“Language Has the Power to Reinvent Itself”: An Interview with Susan N. Kiguli

«NS: Do you think your relationship to language, either to Luganda or to English, has changed over time?

SK: I don’t know if I know exactly what you are asking. From childhood I was that kind of person who was extremely keen at finding out about language. Maybe when you’re young, you’re not critical about what language is doing. But I was always fascinated by the turn of phrase, by what it could achieve. When I came to university, I was really into this whole “speech act” thing and How to Do Things with Words and thinking about the power behind language and how just a word can move things or can name things forever or can continue a conversation. First of all, of course, my relationship with English has been based on the fact that it’s the medium of instruction. It’s the language that has constantly been around me in my upbringing and in my education journey. It’s a language that you can’t really set apart from us, but because of the whole colonial legacy, it carries a burdensome past and memory of oppression and subjugation of my people… it’s a huge thing. It’s a language that the missionaries used to erase and debase my people’s culture. But it’s also a language that I was taught from a young age».