1

“Hear no evil: monolingualism and parochialism in America policy and scholarship”

Prepared for presentation at the Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences 16 October 2009

Dr. G.G. Candler Indiana University South Bend [email protected]

Abstract

The United States has long suffered from an unfortunate inconsistency between its global position as hegemon, or perhaps „global leader, and an often very parochial citizenry. A key element of this inconsistency concerns language acquisition. The monolingualism that characterizes most Americans (indeed, most citizens of Anglophone countries) might be justifiable, as few Hoosiers, for instance, have any practical need to understand a second language in their everyday lives. Less excusably, though, this monolingualism is also evident among both policy makers and scholars, even among those with an ostensibly international focus.

Introduction

A first illustration of the point which I seek to make in this paper was reflected in a recent article published in Inside Higher Ed. Author Scott Jaschik titled the article “Should American politics be abolished (as a field)?” In reporting on debates about this at the recent meeting of the American Political Science Association, his point was essentially that “using the United States as an organizational structure, in isolation from the rest of the world, is producing flawed ideas” (Jaschik 2008). I‟ve recently (with two Brazilian co-authors) argued something similar in a forthcoming paper. After presenting data on the monolingual parochialism of American research in public affairs; Ariston Azevêdo, Renata Albernaz and I conclude “the solution within America is not more comparative research, but rather the end of the concept of comparativism, so that its parochial alternative, the Americanist wholly unaware of other experience, loses this implicit legitimacy as an acceptable scientific approach” (Candler, Azevêdo and Albernaz 2010, p. 11).

Outside of academia, a second illustration in the policy realm of the importance of language in a globalizing society can be gleaned from The 9-11 Commission Report, which sought (in its own terms) to answer the questions “How did this happen, and how can we avoid such tragedy again” (p. xv). A recurring response in the report to that question concerned the role of language, especially inadequate translation capacity, across the US intelligence apparatus (see pages 77, 128, 182, 207, and 307, as well as Conway, 2005; Economist, 2005; Ivey, 2005). This, keep in mind, was nearly forty years after the Munich Olympic massacre put, on the US policy agenda, terrorism originating in the Arab world. It has remained there after numerous subsequent 2

attacks, not least an attempted bombing of the World Trade Center Towers in 1993. The 9-11 Commission report summarized one of the four key failures that permitted the attacks as a failure of imagination (p. 339). This is no doubt true, but the problem may be a bit more fundamental, at the level of common sense rather than imagination. It needs only common sense to realize that the most modern intelligence gathering equipment in the world will be useless if the ancient human art of translation is neglected.

It is also worth noting the backgrounds of the team widely acknowledged as driving the Bush administration‟s decision to invade Iraq. Of Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams, William Luti, Stephen Hadley, and others both in the administration and among the neo-conservative foreign policy establishment, I have found no evidence that any of these had a record of open engagement with the Arab world. By open engagement with the Arab world I mean an engagement not mediated through an affinity with Israel, and perhaps best reflected by Arab language skills and so evidence of an ability to engage „the Arab street‟. And so an invasion plan was developed by a team of people with no expertise in the region and, by most accounts, that rejected the advice of those with expertise in the region. Not surprisingly, it didn‟t go well.

Finally, this lack of engagement with the rest of the world is also evident among the populace. For a particularly telling example, a year after the United States invaded and overthrew the Afghan government that harboured the terrorists responsible for the mass murders of September 11, 2001, a National Geographic survey found that only 13% of Americans aged 18-24 could locate Afghanistan on a map (National Geographic, 2002). Similarly, over two years after the US-led „coalition of the willing‟ invaded Iraq, barely 30% of Americans aged 18-24 were able to locate Iraq on a map (National Geographic, 2006). Keep in mind that opinion polls through the period continuously kept these two wars at or near the top of the list of most important issues in American politics, and the imperative to „support our troops‟ manifested itself everywhere from cheap political putdowns to cheap yellow magnetic ribbons affixed to the back of many autos. Yet the level of support for these troops did not extend to the point where people were intelligently enough engaged with these wars that they could locate them on a map.

