Vol. 2, Issue 6, Part I (2016)

Abstract
Development professionals and researchers are yet to give adequate attention to the fact that languages used in different communities have patterns that are worth considering in the process of providing a global civic competence that stimulates social change. Patterns in language influence meaning, social organizations and cultural practices. Despite the wide spread understanding of these interrelationships, western scholars have not sufficiently addressed language and culture as development components thus inciting a thought provoking ideology that western development concepts are clouded with hidden agendas that complicate the whole process of development within the global context. This article investigates the idea that local languages be developed alongside western languages (English, French, Spanish, and German) in order for concepts of social development to be appreciated within the understanding of local African communities. It discusses the point that western languages constitute sociocultural barriers to effective cross cultural African communication because of the legacy of colonization and argues that the language used in social development studies is foreign to the social realities of the target African communities and as such constitutes a socio-linguistic barrier to the ethnocentric bond that unites African communities.