Why English?: Confronting the Hydra 9781783095858

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Why English?

LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS Series Editor: Dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Åbo Akademi University, Finland Consulting Advisory Board: François Grin, Université de Genève, Switzerland Kathleen Heugh, University of South Australia, Adelaide Miklós Kontra, Károli Gáspár University, Budapest Robert Phillipson, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark The series seeks to promote multilingualism as a resource, the maintenance of linguistic diversity and development of and respect for linguistic human rights worldwide through the dissemination of theoretical and empirical research. The series encourages interdisciplinary approaches to language policy, drawing on sociolinguistics, education, sociology, economics, human rights law and political science, as well as anthropology, psychology and applied language studies. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31−34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS: 13

Why English? Confronting the Hydra

Edited by Pauline Bunce, Robert Phillipson, Vaughan Rapatahana and Ruanni Tupas

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Bunce, Pauline, editor. | Phillipson, Robert, editor. | Rapatahana, Vaughan, editor. | Tupas, T. Ruanni F., editor. Why English?: Confronting the Hydra/Edited by Pauline Bunce, Robert Phillipson, Vaughan Rapatahana and Ruanni Tupas. Description: Bristol; Buffalo: Multilingual Matters, [2016] | Series: Linguistic Diversity and Language Rights: 13 | Includes bibliographical references and index. LCCN 2016004795| ISBN 9781783095841 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781783095865 (epub) | ISBN 9781783095872 (kindle) LCSH: Languages in contact. | English language–Foreign coutries. | English language– Influence on foreign languages. | English language–Political aspects. | English language– Social aspects. LCC P40.5.L38 W493 2016 | DDC 306.442/21–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn. loc.gov/2016004795 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-584-1 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. US: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2016 Pauline Bunce, Robert Phillipson, Vaughan Rapatahana, Ruanni Tupas and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services Limited. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Books Group Ltd.

Contents

Contributors

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Series Editor’s Foreword Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

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Introduction The editors

1

Part 1: Hydra at Large 1

The English Language in a Global Context: Between Expansion and Resistance Alamin Mazrui

2

Promoting English: Hydras Old and New Robert Phillipson

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3

English, Neocolonialism and Forgetting Ruanni Tupas

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4

The English Language as Naga in Indonesia Hywel Coleman

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5

Offshore Call Centre Work is Breeding a New Colonialism Mehdi Boussebaa

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23

Part 2: Hydra Mythology 6

Confronting Language Myths, Linguicism and Racism in English Language Teaching in Japan Ryuko Kubota and Tomoyo Okuda

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Mr Jones: Mi Laik Askim Yu Samting Hilary Smith

8

Must the (Western) Hydra Be Blond(e)? Performing Cultural ‘Authenticity’ in Intercultural Education Phiona Stanley

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9

Voluntary Overseas English Language Teaching: A Myopic, Altruistic Hydra Pauline Bunce

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10 English Language as ‘Fatal Gadget’ in Iceland Ari Páll Kristinsson 11 The English Hydra as Invader on the Post-Communist ‘New Periphery’ in Bulgaria Bill Templer

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12 The English Alphabet: Alpha-Best or Alpha-Beast? Pauline Bunce

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13 ‘Languages’ Tammy Ho Lai-Ming

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Part 3: Confronting the Hydra 14 Mauritian Kreol Confronts English and French Hydras Lindsey Collen and the Ledikasyon pu Travayer (LPT) team

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15 ‘Hydra Languages’ and Exclusion versus Local Languages and Community Participation in three African Countries Kathleen Heugh, Blasius Agha-ah Chiatoh and Godfrey Sentumbwe

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16 The Destruction of Nadia’s Dream: The English Language Tyrant in Pakistan’s Education System Zubeida Mustafa

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17 The (Illusory) Promise of English in India A. Giridhar Rao

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Part 4: Resistance and Cohabitation with the Hydra 18 A Personal Reflection on Chican@ Language and Identity in the US-Mexico Borderlands: The English-Language Hydra as Past and Present Imperialism Aja Y. Martinez 19 The Struggle to Raise Bilingual Children in the Belly of the English Hydra Beast: The United States of America Christof Demont-Heinrich

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20 TEFL and International Politics: A Personal Narrative Julian Edge

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21 Hungary: A Sham Fightback Against the Domination of English Miklós Kontra

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22 The English Language as a Trojan Horse within the People’s Republic of China Mobo Gao and Vaughan Rapatahana

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23 TEFL as Hydra: Rescuing Brazilian Teacher Educators from ‘Privilege’ Clarissa Menezes Jordão

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24 ‘Writing back (to the centre)’ Vaughan Rapatahana Afterword: Decentring the Hydra: Towards a more Equitable Linguistic Order Ahmed Kabel

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Contributors

Mehdi Boussebaa is an associate professor of organisation studies at the University of Bath and an international research fellow at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. His primary research investigates the institutional, linguistic and political implications of economic globalisation. [email: [email protected]] Pauline Bunce is an experienced secondary-school teacher of humanities and English as an additional language. She is a Malay speaker, and she holds a doctorate in reading education. Pauline has taught in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam and Hong Kong, as well as in remote, rural and urban Australian schools. She is the co-editor, with Vaughan Rapatahana, of English Language as Hydra: Its Impacts on Non-English Language Cultures (Multilingual Matters, 2012), and she maintains a website on the teaching of English to biscriptal students. [www.alphabetheadaches.com] Blasius Agha-ah Chiatoh holds a PhD in applied linguistics from the University of Yaounde in Cameroon. For many years, he was on the staff of the NACALCO Centre for Applied Linguistics, during which time he served as field researcher and project coordinator. Specialised in literacy, he has over the years developed a special bias for language planning, bi-multilingual education and sociolinguistics. He has also been a consultant with the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. He has published extensively, both nationally and internationally. He now lectures at the University of Buea in Cameroon. Hywel Coleman studied at the universities of Oxford, Leicester and Lancaster, and he holds the final diploma in Indonesian from the Institute of Linguists, London. He is honorary senior research fellow in the University of Leeds and a trustee of the Language & Development Conferences. He has lived and worked in Indonesia for more than 25 years. His books include Society and the Language Classroom (Cambridge), Dreams and Realities: Developing Countries and the English Language (British Council, UK) and The English Language in Francophone West Africa (British Council, Senegal). He was

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awarded an OBE for his services to education in Indonesia in 2000. [www. hywelcoleman.com] Lindsey Collen, political activist, has degrees from Wits University and the London School of Economics, and she is a novelist who has won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Africa twice. Her novels have been published in many languages, including French, German, Turkish, Dutch and Danish. She is member of the Mauritian association Ledikasyon pu Travayer (LPT – Kreol for Workers’ Education) team that contributed to writing this article. LPT won the UNESCO World Literacy Prize in 2004 and the UNESCO Linguapax Prize for 2013. [www.lalitmauritius.org] Christof Demont-Heinrich is an associate professor at the University of Denver. He has published widely on the subject of the global hegemony of English in journals such as Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, International Communication Gazette, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication and World Englishes. Demont-Heinrich believes strongly in the importance of melding theory and practice. He is raising his daughters, Alina (10) and Kyra (8), as English-German bilinguals. Julian Edge is a qualified Test of English as a Foreign Language (TESOL) teacher with an MA in language education and a PhD in applied linguistics. Between 1969 and 2011, he lived and worked in Jordan, Germany, Egypt, Singapore, Turkey, Australia and Britain, as well as making short-term educational visits to a large number of other countries. His 2011 book, The Reflexive Teacher Educator in TESOL: Roots and Wings, documents his learning over that period. [www.cooperative-development.com] Mobo Gao has certificates and degrees from Xiamen, Wales, Westminster, Cambridge and Essex universities and now holds a chair of Chinese Studies at the University of Adelaide. Gao has working experience at various universities in China, the United Kingdom and Australia and has been a visiting fellow at some of the world’s leading universities, including Oxford and Harvard. Gao’s research interests include studies of rural China, contemporary Chinese politics and culture, Chinese migration to Australia and Chinese language. His publications include four monographs and numerous book chapters and articles. One of his books, the critically acclaimed Gao Village, is a case study of the village that he came from. His latest book, The Battle of China’s Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, is a reassessment of the Mao era and the Cultural Revolution. Kathleen Heugh is a socio-applied linguist whose work has focused on language policy and planning and multilingual education in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly South Africa. She has led several small, medium

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and large-scale (countrywide and multi-country) studies of literacy, mother-tongue and multilingual education, and large-scale assessments of multilingual students. She uses multilingual pedagogy and theory in her teaching of English to international students at the University of South Australia. [http://people.unisa.edu.au/staff/Kathleen.Heugh] Tammy Ho Lai-Ming is a founding co-editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. She has edited several volumes of poetry and short fiction published in Hong Kong, including Desde Hong Kong: Poets in Conversation with Octavio Paz (Chameleon, 2014) and Love & Lust (Hong Kong Writers Circle/Inkstone Books, 2008). Her first poetry collection is Hula Hooping (Chameleon, 2015). She is assistant professor in the Department of English at Hong Kong Baptist University, where she teaches poetics, fiction and modern drama. Clarissa Menezes Jordão has a PhD in languages and literatures from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and a master’s degree from the Federal University of Parana, Brazil, where she is currently a full professor of applied linguistics and teacher education. She has developed two sabbatical researches in Canada, at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, 2009 and York University in Toronto, 2013. She has worked extensively with Brazilian teachers of English, in both initial and continuous education, and published widely in the areas of critical education and critical literacy from a postmodern and postcolonial perspective in the field of teacher education. Ahmed Kabel was born and raised in Morocco and is of both Amazigh and Arab heritage. He teaches at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. His research interests include language and education policy, linguistic and educational imperialism and the implications of decolonisation for an equitable linguistic and cultural world order. [Email: [email protected]] Miklós Kontra is professor of linguistics at Károli Gáspár University, Budapest. He is a sociolinguist and educational linguist, who has also been involved in training teachers of English in Hungary for decades. Between 1991 and 1998 he was director of the Centre for English Teacher Training at the University of Szeged, where (with considerable support from the British Council and some from the United States Information Agency) a highly innovative, teaching practice-oriented form of pre-service teacher education was created. His publications include Language: A Right and a Resource, Approaching Linguistic Human Rights, co-edited with Robert Phillipson, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Tibor Várady (Central European University Press, 1999). [Email: [email protected]]

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Ari Páll Kristinsson holds a PhD and is research professor and head of the Language Planning Department at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, Reykjavik. A major part of his publications is in the field of Icelandic language policy and planning studies. Since 1990, he was engaged in Icelandic language consultation and language planning, initially at the Icelandic Language Institute, and at the RUV Broadcasting Service. From 1996 to 2006, he was director of the Icelandic Language Institute. He is currently vice chairman of the Language Council for Icelandic Sign Language. For eight years, he was chairman of the Icelandic Place Names Committee. He was recently appointed editor of the periodical Orð og tunga (from vol. 17, 2015, onwards). Ryuko Kubota is a professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia, Canada. She has taught courses on language education and Japanese as a foreign language in the United States and Canada as well as English as a foreign language in Japan. Her research focuses on critical approaches to language education, especially on culture, race, multiculturalism and second language writing. Aja Y. Martinez holds a PhD in rhetoric, composition and the teaching of English, an MA in English and a BA in anthropology from the University of Arizona. She is assistant professor of English at Binghamton University, SUNY in New York. Her scholarship, published both nationally and internationally, focuses on the rhetorics of racism and its effects on marginalised peoples in institutional spaces. Her efforts as a teacher-scholar strive towards increasing the access, retention and participation of diverse groups in higher education. Her writing has appeared in College English, Composition Studies, Across the Disciplines and other publications. [https:// binghamton.academia.edu/AjaMartinez] Alamin Mazrui is professor of sociolinguistics and literature in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. He holds a PhD in linguistics from Stanford University with a specialisation in the political sociology of language. Over the years he has taught in universities in East Africa, West Africa and the United States. He has also served as a consultant to nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) in Africa on subjects such as language and urbanisation, and language and the law. A member of the international advisory board of Human Rights Watch, the Committee on Academic Freedom in Africa and, until recently, the board of directors of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, he has a special interest in human rights and civil liberties and has written policy reports on these subjects. In addition to his scholarly books and essays, Alamin Mazrui is a published Swahili poet and playwright.

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Zubeida Mustafa is an award-winning journalist based in Karachi, Pakistan, who worked from 1975 to 2008 as an assistant editor with Dawn, Pakistan’s most prestigious English-language newspaper. Since her retirement she has been writing a column for the paper, which she archives in her blog, www.zubeidamustafa.com. Mustafa researches and writes extensively on social issues, especially education (including language), health, population, empowerment of women and children’s rights. She has written/edited a number of books, the latest being The Tyranny of Language in Education: The Problem and its Solution (revised and expanded edition, Oxford University Press, 2015). Tomoyo Okuda is a doctoral student in the Department of Language and Literacy Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. After she received her master’s degree in TESOL from Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan, she taught English at Japanese secondary schools before pursuing her doctoral studies in Canada. Her research interests include second language writing, writing centre studies, globalisation and education, internationalisation of higher education and language policy. Robert Phillipson has degrees from Cambridge, Leeds and Amsterdam universities. He is a professor emeritus at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. He worked for the British Council in Algeria, Yugoslavia and the United Kingdom from 1964 to 1973. His books on language learning, linguistic imperialism, multilingual education, linguistic human rights, linguistic imperialism and language policy have been published in 12 countries. He was awarded the UNESCO Linguapax Prize in 2010. [www.cbs.dk/en/staff/rpibc] A. Giridhar Rao worked on science fiction for his PhD (University of Hyderabad, India). This led him to explore the egalitarian possibilities of Esperanto. This further opened up areas of linguistic diversity, linguistic human rights, language policy and politics and multilingual education. He currently teaches courses on these topics at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, India. He publishes in Esperanto and English. His blog (in English) on these themes is at http://bolii.blogspot.com. Vaughan Rapatahana has qualifications from six universities. He has homes in Aotearoa New Zealand, Hong Kong and the Philippines and has worked in TEFL across the Pacific and Asia, as well as in the Middle East. He has been published widely internationally as a poet, novelist, poetry resource creator, critic, reviewer and expert on the works of the English writer, Colin Wilson. His first languages are Māori and English, while his multi-ethnic family has Tagalog and Cantonese as their own first tongues.

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Godfrey Sentumbwe has degrees from Makerere and the Open (UK) universities and postgraduate certificates from the Open University of Tanzania and Leeds Metropolitan University. He has previously worked as a school teacher in Ugandan secondary schools and as an adult literacy instructor of refugee communities from South Sudan, Rwanda, Somalia and Democratic Republic of Congo who have settled in Uganda. He has supported the Ugandan government and several international NGOs in designing and implementing formal and non-formal basic education programmes in marginalised communities since 2001. He is currently the head of programmes in the Ugandan NGO, Literacy and Adult Basic Education. Hilary Smith has a PhD in linguistics and is an honorary teaching and research fellow at Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand. She was an English teacher for two years at Ialibu High School in Papua New Guinea and has taught in Tonga and Lao People’s Democratic Republic as well as carrying out numerous short-term projects in Asia and the South Pacific. She is current national president of Teachers of English as a Second Language Aotearoa New Zealand (TESOLANZ − Te Rō pū Kaiwhakaako Reo Ingarihi ki Iwi Reo Kē) and former national chair of Volunteer Service Abroad (VSA − Te Tū ao Tā wā hi). [www.systemetrics.co.nz] Phiona Stanley has several degrees, including a PhD, from Edinburgh, Sydney and Monash universities. She is a senior lecturer in education at UNSW Australia in Sydney. She has worked in TESOL in Peru, Poland, Qatar, China, the United Kingdom and Australia, as a teacher, CELTA trainer, director of studies, academic operations manager and editor. Her research focuses on intercultural competence in educational contexts, particularly language education, and she is currently working on a book for Routledge on backpackers learning Spanish and interculturality in Latin America. [https://education.arts.unsw.edu.au/about-us/people/phiona-stanley/] Bill Templer is a Chicago-born applied linguist with research interests in English language teaching, radical critical pedagogy and minority studies. Bill is a deputy chief editor with the Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies (www.jceps.com). He has taught at universities in the United States, Ireland, Germany, Iran, Nepal, Israel/Palestine, Bulgaria, Laos, Thailand and Malaysia, and has long been based as a researcher and translator in eastern Bulgaria. Ruanni Tupas is an assistant professor at the English Language and Literature Academic Group of the National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore. Prior to his NIE position, he was senior lecturer at the Centre for English Language Communication of the National University of

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Singapore where he taught for 10 years from 2002 to 2012. He was the 2009 Andrew Gonzalez Distinguished Professorial Chair in Linguistics and Language Education, awarded by the Linguistic Society of the Philippines, which recently has also elevated him to honorary membership. His edited book, (Re)making Society: Language, Discourse and Identity in the Philippines (University of the Philippines Press, 2007), was a Philippine National Book Awards finalist. He has recently co-edited a volume with Peter Sercombe, Language Education and Nation-Building: Assimilation and Shift in Southeast Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and has another sole-edited volume, Unequal Englishes: The Politics of Englishes Today (Palgrave Macmillan).

Series Editor’s Foreword Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

In this series, we welcome a second collection of chapters on the theme of the English Language as Hydra (Rapatahana & Bunce, 2012), in which the worldwide trade in English-language teaching, testing and publishing is likened to the monstrous, multi-headed Hydra of Greek mythology. It should be noted from the outset that the editors and contributors do not seek to denigrate the English language per se. Far from it. Their targets are the agencies that peddle this language subtractively, at the direct expense of other languages, and thereby serve to denigrate the core identities of the people who speak them. The chapters in this book consistently advocate a considered, and respectful, mother-tongue-based multilingual approach to language education – all language should be taught additively so that especially children’s linguistic repertoire grows − and a wider recognition of a diversity of languages. In the Foreword I have space to take up just a couple of themes reflected in many of the Hydra chapters that follow (their summaries are in the Introduction). First, a framework. Robert Phillipson and I have for decades analysed a trio of interconnected concepts − stigmatisation, glorification and rationalisation: Maintenance of a linguistic hierarchy typically involves a pattern of stigmatisation of dominated languages (mere ‘dialects’, ‘vernaculars’, ‘patois’), glorification of the dominant language (its superior clarity, richer vocabulary) and rationalisation of the relationship between the languages, always to the benefit of the dominant one (access to the superior culture and ‘progress’). (Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 2013: 500) The same trio of concepts has also been applied to the speakers of the hierarchised languages and their competence in the languages, especially the dominant ones. Many of the chapters in this book show examples of all this. One theme is ‘helping’, which many chapters expose. Marianne Gronemeyer (1992) analysed the concept in her article ‘Helping’ (1992) so profoundly that I have been unable to use the concept ‘helping’ for over 20 years. In order to ‘help’, the helper has to construct the ‘helpee’ (the victim in need of the helper’s help) as helpless. Clarissa Jordão writes in this volume about teacher educators (TEs) in Brazil who portrayed

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the teachers of English ‘as unknowing subjects that needed our help to become “full” selves’. When becoming aware of this hierarchisation (through stigmatisation), the TEs, including Jordão herself, therefore needed to ‘unlearn our privileges as TEs, positioned as the knowing selves in charge of rescuing teachers from ignorance and malpractice’. The TEs had to ‘share the discomfort in the awareness of our positioning as saviours of the teachers, as responsible for “rescuing” those that do not need rescuing … Our genuine disposition to help teachers could be expressing a desire to colonise them, positioning ourselves as some sort of “second-level Hydras”.’ In fact, as Gronemeyer shows, the ‘helpers’ are the ones who benefit in several ways, not only through positioning themselves higher up in the power hierarchies and working to maintain that position, but also through preventing the ‘helpees’ from both seeing themselves and becoming strong agents in their own lives. Becoming strong agents might enable the helpees to start questioning the unequal power relationships that are reproducing them as powerless and in need of ‘help’. Similarly, in Ruanni Tupas’s chapter (this volume, p. 55), In the school’s Student Handbook, for example, speaking in the vernacular is listed alongside other types of ‘misconduct’, namely: (1) littering, (2) using chain accessories for males, and (3) speaking bad words inside the campus (Geronimo, 2013). In other words, echoing earlier discourses on the mother tongues or the Philippine ‘dialects’, this present-day aversion to speaking in the vernacular regards local languages as undesirable, inferior and filthy, and their speakers backward, disobedient and undesirable. The ‘helping’ ideology rationalises the exploitative relationship between ‘helpers’ (British Council, Western publishers, voluntary English-language teachers, aid donors, etc.) and the ‘helpees’ so that what the former are doing always seems to be of ‘benefit’ to the latter; ‘Western do-gooders’, as Antje-Katrin Menk (2000) has called them. The rationalisation notion posits that monolingualism (in English) is normal, desirable, sufficient and inevitable and that striving towards this or at least towards a good competence in English at the cost of other languages, subtractively, is ‘for the child’s own good’. The English Hydra − and other Hydras – are positioned as ‘helping’, through myths; among them the ‘economic benefit myth’. Kubota and Okuda’s (this volume, p. 79) statement about Japan could probably be generalised to most of the countries discussed in this book: the percentage of people in Japan who actually need English competence is small … there is no empirical evidence that proves the link between

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English proficiency and income (Grin, 2003) … The belief that English competence is always linked to economic benefit is clearly a myth. The ideologies about English and other Hydras also include glorifying dominant English-speaking mainstream monolingual societies, often stigmatising parents and children who want to become or stay bilingual/ multilingual. Parents are questioned about this choice and blamed by organisations and even some researchers who claim that parents are doing a disservice to their children and constraining their social mobility (see May, 2014 for counterarguments). Sometimes, the conflict between monolingual and multilingual upbringing can lead to the courtroom, as in the United States where a Spanish-speaking mother was threatened with the removal of her child unless she spoke only English to the child, including at home.1 The conflict between the monolingual and bilingual ideologies may also be within the family; parents disagreeing on children’s monolingual or bilingual upbringing. Christof Demont-Heinrich’s deeply moving and courageous chapter (this volume) describes consequences of this, including a divorce and a psychological breakdown, both also stigmatised by many mainstream ideologies. Writing about them in a scholarly article can also give rise to a hegemonic resistance to this kind of appeal to raw, individual human experience as ‘legitimate’, especially in the academic realm, where the ‘rational’ is artificially separated from the ‘emotional’ and the former valorised at the expense of the latter. Moving back to states where English is not a native language of many, it is also claimed that competence in English ‘helps’ everybody economically. It is convenient for the corporate and other élites to support this claim and to also make employers believe that they need to demand English competence from all of their employees, when, in fact, in most of the work in most countries, a knowledge of the local and regional language/s is what is needed. The prestige that some competence in English and other Hydras gives is an imagery that should be questioned and is being questioned throughout this book. The second theme I want to touch upon here is historicide and linguicide as prerequisites for each other. Many of the languages that the English Hydra is now devouring have a very long history of use, some also for literacy, but this knowledge is often made invisible. It has to be re(dis)covered (Heugh, 2009). Fighting what he calls ‘historical amnesia’, Tupas writes (this volume), ‘our struggle for power is a struggle for memory. We can design our own future only if we take control of our own past.’ (p. 56). Andrea Bear Nicholas, a Maliseet history scholar and indigenous activist in Canada, gives dozens of examples of ‘official’ history’s omissions, distortions and outright misinformation about what the colonisers did (and continue to do) to indigenous people/s. She calls this historicide and connects it with linguicide − linguistic genocide. The search for an accurate history of the

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misdeeds of the colonisers, and of indigenous resistance against them, presupposes that the conveniently ‘forgotten’ facts can be recovered − and this is ‘one of the most poignant reasons for maintaining Indigenous languages’, she writes. Many indigenous stories about the resistance often only exist in indigenous languages. ‘There can be no history of a people only in the language of the coloniser’ (Bear Nicholas, 2003). ‘We are mentally colonialised and alienated from our cultures if all we know is in English,’ Tariq Rahman from Pakistan stated in 2002. All four writers are not only presenting a plea for the voice of the subaltern to be heard in their own languages but stating the very necessity of it for recovering the truths for a ‘decolonisation of the mind’ (Ngũgĩ, 1987). Both English and non-English Hydras prevent this. The two largest peoples in Europe without a state, the Kurds2 and the Roma, are still invisibilised to the extent that the very existence of their languages has been/is denied: Kyuchukov, a Muslim Rom linguist, established a program in Primary School Education and Romani Language at Veliko Turnovo University in 2004 to train teachers for Romani. The program was perfunctorily shut down in 2010 by the Sofia Education Ministry, which argued that ‘all the applicants are Roma only’, and they ‘study a language which does not really exist’ (Kyuchukov, 2013: xi). (quoted by Bill Templer, this volume, p. 138) Aja Martinez relates the Arizona 2010 bill banning from Arizona K-12 public education ‘courses designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group’. This could prevent telling minorities about their own history, that is, it is an attempt at historicide. But the law continues: ‘with the exception of courses … of the Holocaust or any other instance of genocide, or the historical oppression of a particular group of people based on ethnicity, race, or class’ (emphasis added). Robert Dunbar, a human-rights lawyer, and I have shown that most of the various kinds of subtractive education that articles in this book outline can be described as linguistic genocide (linguicide) from a sociological, psychological, educational and linguistic point of view (Skutnabb-Kangas & Dunbar, 2010). This means that all history of indigenous and minority education describes linguistic genocide − and could thus be taught in Arizona. Therefore, preventing further linguistic genocide in education could also prevent historicide. In addition, public education courses in most countries are of course ‘designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group’, namely the dominant group. Philippe Leymarie (2015: 8) writes about Africa: The European education system, which builds an élite but acts as a ‘cultural defoliating agent’ (according to Burkina Faso historian Joseph

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Ki-Zerbo), exists alongside secondary, primary and Koranic schools for the urban and rural lower classes. This growing, culturally and educationally defoliating system, which builds on the glorification of the English Hydra and the stigmatisation of other languages and systems, is thoroughly exposed and analysed in this book; its irrationality laid bare. Resistance against it is described, and alternatives are suggested. Why English? There is, indeed, huge irony in the fact that this collection is written in English and published in the United Kingdom. Such is the power of the global publishing industry and the pervasiveness of English-language hegemony that this critique needs to emanate from within its very realm. May the knowledge in this book change attitudes, and actions.

Notes (1) (2)

See http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/30/us/mother-scolded-by-judge-for-speakingin-spanish.html and follow-ups. For Kurdish, see Fernandes (2012) and his many books.

References Bear Nicholas, A. (2003) Linguicide and historicide in Canada. Paper given at Presence of the Past: The Third National Conference on Teaching, Learning and Communicating the History of Canada. Fernandes, D. (2012) Modernity and the linguistic genocide of Kurds in Turkey. In J. Sheyholislami, A. Hassanpour and T. Skutnabb-Kangas (eds) The Kurdish Linguistic Landscape: Vitality, Linguicide and Resistance (pp. 75−97). International Journal of the Sociology of Language 217. Gronemeyer, M. (1992) Helping. In W. Sachs (ed.) Development Dictionary. A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London and New Jersey: Zed Books. See http://www. citizens-international.org/ci2012/http:/www.citizens-international.org/ci2012/ wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Development-Dictionary.pdf. Heugh, K. (2009) Literacy and bi/multilingual education in Africa: Recovering collective memory and knowledge. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas, R. Phillipson, A.K. Mohanty and M. Panda (eds) Social Justice through Multilingual Education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Kyuchukov, H. (2013) Foreword. In M. Miskovic (ed.) Roma Education in Europe. Practices, Policies and Politics. London and New York: Routledge. Leymarie, P. (2015) Africa’s own UN. Le Monde Diplomatique, English edition, March. May, S. (2014) Contesting public monolingualism and diglossia: Rethinking political theory and language policy for a multilingual world. Language Policy 13 (3), DOI 10.1007/s10993-014-9327-x. Menk, A.-K. (2000) Equality of opportunity and assimilation. Or: We German left-wing do-gooders and minority language rights. In R. Phillipson (ed.) Rights to Language: Equity, Power and Dducation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ng ũg ĩ wa Thiong’o (1987) Decolonising the Mind. The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey Ltd.

