4^th Nitobe Symposium on Language Policy in the European Union

Vilnius, Lithuania. July 30 – August 1^st, 2005

Comments on Improving the Language Policy: A global challenge

Lydia Nyati-Ramahobo

University of Botswana

A discussion of language policy for the European Union is of great interest to the World in general and to Africa in particular. In this presentation I will focus my comments on Anglophone Africa, for obvious reasons and give a few examples from Southern African countries. Policy decisions on language in Europe have both direct and indirect implications for the language policy in Africa for two reasons:

Firstly, the current language policies in Africa are the brain child of Europe as a historical fact, and that influence continues to exist through linguistic and other development agendas. As a result, any new policy directions in Europe are likely to result in two possible scenarios – a) a trickle down effect to Africa, or b) the changes may be seen as only good and possible for Europe and not for Africa.

Secondly, Africa, like any part of the World needs to take part and be conscious of the globalization process on languages issues – even if its current language policy were not influenced by Europe. This is more so because language permeates the economic, cultural and political life of any society, and it reflects power relations and socio-cultural value systems.

For these reasons, Africa needs to at least follow the debate at an early stage, which ever of the two possible scenarios occur, we should understand how it came about and perhaps why. I would like to draw some parallels between African states and the European Union, and argue that positive policy directions in Europe need to also benefit Africa. The decolonization process resulted in African states which are linguistically and culturally diverse, and in fact, became nations of nations, rather than monolingual states. This diversity was found to be unmanageable and the solution for Africa was the use of foreign languages, which were viewed as neutral and economically viable. The European Union is a nation of nations. While initially each state was basically monolingual, foreign language teaching and other factors are slowly changing that picture. Thus these nations are opening up for multilingualism, though cannot be said to be so in the same context as those in Africa. I wish to quickly mention the fact that, while foreign language teaching, with specific reference to English, has not and does not result in the replacement of European languages, it did and continues to do so in Africa, thus presenting a sharp contrast and placing Africa in greater danger of language death, and loss of the African wisdom, value system and knowledge bank.

The parallels however, bring us to one common ground, the need to manage multilingualism and multiculturalism both in the European Union and in each African state. My wish and prediction is that the positive formula to do this in Europe, when found, could be useful in informing Africa to do better than it has in the past. While the contexts and details may not be exactly the same, the principles and justifications for preserving multilingualism may be informative at the very least and transferable at best.

What are the current scenarios with regard to language policy in Africa?

To simplify a rather complex situation, I would say that there are mainly three major scenarios operating in African. At independence, some African countries adopted the English only policy or better put, the foregin language only, depending on the language of colonization. Examples from Southern Africa include Zambia and Botswana, which taught all school subjects in English for several years after independence. As they tried teach English more efficiently and much better, the failure rates were on the rise. Later, both these countries started to include local languages as medium of instrution at lower levels. In the case of Zambia more than one local language was introduced in schools and national radio. In Botswana only one local language was added in schools, media and as the language of citizenship. Other languages spoken by over 70% of the population continue to be officially banned from education, the media and other social domains.

The second model are those countries which started off with the three-language fornulae, with mother tongue going only as far as three to four years of schooling (subtractive), and the third category are newly independent countries like South Africa with more official languages being permitted for use in schools and other social domains. This situation is an exception in language policy formulation in Africa than the rule. The common factor, however, from all three scenarios is that English continues to be the preferred language for government activities both in writing and speech, for local and international diplomacy.

Thus the dominant and hegemonic character of English which has been described in this conference is more intense in Africa, mainly because of the impact it has had on the majority of the African languages and cultures, and more importantly on the human resource development of the continent. Nivelle Alexander makes a distinction between dominance and hegemony. While the two are related, they differ in that dominance may innocently refer to the spread and use of a language by large populations of non-native speakers. It is the hegemonic character however, that is most undesirable as it reflects the attitudes and stererotypes people hold about the value of English language and English culture, and the lack of the same for other African languages and cultures. African leaders were convinced that there cannot be development without English and they became the most fluent speakers of the Queen‘s language, with received pronunciation. They also became the agents for the promotion of English and the demotion of their own languages. But Africa remains the least developed continent on Earth, with the least developed skilled labour and human capital. Learners reflected less developed analytical skill as a result of the use of an unfamiliar language for learning. The current fight against the HIV/AIDS scourge remains illusive, largely becasue of the communicative and cultural gap between the state and the ordinary citizen.

The advantages of the dominance of English must, of course, be acknowledged and so should be those of multilingualism in African languages and other international languages. The value for the use of African languages must be counter balanced with the cost of monolingualism. It is far cheaper to develop African langugages than the current loss of the human resource Africa is faced with. English has never been and cannot be neutral, becasue it is not without an agent with political and economic interests. Its dominant value remains unquestionable, but its hegemonic nature has been far too destructive to humanity. Its value should be strengthened with the value for, and protection of, World langauges including African.

Implications and conclusions

An English Only language policy for the European Union will excellerate the disapparance of African languages and cultures. It will also halt, and even reverse, the current efforts by some governments and private organisations in accomodating and protecting as many languages as possible in Africa. A multilingual-orientated language policy in Europe may provide an enabling enviroment for the development and use of African languages. All the legal, economic, cultural and lingusitic arguments presented in this symposium for the preservation and use of all European languages are equally relevant and desirable for African languages. A situation in which the African child will be mulitlingual in just about all major European languages except their own local languages would be highly regrettable. If multilingualism and multiculturalism is good for Europe it is also good for Africa and this must be reflected in the developement agenda Europe has for Africa.