| The Ewes of West Africa inhabit the territory stretching from the Volta River in southeastern Ghana to the Mono River in Benin. According to Ghana Statistics Service's 2002 census, there were 1.7 million Ewes in the Volta Region of Ghana. Of this population, 963, 811 were literates, with 51, 613 literates in only English, 365, 710 literates in both English and Ewe, and 106, 605 literates in only Ewe. Although there have been many attempts to establish print media in the Ghanaian languages, no sustained Ghanaian-language print media have yet been successful. This situation is interesting given that broadcast media have, in contrast, been quite successful in using certain Ghanaian languages. This raises the question of why print and broadcast media differ in their use of local languages.;Throughout the explorations, I demonstrate that complex factors, such as language specific, language-attitudinal, and language aesthetic issues, cohere to contribute to ideologies of language, which in turn influence a sustained production of newspapers in English-language, in contrast with the local-languages, using the Ewe language as a case study.;Key words: Anthropology, linguistics, Ewe language, translation, ideology, aesthetics, Ghanaian novelists, rural newspapers, print media, and Africa.;In this study, I explore ideologies of language with respect to the roles of languages in print media in the Ghanaian multilingual context. In particular, I argue that ideologies of language shape the roles accorded to Ewe, in contrast to English-language, and that this has implications for the use of a language in print media. To investigate this point, I examine the ideologies of language underlying a variety of topics, including language standardization, professionalization in journalism, variants in journalistic productions, language attitudes, pragmatics, writing versus orality, literacy, density of language aesthetics, language policies, language practices, and construed domains of languages. I draw on Woolard and Schieffelin's (1994) multidimensional view of ideologies of language, as well as Irvine's (1993; 1989) analyses of colonial grammars and language issues within multilingual context. I tap into Woolard's (1998) definition of ideologies of language, as well as the views of Humboldt (1825 [1988]), Whorl (1940 [1956]), and Demetracopoulou Lee (1939) on language codification. I also draw on Cohn's (1987) excursus on colonial language codification, Ngugi (1991) and Appiah's (1992) notions of postcolonial issues regarding language, Bourdieu's (1979) examination of language as commodity, as well as Spitulnik (1993) and Bate's (2002) explorations of the media. |
