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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7178-3384

Abstract

As linguistic erasure intensifies across the African world, the preservation of African-centered knowledge systems has become both a scholarly and political imperative. This article examines the relationship between linguistic imperialism, epistemic agency, and scholarly sovereignty through the intellectual trajectory of Dr. Ayo Sekai, political linguist and founder of Universal Write Publications (UWP), a Black woman–owned academic press dedicated to culturally grounded scholarship. Expanding traditional understandings of linguistic imperialism, Dr. Sekai advances political linguistics beyond structural language dominance to examine who holds linguistic power and how that power operates through dog whistle politics, signaling terms, and policy language code—discursive patterns embedded in governance systems that produce the appearance of neutrality while encoding ideology. The article also introduces lexicentrism, a word-centered epistemological framework positioning culturally grounded language as a site of authority, meaning-making, and knowledge production. Drawing on Black politics, African-centered epistemology, and Poetical Science Discourse as methodology and worldview, the article argues that control over language, narrative, and publishing infrastructure is essential to protecting Black intellectual traditions across the Global South. Through reflexive narrative, archival analysis, and institutional critique, UWP emerges as a contemporary model of diasporan women’s epistemic leadership shaping the future of global knowledge production.

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