African Languages as a medium of tuition at SU

This weeks blog post was to address one of two topics, and I chose the following:

Will African Language ever have a role of tuition at Stellenbosch Universtiy?

For the sake of brevity, my linguistic opinion is:

It is highly unlikely.

And in case I may have offended anyone’s feeling with this, I included a picture of two Wug’s that will represent the linguistic teams arguing on this very topic.

Before I continue, I would like to encourage any enthusiasts on the topic to peruse the following Papers:

The Language Policy For higher education

as well as the Council on higher education’s Framework (although a little outdated)

The home-grown Theo Du Plessis’ “FROM MONOLINGUAL TO BILINGUAL HIGHER EDUCATION” and then lastly, and this is my winning document, 

Andrew Foley’s paper titled “Mother tongue education in South Africa”

(a side note: this is a blog post, not a Scientific Communication module, and therefore I have adhered to Blogger’s referencing standards).

Andrew Fowley “is Professor and Head of the Department of English, and Director of the Division of Languages, in the Wits School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. “ and with this title, I expected a well informed address of the topic. I was not disappointed.

The great debate: Mother Tongue tuition

A topic that has been discussed since the Apartheid Bun exited the oven, and twenty years later, we have witnessed incredibly poor progress on the development and implementation of African Languages as languages of tuition in south Africa.

The demand for mother-tongue tuition is both reasonable and desirable - and the absolute need for it is only highlighted by the shockingly low pass rates of south African youth through academic institutions, where a sad quarter of African language learners will see their name on a Secondary Education certificate.

Yet majority of the population are African language speakers - what the problem is?

The great barrier to all African languages socializing outside the walls of academic institutions can be best described as the wall of Implementation.

See, thing is: there is truthfully an enormous amount of work that has to be done for African languages to become well-established to the point of academic quality. Foley touches on these with a pragmatic, researched and unbiased view that has certainly influenced my opinion on the topic of this post.

I’d like to address a two of his main points:

Language development

1. While African languages function excellently as mediums of conversation, interpersonal discourse and cultural practice-- at present, these languages are premature and undeveloped in terms of effectively carrying academic discourse.
2. This alone makes it a challenge to implement them as matured languages of learning and teaching, even at the most elementary Foundation Phase.
3. The most to which they have been formally developed can be attributed to their role as mechanisms of social control by the Apartheid government, according to Mr. Fowley. This has resulted in a large portion of the terminology used in these languages being inflexible, constrained and context-bound.
4. Furthermore, these diluted standardizations are often different to dialectal variations spoken by people in various communities.

How we could address this:

1. In sum: LARGE SCALE PROJECTS that address the refining and modernizing of these standardizations with the aim of enlarging the scope of these languages in academic spheres, expanding vocabularies and most importantly, building the academic context of these languages based on actual practices of the speech communities, and not on cultural norms.
2. This would be an incredibly large and time consuming undertaking project, given that there are no already established African languages with matured Academic context. Unlike with Afrikaans, which was derived largely from Dutch, a fully functioning scientific language, (along with being intensely fueled by a unified Nationalistic will, a huge allocation of resources and fully supported by a community seeking exclusivity from English at the time).

“It is only when co-ordinated and systematic linguistic research is able to draw on, and feed back into, an actual, developing discourse of practice in a mutually enhancing relationship, that a language can begin to evolve into a functioning mode of academic and scientific expression.” - Fowley

On the brighter side, there are recently developed research centers at some universities as well as courses in translation and terminography addressing orthographic standardization; lexicography and terminology development. Sadly, progress has not produced enough momentum to eventually actualize the ideal of African languages as academic ones.

Another negative: Curriculum Development

Realistically, there will not be an overnight access to academic material in African Languages. After the lengthy process of language development, which is a prerequisite fr translating any academic material from any of the three Education phases, there will need to be revised and translated  Revised National Curriculum Statement and academic content as well as teaching and learning material must be created in the language, as well as updated and maintained. While initially this sounded, to me, like a great deal of effort and incredibly resource taxing- i think it could also be an excellent opportunity for Economic growth. It would increase the demand for African language speakers in the Education and this in itself is a complicated process- one that always requires the slow progression and integration of the language from foundation phase, (in three basic subjects, Literacy, Numeracy and Life Skills).  

A great amount of resources will be needed to see this project through from it’s early, fundamental developmental stages in the three basic spheres on primary education onwards through Secondary education (with it’s greater subject variety) and finally reaching the required level of formality demanded in Tertiary education.

