ON THE LINGUISTIC DILEMMA OF MODERN AFRICAN LITERATURE

Abstract

New issues in literature have polarised African scholars and critics as much as the relative significance of language in the F evolution of a national literature. At stake here is the true status of the indigenous language in literary communication in the emergent nations of Africa. Two schools of thought seem to have emerged over the years: the realist school led by Chinua Achebe, which adopts a deferential attitude towards the apparently entrenched language of the coloniser, and the more militant idealist school of Ngugi wa Thiong'O which, fired by nationalistic fervour, adopts a nihilistic attitude towards the colonial language. Chidi Amuta (1989) puts the argument in its proper perspective thus:

There are those like Achebe and Soyinka who insist that African literature written in European languages is historically legitimate and that the use of these languages to communicate African experiences enriches both the languages in question and the literature itself. These writers also recognise the legitimacy of literature in African languages. Squarely opposed to this accommodationist/assimilationist position are others like Ngugi and Obi Wali who insist on linguistic indigenisation as a minimum condition for the existence of African literature. Ngugi has driven this position to its logical conclusion by advancing the controversial view that African literature in the European languages in fact constitutes Afro-European literature (112).

These apparently irreconcilable positions have each inspired a large army of adherents, perennially engaged in a polemical war in which neither side is ever likely to score an outright victory. This underscores dispassionate review of the various the need for a truce to facilitate a sues in contention, and possibly chart a way out of the linguistic maelstrom in which modern African literature still finds itself, after more than half a century of its inauguration. In this critical exercise, an attempt will be made to distinguish fact from fallacy; to identify what is both plausible and feasible, as against what is merely desirable but impracticable.