From Southern Theory to Decolonizing Sociolinguistics

This book is a bold and timely contribution to debates about the role of power, privilege and perspective in the creation of knowledge. Particularly impressive is how contributors weave moving and personal stories of their experiences as scholars together with their empirically rich and theoretically complex accounts of their scholarship. This volume is a generously provocative intervention that provides a compass for future journeys in the field. * Rodney Jones, University of Reading, UK *
Akin to a capoeirista who swerves and slides and swings in syncopated disobedience to colonial oppression, this book has ginga. Each chapter engages southern theory not in mere references here and there but as integral to a project of rethinking language, re-shaping unjust worlds, and reimagining futures beyond our troubled times. The authors powerfully show how to decolonize our minds and de-Westernize our eyes and ears towards a sociolinguistic praxis that moves, grooves, and nourishes us. * Rodrigo Borba, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil *
In this critical and exciting collection, Deumert and Makoni introduce us, through the multiple voices and perspectives of authors from a variety of disciplinary and geographical positions, to different forms of disciplinary disobedience and epistemological delinking that provide a new foundation for the project of decolonizing sociolinguistics. A fascinating volume and a must read for those interested in the decolonial turn in the social sciences. * Anna De Fina, Georgetown University, USA *