OUR ANNUAL MESS

Smells of the echoes of your tongue

Blocked oxygen’s penetration of my larynx

These days of abracadabra:

My land is a magic house

And all my siblings are changers of materials

Into other materials:

My and has twenty-two million magicians

At whose esoteric glance

Cocaine baptizes into kokonte and baking powder:

Even at the reverberating footsteps of the eyes

Of the law-men and women

And a huge stone wall of silence

Is fortified around the scientific change

The footsteps of your eyes, my land

Is sounding in receding crescendo

Even as you trek towards me

At whose feet can we lay our burdens?

Not at the Cross overfilled with garbage.

At whose feet shall we expiate your name, my land?

3/1/12 Mafi Kumase.

LANGUAGE AND GENDER: THE ESSENTIALISTS VIEW

                                       

Language and gender encompasses discussions of both the ways in which language is used by men and women and the ways language is used about men and women. There are two main theoretical approaches to language and gender: the Essentialist and the Constructionist Approaches.

The Essentialists approaches drew on the idea of gender developed from the view of the individual’s biological sex. Sex was considered a vital biological category and gender was usually mapped onto sex, making gender too an essential category. This approaches focus on ‘binary oppositions’-male and female, and the categories of behaviours ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ were given to males and females as such. The Essentialists approaches include the deficit, dominance and difference approaches.

These approaches are similar in certain ways. They all focus on ‘gender differences’ and on language reflecting gender for instance how men/boys talk differently from how girls/women talk. In the deficit approach, ‘women language’ was seen as deficient and inferior to that of males. Women are claimed to have smaller vocabulary, an inferior command of syntax, use hyperbole, form incoherent sentences and are non-creative users of language. It can be seen that men’s and women’s languages have specific features across times and spaces and leaves no chance for diversity as well as inter and intra-group similarities.

It is also argued that women speech most often focuses on minor issues and their use of hedges, such as ‘em’, ‘’sort of’ among others suggest uncertainty  and seen as  “ an apology for making assertion at all” (Lakoff 1975: 54) and portrays a lack of confidence. Women are also said to have used more hyper-correct forms, suggesting an effort to perhaps raise the level of their ‘deficient language’. This again leave no chance for diversity as well as inter and intra-group similarities.

The dominance approach holds the view that, in mid-sex talk, women are dominated in interaction by men. Conversation was perceived as a site of male dominance and the suppression of women. Traditionally, women must not assert themselves in interactions. If a woman does, then she must hedge to suppress the effect and respect for the laid down societal norms. Men dominate women by being more verbose, initiating topics, more successfully, interrupt women in mid-sex talk. This is a way of ‘doing power’ in face-to-face conversations, indicating that ‘women’s language’ is weak and powerless.

These approaches differ in some ways. The dominance approach sees ‘women’s language’ as a portrayal of women’s powerlessness and the deficit approach sees it as week and deficient but the difference approach sees it as different from men’s but valued positively.  It perceives gender differences as resulting from ‘cultural differences.’ Men and women are socialized into different sub-cultures. There are varied interactions of and by both men and women.

In conclusion, the Essentialist approaches to language and gender consider ‘women’s language’ as inferior to that of men, a product of weakness and a portrayal of their diverse socio-cultural orientations. Gender identity is seen a innate and predictive of use of language. They overlook of take no cognizance of agency. They give rise to gender stereotypes and cannot account for complex contextual use of language, however, the difference approach sees ‘women’s languages’ as different due to the socio-cultural orientation rather than inherent gender identity.

SUNSET AT DAWN BUT STILL …

Yesterday, her Sun set at its rising place

After a brief moment of her rise

It took with it her candle

And flew the early morning with her hope

Stuffed at the back pocket of his trousers

The flicker of our ambition was gone for good

Sunset at dawn but still shines

And though my Sun set at its rising place

The memory of my dreams in his trousers pocket

The memory of Uncle Kwame’s dreams

Shall lit the torchlight in the night

After wailing

I became full of smiles

There were several glittering stars

In the corners of my spread lips

In the deep blood of my soil

In the vast spaces of my heritage

In the eternal brotherly souls of humanity

Whose destiny once were manacled

Across stormy seas

Sunset at dawn but still shines

I glitter with much dignity and honour

For golden gold rocks my knee

For the best chocolate

Ask of my cocoa

That sweet scenting taste

That will last long on your tongue as long as you live

In the coldest of the Norwegian winter

In the hottest of the tropical African weather

The taste of my chocolate will still be in your buccal cavity

In 2009

The world called for a champion

To rule its best loved and known youth sports

Cowardice did all the nations show forth

None had the courage to respond

I responded gallantly

With inspiration as the Great Ghana Empire of old

And I conquered the world on the soil

Of the Pharoahs

Sunset at dawn but still shines

In the midst of unprecedented economic and financial hiccups

The security guard of the earth’s economy

Was called to present his files on 2011

I was called as being among the best 10 economic superpowers of the world

Among my siblings, I still lit as brightest as ever

The sunset at dawn but still shines

 

