Population Movements, Language Contact, Linguistic Diversity, Etc.

This chapter argues that languages move with people for various reasons, including nomadism, long-distance trade, colonization, exile and refuge, and deportations. While not necessarily mutually exclusive, these categories enable a better understanding of the differential evolution of languages at home and in the diasporas, owing to differing population structures and other ecological conditions resulting from different kinds of migrations within, into, and out of Africa in particular. In contrast with the fragility of its languages in the diaspora, the continent has been remarkable for the resilience of its indigenous vernaculars relative to the prestigious European colonial languages and the urban varieties that European colonization generated. This resilience is due to the division of labor in communicative functions as well as to stagnation of African economies, both of which have sustained multilingualism through socioeconomic and cultural segregation. From this theoretical foundation, the chapter then engages with the previous contributions to the volume.