Evidence of monolingual myopia

Beyond these polemics, this paper is a call for greater appreciation, if not mandatory adoption of, extensive foreign language requirements in Indiana universities. If this is impossible, then at least international studies programs need to adopt this. Again drawing on previous research of mine into the linguistic abilities of scholars of public administration, in a 2006 article I argued that North American monolingualism ironically functions as a sort of reverse diglossia. „Diglossia‟ refers to societies in which different varieties of a single language are used, and when the dominant variety itself is not a common dialect used by people in everyday life. The concept has also been applied to societies in which different languages serve this same function of separating the population into those who speak the dominant language, and those who don‟t. Examples include the use of French as the language of government in otherwise Arabic and Berber colonial Algeria; and the co-existence of high status Spanish, and low status Guaraní in Paraguay (see Ferguson 1959, and Fishman 1970). By „reverse diglossia‟ is meant that 3

American knowledge of only the dominant language is not a source of power, but is rather a source of weakness.

To demonstrate this the previous article (Candler 2006) looks at the language of citations in articles published in my field of public administration, in the United States, Brazil, and France. Not surprisingly, Americans cited sources in their own language far more than did either the Brazilians or the French for, as any red-blooded American knows, English is the global lingua franca. We also, I would suggest, like to see ourselves as the center of global scholarship. Everything worth knowing is published in English, and the major American journals are also the major international journals.

Table 1 Non-Portuguese languages of references in RAP (Brazil), and RFAP (France) (n = 76) RAP 0 1-5% 6-15% 16-50% 51%+ English 14 6 9 28 19 Spanish 51 8 6 8 3 French 57 8 5 5 1 Italian 73 0 3 0 0 RFAP English 39 8 5 9 3 Spanish 57 1 0 4 2 8 others 53 0 7 1 3 Source: Candler 2006, p. 550

Table 1 casts doubt on this explanation. The table presents data on the percentage of articles with references in different languages used in the Brazilian journal Revista de Administração Pública (RAP), and in the Revue Francaise d’Administration Publique (RFAP).1

As can be seen, while Brazilians have seen English language scholarship worth referencing, 33% of articles in RAP include references in Spanish, and 25% in French. Both of these figures are far higher than the US figure for total non-English references, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Language and scholarship in US public administration Non-English references Journal Total 0 1-5% 6-15% 16-50% 51%+ PAR 122 113 4 0 4 1 A&S 59 51 4 1 3 0 ARPA 38 38 0 0 0 0 JPAM 52 47 2 1 2 0 PSJ 60 55 0 1 4 0 Total 331 304 10 3 13 1 Source: Candler 2006, p. 548

1 All data presented in this paper are for articles published in the years 2002 and 2003. 4

An overwhelming percentage – 304 of 331 articles in the sample of US public affairs journals, or 92% -- have no references in a language other than English. In the 2006 article, a final blow to the „English as dominant language‟ excuse for English monolingualism in American public administration results from an analysis of languages used by French and Brazilian public administration scholars when they study societies that speak languages other than their own. This is reflected in Table 3. The table presents the number of articles on either international topics or on non-French/Portuguese speaking countries, which include references in languages other than their own and English.

Table 3 Language and scholarship in comparative/international articles in French and Brazilian public administration Non-English/French/Portuguese references Journal Total 0 1-5% 6-15% 16-50% 51%+ RAP 11 1 0 2 4 4 RFAP 21 5 0 7 3 6 Total 32 6 0 9 7 10 Source: Candler 2006, p. 551

As can be seen, while some 60% of American articles on international/comparative themes feature less than 5% references in languages other than English (Candler 2006, p. 548; table omitted from this analysis); over 80% of French and Brazilian international/comparative articles feature more than 5% references in languages other than their own and English. So given that multi-lingual Brazilian and French scholars have found work worth referencing outside of both their own, and of the dominant language; that Americans rarely cite anything not written in English would appear to be a result of monolingualism – the failure to develop linguistic research tools critical for cross-cultural research -- rather than the lack of relevant work in other languages.