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Phillipson, R. and Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2013) Linguistic imperialism and endangered languages. In T.K. Bhatia and W.C. Ritchie (eds) The Handbook of Bilingualism and Multilingualism (2nd edn). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Rahman, T. (2002) Private email; confirmed by email 5 March 2015. Rapatahana, V. and Bunce, P. (eds) (2012) English Language as Hydra. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. and Dunbar, R. (2010) Indigenous children’s education as linguistic genocide and a crime against humanity? A global view. Gáldu Čála. Journal of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights 1. Guovdageaidnu/ Kautokeino: Galdu, Resource Centre for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. See http://www.tove-skutnabb-kangas.org/en/ most_recent_books.html.

Introduction1 Pauline Bunce, Robert Phillipson, Vaughan Rapatahana and Ruanni Tupas

This book documents some of the key functions that English is serving in our rapidly changing world. It explores the use and misuse of English in a wide range of contexts and aims to reveal how the dominance of English is being confronted and counteracted. We explore the language policy challenges for governments and for education systems at all levels and show how changing the roles played by English can lead to greater success in education for a larger proportion of children. More ethical and socially just language policies can improve social cohesion. The Hydra image from ancient Greek mythology represents a rampaging monster that developed two heads for every head that was chopped off. It is, therefore, appropriate for capturing the diversity of ways and means by which English threatens the vitality and diversity of other languages and cultures in the modern world. We need to stress that we are not against English. There is nothing intrinsically evil about English or any other language. It is, of course, not the language itself that is responsible for its expansion, but the users of the language, the uses to which it is put and the structural and ideological forces behind it. The expansion of English continues to impact in negative ways on other languages and their cultures. While English opens the doors of privilege and access for some, often the few, the way many countries organise education systems means that the English door is closed for the many. What we are concerned with is attempting to ensure that the harmful consequences of how English is used or taught − its many Hydra heads − are counteracted. Language policy needs to change in more equitable directions. This will generally entail greater respect for languages other than English, and education that builds on the languages and cultures that children know. Research shows that this leads to higher levels of competence in English. We want English to take its place alongside people’s first languages and other relevant local languages. Unfortunately, and tragically, this is not what is happening in many learning contexts around the world. English is fast replacing local languages, even in domains such as the home. Initial literacy skills need to be taught in a language familiar to the child, so as to provide a foundation for all later language learning. Local languages need 1

2

Why English?

to be respected and strengthened, with English taught additively, as opposed to subtractively, that is, at the expense of other languages, as is currently often the case. The research evidence on mother-tongue based multilingual education is unambiguous: it leads to improved educational results, including a better command of English. Policymakers who are committed to education systems that serve the needs of all rather than a privileged élite need to rethink educational policy. They need to constantly ask ‘why English?’. They need to urgently address the reasons why current policies are often inappropriate and to confront the English-language Hydra. Whereas the first Hydra book consisted mainly of chapters of conventional academic style and length, this second book is different. It is written for a wide readership, for the general reader with an interest in English worldwide, as well as people who are professionally concerned with education, ‘global’ English or the broader issues of language policy and social justice. The contributions range widely in their written style. There are auto-ethnographical accounts of the deep impacts that language policies can have on people’s lives, several poems, an open letter and journalistic articles, as well as those that follow a more academic style. All contributions are concise texts that cite only the most central sources. There is worldwide coverage, because there are similar problems with the roles being played by English on all continents. This book has persuasive examples of the realities of change agents and new language policies.

Box 1 The first Hydra book: English Language as Hydra: Its Impacts on Non-English Language Cultures (Rapatahana & Bunce, 2012) This anthology contains scholarly articles on the role of English in many parts of the world, each with their distinct historical trajectories and cultural traits. In each context, the advance of English has had devastating consequences for other languages and cultures. The introduction to the book stresses how English, like other dominant Hydra languages, spreads in insidious, pervasive and destructive ways that are complex and contradictory. However, there is often resistance and opposition to its power. The Hydra image in different contexts captures the diversity of the ways in which English has functioned, as bully, juggernaut, nemesis, malchemy (negative alchemy), governess, auntie, siren, unnerving border-crosser, criminal and intruder. What is generally perceived as the success of English has been achieved through the voracious Hydra consigning other languages to the graveyard. (Continued)

Introduction

3

Box 1 (Continued) Eminent Kenyan author Ng ũg ĩ wa Thiong’o’s opening article in the book signals his conviction that languages ought to serve as bridges rather than monsters. Muhammad Haji Salleh from Malaysia, whose Coda concludes the book, went through a similar educational experience to Ng ũg ĩ in colonial education. What is significant for both these creative writers is that they became sophisticated performers in English − each of their texts is vivid and original − but they have also written extensively in a local language, Gĩkũyũ and Malay (Bahasa Melayu), so as to reach a different reading public and to demonstrate how these languages can thrive. Alternatives to the violence of the Hydra do exist. In both countries there has been a transition to government by locals, but with English remaining in place and still voracious. Other chapters explore countries where European settlers and the English language have remained in power: Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In each of them, local languages are, or, until recently, have been imperilled. Australia also continues to have a Hydra-like impact in the Republic of Nauru and on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. The threatening role of English is also captured in the analysis of current developments in Hong Kong, Brunei, Singapore, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, in each of which the issues, challenges and features of the Hydra differ. Two very different contexts that can be seen as part of an informal American empire are also covered: in Latin America, English has had a rather mixed reception, whereas in Korea, colonised by the Japanese for several decades, and since 1945 under a capacious US umbrella, there is a frenzy to learn English. Each of the chapters clearly documents the interlocking of English with power. The authors are deeply involved in working for change, so as to achieve more just and diverse societies in which the languages and cultures that have been victims of the English Hydra can flourish.2

The Global Context One of the shocking features of many of the chapters in our new book, like the earlier one, is the way an uncritical acceptance of English is linked to an equally uncritical hostility to, and a devaluing of, other languages. This typically occurs when English is equated with modernity, progress and consumerism, whereas other languages are not. Belief in monolingualism as a necessary feature of prosperous, modern societies was perniciously exported worldwide by imperial European powers. Its legacy is clearly visible throughout this book. The expansion in the use and learning of English is unique in the history of imperial languages. English is impacting cultures worldwide more profoundly than other languages have done because of its

4

Why English?

links with the global economy, the media, the internet, youth culture and seductive advertising. It is, therefore, logical that people are keen to become proficient in English. They are, however, often unaware of the implications of inappropriate education policies. Likewise, educational policymakers in many countries also appear to be unaware of the implications of their language policies. The book documents how misleading and invalid much of the faith in English is and why different policies are needed. Multilingualism is widespread worldwide and is increasingly necessary in the modern world. It heightens one’s awareness of linguistic and cultural difference. It strengthens one’s insight into a diversity of cultures and one’s capacity to act with intercultural sensitivity. There is a vast literature on how multilingual education can be organised, building on its success in many contexts. Mother-tongue-based multilingual education is recommended by UNESCO, with an explanation of the rationale for this approach.3 It is important that politicians and educational policymakers understand how additional, additive language learning works and how it can be facilitated.4 It is a cardinal principle of bilingual education that both languages are used as a medium of instruction over several years of learning, with a progression from a second language being taught initially as a subject to a later role as a medium for other subjects. The pedagogy for English language teaching (ELT) that evolved in the United Kingdom and United States from the 1950s onwards, and was exported worldwide, was dogmatic, behaviourist, monolingual and misguided (Phillipson). Native speakerism, the false belief that the ideal teacher of English is a native speaker, is a common misunderstanding that ignores the evidence of successful foreign-language learning in many countries. The claim that people from the United Kingdom and United States, in which multilingualism and the learning of foreign languages have not been high national priorities or widespread, can somehow sort out the language-learning problems in education in Asia, Africa or Latin America is a deceptive claim that is underpinned by politically and commercially driven opportunism. This can be seen in several chapters of this book. Employing monolinguals as consultants, teachers or teacher trainers on language-related projects worldwide tends to serve the interest of the countries of origin only: it is indefensible and illegitimate, 5 as even the evidence of its own practitioners shows.6 The ‘expertise’ often operates within a narrow paradigm, neoliberal, consumerist and detached from local educational realities. It ignores the value of translation in foreignlanguage learning, the relevance of bilingual dictionaries and of detailed contrastive analysis of the differences between the languages of the learners and English. Native speakerism fraudulently legitimates a hierarchy of political dominance. It continues linguistic imperialism (Phillipson, 1992) in new forms, does not contribute to social justice and interlocks with racist

Introduction

5

and linguicist hierarchies. It also places huge financial demands on the communities where native speakers are employed, while causing resentment from local teachers of English who, all too often, are treated as subservient to messiah-like native speakers. The expansion of English worldwide initially built on its consolidation in the British Isles. English was the key language of the British Empire, and it is a key instrument of current American global dominance. The drive to expand the use and learning of English worldwide is ‘about delivering benefit to the UK’, as a British policy document frankly states.7 This continues the work of an adviser to the British Council, David Graddol, whose booklet English Next (2006) presents the ‘World English Project’ with the following recommendations for the entire world: – – – – – –

Introduce English in primary schools at Grade 1. Start teaching some subjects through the medium of English in secondary school. Use technology to bypass problems with teacher proficiency. Teach most subjects at university through English. Hire English-speaking staff from other countries to create international centres of excellence. Attract foreign students through teaching through English.

This ‘project’ aims at strengthening British commercial and educational interests and institutions and has been energetically promoted by the British Council in the key ‘markets’ of India, China and Brazil. British Council consultants are increasingly involved in projects worldwide to strengthen English learning, often without any familiarity with the culture or language or educational traditions of the countries where they are ‘advising’. The primary mechanism for privileging English in the major political functions of state administration and in education is linguicism. Linguicism entails the structural favouring of English over other languages – the devotion of more resources to English than to other languages – and a belief that this policy is justified and necessary.8 Linguicism operates in similar ways to racism and sexism and interlocks with class hierarchies. We refrain from using the label postcolonial for countries that were formerly colonies, because these countries are still connected with the former colonial powers through a wide range of economic, political, military and cultural links, as well as language. They have been integrated into the capitalist world order, most of them in a subordinate, neocolonial position. Their international links are typically serviced by English, which is also the primary language of the United Nations (UN), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (no longer a ‘North Atlantic’ body, but now in action worldwide). It is, therefore, more apt to refer to English as a

6

Why English?

neocolonial or neo-imperial language because of its role in sustaining broad links between the former colonial powers and their past colonies. English is also the dominant language of regional supranational organisations: the European Union (EU), the African Union, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and countless other bodies. There is considerable variation in the language policies of such institutions. The reality of English as a language of power internationally and as a language of the nationally dominant class in many countries explains the massive role ascribed to English at all levels of the education system worldwide. This has pernicious consequences for a large section of the world’s population, which the chapters of this book, as well as its predecessor publication, explain.

The Ubiquitous English Hydra The book has chapters that critique what is being done by people and organisations from the Hydra-generating ‘English-speaking’ countries, in policies that are often driven by the quest for economic and political profit. The book provides detailed examples of this, in advice to foreign countries provided by the World Bank (Mazrui) and British Council experts (Phillipson); in call centres that are creating a novel form of colonialism (Boussebaa); in a continued and ignorant valuing of the romanised alphabet above other written scripts (Bunce); in a film that uncritically portrays Europeans as saviours of the culturally inferior (Smith), underpinned by racism that can also be seen in how English as a school subject operates in Japan (Kubota and Okuda), and in the way that English teaching for foreigners in Australia capitalises on false stereotypes of the country and its white population rather than on social realities: appropriate pedagogy is sacrificed both in Australia and when such native speakers teach in China (Stanley). Underqualified, volunteer native-speaking teachers of English are part of the problem of English worldwide rather than an effective solution to educational problems and community needs (Bunce). The ‘aid’ or ‘development’ industry now has young people from the rich world ‘helping’ others by going off to ‘teach’ English, a form of ‘aid’ tourism. The nativespeaker English-teaching industry is firmly entrenched, but it often fails to adequately screen the qualifications of its recruits. In the ‘aid’ industry, populations are cast as being in need of ‘help’: their lifestyles and languages are stigmatised as deficient, un-modern and irrelevant for cognitive or communicative ‘development’. Such attitudes characterised colonial ideology, the European ‘civilising mission’, and have been carried over into its successor, the development business since 1945, which assesses everything in economic terms. Neoliberalism consolidates values and policies that the UN has embraced throughout its existence. The English Hydra has, like the Emperor in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, great pretentions, but it has no clothes, merely naked ambition.

Introduction

7

Box 2 English − the word of God? The conquest by Europeans of peoples in other continents has involved a Christianising mission since 1513, a task that continues to this day in many Western missionary organisations.9 Some English teachers see themselves as responding to a divine call and believe ‘Global English is becoming the lingua franca of Christianity in the twenty-first century.’10 Nine hundred higher education institutions in the United States have a faith commitment. The Summer Institute of Linguistics, based in Arlington, Texas, oversees 5,000 missionaries worldwide, using a wide range of languages as a springboard for Christian belief, often in parallel with expanding American military, political and economic interests. This mission has now penetrated the English language teaching profession, often covertly. The ethics of the symbiosis of a profession and a religious faith, ‘global’ English teaching and universalising Christianity, has been subjected to scrutiny by those who are critical of this way of misusing the teaching of English.11 Missionaries, despite good intentions, often function as useful neoimperial activists. An underlying factor is that a substantial section of the US population apparently believes that ‘English (and the teaching of English) was not simply a language (or teaching of a language), but it was a language that best carried the word of God’: this is supposed to legitimate proselytising, American wars for ‘democracy’ and the ideology of manifest destiny.12 The true believers in English and Christianity are convinced that their mission is of divine inspiration and should ‘inspire the whole profession’ of English teaching worldwide in a rerun of the white man’s burden.13 This Hydra has a Christian cross around its many necks, one that is often hidden from public view. We have nothing against the values or practice of Christianity or any other religious faith. What we are against is its misuse in any educational or intercultural context and its linkage to the imposition of English. Other chapters reveal the injustice of Hydra-perpetuating governments of former colonies that have retained the linguistic hierarchies that they inherited from earlier times. This involves concealing both the violence and the resistance of the colonial past in the Philippines and Singapore (Tupas) and education systems that continue to serve the interests of the élite ‘haves’ at the expense of the many ‘have-nots’, the majority world. English-medium schooling is a panacea for the few and a disaster for the rest in Pakistan and India (Mustafa; Rao), though valiant efforts in these countries are moving towards putting education onto a more relevant and effective multilingual footing. The regional government of Odisha, India,

8

Why English?

is committed to using ‘tribal’ languages as the medium of instruction, a praiseworthy innovation.14 There are Hydra-inviting policies in other countries, operating through an overemphasis on English with harmful consequences in both Indonesia (Coleman) and Iceland (Kristinsson); in a fluctuating, ambivalent policy in the People’s Republic of China (Gao and Rapatahana); and in the incompetent handling of language policy issues in nationalist Hungary (Kontra). The quality of school education and universities in postcommunist Bulgaria has sunk dramatically, for which the current ‘solution’ is expensive education through the medium of English for a new élite with stronger links to the United States than to local concerns (Templer). The chapters on Bulgaria and Hungary, both member states of the EU that is committed to strengthening multilingualism, show that language policy, including the role assigned to English, is not being handled in an informed way. By contrast, in the five Nordic countries − Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden − a great deal of effort has gone into elaborating commitments to maintaining the vitality of national languages while simultaneously ensuring that the education system produces high levels of competence in international languages, which primarily means English.15 Institutions in the higher education sector and the corporate world are expected to implement policies that generate both types of linguistic competence. The goal is to ensure that the use of English for a range of functions internationally and nationally is in balance with the vitality and unifying role of national languages. This means addressing the threats posed by the Hydra, not eliminating the beast, but confronting and taming it. The book contains plenty of evidence of Hydra resistance and confrontation. The supremacy of two former colonial languages, French and English, is being challenged through an official endorsement of the introduction of creole in Mauritius, though initially only as a subject: this achievement is a result of decades of work by a local nongovernmental organisation (Collen et al.); Chican@ language and identity in the United States are acquiring more space and academic voice (Martinez); confronting US monolingualism through substantial efforts to establish bilingualism in the family is a massively uphill existential struggle (Demont-Heinrich); a British monolingual, doctrinaire ELT approach is being replaced by a locally generated one in Brazil (Jordão); more reflection on the inadequacy of British ELT is being triggered in the United Kingdom (Edge); the tyranny of English in Pakistani and Indian education is being unmasked and alternatives explored (Mustafa; Rao); the Chinese state is acting to curb the influence of English and to restrict its importance in education (Gao and Rapatahana); there is also a shift towards increased use of local languages in multilingual education in different regions of Africa (Heugh et al.). There are also indications that a reduction in the use of English as a medium of instruction in Ghana and Tanzania may be on the way, but

Introduction

9

fundamental change requires both long-term preparation and a major shift in attitudes to local languages, two tasks that few governments have been able to implement. Each African study identifies multiple Hydras (two European languages in Cameroon, English and Swahili in Uganda, English and Amharic in Ethiopia) with different histories of the entrenchment of English in each country. In each case, the Hydras have been challenged through the bottom-up mobilisation of local language support and community participation. This has often proved successful. The decentralisation of language policy decisions has led to more local involvement, with educational and commercial benefits. However, these changes are up against new Hydra forces that may block this effort to create greater social justice. The usual suspects are élite interest in strengthening English, Western ‘expert’ advice and ignorance about why mother-tongue-medium education can lead to greater success in general education and multilingual competence. Western publishers energetically promote their school textbooks, and have even been fined for resorting to bribery in three east African countries and banned from tendering for World Bank projects for three years.16 Corruption is two-sided.

Box 3 Respect for languages The constitution of Indonesia specifies that the country’s many languages should be ‘respected’, but this noble ideal has been counteracted by an education policy that has strengthened Indonesian and marginalised other languages. The Constitutional Treaty of the EU likewise requires that its linguistic diversity should be ‘respected’.17 However, respect is an imprecise concept: anyone wishing to plead for it in either a national court (for instance, a complaint about the absence of a language in state education) or a European court (for instance, inequality in how the 24 official languages of the 28 member states are used in EU institutions) would not win a case. There is no accountability. As regards criminal proceedings, the right to understand what one is being accused of is established in international law. The right to information, interpretation and translation of good quality when relevant has been endorsed in a EU directive that all member states are supposed to follow.18 As a case in Indonesia reported in this volume (Coleman) indicates, a serious miscarriage of justice can occur if the accused are deprived of this right. This definitely occurs in Europe too, when an accused is falsely assumed to be proficient in a Hydra language. (Continued)

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Why English?

Box 3 (Continued) Minority languages are at risk in many parts of the world. The EU is endorsing measures aimed at reducing this risk. A Resolution of the European Parliament on 11 September 2013 regarding endangered European languages and linguistic diversity in the EU was adopted by a 92% majority. The Resolution in Article 1 Calls on the European Union and the Member States to be more attentive to the extreme threat that many European languages, classified as endangered languages, are experiencing, and to commit wholeheartedly to the protection and promotion of the unique diversity of the Union’s linguistic and cultural heritage by deploying ambitious proactive revitalisation policies for the languages concerned and by dedicating a reasonable budget to this aim; Recommends that these policies should also aim at developing a broader consciousness among EU citizens of the linguistic and cultural richness these communities represent; Encourages Member States to produce action plans for the promotion of endangered languages based on shared good practices which are already available within a number of language communities in Europe. The Resolution is a lengthy document that articulates the need for action. What is needed worldwide is to go beyond resolutions and engage in activities that strengthen linguistic diversity and combat Hydras, and not least the English-language Hydra, wherever they are encountered. In EU institutions there are 24 official languages that, in law and in principle, have equal rights, but French was earlier primus inter pares, and progressively English has become the default language for many key functions due to the market forces behind it. The chapters on China and Indonesia make it clear that there are competing Hydras here also, with English eating away at the dominant national languages, Mandarin Chinese and Bahasa Indonesia, and these languages devouring other languages in their extensive territories. The threatening image in Indonesia is a voracious naga, a serpent or snake − an image that is widespread in Hindu and Buddhist mythology. These processes are in conflict with the explicit language policy commitments in each country. Respect for local languages means that New Zealand recognises three official languages, te reo Mā ori (Māori language), Aotearoa New Zealand sign language and English. The fact that te reo Mā ori has legal status means

Introduction

11

that the implementation of this endangered language can be and is being enforced. The Hydra can be confronted.

Which English? The way English is being appropriated in Europe has similarities with what took place in the former British Empire. For local purposes, English has been adapted and transformed so that it reflects local cultures and local ways of using English. Histories and fiction written by the subaltern give voice to the colonised and their experience, both in English and in local languages − the empire can ‘write back’ (Ho; Rapatahana). There is considerable diversity and local distinctiveness in ‘new’ Englishes, especially in speech, which has been well documented in studies that celebrate their local anchoring. On the other hand, English has invariably remained at the pinnacle of a hierarchy of languages in these countries, whereas this is not the case in the five Nordic countries, even if competence in English generally has high prestige there. While diversity is relevant locally, following local norms, there is a need for intelligibility when English is used externally, internationally. This requires a strong degree of compatibility with the standardisation that is an essential feature of the written language and of formal international spoken discourse. The history of dictionaries of English reflects the consolidation of the language in national and international power. British English was first codified in Samuel Johnson’s dictionary of 1755. The Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1884, the heyday of British imperialism and worldwide expansion. The names of the Webster dictionaries in the United States reflect the transition from a language being forged to form American national identity to a language accompanying global expansion. The American Dictionary of the English Language of 1828 became in 1890 Webster’s International Dictionary, while Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, 1981, aims at meeting the needs of the ‘whole modern English-speaking world’. This reflects the shift from the local and national to the imperial. Recent decades have seen the publication of several dictionaries of Australian English and New Zealand English. These are unlikely to be used much outside their countries of origin. British and American dictionaries, by contrast, are significant pillars upholding the interests and economies of their countries of origin worldwide. An insistence on standard English gives the Hydra a powerful destructive thrust. In some Asian contexts, including Hong Kong, Korea and Japan, there is also a strong preference for ‘authentic’ British or American teachers. This applies to their physical appearance (white) as well as speech, which should preferably be a middle-class form, without strong regional marking. British independent schools such as Dulwich College, Harrow and

12

Why English?

Marlborough are now using this kind of Anglo-preference to expand their current reach into the Asian student market by opening branch campuses in the region (Sheng, 2012). Another means by which an insistence on standard Anglo-American norms is reinforced is via academic journals, since native-speaker academic competence is expected by the gatekeepers who screen submissions. It is more demanding for non-natives to produce texts that enable them to leap over this gate to international publication. There is also the real danger that the prestige and impact of publishing in English means that established languages of scientific publication are being progressively eliminated by English and ultimately killed off, and that other languages might never develop into languages for scientific communication for local purposes. This occurs when the English Hydra functions as a ‘tyrannosaurus rex’ gobbling up other languages.19 Yet another way in which the dominance of English is being consolidated has been revealed in a study of the principles undergirding Google Translate. This operates with English as the pivot language when translating between any two languages.20 This has the consequence that the cultural and linguistic patterns of American English are insidiously incorporated into other languages. English is the default language, the conduit through which ideas in all other languages are digitally filtered. Literal translation and idiomatic English metaphors trigger crude errors: French il pleut des cordes (it is pouring, i.e. there’s heavy rain) becomes incomprehensible in Italian as piove cani e gatti, via the English ‘it is raining cats and dogs.’ The author of this study concludes, ‘English linguistic imperialism has much more subtle effects than approaches that study of “the war of languages” would make one appreciate. The fact that there is a single pivot language leads to a language-unique logic being introduced that is incompatible with other, specific ways of thinking.’ This covert expansion of English thought patterns reinforces the more visible ways in which linguistic borrowing from English is incorporated into other languages, as a result of English being a leading international language. The Polish-Australian linguist Anna Wierzbicka, in Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default Language (2014), makes a strong case for challenging the role that English plays in academic research and the unanalysed assumption that it functions in a culturally neutral way, rather than as ‘a bearer of a particular culture and inhabitant of a particular conceptual and cultural universe’.21 This phenomenon is also evident in the conceptual language that is used in the International Baccalaureate curriculum that is now widely used in the booming business of ‘international schools’. This risk of English expanding in indefensible, imperialist ways is not confined to what happens in academia or general education. It is intrinsic to processes that serve to integrate particular communities (states or

Introduction

13

professions), how particular interest groups (finance capital, corporations, media and educational activities and products) are connected in the world system and in the implementation of immigration policies (Copeland, 2010). The trend towards the creation of the impression of a global culture through production for global markets has substantial local effects. There are push and pull factors behind all such processes, supply and demand flows and the emergence of increased hybridity as a result, alongside an increased use of English. The EU’s institutions are serviced by the most elaborate translation and interpretation services in the world. This is necessary because its laws override national laws. The vast majority of texts for consideration as directives, European laws and policy statements on a huge range of topics are initially drafted in English. This reduces other languages to a subordinate role as languages into which English is translated, which consolidates the hegemony of English. English is monopolising space that earlier was occupied or shared with other languages; languages with very different histories, cosmologies and legal systems. English has an even more monopolistic status in ASEAN, which is modelled on the EU, for which English is the sole language.

Box 4 The impact of English in regional collaboration Anecdotal observation indicates that official discussions between Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia are conducted in English rather than Bahasa. Some officials even scorn their own language as being ‘too imprecise’. Social interaction at such gatherings will be in Bahasa between Malays, and English when other ethnic groups are present. English is seen and used as a seemingly ‘non-political, non-ethnically based’ language in countries with a wide variety of mother tongues. When two educated Malaysians meet, there is invariably some negotiation of choice of language. Ethnic minority individuals will often ‘get in first’ with English, which strengthens their social status. This all serves to consolidate the hegemony of English. In inter-Nordic communication, native speakers of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian have tended to speak their mother tongues, on the assumption that the three languages are understood by all. The Finns, speakers of a Finno-Ugric language, were the odd ones out, but even mother-tongue Finnish speakers often had a good command of the second national language, Swedish. The drift over the past two decades has been into English of varying quality. This signifies a massive loss of intercultural understanding, of deep familiarity with the culture and thought patterns of neighbouring countries.

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Why English?

A further head of the Hydra is English language testing. The examinations that are designed to assess whether candidates are proficient enough in English to undertake higher education studies in English are now colossal commercial empires with US variants (the TOEFL test), British/Australian ones (IELTS) and others joining the market (Pearson). These tests are taken, at considerable personal expense, by several million young people each year, and ever more each year, because of the prestige of studying through the medium of English. This is a further prime component in the domination of Anglo-American standardised English and its cultural universe internationally. There is considerable dialectal and sociolectal variation within ‘Englishspeaking’ countries, but this diversity is absent in formal tests that are based on ‘standard’ English. Resistance to this norm can be seen in this volume in a narrative from the Unites States (Martinez). To resist racism − here white supremacy curricular content and a ban on the cultural past of mestizo Mexican Americans − Martinez opts for a style that conforms more to her multiple ethnic origins rather than standard American English and its normative conventions. Her experience of succeeding in being able to identify with Chican@ literature in academia was important for confirming the justice of her having existentially and intellectually confronted the multiple-headed Hydra – the English language, American white culture and a rigidly stratified society along racial, cultural and linguistic parameters. There is analogous resistance in poems inspired by M ā ori cosmology and traditional song-poetry (Rapatahana). When users of English from different parts of the world communicate, the language they use also varies considerably. It is influenced by the cultural and linguistic background and repertoire of the speakers in question. Receptive competence – understanding of the written or spoken word – is generally vastly greater than productive competence, depending on exposure and experience and on the target norms that are aimed at in an education system. There may be a less stringent need for grammatical and phonetic precision, depending on the context and degree of interactive collaboration required in the relevant communicative situation, its degree of formality and communicative purpose. The organisation of the teaching and learning of English should, therefore, aim not at producing poor copies of native speakers of English but at producing proficient users of English as a second or foreign language, who can adapt their language according to culturally relevant needs. Ironically, even today, such localised Englishes are consistently subsumed by the monster Hydra head of standardised English.

