Challenges of Doing Corpus Linguistics in Africa

Corpus linguistics, although a relatively new field of research endeavour, has made great strides in language research and teaching. Yet, it is relatively unknown in particularly African linguistic academies and as such its gains lost to the communities and language teaching-learning contexts where it has made its most significant impacts. The state of corpus linguistics in Africa is therefore the prime interest of this paper. It seeks to define and illustrate the extent of its knowledge, use, outcomes, and impact, and also to examine the challenges facing its growth as a field of study and adoption as a reliable method of linguistic enquiry. Through ethnographic surveys of corpus linguistics studies across the countries of: Nigeria and Ghana in West Africa; Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya in East Africa; Zimbabwe and South Africa in Southern Africa; and Cameroon in Central Africa, this paper provides some insights into the state of corpus research in Africa and reveals the challenges facing it. The conclusion that forces its way through is that in Africa, corpus linguistics may remain ‘relatively new’, not in terms of age nor in terms of its appropriateness but rather in terms of its feasibility or usability, due to the many limiting factors of underdevelopment and the management of higher education in the continent. This calls for collaborative interventions if the field is to be sustained and its impact globally recognized.