English as enemy or not?

[Harold F. Schiffman]

I wrote a paper which I gave at the ISB4 conference, and which will be
published in the final proceedings. I have it on line at
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/public/finalisimo.pdf

It addresses this issue of whether the ex-colonial language is to be
considered an 'enemy' or whether it represents something else, especially
to peoples who are minorities in these ex-colonies. In India, Tamils, e.g.
don't see English as the enemy, they see Hindi as the enemy, and so do a
lot of other small ethnic groups, which see themselves as disadvantaged if
they don't also get the "good stuff", i.e. access to English, which they
see as more empowering than e.g. access to Hindi.  I used the metaphor of
a linguistic "virus" and whether English is seen as the virus or as virus
*protection*; the Tamils definitely see it as the latter.

Hal S.

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005, Anthea Fraser Gupta wrote:

> I think Trond and I are sort of in agreement and sort of not...
>
> > Italian, Bengali etc. children (immigrants) have the right to
> > so-called mother tongue education,
>
> This is excellent though I really do wonder about the practicalities...
> By the way, I have some issues with the term 'immigrant': I don't like
> (and have published on) the autochthonous/ immigrant distinction made in
> much European policy, as it is invidious. Many members of ethnic
> minorities in Europe are classed as 'immigrant' who are born and brought
> up in the European country and are citizens. I don't like that
> distinction.
>
> > Monolingual countries, such as Burundi and Rwanda, still have their
> > primary and secondary education in French, and not in Rundi or
> > Kinyarwanda.
>
> Nevertheless, it does remain the case that there are many multilingual
> countries (e.g. Nigeria, India, Papua New Guinea).
>
> > And even in multilingual countries picking out say 5-10 languages for
> > implementation in the school system will grant the vast
> > majority of the
> > children education in mathematics, reading, writing, science,
> > etc. in a
> > language they speak and understand (either their mother tongue or a
> > regional language they speak as a 2nd language).
>
> True. Though the colonial language is also going to be one of those
> languages, with many people speaking it as one of their native
> languages. Local tradition also has to be considered -- not all
> languages are regarded as languages of education. Local social
> discrepancies also need to be accounted for, as in many places some
> ethnolinguistic communities have higher status than others and the
> provision of state education in the medium of a language with low status
> may not be well accepted, and may lead to the flight of the wealthy
> members of that community to private education (if private education is
> permitted in the country). The realities of inequity have to be
> addressed on a number of fronts.
>
> > [I wouldn't say "superb", neither ironically nor in earnest.
> > There are
> > always things to correct,
>
> No doubt -- but would you be able to suggest anywhere better????
>
> > If pupils have Malay as their mother tongue, then the
> > experiences from
> > e.g. Finland should suggest giving Malay a strong position, and teach
> > English as a foreign language (on an advanced level). What to do with
> > bilingual Malay - local lg children should be decided upon as
> > a result
> > of a concrete evaluation of the linguistic situation.
>
> The situation in Malaysia is that Malay is a native language (almost
> certainly) of well over 50% of the population, but is associated with
> one particular ethnic group (classed as the indigenous 'race'), which
> constitutes JUST over 50% of the population, though that 50% is reached
> by including people who are members of ethnic groups subsumed under
> 'Malay' who are associated with related languages other than Malay. You
> refer to "What to do with bilingual Malay - local lg children": the
> concept of 'local language' wouldn't be meaningful. The 'Malays' are
> officially classed as indigenous. The other languages are mainly
> languages from South Asia and from China, and a handful of speakers of
> other languages, including a Poruguese lexifier creole, Kristang.
> Bilinguals (and trilinguals) can be almost any combination, such as:
> Cantonese-Mandarin; Cantonese-English; Tamil-Malay; Tamil-English;
> Punjabi-English; Kristang-English.
>
> Malay has been spoken as a lingua franca in a very wide region for
> centuries and is well accepted as a language of education and culture,
> which all Malaysians are expected to learn to a high level and to speak
> regularly. It has become the main medium of education in Malaysia since
> independence, and has been established in all levels of education and
> all subjects for something like 30 years.  Many children whose native
