Language and value: Towards accepting a richer ... - CiteSeerX

Language and value: Towards accepting a richer linguistic ecology for South Africa

Laurence Wright Institute for the Study of English in Africa Rhodes University

Language policy debate is often obscured by two factors: failure to acknowledge different time-frames attending contrasting positions, and failure to recognise that ordinary people are motivated by their perceived best interests in the present. This article argues that the key to more general public acceptance of linguistic ecological diversity in South Africa is to shift the emphasis from policy development to practical language cultivation issues. Provide the requisite cultivation support, and acceptance of a revitalised future for African languages becomes more assured. It should also be understood that the modernisation of African languages in South Africa has a political dimension concerning which South African language commentators are strangely silent. This political thrust may not be entirely congruent with the concerns of those whose brief for African languages is primarily cultural or ecological – if, indeed, they are even aware of it. Finally, it needs to be recognised that language development under conditions of controlled influence, as in the civil service or schooling, is potentially achievable (with whatever difficulty), but that this must be complemented by authentic contemporary intellectual work published in African languages if the linguistic dimension of the African Renaissance is to take off.

Introduction Many of the disagreements and confusions that have characterised South African debates on language policy take their rise in failure to distinguish between short-term conditions, long-term possibilities, and the steps that can appropriately be taken to

move towards a more equitable linguistic future. Language planning and the “quickfix” outlook are incompatible. The power of English in the central economy is the major force driving the South African linguistic ecology towards a form of diglossic mutualism, in which at national level English is used for higher-order operational functions, and African languages assume important complementary roles (Wright 2003).1 Afrikaans is being edged into a supplementary niche. In an earlier paper I described some of the economic factors which collude with linguistic behaviours in the long term to maintain this form of “elite closure” at national level (Wright 2002b).2 A fully articulated language dispensation for a country as linguistically complex as South Africa has many foundational challenges to surmount before there could be credible practical grounds for attempting to dislodge English from its current role (ideological desires are a different matter). In my view, the dominance of English in the central economy is not one of the features of the linguistic terrain that will prove amenable to broad-based policy intervention, except in particular environments and under conditions of controlled influence (see below). We should, however, remember that this is today’s language predicament, not a divine fiat. At the same time, African languages (including Afrikaans)3 continue to carry traditional riches of regional and local identity, the sense of social belonging, of heritage and cultural origins for their respective speech communities, comprising the vast majority of South Africans. This language situation is markedly at odds with the intent of South African language policy (see Reagan 2001), though it is congruent with similar post-imperial language ecologies in other parts of Africa.

Colonial language ecologies are obviously an historical legacy of political and economic insurgence by imperial powers. At the micro-level of individual language behaviour, they reflect two sometimes complementary, sometimes conflicting, motives rooted in divergent judgements of value. In the literature on such situations, this divergence has often been expressed by describing the drive for English (or the international language in question) as largely instrumental, whereas loyalty to the local language has been viewed principally as associative or integrative (Gardner and Lambert 1972). In other words, the claim is that English is desired as a means to an end, principally access to jobs, goods and services in the developed economy, while the home language is cherished as the sustainer of cultural and group cohesion and personal identity. The instrumental/integrative contrast: A metonym for change We must examine the adequacy and significance of this analytical construct in the South African context. Historically, the distinction appears appropriate in situations where colonial culture is marginal to the life-worlds of indigenous people, where interaction with the invading cultural repertoire is confined to the purchase of selected consumer goods and the competition for lower-order jobs in the colonial economy. Perhaps it belongs most typically to an early stage of colonial development, where subject peoples could be interpreted as desiring certain fruits of western culture (novel entertainments, simple machinery, communication devices, means of transport, and so on, for instance) without needing to understand or participate in the mental world which produced them. Such an analysis is obviously no longer adequate, if indeed it ever was, for the following reasons.

First, it should be accepted that the distinction between integrative and instrumental motivations is never absolute. (This statement would be true even in the colonial language ecologies for which the contrast seemed most appropriate.) We should instead conceive these different kinds of language attachment falling along a continuum, with predominantly instrumental motivation at one pole and predominantly associative or affective affiliation at the other. It might also help to acknowledge that in the case of English in South Africa this continuum straddles the rural-urban divide, with instrumental motivation dominating in deep-rural areas where there is a strongly embedded home language and little exposure to English; while associative attachment to English becomes more prominent in middle-class urban areas where linguistic complexity and the dominance of English in the formal sector undermine the socioeconomic value of a single home African language (see Wright 2002b). Secondly, the affective/instrumental contrast is of a piece with static descriptions of linguistic ecologies.5 Such descriptions are of limited use in a society transforming as rapidly as is South Africa. To engage meaningfully with language planning issues, language advocacy and analysis must reflect the reality of ongoing change. While there are indeed deep rural South African communities living some approximation to a traditional language-in-ethnoculture, such communities are clearly not insulated from important aspects of modernity. Electronic communications, broadcast entertainment and news, water and electrical infrastructure, and high levels of personal mobility increasingly counterbalance geographical remoteness and ensure some effective presence of modern, largely western, mentality.

