The Roots of Ethnicity: Discourse and the Politics of Language Construction in South-East Africa

In: African affairs: the journal of the Royal African Society, Band 87, Heft 346, S. 25-52

Abstract

Early European explorers & colonists, on their arrival in Africa, erected linguistic & other boundaries in order to make the African world comprehensible within their existing structure of knowledge. Strongly influenced by positivism, they believed these borders to be objective products of science. Social scientists have built on their classification of languages & ethnic groups. However, much of what the early experts viewed as scientifically defined, & hence objective, was in fact based on social & political considerations. This process is illustrated through a description of the use of the Tsonga language in Christian evangelism in Basutoland in eastern South Africa.