ABSTRACT
Even though integrationism has developed considerably and made substantial contributions to language scholarship, most of the research has largely been situated in Western contexts. This chapter is contributed to a development of the concept of 'integration' in non-Western contexts by analyzing Ubuntu. Writing as a semiotic modality narrowed, stabilised and created an illusion of stability of the meanings of Ubuntu in writing. An important feature relevant to an analysis of Ubuntu are laypeople's experiences of language. The use of lay people's experiences as an important site of analysis complicates because of the different names and meanings speakers of African languages assign to their speech practices. Ubuntu and integrationism when applied in colonial and postcolonial Africa share a communitarian and thus politicised concept of language built on the idea that language practices only make sense when radically contextualised into specific modes of being in the world.
