Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 10:23:27 -0500 Subject: Re: weird nitpicking (was: syllabus proposal for undergrad course) From: "Lisa Anne McNee" <lm23-AT-qsilver.queensu.ca> A point well taken--but I think that the subject is a bit more complicated (as you suggest at the end of your message). The contrast between the positions taken by Ngugi and Achebe suggests as much as well. I also find it problematic to assume that anglophones or francophones usually speak English or French as their mother tongue. Lisa ---------- >From: Bram Dov Abramson <bram-AT-dojo.tao.ca> >To: postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu >Subject: weird nitpicking (was: syllabus proposal for undergrad course) >Date: Thu, Nov 18, 1999, 12:51 PM > >Something that has always bugged me, for reasons unfathomable. > >> From: "Lisa Anne McNee" <lm23-AT-qsilver.queensu.ca> >> >> The course sounds interesting as is. I'm assuming you're teaching the course >> in an English department, as you have only mentioned anglophone works. > >Shouldn't this be "English-language" works, not "anglophone"? Anglophone, >as I understand it, refers to the language spoken by (usu. mother tongue >of) a human being. Texts can only be English-language or French-language >or whatever -- to call them Anglophone or Francophone (hispanophone, >lusophone, and on and on) would be to discuss the author's cultural >background, which isn't usually the point, and can't necessarily be >inferred from the language in which the book is written. > >(To call them anglophone, francophone, etc. might also be to imply >something else, eg that the work is one taken up within & familiar to >communities of English-speakers [anglophones], French-speakers >[francophones], etc. But in all cases, the word referes to speaking >subjects.) > >Example: "Heart of Darkness" is an English-language book. Whether or not >it is an anglophone book is a more complicated question. > >No? > >cheers >Bram > > > --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- > --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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