Moradewun Adejunmobiis an Associate Professor in the African American and African Studies Program of the University of California, Davis, USA. She has also taught at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and the University of Botswana. Her current research interests are in questions of language and identity in African literature and popular culture. She has also worked on Malagasy literature in French and is the author of JJ Rabearivelo, Literature and Lingua Franca in Colonial Madagascar.

• IntroductionAcknowledgements 1 Colonial Encounters and Discourses of the Vernacular2 African Literature, European Languages, and Imaginations of the Local3 Foreign Languages, Local Audiences: The Case of Nigerian Video Film in English4 Romance Without Borders: Narrating Love, Femininity, and the Local in Contemporary Ivory Coast5 Languages of Wider Communication and Alternative Sites of BelongingConclusionBibliographyIndex

"Vernacular Palaver is a convincingly argued and innovative assessment of the use of languages in different educational and popular cultural settings in Africa. The work sparkles with ideas and is rigorously, unflinchingly critical in its analysis of both context and the current literatures in the field. It is a mature piece of work, and full of critical insight. Alison Phipps, University of Glasgow"