Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Boakye D. Alpha's avatar

Thank you! 💪🏿🖤

Expand full comment
Jim McKee's avatar

I have not read anything by the author you discuss, but the distinction that you find between prose written by African authors and prose written by Western authors is elusive. Just as Irish storytellers composed their stories in Gaelic until the rural population of Ireland learned English in the 20th century, Ghanan storytellers in the 20th century switched from African languages to English. It may appear that qualities of the earlier cultures in both British colonies (Ghana & Ireland) were lost when storytellers switched to English, but there are always carry-overs from the earlier cultures. The syntax of English as written or spoken by writers from Ireland is noticeably distinct from the syntax and diction of writers born in England whose contact with Celtic culture is little more than familiarity with the Arthurian legends. There is no uniformity of prose across all Western dialects of English: London English, Scottish English, Welsh English, Irish English, American English, Canadian English, Australian English, South African English. The prose of Ghanan writers of English is one more written variety of English to add to the list of Western varieties. You may have had to answer an exam question asking you to identify the English dialect of various prose passages, maybe a paragraph from Dylan Thomas, a paragraph from Mark Twain, a paragraph from Charles Dickens, a paragraph from Alan Paton, a paragraph from Sir Walter Scott, a paragraph from James Joyce, a paragraph from Chinua Achebe, a paragraph from V.S.Naipal; for extra points you would have to name the prose feature of the paragraph that gave away the writer's dialect of English. It is almost regrettable that the higher education of African writers of English prose at British universities has brought about a levelling of their dialects with those of their fellow students born in the British Isles in the same way that Oscar Wilde worked to lose his Irish accent while he was at Oxford and teased about it. His mother in Dublin was among the leaders of a movement among Irish Protestants and Catholics to revive Gaelic just as it was losing ground to English. Wilde expunged all traces of Gaelic prose syntax and diction from his English prose style as from his speech, but his fairy tales may have been inspired by stories in English that he heard at his mother's knee or his nanny's. The distinctness that you sense exists between African prose writing and Western prose writing is overt at the level of dialect, by which I mean the idiosyncratic diction and syntax of the prose dialects of written English. That is the overt distinction of the African prose dialect. The more subtle distinctions between African prose and Western prose are a topic for a dissertation. An accountant in Accra shares much in common with accountants in London, Dublin, New York, Sydney, and Edinburgh, but his society and background have much less in common with theirs beyond speaking & writing English. The historical background of Accra's society does not show up in the words of a sentence written by a Ghanan author, but it is always there BETWEEN THE LINES & BETWEEN THE WORDS.

Expand full comment
1 more comment...

No posts