Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - This is not Farooq!

Oga, we all need humor in this moment of heightened anxiety. But each time Farooq writes on the importance of clear, effective English communication in governmental affairs, some Nigerians retort that grammar is not synonymous with good policy--who grammar epp, they ask in pidgin. The tragedy of it is that, it is not only English orthography that has suffered from lingua-phobia and linguistic mediocrity in high places. Even Hausa and other vernacular orthographies have suffered precisely because of the strange belief that how you communicate ideas do not matter as much as what you do, how you do it, and its impact on society. The problem in other words, is the failure to recognize that the realms of policy communication and policy implementation--the zones of saying and doing are entwined and are coextensive. The broader problem then transcends the language of official communication. It is something deeper--the reduction of governance and statecraft to crude instrumentality. To put it rather crudely, it is prevalent belief that can be distilled into this statement: "who cares about whether the memo proposing or approving the road contract is written poorly in either English or Hausa if the road gets built?" 

On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 9:24 AM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Have you noticed the official memos from the highest levels of government and the quality of language? Read that from the State House, Bauchi. Pay attention to the "kovik 19" in that of the President.

Can we not ask them to write in Hausa instead?

This is not Farooq writing!!!

TF

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/5606EB8B-5B03-41DF-8DD5-5D045F5BE520%40austin.utexas.edu.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPqSP1eD8NfdnU0PGTY1Pu%2BnnYu-wiMX%2Bzuuxk%3DXobrPRQ%40mail.gmail.com.