Language and Literacy: Tools of Repression or Freedom? (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

The Daily Observer, Gambia

Language and Literacy: Tools of Repression or Freedom?

Written by Demba Ceesay
Jun 10, 2007 at 08:21 AM

>From time immemorial, the world has never been free from competing
ideologies. Some of the most recent ones even ignited wars that were,
fortunately, never fought – the Cold War.

There is the green revolution debate that has brought academics, ecologists,
conservationists and producers at loggerheads over biodiversity. Then, came
the globalisation debate which centres on the spread of western forms of
production and consumption and their accompanying contestations across of
the world. Indeed over the years, the world has witnessed many ideological
debates. And now, coming closer to the lives of the people, the language
debate has also erupted with all sorts of protagonists having untold number
of cases for their side of the debate. While in the past, events in one part
of the world could not have possibly affected some other areas as a result
of limited means of information dissemination, in the new world order, this
is no longer so.

Economies have been linked by the powers of free marketisation and
international trade; migration is taking place at an unprecedented fashion;
education systems have been synchronised by incessant policy borrowing and
lifestyles are increasingly becoming homogenous with every country and
people eager to take their share of the gains of a globalised world. In
such a pluralist society, more and more people are insisting on having a
say in issues that affect their lives. In this new dispensation, the
question of who wields power is often asked. Related to power are
ownership, voice and access to information. The axis of all these
parameters in a modern world is undoubtedly language. In this exposition, I
intend to discuss how language defines power, and how it serves as a tool of
repression and freedom. I will also discuss how language, particularly a
familiar language can help bring out the authentic voice among the
voiceless. Also important to add is the role of language and literacy in
the development of a participatory and genuine democratic culture.

To begin with, let us assert that language and literacy work in a mutually
re-enforcing manner and fundamentally combine to enrich cultures and confer
freedom on people that access them. This is because together, language and
literacy provide powerful means through which cultural hegemony can be
planted and re-organised in order to secure the social relations of the
emergent socio-cultural and political milieu of a highly interconnected
world. This socio-cultural and political environment is a multicultural
society with multiplicity of languages. Notwithstanding the multilingual
nature of the modern era, the language debate has now polarised the world
into European languages (especially English!) on one side and non-western
languages on the other, hence the importance of the language and literacy
awareness. In this so-called global village of ours, information has become
top priority in all spheres of life and the more people are informed, the
more they become active participants in development. And since information
has to be communicated through a language, language acquisition and
literacy has the potential of either involving or excluding people and
whole communities in the development paradigm.

In discussing how language confers freedom, especially in the context of the
developing world, it is instructive to start the argument from colonialism
because the later gives hindsight on how language was used both as a tool
of subjugation and later as weapon of liberation. Also, the origin of the
current debate on national and official languages, language rights and the
choice of medium of instruction in our school systems could all be rooted
from colonialism. Colonialism was indeed facilitated by the use of foreign
languages (e.g., the colonial education insisted on the undiluted use of
foreign languages) to enable effective control of colonies. Colonialism
therefore witnessed both political and economic domination, as well as
linguistic imperialism. It also forcefully created countries with people of
different linguistic backgrounds together (e.g., Sudan, Nigeria, and
Mauritania just to name a few) as well as separated people of linguistic
similarity (Senegal and Gambia, Nigeria and Cameroon, India and Pakistan,
Algeria and Morocco etc). In doing so, colonialism chose for the people
what language they have to learn in school.

The choice of colonial language policies was meant for educating a
population to be both producers and consumers of the numerous goods of the
empire as well as continuously making them subservient to the colonial
overlords.  By this, the source of genuine knowledge was taken away from
the people as English, French, Portuguese and Spanish (just to name a few)
continued to enjoy the hegemony they never deserved.
Through this, local languages were despised together with all their related
virtues. School systems embraced the new language whole-heartedly. If
children, even by mistake, uttered a few words in their mother tongues,
they were beaten, mocked and sometimes suspended from schools. Otherwise,
they are made to wear awkward symbols of shame. The colonial language
reigned supreme at the expense of indigenous languages. The emergent elite
group after colonialism was left with no option but to try to grasp the new
language in order to fit in the new setting. As Ngugi wa Thiongo stated in
the case of English speaking Kenya, "English was the official vehicle and
the magic formula to colonial elitedom." School policies that exalted the
language of the invader while despising that of the indigenes persisted
long after independence. This is because the colonial language was
associated with success and people who were proficient in it were revered
as saints and philosophers.

