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:
as well as the Council on higher education’s Framework (although a little outdated)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
- 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.
- This alone makes it a challenge to implement them as matured languages of learning and teaching, even at the most elementary Foundation Phase.
- 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.
- Furthermore, these diluted standardizations are often different to dialectal variations spoken by people in various communities.
How we could address this:
- 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.
- 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.
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.”
“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”.
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.