This is even more the case for urban communities in South Africa. While the African home languages can still rightly be regarded as carriers of traditional affect, it would be a serious distortion to view them as the sole repositories of emotional attachment, or social and cultural allegiance. With the transfer of power in 1994 and the broadening of democratic participation, the general level of engagement with modernity is now too far advanced in such communities for the impact of English or Afrikaans (as additional languages) to be felt as primarily instrumental. There is in addition an increasingly strong emotional need for these languages, particularly among those young South Africans whose ambitions are directed to the images and life-styles, the wealth and status, attendant on careers in the central economy.6 In addition to their instrumental value, English and Afrikaans are associated with another kind of belonging, another habitus, with the possibility of participation in a broader form of society, one differentiated both in scale, in social orientation, and in its range of economic possibility, from the small-scale communities characteristic of the regional linguistic heartlands.7 English and Afrikaans hold out the prospect of access to the rapidly transforming, abstract, geographically rootless, relatively impersonal arena of modernity. In addition, English proffers a kind of faux universality, involving international participation, interchange, awareness and prestige. If the desire for English and Afrikaans (the latter in diminishing degree) can no longer be described as merely instrumental, one could equally well impugn the adequacy of regarding the previously marginalised languages as primarily languages of culture and tradition. Beyond the interface with the central economy, and particularly considering the fact that the previously marginalised languages have regional,

geographic bases, they are obviously languages of commercial interaction, intellectual debate, and social aspiration within their own speech communities. There is also the commercial utility of multilingualism to consider both within and across speech communities: this too can hardly be analysed simply as a function of heritage and tradition. Not only are businesses in the central economy becoming increasingly aware of the competitive edge afforded by “user-friendly” linguistic practices in relation to their customers (banks and building societies have been among the leaders here), but regionally-based small and medium business enterprises soon learn that in order to interact with suppliers and financial services, a degree of proficiency in English or Afrikaans is immensely valuable, even though their customer base may speak a regional African language. However, simply pointing to such bald anachronistic shortcomings of the integrative/ instrumental contrast in relation to contemporary South African language ecology by no means deconstructs or disposes of the distinction. Quite the contrary. If the sustained process of language development envisaged by the National Language Policy and Plan takes place satisfactorily, it will be come to be recognised that, increasingly, all the official languages are gradually accreting additional ranges of both instrumental and affective value. This is to be expected. Nevertheless, though inadequate in itself, the contrast between affective and instrumental affiliation raises issues which are of fundamental importance for understanding challenges the South African language planning process has to meet. Language planning in modernising societies like South Africa must concern itself with negotiating cultural pathways – more properly “thought-ways” – between

two very different kinds of society, and between divergent systems of value. People sometimes unwittingly conflate the notion of “instrumental motivation,” meaning the grounds for wanting to acquire an additional language, with some mysterious force facilitating the pedagogical process of language acquisition. This is a misconception. No matter how strong the extrinsic need to learn a language may be, this need can of itself do no more than nerve persistent endeavor: success depends on talent and the quality of the available educational resources, human and material. An instrumental attitude to language indicates a confining of the range of human motivations for acquiring and using that language, usually to those which are strictly and rationally adapted to achieving desired extrinsic and material ends. Intrinsic, non-utilitarian satisfactions are minimised or ignored: in particular, what Csikszentmihalyi (1990: 250) calls funktionslust – “pleasure in the activity itself” – is minimal. Instrumentality: A metonym for a civilisation Instrumental motivation in fact implies not only a particular attitude to the target language, but a particular mode of engaging with the target cultural repertoire and the society which sustains it. This mode of engagement, moreover, is positively induced by the nature of that society. It is a commonplace that instrumentality – the narrowly rational adaptation of means to ends – is a defining characteristic of post-Enlightenment western society, with its roots in the European Renaissance (see Horkheimer 1974: 357; Cassirer 1951: 3-36). One could flesh-out this description by referring to the classical sociologies of Weber, Durkheim, Mannheim, Marx and Tawney. Later generations of historians and theorists like Braudel, Wallerstein, Gunder Frank and others have shown how this kind of society has, through trade and conquest, expanded

since the Renaissance to become increasingly international, supra-national and global. The civilisationist David Wilkinson has gone as far as to argue that, “Today on earth there exists only one civilization. As recently as the nineteenth century there were several independent civilizations still existing (i.e. those centered on China, Japan and the West); now there remains but one” (1995: 46).8 Development of the African languages means their modernisation, the deliberate effort to fit them for effective participation in contemporary world civilisation. Part of the public’s distrust of these languages is a suspicion that at present they do not yield plausible access to modernity. (In a splendid conflation of cultural symbolism, I was once told by a well-to-do black businessman that African languages belonged to “the ox-wagon days.”) Here we come to the heart of the issue this paper addresses. The technicist view that developing the African languages merely means equipping them to perform higher order functions in a given society is deeply inadequate, as if interventions in the lexico-grammar of the original language could somehow replicate the reverberations and background metaphysic subtended by the target language. Or, conversely, that such interventions could easily erase or muffle the Weltanschauung lingering in a consciousness shaped by the home language. This is where the insights of the later Wittgenstein and, among linguists, especially those of Whorf (as redeemed by post 1990 scholars who have lifted the falsely-imposed burden of determinism from his legacy) become useful in understanding what the true nature of cultural translation might be.9 In this instance it means taking languages which developed within successive small-scale pastoral societies and re-siting them in a

