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Language And Identity In Postcolonial African Literature: A Case Study Of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Abigail Guthrie

Masters Theses

Sociolinguists often research the development of language attitudes and the state of language within speech communities. Individual speakers reflect the status of their L1 language in both speaking and writing (Wa Thiong'o 1986, Showalter 2001), and the idea that writing can be used as a set of data that reflects an author's language attitude is the motivation for this research. Salikoko Mufwene (2001), one of the leading experts on creolization and the ecology of language, has argued that individual speakers of a language make daily choices that affect the future of their native tongue. Using the novel Things Fall Apart …