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Th H Ll F L B Ti the Challenge of Celebrating Linguistic Diversity in A

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Th H Ll F L B Ti the Challenge of Celebrating Linguistic Diversity in A 10/15/2009 Public lecture, University of Mauritius, 2009 The c ha llenge o f ce le bra ting linguistic diversity in a world dominated by English Robert Phillipson Handelshøjskolen i København, Danmark Copenhagen Business School, Denmark 1 10/15/2009 The original Britons Who the first inhabitants of Britain were, whether natives or immigrants, remains obscure: one must remember we are dealing with barbarians. Tacitus, AD 97 2 10/15/2009 Tacitus on cultural assimilation Agricola trained the sons of the chiefs in the liberal arts... The result was that in place of distaste for the Latin language came a passion to command it. In the same way, our national dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen. And so the Britons were gradually led on to the amenities that make vice agreeable – arcades, baths and sumptuous banqqypuets. They spoke of such novelties as ‘civilization’ when really they were only a feature of enslavement. 3 10/15/2009 Languages evolve • English evolved through the merging of a variety of languages : Celtic languages, Latin, Norse/Danish, Norman French, etc • Old Engg,lish, Middle Engg,lish, standard Engg,lish, National Englishes, New Englishes, creoles • Creoles evolved through the merging of languages of different families from C15: colonising languages and local languages. 4 10/15/2009 Language identity and evolution ‘The legitimate and illegitimate offspring of English’ I maintain that native Englishes, indigenized Englishes, and English pidgins and creoles have all developed by the same kinds of natural restructuring processes. Salikoko Mufwene The ecology of language evolution Cambridge University Press, 2001, 113 5 10/15/2009 Languages, power and social change variables • A language = a dialect with an army and navy • State education • Monolingualism • Democratisation • International human rights law • Free basic education as a human right • Literacy as access to the neoliberal economy • Need for a historical and global perspective 6 10/15/2009 The worldwide roots of democracy In so far as public reasoning is central to democracy …, parts of the global roots of democracy can indeed be traced back to the tradition of public discussion that received much encouragement in both India and China (and also in Japan, Korea and elsewhere), from the dia log ic comm itment t o B uddhi s t organization… The first printed book in the world with a date (corresponding to 868 CE), which was the Chinese translation of a Sanskrit treatise, the so- called ‘Diamond Sutra’ (Kumārajīva had translated it in 402 CE), carried the remarkable motivational explanation: ‘for universal free distribution’. Nobel Prize for Economics laureate, Amartya Sen, 2005 7 10/15/2009 A history of global Europeanisation and Christianisation East India Company 1600 1698, charter renewal included a ‘missionary clause’ requiring ‘the company to maintain ministers of religion on their business premises and take a chaplain in every ship of 500 tons or more.’ Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 1698 plus many denominational missionary bodies. 8 10/15/2009 Global = American In 1838 the ‘Board of Foreign Missions of the USA’ , 13 ‘colonies’, propounded ‘a belief in the manifest destiny of Anglo-Saxon culture to spread around the world’ Joel Spring, The cultural transformation of a Native American family and its tribe 1763-1995. 1996, Lawrence Erlbaum. The whole world should adopt the American system. The American system can survive in America only if it becomes a world system. President Harry Truman, 1947 cited in Pieterse, Jan N. Globalization or empire. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. 131. 9 10/15/2009 English in the British empire and colonial America English is destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French in the present age. John Adams to Congress, 1780 A class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect. Lord Macaulay, 1835 10 10/15/2009 His Majesty’s Inspector of Schools, Matthew Arnold, 1853 Whatever encouragement individuals may think it desirable to give to the preservation of the Welsh language on grounds of philological or antiquarian interest, it must be the desire of a government to render its dominions , as far as possible, homogeneous, and to break down barriers to the freest intercourse between the different parts of them. Sooner or later, the difference of language between Wales and England will probably be effaced, as has happened with the difference of language between Cornwall and the rest of England. 