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How to Write on the Theme Outsider

  • ella1525
  • 15 hours ago
  • 1 min read


Censorship: I do not censor your writing, nonetheless, contestants are expected to stay within the jurisdiction of their (African) countries. Please remember that when submitting poems. 

 

In order for your submission to be accepted, you are expected to respect the human rights of all. No hateful poem allowed. Please familiarise yourself with banned words that social groups in the UK might find offensive.

Thanks for reading.

Good luck.


Here're Some Suggestions of What to Write About: -


External Disempowerment (the actions of others and how they affect the poet); I want to see the intersection of poetry and recent sociopolitical events.

  • Afro-diasporic themes: cultural resilience where subgroups are demonised

  • African identity vis-à-vis Europeanisation

  • Black womanhood & Feminism (against a backdrop of racial serotypes)

  • Migration & exile: Immigrant /settler

  • Feeling alienated: Affected by homophobia/ xenophobia /islamophobia et cetera

  • Race & political resistance

  • Persons with disability – how society relates to them

  • Poems about physical and social displacement (having to move away due to actions of others) or a protagonist who feels ostracised by others/the State



Metaphorical outsiders

  • A social misfit - writing from the perspective of someone who feels different or a strange person.

  • An objectified outsider - someone who has good looks/intelligence/wealth writing about their experience

  • A rebel

  • A nonconformist - a loner, a rebel, or an anti-hero.

 
 
 

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Featured Writer- Bridgette James

A comparative analysis of English Language Use by creatives in two countries in sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, by Bridgette James.

Hypothesis:

Any discussion of ethnolinguistic factors affecting language proficiency cannot be premised without examining the meaning of language. Cambridge Dictionary Online (2023) puts forward a concise definition that would be used in this paper: a system made up of phonemes, words, and grammar rules on how to use that particular language. An emphasis on maintaining a system of rules and standards in order to convey meaning in language is a persuasive argument (Open Learn, 2024).  The language under discussion here is the English used in two sub-Saharan countries, Sierra Leone, English 01 and Malawi, English 02.

Language had two of the meta functions first recognised by Thompson (2014 in Open Learn (2024)  in the creative pieces studied from March 2022 to December 2023: ideational and textual roles. In the poetry and stories analysed writers utilised English language to fictionally represent the world visualised in their imagination to convey written messages in textual forms.

In creative writing a speaker’s language is presumed to influence their thoughts and conceptualisation of ideas, validating the theory purported by German linguist Johann  Georg  Hamann (1905 cited in  De Gruyter Mouton 1968). Wilhelm von Humboldt discuss. Humboldt and Herder reportedly saw an alignment between language use and behavioural patterns affected by the speaker’s culture. Culture here is synonymous with how individuals from the same language community use the language under consideration based on recurrent themes and expressions in their writing. (Britannica, accessed 2023) This research concerns itself with factors affecting proficiency in English language based on common behaviours in aforenamed communities and from henceforth referred to as English 01 and English 02.

History of how English arrived in the chosen communities

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To give a historical overview, English was transported to Malawi via the similar route of colonisation by Britian and the establishment of English speaking mainly missionary schools on whose premises school age children in  both nations were  taught in English. (Matiki, 2001; accessed in 2024.) A notable feature of the way English arrived in Sierra Leone was through the deportation of freed slaves…

 

Miriam Conteh-Morgan (1997) highlighted the lack of extensive sociological research into the use of English language in Sierra Leone; she argued that it may be due to an [erroneous] perception that English is a native Sierra Leonean language spoken by the Krios. Conteh-Morgan distinguishes the English spoken in Sierra Leone from the native speaker variety- the variation spoken in Sierra Leone has been influenced by indigenous languages. My research unearthed the influence of the Krio language on English evidenced by the lack of subject-verb number coordination in the third person singular in the material of a large cohort of creative writers studied from March 2022 to December 2023.

Role English plays in Malawi

​

To quote A. J. Matiki (2001), English was given official status in 1968 in Malawi when the government designated it as an official language. Mikiti has argues that assigning English such a high status has effectively led to the marginalisation of non-English speakers in the country. My contradictory argument centres on the need for Malawian creative writers to increase the frequency of English use in order to attain proficiency. This research shows a direct link between the use of the language for lengthy periods per day and a demonstration of level of proficiency required for writers.

Penned in Rage Journal, Amplifying Marginalised Voices

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