Prof Friederike Lüpke: Language Diversity, African Style, SOAS, University of London HD

More about Linguistics at SOAS http://www.soas.ac.uk/linguistics/ More about Africa at SOAS http://www.soas.ac.uk/africa/ Prof Friederike Lüpke: http://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff31356.php This Inaugural Lecture by Professor Friederike Lüpke titled "Language Diversity, African Style" took place at SOAS, University of London on 11 February 2015. Africa is one of the hotspots of linguistic diversity. Yet, very little is known about the interplay of its many languages at the level of the individual and of society. This lecture will explore this interplay of multilingualism in West Africa, and reflect on how this helps us to understand linguistic diversity in the wider world. The lecture presents the layered patterns of African multilingualism, focussing on the interaction of spoken and written registers, languages of wider communication and locally confined languages, and multilingual practices and essentialist ideologies. Friederike Lüpke is Professor of Language Documentation and Description at SOAS, University of London. She is currently leading a Leverhulme Research Leadership Award Project project on multilingualism in rural Senegal. Together with Anne Storch, she is the author of the monograph "Repertoires and choices in African languages", which appeared 2013 with de Gruyter Mouton.