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Labels for English Some key labels attached to English need to be clarified, since they tend to be used in a confusing range of ways. English is definitely the national language of countries that are described as ‘English-speaking’, but this label obscures the reality that the United Kingdom and settler countries (Ireland, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) are all multilingual, with some surviving languages that predate colonisation and others of more recent immigration. Our reference to Hydra-generating countries is valid in that it has been an explicit policy of corporate interests in the United Kingdom and United States since the 1930s to promote the learning and use of English so as to consolidate British and American interests worldwide and to strengthen their control of the capitalist system. The first Anglo-American conference on ‘The use of English as a world language’ took place in New York in 1934, funded by the Carnegie Foundation. This industry has been in constant expansion since the 1950s, promoting national interests.22 The British Council promotes British interests through an expansion of the use of English; the United States and Australia operate by similar means, both nationally and worldwide. English is often called an international language, which is logical when it is used in international organisations and in transnational business (alongside many other languages), but as many of the chapters in this book document – in Asia (India, Pakistan) and Africa (Cameroon, Mauritius, Uganda) – English serves national rather than international purposes domestically, in education and key sectors of political and economic life. When policymakers in such countries insist on giving English pride of place in education because of its importance for ‘international’ purposes, the role of English in maintaining the privileges of an élite tends to be obscured. For the vast majority of people in most countries worldwide, what is needed primarily is local languages for local purposes. The Chinese have rather belatedly come to appreciate this reality after decades with an overemphasis on English. On the other hand, the strength of the economies of China, Japan and Korea, like continental European countries, is in large measure due to national languages being the medium of instruction in these countries. It is also quite common to describe English as functioning as a lingua franca, a term that originally referred to a limited, hybrid trading language that was not a national language linked to a particular country or culture. Lingua franca is a loose term that is open to several interpretations. As the chapters on Hungary, Iceland and Japan show vividly, the expansion in the use of English in these countries is seen as constituting a possible threat to national languages because of its use in commerce, academia and popular culture. To describe English as a lingua franca here would be misleading. English impacts such countries because it is a driving

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Why English?

force in the neoliberalism that has intensified the integration of the global economy over the past 30 years. English might be more accurately labelled a lingua economica (the dominant language of global finance and investment, of many large transnational corporations), a lingua bellica (the language of military aggression and the armaments industry), a lingua academica (the dominant language of scholarship), a lingua cultura (the language of Hollywood, the international media, McDonaldisation, influencing cultural and social norms worldwide), so as to highlight the particular ways in which English functions, like other dominant languages. 23 English was, in fact, a lingua frankensteinia when most of the languages of the indigenous peoples of North America and Australia were deliberately killed off, as one dimension of the assault on their land and cultures – the Hydra let loose. Casually referring to English as a lingua franca may serve to obscure how and why English is expanding worldwide and whose interests this process is serving.

Concluding Remarks: English for a More Hopeful Future It may seem curious to focus on English, on language policy, when our world is plagued by environmental challenges, disastrous military adventures, an economic system that fails many and widespread political disaffection. On the other hand, what needs exploration is whether and how all these symptoms of social malaise and disintegration are connected, directly or indirectly, to the influential role that English plays in the modern world; a role that is choreographed by its Anglo-American-Australian spin doctors, through education in these countries functioning as an import and export business that interlocks with geopolitics, the publishing and media industries and worldwide ‘partnerships’. Some might also think that it is intriguing or ironical that a book that is so critical of English is written in English and published by a British publisher. We need to stress again that we have nothing against English per se, and definitely nothing against British publishers who can reach a worldwide readership and publish a range of works, some of which they may not agree fully with. Nor do we have anything against people becoming proficient in English; quite the opposite. What we are against is the misuse of English in the many specific contexts that the contributors to this volume illustrate, contexts where its harmful consequences are manifold and for which there are many causal explanations, which we document. Gandhi was passionately devoted to English, had many friends of British origin and had nothing against individuals who were employed to work for British power in India. What he was against in education was the misuse of English, since this conflicted with the role of Indian languages in

Introduction

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maintaining the many cultures of India and in unifying India.24 Put simply, both he and we believe that English can be used for imperialist purposes and equally for resisting and counteracting imperialism. Any language can serve good or evil purposes. As the chapters of this book document, English frequently functions as a voracious Hydra. Youngsters starting school can be rendered mute and ignorant by being forced to learn through English. Linguistic and cultural genocides are a contemporary reality and can be seen as crimes against humanity.25 English can serve to either combat or entrench injustice and exploitation. It has been used for centuries in struggles for the rights of speakers of other languages – as it is used here. The influence of English, for good and evil purposes, is, therefore, causally related to fundamental political and social realities. Our personal experience, as multilingual users of English, and coming as we do from different continents, and with experience of a very wide range of countries, has compelled us to produce a book that shows that the question ‘Why English?’ is not asked frequently enough and is too often answered too uncritically. The chapters in this collection follow a deliberate progression – from descriptions of the English-language Hydra at work in new and multifarious guises through to the presentation of various ways in which this global juggernaut is being challenged and confronted. Part 1, The Hydra at Large, comprises studies that situate English in broad historical and present-day contexts and analyse how this language is being promoted and consolidated. These chapters explore the workings of supply-and-demand discourses and the push and pull factors that underpin the overt and covert marketing of the English language. Part 2, Hydra Mythology, presents a wide-ranging set of studies of some attitudinal factors that drive the teaching of English, such as the export of ‘nativespeaker’ teachers with suspect qualifications, and the interlocking of English with modernisation discourses in a rapidly changing world. The third part, Confronting the Hydra, showcases studies from Mauritius and other African countries, Pakistan and India, which clearly portray the tensions that exist between teaching English and the educational need to build this onto full competence in students’ primary languages. The fourth part, Resistance and Cohabitation with the Hydra, includes studies from North and South America, China and Europe that demonstrate how change is often an uphill struggle, but still possible, in ensuring a healthy balance between English and other languages. Poems that capture the personal dimensions of these struggles are provided at the close of Parts 2 and 4. Our Afterword brings together the central themes of the book in a powerful synthesis and further elaborates how a more equitable linguistic world order can be achieved. English can play a more productive role if attitudinal and practical changes are made. Even if this seems a Herculean task, it is one that urgently

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needs action. We hope the book will stimulate far greater efforts to ensure the maintenance of the world’s linguistic and cultural diversity. The old adage ‘think globally, act locally’ is too simplistic. While it is essential to be aware of the big picture and the forces underlying it, globalisation and ‘global English’ should not be taken on board uncritically. There has to be strong local mobilisation to ensure just, locally relevant and pedagogically valid policies in education and language policy. The book shows how and why this should be done.

Notes (1) Please note that all the references in this Introduction to chapters in this book will be flagged with only the name of the author. (2) For reviews of the book, see Kabel (2014) and Benson (2014). (3) UNESCO (2003). (4) Skutnabb-Kangas et al. (2009). (5) Widin (2010). (6) Kumaravadivelu (2016), Coleman (2011), Alderson (2009), on which see Phillipson (2010). (7) Howson, P. (2013) The English Effect. The impact of English, what it’s worth to the UK and why it matters to the world. See http://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/ britishcouncil.uk2/files/ english-effect-report.pdf (accessed 28 February 2015). (8) The term ‘linguicism’ was coined by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas in the 1980s. ‘Linguistic imperialism’ is a form of linguicism. See Skutnabb-Kangas (2015). (9) Errington (2008). (10) Dörnyei (2009: 156). (11) Wong and Canarajah (eds) (2009); Pennycook and Makoni (2005). (12) Ahmar Mahboob in Wong and Canarajah (eds) (2009: 272−273). (13) Suresh Canagarajah’s Foreword to Wong, Kristjánsson and Dörnyei (eds) (2012: xxi−xxiii). (14) There are policy and implementation guidelines for this, produced by a committee chaired by Professor Ajit Mohanty. (15) Declaration on a Nordic Language Policy 2006 (Nordic Council of Ministers 2007), published in eight Nordic languages and English. See http://www.norden.org. (16) See http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2011/jul/25/macmillaneducation-deal-south-sudan. Oxford University Press has also been convicted of bribery in Kenya and Tanzania. See http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/pressrelease/2012/07/03/world-bank-sanctions-oxford-university-press-corruptpractices-impacting-education-projects-east-africa. (17) ‘The Union shall respect cultural, religious and linguistic diversity’, Article 22 of The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. (18) Directive 2010/64/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 October 2010 on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings. (19) Swales (1996). (20) Kaplan (2014). (21) Wierzbicka (2014: 193). (22) See Phillipson (1992), especially Chapters 6 and 7, and Phillipson (2009: 112−131). (23) See Phillipson (2009), Chapter 7. (24) See Chapter 18, on education, in Gandhi (2010). (25) See Skutnabb-Kangas and Dunbar (2010).

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References Alderson, J.C. (ed.) (2009) The Politics of Language Education. Individuals and Institutions. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Benson, C. (2014) Review of Rapatahana and Bunce (eds) 2012. Language Policy 13 (1), 67−69. Coleman, H. (ed.) (2011) Dreams and Realities: Developing Countries and the English Language. London: British Council. See http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/transform/books/ dreams-realities-developing-countries-english-language. Copeland, M. (2010) Language as an immigration gatekeeper. Monitor (winter). See http://web.wm.edu/so/monitor/issues/16-1/2-copeland.pdf (accessed 8 April 2015). Dörnyei, Z. (2009) The English language and the word of God. In M.S. Wong and S. Canagarajah (eds) Christian and Critical English Educators in Dialogue: Pedagogical and Ethical Dilemmas. London and New York: Routledge. Errington, J. (2008) Linguistics in a Colonial World. A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Gandhi, M.K. (2010) M.K. Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj. A Critical Edition. Annotated and edited by Suresh Sharma and Tridip Suhrud. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. First published in Gujarati in 1909. Graddol, D. (2006) English Next. UK: British Council. Kabel, A. (2014) Review of Rapatahana and Bunce (eds) 2012. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 13 (2), 131−134. Kaplan, F. (2014) See http://fkaplan.wordpress.com/2014/11/15/langlais-comme-languepivot-ou-limperialisme-linguistique-cache-de-google-translate/. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2016) The decolonial option in English teaching: can the subaltern act? TESOL Quarterly 50 (1), 66–85. Mahboob, A. (2009) Additive perspective on religion or growing hearts with wisdom. In M.S. Wong and Canagarajah, S. (eds) Christian and Critical English Educators in Dialogue: Pedagogical and Ethical Dilemmas. London and New York: Routledge. Pennycook, A. and Makoni, S. (2005) The modern mission: The language effects of Christianity. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 4 (2), 137−155. Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Phillipson, R. (2009) Linguistic Imperialism Continued. New York and London: Routledge. Phillipson, R. (2010) The politics and the personal in language education: The state of which art? Review article on The Politics of Language Education. Individuals and Institutions, J. Charles Alderson (ed.). Language and Education 24 (2), 151−166. Alderson’s response, pp. 167−168. Robert Phillipson’s final comment, p. 169. Rapatahana, V. and Bunce, P. (eds) (2012) English Language as Hydra. Its Impact on NonEnglish Language Cultures. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Sheng, E. (2012) Queuing for UK study. South China Morning Post, 25 June 2012. See http://www.scmp.com/magazines/money/article/1004910/queuing-uk-study (accessed 8 April 2015). Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (in press) Linguicism. The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Published online 19 June 2015. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. and Dunbar, R. (2010) Indigenous Children’s Education as Linguistic Genocide and a Crime against Humanity? A Global View. Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino: Galdu, Resource Centre for the Rights of Indigenous People. See http://www.toveskutnabb-kangas.org. Skutnabb-Kangas, T., Phillipson, R., Mohanty, A. and Panda, M. (eds) (2009) Social Justice Through Multilingual Education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Swales, J. (1996) English as ‘tyrannosaurus rex’. World Englishes 16, 373−382. UNESCO (2003) Education in a Multilingual World. Paris: UNESCO.

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Widin, J. (2010) Illegitimate Practices. Global English Language Education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Wierzbicka, A. (2014) Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default Language. New York: Routledge. Wong, M.S. and Canagarajah, S. (eds) (2009) Christian and Critical English Educators in Dialogue. Pedagogical and Ethical Dilemmas. London and New York: Routledge. Wong, M.S., Kristjánsson, C. and Dörnyei, Z. (eds) (2012) Christian Faith and English Language Teaching and Learning: Research on the Interrelationship of Religion and ELT. New York: Routledge.

Part 1 Hydra at Large

1 The English Language in a Global Context: Between Expansion and Resistance Alamin Mazrui

The spread of English globally is, of course, a direct product of the expansion of capitalism across national borders. In its initial phases in much of the world, however, this process of linguistic extension was by no means a spontaneous and peaceful one. It was often a violent course of development in which English itself became part of the imperial arsenal to subdue, inferiorise and conquer the colonial subject. Like many other aspects of colonialism, language featured prominently in the creation of new hierarchies and in the disfiguration and erasure of the history of the colonised. This dimension of colonial history came to find ample expression in the following verses of the South African singer, Johnny Clegg: Bits of song and broken drums Are all he could recall So he spoke to me In a bastard tongue Carried on the silence of guns It’s been a long long time Since they first came And marched through the village They taught me to forget the past And live the future in their language Chorus: They said I should learn to speak A little bit of English Don’t be scared of a suit and a tie Learn to walk in the words of the foreigner I am a Third World Child! (quoted by Pennycook, 1994: 2)

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In other words, the violence that accompanied European colonial penetration alienated the colonised, weakened many of their languages and pushed some to the verge of extinction. After independence, the relationship between Britain and its former colonies metamorphosed institutionally into the so-called Commonwealth. There are countries, of course, that were previously ruled by Britain but did not join the Commonwealth. These include countries like Egypt, Iraq and Kuwait − Arab countries in which the English language was more marginal than it was in other former British colonies. Among the reasons that influenced these former Arab colonies of Britain against joining the Commonwealth were (1) Arab nationalism was distrustful of continuing organisational links with the former imperial power; (2) the Commonwealth was viewed as a rival to the League of Arab States − a conflict between Pan-Britannica and Pan-Arabism; (3) British policies were viewed as proIsrael, indirectly tarnishing the image of the Commonwealth; and (4) the head of the Commonwealth was also the head of the Church of England − in the eyes of Muslims, England’s Christian theocracy tarnished the Commonwealth. The great exception among countries that did not join the Commonwealth but where, nonetheless, English became triumphant is, of course, the United States. The United States did not become a member of the Commonwealth partly because it became independent long before the Commonwealth was born and partly because, once it was formed, America’s anti-monarchical political culture would not have easily accepted the idea that the British monarch was the head of the Commonwealth. But although the United States (unlike Canada) is the grand exception to Commonwealth membership, it nevertheless became an even more influential carrier of the English language than Britain by the second half of the 20th century. People and whole societies began to experience the pull of English less and less because of Britain and more and more because of the United States. Today it is possible to say that, as a direct result of the post-Cold War political economy of neoliberalism, a certain degree of spontaneous momentum has indeed accompanied the continued spread and consolidation of English. Having emerged as the only superpower in the post-Cold War period, the United States has naturally become central in this globalisation process. The globalisation of empire that the British attempted in the formal sense has been carried further by America in a more informal manner, constantly reproducing even more massive structures of inequality. As the single largest English-speaking country in terms of its number of native speakers, and with its economic, political and technological pre-eminence, the United States now is contributing to the expansion of the frontiers of the English language at an unprecedented rate. Due to American dominance

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in world affairs, the emergent global English may increasingly be assuming an American articulation. In a sense, then, neoliberalism has provided an additional stimulus for the spread of English worldwide, giving the language a new and, to a certain extent, spontaneous momentum that has made it important in its own right for the consolidation of the American rule of cash-nexus on a global scale. Within the international capitalist market, the ‘centre’ (and America, in particular) has been serving as the ‘proprietor ’, while the ‘periphery’ can be likened to the labour and consumer dimension of the transnational capitalist equation. And it is increasingly the English language that allows the proprietor nations of the centre to have contact with each and every extractive and consumer nation in a way that leads to the increasing consolidation of the global capitalist market. The US-Africa Leaders’ Summit that took place on 4–6 August 2014 in Washington, DC, designed to open up the African market even further for US investment, was yet another example of an economic agenda that has deep linguistic and cultural implications emanating from the neoliberal order. What makes some of the countries of Asia and Africa different from those of Europe in their experience of linguistic imperialism is the extent to which the spread and consolidation of English is given institutional support, primarily from Britain and the United States. Here we have seen organisations like the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the British Council constantly at work promoting policies that continue to demonstrate the interdependence between the corporate world and language development in favour of English. In Africa, the policies of the Bretton Woods institutions have had the particularly harmful effect of undermining the potential of African languages to become important linguistic partners to English in the educational process. Echoing UNESCO’s position on The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education (1953), the World Bank realises that ‘in the crucial, early grades when children are trying to acquire basic literacy as well as adjust to the demands of the school setting, not speaking the language of instruction can make the difference between succeeding and failing in school, between remaining in school and dropping out’ (Lockheed & Verspoor, 1991: 153). The World Bank is also aware that establishing the conditions of sustainable instruction in local African languages, which is crucial to the uninterrupted educational progress of a child, requires substantial government investment in the generation of educational resources. Yet, the World Bank and IMF prescriptions for revitalising African economies – that is, for embedding African economies more deeply into the world capitalist system − have placed heavy emphasis on the reduction of government subsidies in education, which are indispensable to the promotion of instruction in local languages. In the final analysis,

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then, under the World Bank-IMF structural impositions, the only avenue available to many African nations has been the adoption of English from the very beginning of a child’s education. Expectedly, then, in countries such as Tanzania, which had been successful in challenging the supremacy of English, the British Overseas Development Agency (ODA) moved in immediately following the World Bank-IMF ‘austerity’ measures, essentially to reclaim the spaces that English in Tanzania had lost to Swahili. Towards this end, the ODA launched the multimillion-dollar English Language Teaching Support Project (Roy-Campbell, 1992), ostensibly to improve English teacher training and English-language skills in classrooms at the national level and to bridge the gap between Swahili-language instruction at the elementary level and English-based instruction at the high-school level. Together with the WTO and other bodies, then, the World Bank and IMF are some of the principal organisations through which the capitalist ‘West’ has managed to control the destiny of the rest of the world. And that imperialist control has relied in no small measure on the establishment and reconstitution of structural inequalities and cultural inequalities between and through English and other imperial European languages (Phillipson, 1992: 47). These institutional efforts, as well as non-institutional processes, have made particularly rapid gains in areas/countries where linguistic nationalism is low, as is the case in many countries of Africa. We can define linguistic nationalism as that version of nationalism that is concerned about the value of its own languages, seeking to defend them against other languages and encouraging their use and enrichment. Many Africans south of the Sahara are nationalistic about their race, about their ethnicity and, often, about their land. For a variety of reasons that we need not get into here, nationalism about African languages is relatively weak compared with India or the Middle East or France. What is significant for our purposes is the idea that, because many sub-Saharan Africans are rarely strong linguistic nationalists, they are seldom resentful of their massive dependence on English or other imported languages. An African politician may speak six or more African languages fluently. Yet, if he or she does not speak the English language, he or she cannot become a member of the legislature. Dr Hastings Banda spoke only English and could become the president of Malawi. There is no example of a president of a former British colony of Africa who has been elected to the presidency without knowledge of English. It is this syndrome of self-abnegation that Okot p’Bitek’s poem, Song of Lawino (1962), seeks to capture. Here the female character, Lawino, laments about her husband who has been ‘properly’ schooled in English in the ways of the white men. In the words of Lawino,

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Bile burns inside me! I feel like vomiting! For all young men Were finished in the forest [of books] Their manhood was finished In the classrooms, Their testicles Were smashed With large [English] books Weak linguistic nationalism, then, has made much of Africa especially vulnerable to the imperialist linguistic penetration that is facilitated by economic and educational bodies in the service of colonialism and neoliberalism. Through a process of estrangement from the existential self, Lawino sees English-based education as one that has produced ‘docile bodies’, impotent and functionally ineffective in meeting the needs of production and in the development of their own societies. While on balance, the English language has continued to impose its imperial might in different parts of the world, there is a tendency to overlook its setbacks within the grand picture. There is no doubt that French has been a bigger loser than English since World War II. Indeed, some recent proponents of Francophonie − the union of ‘French-speaking’ countries − have even claimed that the French language is endangered by English as ‘Francophone’ countries have become increasingly attracted to English due to the new international economic opportunities, real or imagined, that it seems to offer. New English-language centres are cropping up almost everywhere in the so-called Francophone zone. And seemingly in desperation, Francophonie now seems willing to enlist into its membership even ‘non-Francophone’ nations if only they would agree to promote the study of French in some way or other. Nonetheless, there are developments in some areas of the world that constitute a definite challenge to the English language. Let us look at two such instances. First, there have been the postcolonial indigenisation policies in which some former colonies of Britain have attempted to try to reduce the role of English in their societies. Originally, the Indian constitution envisaged replacing English completely with Hindi as the official language of the country. This ambition was not realised, partly because of objections and protests from Tamil Nadu and some other ‘nonHindi’ states in southern India. Nonetheless, India’s language policy did have the effect of increasing the roles of Hindi and other Indian languages in official domains in spite of the prevailing social attitudes that favoured the continuing expansion of English. Ironically, capitalist consolidation in a globalised economy has had unforeseen consequences on India’s linguistic

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landscape. As Subramanian informs us with regard to the newspaper industry in India, A decade or more ago, the publishers of English newspapers scorned Indian language readers, assuming that, as hundreds of millions more Indians became literate, they would turn automatically into consumers of English papers. But the steady rise in literacy rates … has had unexpected consequences. The new middle class is increasingly found in smaller towns, and prefers to read in its own regional language, rather than English. Meanwhile, major media houses have discovered that English readership is declining or stagnant … Along with an influx of politicians from non-élite background and growing importance of regional and state-level politics, these developments have begun to challenge the assumption that English is the default medium of Indian public life. (Subramanian, 2014: 3) Even highly successful publishers of newspapers like the Times of India have now been forced not only to improve the quality of their Hindi and Marathi newspapers, but also to launch new dailies in other Indian languages such as Bengali and Tamil. The view that English is the only linguistic means for upward mobility in India seems to be slowly eroding. And in the public domain, it is becoming increasingly clear that fluency in English is no longer the necessity it was once deemed to be for a successful political career. This brings us to the successful election of Narendra Modi as India’s prime minister in 2014. He is an example of a politician who has risen from the ranks of the poor − working as a chaiwallah during much of his childhood, helping his father sell tea at a railway station − to the élite political status that he now enjoys. Soon after he took over the reins of power, Modi is reported to have vowed to restore a sense of pride to India’s dejected millions, many of them battling unemployment and grinding poverty. One quick boost would be giving prominence to Hindi, the language of the masses … So a day after the new government took office, India’s Home Ministry ordered officials to switch to Hindi on social media. Modi also ordered officials to use Hindi in all official correspondence and to takes notes in Hindi. Modi himself declared he would only speak Hindi with foreign leaders. (George, 2014) Modi thus demonstrates a peculiar mix, a staunch advocate of capitalist economics and a committed Hindu nationalist − a combination of economic motives and a political agenda that is posing a new challenge to the exclusive primacy of English in India in some social domains.

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This example of India also raises the question of the interplay between language and the economy. It is probably contestable that capitalism has succeeded best where the language of the marketplace has not been too far removed from the language of the classroom. In much of Africa, for example, the language of the marketplace (usually indigenous) and the language of schooling (usually foreign) are indeed distant. Africa has become the only continent in the world that is attempting a capitalist takeoff while having such a massive dependence on foreign languages. Among the contrasts between Africa and the East and South East Asian countries, which may have been leaving Africa behind in the capitalist race, is the linguistic contrast. In Japan, Korea, China and Malaysia, the language of the marketplace is much closer to the language of the classroom. The Asian élites use indigenous languages much more often than do African élites south of the Sahara. Is it possible that the success of East Asian and South East Asian efforts in the capitalist game is partly related to such linguistic considerations? Has more dependence on indigenous languages helped the East Asian economies? Africa starts from a disadvantage. Many African policymakers assume that being westernised in both religion and language improves the chances of ‘development’. There is a naïve assumption that Christianity is necessarily a force for modernisation and that English and other European languages are instruments of economic transformation. Not enough attention has been paid to the experiences of countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China and Malaysia, where Christianity is minimal and where indigenous languages play a large role in economic transaction and educational policies. If the reliance on indigenous languages appears to be a necessary condition in capitalist development, it is by no means a sufficient condition. Tanzania pursued policies of increased Swahilisation deliberately at the expense of English in education, the media and politics. The aftermath of British colonialism in this East African country saw the rise of nationalism of self-reliance, Kujitegemea, buttressed by a socialist ideology of Ujamaa. The linguistic expression of this socialist-nationalism was Swahili; the common person’s language of Tanzanian nationhood. Tanzania thus came to distinguish itself as the first African ex-colony of Britain with a language policy that posed a genuine challenge to the supremacy of English as an imperial language. Yet, bearing in mind that the most ambitious years of Tanzania’s Swahilisation programme were inspired by a socialist rather than a capitalist quest, one cannot describe Tanzania today as an economic success. The success of Swahili in Tanzania (and Kenya) partly lies in the fact that it has developed to become a preponderant language without being a hegemonic language. It is used as an additional language by tens of millions of East Africans who outnumber the native speakers of the language by

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a very wide margin. Swahili became accepted as a national language in both Kenya and Tanzania, without opposition from any of the other ethnic languages, partly because the Swahili people are not numerous enough as an ethnic unit to make any substantial difference in the ethnic power equation in these two countries. Swahili, therefore, contrasts sharply with a potentially hegemonic language like Hausa in West Africa. While the destiny of Swahili has long ceased to be in the hands of its native speakers, the destiny of Hausa continues to be determined primarily by the Hausa people themselves. Selecting Hausa exclusively as a national language in Nigeria, therefore, would have generated fears of Hausa hegemony in national affairs. Tanzania is often castigated for the failure of its socialist experiment, but it is seldom given credit for its success in national integration. Swahili has been part and parcel of that integrative triumph. Today, Tanzania stands as the most successful case in Africa of the use of language for national integration, both horizontally across ethnic lines and vertically across class lines. In addition to its sentimental value as the language of Tanzania’s sovereignty and national identity, Tanzanians were encouraged to heighten their proficiency in the language partly because it widened their economic opportunities in the society. By enabling a much wider section of the population to have potential access to the corridors of political and economic power, Swahili in Tanzania has helped in fostering a less sharply differentiated and, therefore, a more integrated social structure than has been achieved in either Kenya or Uganda. In other words, Swahili has been a great political and socio-economic asset in Tanzania, in spite of the fact that economically, the country as a whole continues to struggle under the weight of neoliberal market forces. As suggested earlier, however, under increasing pressure from the World Bank and IMF in the aftermath of the Cold War, cracks have begun to open in the Tanzanian socio-economic space that have allowed for some ‘rehabilitation’ of the English language. By the end of the 20th century, the federal government of Tanzania had indeed capitulated to some of these pressures, allowing the emergence of private academic ventures in the urban space under the name of ‘international schools’. In spite of these World Bank-IMF-induced developments that fed directly into a reinvigorated British Council programming in Tanzania, however, the resurgence of English in Tanzania is not likely to be at the expense of Swahili − at least not in the short run. The linguistic gains that have resulted from the few decades of a pro-Swahili nationalist-socialist policy in the country, in other words, have given the language a significantly strong foothold in public and official domains that cannot easily be dislodged by the fresh imperial designs to recentre English in the Tanzanian space. While Tanzania has moved to bestow to English some of the space it had lost to Swahili, its next-door neighbour, Kenya, is beginning to

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accord Swahili a greater role in society. In August 2010, the citizens of Kenya voted for a new constitutional order in a referendum that, for many, heralded a new beginning in important domains of national life. Arguably among the most revolutionary of the provisions of the new constitution is the elevation of Swahili to a coequal status with English as the country’s twin official languages. The Kenyan government is in the process of drafting an Official Languages Bill which, once ready and enacted in Parliament, will articulate in greater detail the nature of this co-official relationship. Of course, there have been other developments over the last couple of decades that have enhanced the value of Swahili in Kenya, especially in the educational realm. Today, every pre-university student in Kenya is required to study Swahili and pass it as a subject in the national examination. This policy has been in operation for over 20 years, accompanied by a very rich and growing body of Swahili publications, especially in literary materials, readers and Swahili textbooks for schools. Assessing the results of this policy, Kimani Njogu, the chair of Kenya’s Chama cha Kiswahili cha Taifa (National Swahili Council), has had the following to say: There is an aura of excitement among Swahili scholars because seeds planted decades ago have flowered and are beginning to bear fruit. The language is now common in offices, in the streets and homes. It is robust in the informal sector and has become an engine of economic regeneration. Official business is being transacted in the language and it is no longer viewed as ‘low status’ to speak it. (Njogu, 2006: 12) Whatever the case, what these policies and the new constitution in Kenya demonstrate is that the struggle between the forces of dependence and the forces of self-determination is still very much alive, and debates about language in society are a continuing site of this struggle. Hong Kong is a special case where English may be weakening since the territory became re-incorporated into the People’s Republic of China and ceased to be a British colony in 1997. This development in Asia comes at a time when Mandarin is experiencing growing demand in Africa − recently described by Howard French as ‘China’s Second Continent’ (2014) − fuelled by aggressive Chinese investment initiatives on the continent. Several Chinese-funded Confucius Centres have been established on the university campuses of several African countries, committed to promoting the study of Mandarin to students and the wider public. In much of ‘Anglophone’ Africa, French has been second only to English as the most popular choice for Africans wishing to study a foreign language. Mandarin may be overtaking French, though it is unlikely to affect the continued supremacy of English in the foreseeable future.