This American monolingualism is also reflected in other English-language dominant countries, as reflected in Table 4. American monolingualism is topped only by that of Australians. More important, the French, Portuguese and Brazilians, for instance, have found work worth citing outside of both their own languages and English, again, reinforcing the parochialism of American scholarship in public affairs. 5

Table 4 Languages of citations in major public affairs journals Number of Number of Native Second Other articles citations language language languages (%) (%) (%) US 97 4597 98.2 -- 0.9 UK 73 3658 91.5 -- 8.5 Australia 88 2447 99.2 -- 0.8 India 102 1128 98.0 (English) 2.0 Canada (English) 31 1279 95.6 4.5 (French) 0.0 Canada (French) 21 579 53.9 45.4 (English) 0.5 France 79 1317 57.9 34.2 (English) 7.9 Philippines 53 1313 94.6 (English) 5.4 Portugal 63 1658 39.8 55.3 (English) 21.4 Brazil 72 2227 44.4 46.9 (English) 8.3 Source: Candler, Azevêdo and Albernaz 2010

The problem is not restricted to public affairs, though. Table 5 presents similar data for the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, and for the American Sociological Review.2

Table 5 Languages of citations in major sociology and political science journals Number of Number of Native Other articles citations language languages (%) (%) American Sociological Review 24 2017 99.8 0.2 American Political Science Review 32 2203 99.2 0.8 Comparative Political Studies 24 1337 87.1 12.9 Source: author, for this paper

The parochialism of ASR and APSR is especially shocking. Even the relatively polyglot results of CPS reflect a large number of non-US based researchers.

It should also be noted that the greater international engagement of Brazilian and especially French scholars can hardly be attributed to an inferiority complex among scholars in these two countries. French language nationalism is well appreciated, both in the French (Ministère de la culture et de la communication 2003) and Québécois contexts (see Gosselin 1963, and Perrone- Moisés 2001). Brazilian „administrative nationalism‟ is also well appreciated (Sodre 1961, Guerreiro Ramos 1965, Cunha 1981, Serva 1990 & 1992), and Florestan Fernandes has made the case specifically with reference to language (1990). So given that these non-Anglos are

2 For the data in Tables 1-4, all articles in the journals were analysed. For the three journals in Table 5, only a sample were analysed. For ASR these included all articles in 67/2, 67/5, 68/2, and 68/5. For APSR all articles in 96/2, 96/4, 97/2, and 97/4. For CPS all articles in 36/3, 36/6, 36/9, 35/3, 35/6, and 35/9. 6

engaging English and other non-native sources despite a residual linguistic nationalism, the comparative linguistic insularity of the American literature therefore becomes that much more striking. Keep in mind, too, that we Americans like to see ourselves as the global leader, or at least as the leader of a now somewhat vague entity known as „the free world‟, yet we feel comfortable exercising this leadership without actually being able to understand what our followers are saying. Hence „reverse diglossia‟: to the extent that few Americans are able or willing to cross language barriers and to bring the lessons of others into their discipline, the US social sciences will be collectively impoverished.

English as lingua franca?

English is the unquestioned dominant language in both „the global village‟ and in international intellectual discourse. Yet rather than a dominant elite, monolingual English speakers are impoverished by their knowledge of only this language, trapped in an intellectual provincialism of their own making.

Language may have importance beyond the facilitation of communication in an increasingly inter-related world. Survey research by Grant and Wren, for instance, found that ethnocentrism and monolingualism are highly correlated (1993: 14). On the other hand, overcoming this linguistic deficit has long been considered one of the easier challenges faced by those seeking to combat American provincialism (see Rustow 1957, Roberts 1969). Yet decades later, Boyacigiller and Adler reported that foreign language requirements were in free-fall in American universities (1991: 268), and PhD programs in organization science “fail in training researchers both to understand international issues and to develop the tools, such as foreign language skills, to conduct research” (p. 269).

