Thanks to Guy-Maurille for a very interesting post. I like his approach of
looking at the process of ethnic identification via specific linguistic
features of culture. His argument that language shapes "psycho-sociological"
dynamics of ethnic identities, including some specific understanding of the
nature of "ethnicity" in general from within a language, is subtle &
interesting.
But I still find what he says a little confusing about translating to and from
English. He writes:
"In some african languages, the term 'tribe' refers to the language, the region
or the country -read the place where a certain language is spoken."
But "tribe" is not a term in any African language. It is a term in English. I
assume Guy-Maurille was using a shorthand for saying "the indigenous term which
often gets translated as 'tribe' in English."
I don't think this is just nit-picking. A key question is, does the English
term "tribe" adequately translate African concepts relating to ethnicity,
peoplehood, natural-appearing collective identities & their causes, etc. ?
Guy-Maurille's post suggests not, for a significant category of Bantu languages
including Kikongo and Lingala. He argues that for speakers of this type of
language, an "ethnic group" will be people who speak with one voice/ language,
and that the close psycho- sociological link between "voice" and "language" is
distinctively significant.
Now if you asked home-language speakers of English to define "tribe", what
proportion of them would say, "people who share one voice?" Not many. You
might get a few who would say people who share a language. But basically in
English "tribe" does not even refer primarily to language, and language does
not imply united "voice".
I would bet that a larger proportion of home-language English-speakers would
define "ethnic group" in terms of language. To that extent, "ethnic group"
seems like a better translation than "tribe", for this category of Bantu
languages/ cultures. It is still not terribly good.
So here we have "tribe" translating very badly the self-conceptions about group
identity embedded in key African languages. And we know that "tribe" also
carries negative connotations in English which most Africans would reject. Nor
are these negative connotations present in linguistic cultural self-
understandings. (In African languages, neither generic ideas of people,
nation, clan etc., nor terms referring to a speaker's own people, group,
language etc, carry a sense of "savage/ barbaric" or "primitive" as "tribe"
does in English.)
These seem like powerful reasons to avoid the term.
What do you think, Guy-Maurille? Anyone else?
Chris Lowe