SST Postgraduate Conference Manchester 2015

I was just confirmed as a speaker at the 2015 SST Postgraduate Conference in Manchester: 'Images, Icons & Idols'. In my paper 'Idols', 'superstitions' and the 'prince of darkness' – Linguistic re-mapping of the Yorùbá pantheon in 19th century missionary correspondence I will talk about the effects of missionary translation work and re-interpretations of Yorùbá cosmology and theology. Leeds' very own Dr. Al McFadyen will be one of the keynote speakers. What a nice way to come back from the Christmas break!

Interview on Nigeria with Holger Klein

I am not ashamed to admit: I have been a huge fan of podcasting legend and German radio presenter Holger Klein for quite some time. His private podcasting project WRINT, his research podcasting project Resonator for the renowned Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, and his radio shows on the German station RBB make up a considerable part not only of my playlist but also of those of the sizeable loyal audience he has gathered over the years.

Holger asks professionals, activists, and enthusiasts from various backgrounds to share their stories and their knowledge, their experience and their passion with him and his audience.
Before my trip to Nigeria, I was bold enough to get in touch with him and ask if he would be interested in learning more about Nigeria and talking about my research. I was thrilled when he replied and said: Yes!
So a couple of weeks ago, we managed to arrange a Skype interview -- one of the scariest and most amazing experiences since I started my PhD. NB: Holger is a very pleasant conversational partner and himself not scary at all but I was still glad the interview was recorded and not live.
We talked about Nigerian missionary and colonial history,  the present-day situation of religious and political conflict in the country, language and media production, researching religion in Africa as an outsider, and last but not least: Nigerian food.

You can find the podcast (in German only, unfortunately) on Holger's website.

20th Sociolinguistics Symposium, Jyväskylä

I was privileged to attend and present at the 20th Sociolinguistics Symposium in Jyväskylä, Finland, this week. With renowned keynote speakers, such as Terttu Nevalainen (University of Helsinki) and Adrian Blackledge (University of Birmingham), and a broad variety of talks on the theme of 'Language, Space, Time' the conference was an excellent opportunity to meet researchers from over 50 countries, share my work, and learn about fascinating research outside of the filter bubble that is my PhD project. The midsummer boat trip also gave all of us a chance to see more of the breathtaking Finnish lake district and meet in a more informal setting. 

You can find the draft of my talk on 'Black white men' - Yoruba missionaries' renegotiation of identity and place through language' here. This talk was a variation of the one I gave at last year's EASR Annual Conference in Liverpool, tailored to the linguistic audience in Jyväskylä.

Jyväskylä Conference Centre

Telling the "divinely mandated success story"

Today gave a talk at the Language@Leeds seminar on how 19th century missionary correspondence from Yorubaland worked as an instrument of discursive power. The group gives an opportunity to researchers across all disciplines to present their research on linguistic topics and get valuable feedback from their peers. Below you can find the abstract to my talk, which also forms the basis for my next thesis chapter.

The source material of my interdisciplinary research consists of letters, journals and reports from 19th century Yorubaland (Western Nigeria), written by European and African missionaries from the Church Missionary Society (CMS). In these documents I look for evidence of how language was used to (re-)construct 'reality' of missionaries' life and work.
This correspondence was not private, but was used to inform CMS policy decisions and fed into the CMS periodicals, telling the Christian audience 'at home' and abroad about missionary work, conversions, and life in 'exotic' West Africa. The content of a missionary's letters and journals did reflect on his own work and on the writer's fellow missionary on the field and the missionary effort as a whole. We have to ask ourselves how this affected the writing itself, the reliability of the documents, and the selection of journal extracts and stories to share with their audience.
The second question I address is whose perspectives and interpretations of events the audience found represented in these documents. The authors of the majority of the correspondence were male Christians employed by the mission. Members of the non-Christian native population and converts with no direct involvement in the mission had virtually no access to this discourse channel; their perspectives and interpretations of events, where they can access the discourse, tend to be critical and divergent of those in missionary writing. Equally, despite the fact that most missionaries were married, their wives do not feature largely in the agents' correspondence and with a few notable exceptions did not correspond with the CMS themselves. The “divinely mandated success story” (Peel, 2003: 17) which most of my source material tells is therefore far from comprehensive.
I argue that, following Diamond's insight that power  “[involves] the ability to interpret events and reality, and have this interpretation accepted by others” (Diamond 1996: 13), missionary correspondence can be seen as an instrument of discursive power, which necessarily resulted in an androcentric and Christian-focussed picture of missionary activity.   

