(1 video; 9 papers, 8 with)

Title of panel:

Short abstract:
As the vehicle of experiences and ideas, language is a very powerful element in understanding the worldviews of a given society. In African Studies one of the prevalent misconstructions of African worldviews has come from language use.

Long abstract:
As the vehicle of experiences and ideas, language is a very powerful element in understanding the worldviews of a given society. In African Studies one of the prevalent misconstructions of African worldviews has come from language use. On the one hand the African story has been rendered as a uniform, objectifying tale of the victor, through the theoria of exploration, balkanization and conquest. On the other hand, some reactive attempts at domesticating African Studies have led to the deployment of romanticizing narratives bordering on pseudo-historical and obstinately therapeutic linguistic devices. However, current research endeavours in African Studies have come to the realization that both tendencies have to be interrogated if African Studies is to be stripped of obstructive partisanship inimical to genuine scholarship. Thus, there is need for a reflexive interrogation of language use and linguistic nuances in African Studies, especially as they concern the religion, culture and politics of African peoples and polities. To this end, this panel seeks research presentations that demonstrate the intellectual/academic relevance of reconfiguring the communicative, expressive and descriptive aspects of language use in African Studies from inter/multidisciplinary perspectives. The insistence on the multiform approaches and methods is to reflect the multiple nature of African worldviews as genuinely as possible. Standard presentations should examine the prospect of this reconfiguration from theoretical, ethnographic and hermeneutical approaches, amongst others.

9 Accepted papers:
1	African languages for African studies: agenda setting
2	What about the politics? A realist interrogation of the stand to conduct African studies research in African languages
3	Language decolonization and deconstruction: re-integrating disparate linguistic epistemes in contemporary African studies
4	The limitations and prospects of African languages in ethics scholarship in African Studies
5	Afrophony and the language of African philosophy: reflection on problems and prospects
6	Modern faiths and the Yoruba language: reconfiguration of the Yoruba lexicon
7	Ìràpadà (redemption) in the religions of the Africans: do you really understand what they mean?
8	Re-examining the philosophical potentials in African languages
9	Language, culture and the conceptualization of character in selected Yoruba proverbs