Institute of Languages (INSTL)

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Browsing Institute of Languages (INSTL) by Subject "Culture"

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    Representation of Culture and Human Rights Violations in Timothy Wangusa’s Upon This Mountain and Austin Bukenya’s The Bride. Unisa Press.
    (Unisa Press, 2024) Tugume, Benon.
    This article examines the portrayal of culture and human rights violations in Timothy Wangusa’s novel, Upon This Mountain and Austin Bukenya’s play, The Bride. It focuses on the Bagisu cultural ritual of circumcision in Upon This Mountain as well as the culture-based traditions of prejudice and discrimination in The Bride that are responsible for the violation of the rights of Kangala, Wabwire, and Mwambu in the former, and Namvua and her entire Merio family in the latter. In this article, I apply qualitative methods of data collection and analysis since it is a case study of Wangusa’s Upon This Mountain and Bukenya’s The Bride as primary texts. Data for analysis is generated by carrying out a close reading of the primary texts as well as secondary texts—critical works, journal articles, and literature on human rights purposely to strengthen the discussion of culture and human rights violations depicted in the primary texts. The reading of primary texts focuses on characters and themes since the objectives are twofold: first, to examine the point of view of individual characters subjected to ritual pain, trauma, and intra-cultural discrimination in Upon This Mountain and second, to analyse the writer’s use of dialogue and action to dramatise resistance to cultural prejudices and discrimination in The Bride. Using principles of human rights, the paper discusses the pain, torture, and degrading treatment Kangala and Wabwire in Upon This Mountain go through as they submit to the ritual of the knife. Similarly, the article explores discrimination against Namvua and her entire Merio family based on age-old cultural prejudices in The Bride. Lekindo, the leader of the young generation is opposed to her discrimination and fights for her rights and acceptance in the plains by smashing the skull, an iconic symbol of cultural beliefs. He marries Namvua to underscore the theme of the inevitability of change because of human rights abuses.
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    ItemOpen Access
    The Development and Intellectualisation of African Languages Revisited.
    (Kabale University, 2024) Ndoleriire, Oswald Kyamulesire
    In this article, I am revisiting, the well-known topic of developing African languages and the concept of the intellectualisation of African languages. I start by defining the idea of intellectualisation which involves using a language in all areas of human endeavour. I then look at some success stories regarding language intellectualisation, in particular the case of Hebrew and Afrikaans. Thereafter, the case of intellectualising languages in Asia reveals a situation where the exercise was quite successful in the case of Malay in Indonesia and Malaysia but less successful with Tagalog converting into Filipino in the Philippines. The case of India is of particular interest to Africa due to a common colonial heritage and the multiplicity of languages because the Indian experience has been relatively successful. In Africa, the commendable efforts in formulating and to some extent implementing an enabling language policy in South Africa are pointed out. A quick review is then carried out on the language situation in some other countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, where the situation leaves a lot to be desired, apart from the glimmer of hope presented by Kiswahili in Eastern Africa. Among the challenges faced by those who want to promote and intellectualise African languages, the issue of the Africans’ mindset and the phenomenon of globalization, with English as one of the globalising agents, are highlighted. Finally, strategies to counter the challenges are proposed, including political will, appropriate policies and the creation of universities using only African languages as media of instruction.