"Siliminya, hello!" Negotiating Race, Place, and Language Ideologies in Post-Colonial Dalun, Ghana

Abstract

This paper is an enthographic account of the motivating factors of language choice in Ghana through the lens of a community of Dagomba people in the rural town of Dalun in the Northern Region of Ghana. English-only education policies force many to choose English or a local language- in this case, Dagbami- and designate each to disparate spaces. The focus of this paper are (a) to investigate how local people of Dalun narrativize their own language learning, choices, and ideologies, (b) to examine how agency in language learning, choice, and ideology in the context of rationale is impacted by discourse on development, education, and mobility reveal language ideology, and (c) to emphasize the indispensable nature of the voice of the ethnographee in answering these questions of language, power, and agency.