Ironically though, and since language is the property of anybody who
acquires it, and since it is not neutral, the colonial language, once used
to suppress people to submission, would soon be turned upside down and  be
used against continued domination. At struggle for independence, the
nationalists turned the colonial language on its head and used it as a
counter-discourse. For instance, in the entire colonised world, the
nationalist movement used the newly acquired language to appropriate the
discourse of Modernism and Enlightenment, Liberalism and Liberty and
European Nationalism taught by the colonialist in their own schools. How
powerful language can be! Eminent Sri Lankan teacher and writer, Suresh
Canagarajah, in his article, "Negotiating Ideologies through English"
illustrates the shrewd nature of the counter-discourse use of language for
freedom thus:
This is a strategy of reinterpretation – i.e., providing new meaning for
dominant discourses to suit one’s own interests and ideologies. It was hard
for the colonizers to resist this argument as the natives were repeating the
discourses they themselves cherished.
What was this "new meaning"? The right to independence is like to right to
life, one would be tempted to answer? And did the counter-discourse
strategy work? Yes, because the rhetorics appealed to the sentiments of
personal dignity that were used to conquer the colonies. Country and after
country, the independence movements used the colonial language to wage
ideological warfare, proving new meaning to the dominant discourses in
pursuit of freedom, which over time, was achieved. So from a colonial
perspective, language which once subjugated people now conferred freedom on
them at independence.

However, in terms of modern era and indeed looking at the seemingly
permanent damage colonialism has done to linguistic pluralism across the
globe, one is tempted to ask: how much freedom is available to people for
the use of language, particularly their own languages for the realisation
of real freedom and effective participation in the new world order? How
language does bring about self- definition and development. First, let us
argue that the modern world is faced with decline of languages, especially
in the developing countries. The impact of colonialism and the emergence of
globalisation that is giving supremacy to western languages (English in
particular) are weighing heavily on national language policies. At
independence, most developing countries were faced with the dilemma of a
language choice: whether to develop local language policies or to continue
using the imperial language; more still, whether to have monolingual or
multilingual policies. In places like Tanzania, at independence, Kiswahili
was used to replace English. Malaysia also once replaced the colonial
language with Bahasa Malaysia, otherwise called the Malay. In these and few
other countries, a familiar language (the language of the locals!) was seen
as the carrier of culture and symbol of societal re-orientation. It was
also seen as a variable though which the new state can define itself and
unite its population under a new identity. Even in a more complex modern
nation-state, language is certainly a means of self-expression and
countries that want to forge forward in development must first resolve the
language issue within the population. Countries that want to effect
meaningful change must first work to put language issue at the centre. This
is because language affects people’s consciousness, alters situations as
well as raises and changes awareness.

In a culturally plural society, the people can only participate in
development if they have a stake in issues around them, and there is no
further place to look for people’s voice other than a language they can
express themselves in. The power imbalance that is characteristic of the
globalised world is largely caused by the minority groups having monopoly
of a dominant language. This dominant language, which is usually the
official language, is the language of politics, commerce and information.
And because majority of the people cannot function in it, they find it hard
to function meaningfully within the state apparatus. So we have a situation
in many developing countries where the majority of the people are left out
of the development agenda just because they have no access to the required
tool, the tool that is called language. And just as to add salt to the
wound, indigenous languages are gradually, and indeed painfully,
disappearing at an unprecedented rate, thanks to the continued dominance of
European languages.

>From a historical point of view, the dominance of European languages has
always been a threat to indigenous languages which are sidelined when it
comes to education, despite a series of national clamouring about the
significant role of local language. Research reveals that less than 10% of
the world’s 6000 to 7000 languages are used in schools as media of
instruction and mass literacy. In Australia, only 20 of the 200 Aboriginal
languages found are now in use. In Alaska (USA), only 2 out of the 18
languages found by the British are now alive. Generally, 50% of the world’s
languages are at the brink of extinction. Where languages are not written
(as in the case of most of Africa!), they are more likely to disappear.
Even in The Gambia, if one were to conduct a thorough research, one would
discover staggering details of how certain dialects, if not languages, are
disappearing.  For instance, I cannot recall how many times, I have heard
people suggesting the Bianunka language is fast disappearing in The Gambia
as the language group is irresistibly being submerged into other Manding
speaking languages and dialects. The lack of viable literacy campaigns in
many parts of the developing world, the continued use of foreign language
as medium of instruction in schools and commerce, combined with serious
negligence of local languages is speeding up the extinction of indigenous
languages.

Research also reveals that somewhere in the world, one language dies every
two weeks (which is roughly 25 every year!). And if the trend continues, it
is estimated that only 10% of the world’s languages will survive the 21st
Century.
In Africa, indigenous languages being driven into oblivion at an alarming
rate. And when they go, they do so with a whole lot of riches, identities
and voices. So we can imagine that anytime a language dies, a whole library
is buried with it. This is precisely the reason it should be duty bound upon
all governments and education systems to re-affirm the need for mass
literacy in all languages at their disposal in a bid to re-distribute
power. But how dose language and literacy distribute power?

by ,Demba Ceesay
Gambia College
Last Updated ( Jun 11, 2007 at 08:24 AM )