national economy and world-order shaped by an international world-view utterly foreign to traditional African thought-ways.10 There is nothing particularly novel about this process. It is an extension of the path adopted by the missionaries and early western educators in South Africa, who introduced forms of Christian universalism and the western-style education this supported, in order to “civilise” indigenous South Africans, a process which was subsequently interrupted by the aberrations of apartheid’s cynical manipulation of language, tribalism and ethnicity to keep Africans in subordinate positions.11 Post-1994 democratisation, with the allied impacts of the increasing human resource demands of the economy, necessary renovation of the South African education system and the unstoppable drive towards modernity, have combined to ensure the revival of the “civilising mission” in revised form. Indeed, given that high-quality education for all within a unitary education system was one of the key demands of the liberation struggle, it is scarcely surprising to find African languages now being drawn more fully into the modernisation process via the education system. It is equally unsurprising, and indeed rather admirable, to find the most consistent advocates of African language education on the South African scene, the Project for Alternative Education in South Africa, involved in re-assessing earlier text-books and terminological schemes completed under the old regime on behalf of Xhosa, and finding at least some of them passable and even useful (see Mahlalela-Thusi 2002). Why is this happening? On the face of it, the linguistic transformation process is being driven principally within an ideological framework of equity and redress (the linguistic human rights model), supplemented by gestures toward the notion of

language as a resource and then, playing a very subservient role, the linguistic ecology paradigm (see Ruiz 1984). These are the primary discourses informing the emerging legislative and implementation documents, and this is the range of debate within which language commentators are encouraged to take their various, closely-considered positions. However, it would be folly not to recognise that these sociolinguistic discussions, cogent and important though they seem, are in the end subordinate to and supportive of what is at root an overtly political agenda.12 The discourses of linguistic human rights and care for linguistic diversity, together with the notion of multilingualism as a resource, are indeed important in themselves, but they also form ancillary means of recruiting intellectual support for a political strategy. The political aim is to use language policy to help empower firstlanguage speakers of African languages, initially through government patronage in the civil service and parastatals, and subsequently in the economy at large. (This was, after all, the route followed so successfully by Afrikaner Nationalism.) At the root of the strategy is adherence to class-based politics. The enemy is the embourgeoisement process associated with affiliation to middle-class cosmopolitan values and mediated by English. The intended remedy is the co-option of the dispossessed, via Africanlanguage education, to create a new power-base within the developed sector of the South African polity from which the struggle for a socialist dispensation may be fought (see Ngugi 1986; Alexander 1989, 2002; Wright 1996).13 The extent to which South African language commentators are aware of this political dimension is open to debate – there is little evidence in the sociolinguistic literature. Equally dubious is the capacity of such a strategy to realise the desired

political end, given the multitude of other variables which must be thrown into the equation. Nevertheless, it has to be acknowledged that while there can be fruitful debate over where and to what extent African languages can with propriety be classified as a resource, if by this we mean an economic resource (see Wright 2003), there is no doubt whatever that they can be exploited as a political resource – South Africa’s experience under apartheid confirms this. This particular issue is something of which language commentators need to be aware, because in the process of operationalising the political strategy, the value of African languages and dialects as a cultural resource may well be travestied or side-lined. The specific strategy demands not only very selective linguistic modernisation, in order to promote the use of particular languages within the developed economy for political ends, but it implies unintended processes of linguistic marginalisation for those languages and dialects not chosen for mainstreaming (see Wright 2002a). Hard choices lie ahead – especially for those whose concern for African languages leans towards their ecological and cultural value, more than (or in addition to) the ongoing reformation of African identity within the ambit of universal modernity. It is difficult if not impossible for ordinary South Africans to judge the viability, let alone the acceptability, of the vision sustaining this programme of linguistic transformation because its fulfillment lies in the future, while the choices they face must be made in the harsh world of the present. In the interregnum, the nation is left with speculative questions. Will African language education really be of equivalent value to its patrons? How successfully can the knowledge base accessible through English be mediated for those who choose an African language as their “language of

learning and teaching”? Is there a danger of perpetuating the present pattern of underemployment for those without adequate English? 14 Are the risks of enflaming ethnic rivalries too great? Will the dialects suffer? What do the traditional guardians of the languages, the rural communities, feel about the whole project? Can it be affirmed with some assurance that eventually (how far away is “eventually”?) all eleven official languages will join the mainstream of modern intellectual discourse? These questions can only be laid to rest by the test of practice. Serious language development must become the priority, if the window of opportunity is not to close with English entrenched as the only viable option. The implementation strategies are gradually taking shape and form, but they face the ineluctable and salutary challenge of doing so in a vigorous young democracy. Each policy thrust has to earn its spurs from a populace fully conversant with the educational manipulations of the old regime, and wedded to its own immediate interests. That populace is, quite rightly, going to exact evidence of legitimate and tangible benefits from language planning before giving assent to the strategy or lending support to the political intent. To secure the policy, improvements must be felt on the ground. If language planners are alert to the challenges posed, this could have significant impact on language planning priorities over the next few years. Impact on language planning Early in the history of language planning as a separate field of interest within sociolinguistics, Jiri Neustupný (1970) made a crucial distinction between what he called the “policy approach” and the “cultivation approach” to language planning. The policy approach treats matters such as national and regional languages, standardisation,