When the black gold drips down the shores

Of many of my mother’s children

It became known as the cursed substance

I stepped in to bring change and decorum

As the gallons and barrels

Of my high quality Jubilee Fields Oil

Hit the world markets

Men have begun to see

That I am indeed the destiny changer

Many are the footprints

Of men and women

Who have thronged to catch a glimpse at me

My waterfalls of Boti and Wli

Splashing out refreshing substance

Like the living streams that ever lasts

The diverse and never-to-be forgotten

Cultures that make me.

Oh the natural scenery

Of my parks and gardens

Will ever linger on your mind.

A sight of my power-packed batakari

And adoring and splendid woven kente

I know you will ever remember me

Today,

Some call me the Star of Africa,

The beacon of hope.

Just two days ago

The most powerful person on earth

Identified me with the moniker

The Wonderful Economic Success.

In all these

I smiled.

Yes, I do

Because I know the world is yet

To behold that which I can do.

I still remember what my first son told me 55 years ago

That the Blackman will prove to the world that he is somebody.

The list of the world’s best places of human rights recognition

Are incomplete without me.

Yes I.

Press freedom

I gave to my children.

For achievements

Lie in the expressions of the heart

A journey beyond and across the horizon
Across the deepest and widest seas of  the Atlantic

And the Pacific

have men and women searched

For that which make a people

Peace, Peace, Peace

But to no avail among my mother’s children

Right before me

Peace has been found

To show the world my Peace

I dashed it my son, Busumuru Kofi Annan

From the coolest coast of Axim

To the dried grasslands of Gambaga

From Elubu to Aflao

I called unto my children

To meet at Kintampo

Where my heart dwells

They responded with peace dripping off their lips

In the most difficult times

When all said I am doomed

Yes, my children responded with shouts of

Together we shall shine

The clock is tickling

And I welcome my children

To speak their unequivocal unmistakable mind again

I will respond with much peace and love

Yes, 7.12.12

I will prove to the world again

That the sun though set at dawn

Still shines again

To you

I say

Come, come, come

I call on you to have a taste

Of what is inherent in the word hospitality.

Woezor, akwaaba, moyee, welcome, velkommen.

BY EDZORDZI AGBOZO AND EGBENYA DANIEL

HALO

If my face must be muddied by you,

Be ready to muddy your hands too

It is at the handshake of sea sand

And the sea, that moisture shores

Are born;

You, child of a dog, whose father your mother

Can’t identify among the never unending

Cue of bedsharers,

You, whose front teeth and pick-axe

Cannot be differentiated by microscope

You, whose urethra opened in your pants

At our meeting at the market square

And you never knew it until the feasting flies

Announce it to the gathering,

Today you sit there and count the kiosks

In which I laid my head near the Alajo gutter

Because I lack shelter in a foreign family,

Don’t let me expose your vulture face

To gatherers of shame to buy for free

And display at the Trade Fair

For children to come and spit upon,

Step on those needles you call legs

And carry your elephant-tusk-nose

Away before I opened my eyes.

Pass my eye-steps again and vomit

And I shall bath you at noon

With the white truth of our ancestor

Captured a slave, died and buried in shit.

31/12/11 Mafi-Kumase.

COMMON FLATULENCE

Let us switch off our noses

To this common flatulence of guilt

That the world offers for our dirty G-string

We keep washing at the World Laundry Centre-

A place where souls are washed

For heaven’s corner chambers

Switch off our noses to the scent

Snaking from the chamber pot of

The International Crucifixion Chamber

For only tagged (mis)rulers of our part

Of a common world of a common stench.

Each day we pay tribute with our eyes

To the gold-shrouded tomb of justice

Offered our prodigal Lords at The Hague

But are we the only seeds whose mother-fruits

Emit stench from maggoty thrones?

Are we the cursed mis-directors

Of the fate of our lands?

Long ago a certain father & son sent

Storms across our heavens to a land beyond

Deep Mediterranean oils

Old Old Babylon

Was once the glory of that soil.

And our world switched off its voice

Over that common flatulence.

Yesterday of all days:

From the land of elephant tusks

Another prodigal path-leader was carried

Up near the stars, far away

For soul-washing.

When & how will his spirit transfigure?

& what do we do to the rest whole whore 

Of clanging common flatulence of the misrule of our souls?

12:08 am. 01/12/11 Legon.