I am happy to say that I can start off this blog with excellent news: The peer-reviewed journal Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics has been kind enough to include my paper "Spreading which word? Philological, theological and socio-political considerations behind the nineteenth-century Bible translation into Yorùbá." in their latest issue, pp. 54-83.
In this paper I offer a linguistic perspective on C19 missionary correspondence from South-West Nigeria concerned with the translation of the Bible and other Christian texts into Yorùbá. I reconstruct the considerations behind thet ranslations and the often unexpected linguistic, religious, and political repercussions of missionary work. I show that the missionaries, by committing Yorùbá to writing, developing the Christian vocabulary, and by linguistically reinterpreting elements of native theology and cosmology, reconceptualising the native population’s world, effectively wielded linguistic power over their target audience. However, as can be seen in the case of the Yorùbá deity Èṣú, who through his 'translation' as the Christian devil remained meaningful in the converts' minds and lives, the native readers also re-appropriated the translated text and thus became active creators and not merely passive recipients of the message delivered to them.
I find the time of the publication rather encouraging. It correlates with my idea to open a blog, writing about my interdisciplinary postdoctoral research at the University of Leeds, in which I provide a synthesised account of the power of language to create, reflect and interpret reality in inter-religious contact, as well as my thoughts on the intertwined nature of religion(s) and language(s).
In this paper I offer a linguistic perspective on C19 missionary correspondence from South-West Nigeria concerned with the translation of the Bible and other Christian texts into Yorùbá. I reconstruct the considerations behind thet ranslations and the often unexpected linguistic, religious, and political repercussions of missionary work. I show that the missionaries, by committing Yorùbá to writing, developing the Christian vocabulary, and by linguistically reinterpreting elements of native theology and cosmology, reconceptualising the native population’s world, effectively wielded linguistic power over their target audience. However, as can be seen in the case of the Yorùbá deity Èṣú, who through his 'translation' as the Christian devil remained meaningful in the converts' minds and lives, the native readers also re-appropriated the translated text and thus became active creators and not merely passive recipients of the message delivered to them.
I find the time of the publication rather encouraging. It correlates with my idea to open a blog, writing about my interdisciplinary postdoctoral research at the University of Leeds, in which I provide a synthesised account of the power of language to create, reflect and interpret reality in inter-religious contact, as well as my thoughts on the intertwined nature of religion(s) and language(s).
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