LANGUAGE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT IN TEACHING AND RESEARCH OF INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES: CAMPAIGNING FOR CHANGES IN LANGUAGE CURRICULAR IN ZIMBABWE

Kutsirayi Timothy Gondo, Gondo Thembelihle

Abstract


Language is one of the most fundamental vehicles of human development and transformation in post-modern times that can bring both intended and unintended changes to mankind. According to Spolsky (in Cohen, McAlister, Rolstad and MacSwan, 2005), language development is consciously and deliberately contrived to influence changes to mankind through linguistic functions, structure or acquisition of the various speech communities involved. This paper seeks to highlight some of the issues that could be considered important to the teaching and research of indigenous languages, including the marginalized languages of Zimbabwe. The paper, therefore, seeks to give some pointers for consideration to growth and development of indigenous languages in Zimbabwe. It is the view of the paper that the teaching and research of indigenous languages in Zimbabwe still needs to be monitored and strengthened further in order for it to reach out to comparable linguistic standards elsewhere. The paper uses the researchers’ experiences at Zimbabwean and South African Universities where the researchers attended a lot of seminars and conferences on linguistics.

 

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language, language growth, indigenous languages, language curricular, marginalized languages, linguistic functions

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References


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