Language, Literature and Identity

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The twenty-seven articles in this volume are specially selected and edited works presented at the 2005 Yaounde conference on “Language, Literature, and Identity”. This is therefore not just a “proceedings” but a selection of self-contained, rich and inspiring body of works that should prove of enduring value to scholars and practitioners in the field of language, literature, culture and education. The themes that run through the works are varied and include among others: social integration, language, culture and identity, nationalism, identity and development, democratisation, poverty alleviation and gender sensitivity. The analyses are insightful and perspicacious, bringing to the fore a complex matrice of distinctive spiritual, cognitive and material features that characterise issues of language, literature, art and culture predicated on identity as a centralising value. We have taken the liberty to summarise and highlight the key issues in each article below; but this, at best, can only be an imperfect imitation of the original which I invite you to savour as input to a permanent reflection geared towards an objective deconstruction of the past to value the present and envision a brighter future as a legacy to the inheritors of our dreams and aspirations.