The Scariest Reality

Upon digesting these good points and valid others, I am left to reflect again on the role of African Languages in tertiary education once they have been fully developed. As discussed in previous posts, there is a strong relation between language and ethnicity in South Africa, and the while mother-tongue education seems to be the most ideal linguistic scenario, there remain a few underestimated and ironic implications.

“For schools seriously to implement initial mother-tongue instruction (followed later by English) means that schools would have to be divided into particular language groupings, and learners would have to attend a school offering their particular language.”

While this presently takes places informally to some extent; a formalised policy could effectively return South African schools, if only in foundation phases, to a “kind of linguistic apartheid reminiscent of a former era.”
More ironically, “Even in the unlikely event of township schools being able to offer parallel-medium education in two or more African languages, there would still effectively exist a language apartheid between the various classes within the school. It is not clear whether the current proponents of mother-tongue education in this country have thought through these matters with sufficient care.”

In my linguistic opinion, the implementation of African languages in an Academic context only benefits, empowers and uplifts the language and along with it, it’s people. Standardizing these languages will have enormous positive impacts on our socioeconomic wealth as a nation and sense of unity as a people. Simultaneously, I don’t believe Afrikaans should be stripped of it’s status as a well-established language of Academia- for that only dis-empowers Afrikaans along with the majority of people who speak it.

And also- in conclusion- Perhaps the length of time needed to develop African languages in academia is a good thing, and will allow for more inclusivity of all south African ethnic groups, minimizing racial disparities and truly fulfilling our title of “Rainbow Nation”.

Consciousness, Language, and how this shapes our thoughts and our brains.

J Mishlove on how language does not influence our thought patterns and thinking, where we acknowledge the arbitrary relationship between words and meaning, and how this allows for an invisible web upon which to relay our intended concepts. Whole, concise and complete in his arguments, Mishlove shares with us a platonic perspective by posing questions which encourage us to explore this concept on our own.

Mother Tongue > Academic Language of Instruction

"People think best in the language they understand best."

A topic for our final blog post, and one that has provided much insight (for me) into the current topic on campus of academic languages, this week in General Linguistics we found ourselves discussing

"Children should be taught in their mother tongues as long as possible."

With eye-opening information on the development of CALP (cognitive academic language proficiency) and BICS (Basic Interpersonal communication skills), for the first time I gained a deeper insight into the struggle that all non-English as a first language speakers experience when they begin their academic journey.

For the hurriedness of this post, I'm going to keep it a little more subjective than what may be appropriate in argumentative circumstances. Heads-up to all yall critiquing critters out there- this is a blog, and I'm a linguist, this means I reject all 'dem existentialist, prescriptive views- and as a result, I may write as I wish.
#LinguisticLiberty

I want you to imagine that you are seven years old again. Yes you, reading this blog, you are now incredibly pre-teen, you find yourself avoiding eye contact with any pair that may require you to tilt your chin higher than normal, in your adolescence you are shy, little, curious, enjoy playing with mud and have hopefully by now, at some point, ingested a fair amount of play dough. If not- you may need to re-evaluate the authenticity of your childhood.

It's Grade 1. Your wax crayons (oh, excuse me rich kid, are those turn-ups?) are sitting comfortably in your little denim chair-bag that houses the sum total of the three books in which you split three subjects: English Literacy, Numeracy and some variant third. On your table lays the remnants of some lunch alongside a white A4 paper with th drawing of a jovial looking spider on it, each of his eight legs connecting some numbers on the left to some numbers on the right.

The teacher begins her lesson, it's on addition. Ready?


"viðbót og frádráttur, 2 munurinn 1..."

Easy stuff right? 'Cummon- you recognize those numbers- you've got this!

"bæta 4... " 

Continues the overtly sweet and encouraging voice of your first Primary School teacher.

What's the problem folks? Never learnt how to do maths in Icelandic? 

Not to worry! You'll easily find friends who share this struggle among the 81% of black students in your age bracket who failed their National Maths Benchmark test for preliminary phase because they too didn't have the necessary foundation in the language of academic instruction to cognitively process the conceptual content of subjects such as Mathematics and Science. 

Although rudimentary, this model remains effective in illustrating the reality of what the majority of South African youth face today. As Dr. Mongie so aptly said "How are you supposed to learn new content in a language that you don't even understand yet?".

