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The Study of African Languages in the United Kingdom: Part II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

David Dalby
David Dalby*
Affiliation:
University of London
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Extract

The first part of this review covered the growth of African language studies in the United Kingdom from 1895 to 1970, by which time the Department of the Languages and Cultures of Africa at SOAS (Department of Africa) represented the largest group of African language specialists in the world.

This expansion had been due in large part to the recommendations of the Scarbrough Commission in 1947, although that same commission was also responsible for the confinement of African language studies to a single British institution. The Scarbrough request for a regular review of Oriental and African studies has been disregarded by successive governments, and even the solitary Hayter review, undertaken in 1961 by the UGC, largely ignored the field of African language studies (apart from an unfulfilled request that they be pursued at Oxford as well as at SOAS).

Type
Articles
Information
African Research and Documentation , Volume 34 , 1984 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1984

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References

Notes

1. The Times, Jan.16 1967, Supplement on the School of Oriental & African Studies, p.1.

2. Charter of the Incorporation of the School of Oriental Studies, 1917, Art.II: ‘The purposes of the School are to further research in, and to extend the study of the Languages of Eastern and African peoples, Ancient and Modern, and the Literature, History, Religion, Law, Customs and Art of those peoples…’

3. Higher Education: Report of the Committee on Higher Education under the Chairmanship of Lord Robbins, 1961-1963, London: HMSO [1963-4].Google Scholar

4. University Grants Committee, Report of the Sub-Committe on Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African Studies, London: HMSO, 1961.Google Scholar

5. Yapp, M.E., Memorandum on undergraduate studies at the School of Oriental & African Studies, SOAS, 18 June 1971, 16pp. (duplicated).Google Scholar

6. For a cumulative bibliography of these publications during the 1970's, see Dalby, David, ‘La linguistic africaine au Royaume Uni’, in Etudes Africaines, Paris: ACCT & Karthala, Vol.1, pp.405–440Google Scholar (or, as annually published) in each relevant Report of the Governing Body, SOAS).

7. Report of the Working Party on Longer-Term Development (Chairman: M.E. Yapp), SOAS, 31 July 1982, 45pp.

8. op.cit., p.2: ‘The Working Party's approach, therefore, was essentially pragmatic; from the outset it rejected the rival philosophical concepts implied in the so-called ‘Charter’ and ‘Hayter’ approaches’.

9. ‘The Director's Survey’, School of Oriental & African Studies: Report of the Governing Body and Statement of Accounts for the Session 1982-83, SOAS [1984], p.6: ‘…we were cheered by the UGC's evident understanding of our problems and their general endorsement of the ways in which they were being tackled’.