problems of language stratification, literacy levels, orthographies, and so forth. It is normally characterised by a high level of ethno-political concern focused on underprivileged communities in modernising societies. The cultivation approach, on the other hand, addresses issues of lexical development, appropriacy of linguistic registers for specialised functions, language education issues, the identification and easing of constraints impinging on language competence, and so on. It is generally associated with modern industrial societies. The moment has arrived in the South African language planning process when the emphasis has to shift from policy development to deliberate and sustained language cultivation. That government has been pro-active in the field of language policy is evident from the growing body of enacted and draft language legislation on the books.15 As is to be expected, language cultivation issues have received less attention to date. The obvious reason for this is that the bold outline of national policy had to be devised and enacted before implementation strategies could be addressed practically. Nevertheless, language cultivation, not policy, is the arena in which the long-term impact of language planning tends to stand or fall. Policy development is challenging and onerous, but it has the advantage of taking place within a distinctive political, intellectual or academic milieu, with well-formed, convincing documents as its immediate outcome. These documents have to win favour among legislators who are generally less than well-informed about the challenges of language cultivation. Language cultivation, by contrast, has to win support from language speakers (who are also voters) in particular contexts; people who are using languages for specific purposes, and have their own immediate interests in view.

Obviously the two approaches, policy development and cultivation, are complementary, particularly in a society such as South Africa where processes of modernisation have been both racially and geographically uneven, deliberately distorted by apartheid policies. As noted above, the South African linguistic ecology stretches from vestigial remnants of the traditional homeostatic community of anthropological lore to the most rarified post-modern urban sub-cultures taking their cues from the Internet.16 It is loosely tied to regional and ethnic loyalties, which are often exploited by reactionary political forces striving to consolidate particular power bases. One of the challenges of managing the formation and implementation of South African language policy in this environment is to ensure that policy development and language cultivation progress, if not in tandem, at least in reasonable proximity, across this vast sociocultural continuum. This is not easy, and it is made less so by anxieties which cause the public to form judgments based on current predicaments, rather than longer term probabilities and possibilities. In particular, the low public profile of language cultivation efforts (and, indeed, their paucity) is a major factor interfering with the capacity of ordinary people to reach informed conclusions. They find it difficult to trust the provisions of policy, when the means for realising those provisions are weak, absent or dysfunctional in their own environments. Language cultivation sequencing Sequencing is important from both strategic and practical points of view. There is almost a necessary sequence which cultivation strategies must follow in addressing policy implementation requirements.

It would be difficult for any language policy, anywhere, to win popular support unless the government promoting it is seen to abide by its own prescriptions. This has been problematic in South Africa, where actual national and provincial government practice has tended to favor English as its operational language. Public perception has been that English is the preferred language of national communication, and the television and radio broadcasts of transactions in Parliament have done little to dispel this impression. This is where we need to distinguish carefully between short-term exigencies and long-term policy implementation. Parliamentary and civil service language practices are among those controlled environments potentially amenable to legislative authority and the supervised implementation of language policy. We can therefore expect that considerations of ideological probity and “do-ability” will lead language practices within national and provincial government to become the first intensive site (and first real test) for the implementation of transformational South African language policy. An outline of the probable route each province will attempt to follow in order to create a more equitable linguistic ecology has been established, thanks to the example set by a particular province. The Western Cape has become the provincial leader in serious preparations to realise national and provincial language policy. In cooperation with the Provincial Language Committee (which reports to the Pan-South African Language Board), the province has costed the implementation of language policy in three government departments (Health, Community Safety and Culture, Sport and Recreation), and these estimates have been extrapolated to cover the Western Cape government as a whole.17 This is one of the first concrete signs that a provincial

government is preparing to tackle its own internal (and external) language cultivation needs in a comprehensive manner. Broadly speaking, the aim of the plan is to ensure that Afrikaans, English and Xhosa – the three official languages of the province – are employed equitably within the government and in relation to the public. The cost estimates, prepared by Emzantsi Associates of East London, are commendably rooted in a detailed implementation plan. As with many comparable plans, its timetable is likely to prove unrealistic, and the costs will have to be projected forward as implementation proceeds.18 Nevertheless, the document indicates a supportable level of long-term provincial expenditure over different implementation trajectories conveying, in theory, detailed means whereby the Western Cape government could realise the aims of its language policy. Whether it has the executive capacity and stamina to follow the plan in toto remains to be seen. Let us assume, then, that this process is replicated, with appropriate changes of emphasis, for all the provinces. Such exercises would be examples of language cultivation under what was earlier referred to as “conditions of controlled influence.” Typically, a language needs analysis will document the registers, lexicon and communicative modes required within a modern bureaucratic system for each government department, and language units will be created and charged with implementing language cultivation pathways for employees using the design principles of language for specific purposes. The units will then also be responsible for policing language practices. It would be no exaggeration to say that the language modes involved will be those of abstract instrumentality, because this is the character of modern state bureaucracy. English and Afrikaans have undergone lengthy processes of

