This book, which combines scholarly articles with interviews, seeks to imagine a decolonized sociolinguistics. All the chapters are firmly grounded in southern approaches to knowledge production, focusing not only on epistemology but also on the complex relationship between epistemology and ontology. The chapters address issues ranging from author positionality to the central theorists of a southern sociolinguistics, and roam from the language classroom to the church, in ways which invite us to begin to decolonize ourselves and rethink normative assumptions about everything from academic writing to research methods and language teaching. The book provides scholars and teachers with inspiration for how to teach linguistics in ways that challenge colonial hegemonies and that allow one to 'do' sociolinguistics otherwise. It also makes a powerful argument that debates about decolonization, southern theory and social justice are not just academic pursuits: what is at stake is our future and how we imagine it.

Invites readers to reflect on decolonization and southern theory in new ways and to imagine what a better version of sociolinguistics might look like

About the Author

Ana Deumert is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research is located in the broad field of African sociolinguistics and has a strong transdisciplinary focus. She is co-editor of Struggles for Multilingualism and Linguistic Citizenship (2022, Multilingual Matters) and Colonial and Decolonial Linguistics: Knowledges and Epistemes (2020, Oxford University Press).

Sinfree Makoni is Professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics and Program in African Studies at Pennsylvania State University, USA, and is an Extraordinary Professor at North West University and University of the Western Cape, South Africa, and Visiting Professor at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. His main research interests are language and politics and Southern Theories. He is co-editor of the Multilingual Matters series Global Forum on Southern Epistemologies.

Reviews
This book is a bold and timely contribution to debates about the role of power, privilege and perspective in the creation of knowledge. Particularly impressive is how contributors weave moving and personal stories of their experiences as scholars together with their empirically rich and theoretically complex accounts of their scholarship. This volume is a generously provocative intervention that provides a compass for future journeys in the field. * Rodney Jones, University of Reading, UK *
Akin to a capoeirista who swerves and slides and swings in syncopated disobedience to colonial oppression, this book has ginga. Each chapter engages southern theory not in mere references here and there but as integral to a project of rethinking language, re-shaping unjust worlds, and reimagining futures beyond our troubled times. The authors powerfully show how to decolonize our minds and de-Westernize our eyes and ears towards a sociolinguistic praxis that moves, grooves, and nourishes us. * Rodrigo Borba, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil *
In this critical and exciting collection, Deumert and Makoni introduce us, through the multiple voices and perspectives of authors from a variety of disciplinary and geographical positions, to different forms of disciplinary disobedience and epistemological delinking that provide a new foundation for the project of decolonizing sociolinguistics. A fascinating volume and a must read for those interested in the decolonial turn in the social sciences. * Anna De Fina, Georgetown University, USA *



Book Information
ISBN 9781788926553
Author Ana Deumert
Format Paperback
Page Count 296
Imprint Multilingual Matters
Publisher Multilingual Matters
Weight(grams) 420g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 15mm