143242 VO The Chinese Diaspora in Africa: Topics in Sociocultural Linguistics and Beyond (2021W)

The Chinese diaspora in Africa has been studied from different perspectives, including the sociopolitical, the socioeconomic, and the sociocultural. This course begins with background analysis of the Chinese presence in Africa, and then focuses on sociocultural linguistics, giving course participants the opportunity to explore, in a different geographical setting, key areas in linguistics, such as contact linguistics/contact grammars, linguistic communities, language and identity, language and communication, and the recent idea of ‘diaspora linguistics’ within which concepts like linguistic repertoires and heritage grammars are salient. The course goes beyond these sociocultural linguistic concepts to explore wider issues about Chinese links to other parts of the world through the formation of diaspora communities and what implications this has for conceptualizing Africa-China studies as area studies within a global context.

Methods:
1. The ideal scenario: Classroom teaching will be in the form of lectures, student presentations, group projects/discussions, visits to Chinese diaspora community settings in Vienna;
2. The Covid-19 scenario: We are also prepared to teach digitally via Moodle, if the pandemic should make this necessary. Class interaction will mostly take place in a discussion forum for each lecture. All course materials and assignments will be uploaded onto Moodle.