---
Diamond, J. (1996): Status and power in verbal interaction. A study of discourse in a close-knit social network. Amsterdam, Benjamins.
Peel, J. (2003): Religious encounter and the making of the Yoruba. Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

National Archives in Ibadan

I would like to write a few lines about my work in the Nigerian National Archives in Ibadan in April. As I have mentioned before, the purpose of my visit to the archives was mainly to find early 20th century documents in the Church Missionary Society (CMS) archives which can give me some indication of the impact of missionary language use on the nascent nationalist movement in the area and the concomitant efforts to form African Christian churches independent of the missionary churches. I was lucky enough to be in Ibadan when the National Archives' 60 year anniversary was held, which was celebrated with a Christian service outside the building.

Unfortunately, a large number of the documents I had expected to find in Ibadan were in fact not available. For example, despite the fact that the respective finding lists were available in Ibadan, documents with the shelfmarks CMS ECC 1 and CMS N (Niger Mission) could only be accessed in the archives in Enugu. Equally, out of the 18 documents I requested from the CMS Y collection (200 documents in total, 1844-1945), only 4 were actually available.

However, the information I was able to gather from the archives can be of considerable use not only to the limited area of my research outlined above.

I was able gather information about conflicts between the CMS and newly emerging native churches, particularly concerning the questions of polygamy and opening the native churches for those previously excommunicated from missionary churches. Trials over land ownership and physical violence against missionaries only served to aggravate the situation and the disapproval on the side of the missionary churches. Rev. Melville Jones' correspondence (CMS Y 1/6/1) in particular proved insightful in this matter. It was also interesting to see from reports about disputes between the native population and the Catholic Mission in the Roman Catholic Mission Papers that in the Benin Diocese similar problems for the missionaries arose almost simultaneously. An opposing point of view on the matter is offered by Herbert Macaulay in his 1941 lecture on "The history of the development of missionary works in Nigeria": "In consequence of certain differences of opinion which occurred between them and the authorities of the several Churches to which they belonged sometimes before the year 1891, they were moved by their honest convictions to secede as they came to the unanimous conclusion that the time had arrived for the Establishment in Lagos of a purely undesirable shackles of foreign control." These differences of opinion primarily arose from the tension of the 'imported' European form of Christianity and the desire to see a 'home-made' form of African Christianity emerge. Macaulay quotes to the sermon of a British Niger Mission agent towards the end of his lecture, which nicely encapsulates the matter: "The Gospel of Christ is for the whole world, it belongs as much to the African as to the European. In fact, in its origin it is more connected with Africa. [B]y associating [Christianity] altogether with European ideas and customs, we are narrowing its scope.”

Another aspect of my research which I would like to mention here is the question of who could access the discourse about missionary work produced by the missionaries' correspondence. It is not hard to guess that this discourse was on the whole informed by male Christian missionaries who wrote their letters, journals and reports for and sent them to male European Christians in the CMS headquarters in London. This means that two major groups involved in missionary activities were excluded from this discourse; African Christians (and also non-Christian natives) who were not intimately involved in the mission, and missionaries' wives[], who had often come to Yorubaland with their husband or, in the case of the African agents, lived in the mission compound, and were often entrusted with teaching tasks. 

The experiences and views of these two groups were generally not part of the picture that was painted of the state and progress of missionary efforts by the agents' correspondence. In the documents I found during my time in Ibadan, once again, women were mainly talked about but did either not take or were not given the opportunity to contribute to the discourse themselves. When Rev. Melville Jones, for example, writes in 1903 "I doubt if Mr. Harding's letter fully represents Mrs. Wood's view" (CMS Y 1/6/1), one can start to wonder if Mrs. Wood herself would not have been the ideal candidate the represent her view. A number of such examples found in the documents in Ibadan can now inform my writing on the power relations allowing or banning access and contribution to discourse.

