Communicating with Victoria's emerging African language communities: issues and responses

Abstract

Increasingly ICTs are seen as an important and powerful means for communication with and within communities in different languages and in facilitating and broadening opportunities for communication locally and globally. However, for refugee and humanitarian immigrants, such as those who have been arriving in Australia in the past decade from Africa, there are particular challenges in the provision of equitable and accessible ICT-facilitated communication in their languages. Recent research undertaken for the Victorian Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Victorian Multicultural Commission has highlighted the complexity of the sociolinguistics of language use within some African background communities where linguistic diversity and individual bilingualism/multilingualism is the norm, and the status, educational policies and nature of the use of different languages in the home country context has affected the extent that adult language users have access to literacy skills in each/any language and formal education and related skills, such as those required to use ICTs. In this paper we will present the findings of our research on African language usage and communication preferences in some of the major emerging African language communities and discuss implications and responses for addressing issues of information poverty and the digital divide.

Assoc. Prof. Helen Borland

Helen Borland is Associate Professor in the School of Communication, Culture and Languages at Victoria University and currently, Principal Advisor International to the Pro Vice Chancellor, International. She has a background in Russian, Linguistics, and English as a Second Language and teaches sociolinguistics, cross-cultural communication and communication research methodology. She is well known for her research into language, identity and communication issues in migrant communities in Melbourne and, particularly, in Melbourne’s west. In 2006, with Dr Charles Mphande she completed a report for the then Victorian Office of Multicultural Affairs investigating the numbers of speakers of various African languages in Victoria. She and Dr Mphande are currently working for the Victorian Multicultural Commission on a second stage of this project which involves community consultations to gain a more in-depth understanding of patterns of language and literacy usage in some of the larger African language communities in Victoria.

Dr. Charles Mphande

Dr Charles Mphande lectures in International Community Development and Public Advocacy at Victoria University. He holds a PhD in Critical Communication and Community Development Studies from Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. He has studied in Malawi, the UK and Australia. For over a decade he taught and managed schools, and was a teacher trainer in Malawi. Prior to his doctoral studies, Dr Mphande lectured in Communication and Applied Language Studies in the University of Malawi, where he was also an academic manager. He has been a consultant for the World Bank and the Malawi Government, evaluating the impact of program information, education and communication (IEC) on national socio-economic development projects. Dr Mphande is a Research Associate of Victoria University’s Institute for Community Ethnicity and Policy Alternatives. His current interests include communication and citizen participation for recent migrants, an area in which he has served as a consultant to the former Victorian Office of Multicultural Affairs.

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