endogenous development to arrive at the capacity for servicing such large-scale communicative networks (see Halliday 2001). Routines and protocols hitherto expressed in English and Afrikaans terminology will receive a new rendering in Xhosa, Sotho, Venda, etc. It will be very much a case of fitting the language to the needs of an existing operational environment. In such development processes, which might be dubbed exercises in “shallow” cultural translation, there is typically very little thought given to the psychological and intellectual implications for the long-term character of the language, or for the cultural and spiritual rootedness of its users (to what might be termed the Whorfian considerations). The language practitioners involved naturally strive not to perpetrate barbarisms, but their eyes are on facilitating the smooth running of an existing repertoire of bureaucratic practices. If this is a criticism, it is scarcely one to be easily remedied – such is the nature of localised language modernisation. The strategy has to be directed towards assimilation, and this characteristic can be regarded as typical of most site-specific linguistic cultivation interventions. Pioneered in provincial government, this is likely to be a foretaste of similar programmes in parastatals, in local government (in reduced form), and within large, compliant, high-profile businesses and corporations. Language in education policy The next logical link in the sequence driving language transformation towards deeper engagement with society must be the “language in education policy.” Schooling is the feeder system through which the long-term future of multilingualism in South Africa must be secured, because it is the only arena in which issues of language

cultivation can be addressed at depth.19 This is also an environment subject to conditions of controlled influence, but currently one of unrivalled complexity, given the historical legacy of failing administrative systems, uneven resourcing, lack of adequate teacher-training and in-school support, and flagging motivation. Here again, it is important not to confuse passing contingencies with permanent conditions. We are looking at a long-term process, and it is vital not to reify medium-term coping strategies so that they turn into unassailable pedagogical principles. Appropriate school language policy options are notionally in place in all the provinces, though there is much groundwork still to be done in terms of educating teachers and parents about the relation between the options and the broad, evolving South African linguistic ecology. Probyn et al. (2002) and Vinjevold (1999: 213-15) indicate that, on the ground, school language policy is being sidelined by other issues. Nevertheless, it seems true to say that adequate general school language policy has been developed and is in the process of being digested by parents, educators and school governing bodies. However, when we turn to issues of language cultivation, we find a very different state of affairs. School governing bodies and parents are being forced by circumstances to consider language policy options in the light of their experience of existing school conditions, existing career options, and the current language ecology of South Africa. They are quite naturally focusing on the perceived needs of their own children in the present. This is the predicament that impels unprofitable discussion over the rival merits of English or African languages as subjects and/or languages of learning and teaching, among both teachers, parents and, let it be said, language commentators.

The latter point was illustrated marvelously in a recent issue of the journal Perspectives in Education (2002, volume 20, number 1), in which divergent findings are put forward in relation to debates over English versus African language education, multilingualism and the choice of languages of learning and teaching. Kathleen Heugh argues strongly in favor of “the mother tongue principle,” urging that its neglect or displacement by English only or English mainly strategies will disadvantage some 83% of South African learners from “poor socioeconomic backgrounds” (2002: 193). In the same issue, two articles by de Klerk and a study by Probyn et al. document the passion with which educators and parents in parts of the Eastern Cape defend their preferences for English-mainly education. On the face of it, this appears to be a contest between expert opinion and ordinary public views. Look further, however, and it becomes plain that the temporal framework of the two studies, or rather the state of educational provision assumed by them at different time periods, is the real cause of the fracas. Heugh is framing her arguments in terms of a future educational dispensation in which true multilingual education will be possible, because the enabling educational conditions have been put in place. De Klerk (2002a, 2002b) and Probyn et al.(2002), by contrast, are reporting empirical findings concerning what teachers and parents feel now; and there is at present, as nearly everyone admits, an horrendous mismatch between the possibilities implied in school language policy options, and the current ability of schools to deliver in the short term. As de Klerk points out (2002a: 13), it would be unfair to ride roughshod over parental views – that would be utterly undemocratic – but Heugh is also correct that capitulation to the more radical English only or English mainly polemics would be inimical to a clear-sighted appreciation of

the long-term issues governing an effective language in education policy for South Africa. We must avoid unprofitable debates where contingent variables are reified as permanent principles. The country is at a challenging crossroads with regard to language in education policy. The policy of supporting additive bilingualism as far up the school system as possible is built into the revised Curriculum 2005, but the protocols for principled implementation of the concept have still to be established (see Revised Implementation Plan for Language in Education Policy [Draft] 2003). The issue is complex, but no more daunting than many others the education system has to face and solve. It is not merely the provision of appropriate methodological learning support materials that needs addressing, but the establishment of effective classroom practice for language learning across the curriculum, for languages as subjects and for dealing with the language of learning and teaching question. (The worst possible outcome would be the proliferation of unprincipled code-switching in the guise of additive multilingualism.) Assuming that the principle of initial home-language literacy is accepted by educators and parents – and this surely ought to be a winnable position on pedagogical grounds, even though there is also a democratic right to reject it – there remains the challenging question of how and when to manage the introduction of the main additional language. A range of sensible strategies is available for consideration (see Macdonald (1993) and NEPI (1992) for well-considered South African examples), but the existence of attractive policy options is once again not the real issue. The upshot of assessing the choices has to be an implementation model ready to be injected into the system and supported through high-quality in-service education for teachers. Only once this is in