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Earlier in this chapter, I suggested that relatively weak linguistic nationalism in many African nations has made them more susceptible to English penetration. But could African languages benefit from other types of nationalisms whose manifestations may include a protective orientation towards people’s own languages? For obvious historical reasons, African nationalism is inspired much more by a quest for racial dignity than by a desire to defend African languages. But is it possible to have a certain degree of linguistic nationalism deriving from the more overarching nationalism of race? A racially based nationalist quest would certainly help explain the African-American demand for the introduction of Swahili into the American academy during the heydays of ‘black consciousness’, the language’s enduring popularity among African Americans, and the continued efforts on the continent of Africa itself to make Swahili the panAfrican language. A second important force that has challenged the centrality of English is postcolonial or post-revolutionary policies of Islamisation and Arabisation. This, too, is sometimes a case of derivative nationalism, in this case promoting nationalist distinctiveness and pride rooted in religion (Islam). The Islamisation policies sometimes have resulted in the reduced role of the imperial language and the promotion of the Arabic language (or Persian) instead. One example where Muslim reaction to the West may have phased out English quite decisively is in the Sudan. When the country gained its independence from Britain in 1966, English was the language of instruction throughout post-elementary education. In 1969, English was replaced by Arabic at the secondary level, while English continued to be the primary instructional medium at the University of Khartoum, except in subjects such as history, Islamic philosophy and Shari’a law. English also served as an important working language in a variety of white-collar professions at this time. By the 1990s, English in the Sudan had begun to experience a second wave of existential challenge. Even though Sudanese nationalism has always been a source of pressure for the gradual replacement of English by Arabic, it was during the Islamist period of President Umar Hassan el-Bashir that it faced its greatest threat. By 1996, Arabic had become the medium of instruction at almost all levels of education, including most departments at universities and other tertiary institutions of learning. Only medicine, dentistry and pharmacy continued to be offered in English. These changes in the educational sphere have been taking place against the backdrop of a rapid spread of Arabic, in its localised demotic variety, into South Sudan, where linguistic Arabisation had been proceeding without any accompanying Islamisation. Since the fall of the Shah, English − historically driven by the British Council in particular − has also lost some ground against the increased use of Persian (Farsi) and Arabic in the reformed syllabuses of education

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within the post-revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran. Diplomatically, however, Iran has used English more than any other language in a bid to influence political and diplomatic trends, especially in Africa. Within its publications for Africa, Iran has resorted to the English medium more than any other language − when it has been attempting to reach fellow Muslim militants.1 Iran’s policies have served to weaken English domestically, but in linguistic practice, Iran has fostered the continued consolidation of English internationally. National efforts, like those of Sudan and Iran, to promote Arabic have received additional support, of course, from the increasing recognition of Arabic as an additional international language. Arabic is now official in some meetings of the United Nations, within the organisation of the African Union, within institutions born out of the new Arab petro-power such as the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the Arab Development Bank. And, of course, Arabic continues to have official status within the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. In addition to the two types of challenges to English discussed in this chapter, there are other forces that constitute real or potential setbacks for the language. For example, the rise of the numerate culture in which people communicate in fewer words and make greater use of numerals may well affect the destiny of English and other literate languages. This is partly in the computer world of financial consultations and scientific discourse where calculations in numbers assume a bigger and bigger role. Then there is the increased legitimation of creole languages, which has reduced the push for standard English in places like Nigeria, Trinidad and Sierra Leone. The slow but steady acceptance of Spanish as a potential second language of the United States is beginning to have an effect on the supremacy of English in the country as the Spanish-speaking population continues to flex its linguistic muscles. What is clear from these and other examples not explored here is that even though on balance the English language continues to be triumphant on a world scale, often as a direct product of the different pressures of empire, there are also anti-hegemonic forces of cultural resistance that continue to challenge the imperial push for one linguistic superpower in favour of a linguistically multipolar world. These challenges are sometimes borne of the contradictions within the global capitalist system itself. We see this in India as English faces new contestations from Indian languages. Similarly, some Muslim women in East Africa, highly educated in English in the Western tradition, suddenly find themselves in an unrelenting struggle with post-Cold War globalisation, initiating school projects dedicated to counter-balancing the exclusive reliance on English as a medium of instruction with a bilingual or even trilingual − Arabic, Swahili, English − curriculum. What will eventually emerge from these dynamics and counter-dynamics in the dialectical interplay between language and

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political economy is, of course, a matter that is still in the womb of time. What is certain for now is that the global linguistic struggle is bound to continue for decades to come.

Note (1)

Information gathered from conversations with Shi’a converts in Kenya and Tanzania between 17 and 29 December 2013.

References French, H.W. (2014) China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa. New York: Knopf. George, N. (2014) Indian bureaucrats scramble for Hindi dictionaries. Associated Press, 19 June. See http://news.yahoo.com/indian-bureaucrats-scramble-hindidictionaries-073115866.html. Lockheed, M.E. and Verspoor, A.M. (1991) Improving Primary Education in Developing Countries. New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank. Njogu, K. (2006) Kiswahili comes of age as tongue for decolonisation. Daily Nation (Nairobi) 2 July, p. 12. p’Bitek, O. (1962) Song of Lawino: An African Lament. New York: Meridian Books. Pennycook, A. (1994) The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. London: Longman. Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roy-Campbell, Z.M. (1992) Power and pedagogy: Choosing the medium of instruction in Tanzania. PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Subramanian, S. (2014) India after English? The New York Review of Books 9 June. See http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/06/09/india-newspapers-after english/ UNESCO (1953) The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education. Paris: UNESCO.

2 Promoting English: Hydras Old and New Robert Phillipson

Until the 16th century, English was the language of an obscure island in northern Europe. Military aggression in Wales, Ireland and Scotland was followed by vigorous attempts to eliminate all languages other than English throughout the British Isles, with only partial success. People of British origin who settled in the Americas and Australasia imposed similar policies, with disastrous consequences for local languages. This English Hydra is still vigorously alive worldwide. However, intriguingly, the monster is understood by many as a universal need in the modern world. This misunderstanding obscures the reality that English opens doors for the few and closes them for the many. English plays a central role in servicing a capitalist system that serves the interests of a tiny fraction of the world’s population. The wealth of the transnational élite accumulates in ethically indefensible offshore banks, while the rest of the world attempts to survive onshore. In countries known as ‘English-speaking’, a label that airbrushes speakers of many other languages, the rich have become much richer in recent decades, while conditions for the rest of the population have deteriorated. The English-language Hydra services this injustice at home and abroad (Rapatahana & Bunce, 2012). The key document that determined language policy in the British Empire − the promotion of English and the marginalisation of local languages − was a ‘Minute on Indian Education’ prepared by Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1835. India was of immense economic value to the United Kingdom, but the goals included strengthening ‘our language, our learning, and ultimately our religion in India ... India as a base of operations, that afterwards may be applied ... to the surrounding nations … The Indian mind had walled itself up inside such a prison that only a new language could give it a ladder of escape’; English was for ‘the enlightenment of benighted Asians’ (Charles Trevelyan, cited in Clive, 1973: 361). The decision to strengthen English and weaken the hold of other languages was in fact a fait accompli before the Minute was written. Macaulay functioned as a spin doctor. English has retained its position as the language of power in former colonies. This has been achieved through continuous Western efforts to promote English in a changing world. American foundations were active in funding

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work on establishing English as a ‘world’ language on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1930s (Phillipson, 2009: 112−118). The Diffusion of English Culture Outside England: A Problem of Post-war Reconstruction, written by an adviser to the British Council in 1941, articulates a rationale for establishing English as a ‘world-language and culture based on our own’: the writer advocates the creation of a new career service, an ‘army of linguistic missionaries’ (Routh, 1941: 59, 11), a modern-day Hydra. US and UK strategy was coordinated in the 1950s and 1960s. The English language teaching (ELT) profession was established, impelled by concerns to maintain the value of American and British investments and to consolidate and influence links with newly independent countries (Phillipson, 1992). The British Council has spearheaded the promotion of British English worldwide since the 1930s, for political, geostrategic and economic reasons. Ensuring a major place for English in education is a key goal. It is marketed with the claim that Britain has the expertise to solve language- learning problems worldwide, which is paradoxical and counter-intuitive when one recalls that the British are notoriously monolingual. How is this dubious Hydra nourished? The issue will be explored by contrasting the arguments in the early imperial rhetoric of commercially driven British colonisation (Macaulay, 1835) with those used in the market-driven commodification of English in the 21st century (the British Council’s language consultant, David Graddol, English Next India, 2010). The evidence shows remarkable continuity in the types of argument used. It reveals the smooth transition from colonial linguistic imperialism to contemporary linguistic neoimperialism (Phillipson, 2009). Graddol collected and processed a large amount of information on the economic, linguistic and educational problems and challenges that India faces. Official governmental studies, a 2009 World Bank report and the views of industry are cited. Many observations stress inequalities in India, the inefficiencies for many children of what is supposed to be education and the wish of all classes and castes to attain the benefits that proficiency in English offers. However, Indian scholars figure only very selectively in the study, and the role of Indian universities is unexplored. I have major reservations about the entire exercise. The unstated agenda is to strengthen the British ELT industry. In Graddol’s earlier reports for the British Council, The Future of English (1997) and English Next (2006), the connection between a multi-faceted analysis and British ELT was made openly: the purpose was to equip the British ELT establishment (universities, publishers, language schools, consortia exporting language teachers etc.) to maintain the position of the billion-pound industry. The covert assumption in the Indian report is that the UK has the expertise to solve India’s English-learning educational problems. This assumption is subtly packaged, as no explicit advice is forwarded in the report, but there are many misrepresentations and false arguments.

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British interest in India has always been essentially political and commercial. British India was run from 1757 to 1858 by the East India Company, which exercised military and administrative functions and was outstandingly profitable for the British economy. The British Council is currently active in teaching and testing English and in consultancy in over 100 countries. Its income generates 75% of the organisation’s annual turnover of £781 million (Howson, 2013). Its primary purposes as the ‘UK’s second biggest charity’ is to ‘support the English language industry, worth £3−4 billion a year’ (British Council, 2014a). The organisation’s selfpromotion is riddled with such contradictions. It has nine centres in India, which are increasingly profitable. Its executive directors have a personal incentive to increase their astronomic salaries through improved ‘business’ results (fully documented in the Annual Report 2013−14, 62−65, www. britishcouncil.org). This replicates colonial financial priorities: Macaulay’s personal salary was the same as the total budget for educational activities in India (Sullivan, 2010: 144). A policy survey conducted by a pro-government nongovernmental organisation suggests how the British Council could be more effective: the students it teaches worldwide and ‘the 800,000 people who take exams administered by the Council every year … would make good targets for public diplomacy activity,’ as part of ‘Diplomacy by Stealth: Working with others to achieve our goals. … The general lesson is ... make sure it appears to be coming from a foreign government as little as possible. Increasingly … it must work through organisations and networks that are separate from, independent of, and even culturally suspicious toward government itself’ (Leonard et al., 2002: 81). Thus the activities of English teachers − some of whom may dislike their own government − can stealthily serve a national cause: local English for the global purposes of Britain.

Continuities in Discourse Juxtaposed extracts from the two key documents exemplify how the case for English is argued. Macaulay’s ‘Minute’ 1835 The Orientalists. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.

Graddol’s English Next India 2010 The rate of improvement in the Englishlanguage skills of the Indian population is at present too slow to prevent India from falling behind other countries which have implemented the teaching of English in primary schools sooner, and more successfully. (Continued)

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Whoever knows that language [English] has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations… the literature now extant … is of far greater value than all the literature which 300 years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together.

English is now seen as a ‘basic skill’ which all children require if they are fully to participate in 21st century civil society…. It can now be used to communicate to people from almost any country in the world … We are fast moving into a world in which not to have English is to be marginalised and excluded.

We are attempting to raise up a large class of enlightened natives. I hope that, twenty years hence, there will be … thousands of natives familiar with the best models of composition … and Western science. Among them some persons … will have the inclination and ability to exhibit European knowledge in the vernacular dialects.

India now aspires to make English universal … is it necessary? Is it desirable? … engaging with globalisation … building on the extraordinary human resource offered by India’s existing linguistic and cultural diversity. English may be a useful catalyst … a vital ingredient … but the final goal must lie beyond English.

The point of departure for both authors is that what India needs is English. They both refer to local languages, but Macaulay bombastically execrates Indian languages: Sanskrit, Persian and Bengali have failed to make India a ‘wise nation’. Indian brains are seen as tabula rasa waiting for European enlightenment. Graddol sees English correctly as ‘a casualty of wider problems in Indian education’. There are, however, fundamental flaws in Graddol’s line of argument. •

•

•

Graddol cites no evidence for English being taught successfully in primary schools elsewhere. The only country that could demonstrate this is Singapore, where English is the sole medium of education. As a result of several decades of this policy, well over half of Singaporeans now use English as the main language of the home. This is an extreme case of forcible language shift. The claim that English is a ‘basic skill’ (left undefined) is also undocumented. It is a deceptive mantra voiced by uncritical promoters of ‘global’ English, which is a project rather than reality. ‘Basic’ implies a privileged position from early in general education. The effect is to put English onto a comparable pedestal to Macaulay’s. The idea that you can communicate in English with ‘people from almost any country in the world’ is fraudulent. It is probable that two-thirds of the world’s population have no proficiency in English. In most parts of the world, including former colonies, you don’t get far in English outside élite circles and tourist sites.

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•

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Graddol rightly wonders whether making English universal in India is an appropriate policy, but the ‘final goal … beyond English’ is possibly an oblique reference to participation in globalisation, as though this is what the entire population needs. While English is of major importance for the global economy, assuming that it is so ‘basic’ that it is a requirement for economic success or general education is contradicted by the fact that the successful economies of China, Japan and Korea use local languages in basic education, as do continental European countries.

Graddol’s reference to English as a ‘basic skill’ assumes instruction through the medium of English rather than as a school subject. He conflates the two. The falsity of his argument is at its most visible when he refers to northern European countries. Here ‘the majority of the adult population can now speak English’ but it has taken ‘50−60 years to reach this stage’ (2010: 122). The reality is that good English in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Finland (which in fact varies hugely) has been achieved in countries that are more egalitarian than all others, with free education in a national language for the entire population and well-qualified teachers with reasonable fluency in English. English is taught and learned as a foreign language, that is, as a subject, and virtually never as a medium of instruction. In any case, the English proficiency of the Scandinavians, Dutch and Finns is much more limited than that of a large élite of English-users in India for whom it is, in effect, the dominant language. Graddol’s comparison is completely false. The overall thrust in the two texts is fundamentally similar: Macaulay’s ‘Minute’ 1835

Graddol’s English Next India 2010

It denigrates and stigmatises the local.

Indian learning of English is inadequate.

It glorifies Western culture and English.

English is the key to success in the modern world.

It rationalises the asymmetrical relationship between coloniser and colonised.

The United Kingdom has the solution to India’s language in education problem.

A British intellectual can decide matters.

A single expert from the United Kingdom can cover the issues.

It conceals the economic interest of the colonisers.

The potential benefits to the United Kingdom economy are not mentioned.

It fails to refer to the reality of British military occupation of India.

Geostrategic political and military interests are not considered relevant.

Macaulay’s declared goal was to produce ‘interpreters between us and the many millions we govern’. The Minute was essentially about priorities in the short term as well as long-term goals and was concerned exclusively with higher education. He expressed concern that those

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educated in Western knowledge would be isolated and estranged from the rest of the population, that there would be inadequate ‘filtration’ to other groups. This was prescient. An additional consequence of the implementation of the policy, which established the supremacy of English in Bengal within a decade, was to intensify the division between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi wrote in 1907, ‘To give millions a knowledge of English is to enslave them. The foundation that Macaulay laid of education has enslaved us’ (2010: 84). Many scholars from the subcontinent have stressed the pernicious consequences of the decision to put funding into English rather than Indian languages. English has always been causally related to inequality and injustice. Linguistic imperialism invariably involves pull as well as push factors, demand as well as supply. To consider British promotion of ELT as exclusively a question of meeting demand, which the British Council has done for 50 years, is simply untrue. Graddol correctly writes that there is an Indian demand for English, but his report in reality orchestrates this demand on the assumption that the British can solve India’s educational language-learning problems. Few Indian educationalists would agree with this idea. Macaulay’s cultural arrogance was explicit, while the British Council bombastically proclaims that English is needed for success in the global economy, in Indian education and in every Indian home: Macaulay 1835

Martin Davidson, chief executive, British Council: Foreword to Graddol 2010, British Council Annual Report 2009−10

We know that India cannot have a free government. But she may have the best thing − a firm and impartial despotism.

English provides access to the information with which individuals can learn and develop and it provides access to the networks which are vital in building and maintaining economic links.

We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother tongue.

English Next India tells us that from education to the economy, from employability to social mobility, the prospects for India and its people will be greatly enhanced by bringing English into every classroom, every office and every home (italics added).

The British tabloid The Sun proclaimed on 18 January 2008, when Gordon Brown made his first visit as the British prime minister to India and China,

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Gordon Brown will today pledge to export the English language to the world − and boost our economy by billions. Mr Brown believes teaching English will quickly become one of Britain’s biggest exports. It could add a staggering £50 billion a year to the UK economy by 2010. Brown announced a boost to English language learning, teaching and training facilities for people throughout the world. Within days the British Council announced a plan for achieving this on its website (highlighting added): We will help develop a new website to deliver that goal. Gordon Brown also announced how the British Council will be starting a programme in India to recruit ‘Master Trainers’ charged with developing the skills of 750,000 teachers of English over a five-year period. These initiatives are being developed by our teams in China, India and the UK. The Prime Minister emphasised that the new website will establish networks between teachers and students throughout the globe and enable one-to-one tuition between people anywhere in the world. Martin Davidson, Chief Executive of the British Council, said we are delighted to be working with other organisations to provide access to the best of teaching: ‘We know that right around the world young people want access to English language to give them the skills they need to take part in the globalising economy but also to get access to all the knowledge and understanding that we have in this country. And our ambition, as an organisation, is that every learner and teacher of English right around the world should have access to the best of English language teaching from this country.’ British commercial interest in the Indian market for English was serviced by a study by the market research agency Ipsos MORI for the British Council in 2009, Demand for English Language Services − India and China. This study revealed that the interest of Indians in learning English has little, if anything, to do with the United Kingdom. Graddol’s report does not refer to it. However, the British know best what India needs in 1835 and 2010. The British will work to establish (British) English in every Indian home. The imperial packaging is renewed and cushioned by neo-imperial obfuscation; the Hydra has been clothed in worthy and wordy good intentions. To achieve this aim, Graddol brings in a set of myths that seem plausible but can easily be disproved: •

English as a global language. This is in fact a project that some are attempting to bring about. It is not a present-day reality except in restricted circles.

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•

English is ‘the language of business across Europe’. In fact, many languages are used in business in Europe. European universities are shifting from local languages to English. What continental European universities are doing is adding English to their repertoires. There is currently no evidence that this is at the expense of local languages of scholarship. There is a global consensus on how English should be learned, ‘a new global orthodoxy’. Elsewhere in the report Graddol endorses the idea that a mix of educational approaches is needed, but the notion that one approach is universally valid is false. The early start fallacy. The age factor is one among many variables that influence educational success, but age is less important than the qualifications and quality of teachers and choice of the most appropriate medium of instruction.

•

•

•

What is dangerous about these claims is that bureaucrats and an Indian readership might take them as gospel, whereas most scholars with a profound familiarity with language policy issues would not. If there is any paradigm or orthodoxy in educational language policy and planning, it is one that is presented in a book that has contributions by scholars from Africa, Canada, Europe, Latin America and the United States and with strong representation from India and Nepal (e.g. Mohanty et al., 2009; Skutnabb-Kangas et al., 2009). This paradigm is in conformity with the global consensus on how multilingual education can best be achieved. UNESCO published an influential report explaining the criteria for successful multilingual education in 1953 and updated it in 2003, Education in a Multilingual World. Most foreign ‘aid’ has tended to invest resources in ex-colonial languages. It has failed a large section of the population as a result. The ‘communicative’ focus in ELT of recent decades, in its British and American variants, is essentially monolingual and does not require familiarity on the part of its adherents with the languages or cultures of the learners. Nor does it require that native speakers should themselves have learned other languages successfully. The monolingual Hydra paradigm ensures that ELT can be marketed globally. By contrast, foreign-language learning is generally undertaken in the Western world, including the United Kingdom, by teachers who have gone through the experience of acquiring the language in question and who are therefore in a position to undertake metalinguistic analysis in relation to the two languages and translation. Should this not be a requirement for British involvement in education systems anywhere outside the United Kingdom, and specifically in India, if it is to be considered relevant? English linguistic imperialism has been cumulatively asserted in independent India. A report on a British Council conference in 1950 in Mahabaleshwar, attended by a single British academic and 30 Indians, is

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dogmatic about the need for the ‘direct method’ and an early start. It cites the familiar fallacy of ‘standards’ of English dropping if Hindi is promoted and proclaims that the British had the key to ‘the most modern methods of teaching English as a foreign language’. This was strategic opportunism at a time when the ELT profession was virtually non-existent. Enter the Hydra to post-independence India. British self-interest also influenced the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages at Hyderabad, established in 1958. An evaluation in 1975 (Kachru, 1975) is devastatingly critical of the quality of British academic leadership. British ELT was a distillation of the English-only approach that evolved in adult education and in colonial education and was consecrated in the 1960s (Phillipson, 1992). It was based on five fallacies: monolingualism, native speakerism, the early start fallacy, the maximum exposure fallacy and the subtractive fallacy. These are still central to the US-UK ELT business and to most World Bank policies for postcolonial education. Native speakerism means a blind faith in the superiority of one language, one culture and one pedagogy. The Hydra not only remains alive and kicking; its ravenous heads are multiplying apace. Scholarly underpinning for this approach, which essentially legitimates the idea that native-speaker skills are universally marketable, was provided at an Anglo-American conference held in Cambridge in 1961. The eminent literary scholar, I.A. Richards, with professorships simultaneously at Harvard and Cambridge, wrote that ‘in an underdeveloped country, the students’ world becomes restructured’ by English, and, echoing Macaulay, ‘English, through its assimilations, has become not only the representative of contemporary English-speaking thought and feeling but a vehicle of the entire developing human tradition’ (cited in Phillipson, 1992: 167). This is a prescription for global linguistic apartheid. Linguistic imperialism has these defining features (Phillipson, 1992, 2009): •

• • • •

It is a form of linguicism, a favouring of one language over others in ways that parallel societal structuring through racism, sexism and class: linguicism also serves to privilege users of the standard forms of the dominant language, those with convertible linguistic capital. It is structural: more material resources and infrastructure are accorded to the dominant language than to others. It is ideological: beliefs, attitudes and imagery glorify the dominant language, stigmatise others and rationalise the linguistic hierarchy. The dominance is hegemonic, it is internalised and naturalised as being ‘normal’. Linguistic imperialism interlocks with a structure of imperialism in culture, education, the media, communication, the economy, politics and military activities.

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•

In essence it is about exploitation, injustice, inequality and hierarchy that privilege those able to use the dominant language. This entails unequal rights for speakers of different languages. There are invariably push and pull factors, supply and demand mutually reinforcing each other. Linguistic imperialism is invariably contested and resisted. Language use is often subtractive; proficiency in the imperial language and in learning it in education involves its consolidation at the expense of other languages.

• • • •

Subtractive language policies in education are clear cases of a Hydra biting off and consuming other languages. This was captured in Louis-Jean Calvet’s term when he described the annihilation of languages by French colonial language policies as ‘glottophagie’, linguistic cannibalism (1974). The role of foreign ‘aid’ bodies in promoting the interests of the funding country and the dubious effect that their projects have on strengthening English learning in East Asian countries are analysed in an Australian study (Widin, 2010). It documents in great detail that such projects are ‘illegitimate’. They are part and parcel of the ‘web of deceit’ (Curtis, 2003) that characterises the foreign policy of Western governments. This is what underpins and facilitates the activities of the English Hydra. The British Council has commissioned studies of language education in countries in several parts of the world. Its senior staff are fully aware of the importance in multilingual societies of education initially being in the mother tongue or a related language that the child understands. Even so, it promotes the use and learning of English in ways that are in conflict with this principle and doomed to fail. For instance, it is involved in an attempt to reform education in Pakistan with English as a medium of instruction − the British Council’s ‘Punjab Education and English Language Initiative’ (2013), using ‘the latest teaching techniques’, presumably British ones, despite the awkward fact that the vast majority of primary teachers are unable to function in English. It has related projects in India and Africa. However well-intentioned the efforts might be, like the goal of improving language competence and educational skills, it is questionable whether UK ‘experts’ who lack deep familiarity with the culture, languages and local educational norms can be equipped to reform education appropriately. This can be seen in the failure of many ‘aid’ projects (Phillipson, 2010). A persuasive Hydra gets a foot in the door, often funded by the World Bank or a British government department of foreign ‘aid’, and makes a killing. This looks good in its business turnover. The British Council’s corporate plan 2014−16 (on page 18) identifies many goals, including ‘working more with governments to transform whole education systems to increase opportunity and employability through English’. This is opportunistic when one recalls that the education system in Britain (like the United

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States) is deeply stratified and divisive, with a substantial proportion of the population deriving little benefit from it. It also functions monolingually. British Council strategy is integral to the United Kingdom’s role worldwide in promoting the interests of financial and corporate capital, in league with the United States, with frequent resort to military means (Phillipson, 2014). I do not dispute the fact that the British Council can spend much of its Hydra-accumulated income in promoting more noble causes in the cultural and educational domains, but assuming that British expertise in education is universally relevant is unjustified. The British Council and Graddol are in the vanguard in promoting English and British interests worldwide. The similarities between the rhetoric of the early 19th and 21st centuries are strong and disquieting, as are the ensuing structural and material consequences. Imperial Command & Macaulay’s ‘Minute’

British Council & Graddol’s English Next India

English as ‘universal’

English a ‘basic skill’

Limited budget of £10,000

Budget for British Council institutional infrastructure

Good business in consolidating British power

Income potentially massive

Major impact on educational policy

Impact as yet unpredictable

Covert political economy

Covert political economy

Linguistic imperialism

Linguistic neo-imperialism

The similarities may seem minor when compared with the enormities of colonial repression and current global militarisation, but for the individuals whose lives and educational hopes are impacted, the consequences may be equally devastating. The discourse explored here is influential. It serves the purposes of imperialists ancient and modern and not the mass of the population, the colonial and neo-imperial subjects. Dispatching underqualified native speakers to teach English in schools and language schools (for instance in Asia) is unprofessional. Employing monolinguals as consultants or teacher trainers on language-related projects worldwide is illegitimate. The British Council is increasingly run as a business to make money worldwide out of the teaching and examining of English and native speakerism. This is commercially driven, pseudo-academic opportunism. The ‘expertise’ typically operates within a narrow paradigm, neoliberal and consumerist, and fraudulently legitimates political and racist dominance. It continues linguistic imperialism in new forms and does not contribute to social justice. English functions as a professional Hydra, with tragic consequences.