The role of English as global lingua franca is also not quite what many believe. A recent Atlantic Monthly article opens by repeating the belief (no doubt of many mono-lingual Americans unable to determine otherwise) that English is now, and is only increasingly becoming, the global lingua franca. First, every day the number of native English speakers is reduced as a percentage of world population, simply due to birth rate differentials between English language and other societies. Second, although a greater percentage of the world's population will be using English as a second or third language, the quality of that proficiency is often weak, and so will not be sufficient to allow American business people, lawyers, aid workers, UN workers in the field, etc., not to mention academics, to rely on English. Indeed, one study found that as few as three percent of people in many major European countries had excellent English skills (Wallraff 2000: 56). Note too that while English may be “the de facto working language of 98 percent of German research physicists” (p. 52), for the social scientist German remains the de facto working language of German society.

Swift also notes other reasons that Americans cite for remaining monolingual, including time constraints, lack of confidence in linguistic abilities, and a belief that translators can overcome language barriers. This latter is an especially imperfect solution. The translator‟s client only hears what the translator actually translates, a problem in itself but especially acute in fast-paced, free flowing conversations with multiple participants. Translation is also limited by the 7

translator‟s competence, a problem compounded in field with a specialized vocabulary like the social sciences. Translators are also typically not there to help with travel arrangements, order food, and carry out other mundane daily tasks (Swift 2001: 39-40). Perhaps more important for the academic researcher, the translator cannot help to develop the deep knowledge of another society that comes from daily reading of newspapers, from engaging government documents and academic research published in that country‟s language, from informal social interactions, and such. Even faculty exchanges, or sabbaticals abroad, may not give the monolingual academic adequate insights into the cultural realities of a society, given the typically privileged class origins of both foreign (Rustow 1957: 533) and American (Kahlenburg 2000; Oldfield and Conant 2001) academics.

Challenges for multi-lingual social science education

Multilingual education faces a number of challenges. First, survey data suggests that as many as 12% of faculty in programs in my field in the US are professionally bilingual. Yet even in terms of scholarship, there seems to be a self-censorship operating, as the data presented above indicates that far fewer than 12% appear to bring this „professional bilingualism‟ to bear in their published work in major journals (Candler 2006, p. 547).

A first problem faced by the scholar seeking to develop linguistic skills is that language faculty in Arts and Sciences are often little help, as there is a poor match between the literary material used in many assignments, and the technical language needs of professional schools or the social sciences (Noaro 1983, p. 162-4; Morgan 2004). A second problem relates to the „time constraint‟ excuse referred to earlier. Even for the ethical internationalist who insists on investing the time in developing a working knowledge of another language, a large investment of time is required to achieve this competence. This time could otherwise be invested in more immediate research, teaching, or service activities rewarded through the academic promotion and tenure process. More important, an element of risk also applies. Learning some languages can be an investment expected to yield adequate rewards, as both grant proposals and research output on German, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and now Arabic topics are likely to remain popular. Languages like Spanish and French that offer access to multiple societies are also more likely to yield adequate returns on this investment, and less likely to result in civil or political unrest in a single country making field research impossible. But the overwhelming majority of languages are spoken in areas marginalized both by the global economy and by the at best Euro-centric (Welch and Wong 1998: 40), at worst provincial American (Boyacigiller and Adler 1991: 267- 70) social sciences. In other words, developing linguistic skills represents a risky investment for the ethical internationalist, over and above the reality that “even if prepared, international research is more difficult to conduct than its domestic counterpart, given the complexity of the multinational environment and the higher monetary and time costs involved in multi-country studies” (p. 269)

Still, faculty can develop language skills simply by auditing two or three undergraduate language classes, then making a personal commitment to regularly read substantive work in the language. Through this sort of part time but consistent commitment, working competence – the ability to 8

scan newspapers, government and academic sources for relevant material, and read these, even if laboriously -- can be obtained in a couple of years.

