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Abstract
In recent postcolonial literary and cultural studies, there has been renewed interest in the history and vitality of African-language textualities of the pre-colonial era. This article explores new terrain, surveying and shedding light on some of the significant texts and sites from the Tigrinya language and culture in Eritrea and Ethiopia. The Tigrinya language serves as a general medium of communication and an important literary language. A 2007 census reports that about seven million people in the region speak the language. This investigation roughly explores the span of time from the first century to the 1890s when colonial modernity arrived in that part of the African continent. Using what I call “a snapshot approach,” I focus on some primary texts and explore their textuality and the material conditions surrounding their production. I begin by considering Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of “polyglossia” to account for the prevailing and complex dynamics of multi-lingualism, a socio-linguistic reality that has defined the language map of the area since ancient times. Initially drawing inferences from a first-century inscription at the archaeological site of Matara in present-day Eritrea, I discuss key texts from different periods and conclude by suggesting that the existing “vibrant linguistic and cultural landscape” of the region should be understood with a recognition of the long-term contact and intermixing of local and international languages that mutually enrich each other in the context of a polyglotic spatial zone. While the texts sampled have been conventionally discussed from a linguistic and legalistic point of view, I further establish their multiple social and cultural functions by emulating Brinkley Messick’s idea of “total discourse” and adopting it to the region.