Postcolonial African Writers’ Attitudes towards English as Reflected in Their Writings
Postcolonial African Writers’ Attitudes towards English as Reflected in Their Writings

Summary/Abstract: The paper critically examines the attitudes of some prominent postcolonial African writers to the use of English as a medium of artistic creativity. The political and sociolinguistic transmutations the English language undergoes in post-colonial literary contexts and societies have engaged the attention of both literary and linguistic scholars over the years. The processes by which the use of the English language in post-colonial societies gradually move from an external to an internal norm have been variously labeled as nativization, transculturation, and appropriation. One way of conceiving of post-colonial literatures in English is to think of them as the result of the contact of English with other languages in multilingual and multicultural contexts. Consequently, the writings to be examined in this paper epitomize how post-colonial writers adapt and modify the English language to fit their own cultural, social, and political exigencies.

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