11 10/15/2009 Gandhiji 1908 To give millions a knowledge of English is to enslave us. The foundation that Macaulay laid of education has enslaved us. ”A half-naked fakir” 12 10/15/2009 From colonisation to an English-speaking world … the British Empire and the United States who, fortunately for the progress of mankind, happen to speak the same language and very largely think the same thoughts… Winston Churchill, 24 August 1941, after signing The Atlantic Charter with President Roosevelt 13 10/15/2009 Project for the New American Century The Cheney-WlfWolfow itz-RflddiRumsfeld doctrine The plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful. D. Armstrong in Harper’s Magazine 305, 2002. 14 10/15/2009 The neoimperial language English in Africa: an imperial language , the language of linguistic Americanization, a language of global capitalism, … creating and maintaining social divisions serving an economy dominated primarily by foreign economic interests and , secondarily , by a small aspiring African bourgeoisie. Alamin Mazrui, 2004, 30, 40 Linguistic imperialism continued, Robert Phillipson, Routledge and Orient Blackswan, 2009 15 10/15/2009 Jawaharlal Nehru, 1956 language is a unifying factor of our society and it is also a factor promoting disunity I am convinced that real progress in India can only be made through our own languages and not through a foreign language. I am anxious to prevent a new caste system bibeing perpetuate did in India - an English-knowing caste separated from the mass of our public. That will be most unfortunate.... I cannot conceive of English being the principal medium of education in India in the future. That medium has to be Hindi or some other regional language. Only then can we remain in touch with our masses and help in uniform growth. 16 10/15/2009 Ajit Mohanty 2006 In today’s India, English is the language of power, used as an indication of greater control over outcomes of social activities. […] Over the post-Independence years, English has become the single most important predictor of socio- economic mobility. […] With the globalized economy, English education widens the discrepancy between t he soc ia l c lasses. 17 10/15/2009 Globalisation: English +? The modern Third World child, among other things, is the victim of globalisation. (…) By acclaiming English as the only global language and the only chance in life, denying their mother tongues and neglecting their regional languages, schooling distances them from their culture, their family, their traditional knowledge and vocation. It enhances the distance between haves and have-nots. If Englishes supplemented and complemented different local, regional, national languages, then it would be a tower of strength. As a substitute it is debilitation. Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, 2004, 182 18 10/15/2009 The lingua divina It wasn’t until he was 18 that Kanchedia Chamaar realized that God spoke and understood English and nothing else. Because unfamiliarity with the lingua divina was a matter of intense shame at Delhi School of Economics in the 1970s, he started learning English on the sly, and continues to be consumed by the process to this day. Over a period of three years after his master’s degree, no fewer than one hundred and eight Indian firms found him unfit for gainful employment. While doing his PhD in the 1980s, he found that at Universities in the US, even those not fluent in English were treated as human beings, a dignity that not everybody seemed willing to accord him in Delhi. He has been hiding in the US ever since. Kanchediar Chamaar, 2007 19 10/15/2009 The lingua divina? English and Christ for the World United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Amity [Foundation] has a team of people witnessing at a grassroots level that Christianity is not anti-Chinese or solely western. As missionaries are still banned from China, it represents one of the most effective ways to support Christians in China through the sending of teachers of English from overseas. <www.uspg.org.uk> Wong and Canagarajah, eds., 2009 20 10/15/2009 lingua frankensteinia / diabolica? • Louis-Jean Calvet: ggpglottophagie • John Swales: lingua tyrannosaura: some languages of scholarship on the way to extinction • Tove Skutnabb-Kangas: killer languages, language murder, linguistic genocide, minority education as a crime against humanity • Amos Key, Six Nations of the Grand River, OtOntar io: littillanguages as existential 21 10/15/2009 lingua franca : pernicious, misleading, false • A pernicious, invidious term if the language in question is a first language for some people but for others a foreign language; asymmetrical. • A misleading term if the language is supposed to be neutral and disconnected from culture. • A false term for a language that is taught as a subject in general education.
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