The question of breaking the monolingual trap of US public affairs education can also be addressed from the student side of the podium. A first problem concerns the already full curricula in university programs, and the long queue of other subjects jostling for a place on these. Language often suffers. To return to my field of public affairs as an illustration, it is worth noting that only a bare majority of US members and affiliates of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs have language requirements for their students, typically without provision for inclusion of language courses in required coursework. It is up to the student to develop this proficiency on her/his own. There is a case to be made, though, for equating language with statistics as an appropriate tool skill that students might obtain through elective courses. In the absence of this, programs are indicating that they consider counting people an appropriate research method, but talking to them (or reading what they have to write among themselves) is not.

A second problem again concerns the often poor match between university language faculty in Arts and Sciences. As a result, language instruction often features a heavy literary focus, while the professional student has both different substantive interests and a need to develop a specialized professional vocabulary.

Without searching the websites of Indiana universities to check how many have how much language requirements for students, the norm at the four places I have taught has been at best two language classes. This is probably inadequate, as students often seem to see these classes as much as a sort of „challenge‟ on an episode of Survivor than as an opportunity to learn, and (certainly speaking from experience here) two undergraduate classes alone may not be enough to develop adequate language facility so that an enjoyable engagement of another culture is possible. So more is better. The problem, though, is that higher education operates in the purest education market in America, and if the consumer wants less language, the incentives will pull universities in this direction.

Conclusion

A defender of the concept of American politics was summarized in the Jaschik article that opened this essay, arguing that “political scientists in Iceland should have a subfield on Icelandic politics and that the same principle applies to American political scientists” (Jaschik 2008). This misses the point, in a decidedly parochial American fashion. Little political research in Iceland, I will go out on a very secure limb and guess, takes place in the geographical vacuum that characterizes American research on American political science, with no awareness of trends, parallels, and lessons from other societies.

The solution offered by a political scientist referred to in the Jaschik article was for “every Americanist Ph.D. required to become fluent enough in a foreign language to do real comparative work” (Jaschik 2008). This may be overstating it a bit. The key is more that the social scientist with an interest in the United States should still be aware enough of other 9

societies to put US politics into some sort of broader context. Indeed, given the plethora of English-speaking countries around the world, a handful of which provide useful comparators for the US, it would be a start if the average Americanist was well-versed on Canada, the UK, Australia, or a similar country. But yes, the lack of real global dialogue in academic is shocking, and more American ability to engage non-English voices would help this process greatly.

To close by perhaps over-using a quote: within my field Fred Riggs argued that “not to be comparative is to be naively parochial” (1998, p. 23), and one might add that to be monolingual is to be naively comparative. As Nelson Mandela eloquently put it, “Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs” (1995, p. 84).

References:

Boyacigiller, Nakiye and Nancy Adler (1991). “The Parochial Dinosaur: Organization Science in a Global Context,” Academy of Management Review 16(2): 262-90.

Candler, G.G. (2002). “Particularism versus Universalism in the Brazilian Public Administration Literature,” Public Administration Review 62(3): 298-306.

Candler, G.G. (2006). “Lingusitic Diglossia and Parochialism in American Public Administration: The Missing Half of Guerreiro Ramos‟s Redução Sociológica‟,” Administrative Theory & Praxis 28(4): 540- 61.

Candler, G.G., Ariston Azevêdo and Renata Ovenhausen Albernaz (2010). “Toward global scholarship in public administration,” forthcoming in Public Administration.

Conway, J. (2005). “The view from the Tower of Babel: Air Force language posture for global engagement,” Air & Space Power Journal 21: p. 57-69.

