critical approach to language still needs to develop a broader understanding of the processes of invention. A central part of our argument, therefore, is that it is not enough to ackno…
Language and human rights discourses in Africa
In this article, we investigate the question of who benefits from language minority research by analyzing the discourses of language rights and human rights jointly, because language rights are perforce part of human rights. We argue that some 'small' minority languages flourish and others fail unless speakers of these languages articulate their voices and needs. We also explore how human rights discourses relate to traditional practices. The int…
The use of "indigenous" and urban vernaculars in Zimbabwe
This article analyzes the reasons for and the effects of the language shift in Zimbabwe represented by the increasing use of pan-ethnic lingua francas, or urban vernaculars, of local origin. It is suggested that essentialist/primordialist assumptions about “indigenous” languages that feature prominently in current accounts of language endangerment should be made more complex by understanding their historical and social origins. In Zimbabwe, this …
An integrationist perspective on colonial linguistics
The sociolinguistics of nationalism in the Sudan
This monograph describes the historiography of language ideologies that led to the politicisation of Arabic and the Arabicisation of politics in the Sudan, starting from British colonial rule until the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was a precursor to the separation of the South as an independent state. The monograph shows that the politicisation of Arabic in the Sudan is largely a product of British colonial language planning practices that …
Sociolinguistics, colonial and postcolonial
Zimbabwe Colonial and Post-Colonial Language Policy and Planning Practices
This monograph focuses on the development of colonial and post-colonial language policies and practices in Zimbabwe, attributing changes to evolving philosophies and politics in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe. In colonial Zimbabwe, we argue that the language policies had as one of their key objectives the development of a bilingual white colonial ruling class proficient in both English and at least one African language. Contrary to what some…
The Naivasha language policy
Naming Practices and Language Planning in Zimbabwe
Studies of African naming practices focus almost exclusively on the meanings and etymology of names and details about the circumstances surrounding how such names are assigned. Such research has not examined the implications naming has for language planning, ideologies of language, and language shift. Focusing on names and naming practices in Zimbabwe from 1960 to 1990, this paper departs from this well-established tradition. The paper provides e…
Intergenerational Communication Beliefs Across the Lifespan
The colonial linguistics of governance in Sudan
This paper explores the discursive history of 'language-making' in the context of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, focusing on a significant colonial moment of standardisation: The Rejaf Language Conference (RLC) of 1928. Through inspecting the report of the proceedings of the RLC, the paper contends that this institutional event contributed to the construction of racial and regional differences by, then: (1) being informed by scientific theories of rac…
Language Planning, Language Ideology and Entextualization
This article examines the relationship between language and war by investigating naming practices through three prisms: language planning, language ideology and entextualization. The article focuses on names assigned to combatants during the War of Liberation for Zimbabwe's independence. In African cultures, names often address a kaleidoscope of issues which may include the collective history and life experiences of the individual name bearer and…
Comparative Gerontolinguistics
This article compares and contrasts the interactions between caregivers and care–recipients in two nursing homes in the United Kingdom and South Africa. It is argued that the discourse of caring in the two settings is similar in terms of how residents and nurses use interactional strategies to negotiate role relationships. It is also argued that it is the context of the “total” institution that gives rise to these strategies. Differences in the t…
A critical analysis of the historical and contemporary status of minority languages in Zimbabwe
Although a voluminous amount of literature addresses language-in-education policy in Africa, one area in which the literature remains sparse is the role of minority languages in education. This article presents an overview of complex issues regarding the hegemony claims of different minority language groups in Zimbabwe. Given the relatively small research base dealing explicitly with controversies in the promotion of minority languages as the med…
Southernizing and decolonizing the Sociology of Language
In this short article we call for decolonization strategies in the Sociology of Language through a focus shift towards the global South, in particular Africa and a heightened attention to "race" as a significant category.