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References British Council (2013) Punjab Education and English Language Initiative (PEELI). See https://www.britishcouncil.pk/programmes/education/peeli (accessed 17 April 2016). British Council (2014a) Annual Report 2012−2013. British Council (2014b) Corporate Plan 2014–16. https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/ default/files/corporate-plan-2014-16.pdf. Calvet, L.J. (1974) Linguistique et colonialisme: Petit traité de glottophagie. Paris: Payot. Clive, J. (1973) Macaulay. The Shaping of the Historian. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Curtis, M. (2003) Web of Deceit. Britain’s Real Role in the World. London: Vintage. Gandhi, M.K. (2010) M.K. Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj. A Critical Edition. Annotated and edited by S. Sharma and T. Suhrud. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Graddol, D. (1997) The Future of English? A Guide to Forecasting the Popularity of the English Language in the 21st century. British Council, UK. Graddol, D. (2006) English Next. British Council, UK. Graddol, D. (2010) English Next India. London: The British Council. See http://www. britishcouncil.org/learning-english-next-india-2010-book.htm. Howson, P. (2013) See http://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/britishcouncil.uk2/files/ english-effect-report.pdf (accessed 28 February 2015). Ipsos Mori (2009) See http://goo.gl/5noUeS for details of this report for the British Council. Kachru, B.B. (1975) A retrospective study of the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, and its relation to Indian Universities. In M. Fox (ed.) Language and Development: A Retrospective Survey of Ford Foundation Language Projects 1952−1974 (pp. 27−94). New York: Ford Foundation (vol. 1, report; vol. 2, case studies). Leonard, M., Stead, C. and Smewing, C. (2002) Public Diplomacy. London: Foreign Policy Centre. See http://fpc.org.uk/fsblob/35.pdf. Macaulay, T.B. (1835) Minute on education in India. See http://www.columbia.edu/itc/ mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html. Mohanty, A., Panda, M., Phillipson, R. and Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (eds) (2009) Multilingual Education for Social Justice: Globalising the Local. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Phillipson, R. (2009) Linguistic Imperialism Continued. New York and London: Routledge. Phillipson, R. (2010) The politics and the personal in language education: The state of which art? Review article on The Politics of Language Education. Individuals and Institutions, edited by J. Charles Alderson. Language and Education 24 (2), 151−166. Alderson’s response (pp. 167−168). Robert Phillipson’s final comment, p. 169. Phillipson, R. (2014) English, the lingua nullius of global hegemony. Paper presented at Université de Genève, 19 – 20 June, 2014. See http://www.linguistic-rights.org/robertphillipson/Robert_Phillipson_English_in_global_hegemony.pdf (accessed 12 March 2016). Rapatahana, V. and Bunce, P. (eds) (2012) English Language as Hydra: Its Impacts on NonEnglish Cultures. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Routh, R.V. (1941) The Diffusion of English Culture Outside England. A Problem of Post-war Reconstruction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skutnabb-Kangas, T., Phillipson, R., Mohanty, A. and Panda, M. (eds) (2009) Social Justice Through Multilingual Education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Sullivan, R.E. (2010) Macaulay, The Tragedy of Power. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan (first published by Harvard University Press, 2009). UNESCO (2003) Education in a Multilingual World. Paris: UNESCO. Widin, J. (2010) Illegitimate Practices. Global English Language Education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

3 English, Neocolonialism and Forgetting Ruanni Tupas

The struggle of man [sic] against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. (Milan Kundera)

Introduction The night before 28 September 1901, in Balangiga, Samar, in the Central Philippines, the American guards in the plaza were startled to see a hurried throng of heavily dressed Filipino women entering the Catholic church, some carrying small coffins. The sergeant of the guard warily demanded that one of the coffins be opened for inspection. Inside was a dead child. Underneath the dead bodies, however, were sharp bolo (machete) knives of the native men who, stripping themselves of women’s clothes inside the church, were gearing themselves for a surprise attack on the American army garrison early in the morning of the next day. On that day, a mad rush of Filipino men carrying knives and bolos emerged from the church and started hacking every American in sight. They were resisting the presence of the Americans on the island who had begun to carry out President McKinley’s ‘benevolent assimilation’ campaign in the Philippines. Filipinos paid very dearly for what they did. In his infamous words of retribution, Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith said, ‘I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better you will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States’ (in Schott, 1964: 71). The Balangiga massacre was a defining moment in the country’s resistance against US colonisation. Yet today, it only flickers in and out of collective memory. In rare flashes of good memory, it is dismissed as an unfortunate incident that should not overshadow ‘the fact’ that American colonisation of the country was a blessing for which Filipinos must be forever grateful. Through what Connerton (2008: 60) refers to as repressive erasure, ‘encrypted covertly and without apparent violence’, American colonial state apparatuses, especially the school system, activated its project of forgetting the brutal beginnings of Philippine–American relations. From then on, images of the Filipino dead (at least 200,000) have slowly faded into the shadows of colonial memory. 47

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This chapter argues that the hegemonic presence and spread of English around the world is implicated in forgetting. The English-language Hydra dominates, but here in the Philippines it is in the guise of an invertebrate water creature, and it dominates through its tentacles of forgetting. It lives, thrives and breeds in people’s and institutions’ selective memory. For example, language policy is an arena where the Hydra’s tentacles of forgetting tighten even more ‘the grip of English’ on people today (Lorente, 2013: 187); they crush people’s memories of collective resistance and intensify their obsession with the English language.

Understanding Forgetting In the social sciences, forgetting is part of a larger body of work on social memory, which is concerned mainly with why people choose to return to their past and choose which past to remember and ignore, and with how and why people resist particular memories. Because forgetting and remembering are at the centre of identity formation and nation-building projects, social memory is an indispensable concept in the social sciences. Sociology, for example, ‘cannot afford to forget memory’ (Olick & Robbins, 1998: 134). In history, Nora (1989: 7) asserts that we ‘speak so much of memory because there is little of it left’. It is important not to let this happen in language policy, applied linguistics and other language-related studies. The issue is fundamental: how to place memory at the centre of our work as language scholars, language teachers, language policymakers and educational researchers. Understanding how the tentacles of forgetting work could help draw the link between colonially induced language policies and the continuing dominance of English today, as well as between the structures of neocolonialism and individual subjective desires for English. If we do not undo the ‘past’ that embeds our daily life, we remain subjected to the historical tentacles of English as Hydra. Keeping in mind that forgetting is not a monolithic concept, that not all of it is good and that not all remembering is bad (Connerton, 2008), this chapter addresses more fundamental questions: What do we forget in order to validate our present life, and what are the consequences of such forgetting on ourselves and our societies? These should be valid questions especially because we live in ‘hopelessly forgetful modern societies’ (Nora, 1989: 8). These are tricky questions too, however, because forgetting assumes that some memories must have been known before they are forgotten. Nevertheless, forgetting for this paper is a historical process and, while individuals may differ in their relationship with particular memories, individual trajectories have been shaped and choreographed historically by powerful and oppressive institutions to advance their own agenda. In the case of the Philippines, active resistance was extensive in the years following the Balangiga massacre but notably waned as

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colonial institutions of forgetting began to take political root. Thus, in the collective memory of the nation, the Balangiga massacre was forgotten. There are conceptual nuances between related terms such as ‘the problem of memory’, ‘historical amnesia’, ‘historical forgetting’ and ‘the problem of historical consciousness’, and these should be acknowledged. This paper deploys ‘forgetting’ as a politically strategic term to highlight the fact that language teaching, learning and research are actively interpreting the past, knowingly or unknowingly. ‘Forgetting’ also has the advantage of being both a condition and a process, a political act that continuously reinscribes the past in the present, thus remaining potentially open for change and transformation as well. What all this could mean to language policy in general, for example in furthering English-language hegemony, is that it could be saturated with memory but selective in what it forgets and remembers. Worse, the tentacles of forgetting, uncontested and unexcavated, serve as built-in structures of language policy for the construction and sustenance of linguistic hierarchies and hegemonies. People are gripped by the Hydra’s tentacles of forgetting, internalising forgetting through the privileging of colonially induced meanings of English as well as enacting forgetting by succumbing to the fleeting but imperious demands of the market today.

English and Forgetting in Singapore Let us take Singapore as an example of how English, despite the nearvaliant efforts of the state to safeguard the interests of at least the speakers of Mandarin (Chinese), Malay and Tamil, the three official ‘mother tongues’ of the country, is perpetuating class-driven social divisions and expeditiously destroying the traditional languages of the home through its tentacles of forgetting. Singapore has defied international trends in education because its use of a non-native language of instruction − English − is seen as one of the world’s success stories in education. English became the primary language of instruction in 1987, but it was already one of the official languages three decades earlier when the country was reeling from the traumas of independence from the British and then from Malaysia. The politically strategic but effective way to introduce English as the most important language in postcolonial Singapore is the subject of the following discussion. Singapore achieved self-governance from the British in 1959 and political independence from Malaysia in 1965, after Malaysia supposedly kicked it out of the Malaysian Federation. From 1959 up to the present, the country has been practically ruled by a one-party system, the People’s Action Party (PAP), whose most popular member was former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, the country’s first and longest-serving prime minister. When the

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British left, the government under the PAP had to contend with massive unemployment, economic stagnation and ethnic divisiveness. Therefore, it only had one goal in mind − modernisation − and to accomplish this, it had to ‘reject all links to the past and to tradition’ (Loh, 1998: 3) to build the nation. In the words of Hill and Fee (1995: 3), this nation-building in the country encompassed ‘historical amnesia’, a look towards the future and integration through institution building. In the process, the PAP-led government had to create its own story of Singapore in order to legitimise its hegemony over the people. This story was a narrative of survival, vulnerability and crisis, which necessitated ‘immediate and rapid material development’ (Loh, 1998: 3). The designation of English as an official language of Singapore would thus be part of this ideological rejection of links to the past: English was going to be used as a language of modernisation, as well as of inter-ethnic communication to achieve racial harmony, divested of any colonial trappings and ideologies. In the process, Singapore would be fully integrated into the trade and finance of the global economy and would have to accommodate to its norms. Thus, to unhook English from its colonial moorings, to package it as a language of modernisation, is to avoid addressing the colonially induced inequalities brought forth by the use and imposition of English on the local population. Consequently, such inequalities would be forgotten but continue to persist, making English a neocolonial, rather than a postcolonial, language. Nevertheless, as Singapore rapidly progressed economically in the 1970s, the government radically departed from its stand on history and, in fact, admitted that it could have been wrong in setting aside history and tradition in its zealous quest for economic progress. The younger generation, it argued, seemed to have lost their appreciation of the sacrifices of the earlier generation, so it needed to introduce history and values back into the national curriculum. This change of heart towards the relevance of history in nation-building, however, was born not really out of altruism but more so out of the government’s response to the potential erosion of its support among the youth. It feared that those who took Singapore’s ‘prosperity and stability for granted’ would advance a ‘different story … for Singapore’ (S. Rajaratnam in Loh, 1998: 4). What it chose to remember and forget, in other words, became a strategy to perpetuate its extensive power over the people. Thus, the official Singapore Story had to begin in 1819, the year that Singapore was founded by Sir Stamford Raffles, because (initially at least) extending the trajectories of the past back beyond the British colonial period would have conjured up a much longer history of communal conflict and racial disharmony. Under the British Crown, what was remembered were the extreme sacrifices of the ethnically diverse immigrant population, which had crucially contributed to the economic success of the port of Singapore.

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It is against this backdrop of forgetting and remembering, of ‘an interpretation of the past that has been manufactured for political reasons’ (Loh, 1998: 6), that the highly ‘successful’ bilingual policy of Singapore could be understood. The policy − as a centrepiece social policy to address the twin national objectives of modernisation and management of ethnic diversity − recognises English, Mandarin Chinese, Malay and Tamil as coequal official languages of the country. English, called the ‘first language’ in school, became the primary medium of instruction, and [Mandarin] Chinese, Malay and Tamil were the designated ‘second languages’ in school, to be taught as subjects. Through the ideological lens of the official Singapore Story, the teaching of the official mother tongues in school was institutionalised not only to strengthen ethnic identities but also to counter the so-called decadent and culturally incompatible values and ideologies of the West, which were wrought upon the native population through the English language. The state-driven discourse of English as an agent of westernisation avoided the notion of English as a colonial language but, instead, constructed English as a carrier of ideologies of individualism and freedom of expression that threatened the formation of a national identity forged through a statesanctioned view of the past. On the other hand, when it came to the introduction of English as the common medium of instruction in the schools, the state retreated from constructing English as an ideologically laden language. Instead, it divested the language of any cultural content or value and packaged it as an ethnically neutral language needed to modernise and manage racial diversity. Thus English has served as both a neutral and non-neutral language, as well as a language which was ideologically suspect and unbiased at the same time. Thus, while indeed the bilingual policy has served as an agent of modernisation and the management of racial diversity, the arbitrary characterisations of English resulted from the government’s strategic use of the past to advance its own agenda. Consequently, the colonial moorings of English were rejected, thus forgetting the socially divisive mechanisms of British colonial rule that had created a small English-educated élite. Specifically, what was forgotten was the acute class-based social divisiveness pervasive at the time of colonial rule: ‘Education under the colonial administration was expediently compartmentalised, with English available only to a privileged minority’ (Hill & Fee, 1995: 4). This does not mean that the establishment did not reference the élitist nature of English-medium education before independence from the British. This was used to accomplish the state’s aim of racialising Singapore as a way to contain diversity. This meant using English as an ideological tool of the state to manage ethnic diversity wherein Singaporeans were assigned officially designated races (Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others − CMIO) thus homogenising what were then linguistically and culturally diverse

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communities. The category ‘Others’ was meant for all those who did not fit the fine racial categories of the state because of their having come from racially mixed marriages. The point here is that the introduction of English in all schools was less about redressing social inequalities and more about managing and reducing racial and linguistic diversity. In the words of Chua (2003: 71), ‘the ideological promotion of English as a “neutral” language to all ethnic Asian children has suppressed this class dimension.’ The Hydra’s tentacles of forgetting have kept mostly everyone primarily class-blind at the instigation of the state and its political apparatuses. While this has helped PAP leaders to confront chauvinist pro-Malay and pro-Chinese ideologies early due to their essentially intolerant views of cultural and linguistic diversity, it has locked in the role of English as Hydra as a social stratifier in Singapore. Indeed, the ability to speak English, as well as different levels of English proficiency, has become a marker not only of education but of people’s housing status as well. Against this backdrop of enduring classbased inequalities in the country, the Hydra’s tentacles of forgetting were unstoppable, encroaching upon the homes and clambering upon all street corners of the small nation-state. Official numbers from the Department of Statistics show an increasing number of Singaporean homes shifting to English as their primary language of communication: 18.8% in 1990, 23.0% in 2000, 28.1% in 2005 and 32.3% in 2010 (cited in Tupas, 2011). Other sources (e.g. Pakir, 2008) even point to a higher number, with the Report of the English Language Curriculum and Pedagogy Review (2006: 4) noting that ‘in 1996, about 35% of our Primary One (P1) students came from homes where English was the predominant home language compared to 50% of the P1 cohort in 2006.’ Although it has long been a foregone conclusion that English was going to be the most powerful language in Singapore, with ‘Singlish’ as a stigmatised but vibrant hybrid variant, the gradual displacement of the traditional languages of the home evidences the destructive power of the policies favouring the English language. The bilingual policy, ironically put in place to safeguard the country’s so-called multilingual and multicultural ethos, is increasingly pushing more people towards subtractive bilingualism − specifically the learning of English at the expense of, and not in addition to, other languages. There are now serious questions about the existence of a monolithic English in Singapore homes, with many commentators arguing that this may now have splintered into several class-induced Englishes alongside the Chinese, Malay, Indian and other Asian ‘new immigrant’ languages such as Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese. This is not an unrealistic proposition, although official statistics do not yet capture this aspect of home language use. What they capture, as mentioned already in this chapter, is the socially stratifying power of English over other languages.

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English and Forgetting in the Philippines Unlike the British in Singapore, the American colonisers undertook a campaign of ‘benevolent assimilation’, by introducing free primary education to all Filipino children. Education, in other words, was the centrepiece colonial tool to pacify the Filipino people, with English as the medium of instruction. Therefore, it was through English that Filipinos were indoctrinated into deplorable colonial ideologies that taught them not only to be submissive to their colonial masters but also to believe that they were uncivilised half-savages who spoke multiple ‘dialects’, not languages. Constantino (1970) famously described this process as ‘the mis-education of the Filipino people’. It was not, of course, just the Balangiga massacre that was forgotten, but everything else that it represented − the resistance of the Filipino people to American colonialism. On 12 June 1898, the Filipinos, whose country had been colonised by Spain for more than three centuries, on their own declared independence, raised the first Philippine flag and drafted their own constitution – this made the country reputedly the first republic in Asia. Unfortunately, this came at the time when the United States was starting its first ‘pivot’ in the region. The Philippines’s declaration of independence made it extremely vulnerable, especially as it was of geographic advantage to the United States. Refusing to surrender to its erstwhile colonial subjects, Spain, through the infamous Treaty of Paris of 1898, then ceded the Philippines to the United States for the sum of $20 million. The newly established Philippine government clamoured (unsuccessfully) for representation at the negotiation table. With their country’s diplomatic overtures roundly rejected, Filipinos, still exhausted from their revolutionary struggles against Spain, wearily began yet another protracted war. For the first three years of American occupation, 1898−1901, both sides engaged in a ravaging war, referred to as the Philippine–American War, which Kolko (1976: 46) described as ‘the bloody acquisition of the Philippines’. This was the ‘first American entry into Asia’, and the war ‘the most ignored’ by the American colonisers (Kolko, 1976: 46). Overpowered militarily, the Filipino resistance fighters retreated from public view to the countryside, where they continued to engage the colonisers in intermittent and isolated battles. Enter the ‘pacifying project’ of American colonial education through which the Americans sought to win the hearts and minds of the Filipino people. Alongside this was the imposition of the English language as the medium of instruction, as well as the teaching of English history and literature, which foregrounded the values and thinking of the Western world and denigrated Filipino culture, tradition and indigenous knowledge. At the centre of this mis-education was the institutionalisation of forgetting: the

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Philippine–American War was ignored in colonial textbooks, where Filipinos who continued to resist the ‘benevolent’ presence of the Americans were constructed as ‘bandits’ whose ‘irrational’ minds and hearts resented the desire of the majority of Filipinos to embrace the ‘the modern free world’. The Spanish-speaking Filipino élites, eager to access the new social goods offered by the Americans, were co-opted to serve as agents of pacification and forgetting. Thus, despite a very small élite benefitting from English education, the language became widely ensconced in the educational system, at least, because this was broadly and passionately supported by the Filipino élite. The official beginning of American colonial rule in the Philippines thus commenced after the Philippine-American War. Filipinos and the generations thereafter were taught that the Americans ‘came’ to the Philippines and gifted them with good education and the English language. The impact of such forgetting has been so sweeping such that Filipino self-identification or selfconcept is inextricably embedded in their veneration of the United States as the country that would ‘rescue’ the Philippines from all trouble and the country that would never think ill of the Filipino people. Filipinos have been found to be willing to go to war on behalf of the United States, prefer Americans as their seatmates in class over other nationalities and trust Americans more than their fellow Filipinos. In a recent global survey by the Pew Research Centre’s Global Attitudes Project, its bizarre but understandable results indicate that more Filipinos than Americans themselves have a favourable view of Americans and the United States and trust the US president more than his fellow Americans (rappler.com, 2014). This explains why generally there has been only a muted resistance to the renegotiated terms of American military presence in the country − for example, through joint military exercises between Filipino and American soldiers within Philippine territory − despite the Philippine Senate voting in 1991 against the continuing operations of all US military bases in the country. Thus, among Filipinos at least, the hugely favourable view of the English language cannot simply be reduced to the more recent discourses on English and globalisation, which perpetuate the myth that only through English can people be successful in today’s world. Language policies around the world largely propagate similar views, trumpeting the economic advantage of English, even if in reality only a select few actually gain from it. These discourses are so powerful that even those disadvantaged by the privileged status of English will endorse them as well. In the Philippines today such globalisation discourses intersect with the colonial discourses, providing support for the reproduction of the tentacles of forgetting. In this sense, language policies continue to be a ‘war of memories’. In the case of the Philippines, the symbolic and materialist power of English has been sustained through the forgetting of how it was actually introduced through bloodshed and amidst resistance against colonial rule.

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The Hydra’s tentacles of forgetting can be more clearly understood through a recent case of linguistic discrimination in the country. In 2013, three high-school students in the Ilocos region, with around 10 million speakers of Ilocano (out of approximately 100,000 million Filipino population, and more than 150 languages), were expelled from school because they spoke Ilocano on campus (Geronimo, 2013). They supposedly violated the school’s English-only policy. While some criticism of this event has focused on issues of linguistic human rights and educational equality, there has been broad support for the school’s decision because of the popularity of English-only schools today. Those who agreed with the decision to expel the students believed that the children had violated a school policy by which they were expected to abide in the first place. There is, according to them, nothing wrong with an English-only policy. After all, English is a global language and the language of work and business. The politics of English that are implicated in the controversy, however, are not as straightforward as they may appear to be. The political and ideological undercurrents are far more deeply entrenched if we turn our analytical lenses back into early 20th-century history. The English-only policy today is bound by the tentacles of forgetting, which make the discourses of support for the policy both destructive and deeply rooted. The policy is really not about English-only but is actually anchored in a colonially induced hatred towards local languages. In the school’s Student Handbook, for example, speaking in the vernacular is listed alongside other types of ‘misconduct’, namely: (1) littering, (2) using chain accessories for males and (3) speaking bad words inside the campus (Geronimo, 2013). In other words, echoing earlier discourses on the mother tongues or the Philippine ‘dialects’, this present-day aversion to speaking in the vernacular regards local languages as undesirable, inferior and filthy and their speakers as backward, disobedient and undesirable. Pernicious and subtle colonially induced discourses are embedded in today’s veneration of English. Undergirding the seemingly harmless rhetoric of English-only ideologies are the Hydra’s tentacles of forgetting which foreground ‘colonialism’s economic, political, and cultural deformative traces in the present’ (Shohat, 1992: 105, italics added). Colonial structures of forgetting have been ‘replaced’ by neocolonial ones; or rather, English as a tentacled Hydra dominates through the protracted and enduring influence of colonialism today.

Conclusion: The Continuing Struggle for Memory Of course, the English-language Hydra does not feed on memory alone, but my focus here on its tentacles of forgetting highlights the need to address this critical aspect of the bestial presence of English in our lives today. It is too massive to be slain from one angle alone, but excising its tentacles

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of forgetting can incapacitate it and loosen its grip on people’s lives. As the Kundera quote at the beginning of this paper declares, our struggle for power is a struggle for memory. We can design our own future only if we can take control of our own past. Filipinos valiantly struggled against forgetting in the 1960s and 1970s when it was increasingly becoming apparent that, despite their nominal political independence from the United States in 1948, the United States was continuing to impose its presence on Filipinos through neocolonial rule. Constantino’s (1970) massively important rejection of English as the centre of the ‘mis-education of the Filipino people’ reverberated in the streets and the hills in most parts of the country where both student and underground movements consolidated their resistance against US imperialism and the colluding administration of the would-be dictator, Ferdinand E. Marcos. The fight for memory was at the centre of the political battle that led to the institutionalisation of bilingual education in 1974, in which both English and Pilipino (now called Filipino) would be used as media of instruction: science and mathematics would be taught in English, and all other subjects in Pilipino. Pilipino was going to serve as the language of nationalism and anti-colonialism. Although nothing close to ideal, this bilingual arrangement in schools was a huge political breakthrough in education. Prior to this − for around 70 years of American (neo)colonial rule, to be precise − English had always served as the primary or sole medium of instruction. The bilingual education policy has recently been supplanted by an even more potentially enlightened educational policy, MTB-MLE (or mothertongue-based multilingual education), which mandates the use of the children’s mother tongues as the medium of instruction in the early years of basic education. The focus on the pedagogical efficacy of the mother tongues is certainly a brilliant way to argue for their relevance in school, but it is not enough to dislodge English from the empire of memory. As the example of the three students being expelled for speaking Ilocano in school shows, implementing mother-tongue-based education does not mean embracing multilingualism and diversity. Clearly, the Hydra’s tentacles of forgetting have encroached upon mother-tongue-based education by sustaining people’s colonially induced hatred towards their own languages. The case of Singapore is trickier. The country has always been very mindful of the ideological dangers of the English language. However, its goal of curtailing the ideological impact of English on the local population through the teaching of the ‘mother tongues’ cannot in any considerable way be viewed as some attempt to overturn or at least hurt the Hydra. In fact, it holds the view that English should be the common language of all. Its own version of bilingual education was meant to expand the reach of English and reinforce its status as the most powerful language in the country. In other words, Singaporeans, more than Filipinos perhaps,

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have pretty much been lulled to sleep by the Hydra’s tentacles of forgetting. The ideological infrastructures of the state, the country’s obsession with pragmatism or economics as the main guiding principle in all decisionmaking, as well as the country’s role as an avid supporter of capitalist globalisation, have connived to ensure the self-preservation of the Englishlanguage Hydra. Literally and figuratively, Singaporeans are at home with the Hydra. It should be noted, however, that recent warnings from the streets and the home may be warning Singaporeans that the Hydra could soon be a major nightmare for the government. Many people, now more comfortable with English than with their ‘mother tongues’, are clamouring for English to be called their mother tongue (Tan, 2014; Wee, 2002), potentially supplanting three decades of ‘bilingual’ peace. If it becomes so, then the official mother tongues would lose their status as the exclusive languages of identity and cultural rootedness. While the government will most likely vehemently resist this possibility, it will nonetheless have to confront the socially differentiated nature of the ownership of English. Those who claim much more affinity with English than their other home languages tend to come from socio-economically advantaged homes and schools (Zhao & Liu, 2007). In other words, aside from the fact that English is destroying the traditional home languages in the country, the colonially induced élitist nature of English-language use continues to persist. Sleeping with the Hydra in the comforts of the home does not make English any less insidious. It only proves the point that the future of English cannot be confined to the wild, wild west; it can also be found in the perilous new homes of the Hydra, feeding on the graciousness of its new natives.

