By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: farooqkperogi Although I am a strong advocate for native languages, there are two major reasons...
By
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter:
farooqkperogi
Although I am a strong
advocate for native languages, there are two major reasons why I advocate the
retention of English as Nigeria’s official language and as our language of
instruction at schools. The first reason, which I have explored extensively in
previous columns, is that Nigeria, as it’s presently constituted, is held
together by English.
In an April 24, 2010 article, I wrote: “English is the linguistic glue that holds our disparate,
unnaturally evolved nation together. Although Nigeria has three dominant
languages, it also has over 400 mutually unintelligible languages. And given
the perpetual battles of supremacy between the three major languages in
Nigeria—indeed among all the languages in the country—it is practically
impossible to impose any native language as a national language. So, in more
ways than one, English is crucial to Nigeria's survival as a nation. Without
it, it will disintegrate!”
The second reason is
that English is the lingua franca of global scholarship, and we would be
shutting ourselves off from the global scholarly community if we shut out
English. This is how I captured it in my 2015 book titled “Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in aGlobal World”:
“Most importantly, [English] is the
language of scholarship and learning. The Science Citation Index, for instance,
revealed in a 1997 report that 95 percent of scholarly articles in its corpus
were written in English, even though only half of these scientific articles
came from authors whose first language is English (Garfield, 1998). Scores of universities in
Europe, Africa, and Asia are switching to English as the preferred language of
instruction.
“As Germany’s
Technical University president Wolfgang Hermann said when his university
ditched German and switched to English as the language of instruction for most
of the school’s master’s degree programs, ‘English is the lingua franca [of the]
academia and of the economy’ (The Local, 2014). His assertion has support in
the findings of a study in Germany that discovered that publishing in English
is ‘often the only way to be noticed by the international scientific community’
(The Local, 2014).
“So most academics in
the world either have to publish in English or perish in their native tongues.
In addition, it has been noted in many places that between 70 and 80 percent of
information stored in the world's computers is in English, leading a technology
writer to describe the English language as ‘the lingua franca of the wired
world’ (Bowen, 2001).”
English has moved beyond being imperialistic; it's now
hegemonic. That is, its dominance isn’t a consequence of forceful imposition;
it’s now entirely voluntary. When German, Italian, Israeli, Asian etc.
universities switched to English as their medium of instruction, they didn't do
so because they were conquered by Britain or the US.
When millions of Chinese people spend time and
resources to learn English, they do so because they want to be competitive in
the global market. When South Koreans go to the ridiculous extremes of spending
thousands of dollars to perform surgery on their tongues so they can speak
English with native-like proficiency, they do it of their own volition. (In
South Korea, professors can’t be tenured, i.e., granted permanent employment
status, if they don’t demonstrate sufficient proficiency in English).
When poor, struggling Indians spend scarce resources
to acquire proficiency in English and to “dilute” their accents so they can
approximate native-speaker oral fluency preparatory to call-center jobs, they
do so because they think it offers a passport to a better life.
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek once argued that
people who are targets of hegemonic cooptation only voluntarily agree to this
process if they believe that, in accepting it, they are giving expression to
their free subjectivity. That's effective hegemony.
If English ceases to be the receptacle of vast systems
of knowledge that it is now and goes the way of Latin, everyone would drop it
like it's hot. This isn't about "race," "inferiority,"
"superiority," or such other piteous vocabulary of the weak. It's
plain pragmatism.
This isn't about English as a language of culture, or
as a symbol of colonial domination; it's about the fact that it is the
depository of contemporary epistemic production and circulation. You shut it
out at your own expense. It is hard-nosed pragmatism to embrace its epistemic
resources both for development and for subversion.
Of course, English won't always be the language of
scholarship. Like Latin, Arabic, Greek, etc., it would wane at some point,
especially when America ceases to be the main character in the movie of world
politics and economy, which Trump's emerging fascism is helping to hasten
faster than anyone had imagined. It could be succeeded by Mandarin. Should that
happen, it would be counterproductive for any country in the world to, in the
name of nativist linguistic self-ghettoization ignore Mandarin.
As I argued two weeks ago, there is no truth to the
oft-quoted claim that no society develops on the basis of a foreign language.
On the contrary, it is misguided nativist linguistic self-isolationism that
actually hurts development.
India
as Model for Nigeria?
India often features
prominently in every conversation about language policy in Nigeria. There is
much that I like about India’s language policy and much that I wouldn’t recommend
to Nigeria.
Although India has as
many as 880 languages, it has two national official
languages: Hindi and English. It also recognizes 31 regional
languages in its constitution, and allows states to determine their own
official languages—even if the languages are not among the 31 constitutionally
recognized languages. In addition, people whose mother tongues are not
recognized as state languages may choose to speak in their native languages in
official communication, including in state parliaments—of course, with the
permission of the Speaker. But all laws at both state and federal levels must
be written in English.
It’s relatively easy
to make Hindi the national language because 45 percent of Indians speak Hindi
or its dialectal variations. No Nigerian language is spoken by up to 45 percent
of the national population, and any attempt to impose a domestic language on
others in Nigeria will be resisted. The only time people willingly accept
formal linguistic imposition without conquest is if the language serves a
personal social need—if it’s a vehicle for upward social mobility. There is
absolutely nothing to be gained in getting one's education in a domestic
foreign language with limited utility outside the country.
But linguistic minorities in India didn’t simply
accept Hindi with listless resignation. The proposal to derecognize English as
an official language and impose Hindi as the sole official language of the
country was met with violent protests, especially in the south where Hindi isn’t
widely spoken. This compelled the government to reverse the policy (see Robert
Hardgrave’s interesting 1965 essay titled, "The Riots in Tamilnadu:
Problems and Prospects of India's Language Crisis" in the Asian Survey.) Nor is Hindi's dominance
in India unchallenged (See "Hindi Not a National Language: Court" in The
Hindu of January 25, 2010).
Most importantly, though, there is a class dimension
to the language policy in India that many people seem to ignore. First,
although Hindi-language media are the most popular in the
country (the Hindi-language Dainik Jagran,
for example, is India’s largest circulation newspaper), the English-language
media set the national agenda and are more influential in shaping national
discourses than the indigenous language ones.
Second, the
upper crust of the Indian society educate their children in English (and, of
course, Hindi) and condemn others at the lower end of the society to Hindi or
other indigenous language education. This entrenches intergenerational
perpetuation of social and economic inequalities because Hindi-only educated
Indians often have limited social and economic mobility. They are not part of the great Indian revival. They are shut out of the country's exploding ICT revolution.
Children of wealthy people attend English-language
schools, climb the social ladder, travel the world, become citizens of the
world, partake in all the thrills that the English-dominated global world
offers, etc. while children of the poor are educated in indigenous languages,
vegetate in epistemic insularity, limited social mobility, and perpetual
servitude to the children of the English-educated, privileged class. That is
not the Nigeria I want for my people.
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