Abstract
This talk presents an introduction to the ongoing project ‘Multilingualism, Conflict and Conflict Resolution in Africa’. This 4-year project examines how multilingualism may shape the risk of violent conflict, as well as the potential for multilingualism to be taken into consideration in conflict resolution in Africa.
While there has been a substantial amount of research emphasising primary languages as a source of ethnic group identification, and the role of language differences in ethnic mobilisation and violent conflict, we know that multilingualism is widespread, across both Africa and the world more broadly, and people may share affinities with more than one ethnic group. Moreover, we lack systematic, comparative studies on how the dynamics of practised multilingualism shape security and conflict resolution. This talk introduces this interdisciplinary collaborative research project which examines these issues with a focus on Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Uganda and Nigeria. We present a general overview of the project as a whole, as well as some emerging insights from the data collected so far.
The Linguistic Forum
The Linguistic Forum is an informal meeting place for all linguists working at the Faculty of Humanities. We are a faculty-wide seminar activity with financial support from the faculty (since 2020). Our aim is to promote knowledge exchange and collaboration between the faculty's linguists.
Read more about the Linguistic Forum here (in Swedish)
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