Cultural-Cognitive Approaches to African Englishes (CAPE 2027):
Language, Identity, and Conceptualisation in African Contexts
African Englishes have emerged as a major area of inquiry within contemporary linguistics, offering important insights into the complex relationships among language, culture, cognition, identity, and social change. Research on African Englishes has witnessed remarkable growth and diversification in recent years, as evidenced by a number of influential edited volumes and monographs (Esimaje et al., 2019; Akinlotan, 2023; Esimaje et al., 2023; Kecskes et al., 2025; Ngefac et al., 2025; Sabao & Mavengano, 2025). While scholarship on African Englishes has traditionally focused on structural variation, language contact, sociolinguistic developments, and postcolonial language dynamics, increasing scholarly attention has been devoted, particularly since the publication of Wolf and Polzenhagen’s (2009) seminal study, to the cultural and cognitive dimensions that shape African Englishes and linguistic practices across African contexts. Speakers of African Englishes draw on culturally grounded conceptual systems, local knowledge structures, multilingual repertoires, and shared communicative traditions in the production and interpretation of meaning. These processes influence how identities are constructed, how social realities are conceptualised, and how linguistic innovation emerges within diverse African speech communities.
This international symposium seeks to bring together scholars working at the intersection of African Englishes, cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse studies, linguistic anthropology, and related disciplines to explore how cultural-cognitive approaches can advance our understanding of English in Africa. It aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and addresses the guiding question of the extent to which cultural-cognitive linguistics can provide a productive framework for understanding processes of structural nativisation, cultural conceptualisation, linguistic variation, meaning-making, and identity construction in African Englishes. This academic event will provide a platform for established scholars and early-career researchers to share theoretical perspectives, methodological innovations, and empirical findings concerning the complex interaction among language, culture, cognition, and society in English-speaking African contexts.
We invite abstracts for presentations that employ a range of theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and empirical data and address one or more of the following thematic areas:
- the interplay of language, culture, and cognition in African Englishes, including language contact, cognitive adaptation, and conceptual transfer
- Construction Grammar and usage-based approaches to language development, variation, and change in African Englishes
- Pragmatic variation across African Englishes, including speech acts, discourse practices, politeness, and intercultural communication
- Metaphorically motivated lexis and phraseology in African Englishes, including conceptual metaphors, metaphorical expressions, idioms, proverbs, and other forms of figurative language
- Corpus-based, experimental, and mixed-methods approaches to cultural-cognitive aspects of African Englishes
In addition to the symposium, we will organise a doctoral workshop for PhD researchers whose research engages with cultural-cognitive aspects of African Englishes. The workshop will provide a supportive environment for scholarly exchange, mentoring, and professional networking. PhD researchers will have the opportunity to present their ongoing research projects and receive constructive feedback from established scholars working in the fields of African Englishes, cognitive linguistics, and related disciplines. PhD researchers wishing to participate in the doctoral workshop should indicate this clearly when submitting their abstracts.
Submission Guidelines
Abstracts of up to 500 words (excluding references) should be submitted in PDF format to: oyebola@uni-bremen.de and callies@uni-bremen.de and should clearly outline the research question, theoretical framework, methodology, and key findings (where applicable). Submission deadline is March 31st, 2027.
Presentation format: 20-minute presentation followed by 10 minutes of discussion.
References
Akinlotan, M. (2023). Englishes in Africa. Peter Lang.
Esimaje, A., Gut, U. & Antia, B. E. (eds.). (2019). Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes. John Benjamins.
Esimaje, A., van Rooy, B., Jolayemi, D., Nkemleke, D. & Klu, E. (eds.). (2023). African Perspectives on the Teaching and Learning of English in Higher Education. Routledge.
Kecskes, I., Buregeya, A., Odebunmi, A., Unuabonah, F. O., Agyekum, K. & Dinh, H. (eds.). (2025). Pragmatics of African Varieties of English. De Gruyter Mouton.
Ngefac, A., Zang, P. Z., Brato, T. & Leimgruber, J. R. (eds.). (2025). African Englishes and Multilingualism for the Transformative Development of Postcolonial Africa. Bloomsbury Academic.
Sabao, C. & Mavengano, E. (eds.). (2025). African Englishes: Contemporary Trends and Sociolinguistic Shifts. Routledge.
Wolf, H.-G. & Polzenhagen, F. (2009). World Englishes: A Cognitive Sociolinguistic Approach. Mouton de Gruyter.