Relativism, universalism, and the language of African literature

Abstract

Thepresumedoppositionbetweenlinguisticrelativismand linguistic universalism has long been at center of debate about use of language in African literature. Relativists regard use of African languages as indispensable in quest for an authentically African literature. For them language reservoir of a people's culture (e.g., Biobaku 76) or medium that structures a people's perceptions (e.g., Irele 43) in culturally bound ways. As a result, relativists consider non-African languages less than adequate in conveying an African cultural-cognitive essence that, they should be a defining characteristic of all truly African literary works. Only African languages, they claim, can perform this task satisfactorily. Chidi Maduka, for example, argues that, even though the sources of Achebe, Awoonor and Soyinka, for example, are from Igbo, Ewe and Yoruba, respectively,... they are cast in a language that captures spirit of worldview of this group of (190), and these writers are, he declares, by-products of European linguistic imperialism (182). Ngiigi wa Thiong'o expresses a similar sentiment when relegates European-language writings of Achebe, Soyinka, Sembene, and others to what he calls an Afro-European literary tradition. After all, asserts Ngfigi, the domination of people's languages by languages of colonizing nations was crucial to domination of mental universe of colonized (Decolonising 16). He, therefore, regards writing in European languages as a trap that holds African creative genius captive in cultural and conceptual prisonhouse of former colonizers. Pitted against relativist position a linguistic universalism that regards language as a malleable tool in service of transcultural creative mind. Proponents of this view reject idea that literature African only if it has been composed in an African language. What I refuse to believe, writes Gerald Moore, is that a book like Things Fall Apart not African merely