Conflicting reactions to chi’ixnakax utxiwa
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The Wordy Worlds of Popular Music in Eastern and Southern Africa
Language-in-education policy in Africa is replete with debate regarding the use of standard African languages as part of mother-tongue education. An issue inadequately addressed within this debate is the role and function of urban vernaculars which have become “the” mother tongue of the greater part of Africa's population. Using data from the lyrics of popular music from eastern and southern African songwriters as an instance of ground-level lang…
Language Planning From Below
Arguments for bottom-up approaches in language planning are currently in vogue. Rarely, however, are such arguments supported by evidence demonstrating how such bottom-up planning leading to successful implementation can be achieved. This article presents evidence based on archival documentation in the form of annual reports and manuscripts written by administrators that document how, through community empowerment, the Tonga, a minority (a term w…
Postcolonial Language Policy and Planning and the Limits of the Notion of the Modern State
In this review, we discuss the limits of the concept of the modern nation-state to explore language issues in postcolonial contexts, as in Africa. We argue in favor of a revision of the history of the field of language policy and planning (LPP) and sociolinguistics, paying attention to how the colonial issue has been erased and downplayed. We first explore the colonial history of LPP and how this field contributed to frame African multilingualism…
Gazing at language crossing in the global north but doing crossing in the global south
Rampton (1995) uses the term ‘language crossing’, or its less well-known variants ‘code crossing’ and ‘code alternation’, to refer to language use by people who are neither accepted nor recognized
Language planning, security, police communication and multilingualism in uniform
Discourses of language in colonial and postcolonial Brazil
Southern perspectives of language and the construction of the common
A local discursive dimension in a specific historical context
Most studies on campus and private policing take on political, anthropological, sociological, and criminological perspectives. Although there were investigations on policing in South Africa during apartheid, scant research has focused on how students in South African higher education (SAHE) relate their experiences of campus policing. Due to recent unrest on SAHE campuses and radical changes that include the militarization of police forces, exami…
The cultural politics of language in Sudan
The sociolinguistic repertoires of individuals in Sudan are products of institutionalised orders of normalisation. The visibility of language in popular and official discourses in Sudan is always linked with wider cultural and political projects. This paper intends to engage with and explicate this observation by, first, examining how the dominant ideology of language operates in practice in Sudan, and second, by inspecting how it is contextually…
Some comments on discourse domain as used in studies of interlanguage variability
Variability has continuously attracted interest among some second language acquisition (SLA) researchers. Attempts have been made to explain interlanguage (IL) variability by appealing to a number of different constructs, including attention to form, planning time, linguistic context etc. A more recent attempt seeks to explain variability through the construct of discourse domain. This paper seeks to demonstrate that, although the attempt to expl…
The Plain English Campaign and South Africa
A consideration of how useful the Plain English movement can be in a country like South Africa
Gerontolinguistics in South Africa
This paper evaluates the contribution of Coupland's research project from the perspective of an African interest in gerontology, and I argue that some of the underlying concepts need to be reconsidered if the project is to be extended to a different context. Then, using Rampton's paper as a starting point, I outline some of the strengths and frustrations typical of a serious attempt at multidisciplinary research
Conflict and control in intercultural communication
Article Conflict and control in intercultural communication: A case study of compliance-gaining strategies in interactions between black nurses and white residents in a nursing home in CapeTown, South Africa was published on January 1, 1998 in the journal Multilingua (volume 17, issue 2-3)
Comparative Gerontolinguistics
This article compares and contrasts the interactions between caregivers and care–recipients in two nursing homes in the United Kingdom and South Africa. It is argued that the discourse of caring in the two settings is similar in terms of how residents and nurses use interactional strategies to negotiate role relationships. It is also argued that it is the context of the “total” institution that gives rise to these strategies. Differences in the t…
Black linguistics
"Written exclusively by Black scholars on behalf of, and in collaboration with local communities, the book looks at the commonalities and differences among Black speech communities in Africa and the Diaspora. Topics include: * the OJ Simpson trial * language issues in Southern Africa and Francophone West Africa * the language of Hip Hop * the language of the Rastafaria in Jamaica With a foreword by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, this is essential reading for…
Introducing applied linguistics in Africa
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I want to be like a human again”
The article undertakes an integrated, holistic and multidisciplinary study of the language produced over an extended period by an ageing South African woman suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. It does so against the background of the medical and legal records of the dementing person’s condition revealing certain possibilities, in treatment and care, of moving beyond pathological deficit perspective and exploring the implications of retained abili…
Black Linguistics
Enslavement, forced migration, war and colonization have led to the global dispersal of communities and to the fragmentation of common experiences. The majority of language researchers explore the social and linguistic phenomena of individual communities, without looking at experiences outside a given community. This groundbreaking collection re-orders the elitist and colonial elements of language studies by drawing together the multiple perspect…
Western perspectives in applied linguistics in Africa
The aim of this article is to analyze the nature of the historical and contemporary social contexts within which applied linguistics in Africa emerged, and is currently practiced. The article examines the challenges ‘local’ applied Linguistics in Africa is confronted with as it tries to amplify applied linguistic programs emanating from Europe and North America. The article argues that seemingly progressive applied linguistic projects interconnec…
English and the African Diaspora
English in Africa After the Cold War. Alamin M. Mazrui. Black Linguistics: Language, Society, and Politics in Africa and the Americas. Sinfree Makoni, Geneva Smitherman, Arnetha F. Ball, Arthur K. Spears (Eds.)