place and seen to be operating effectively will learners, their parents and their families be in position to take seriously the arguments of language planners. As far as the public is concerned, there is little point in trumpeting the virtues of African language education, or proclaiming the evils of language-shift towards English, still less the putative superiority of an African language as a language of learning and teaching, until faith in the education system as a whole is restored. How can parents be required to debate an enlightened language of learning and teaching policy when the school in question may be practically dysfunctional? The bottom line for South African language policy – and for the political strategy it is designed to support – is that the sociolinguistic engineers are no longer dealing with a subject people who can be cowed into accepting grandiose policy prescriptions when the reality on the ground doesn’t match up. Legislative authority supporting the implementation of multilingualism will suffice to some degree in the sheltered environment of the civil service: it will not work in the more complex, open environment of the school system unless that system delivers what it promises, namely good quality education for all, in English and in African languages.20 Fail to deliver quality, and the default position for most parents and learners will continue to be: “Put your faith in English.” African languages “in the wild” A final point, worth making because it impinges on the democratic character of language development, stems exactly from this recognition that modernisation of African languages in the school system, and especially in government bureaucracies, is language development under institutionalised conditions. School texts are a form of

mental pabulum; bureaucratic protocols a necessary substitute for thought. We cannot talk of a democratic renaissance for the previously marginalised languages until the African language movement takes off beyond the sheltered confines of deliberately planned intervention. The admirable dedication of many Afrikaans-speakers – intellectuals and ordinary people – to the development of and care for their language finds no substantial equivalent in African language communities today. Where, for example, is the intellectual counterpart of a Eugene Marais (see Rousseau 1990)? Where are the successors to Sol Plaatje, S.E.K. Mqhayi, J.J.R. Jolobe, B.W. Vilakazi, Thomas Mofolo, O.K. Matsepe, and others? – champions of the languages, in addition to being creative writers. There is great need for such “culture heroes” to fight intelligently for the African languages, to do the intellectual work. African intellectuals tend to pursue their concerns in a colonial language, French, English, Arabic, Portuguese, even Latin if one wants to go back as far as St. Augustine. Modernity finds itself only shallowly represented in African language publications, and hardly any science is prosecuted in African languages. In a society where large numbers of people are constantly negotiating and renegotiating the complex transition between tradition and modernity, between the rural and the urban, the arts, culture and scholarship form an important arena in which to forge a new habitus, a more complicated identity. The character of this new identity is rightly a matter of intense debate, in which the understandings carried by the African languages have an important part to play. Clearly, South Africa must avoid capitulating to mere antiquarian nostalgia (see Hountondji 1983; Wiredu 1980), one of the typical shortcomings of post-independence African nationalism. My own view is that, if it is

to be viable in the long term, South African identity has to engage and come to terms with the findings of international science. This would impact profoundly on the longterm development of African languages. As Sapir observed years ago, “The modern mind tends to be more and more critical and analytical in spirit, hence it must devise for itself an engine of expression which is logically defensible at every point and which tends to correspond to the rigorous spirit of modern science” (1949: 112). It is little good posing the question of South African identity as a debate between African and Western “life-styles,” norms and values, with whatever complexity this problematic opposition may be endowed, if we do not attempt to probe the root causes of these differences beyond their surface manifestations. Many of the differences are encoded in our languages, and they gesture not only towards the different modes of production historically characteristic of the two civilisations, as the Marxists cogently urge, but in the different scientific and pre-scientific modes of thought which currently inform both of them. In a rapidly modernising society like South Africa, African culture cannot be renovated or revalued or understood sympathetically without assessing it against the claims of international science, however unfamiliar or challenging this might be. And western civilisation has no room to be complacent about the character of life it offers, indeed compels, in many respects – witness the variegated and often devastating self-critiques it habitually turns on itself (for random examples, see works by Nietzsche, Habermas, and Schumacher, listed below). For science, while it has a distinct operational culture, is not a matter of feeling or not feeling “at home in the world” but of pursuing the truth – though scientists might

not always express their efforts quite in these terms. Human society is slow to take in the implications of proven scientific knowledge. Much of current scientific thinking is counter-intuitive and deeply disturbing to a whole range of traditional beliefs about the world and humanity’s place in it. Western society itself is only gradually re-shaping its belief system and culture to accommodate this knowledge. Great swathes of strange impossible superstitions on the one hand, and crass, unthinking scientism on the other still scar the outlook of many supposedly well-educated westerners. Among many ordinary Africans in South Africa, this process is in its incipient stages. It follows that there is huge scope for African-language intellectuals to explore the significance of the evolving scientific world-view from their own standpoints, mediating in African languages the extraordinary findings that are transforming the way humanity understands itself, but which are largely withheld from those who have missed tertiary education. This would be a way of renovating and re-interpreting African culture from within. Not until this happens, with all the debate and controversy it entails, will we have the rich and open linguistic ecology South Africans look for.

Notes

1.

Diglossia is Ferguson’s term from his article of 1959 (see 1996: 25-39), used to describe a situation where two varieties of a language are deployed in a community for distinct social functions. The term was elaborated by Fishman (1971: 75) to apply to different languages within a community performing formal and informal functions. My usage is an extension of Fishman’s, for in

multilingual South Africa the partner “language” is very often a suite of languages. For mutualism, see Laponce (1993: 25). 2.

How long is “the long term”? Because of the intimate relation between English and globalisation, this is an issue which may not fall effectively within the competence of national language planning. Any alternative would be subject to tricky ethno-political tensions concerning the development of an appropriate African-language lingua franca.