References Chua, B.H. (2003) Multiculturalism in Singapore: An instrument of social control. Race & Class 44 (3), 58−77. Connerton, P. (2008) Seven types of forgetting. Memory Studies 1 (59), 59−71. Constantino, R. (1970) The mis-education of the Filipino. Journal of Contemporary Asia 1 (1), 20−36. Geronimo, J. (2013) 3 students expelled for speaking Ilocano − in Ilocos Norte. 6 August. See http://www.rappler.com/nation/35762-students-expelled-speakingilocano (accessed 11 October 2014). Hill, M. and Fee, L.K. (1995) The Politics of Nation Building and Citizenship in Singapore. London: Routledge. Kolko, G. (1976) Main Currents in Modern American History. New York: Harper & Row. Loh, K.S. (1998) Within the Singapore story: The use and narrative of history in Singapore. Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 1 (2), 1−21. Lorente, B. (2013) The grip of English and Philippine language policy. In L. Wee, R.B.H. Goh and L. Lim (eds) The Politics of English: South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Asia Pacific. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Nora, P. (1989) Between memory and history: Les Lieux de Memoir. Representations 0 (26), 7−24.

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Olick, J.K. and Robbins, J. (1998) Social memory studies: From “Collective Memory” to the historical sociology of Mnemonic Practices. Annual Review of Sociology 24, 105–140. Pakir, A. (2008) Bilingual education in Singapore. In J. Cummins and N.H. Hornberger (eds) Bilingual Education, vol. 5 of Encyclopedia of Language and Education (2nd edn). New York: Springer. Rappler.com (2014) Filipinos like the US even more than Americans do − Pew Research. See http://www.rappler.com/nation/56085-philippines-usa-pew-research (accessed 27 October 2014). Report of the English Language Curriculum and Pedagogy Review 2006. Executive Summary, 1−19. See http://www.tesol.edu.sg/pdf/MOE%20English%20Review.pdf (13 January 2015). Schott, J.L. (1964) The Ordeal of Samar. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Shohat, E. (1992) Notes on the ‘Post-Colonial’. Social Text 31/32, 99−113. Tan, Y.Y. (2014) English as a ‘mother tongue’ in Singapore. World Englishes 33 (3), 319−339. Tupas, R. (2011) English-knowing bilingualism in Singapore: Economic pragmatism, ethnic relations and class. In A. Feng (ed.) English Language in Education and Societies across Greater China. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Wee, L. (2002) When English is not a mother tongue: Linguistic ownership and the Eurasian community in Singapore. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 23 (4), 282–295. Zhao, S. and Liu, Y. (2007) Home language shift and its implications for language planning in Singapore: From the perspective of prestige planning. Asia-Pacific Education Researcher 16 (2), 111−125.

4 The English Language as Naga in Indonesia1 Hywel Coleman

The Naga In Indonesian iconography (particularly in Java and Bali), the naga is a mythical serpent. Its open mouth reveals a forked tongue and fierce fangs. The creature’s head is erect and crowned, while its body, possessing neither legs nor wings, undulates vertically as though in motion. There is an ambiguity about the naga: its appearance is regal yet threatening. In some circumstances it has positive connotations, as when four naga wulan (serpents of the months) watch over the cardinal points of the compass and ensure the propitiousness of journeys (Geertz, 1960: 32). For this reason, carved or painted representations of naga are often found at the entrances of palaces, temples and hotels. But the naga is also fearsome. The naga wulan’s protection is conditional and applies only if the traveller sets off in the appropriate direction and at an auspicious time. The well-known wayang kulit (shadow puppet) story about Prince Bima tells how he encountered a fierce naga, which he managed to kill and, in so doing, achieved self-awareness (Geertz, 1960: 274; Sudibyoprono, 1991: 118). Meanwhile, the Old Javanese tale of Ādiparwa recounts the feud between King Janamejaya and the wily naga forces, led by their king Taks ̟aka (Zoetmulder, 1983: 80−82). The naga, then, are powerful and potentially beneficent so long as they can be kept under control. But they are also potentially destructive and, in extreme situations, must be overcome. Overcoming a naga can lead to enlightenment. This chapter proposes that English, Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian, the national language) and the local languages of Indonesia can be likened to naga. All have important roles to play but − in the cases of English and Indonesian − they are also potentially destructive. As we will see, English poses a serious threat to the status of Indonesian, while at the same time Indonesian threatens the local languages. It is as if English, the most voracious naga, is consuming Indonesian tail first. At the same time, Indonesian, the intermediate naga, is busily devouring the local languages, apparently unaware that it is, itself, being consumed by English (Figure 4.1). 59

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Figure 4.1 The large naga of English is devouring the intermediate naga of Indonesian, which itself is devouring the many local language nagas (Artist: David Fero)

The chapter looks first at Indonesia’s local languages, then at Indonesian and English.2 Finally, it looks for evidence of resistance to the trends that have been identified.

Indonesia’s Local Languages It is not possible to say with certainty how many languages there are in Indonesia or how many speakers each language has. According to Ethnologue (Lewis et al., 2014), there are 706 living languages in Indonesia, including major languages such as Javanese, with 84,000,000 speakers; Sundanese with 34,000,000 speakers; and at least 11 other languages with more than 2 million native speakers each. 3 Most of the major languages have their own writing systems and written literatures, which date back several centuries. For example, the oldest extant example of written Old Javanese dates from AD 804 (Zoetmulder, 1983: 3). In contrast, hundreds of other languages have only small numbers of speakers and have never been written. The overall legal standing of the local languages is precarious. When independence was declared in 1945, only Indonesian was mentioned in the body of the Constitution. However, a supplement explained that ‘local languages which are cared for by their speakers, such as Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, and so on, will also be respected and cared for by the State. These languages are part of Indonesia’s living culture.’ The Fourth Revision of the Constitution in 2002 simplified this: ‘[the State] respects and protects the local languages as national cultural assets.’ Between 1947 and 2013, a succession of national curricula gradually minimised the role that the local languages played in education and curtailed the hours allocated for teaching them as subjects. From 1947 to

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1975, Indonesia possessed two parallel primary-school systems, one using Indonesian exclusively as the medium of instruction and one that used the local language as the medium in Years 1 to 3, introduced Indonesian in Year 3 and then used Indonesian as the medium (with the local languages taught as subjects) in Years 4 to 6. From 1975, Indonesian became the default medium of instruction in all schools from Year 1, although schools were still permitted to use local languages ‘if required’. The local language was no longer a core subject in primary schools, and the time allocated for teaching it was reduced from eight to two hours per week in Years 1 and 2. This situation continued, with minor modifications, until 2013. The number of schools that actually used local languages as media of instruction is not known, but ad hoc observations suggest that the policy was widely implemented in the early years of independence and then gradually fell into disuse over the following decades.4 With the introduction of a new curriculum in 2013, the local languages became mere adjuncts to Indonesian. There is no longer any official provision for using local languages as media of instruction in the first years of primary education, and there is no specific time allocation for the teaching of local languages as subjects. Primary schools wishing to teach a local language should ‘integrate it with the curriculum subject Art, Culture & Handicraft’ or provide it as an extracurricular subject at their own expense. In secondary schools, the subject ‘Art & Culture may include the local language’, if desired, in Years 7 to 9. In Years 10 to 12 ‘local content [i.e. any subject of particular local relevance] may include the local language’ (Republik Indonesia, 2013). The local languages, therefore, now play only a peripheral role in education, and in most schools they have disappeared completely. Following the closure of the local-language-medium primary schools in 1975, concerns were expressed about the likely consequences by Amran Halim, head of the National Centre for Language Guidance and Development, and by Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana, who had been primarily responsible for standardising Indonesian in the 1950s. Halim called for a comprehensive national language policy, which would include the protection and development of the local languages (Halim, 1980). Meanwhile, Alisjahbana (1980) suggested that it was already too late: the local languages had been denied the opportunities to develop that Indonesian had enjoyed. In 2015, Indonesia still lacks a comprehensive national language policy, while Alisjahbana’s prediction that the local languages would disappear from their last bastion in primary schools has been proved correct. The local languages, then, are ‘respected’ and ‘protected’ by the Constitution, but they have no formal roles; even in the early years of education they have been replaced by Indonesian. Not surprisingly, Indonesia now has the fourth largest number of endangered languages in

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the world, according to UNESCO, with 146 of its languages considered to be ‘vulnerable’, ‘endangered’ or ‘extinct’ (Moseley, 2010). Meanwhile, according to Ethnologue, 13 of Indonesia’s languages are already extinct, and 48% of the remainder are ‘in trouble’ or ‘dying’ (Lewis et al., 2014). UNESCO and Ethnologue do not always agree on which languages are endangered, but it is clear that large numbers of Indonesia’s local languages, its smallest beneficent nagas, are in a precarious condition and that, as a direct consequence of government education policy, it is Indonesian, the voracious naga, that is replacing them. Even the strongest local languages are not immune to the encroachment of Indonesian. Take the case of Javanese. Although this is the country’s most widely spoken mother tongue, its written form (both in the indigenous script, Aksara Hanacaraka, and in the Latin script) has now almost completely disappeared from public places.5 Instead, government notices, names of buildings, signs and advertisements use Indonesian (or even English, discussed later in this chapter). When the author visited northern Central Java in 2013, no cases of Javanese in Aksara Hanacaraka script were observed, and only two examples of Javanese in Latin script (a local government exhortation not to throw rubbish into a river and an election poster) were noted. Indeed, written Arabic is seen far more frequently than written Javanese. Over the seven decades since the declaration of independence, Javanese and most of the other major local languages have, in effect, regressed into becoming unwritten languages, at least in the public arena.6 With only a few exceptions, local languages are not used by local or central government institutions. Service users may experience difficulty or embarrassment if they speak a local language in a service encounter, particularly in more formal situations. This is illustrated by an incident during a session of the Constitutional Court in August 2014. According to a news report, a witness was asked a question by the judge, but everybody present in the court ‘burst out laughing’ when they heard the witness respond in high-level Javanese (the most polite register). The judge mocked the witness and reprimanded him for not speaking Indonesian (Kompas, 2014b). A more insidious example occurred in a military tribunal in 2007. According to a press release from the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence,7 witnesses who spoke only Madurese were asked questions in Indonesian when giving evidence in the investigation into the fatal shooting of villagers protesting about the seizure of their land by the military. Not understanding what was being said, the witnesses simply answered ‘Yes’ to each question. As a result, the tribunal decided that the demonstrating villagers had been principally to blame for the incident and that the military had fired in self-defence.

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To summarise, half of Indonesia’s languages are ‘in trouble’ or ‘dying’, and some, indeed, have already died. Local languages are no longer used as media of instruction in schools − where they have been replaced by Indonesian − and they have disappeared from the school curriculum as subjects in their own right. Furthermore, the written forms of local languages have almost completely disappeared from public places where, again, they have been replaced by Indonesian. Citizens who know only a local language, without Indonesian, are discriminated against in encounters with the state. The naga of Indonesian shows no mercy when it devours local languages.

Indonesian Originally a trading language, Indonesian was declared to be the national language by the nascent independence movement in 1928. Modernising the language began in the 1930s and continued into the 1950s. Indonesian was promoted as the language of national unity, with considerable success. Contemporary Indonesian is the language of national and local government, the national and local parliaments, the law courts, finance, public services and education. It is also the language of the media, entertainment and book publishing. There are no reliable figures for the number of first-language speakers of Indonesian. Ethnologue suggested that 11% of the population were mother-tongue speakers in 2000 (Lewis et al., 2014). But a far larger number of people speak Indonesian as a second language: according to the 2010 Census, 92% of the population aged five and over ‘knew’ Indonesian. People aged 25 to 29 are the demographic group most likely to ‘know’ Indonesian. Fewer people in younger age groups know the language because they are still learning it at school, while fewer older people know it because they did not have access to education when they were young.8 So, in under a century, Indonesian has grown from being a market language into one that fulfils all the functions of a modern national language and is ‘known’ by nearly 200 million people. It has been calculated that, including second-language speakers, Indonesian is now the 12th most widely spoken language in the world, and it has been described as ‘a linguistic miracle’ and ‘the envy of the multilingual world’ (Fishman, 1978: 333). However, there are challenges to this success. The first is an internal one: many Indonesians show little pride in their national language (Lamb & Coleman, 2008: 190), perhaps because of the common perception that Indonesian is a language ‘without grammar’ and that it is ill-equipped to discuss technical matters. The second threat is an external one, from the naga of English. It is this which will be discussed in the next section.

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English in Indonesia In Jakarta, English is everywhere. As a resident I can choose to live in one of the many housing estates and tower blocks that have English names; examples include Green Garden and Four Seasons Apartment. My children can attend a day-care centre such as Keenkids or Lovely Sunshine or a nursery school such as Royal Primary Academy or Sunrise Internasional [sic]. There, the children can make use of one of many bilingual readers: Suddenly, they heared noisy [sic] voice. ‘Huh, it’s so noisy! What’s going on? Let’s see it!’ said fairies. They went to the noise voice [sic] came from. Apparently there were two ducks fighting over food. … ‘Animal can be grouped according to their food,’ said Cactus Fairy. (Khumaeroh, 2014) I can travel on the Transjakarta Busway or by Commuter Line train to my office in one of the many new office blocks (Skyline Building, Equity Tower etc.) or to an industrial estate (including Delta Silicon Industrial Estate ‘developed by the expert of more than 800 internationality reputated clients’). If I need entertainment I can watch one of the national free-to-air television channels, such as TV One and Global TV. I can choose from programmes with names like ‘Prime Time News’ and ‘Trending Topic’ in which presenters and politicians pepper their talk with English terms such as ‘update’, ‘but we’ll see’ and ‘clean and clear’ (i.e. not corrupt). Former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004−14) was well known for doing this. Television advertisements promote products such as So Nice (sausages), Meat Lovers Personal Pan (pizza), Bolt Super Hot Deal (internet provider), Men All in One Deep Clean (cosmetic) and Hot In Cream (analgesic ointment). Slogans used include ‘thin is in’ (tampons), ‘aroma recovery system’ (bottled tea) and ‘lift up your life’ (ceiling panels). If I do not want to watch television, I can go to the cinema, where a fifth of Indonesian films have titles in English, such as Coboy [sic] Junior The Movie and Toilet Blues. Or I can read romantic fiction, where 40% of books have English titles, including I Ordered My Wife From the Universe and When Toothbrush Meet Love. (I will find that characters in these novels slip English words and phrases into their conversations in the same way as the television presenters and politicians do.) Or I can go to an art gallery, where more than half of the paintings and sculptures by Indonesian artists have English titles, such as Contemplating Somebody Else Mind and Still Shy 2 Let His Ass Covering His Face (Table 4.1).

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Table 4.1 Language of titles of Indonesian films, romantic novels and sculpture Films9 Language Bahasa Indonesia English Both English and Bahasa Indonesia Other

Romantic novels10

Sculpture11

N=111

%

N=293

%

N=53

%

86 20 5

77 18 5

157 112 6

54 38 2

21 28 1

40 53 2

0

0

18

6

3

6

Alternatively, I could go window shopping in one of the many shopping malls, such as Seasons City (‘truly city for living & shopping’) or Pacific Place. Here I will find shops called ‘Nobby Style of Fashion Female’, ‘Hot & Roll’ (snacks) and ‘Surprice’ (‘clock toys bag stationary doll’). If I decide to stay at home and read an Indonesian-medium newspaper, I will find the journalists and politicians using the same array of English words and phrases as the television journalists and the romantic novel characters. Even though the newspaper is read by Indonesians, many advertisements are entirely in English, particularly for construction companies (e.g. ‘Actualisation of idea for professional competence development capable of generating favored performance’: Kompas, 2 January 2014a), houses and apartments. Later, if I need to visit a private hospital, I will see that all the notices and signs there are in English. Or if I need to make contact with the police I will discover that the national force has a ‘Disaster Victim Identification’ team, while the Jakarta force has a ‘Traffic Management Centre’, a ‘Traffic Accident Unit’, a ‘Control Command Centre’ and an ‘Emergency Respons [sic] System or panic button’. The website of the Jakarta force discusses police-community relations using terms (untranslated) such as ‘military policing’, ‘dial a cop policing’, ‘community policing’ and the ‘speed and professional’ policy. Finally, as a concerned citizen I can involve myself in one of the host of civil society and professional organisations such as ICW (Indonesia Corruption Watch), CITA (Centre for Indonesia Taxation Analysis) and ICJR (Institute for Criminal Justice Reform). Or I can simply enjoy the Jakarta Car Free Day every Sunday morning. The situation described here applies in Jakarta and in many other cities. Away from urban areas, the flood of English is less pronounced, but anyone watching national television or reading the national press will encounter the same phenomenon. Turning now to education, English has been a compulsory subject in junior and senior secondary schools since independence. From 1993, primary schools were also permitted to teach English from Year 4 as a

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‘local content’ subject, together with local languages, ‘local arts and crafts’, ‘characteristics of the local environment’ and ‘other matters which the school or district considers necessary’ (Republik Indonesia, 1993: 12). In practice, many primary schools used this slot to teach English rather than local languages (Hadisantosa, 2010: 31), meaning that at this stage, the naga of English was devouring the local language nagas directly. This direct competition between the local languages and English continued until the introduction of the new curriculum in 2013. Then, between 2007 and 2013, an English-medium programme operated within the national education system. A small number of élite ‘international standard schools’ were created at primary, junior secondary, senior secondary and senior vocational school levels. They were given extremely generous government funding and were expected to teach at least mathematics and science through the medium of English from Year 4. The programme aroused controversy because it weakened the role of Indonesian and so threatened national unity, exacerbated social divisions and was too demanding for teachers who had to teach through English, and this impacted negatively on children’s learning (Coleman, 2011). Later we will see how this discriminatory programme was abruptly brought to an end. In higher education, Indonesian continues to be the default language of instruction, at all levels, at least in state universities. A controversial regulation introduced in 2012 requires every PhD candidate to publish an article summarising their research in an international journal (in effect, in English) as a precondition for the award of the degree. The operationality of this regulation has been limited. Some universities also now offer ‘international’ undergraduate and master’s programmes, taught partly in English and partly in Indonesian. Some of these programmes are open to both home and international students, but others cater only for students from outside Indonesia. Thus the role of English in the education system has expanded both downwards and upwards from its original core position as a subject taught in secondary schools. It has appeared at different times as a subject and as a medium of instruction from the beginning of primary school right through to the postgraduate level. Its role in schools has waxed and waned. Beyond the sphere of education, English also has predictable roles in international tourism (especially in Bali), industries involving multinational companies and other economic fields. In all of this, it is important to remember that English has only a minor formal position, as Indonesia’s ‘first official foreign language’. It was given this status in the 1950s for political reasons (because it was not-Dutch12) to underline the new nation’s rejection of everything associated with the former colonial power. The flood of English noted in this section, from tampon advertisements to presidential speeches, cannot be explained solely by its limited role in the state or its functions in education, tourism and similar commercial activities. Instead, English is being used primarily with an emblematic function (Blommaert, 2010), to signal modernity or some other desirable characteristic.

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It creates an aura of exclusivity and association with the world outside Indonesia. English occupies an important space in the developing schema of many young people ‘far beyond its actual practical value in daily life’ (Lamb & Coleman, 2008: 189). The fact that some of the instances quoted in this section are difficult to understand (‘Actualisation of idea for professional competence development capable of generating favored performance’, for example, or Still Shy 2 Let His Ass Covering His Face) or grammatically deviant (When Toothbrush Meet Love) is irrelevant. These usages of English are not aimed at English speakers, and, in any case, they do not need to mean anything: their purpose is to indicate escape, exoticism and sophistication. (Revealingly, the manager of the Nobby Style of Fashion Female cheerfully admits that he does not know what his shop’s name means.) In his study of the attitudes to English of young Indonesians in rural Sumatra, Lamb notes that there is ‘a pervasive view of its general importance … The language is … bound up in a fantasy of future happiness’ (2013: 20). For these young people, English is also ‘an index of general “capability”, even “wisdom”’ and is seen as an enabler of geographical mobility for the child and his or her family (Lamb, 2013: 322). Not suprisingly, a well-known chain of language schools exhorts the public to ‘Dream Big. Learn English.’ At the same time that English is being prioritised, the national language is being scorned and neglected. If English is used to address members of the public who do not speak that language (those seeking health care or wanting to contact the police, for example), communication does not take place. This practice is alienating and discriminatory. English in Indonesia, then, is a symbol of aspiration, but it is also an instrument of social exclusion, closing off opportunities to those whose linguistic repertoire is limited to the local languages and/or Indonesian. And in this way the naga of English pursues its objectives.

Resistance The picture we have painted is a gloomy one, with the naga of English gradually devouring Indonesian while, simultaneously, the many beneficent local nagas are being devoured by Indonesian. Is there any reason for optimism? The Centre for Language Guidance and Development (a body tasked to ‘develop’ the national language and ‘protect’ the local languages) publishes dictionaries, encourages research and organises conferences. But it is unsympathetic to suggestions that mother-tongue-based multilingual education should be introduced. Its policy is that Indonesian is the only language that is appropriate for use in education. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education (whose successive curricula from 1968 have reduced the visibility of the local languages almost to zero) lacks a comprehensive language policy. As a result, almost 90% of Indonesia’s children are at risk

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because they are studying through the medium of a language that is not their mother tongue (Beeby, 1979; Jasin, 1987). Nevertheless, there is some evidence of resistance to the trends that we have identified.

Local Languages The leaders of two provinces are concerned about the fate of their languages. In 2013, the governor of Bali regretted that the central government ‘appears not to care about the Balinese language’ and stated that ‘ways must be found of continuing to teach the language in schools, despite the fact that the 2013 Curriculum does not include the local languages’ (Kompas, 9 November 2013). The governor of West Java has also taken action. In 2013, he issued a decree to encourage schools at all levels to teach Sundanese again. So far, only three districts have made the language a compulsory subject in senior secondary schools, but it is likely that other districts will follow suit from the 2015-16 school year. The same three districts also actively promote the use of Sundanese in government offices in a weekly ‘Sunda Day’. West Java is the home of the ‘Sundanese Mini-Fiction’ website, which invites members of the public to write short stories in Sundanese. The site was established in 2011, and by early 2015 more than 55,000 stories had been uploaded.

Indonesian In contrast to its apparent lack of concern about the decline of local languages, the national Centre for Language Guidance and Development is keen to promote Indonesian as a potential regional language to be used by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (even though ASEAN has always been monolingual in English). An observer at the Congress on Strengthening Indonesian Internationally in 2013, however, felt that this was an overambitious objective: ‘The ambition to make Indonesian into an international language is all very well. But … Indonesian is rotting away and being eroded by its own speakers in its home country’ (Setianingsih, 2013). In response to these and other criticisms, the Ministry of Education and Culture announced in early 2014 that the time allocated for the teaching of Indonesian in the 2013 curriculum would be substantially increased. This decision has had implications for the teaching of English, as will become apparent in the next sections.

English Two recent events have had a significant impact on the role of English in the education system. In 2013, the Constitutional Court adjudicated

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on a petition from a group of parents who had argued that the Englishmedium ‘international standard schools’ were unconstitutional. The judges agreed with the petitioners that the use of English as the medium of instruction in state schools was illegal. The ‘international standard school’ system therefore ceased at the end of the 2012−13 school year (Hadisantosa & Coleman, 2015), and Indonesian was reinstated as the medium of instruction in all primary and secondary schools (but not in higher education). The second event was the publication of the 2013 curriculum which, among other provisions, ended the teaching of English in primary schools and reduced the time allocated for teaching English in senior secondary schools. This was the consequence of increasing the hours for Indonesian, noted already, but it was almost certainly influenced by the Constitutional Court’s decision as well. These restrictions on English (one emanating from the courts and the other from the government) are bold and have been greeted with surprise. It remains to be seen whether state primary schools will find a way around the regulations so that they can start teaching English again, or whether ambitious middle-class parents (with whom the demand for English originates) will send their children to private English courses instead. It is also too early to judge whether these restrictions on the use and teaching of English will have any impact on the status of local languages and Indonesian.

Conclusion Government promotion of Indonesian, prompted by fear of national disintegration, has created a naga that is threatening the existence of the local languages. The promotion of an English naga, meanwhile, can be attributed to a combination of commercial interests, the intangible influence of globalisation and the connivance of government. Some attempts have been made to protect Indonesian from being devoured by the English naga and to defend the local languages from the threat offered by the Indonesian naga. The efforts to protect local languages have been geographically limited, while the long-term impact of recent decisions to restrict English in schools is unclear. For as long as the local languages are perceived to have no utilitarian value, Indonesian is seen as the language of bureaucracy and humdrum daily existence and English is felt to be the language of glamour, ambition and escape, the processes described here are likely to continue. The two enlightened Prince Bima(s) − the governors of Bali and West Java − realise that local identity is bound up with the local language. At the national level, so far only the Constitutional Court has shown itself ready to tackle the naga of English.

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Notes (1)

(2) (3) (4) (5)

(6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)

I am grateful to David Fero of ombusombus.com for his drawing of the naga and to Etty Bazergan, Deden Harri S., Rosmini Hutabarat, Martin Lamb, Farhan Nasrullah, Irfan Rifai and Muhaimin Syamsuddin for providing information and feedback. Etty Bazergan’s feedback was received one day before she passed away in November 2014. Also important in Indonesia but not discussed here are Classical Arabic, used for devotional purposes by the Muslim majority of the population, and several Chinese languages. Lewis et al. (2014) take these figures from the Census of 2000. Javanese probably now has 100 million speakers; it has the 12th largest number of native speakers in the world and is the most widely spoken language that lacks any official status. It is reported that very traditional madrasas (pesantren salafiyah) in East Java, untouched by government intervention, continue to use Javanese as their daily language. On the fate of Indonesia’s indigenous writing systems, see Kuipers (2003). He notes that for the most part the indigenous scripts are marginalised and ‘suffer from a lack of prestige that threatens their survival’ (2003: 1). It is only in Bali that the use of the indigenous script is still ‘vital and integral to the local social system, and is least stigmatised in “civilisational” terms’ (2003: 17). Balinese is exceptional because its writing system is associated with Hinduism, the religion of Bali. On the other hand, many people write informal varieties of local languages in Latin script when texting, emailing and using social media. See http://kontrassurabaya.org/siaran-pers/desakan-penyelesaian-kasus-alas-tlogo/. Data from Badan Pusat Statistik (Central Statistics Body) at http://goo.gl/FBtQ4E. The Census defines ‘knowing’ a language as being ‘able to understand what is said to them … and able to pronounce words which can be understood by others’. See http://goo.gl/onhAiX. See http://goo.gl/JCHFvp. Galeri Nasional Indonesia 2014. Similar thinking underlies the interest that some ‘Francophone’ African countries (Algeria, Rwanda, Gabon, Morocco) have shown in English: to some extent it is attractive not for its own sake but because it is not-French.

References Alisjahbana, S.T. (1980) Politik bahasa nasional dan pembinaan Bahasa Indonesia [National language policy and the development of Bahasa Indonesia]. In A. Halim (ed.) Politik Bahasa Nasional 1 [National Language Policy 1], (pp. 37–54) (2nd edn; 1st edn 1976). Jakarta: Balai Pustaka. Beeby, C.E. (1979) Assessment of Indonesian Education: A Guide in Planning. Wellington: New Zealand Council for Educational Research with Oxford University Press. Blommaert, J. (2010) The Sociolinguistics of Globalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coleman, H. (2011) Allocating resources for English: The case of Indonesia’s English medium International Standard Schools. In H. Coleman (ed.) Dreams and Realities: Developing Countries and the English Language. London: British Council. Fishman, J. (1978) The Indonesian language planning experience: What does it teach us? In S. Udin (ed.) Spectrum: Essays Presented to Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana on his Seventieth Birthday. Jakarta: Dian Rakyat. Galeri Nasional Indonesia (2014) Trienal Seni Patung Indonesia 2 Versi. Jakarta: Galeri Nasional Indonesia.