> language is not Malay are educated in Malay.  In all that time English
> has been taught as a subject to all children. Malay and English are so
> embedded across society that it is often hard to identify a child's
> native language(s): as soon as a child goes to nursery at 2 or 3 or
> starts playing with other children they usually acquire one or both of
> these languages (and sometimes others, depending on where they are),
> even if their native language is neither English nor Malay. A child who
> learns a language from 3 is not much different than a child who learns
> it from birth.
>
> However, the education system in Malaysia is diverse, even within the
> government sector, and there are private schools offering education in
> Mandarin Chinese (another language that became a native language after
> being an educational medium), in Tamil, and in English, and in various
> mixtures of the 4 languages.  Pretty well everyone learns Malay but the
> learning of English is variable, and is economically and racially
> divisive. Naturally, the majority community (like majority communities
> in UK and US) have less interest in learning other languages than the
> minority communities do. It is essential in terms of access to
> professional and business networks for all Malaysians to develop skills
> in English.  I don't myself think that the current solution of using
> English for science and technology is the right one, and I don't
> actually think that the standard of English across the board in Malaysia
> is bad as the Malaysian government's rhetoric suggests it is. But I do
> agree that the inequity of access presents a problem, and I can see that
> some use of English as a medium will raise exposure to English (I think
> I'd go down the route of English days or weeks rather than associating
> English with specifi subjects).
>
> > All this positive things being said about Northern Europe, I must
> > confess that our most skilled English teacher (and German, French
> > teacher) is the television. Unlike countries like France, Germany,
> > Turkey, Russia, (Chile?), we never dub foreign television programs or
> > people interviewed on the news, instead we subtitle. This
> > provides for
> > a couple of hours extra teaching a day...
>
> Another major factor all over Asia!
>
> > Hindi leaves the scene to English only in too many
> > domains.
>
> I don't understand this comment. English has a role mostly at national
> level. The regional languages are very very powerful indeed. The film
> industry has also spread Hindi beyond its homeland and exposed Indians
> to Hindi beyond its northern homeland.
>
> > Also, there is a hen-and-egg reasoning in the situation you describe:
> > "Only the English speaking are rich, and we will give
> > education only to
> > the ones speaking English => only the rich/privileged people will be
> > able to utilise the educational system". Language planning
> > and planning
> > of education are political actions, the key question being
> > "for whom".
> > Politicians may of course build a school for the social and/or
> > linguistic elite, as they most often do, but they should not
> > be allowed
>
> This wasn't what I meant! In India, it is a major imperative to deliver
> primary education, in the dominant regional language, to all children.
> Equality of access to higher education doesn't enter into a situation
> where only a minority complete primary school. But once education is
> being delivered to the whole population, countries can let access
> progress, and then they start to need to think about access to higher
> education and professional training. It isn't difficult to learn more
> than one language, and languages can be taught to older as well as
> younger children.  But what can't be allowed to happen is a system in
> which those in state-provided schooling are massively disadvantaged
> against those in private schooling.
>
> > If, in a region (be it
> > monolingual
> > or with a dominating lingua franca spoken by all the
> > children, I see no
> > cultural or political reasons for having them learn their basic
> > multiplication table in a language they do not understand (other than
> > the grim heritage of imperialism).
>
> Yes. An additional consideration is that there may be a national
> imperative, where languages are strongly regional. I do not think the
> legacy of imperialism has to be grim, so many years after it has ended.
> Social divisiveness is human nature and societies have to find ways of
> redressing it, but I really cannot see the colonial languages as
> automatic enemies.
>
> Interesting discussion!
>
> Anthea
>
> *     *     *     *     *
> Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
> School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
> <www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>
> NB: Reply to a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk
> *     *     *     *     *
>
>