InALC - Investigating African Languages and Cultures aims at the study and documentation of a selected group of languages, literatures and cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa. As a matter of fact, it is indeed under the spotlight that minority, unwritten and orally transmitted languages are in danger of disappearing by the end of the current century. Already in 1991 at the Conference of the Linguistic Society of America, Prof. Michael Krauss made a heartfelt plea to his colleagues inviting them to devote their researches to the documentation of endangered languages “lest linguistics go down in history as the only science that presided obliviously over the disappearance of 90% of the very field to which it is dedicated”. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where the quickness of societal and climatic changes often leads to civil and political tensions, draught and famine, urging millions of people to abandon their lands, cultures and languages in search of better life conditions, the trend is worsening year after year.
With this project we aim to work at the same time at documentation and at the promotion of a wider awareness of this problem among ordinary people.
Due to possible impediments bound to the still ongoing COVID19 pandemic, our researches will be devoted mainly to the analysis of materials and audio recordings already gathered in the previous years. Other materials considered will be those held in the archives and collections of missionary societies and colonial administrations.
Another essential part of our research will be the selection of ethnographic items, manuscripts, audio and video recordings, as well as historical photographs for the creation of an iconographic exhibition. The exhibition, accompanied by presentations by members of the three research units, could be proposed to the students of universities and high schools, and finally archived as a virtual installation on a web page dedicated to the project. We hope that this will help to stimulate a more welcoming attitude towards first and second-generations immigrants.
The collaboration between the three research units has already been successfully tested in our previous common project: the 2012 FIRB “ATrA”.
The dissemination of our results will be realized through different channels: a) the presentation of specific case studies in international conferences; b) the submission of scientific papers to international journals; c) the organization of at least two internal meetings each year - to promote the scientific exchange among us and offer our students the opportunity to attend the process of scientific production in fieri - ; d) the organization of a closing international congress with the presentation of the iconographic exhibition; e) the creation of a dedicated web page; f) the organization of a tour to present the iconographic exhibition in universities and schools that will ask it.