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Geertz, C. (1960) The Religion of Java. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Hadisantosa, N. (2010) Insights from Indonesia. In R. Johnstone (ed.) Learning through English: Policies, Challenges and Prospects: Insights from East Asia. London: British Council. Hadisantosa, N. and Coleman, H. (2015) Why did Indonesia’s Constitutional Court ban CLIL? Paper presented at the 2015 RELC Conference, ‘Language Arts and ELT Across the Curriculum’. Singapore: RELC. Halim, A. (1980) Fungsi politik bahasa nasional [Functions of a national language policy]. In A. Halim (ed.) Politik Bahasa Nasional 1 [National Language Policy 1], (pp. 13–25) (2nd edn; 1st edn 1976). Jakarta: Balai Pustaka. Jasin, A. (1987) Pembaharuan Kurikulum Sekolah Dasar Sejak Proklamasi Kemerdekaan [Primary School Curriculum Renewal since the Declaration of Independence]. Jakarta: Balai Bahasa. Khumaeroh, P. (2014) Bersahabat dengan Binatang − Friends with the Animals. Jakarta: Gurita. Kompas (2013) Festival Bahasa Bali untuk lestarikan bahasa daerah [Balinese Language Festival to preserve the local language]. Kompas 9 November 2013. Kompas (2014a) Proudly presenting 2 subsidiaries for Persada Indonesia. [Advertisement for P.T. Adhi Karya, a construction company]. Kompas 2 January 2014. Kompas (2014b) Gelak tawa dalam sidang Pilpres MK [Bursts of laughter in the Constitutional Court’s hearing on the presidential election]. Kompas 9 August. See http://nasional.kompas.com/read/2014/08/09/08000021/Gelak.Tawa.di.Sidang. Pilpres.MK. Kuipers, J. (2003) Indic scripts of Insular Southeast Asia: Changing structures and functions. In P. Bhaskararao (ed.) Indic Scripts: Past and Future. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Lamb, M. (2013) ‘Your mum and dad can’t teach you!’: Constraints on agency among rural learners of English in the developing world. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 34 (1), 14−29. Lamb, M. and Coleman, H. (2008) Literacy in English and the transformation of self and society in post-Soeharto Indonesia. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 11 (2), 189−205. Lewis, M.P, Simons, G.F. and Fennig, C.D. (eds) (2014) Ethnologue: Languages of the World (17th edn). Dallas, TX: SIL International. See www.ethnologue.com. Moseley, C. (ed.) (2010) Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (3rd edn). Paris: UNESCO. Republik Indonesia (1993) Kurikulum Pendidikan Dasar: Landasan, Program dan Pengembangan [Basic Education Curriculum: Foundations, Programme and Development]. Jakarta: Department of Education and Culture. Republik Indonesia (2013) Peraturan Menteri Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan No 67 Tahun 2013 tentang Kerangka Dasar dan Struktur Kurikulum Sekolah Dasar/Madrasah Ibtidaiyah [Regulation of the Minister of Education and Culture No 67 of 2013 regarding the Basic Framework and Structure of the Primary School/Primary Madrasah Curriculum]. Jakarta: Ministry of Education and Culture. Setianingsih, D.A.S. (2013) Jangan berhenti pada rekomendasi [Don’t stop at recommendations]. Kompas 6 November. Sudibyoprono, R.R. (1991) Ensiklopedi Wayang Purwa [Encyclopaedia of Shadow Puppetry]. Jakarta: Balai Pustaka. Zoetmulder, P.J. (1983) Kalangwan: Sastra Jawa Kuno Selayang Pandang (trans. D. Hartoko). Jakarta: Penerbit Djambatan (Indonesian translation of Kalangwan: A Survey of Old Javanese Literature, first published in 1974.)

5 Offshore Call Centre Work is Breeding a New Colonialism Mehdi Boussebaa1

The outsourcing of call-centre work to developing countries by Western companies has become a huge business. For many, it represents a positive force of globalisation, bringing not only cost benefits to the West but also employment and career opportunities to the developing world. There is, however, a darker side to this. Call-centre work is generally exploitative and puts employees through long and unsocial hours under constant surveillance, not to mention the abuse and racism that employees often experience on the phone. Employees also suffer from losing − at least in part − their identity in an attempt to pass for Westerners. A study that colleagues and I recently carried out (Boussebaa et al., 2014) revealed an even darker side to offshore call centres. We conducted research into two such organisations in the city of Noida in India, where we investigated how employees were affected by their work environments and, in particular, the English-speaking expected of them. Published in the Journal of International Business Studies, our study found that call-centre work creates quasi-colonial relations between the West and the rest. The English language plays a key role in this because it helps to turn a segment of the local workforce into ‘comprador’ supervisors, like the compradors of old who acted as intermediaries between the colonisers and the colonised. And this creates the kind of language-based hierarchies of power and privilege that existed in colonial times.

Comprador Managers The way in which employees are trained in English and then evaluated, rewarded and promoted based on their language performance helps to produce a new class of indigenous corporate supervisors who very much resemble those they serve − in their language, attitudes and practices. The sad irony is that these local managers maintain the exploitative, oppressive and talent-wasting conditions of call centres without direct input from Western clients. In this sense, they resemble the local administrative élites who climbed up the ranks in colonial times by working for the colonists. 72

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In other words, they have become compradors, acting as local middlemen between Western clients and a cheap workforce in the developing world.

Hierarchy of Power and Privilege Along with the importance of learning ‘pure’ English comes a subtle hierarchy of power and privilege similar to that which existed in colonial times. Anglo-American clients reside at the top − they basically dictate the terms of engagement and impose ‘pure’ English as the norm. Below them are the compradors, who earn their place first by going through Englishmedium schools and then by meeting the expectations of their clients. As dictated by their superiors, they maintain cheap labour conditions inside the call centres and assiduously work to deliver the ‘pure’ English experience. At the bottom of the hierarchy are those whose English remains ‘tainted’ by mother-tongue influences. They end up doing the donkey work under conditions of extreme surveillance and with little hope for career advancement. Thus, as in colonial times, the English language helps to separate the West from the rest and to subordinate the latter to the former.

Resistance But this kind of domination also generates some resistance. While clients ask for ‘pure’ English, they put in very little effort to make this actually happen. In the end, their need for cheap labour is much greater than the desire for the luxury of being served in ‘pure’ English. In turn, call-centre workers also resist the clients’ demand for ‘pure’ English. Although they see English as a ticket to a more comfortable life, they also feel oppressed by it. Speaking English often feels unnatural and constraining to them − a bit like a straitjacket. In fact, as a way of resistance, they often switch to Hindi or a hybrid form of English whenever possible. The fact that their English remains ‘tainted’ by mother-tongue influences sends an important and strong signal that they won’t be fully dominated, that they will always deviate from the norm of ‘pure’ English no matter how much time and effort is put into it. Western companies (and their customers) can complain to the compradors and bark at the callcentre workers as much as they like, but pure English will remain an ideal, not a reality, because it is ultimately not a native language. Ultimately, this system serves to maintain unequal relations between the West and the rest, to recreate a relationship that has a lot in common with the colonial relations between European empires and their colonies in the past. In the short term, the least that could be done is to scrap the idea of ‘pure’ English and the related notion of ‘tainted’ English. If English is to be the global lingua franca, then, it’s time to accept the fact that it comes in many varieties and sounds.

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So, there is more to offshore call centres than simply economic growth or exploitation, nasty working conditions and the demise of local culture. These businesses and their clients are playing a role in dividing the West from the rest through the subtle dictation of ‘pure’ English, all the while shooting themselves in the foot. And, with the rise of emerging economies including India, as well as China, it will be interesting to see if this remains the case in the future. Could the resurgence of India even turn the tables on the West, making ‘tainted’ English the superior form?

Note (1)

This short article originally appeared on The Conversation webpage on 21 October 2014. It is reprinted here under the provisions of a Creative Commons licence. The original article can be found at http://goo.gl/vJl5wU.

Reference Boussebaa, M., Sinha, S. and Gabriel, Y. (2014) Englishization in offshore call centres: A postcolonial perspective. Journal of International Business Studies 45 (9), 1152−1169.

Part 2 Hydra Mythology

6 Confronting Language Myths, Linguicism and Racism in English Language Teaching in Japan Ryuko Kubota and Tomoyo Okuda

Like the mythical multi-headed beast, the English-language Hydra has many facets − it can enable communication across linguistic borders and provide career opportunities, but it can also threaten minority languages and legitimise linguistic hierarchies of power (Rapatahana, 2012). The metaphor of the Hydra also links to a number of other myths and beliefs that are often associated with English. These associated language myths can even be complicit in racial prejudice, perpetuating both linguistic and racial hierarchies of power through its various discourses, policies and practices (Watts, 2011). This chapter of Why English? Confronting the Hydra will focus on contemporary Japan, where English language teaching (ELT) has been intensely promoted under the discourses of globalisation and neoliberal ideology. It will demonstrate how language myths are embedded in policies and public discourses on language education and how these are complicit in the underlying linguicism (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1988) and racism that the English language Hydra propagates. Two of the major language myths that this chapter will highlight are the global language myth and the economic benefit myth (Watts, 2011). The first posits that learning English will ‘enable the learner to communicate with anybody in the world’, and the second assumes that learning English will ‘guarantee better and financially more lucrative job opportunities’ or bring individual and national economic success in the new global economy (Watts, 2011: 286). We will draw on two recent examples of these myths at work in Japan: (1) the media-reported comments and policies on ELT in relation to the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics and (2) recent government reports and recommendations on language education and the fostering of ‘global human resources’. These examples clearly demonstrate how myths about language can easily be linked to linguistic and racial biases, thereby legitimating

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hierarchies of power. We will scrutinise these myths and biases at work in Japan and argue that they perpetuate the ‘superiority’ of standard inner circle English (Kachru, 1992) and white native speakers of English − plus the distinctiveness of a Japanese identity. We will argue that anti-racist practices and the integration of linguistic diversity in all aspects of teaching and learning will be essential if the powerful English-language Hydra is to be confronted in Japan.

English Language Myths in Neoliberal Globalisation Myths are dominant social discourses or stories about objects and beliefs that may help people to make sense of the world (Watts, 2011). They correspond to the concept of doxa, a set of taken-for-granted collective beliefs that can shape the practices within a specific field (Bourdieu, 1977). Many contemporary language myths revolve around the status of English in the world, its ‘legitimate’ forms and speakers and the perceived need to acquire it. Such myths serve to both reflect and reinforce neoliberal globalisation ideology. One prevalent myth about the English language is the belief that it is a universally useful language that can readily connect speakers from diverse linguistic backgrounds. This is the global language myth. In reality, not everyone in the world can communicate in English, and there are many circumstances in which languages other than English are used for intercultural communication. For example, studies of Japanese transnational workers in China have revealed that Japanese is a major language in their workplaces, with Mandarin and English playing lesser roles (Kubota, 2013). Even in English-dominant countries, languages other than English may be used for work purposes. The common language in ethnically and linguistically diverse communities in Japan is Japanese rather than English, which serves to contradict the global language myth (Kubota & McKay, 2009). Not everyone has easy access to the acquisition of English, and those with an economic advantage will find access easier than others (Lorente & Tupas, 2013). Although English, or any other language for that matter, is useful for many purposes, it cannot possibly fulfil all the demands of global and local communication. Nonetheless, the global language myth, in tandem with the economic benefit myth, serves as a convincing rationale for an increased emphasis on the teaching and learning of English in countries such as Japan. The economic benefit myth is closely linked to neoliberal ideology. Neoliberal capitalist globalisation aims to expand borderless economic activities by increasing the competition that is enabled by reduced structural barriers. The neoliberal employment system fulfils this goal by prioritising competition, mobility, flexibility and worker productivity.

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No longer are workers assured of job security and social safety nets − rather, they are expected to develop their own ‘human capital’, including those communication skills that are deemed necessary in the new knowledge economy, to increase their personal employability. This economic benefit myth compels workers to seek opportunities to learn English. While some jobs will require English language skills, such skills do not necessarily provide people with economic benefits. There are several reasons for this. First, the percentage of people in Japan who actually require English competence is small (Kubota, 2011; Terasawa, 2013). Secondly, there is no solid empirical evidence that proves a direct link between English proficiency and income (Grin, 2003). Moreover, companies may not necessarily prioritise any preexisting skills in English (or other languages) for local employment or assignment overseas (Kubota, 2013). The belief that English competence is always linked to economic benefit is clearly part of the suite of myths that are encouraged around the world by the English-language Hydra.

The 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics and Discourses on ELT In September 2013, the International Olympic Committee selected Tokyo as the host city for the 2020 Summer Olympics. Shortly afterwards, a number of reports appeared in the media regarding the apparent ‘need’ for English-language training in preparation for this event. Such reports demonstrate how myths about language can push and shape public discourse. In November 2013, the Japanese media reported that the Tokyo Board of Education had decided to send 200 secondary-school English teachers in their third year of service to attend professional development programmes at universities in English-dominant countries for three months (Wada, 2013). The report framed this initiative as preparation for the 2020 Summer Olympics. According to the report, this programme was designed to prepare teachers to conduct their lessons entirely in English to enhance their students’ communicative competence − following a new policy in the revised national curriculum. It was reported that the teachers would be required to obtain a certificate in the teaching of English as a second (rather than a foreign) language, which would enable them to teach English monolingually and to train learners for debates in English. Each participant would stay with a host family in order for this training to become a totalimmersion experience. A second series of media reports followed the return of the governor of Tokyo, Yoichi Masuzoe, from his visit to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in February 2014. Masuzoe reportedly made the following statement during a press conference:

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One problem was that they only spoke Russian. Usually when we go abroad and shop, people there can at least say, ‘One, two, three’ (in English) … No language other than Russian was spoken. The same can be said about Japan. It’d be no good if only Japanese were used. As I said before, I think it’s good to have volunteer interpreters and to offer English conversation lessons … Actually the first official language of the Olympics is French and the second is English … So I think it’ll be good if some people serve as volunteers in French. (original in Japanese)1 Despite the puzzling comment about French, both of these examples reflect media propagation of the two English myths that we have highlighted here, justifying the importance of ELT for enhancing global communication. The global language myth justifies linking the Summer Olympics to a new initiative for English teachers’ professional development abroad, and it also rationalises a proposal to train Englishspeaking interpreters. While not all the visitors to the Olympics will be English speakers, the need to both teach and learn English for global communication is taken for granted. The economic benefit myth also underlies the overseas professional development programme, which is part of a larger government initiative to foster ‘global human resources’. In this discourse, teachers are expected to have high competence in English in order to support this drive. Indeed, it has also been recommended that all teachers of English should obtain a high score on a standardised English language test (Liberal Democratic Party, 2013). The professional development initiative is also under the influence of a number of ELT-specific myths, one of which is that of ‘maximum exposure’ − which posits that total immersion in the target language is the most effective way to acquire a language. This ELT myth also lends weight to an English-only policy for classroom instruction. These ‘maximum exposure’ and ‘English-only’ myths have been heavily criticised by Robert Phillipson (1992). In fact, an English-only, monolingual approach has been empirically discredited as an ineffective method of language education, and the current scholarly consensus recognises the crucial role of all learners’ mother tongues in the acquisition of additional languages. A more useful form of professional development might be to observe the effective teaching of a foreign language, such as Japanese, in an overseas context. The professional development initiative also reflects two other ELT myths − the legitimate language myth and the ‘native-speaker fallacy’ (Phillipson, 1992). The proposed initiative restricts the location of this training to Anglo-Saxon countries, which implies that only inner circle mainstream English (spoken by native speakers) is the legitimate model for language learning. Furthermore, the popularity of standardised tests

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of English used for sorting and gatekeeping purposes demonstrates the perfect language myth, which assumes that the ideal use of language should demonstrate a complete knowledge of the language system, rather than communicative repertoires and strategies. All these myths reflect and reinforce the apparent ‘superiority’ of inner circle mainstream English, while assigning an inferior status not only to other varieties of English and other languages but also to the speakers of those varieties and languages. This hierarchy of language speakers often mirrors a racial or ethnic hierarchy, constituting a further, racialisation myth, which conflates legitimate English speakers with whiteness. Japanese publishers of English-language textbooks for schools have made some effort to incorporate notions of diversity by using characters from diverse ethnic and national backgrounds and integrating topics that reflect geographical diversity. However, all six junior high-school English textbooks approved by the government portray a foreign assistant language teacher (one of the characters) as a white native speaker of inner circle English. This observation corroborates the findings from a recent study, which revealed that Japanese university students prefer white, native English speakers as the most desirable teachers of English (Rivers & Ross, 2013; see also Stanley, this volume). Although native Englishspeaking teachers in Japan are sometimes relegated to an ambivalent or marginalised status with regard to communication and employment in their workplaces, systematic racial discrimination against non-native, or non-white native, English-speaking teachers is pervasive, indicating a link between legitimate English varieties and whiteness (Kubota & Fujimoto, 2013). Indeed, native speakerism signifies ‘prejudice, stereotyping and/or discrimination ... which can form part of a larger complex of interconnected prejudices including ethnocentrism, racism and sexism’ (Houghton & Rivers, 2013: 14).

Fostering ‘Global Human Resources’ In 2011, Japan’s Council on the Promotion of Human Resources for Globalisation Development (henceforth, ‘the Council’) was formed under the government’s Council on the Realisation of the New Growth Strategy (Cabinet Office, 2011). This was a strategic move, organised to consider how Japan could produce the additional human resources that would be needed to strengthen the Japanese economy. This government project has been heavily influenced by the English-language Hydra and the economic benefit myth. The Council has called for a fostering of ‘global human resources’, which they define as a younger generation of workers who can survive and thrive in a globalised world and thereby serve to strengthen Japan’s

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economy (Cabinet Office, 2011). The Council expressed a need to produce a ‘young generation who possess creativity and vitality’ in order to revitalise Japan as a global economic power in the face of a number of social and economic challenges at home, such as population decline and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (Cabinet Office, 2011: 3). The Council expressed its concern that the younger generations’ reluctance to go abroad would eventually see Japan left behind in an increasingly globalised economy. Hence, this notion of developing ‘global human resources’ is framed as one of the national strategies needed to strengthen the economy, bring vitality back into people’s lives and raise Japan’s economic status in the world. The Council laid out the following three important human-resource factors that the upcoming generations should possess in order for Japan to prosper in the globalised economy: Factor I: Factor II:

Linguistic and communication skills Self-initiative and positive attitudes, a spirit to challenge, cooperativeness and flexibility, a sense of responsibility and mission Factor III: Understanding of other cultures and a sense of identity as a Japanese (Cabinet Office, 2011: 7, original in English) The Council cited Japan’s poor rating on the international Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) ranking in their demand for a larger number of professionals with the ‘advanced linguistic skills’ required for bilateral/multilateral negotiations in international contexts. Although the document does not always specify which language ‘communication skills’ should be fostered, it is clear that linguistic skills in English, rather than in other languages, are the major focus of their concerns. The economic benefit myth has also heavily influenced national educational initiatives. New education plans announced by the Ministry of Education reveal the government’s intention to drastically reform English-language instruction in order to bolster the English competence of Japanese students (MEXT, 2013). Such plans will include raising the status of English instruction in elementary schools from an ‘educational activity’ to a formal school subject, recommending a policy of instructing English in English, promoting study abroad for senior high-school and university students and using TOEFL scores for university admission (MEXT, 2013). We would argue that these educational initiatives are designed to categorise students into those who qualify as ‘global human resources’ and those who do not. This is demonstrated by the Council’s proposal to train 10,000 high-school students as ‘global human resources’ annually,

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which is equivalent to only 10% of high-school graduates (Erikawa, 2014). This sorting mechanism is evident in the plan to establish ‘super global high schools’ (special high schools that aim to educate future global leaders through specialised curricula), to identify 30 universities with global competitiveness and have universities require high TOEFL scores for graduation (Liberal Democratic Party, 2013). Furthermore, a grant programme called the ‘Project of Promotion of Global Human Resources’ (MEXT, 2012) has encouraged universities to propose various strategies to foster ‘global human resources’, such as offering special programmes (or certification systems) and creating new categories into which students can be sorted. Language tests will play a key role in these initiatives, further promoting the neoliberal agenda of the state and the fortunes of the Englishlanguage Hydra.

Language Tests and Neoliberal Ideology Language tests serve as a powerful mechanism, mediating policymakers’ ideologies and language teaching practices and influencing the behaviours and attitudes of students, teachers and educational institutions. For example, the adoption of TOEFL scores for university admission and graduation requirements is seen as one way to foster advanced English skills. This will, undoubtedly, influence the curriculum and language instructional practices in secondary schools and universities and further the government’s neoliberal agenda to integrate ability-based competition in education. Most universities will consider the special admission of students with high TOEFL scores and/or those with study-abroad experiences in high school. Some universities further plan to require students to demonstrate a certain TOEFL score to participate in special programmes and courses designed to prepare students to become ‘global leaders’. These language tests will thus create a neoliberal washback effect of sorting the nation’s young people, not only by their language competence but also by their socio-economic status. Another washback effect could be the potential misuse of language tests. In their grant proposals, some universities have stated that they will encourage students to take tests such as TOEFL and Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) periodically and that they will monitor their scores by using e-portfolios (or language portfolios). The taking of TOEFL tests is thought to motivate students to consider studying abroad, since most overseas programmes require TOEFL scores. Some universities now offer TOEFL preparation classes and require all students to take TOEFL once a year. Indeed, universities are becoming more like TOEFL preparation schools, where test preparation classes are replacing other types of English classes in which academic content is taught.

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Here, the economic benefit myth of English is working in tandem with the neoliberal principle of competition, fuelled by the extensive use of language tests. Here, we can see the perfect language myth reinforcing an obsession with linguistic skills, rather than communicative competence for intercultural understanding. The educational initiatives underpinned by such myths will serve to create academic gaps between those who will succeed and those who will not. By over-focusing on test scores and studying abroad, the public’s attention may be diverted away from the socio-economic, racial, gender and various other inequalities that affect people’s social mobility.

An Emphasis on National Identity Along with an increasing obsession with English skills comes a new emphasis on national identity. Significantly, the Council expects Japanese students to develop an ‘understanding of other cultures and a sense of identity as a Japanese’ (Cabinet Office, 2011). These goals are to be met by increasing the instructional hours of language arts (kokugo), Classical Japanese (koten) and Japanese history in schools and by requiring students to learn about aspects of traditional culture such as traditional music and martial arts. This will also enhance the students’ ability to explain Japanese culture and traditions in English, especially in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 (MEXT, 2013). Japanese language and culture will also be promoted for non-Japanesespeaking, international students under the ‘Project of Promotion of Global Human Resources’ (MEXT, 2012). This is to be accomplished by encouraging overseas students from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, especially those from developing countries or economically strategic regions, to come to Japan to study. The teaching of Japanese as a foreign language overseas will also be promoted, especially in developing countries in Central and South America, where sizeable Japanese diaspora populations have settled. These initiatives, together with the promotion of English skills for Japanese students, suggest an implicit expectation about those people with whom Japanese people should interact in Japanese, as opposed to English. The discourse that emphasises a Japanese identity as constitutive of ‘global human resources’ thus designates the Japanese as a distinct racial group and places them in a particular position within a hierarchy of groups, including English-speaking, non-English-speaking, ethnic Japanese and non-ethnic Japanese peoples. From the preceding discussion, it is clear that the economic benefit myth provides all citizens with an illusory promise of success, even though only a handful may actually succeed, and it simultaneously strengthens a sense of belonging to the imagined community. Ironically, the notion of ‘global

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human resources’ is driven by self-interest, rather than a truly global vision, as it is solely concerned with the economic benefit of Japan.

Resisting the English Language Hydra Resisting the propagation of the English-language Hydra in Japan will require a shift from a sole focus on the development of ‘linguistic skills’ towards a fostering of the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary for communication across linguistic, racial, ethnic and other socially constructed lines. Despite the Japanese government’s attempts to boost the Englishlanguage proficiency of all its citizens, transnational business people do not always view English as the only useful language. Multilingual practices are often embraced in transnational communicative contexts. Furthermore, linguistic knowledge and skills are not necessarily the most important requirements for transcultural work but rather a more general ability to communicate (Kubota, 2013). Language competence alone is insufficient for efficient communication. All the language myths mentioned in this chapter must be debunked, resisted and transformed. The global language myth attached to English needs to be critically re-evaluated in educational contexts, including teacher education, materials development and classroom practice. Respect for linguistic diversity must also be extended to the myriad varieties of English. There needs to be a realisation that English competence alone does not universally lead to economic success. Drawing learners’, educators’ and policymakers’ attention to the sociopolitical and socio-economic dimensions of language use could help to debunk the economic benefit myth and highlight instead its related social inequalities. The English-language Hydra is hugely promoted by the language-testing business, which serves to promote neoliberal competition while generating handsome profits for itself. The significant washback effects of popular commercial tests reinforce the legitimate language and perfect language myths, while continuing to undermine the awareness and promotion of linguistic diversity. All in all, resistance to the English-language Hydra’s oppressive presence in Japan can only be made possible by fostering a critical awareness of language, race, ethnicity, gender and social class in all aspects of language education. Racial and linguistic biases in teaching English can often be hidden or go unnoticed in public discourse. Exposing these issues via various media, including this publication, will help to stimulate public debate around the growing need to confront and transform the effects of the English-language Hydra in Japan.

Note (1)

See http://www.metro.tokyo.jp/GOVERNOR/KAIKEN/TEXT/2014/140227.htm.

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References Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Cabinet Office (2011) An Interim Report of the Council on Promotion of Human Resources for Globalisation Development. See http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/ global/1206011interim_report.pdf (accessed 27 October 2014). Erikawa, H. (2014) Gakkô no gaikokugo kyôiku wa nani o mezasu bekinanoka [What should foreign language education at schools aim for?]. In H. Erikawa, Y. Saito, K. Torikai, Y. Otsu and T. Uchida (eds) Gakkô eigo kyôiku wa nanno tame? [What is English Education for?]. Tokyo: Hitsuji Shobô. Grin, F. (2003) Language planning and economics. Current Issues in Language Planning 4, 1−66. Houghton, S.A. and Rivers, D.J. (eds) (2013) Native-Speakerism in Japan: Intergroup Dynamics in Foreign Language Education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Kachru, B.B. (1992) The Other Tongue: English Across Cultures. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Kubota, R. (2011) Questioning linguistic instrumentalism: English, neoliberalism, and language tests in Japan. Linguistics and Education 22, 248−260. Kubota, R. (2013) ‘Language is only a tool’: Japanese expatriates working in China and implications for language teaching. Multilingual Education 3 (4). See http://www. multilingual-education.com/content/3/1/4. Kubota, R. and Fujimoto, D. (2013) Racialised native-speakers: Voices of Japanese American English language professionals. In S.A. Houghton and D.J. Rivers (eds) Native-Speakerism in Japan: Intergroup Dynamics in Foreign Language Education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Kubota, R. and McKay, S. (2009) Globalisation and language learning in rural Japan: The role of English in the local linguistic ecology. TESOL Quarterly 43, 593−619. Liberal Democratic Party (2013) Kyôiku saisei jikkô honbu: Seichô senryaku ni shisuru gurôbaru jinzai ikusei bukai teigen [Educational rebuilding headquarters report: Economic growth strategy and global human resources]. See www.kantei.go.jp/jp/ singi/kyouikusaisei/dai6/siryou5.pdf (accessed 27 October 2014). Lorente, B.P. and Tupas, T.R.F. (2013) (Un)emancipatory hybridity: Selling English in an unequal world. In R. Rubdy and L. Alsagoff (eds) The Global-Local Interface and Hybridity: Exploring Language and Identity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) (2012) Project for promotion of global human resource development. See http://www.mext.go.jp/ english/highered/1326713.htm (accessed 27 October 2014). MEXT (2013) Gurôbaruka ni taiôshita eigokyôiku kaikaku jisshi keikaku [English education reforms responding to globalisation]. See http://www.mext.go.jp/b_ menu/houdou/25/12/1342458.htm (accessed 27 October 2014). Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rapatahana, V. (2012) Introduction: English language as thief. In V. Rapatahana and P. Bunce (eds) English Language as Hydra: Its Impacts on Non-English Language Cultures. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Rivers, D. and Ross, A. (2013) Idealised English teachers: The implicit influence of race in Japan. Journal of Language, Identity & Education 12, 321–339. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1988) Multilingualism and the education of minority children. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas and J. Cummins (eds) Minority Education: From Shame to Struggle. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Terasawa, T. (2013). ‘Nihonjin no 9 wari ni Eigo ha Iranai’ wa hontô ka: Shigoto ni okeru eigo no hitsuyôsei no keiryô bunseki [‘Ninety percent of Japanese do not

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need English?’: Statistical analysis of workers’ needs to use English]. KATE Journal 27, 71−83. Wada, H. (2013) Tokyôi: Eigo no sensei, ryûgaku hisshû rainendo, shidô kyôka e [Tokyo Board of Education requires English teachers to study abroad for strengthening teaching skills]. Mainichi Shinbun 25 November. [The Mainichi Newspapers]. Watts, R.J. (2011) Language Myths and the History of English. New York: Oxford University Press.

