Advice as Practical Epistemology in Multilingual Africa - Projects of The Cluster
Abstract
- Abstract
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Speaking on her short-term project, is Prof. Dr. Susanne Mühleisen, a professor of English Linguistics at the Uni Bayreuth.
Her Cluster Project focuses mainly on advice giving and advice receiving in #Cameroon, something, which she refers to as “Practical Epistemology” in her video presentation. Ideally suited is the African context for the collection of data, as it envelops an undeniable multilingualism that has nested itself in all aspects of everyday life. Amongst the initial findings were Dr. Mühleisen’s observations that certain multilingual codes are organised around the very activities of advice, which means that a switch from language to another is triggered in some advice-giving contexts.
#epistemology #multilingualism #AfricaMultiple #ClusterOfExcellence #ResearchProject #africa #linguistics #englishlanguage #research #UniBayreuth #bayreuth
Origins & context
- Title
- Advice as Practical Epistemology in Multilingual Africa - Projects of The Cluster
- Language
- English
- YouTube playlist
- Presenting The Cluster Projects
- Date
- November 9, 2021
Identifiers & sources
Full text
- Transcript
- [Music] my name is suzanne mulheisen i'm professor of english linguistics at bioward university and i'm a principal investigator at the cluster of excellence africa multiple um okay i'm in the research section learning and i have a short term project at the moment the name of my short-term project is advice as practical epistemology in multilingual africa an analysis of expert user at user user contexts in cameroon and it's a short-term project it started out in october 2019 and was actually intended to be just for one year but due to the corona crisis it was extended until september 2021 so it's still running but almost finished the title suggests the project is situated as a question on speech activities in the multilingual context how people negotiate in their everyday life something like the speech activity of advice giving and advice receiving and this is also part of everyday learning experiences and it's important also an important part of the social organization and transfer of knowledge out of what is called practical epistemology in everyday life so the research project focuses on facets of learning and also learning resistance in the context of advice giving and advice receiving in especially multilingual cameroon but also extending to other multilingual african situations and in the african diaspora for instance in jamaica first of all of course i work in english linguistics i'm interested in languages and well most african contexts are ideally suited for experiences of multilingual contexts and i would say that especially in a country like cameroon you have a hierarchical relationship also between languages between something like an ex-colonial language like english then you have a contact variety like pidgin then you have 270 or more local languages and you have also something like urban contact varieties uh like camp hungley and so also there is um and french of course i did not forget french um yeah so it's actually an a hugely interesting situation and for me the way people in such an uh multilingual situation negotiate between the languages and to see what the relationship between the languages is is just fascinating and i think it's also something that is important for the clusters questions um yeah so i think that's my main motivation i've collected several sets of data partly experimental data like survey questionnaires that are then analyzed okay they were conducted in cameroon and yeah so here we also have the possibility to look at advice giving in more personal situations but i also have a set of media data something like radio phone-in programs which are then carefully transcribed and analyzed by means of well discourse analysis methods and i also have other mediated data that i've collected plus i've collected more data also in the african diaspora context in jamaica and that data consists again of radiophone in programs plus newspaper advice columns and yeah that's basically my my database the data analysis has brought forth a number of research articles that are presently in press or in the final stages of completion and okay i think one really interesting point for me was the level of directness with which advice is performed especially by the advice giver and especially in situations where the advice recipient seeks advice right in in solicited advice situations where actually uh the the performance of the advice would be much more direct for instance with an imperative do this do that not mitigated by something if i were you i would do this or that you know and the second thing that i found very interesting especially in the transcribed data in the media data in radio phone-ins is that often the use of multi-lingual codes is organized around activities of advice or other speech activities that basically something that that is an authoritative speech act like advice then triggers the switch from one language to another and so you can really see that in the careful transcriptions and that was also something that i thought was really interesting well multiplicity is already given in the multiple use of languages and i think that's a very very important point of the project and also something that i would like to also contribute to the cluster the you know investigation of multiple language use in african contexts and the relationality is also very much reflected here in that these languages do not stand innocently but side by side but also are in a particular relationship with one another which also reflects the postcolonial situation in many of the african contexts and particularly cameroon and also to a certain extent kenya where i've also done preliminary research on that are very good examples of that of how multiplicity relationality then are also situated in the clusters project here i would say that the multilingual situation in most african contexts also invites more projects on that and i have well after finishing this short-term project i have plans to conduct a long-term project with a postdoctoral researcher in kenya again situated within the learning research section and that would also look at the use of multiple languages in the kenyan classroom especially for primary students primary school students and especially at a time when the language of instruction then changes from the local language to english and also of course here you have a an extremely interesting situation with swahili um english and a large number of local languages and of course that also has consequences for the learning okay so my vision is to yeah conduct most research in these areas and to contribute to the cluster as a linguist but also as a linguistic anthropologist that i would see myself as you