Toward a More Inclusive Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching
Finally, it is important to consider critical applied linguistics within a global context. The principal concern here is whether the sort of critical applied linguistics I discuss here has sufficient relevance for a diversity of contexts. Is it perhaps just an Anglo-American view of the world? (Pennycook, 2001, p. 171)
Disinventing and (Re)Constituting Languages
In this paper we argue that although the problematic nature of language construction has been acknowledged by a number of skeptical authors, including the recent claim in this journal (Reagan, 2004) that there is no such thing as English or any other language, this critical approach to language still needs to develop a broader understanding of the processes of invention. A central part of our argument, therefore, is that it is not enough to ackno…
Communicative Dynamics of Police-Civilian Encounters
Research in the American West, China, and Taiwan has shown that officers’ communication accommodative practices (and attributed trust in them) can be more potent predictors of satisfaction with the police than are the sociodemographic characteristics of those judging. With Black and White respondents, this study continues this line of work in Louisiana and South Africa and tests a new model about the relationships among perceived officer accommod…
Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages
Those familiar with Pennycook’s previous works such as English and the Discourses of Colonialism (1998) or Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction (2001) will not be surprised to learn that this latest volume, co-edited with Makoni and titled Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages, challenges many orthodoxies related to the role of English in the world and the nature of language. As far back as his 1994 book, The Cultural Politic…
Zimbabwe Colonial and Post-Colonial Language Policy and Planning Practices
This monograph focuses on the development of colonial and post-colonial language policies and practices in Zimbabwe, attributing changes to evolving philosophies and politics in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe. In colonial Zimbabwe, we argue that the language policies had as one of their key objectives the development of a bilingual white colonial ruling class proficient in both English and at least one African language. Contrary to what some…
Intergenerational Communication Beliefs Across the Lifespan
“I Am Starving With No Hope To Survive”
Bringing The Body Back
Recent scholarship on ‘disabilities ’ and bodies has tended to be extreme in its orientation and has, on the whole, not been able to speak of chronic disabilities and bodily breakdown in humanistic ways. In its verve toward finding ‘cures,’ biomedical discourses, from which societal discourses draw their strength, have emphasized malfunctioning body parts and have made little room for bodily breakdown. Likewise, some strains of poststructuralist …
Naming Practices and Language Planning in Zimbabwe
Studies of African naming practices focus almost exclusively on the meanings and etymology of names and details about the circumstances surrounding how such names are assigned. Such research has not examined the implications naming has for language planning, ideologies of language, and language shift. Focusing on names and naming practices in Zimbabwe from 1960 to 1990, this paper departs from this well-established tradition. The paper provides e…
Language and Politics ‐ By John Joseph
The use of "indigenous" and urban vernaculars in Zimbabwe
This article analyzes the reasons for and the effects of the language shift in Zimbabwe represented by the increasing use of pan-ethnic lingua francas, or urban vernaculars, of local origin. It is suggested that essentialist/primordialist assumptions about “indigenous” languages that feature prominently in current accounts of language endangerment should be made more complex by understanding their historical and social origins. In Zimbabwe, this …
Aging in Africa
Language Planning From Below
Arguments for bottom-up approaches in language planning are currently in vogue. Rarely, however, are such arguments supported by evidence demonstrating how such bottom-up planning leading to successful implementation can be achieved. This article presents evidence based on archival documentation in the form of annual reports and manuscripts written by administrators that document how, through community empowerment, the Tonga, a minority (a term w…
Linguistic minorities and modernity
Sociology (55 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (52 works) · Linguistics (48 works) · Philosophy (41 works) · Political science (41 works) · Law (26 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (22 works) · Politics (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Pedagogy (15 works)