Words that struck home as I sat soon thereafter in an Afrikaans lecture myself, not battling to keep up with the work being covered given my advantageous knowledge of the language in Academic context- yet I could not help but notice the blank faces of many friends who don't share this advantage. 

In a country with eleven official languages- one can only imagine the administrative chaos that would accompany a system which catered for all the colors and cultures of our Nation. But can we truly afford to continue neglecting the vast majority of youth who simply are not equipped to compete at the same pace with their English Home Language peers who sit in the very same class as they do?

This, dear readers, is an element of privilege that all too many of us never appreciate in our lives. To be taught in ones mother tongue from the very beginning of our academic journey is to be placed at the finish line of a race our peers have not even arrived at yet. Can we afford to continue like this?
Comrades- the saddening statistics that show us a sad average of 30% of non-English as a first language speakers qualifying for University after Matric tell us that no. We cannot.

African languages need to be embraced within the South African Education system. They deserve recognition and admiration as the tools of empowerment that they truly are. "We are equating intelligence with English proficiency". But furthermore- we are contributing to the slow process of the linguistic genocide that many African languages face in competing against English as a lingua-franca of the world as well as our Nation.

Through the cultivation of these languages as fundamentals to our society, we will surely foster a new respect for, a new hope, and most importantly for this generation and for those to come- a new and imperative cultural integration among our youth of today, tomorrow, and through their hope, we have the power to touch and heal the wounds of the past.

Get dat #LinguisticPerspective

An appropriate and timely poem to open our eyes to a perspective that would otherwise be, for some, entirely inaccessible.

A Language of Oppression

 “I know that it is not the English language that hurts me, but what the oppressor do with it, how they shape it to become a territory that limits and defines, how they make it a weapon that can shame, humiliate, colonize.” -- Bell Hooks Teaching to Transgress

A deep thank you to the authors of the various blogs and papers used to formulate this post, you can read more about them through each appropriate hyperlink.

(Warning: Sorry Cath- this post might be longer than you’d like).

A topic presented to us by the legendary Lauren Mongie this week, for the first time I had to evaluate the statement: “Afrikaans is an oppressive language”.

My initial response being “a language in itself is not oppressive, but rather the system and people in Government who use the language as a means of oppression”. Among other responses, we also explored the notion that English itself is in fact, in South Africa, the forefather of oppression in its origin as the language of colonization. In this context- Afrikaans is regarded a native language, a creole of Dutch original to South Africa- Afrikaans was then a local lingua-franca.

But it would appear that English is far more openly invited as a national language than what Afrikaans is among majority of the South African youth of today. A result, perhaps, of the sensitivity and hurt that still lingers around the wounds of Apartheid, in which Afrikaans was indeed used as a method of disadvantaging and separating many native South Africans.
Combining this perspective with the current Language Policy debate at Stellenbosch, my research into this week’s blog post began.

A little bit of context:

In conversing with fellow students who have chosen to picket and protest against Afrikaans at SU, I learnt my first most valuable lesson in understanding problems and fighting for them: ‘Ya first gots to give a little context.

If South Africa were a freshly baked loaf of bread sitting on your table, you’d still be able to smell the aroma of Apartheid. Yes, that’s how recent it was (in the grand scheme of things) and no, unlike fresh bread- there is nothing pleasant about it.

It is by default that Afrikaans as a language is associated with the language and role of the white-man oppressor. In our country, it is hardly incorrect to say that today still language itself can be used as a proxy for race. (NB: race is not the same as ethnicity - #MrsMongie).

A quote by Pastora San Juan Cafferty:

“While ethnic differences are sometimes not accompanied by linguistic differences, it is rare to find two different language groups in society where speakers are not in two different ethnic groups: the ethnic group’s greatest identification then becomes it’s language”.

Given this context, it becomes easier to understand the association of Afrikaans as an oppressive language, given its role in Apartheid, and thus it becomes easier to understand the antipathy found in the students who support the #AfrikaansMustFall campaigns littered around multiple Universities who still employ Afrikaans as a language of instruction.

As a proud member of the #BornFree generation, and an enthusiastic young linguist who has very recently learnt the appreciation of all languages as capsules of culture, knowledge and unique societal values,  I spent some time truly contemplating on how we could discourage this outdated view of Afrikaans as an oppressive language held by many of my peers on campus; for it is my observation that the heated SU Language Policy debate is strongly associated with, what some feel, is the disempowerment of a lingering “Apartheid Culture” in Stellenbosch.

