 Do any of these books look familiar? Maybe they were a part of a required reading list in high school or college. Yeah. How about these authors? Does anyone know where these authors are from? How about what language their books are written in? And lastly, is there a common trait these authors have that we can kind of point out? In Martin Luther King's 1947 essay, the purpose of education, he writes, the function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education, which stops with efficiency, may prove the greatest menace to society. The great, the most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but without morals. I believe that one way to ensure that education does not stop with efficiency and to buttress it with morality is to first recognize diversity and then to actually diversify what we think is standard in academia. Equality and justice come in many forms. I'm interested in how they play out in cultural and academic settings through the lens of language. I was born in the Gambia to two Sierra Leonean academics, which means that from very early age, I was exposed to multiple cultures, languages, and of course, books. Specifically, I'm interested in linguistic expression and linguistic stigmatization between indigenous languages and English in West Africa. Linguistic expression allows for a person to choose one language in writing poetry and another language when discussing with their grandmother, while linguistic stigmatization would be the cultural and social differences they face while speaking either of those two languages. These books that we looked at earlier are a part of what is called the literary canon. The literary canon is a part of a larger canon, which is the list of the most important and influential art, music, literature, and philosophy. In religious terms, canon is a standard of judgment or a text containing those views, such as the Bible or the Quran. The word canon derives from an ancient Greek word, which means measuring rod or standard. This means that books that are deemed worthy of entering the canon are considered the standard by which all other books are measured. Therefore, when students look towards academic context to validate their identity, self-expression, and morality, they're often looking at those books and those authors. I argue that language plays an important role in these traits. There are 23 indigenous languages in my parents' home country of Sierra Leone. The most widely spoken languages there are Creole, Mende, Timni, and Limba. Currently, though, roughly 16 of the 23 are in use, while the remaining seven have become dead or sleeping languages. A dead language is one that is no longer the native language of any community, even if it is still in use, like Latin, while a sleeping language is one that, although it may not have fluent speakers, is still a symbol of ethnic importance and identity to a particular group. Sleeping languages are also often undergoing processes of revitalization, which can be done from group representatives, researchers, or anyone interested in language. The issue of English having official status over indigenous languages is due to a mixture of things, including colonization, the problem of orthography, which is the standard spelling system of a language, as well as negative perceptions of Africans as being uncivilized and uneducated. I argue that the perception of English as a Western phenomenon denies indigenous varieties that are placed in the academic system. Sierra Leone gained its independence on April 27th, 1961. This year it will have been independent for 62 years. That may be less time than some of you in here have been alive. Late Queen Elizabeth II is pictured here meeting Sir Milton Marguerite, the first prime minister of an independent Sierra Leone. This royal visit included a Sunday service at St. George's Cathedral in Freetown, the capital. A children's parade and citizens rally, a garden party at the prime minister's official residence, diamond digging, and more. Sierra Leone's connection to Britain could not have been more fully on display. Can you imagine the linguistic impact colonial rule for over 153 years had on Sierra Leone? What ground would this leave indigenous languages to stand on? One example of this comes from my parents who were educated in that British system. This is a photo of my mother in her senior year in Methodist Girls High School in 1989 and a photo of my father in 1990 at a commencement ceremony at Four Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. My father recalls having to read and memorize extended soliloquies, long speeches, and quotes from key characters from nearly every single Shakespearean piece. This was a part of his secondary education and Methodist Boys High School, as well as for his honors English bachelor's degree at Four Bay College. Shakespeare wrote at least 38 plays and over 150 short and long poems. I don't know about you guys, but I don't recall ever having to memorize that much content in high school or college. Plays like Ocelot, The Tempest, and The Merchant of Venice played crucial role in their identity formation as well as the shaping of their perspectives of the world, often perpetuating negative stereotypes of blackness and the African native. Language was clearly the tool of expression of Western superiority and reinforcing cultural stereotypes. This summer, I was able to conduct research that reflects language use in Sierra Leone today. The first part of my research involved collecting survey responses from Sierra Leonean linguistic professors, English professors, published authors, and academic administrators who I'm extremely grateful for. Dr. Seidu Bangura of the Sociolinguistics Department of the University of Kabul-Verd, Dr. Abdelai Walonjalo of the Linguistics Department of Forbid College, University of Sierra Leone, and Professor Elizabeth Kamara of the English Department of Forbid College. Our three interlocutors, I'm extremely grateful for, for their additional participation and interviews. Before I talk more about my research, let's do a bit of our own. With a show of hands, and for those online, you can feel free to tap yes or no into the chat box. How many of you here are multilingual? Okay, with those hands up, how many of you speak English when you're in professional or academic settings? And now for everybody, is English the main language you use in professional and academic language settings? Mostly everybody's hand is up, even when we have other valid languages at our disposal. The same is true in Sierra Leone that had 23 languages to choose from. That is the dominating impact of English. The first part of my research, the survey, involved several questions, and a majority of it involved statements that my interlocutors could agree or disagree with on a scaled range. Those statements fell into three categories, general, ethnic structure, and political structure. The general structure statements gave me background information about what my interlocutors felt about the multiple languages being spoken in Sierra Leone simultaneously. The ethnic structure statements gave me insight to the social and ethnic groups in Sierra Leone and that is still related to language as the names of the ethnic groups are also the names of the language they speak. The Creole speak Creole, Mende speak Mende, et cetera. The political structure statements gave me insight to Sierra Leone's political history as well as the lingering consequences of colonial rule. This research is just beginning to delve into linguistic sigmatization and linguistic expression. One path I would like to take into the future is to involve Sierra Leone students themselves. They are the group being directly impacted by linguistic rules being made in academia and so their participation would be of great importance. Another long-term goal of mine would be to publish textbooks in Sierra Leonean languages. Sierra Leonean students would no longer need to depend on Western standards that go against their cultural identity. These publications would then be a new part of the function of canon. There is not one way of writing, speaking, learning, or expressing oneself and so congruently there should not be one language used as a sole tool. I argue that other ways should be continuously affirmed as my research aims to justify. I advocate in the words of Dr. King that languages should not be judged by their status or by the geographical dispersion of its speakers but by its content of the linguistic, of their linguistic character. Thank you.