Impressions of Nigeria

Abandoned mosque by the side of Lagos-Ibadan Interstate Expressway

One of many (abandoned) church universities by the side of Lagos-Ibadan Interstate Expressway

Pentecostal churches advertising in Ibadan

Taken during Sunday worship at the Chapel of the Resurrection, University of Ibadan

On the left the Grand Mosque on U.I. campus, on the right the cross next to the Chapel of the Resurrection. When the mosque was built, the cross sparked a controversy. It was felt that the cross invaded the sacred space of the mosque. Eventually, the pillar on the very left, bearing the shahada, was built.

One of a series of murals in Ibadan by the Educare Trust, attempting to educate the population on matters of health and hygiene.

National Archives Ibadan. A post on my work here will follow as soon as possible.

The departmental library in U.I.'s Religious Studies department, dedicated to one of its most notable sons, Bolaji Idowu, who endeavoured to shed light on Yoruba beliefs and practices from an emic perspective.

A view of Ibadan, Africa largest metropolitan area.

Noo Saro-Wiwa, in her fascinating and highly entertaining book "Looking for Transwonderland", writes about cultism on Nigerian campuses: "University cults are a big problem in Nigerian universities. They began as fraternities or 'confraternities', harmless social clubs for male students. [...] But by the 1980s, the nature of confraternities had morphed into something more sinister." (p.87) She goes on to talk about the fraternities' anti-democratic tendencies, traditional religious rites, and often violent initiation rituals.

The vegetation on campus and outside is stunningly lush and beautiful...

...particularly after the onset of the wet season, ...

....making up for the overwhelming heat...

...and the smog in the city.

Reported speech and intertextuality 2

As I mentioned in the post below, I would like to briefly comment on Greg Matoesian's paper on reported speech in a court room context. Matoesian discusses the use of audiotaped statements made by a witness for the prosecution as well as by the victim herself during the actual trial. He argues that the defense attorney recontextualised the previously recorded statements by playing them in the court room, thus reframing the original utterance and influencing the perception of said utterances by the jury and the judge.

For my research, certainly the most relevant aspect of Matoesian's paper is the act of de- and recontextualisation as such. In my source material, missionaries frequently use Bible quotations for various purposes, for example, particularly in the case of African missionaries, to show their allegiance to Christianity as the religion of the book and establish the place in the Christian tradition. Also, and this is true for Europeans and Africans alike, the missionaries derived solace from the Biblical text in times of spiritual or physical distress. Lastly, this use of Bible passages identified the agents as proficient Christian theologians, emphasising the fact that despite the physical distance, they are members of the same religious community as those who read their letters and journals back in Europe and share a common repertoire of texts and imagery. By quoting from the Bible, they decontextualise the Biblical passage from its original context and recontextualising it to apply to their own situation. They thereby describe their present situation by means of past discourse, thus writing themselves into the reception history of the Biblical text. They also create a new interpretative frame for the Biblical passage in question, forging an bilateral intextual bond which affects not only their own writing but also the original Bible text.

On page 882 of his paper, Matoesian remarks that reported speech "...bestows an aura of objectivity, authority, and persuasiveness to the current moment of speech". By employing someone else's words instead of our own -- in the case of the Kennedy Smith rape trial, the defense attorney used the witnesses' own statements against them instead of arguing in his own words --, we distance ourselves from what is being said, presenting the reported utterance as an objective statement supporting our own argument. In the case of the missionaries' correspondence, Bible passages are frequently used to point to a precedence for the missionaries' current situation. An utterance taken from the text of ultimate authority in a Christian context explains or justifies, for example, a setback in the missionary enterprise, showing that the agents are part of a long tradition of spreading the word, despite the temporary difficulties.

Together with Clift's paper on "Indexing stance: Reported speech as an interactional evidential.", which I discussed below, Matoesian's work is going to inform my writing on the intertextual bonds in my source material formed by reported conversations with locals and the frequent use of Biblical quotations, contributing to the interdisciplinary approach to a critical analysis of 19th century missionary correspondence.

----
Source: Matoesian, G. (2000): "Intertextual authority in reported speech: Production media in the Kennedy Smith rape trial." Journal of Pragmatics 32, 879-914.