Oddly, I found great insight by none-other than the famous Jack Parrow in an SABC News Interview on the debate of Afrikaans as a language. Jack points out how Afrikaans itself is evolving into a more modern, with a variety of dialects that are grossly different to what is considered “Formal Afrikaans”, that which holds it’s roots up north toward the Transvaal.

Mr. Parrow points out (and I para-phrase in the following quote): “... the mentality of a society and it’s values  are held within a language, but as we modernize as a country, we find Afrikaans changing. Afrikaans is dood was a song about how the original Afrikaans has died, but how many creoles have come from it, and we have made those are own, with new societal values.”

A point that I think is ever so complimented by the language demographic poll of 2011, showing that 40% of Afrikaans speakers are white, 50% colored and 10% black: how can the majority of an "oppressive language" be spoken by those who were themselves oppressed during Apartheid? When there is now freedom to speak the language of your choice- the colored community has chosen to continue speaking Afrikaans, and culturally we can evaluate that they have grossly different cultural values to those of the Apartheid-mentality.

I do not believe Afrikaans is an oppressive language. And while the remnants of the Apartheid mentality may still linger among the Afrikaans speakers of the Apartheid generation- we must consider the progress we have made as a country in only 20 years.

Language and Cultural values are interdependent. While that means that a language perpetuates a culture- we must also acknowledge that the death of one cultural value is naturally replaced with another, more fitting, modern and appropriate value. I think this evolution of Afrikaans is greatly reflected by how the language has developed into the diversity it boasts in sub-dialects today, with artists like Die Antwoord and Bittereinder proving that Afrikaans too is a dynamic and full-bodied, independent, inclusive language too.

I’d like to end with a quote by Zina Mustafa of McGill University, in her article confronting the same topic:

“Understanding that oppression is real, and that we all play a role in perpetuating it, is the first step towards its deconstruction.”

On Language and Identity

In perhaps one of his most renowned quotes, Aristotle once said “We are what we repeatedly do”. A powerful axiom that many have applied to integrate small habits of success into their lives. But if truly we are defined by the sum total of our actions and thoughts, and these thoughts first form in the language of our minds, is the very essence of who we are not in some way affected by our language?

In a stunning and engaging discussion on the interrelatedness of Language and Identity, presented by Lauren Mongie over this past week, I (for this first time) began to grasp the intricacies of language, culture, identity and  just what the amalgamation of our sense of self truly consists of.

While this relationship is by no means new to our quest of understanding the self, I was more drawn to the ways in which our language does influence our sense of identity, as opposed to understanding identity as “something dynamic … not static, and defined rather by the collection of the various roles we play in our society”, as Mongie appropriately described.

Surely if we use our language to express these identities, the concept of such roles in itself is confined by the parameters of the language? This led me to ponder rather on the way in which language influences our identity and sense of self through its inclusion or exclusion of concepts and ideas – a topic more along the line of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theories of how our definitions of words emerge from culture & society. But if words are what we use to define roles- then surely roles too emerge from culture and society? Wittgentein continues to argue that to understand and see how language works, one must acknowledge its function in social scenarios. A cool by-product of this notion is known as “Arbitrariness” and you can read more about that here)

(A more fruity explanation on Wittgenstein's theory  here) 

A perfect example to illustrate how the exclusion of concepts found in languages that are in some ways grammatically limited compared to others can be found in the notion of the “subjunctive” in English. In a moving, eye opening Tedx Talk by Phuc Tran, we can find a connection between how a language allows us to grasp concepts and express ourselves in ways that another language does not – for it’s lack of shared Pragmatic knowledge.

I particularly enjoyed Mental Floss’s article on whether or not we would be able to think without a language. After all, if our very definition of roles are defined by words, and words themselves are defined by our conceptual understanding of their meaning, given the arbitrary nature of all human language, surely our very understanding of and identification with our roles in society is fundamentally dictated then, by the language we speak? And surely this would allow for further discovery of self through learning new languages, and with them, the beautiful real of foreign concepts which they unlock.

Perhaps it is safe to say then; that truth can be found beyond Aristotle’s definition of self through action, action which is influenced by thought, and as the above findings have so eloquently connected, thoughts and concepts arise from our ability to comprehend them- an ability tightly related to language. Even if by a few degrees of philosophical relativity, I certainly do think that our language plays a greater role in defining who we are that what we are aware of.