The Threat of Cognitive Language to African Scientific Growth and Development

Author: Aleke Matthew (Kogi State University, Ayingba, Nigeria)
Speaker: Aleke Matthew
Topic: Language Revitalization
The GLOCAL AFALA 2023 General Session

Abstract

Language is the carrier, conserver and promoter of people’s science. The diversity of language structure is what accounts for the different scientific frame of mind around the globe. When the language that naturally speaks to people is different from the language with which they learn and express fundamental scientific principles, it beclouds the purity, distinctiveness and exactitude of their science. Thus, they will not come to grasp with precision the principles that come to play in the science they learn on the one hand, and on another hand fail in the systematic application of their own fruits of scientific reflections. Adopting analytic method, this paper argue that African language is the compendium of the mentality of Africa, the stuff with which African scientific framed of mind is built. Thus, the non-involvement of African language in the formal scientific discourse accounts for Africa’s inability to champion her own scientific growth and development. Taken into consideration the very high linguistic diversity of Africa, their European othographed trail as opposed to African language being naturally existential forest of symbols, African science needs to enrich itself with symbolic script that can take on the metaphoric orientation of African language and could be used as a means of communication between speakers of different dialects and different languages. By doing this, Africa will strike her own scientific breakthrough like the Asian Tigers and contribute African oriented scientific inventions into the global scientific research.

Keywords: Language, Cognitive Language, Africa, Science, Scientific, Growth, Development