Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo, 1880-1938

by Johannes Fabian

Book Overview

Among the preconditions for establishing colonial authority was communication with the colonised. Verbal exchanges depended on a shared communicative praxis providing common ground on which unilateral claims could be imposed. Use of, and control over, verbal means of communication were needed to maintain regimes - military, religious-ideological, economic - in power. In the Belgian Congo brutal physical force never ceased to be exercised. In this...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520076257
• ISBN13: 9780520076259
• Release Date: August 1991
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"