3.

Afrikaans is adequately developed for use as a language of instruction in tertiary education, though the broad knowledge-base available in English together with international academic publishing practice still necessitate a diglossic work environment, with Afrikaans as the junior intellectual partner in many fields.

4.

As the process of language shift proceeds, the continuum sometimes functions in reverse, urban to rural. Second-generation urbanites may have to brush up their African languages to ensure effective social communication with business colleagues, or continued contact for children with relatives living in rural areas. This is a recovery of associative linguistic affiliation.

5.

Gardner has himself warned against the dangers of the instrumental/integrative contrast being treated statically (Gardner and MacIntyre 1993: 4). Static analysis can be useful in explaining short-term behaviors (which of course may accrete as longer-term trends), but it is obviously risky to rely on such projections. For instance, Wright (2003) analyses economic aspects of the flight from African languages in terms of marginal utility theory, but the account addresses presently prevailing sociolinguistic conditions.

6.

Not to be misunderstood, I am not arguing that first language speakers of the previously marginalised languages are desirous of imbibing all the cultural baggage associated with these languages – in particular, only a small elite seems to be keen on exploring the “high culture” carried by them – but it would be equally wrong to assume that the predilection for English in particular is uninformed by a degree of affective attachment to the life-world of universal modernity, and thereby to some of its values.

7.

This account relies on investigations into social change in Africa by Monica Wilson (see for example, Wilson 1971).

8.

Wilkinson’s definition includes conflict as well as cooperation, trade, etc., as a force leading to the consolidation of global civilisation (1995: 47). His account does not deny the modifying power of cultural influences on the local character of that one civilisation.

9.

The classic account of the Whorf revival is Lee (1996).

10.

Whorf’s sense not only of each language subtending a unique thought system but of that thought system interpenetrating the language and shaping it over time is crucial to understanding the subtleties of cultural translation, as George Steiner (1975: 88-94), among others, has cogently observed.

11.

Traditional African religions in southern Africa are essentially householdcentered, and focused on the life-cycle and ancestor veneration. A few more general responsibilities – harvest rites and defense, for example – were assumed by the chief on behalf of his people as the only important gestures towards enlargement of political scale. Christian universalism opened new vistas and

new conflicts. The history of the “civilising mission” of Christianity and western education in South Africa is explored in De Kock (1996), and a most devastating account of the manipulation of ethnic identity during apartheid, showing its impact on politics in the then Ciskei Bantustan, is the anonymous piece in Vale (1989). 12.

Even strong counter-views lend credibility to a case if they substantiate the legitimacy or validity of the issues in question.

13.

The politics could prove strikingly ambiguous: successfully modernised African languages, or rather their speakers, could prove very unreliable allies in the struggle against neocolonialism, while mediocre African language education will sustain the power of English (see De Klerk 2002b: 26: “If first-language curriculums for African languages are not radically overhauled and these languages are not better resourced at schools in terms of text books etc. as a matter of urgency, the gap between the wealthy and the poor will widen”).

14.

As I write, the local newspaper headlines a story in which “car guards” – informal workers who look after vehicles parked on the street in return for a voluntary “tip” – are in danger of losing this meager form of income because new parking technology is allegedly too complex for non-English speakers to look after! (See Grocott’s Mail, 3 June 2003).

15.

For example, the Western Cape Language Committee operates within the following legislative parameters: The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (Act 108 of 1996); the Constitution of the Western Cape (Act1 of 1998); The Pan South African Language Board Act (Act 59 of 1995) and its

amendments of 1997 and 1999; The Western Cape Provincial Languages Act (Act 13 of 1998). 16.

Sjoberg (1964) tried to identify phases of evolutionary language development in relation to preliterate, preindustrial, civilised, transitional and industrialised nations. Notionally, South Africa has all these in the same polity, and the education system has to take children from very diverse backgrounds to standard, high-quality exit points in a unified system.

17.

The language in education policy costings for the Western Cape have not yet been completed (Emzantsi 2003: 1), but estimates from the three departments costed in detail have been extrapolated across all departments to give a broad idea of the cost of Provincial Government language policy as a whole. Over a five-year period, the total costs as a proportion of provincial budgetary resources are set to rise by less than 0.1% per annum, from 0.3% in 2003/04 to 0.6% in 2007/08 (Emzantsi 2003: 57).

18.

The goals are not unrealistic in theory (e.g., 50% trilingualism in government within ten years), but the number and variety of support services that have to be established and coordinated is daunting.

19.

“The language in Education Policy is crucial for the future development of the province as a multilingual society. It will restore adult and children’s respect for their own language, and should produce citizens who can speak and understand one another’s language. What adults are now struggling to achieve should become second nature to their children” (Emzantsi 2003: 9).

20.

Down the line, this is also the key to eliciting a more favorable response to multilingualism from the private sector than is currently the case.

References

Alexander, Neville. 2002. An Ordinary Country: Issues in the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press.

----------------------. 1989. Language Policy and National Unity in South Africa/Azania. Cape Town: Buchu Books.

Anon. 1989. Ethnicity and pseudo-ethnicity in the Ciskei. In Leroy Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa. London: James Currey, 395-413.

Braudel, Ferdinand. 1972-73. (1949) The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols., trans. Sian Reynolds. New York: Harper & Row.

