Recasting the Centre: Ngugi wa Thiong'o and the Africanization of English

The political, psychological, and sociolinguistic transmutations the English language undergoes in post-colonial contexts and societies have engaged the attention of both literary and linguistic scholars over the years.1 The processes by which the use of the English language in post-colonial societies gradually move from an external to an internal norm have been variously labeled as 'nativization' ,2 'indigenization' ,3 'relexification',4 and 'abrogation and appropriation'.5 For example, linguistic nativization refers to the process whereby English-knowing bilinguals in non-native English cultural and linguistic setting not only use the English language for representing typically non-native social, cultural, and emotional contexts, but also use various linguistic devices to contextualize the English language in their respective cultures.6