Cunha, A (1981). “Educação em administração pública: retrospective e perspecticas da experiência norte-americano e reflexes sobre o caso brasileiro,” Revista de Administração Pública, 15(3): 5-30.

Economist (2005). “Know thine enemy,” May 7, p. 28.

Ferguson, Charles (1959). “Diglossia,” Word, 15: 325-40.

Fernandes, Florestan (1990). “Desafios às ciências de língua portuguesa,” Estudos Avançados 4(10): 197-9.

Fishman, Joshua (1970). Sociolinguistics, Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Gosselin, Emile (1963). “L‟administration publique dans un pays bilingue et bicultural,” Canadian Public Administration 6(4): 407-33. 10

Grant, E. Stephen and Brent Wren (1993). “Student Ethnocentrism: Its Relevance to the Globalization of Marketing Education,” Marketing Education Review 3: 10-17.

Guerreiro Ramos, Alberto (1965). A Redução Sociológica, Rio de Janeiro: ISEB.

Ivey, S. (2005). “Lack of Arabic speakers spurs U.S. to action,” Chicago Tribune, October 7, p. 12.

Jaschik, Scott (2008). “Should American politics be abolished (as a field)?” Inside Higher Ed, 29 August 2008, available online at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/08/29/ampol.

Kahlenberg, R. (2000). “Class-based affirmative action in college admissions,” Idea Brief No. 9, The Century Foundation. Available online at www.tcf.org. Accessed November 1, 2003.

Mandela, N. (1995). Long walk to freedom, Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Ministère de la culture et de la communication. Undated, accessed 2003. “La loi du 4 août 1994 et ses textes d'application,” Paris, Government of France. Accessed online at: http://www.culture.fr/culture/dglf/lois/sommaire_loi.htm.

Morgan, E. Philip (2004). Personal communication.

National Geographic (2002). “Young Americans Still in Dark on geography, Survey Shows.” NationalGeographic.com, 20 November. Available online at: http://press.nationalgeographic.com/pressroom/index

National Geographic (2006). “Young Americans Still Lack Basic Global Knowledge, National Geographic-Roper Survey Shows.” NationalGeographic.com, 2 May. Available online at: http://press.nationalgeographic.com/pressroom/index

Noara, Pierre (1983). “The Approach to Languages and International Studies in two French Graduate Schools,” European Journal of Education 18(2): 159-64.

Oldfield, K. & Conant, R. (2001). “Professors, social class, and affirmative action.”

Perrone-Moisés, Beatriz. 2001. “De que se lembram os Québécois?: processos de constitutição da identidade nacional no Québec.” Estudos Avançados CEBRAP, 59: 23-36.

Riggs, F. (1998). “Public administration in America: Why our uniqueness is exceptional and important,” Public Administration Review 58: 22-31.

Roberts, James. 1969. “Language and development Administration.” Public Administration Review, 29(3): 255-62.

11

Rustow, Dankwart. 1957. “New Horizons for Comparative Politics.” World Politics, 9(4): 530- 549.

Serva, M. 1990. „Contribuições para uma Teoria Organizacional Brasileira‟, Revista de Administração Pública, 24, 2, 10-21.

Serva, M. 1992. „A importação de metodologias administrativas no brasil – uma análise semiológica‟, Revista de Administração Pública, 26, 4, 128-44.

Sodré, N.W. 1961. A ideologia do colonialismo: seus reflexos no pensamento brasileiro. Rio de Janeiro, ISEB.

Swift, Jonathan. 2001. “Problems with Learning Foreign Languages for International Business.” Journal of European Industrial Training, 17(10): 35-42.

The 9-11 Commission Report (2004). National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Washington. Available online at: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/pdf/fullreport.pdf.

Wallraff, Barbara. 2000. “What global language?” Atlantic Monthly, November, p. 52-66.

Welch, Eric and Wilson Wong. 1998. “Public Administration in a Global Context: Bridging the Gaps of theory and Practice between Western and Non-Western Nations.” Public Administration Review, 58(1): 40-9.