Cassirer, Ernst. 1951. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. Fritz C.A. Koelln and James Pettegrove. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row.

de Klerk, Vivian. 2002a. Language issues in our schools: Whose voice counts? Part 1: The parents speak. Perspectives in Education 20 (1): 1-14.

de Klerk, Vivian. 2002b. Language issues in our schools: Whose voice counts? Part 2: The teachers speak. Perspectives in Education 20 (1): 15-27.

De Kock, Leon. 1996. Civilising Barbarians: Missionary Narrative and African Textual Response in Nineteenth Century South Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

Durkheim, Emile. 1949. The Division of Labor in Society, trans. George Simpson. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Emzantsi Associates. 2003. Report: Costing the Western Cape Language Policy. Cape Town: Western Cape Language Committee and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport.

Ferguson, Charles A. 1996 (1959). Diglossia. In Thom Huebner (ed.), Sociolinguistic Perspectives: Papers on Language in Society, 1959-1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 25-39.

Fishman, Joshua A. 1971. Advances in the Sociology of Language. The Hague: Mouton.

Frank, André Gunder. 1982 (1975). Capitalist Underdevelopment. Bombay: Oxford University Press.

Gardner, R. C., and Lambert, W. E. 1972. Attitudes and Motivation in SecondLanguage Learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Gardner, R. C., and MacIntyre, P. D. 1993. A student’s contribution to second language acquisition, Part II: Affective variables. Language Teaching 26: 1-11.

Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Halliday, M. A. K. 2001 (1990). New ways of meaning: The challenge to applied linguistics. In Alwin Fill and Peter Mühlhäusler (eds.), The Ecolinguistics Reader: Language, Ecology and Environment. London: Continuum, 175-202.

Horkheimer, Max. 1974 (1947). Eclipse of Reason. New York: Continuum.

Hountondji, Paulin J. 1983. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality, trans. Henri Evans. London: Hutchinson University Library for Africa.

Laponce, J. A. 1993. Do languages behave like animals? International Journal of the Sociology of Language 103: 19-30.

Lee, Penny. 1996. The Whorf Theory Complex: A Critical Reconstruction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Macdonald, Carol A. 1993. Towards a New Primary Curriculum for South Africa. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council.

Mahlalela-Thusi, Babazile, and Heugh, Kathleen. 2002. Unravelling the historical threads of mother-tongue development and use during the first period of Bantu education (1955-1975). Perspectives in Education 20(1): 241-257.

Mannheim, Karl.1951. Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning, ed. Hans Gerth and Ernest K. Bramstedt. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Marx, Karl. 1970. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. ed. Maurice Dobb. New York: International.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o. 1986. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1990 (1888). Twilight of the Idols. London: Penguin.

NEPI. 1992. Language. Report of the NEPI Research Group. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.

Neustupný, Jiri. 1970. Basic types of treatment of language problems. Linguistic Communications 1: 77-98.

Probyn, Margie et al. 2002. Minding the gaps: An investigation into language policy and practice in four Eastern Cape districts. Perspectives in Education 20(1): 29-46.

Reagan, Timothy. 2001. The promotion of linguistic diversity in multilingual settings: Policy and reality in post-apartheid South Africa. LPLP 25(1): 51-72.

Revised Implementation Plan for Language in Education Policy (Draft). Pretoria: National Department of Education.

Rousseau, Leon. 1999. (1982) The Dark Stream: The Story of Eugene Marais. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball.

Ruiz, Richard. 1984. Orientations in language planning. NABE: The Journal for the National Association for Bilingual Education 8(2): 15-34.

Sapir, Edward. 1949. Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality, ed. David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Schumacher, Ernst Friedrich. 1974. Small is Beautiful. London: Abacus.

Sjoberg, Andrée F. 1964. Writing, speech and society: Some changing relationships. Horace G. Lunt (ed.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguists. The Hague: Mouton, 892-898.

Steiner, George. 1975. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. London: Oxford University Press.

Tawney, R.H. 1938. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Vail, Leroy. 1989. The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa. London: James Currey.

*Vinjevold, Penny. 1999. Language issues in South African classrooms. In Nick Taylor and Penny Vinjevold (eds.), Getting Learning Right: Report of the President’s Education Initiative Research Project. Johannesburg: Joint Education Trust, 205-226.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press.

Weber, Max. 1992. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons. London: Routledge.

Wilkinson, David. 1995. Central civilization. In Stephen K. Sanderson (ed.), Civilizations and World Systems: Studying World-Historical Change. Walnut Creek, MA: Altamira Press, 46-74.

Wilson, Monica. 1971. Religion and the Transformation of Society: A Study in Social Change in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wiredu, Kwasi. 1980. Philosophy and an African Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig von. 1958. Philosophical Investigations 1, trans. G.E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Wright, Laurence. 2003. Language as a “resource” in South Africa: The economic life of language in a globalising society. English Academy Review 19: 2-19.

Wright, Laurence. 1996. The standardization question in Black South African English. In Vivian deKlerk (ed.), English in South Africa. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 149162.

Wright, Laurence. 2002a. “Taking language issues to the people”: Language development in context. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 20: 337-347.

Wright, Laurence. 2002b. Why English dominates the central economy: An economic perspective on “elite closure” and South African language policy. LPLP 26(2): 159177.