Reported speech and intertextuality

This week I'm reading up on reported speech and direct quotations in the context of intertextuality. This will inform my writing on how Christian missionaries in 19th century Yorubaland (today Southwest Nigeria) used intertextual bonds, e.g. biblical quotations and imagery but also self-quotations, in their letters and journals to write themselves into the Christian narrative of 'spreading the word'. I'm particularly focussing on how the missionaries report on conversations they allegedly had with members of the native population and from which they inevitably emerge as 'winners'. This phenomenon of self-reported speech is discussed by Rebecca Clift in her 2006 paper "Indexing stance: Reported speech as an interactional evidential." Clift argues that conventional means of marking stance towards a statement or event (adverbs like 'presumably' or constructions like 'It may be that..') are not used in the context of self-reported speech. Clift remarks that if someone reports on their own words, this self-quotation is seemingly "epistemically robust: no markers of uncertainty or mitigation could here undermine the authority of the reporting" (Clift 2006: 572). I'm wondering how this can be transferred to the missionaries' writing and their acts of self-quotation. By quoting themselves, thus showing themselves in a positive light because they reportedly 'won' the religious arguments with the non-Christian population, the missionaries establish epistemic authority and accountability and construct a feeling of authenticity. At the same time, I cannot ignore John Peel's remark that a "hermeneutic of deep suspicion" (Peel 2003: 12) seems to be in order regarding the veracity of the missionaries' accounts.

I'm going to update this post after reading Greg Matoesian's 2000 paper on "Intertextual authority in reported speech: Production media in the Kennedy Smith rape trial."

----

Sources: 

Clift, R. (2006): Indexing stance: Reported speech as an interactional evidential. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10/5, 569-595.

 Peel, J. (2003): Religious encounter and the making of the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Preparing my trip to Nigeria

I'm currently in the middle of organising my one-month trip to Nigeria in April this year. I will stay in Ibadan, Oyo State, for about three weeks and then travel around Yorubaland, the Southwest of the country, for another week.

I'm planning to work in the National Archive in Ibadan to research private letters and journals of prominent political and religious figures like Herbert Macaulay, the grandson of Africa's first bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther and pioneer of Nigerian nationalism, as well as the brothers Alexander Babatunde Akinyele, bishop of Ibadan and CBE, and HRH Isaac Babalola Akinyele, Ibadan's second Christian Olubadan. I'm hoping to explore the ramifications of 19th century missionary language use on religious coexistence and tensions of early 20th century Yorubaland, and the rise of Nigerian nationalism in the same period,


From consulting the material I expect to learn about the space allowed for Yoruba religious heritage in early modern forms of Nigerian Christianity. The Akinyele brothers were highly influential public figures in positions of both clerical and mundane power; tracing back their views on syncretism as well as their position towards Islam to 19th century missionary language use connects the missionary enterprise I mainly focus on in my research with the formative period of Nigerian Christianity. From the private papers of Herbert Macaulay I also expect to discover more about the relation between the rise of Nigerian nationalism and the religious landscape of the early 20th century. The role of Yoruba religious heritage and Christianity respectively in mundane power struggles will be of equal interest to me as the dialectic of Islam as an ally against European influence and a threat to a Christian elite in the emerging nation.


Towards the end of my stay I'm planning to travel to several places in Yorubaland: Abẹokuta, the centre of the Yoruba mission between the late 1840s and 1860s; Ile-Ife, according to Yoruba anthropogony the birthplace of all human beings; possibly the sacred forest of Osogbo with its shrine to the Yoruba goddess Osun; Lagos, centre of the British colonial administration. I'm hoping to experience first-hand the long-term repercussions of the 19th century religious encounter between European and African missionaries, African converts, Muslims, and the traditional Yoruba population.

I'm of course planning to post regular updates on this blog, where possible including photos.

Teaching religion in HE

In their series Academics Anonymous, The Guardian today published an article by a Russell group university 'senior academic in a religion department' who feels their authority in the class room and the environment of critical engagement with religious ideas is being undermined by the presence of a majority of evangelical Christian students. Not wanting to qualify the author's distress, I can gladly say that my experiences so far have by and large been different (with a few notable exceptions). Having said that, I do feel the authors raises the worrying issue of cultural and social homogeneity on UK campuses. While the rise of tuition fees and the partial privatisation of student loans no doubt affect faculties across the board, the critical and secular engagement with religious traditions and their presence and influence in public life in particular suffers from the lack of a broad variety of students from all walks of life, social and cultural backgrounds, and (non-) beliefs, which gives rise to a complacent and matter-of-fact atmosphere in a filter bubble unsuited for uncomfortable questions and agile, critical minds.

New beginnings

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).