7 Mr Jones: Mi Laik Askim Yu Samting1 Hilary Smith

A letter to Lloyd Jones, author of Mister Pip, 2006, Penguin Books NZ. Winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, longlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and adapted into Andrew Adamson’s 2012 film, Mr Pip.

Dear Mr Jones, Kia ora2 − As a fellow New Zealander I congratulate you on winning prizes for Mister Pip and bringing to the world some of the story of a civil war on the island of Bougainville, which led to it gaining autonomy from the rest of Papua New Guinea. Your knowledge as a journalist covering the civil war in the 1990s gives a realism to the backdrop of the story, although you do not go into the reasons for the blockade imposed by Papua New Guinea after the huge opencast copper and gold mine at Panguna was closed by local protest at its social and environmental consequences. Your story is an evocative description of a South Pacific island that will never be visited by many of the readers of the book, nor by viewers of the film adaptation. The world of Bougainville at that time is far from a Pacific Island paradise; it was a brutal place in which the basic structures of society such as schooling had ceased functioning. Into this you bring an Englishman who has the bizarre habit of pulling his wife on a cart while wearing a red nose and has an old-fashioned passion for Dickens and Great Expectations. Perhaps this British eccentricity is reassuring for many international readers, and it does provide the literary conceit of escapism for the 13-yearold Matilda and her classmates: Mr Watts began to read to us. I had never been read to in English before. Nor had the others. We didn’t have books in our homes, and before the blockade our only books had come from Moresby, and those were written in pidgin. When Mr Watts read to us we fell quiet. It was a new sound in the world. He read slowly so we heard the shape of each word.

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‘My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.’ [ ... ] He kept reading and we kept listening. It was some time before he stopped but when he looked up we sat stunned by the silence. The flow of words had ended. Slowly we stirred back into our bodies and our lives. (Jones, 2006: 17−18) When I read this, I sat stunned and disbelieving. I had an immediate picture of the high-school classroom in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea in the late 1980s where I was teaching English. Like Mr Watts, I found that the students understood the opportunities of education and had a lively interest in me and in the outside world. But I had to work hard to make this accessible to them, since the school curriculum is largely based on Western rather than local models.3 It is simply not credible that being read to in an incomprehensible language would have a mesmerising effect on anyone in Papua New Guinea. After all, Oceania is one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the world, and multilingualism has been the norm on Bougainville for 4,000 years, when the waves of Austronesian arrivals settled with the original (often called ‘Papuan’) inhabitants who had been there for over 20,000 years.4 And then in 1786, the visit of French explorer LouisAntoine de Bougainville, whose name was later given to the island, opened the door to European trading which gave rise to the lingua franca Tok Pisin (from ‘talk pidgin’) used throughout Papua New Guinea. Christian evangelisation from the early 20th century introduced church-based literacy and Bible translation which has continued into modern-day linguistics work showing 26 languages on the island. 5 Mission schooling was in local languages during the colonisation period under German and then Australian administration. At independence in 1975, English became the official language of education, but Bougainville was the first province in Papua New Guinea to reintroduce vernacular education into primary schools in the 1980s.6 Children on Bougainville are used to everyday multilingualism. At a minimum, everyone speaks one or two home languages as well as Tok Pisin, which is now a first language for many families in the towns. At school, children are introduced to English, and by secondary level much of the teaching is in English. Given that everyone is used to hearing different languages, I cannot believe that listening to English, especially the English used by Dickens in Great Expectations, would cause the effect on the children described in your book. Granted, there is some acknowledgement that the

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language of Great Expectations is difficult and that the children needed help in understanding the vocabulary of 19th century England: We heard that Pip was scared of London’s ‘immensity’. Immensity? We stared back at Mr Watts for an explanation. ‘Sheer numbers, crowds, a sense of bewilderment and of overwhelming scale ...’ (Jones, 2006: 72) Nevertheless, the use of words such as ‘sheer’, ‘bewilderment’ and ‘overwhelming’ would not be an effective explanation of the word ‘immensity’, and this description adds to my response of incredulity, as well as annoyance that the realities of Bougainville have been distorted to fit into a literary conceit. Of course, it is one of the tools of good writers to create a willing suspension of disbelief, and the telling of stories (tok stori) is a strong part of the cultural tradition of the Pacific. However, it is clear in the film that it is the charisma of Mr Watts, played so engagingly by actor Hugh Laurie, which captures the attention of the children and eventually their parents. It would not matter what language he uses in his dramatic performance, and Dickens becomes irrelevant. One of the particularly disappointing aspects of the unquestioned use of (Dickensian) English as a vehicle for Matilda’s escapist fantasy is that the use of English at school is extremely controversial in Papua New Guinea.7 With the introduction of local languages into primary schooling, the former ‘English only’ policies are now largely discredited in educational circles, with strong international research findings that introducing literacy in the children’s first language will result in better outcomes for all subjects, including English.8 But an ‘English only’ approach continues to have considerable support from teachers and community alike, reflecting its historical status. This is exemplified in the film when Matilda speaks in Tok Pisin to her mother, ‘Me laik askim yu samting,’ I would like to ask you something. Her mother snaps in reply, ‘We speak English in this house’. In fact, this is a very unlikely response; in my experience even the most confident speakers of English use Tok Pisin or local languages with each other. So this statement by Matilda’s mother makes a point about English as the language to access a life outside the village, linking it to Mr Watts’ use of Dickens as a special, superior language, capable of casting a spell over his listeners. Since the film was written and made by outsiders, this has the effect of reinforcing colonial attitudes towards local languages − made even stronger by putting them in the mouths of the local actors. No one could argue with the need for escapism for children caught up in a civil war. Your story is a vivid portrayal of the violence of the Bougainville war, and it is clear from accounts of filming that the people of Bougainville saw it as a chance to tell their story, with the additional benefit of a group catharsis for the actors through the re-enactment of some of the war’s horrors. In this way,

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the outside-imposed story of Mr Pip appears to have again been an irrelevance for the actors and perhaps balances the symbolic violence9 represented by the promotion of English at the expense of local languages and culture. Mr Jones, I would like to ask you something. My question leads on from your comments in an interview about the book10 in which you stressed the importance of the ‘persuasiveness of voice’ in a story, as in the voice of Matilda in Mister Pip. The last time I visited Bougainville was in 2008, and the island was busy with engineers installing mobile-phone towers, ‘leapfrogging’ over electricity and telephone lines and straight into cellular networks. You may be aware that a 2011 survey found that 17.2% of men and 30.6% of women respondents in Bougainville used mobile phones for calls or messages every day.11 The people of Bougainville are now able to transmit their voices further than ever before; for their own purposes in their own languages. My question is about your work in Bougainville after the publication of Mister Pip. You have been instrumental in setting up the Bougainville Library Trust which aims ‘to build a Library and Cultural Centre that protects and promotes cultural identity in post-conflict Bougainville’.12 The building has been constructed, and many people and organisations in New Zealand have contributed materials and books. One of the four stated objectives is that the Bougainville Heritage Foundation will be ‘supported with technical advice and the means to collect, record, translate, and publish local oral histories, stori, and songs, and to conserve other cultural artefacts’. While this conservation approach to oracy is also promoting the literacy that is essential for the development of Bougainville, and with it the chance once again to be a leader in the promotion of local language literacy in Papua New Guinea, it leaves open the question of the future place of the local languages in a modern Bougainville. It leaves unstated the assumption of the superiority of English as the language of the outside world. It does not address the complicated and controversial relationship between Tok Pisin and local languages; the important place of Tok Pisin seems to be ignored, and local languages are relegated to the role of heritage and history. The situation in Bougainville requires an in-depth and informed understanding of the options for language use in voicing the island’s future development, particularly now that the reopening of the Panguna mine is being proposed, to vigorous debate about its potential benefits and problems.13 So, my question relates to the future: Given your privileged position as an outsider who has gained considerable benefit from the telling of a story set in Bougainville, how can you now use this to work with language and development colleagues, both local and international, to support the authentic voices of all Bougainville people in speaking and writing the future of their island? Yours faithfully, ngā mihi14 − Hilary Smith

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Notes (1) (2) (3) (4)

(5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

(10) (11) (12) (13) (14)

I would like to ask you something. Greetings, hello. Le Fanu, G. (2013) The inclusion of inclusive education in international development: Lessons from Papua New Guinea. International Journal of Educational Development 33, 139−148. Tryon, D. (2009) Linguistic encounter and responses in the South Pacific, in M. Jolly, S. Tcherkézoff and D. Tryon (eds) Oceanic Encounters: Exchange, desire, violence (pp. 37−55). Canberra: ANU E-Press. See http://epress.anu.edu.au/ oceanic_encounters _citation.html. Bougainville Province Language Map. See http://www-01.sil.org/pacific/png/ show_maps.asp?map=BP. Siegel, J. (1997) Formal vs. non-formal vernacular education: The education reform in Papua New Guinea. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 18 (3), 206–222. For example see Franken, M., and M. August. (2011) Language use and instructional strategies of Grade 3 teachers to suppport ‘bridging’ in Papua New Guinea. Language and Education 25 (3), 221−239. Taylor, S. and Coetzee, M. (2013) Estimating the impact of language instruction in South African primary schools: A fixed effects approach. Stellenbosch Working Paper Series No.WP21/2013. See http://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2013. See Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1981) Bilingualism or Not: The Education of Minorities (pp. 313−323). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, for an explanation of how symbolic and structural violence result when children’s language is not valued in their education system. A theoretical discussion of language and symbolic violence is in Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Author Lloyd Jones on Mister Pip. See http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=c_CTZrEt81U. UNESCO (2013) Household Literacy Survey 2011 in Eastern Highlands Province and Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. See http://unesdoc.unesco. org/images/0022/002250/225035e.pdf. Background to the Bougainville Library Project. See http://bougainvillelibrary.org.nz. See for example, the controversial report by Jubilee Australia Research Centre (2014) Bougainville voices: Nikana kangsi, nikana dong damana (Our land, our future). See http://www.jubileeaustralia.org/. Kind regards.

Reference Jones, L. (2006) Mr Pip. Auckland: Penguin Books.

8 Must the (Western) Hydra be Blond(e)? Performing Cultural ‘Authenticity’ in Intercultural Education Phiona Stanley

What does the Hydra look like? Many-headed and a monster, this we know, but can you describe one of those heads? White skin? Blue eyes? Blond(e) hair? English is strongly associated, in many parts of the world, with such features. For learners of English, this may be a stereotypical, indeed prototypical, construction of what Westernness looks like. And if English is constructed as necessarily Western and ‘other’, then this is, perhaps, what the Hydra could (or should?) look like. Forget that not all users of English are Western, and not all Westerners use English; forget that not all Westerners look like this and that some blond(e)s hail from elsewhere: this Hydra has a face. This chapter considers adult English learners’ constructions of the identities, characteristics and putative ‘typical’ physical features of ‘Western’ English teachers and examines the effects of these on teaching and learning and on learners’ development of interculturality in crosscultural language education encounters. I consider two contexts: oral English classes taught by (Western) ‘foreign teachers’ at a public university in Shanghai, China, and private language schools in Australia that host incoming language-learner tourists from Europe, South America and East Asia. The Shanghai study was a four-year ethnographic project from 2007 to 2011, in which I studied a group of British, American and Canadian English teachers at a university; a much fuller account of this study can be found in my book, A Critical Ethnography of ‘Westerners’ Teaching English in China: Shanghaied in Shanghai (Stanley, 2013). The Australia study was conducted in 2012−13, in 11 language schools in three cities, and a more detailed account of it can be found in Chapter 1 of Damian Rivers’ edited book, Resistance to the Known in Foreign Language Education (Stanley, 2014). Both studies were based on participant observation and qualitative interviews

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with teachers and students. The Australian study data in this chapter are more extensive than the Chinese data because it is a more complex situation: students from myriad source countries study in a single host context, whereas in the China study the students share a national social imaginary. As there are many more social imaginaries at work there, more data from Australia are required to make sense of the nuances of different students’ framing experiences. However, data from the China study are also included because, taken together, both data sets tell the same theoretical ‘story’: I conceptualise the Hydra, in these contexts, as the unproblematised social imaginaries that frame intercultural experiences in English-language education. The problem I am describing is this: students’ constructed imaginaries of Western, native English-speaking ‘Others’ inform their expectations of teachers, and this creates pressure on teachers to perform back to students a version of these stereotypes. Further, in the Australian context, there is also pressure on schools to stage-manage a stereotypical ‘Australianness’ through home-stay and other out-of-class experiences. This phenomenon, I contend, is the monster, the Hydra. This chapter explores what happens when this occurs in language education in these contexts and how this Hydra might be confronted.

Australia What does Australia look like? What are Australians like? Blond surfers on sun-drenched beaches? Lightly dressed, laughing white people quaffing Barossa red by the Sydney Opera House? Families hanging out at a backyard barbeque? Koalas, kangaroos, cockatoos and crocodiles? Red rocks and rutted outback roads? All this certainly exists; it is the lifeblood of Tourism Australia, and it appears in almost every brochure advertising a tour or, in many cases, a language school. Such images both create, and are created by, out-groups’ imaginaries of what Australia is like; this is Australia’s imagined authenticity. These images shape the experiences that students may expect from their Australian sojourn: perhaps bubbly teachers enjoying an outdoors lifestyle, a home-stay with a family in a sprawling Queenslander house with a dog and a pool and the chance to cuddle a koala. This is perhaps the model experience. Many of the students I interviewed in the language schools were on working holiday visas and were undertaking English-language study prior to working and travelling further in Australia and New Zealand. Others had come to improve their English through immersion, with the goals of passing exams such as IELTS and Cambridge First Certificate. However, all were also keen to have a ‘cultural’ experience, as they conceptualised this. Language schools

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are thus under pressure to provide, indeed, to manufacture, Australian ‘authenticity’ as imagined from outside: by the students and by their friends and families back home, to whom the experience is displayed on social media.

The People’s Republic of China China, and Shanghai in particular, has a complicated relationship with what it calls waiguoren, ‘outside-country people’. Never entirely colonised, China suffered many years of abuse at the hands of foreign powers, and from 1842 to 1949 Shanghai was carved into foreign enclaves. Then, following the 1949 revolution, China was all but closed until the 1980s. As a result both of this bloody history and of the nationalism discourses employed subsequently in the pursuit of political legitimacy by the ruling Communist Party-state, ‘foreigners’ in China are very much positioned as ‘Others’ (see Stanley, 2013, for a review of this literature). In this Otherness discourse, foreignness is often conflated both with Westernness and with whiteness. Enmeshed in this discourse, too, is English: essential for students as a gatekeeper at all levels of Chinese education and in many employment contexts, English is irreducibly associated with (an imagined, idealised) ‘Westernness’. This means that ‘Western’ foreigners teaching English in China serve two purposes: they teach, but they also serve as an Other against which China and nationalist discourses may compare China’s own position and ascendency (Stanley, 2013). The Chinese students in this study were all undergraduates of a single university in Shanghai and all in their early 20s; all were studying degree programmes other than English, although, as with all Chinese undergraduates, all had to pass English-language examinations in order to graduate. Their ‘foreign teachers’ (the label is emic to the context) were mostly TESOL1-qualified as understood in Australia (e.g. by NEAS2 language-school accreditation requirements), and all the teachers in the study were ‘Western’ native English speakers, although others in the context were white second-language English users (e.g. from Belgium, Poland and France). As I have shown elsewhere (Stanley, 2013), whiteness and Westernness seems to be at least as important in the context as speakerhood. Western teachers in this Chinese university, then, as in the Australian language schools, are subject to out-group social imaginaries. And in China, as in Australia, this frames how teachers are expected to look and behave and the putative authenticity that they are expected to perform. This is conceptually comparable to the ‘performed authenticity’ that is well documented in tourism (MacCannell, 2008).

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Imagining the Other: Australia The following extract from a student focus group exposes common stereotypes held about Australia by these (respectively) Belgian, Swiss and German students: Phiona:

Before you came here, what was your picture of Australia? Mathilde: Sun. Emilie: Sea. Sabine: Good-looking surfer boys running around. Emilie: Nice people, they’re all friendly. Sabine: Like everybody’s really relaxed all the time. Mathilde: Yes. … People are really relaxed I think. Sabine: Compared to cities in Europe. Emilie: Yes. Sabine: Everything’s really relaxed here. In Europe everybody’s stressed all the time. (Mathilde, Emilie and Sabine, students, Queensland, 2012) Many other students also constructed Australia as irrevocably different from their home countries. This included notions of universally friendly, ‘relaxed’ people and extended to ostensibly more ‘dynamic’, ‘informal’ and ‘relaxed’ classroom environments. The following extract relates this construction back to the marketing of Australia in tourism: Patty:

Phiona: Patty:

I think they come with the idea ‘I’m not at home anymore, therefore I’m out here and everything is brighter and greener on the other side.’ … They see Australians as what gets sold through the tourism board. Which is what? [O]utgoing, bright, bubbly. And that’s what they expect. (Patty, director of studies, Queensland, 2012)

Students’ imaginaries go beyond tourism-type images of friendly, bubbly Aussies. Recurring in the data was a related notion − imagined differences in education and students’ constructions of friendly and friend-like empathetic relationships between teachers and students: In my country it’s almost impossible to be a friend with a teacher and student because of my culture. But unlike my culture, it’s different here. I think it’s better because they empathise us. I can easily [talk] about my problem. (Hyori, student, Queensland, 2012)

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Hyori describes the empathy she perceives between teachers and students in Australia, comparing it to the more formal relationship she perceives between teachers and students in her home country, South Korea. This theme recurred in many student interviews. The excerpts in this section suggest that students have strong, framing expectations. These expectations, derived in part from tourism advertising but also informed by notions of culture-of-learning differences and the idea that Australian teachers are friendly and approachable, combine to set a high bar for schools and teachers.

Imagining the Other: Westerners in China The two most common words that the students used to describe their foreign teachers in the many thousand written student evaluations I read in Shanghai were ‘fun’ and ‘funny’. Digging deeper in interviews as to what these terms mean to the students, I understood that, for them, ‘fun’ meant a positive, friendly rapport: If the teacher will be cheerful I will pay more attention … I like foreign teacher to be fun, like actor, could told you about anything. … I want to see he is very nice. Easy-going, funny, can share the different ideas, don’t have the distant … humorous, arouse our interest in learning English, you feel flexible. … In the foreign teacher class you can do whatever you like, you can do more communication with him. … He must be fun, yes, and vividly. (Guo, student, Shanghai, 2009) Actually students just enjoy the atmosphere. If they do enjoy the atmosphere they will cooperate with [the] foreign teacher. ... I don’t think it matters [if the teaching quality suffers], as long as the students enjoy the class, that’s more important. ... Because learning [at university, in general], the students are, they feel bored. They just want to learn something from foreigners in a good way, in a way that they enjoy. If you make them do this [course] in a funny way, and they will learn it. (Xiaoli, student, Shanghai, 2007) The word ‘funny’ is intriguing here. ‘Fun’ may simply mean ‘enjoy[ing] the atmosphere’ in class, as Xiaoli says. But ‘funny’ may also mean ‘strange’: an exotic, different experience from Chinese teachers. If so, the purpose of foreign teachers may be to offer students an insight into a different cultural world, albeit one framed by imagined categories of Westernness into which teachers are pressured to fit.

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Defining the Hydra As suggested by the excerpts from the two contexts in preceding sections, I conceive the Hydra as the expectations that frame students’ experiences of intercultural contact. These expectations derive from discourses extrinsic to language education. As the quotes from students show, the imagined, expected ‘authenticity’ of ‘Western’ or ‘Australian’ (assumed to be white, native English-speaking) teachers is derived from larger social imaginaries about the societies the teachers ostensibly represent. The Chinese students have their own version of ‘Westernness’ shaped by local discourses of Otherness, which they project onto the teachers. This creates pressure (through student evaluations and students’ in-class responses) on teachers to perform pre-existing imaginaries back to students. Similarly, the students in Australia already ‘know’ what Australia is like, and schools and teachers are under pressure not to disrupt this notion. This might include, for example, finding host families who look like students’ imagined Australians. So the Hydra, here, is the tyrannical ‘known’ that frames, and makes problematic, the intercultural contact that takes place in each context. While students in both contexts marshal the tropes of what Westernness looks like (to them), they also undermine their own intercultural competence development. The Hydra, then, is a many-headed monster standing in the way of intercultural understanding and students’ acquisition of intercultural competence. To make sense of the nature and effects of the Hydra in this space, I ask: what happens when students arrive in Australia, or to an oral English class in China, only to find that their prior constructions of Western teachers are stereotypes and that their teacher is rather different from their imaginings? The next two sections consider the interfaces of students’ expectations and lived experiences.

Expectations and Realities: Australia The following excerpts tease out the interplay of students’ prior expectations with their lived experiences: Marie: Phiona: Marie:

I know Australia is really multicultural and stuff, I know, but on the other hand my [host] family’s from Fiji. It’s like: I’m not in Fiji; I want to have the real Australian thing. What’s the real Australian thing? I think that’s the hard thing about Australia. You don’t really have your own culture. Your culture is too multicultural. (Marie, Belgian student, Queensland, 2012)

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We often have issues with students who say, ‘I’m staying with a Sri Lankan family,’ [or] ‘they’re Indian.’ … ‘Indians aren’t English speakers.’ You know we’re in Australia, which is supposedly a multicultural country, and these are people who speak excellent English … but they’re not white. The students are stressed by the fact that they’re not with a white [family]. You know, their ideal of what it is to be in an Anglo culture. (Julia, director of studies, Queensland, 2012) These excerpts describe students’ experiences of an Australia that breaches their expectations. However, rather than revising their constructions of Australia and re-imagining a more multicultural reality, students may simply reject what they are experiencing as insufficiently authentic. Another expectation that emerges in the data is that their teacher will act as a conduit into the local culture: an explainer; a guide. So while students may project imagined Australian ‘authenticities’ onto their teachers, they may also hope that their teacher will help them understand Australian ‘realities’. However, there is a necessary conflict here: how are teachers to walk the line between performing students’ imagined ‘authenticities’ back to them while also sharing, exposing and exploring Australian ‘insiderness’? It appears that students want a cultural entry point, but they do not necessarily want their own stereotypes to be disrupted. These excerpts speak to this very complex demand: My favourite teacher is my morning class teacher. … He try to make conversation with many classmates and he talk about his private story, it makes me closer. (Emiko, Japanese student, Queensland, 2012) They loved [one of the teachers]. … I said, ‘what was so good about [him]?’ They said, ‘he gave personally. We would often be talking about something and he would personalise it and say, ‘when I worked here’ or ‘when I did this’, or ‘in my life’, for example, ‘this happened’. Everything he did felt real, and that’s what I liked about it. It wasn’t just the textbook.’ (Amy, director of studies, Queensland, 2012) [In class, some of the most successful teachers] just talk about, say, why Australians like meat pies so much. Or what their dad used to do when he was living around here. … I think most of [the students] actually do go for it, if they’ve got the personality to carry it. That’s the thing … if you’re that kind of charismatic person and you can make a story a yarn, spin a yarn and make it entertaining. I think the students … feel like they’re learning some aspect of Australian culture. (Mark, director of studies, Queensland, 2012)

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These quotes exemplify what students seem to want, and get, from their teachers: empathy and easy communication, teachers who ‘give personally’ and who let students into the ‘insider info’ and their ‘real’ lives, and teachers who joke and can ‘spin a yarn’. Two directors of studies explain how this affects their teacher hiring policy: We started instituting these leaving surveys [and we improved our student satisfaction rate] … So I’m really happy about that, but in a way, part of me died in the process. Because the way that you really keep students happy has not been to institute a rigorous academic curriculum with clear academic objectives. … It’s really to think much more carefully about what customers want and their expectations. Trying to hire teachers who really have that personality. That personality for teaching, their personality carries the class and keeps the people on board. (Mark, director of studies, Queensland, 2012) I think that [as a teacher] you can be very technically skilled, but if you’re a grumpy bastard you probably won’t get great feedback. You can probably get great feedback without being that technically skilled with some classes. So I think that those sort of human attributes, the affective factors, are probably out there [important] for a lot of students. They’re here for a short time and they want to feel that somebody is caring and somebody is interested in them. (Jason, director of studies, Queensland, 2012) While Jason appears to accept that part of the teachers’ job is the affective factors that make the students feel cared for, Mark’s view is more nuanced and idealistic: saying that ‘part of me died in the process’, he acknowledges the trade-off that he has had to make between the quality language education that he would prefer to institute and the need to keep students happy by hiring teachers with the right kind of ‘personality for teaching’ that keeps the students ‘on board’. This comment speaks of an important teacher trait/skill: the ability and willingness to perform according to students’ expectations. As Crang (1997: 148) describes, though, this is ‘the deep acting of emotional labour’ through which the teachers’ ‘personhood is commodified’ (1997: 153). Thus the Hydra has a negative effect on teachers, too, as they may feel pushed into performing students’ imagined authenticities. This goes beyond personality, with some directors of studies consciously hiring teachers who also look the part of imagined, ‘authentic’ Australians: [One of our teachers] Marco’s got that coolness. He’s a soccer player. … He’s hunky looking. The girls love him. He’s married so it’s all safe … But that just makes all the girls go goo-goo over him. The boys hang out

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the front [of the school] and he plays basketball with them. … So he’s for me a dream type of teacher, where the students love him. … [The students say] ‘Marco is the most wonderful teacher ever’. When it comes to photos, when they’re leaving, it’s, ‘Marco, Marco − every student that’s had him … If Marco was small and nerdy and wore glasses, would [the students’] reaction be the same? I don’t know. I think probably not. Amy, director of studies, Queensland, 2012) The majority of [teachers] are big booming personalities with smiles. The joker-jocular, ‘hey, look at me’ kind of person ... big, bubbly − people who could host children’s television. ... There are lots of them. There are lots of them. I think of the more successful teachers where I am and they’re all dimply-faced people. Almost like a baby face. (Julia, director of studies, Queensland, 2012) Beyond the issues discussed here, of students’ surprise and disappointment with insufficiently ‘authentic’ Australian host families or negative evaluations of multiculturalism, these quotes suggest a conscious effort on the part of language schools to provide teachers that both meet students’ expectations and can offer a curated, non-threatening introduction to a more ‘real’ Australia that nevertheless does not challenge the students’ prior constructions too much. This is a highly complex set of expectations of teachers. This complexity was not easy for the teachers to navigate; indeed, most teachers would likely struggle with this complex set of expectations and the emotional labour entailed (Crang, 1997). The teachers in the language schools were all degree-qualified and at least Cambridge CELTA3 qualified in TESOL, although many held higher qualifications such as master ’s degrees in TESOL. Most of the teachers I interviewed had, themselves, lived overseas, many in Asia, and most were at least bilingual, often speaking Asian languages. So while teachers had a great appreciation of students’ expectations, many struggled with the complex, conflicting non-teaching demands placed upon them to perform and to engage in ways beyond that conceptualised by much TESOL training/education.

Expectations and Realities: Westerners in China There are complex expectations, too, on Western teachers in China, and repercussions from this pressure include the demoralisation that quality teaching, as understood on teachers’ pre-service training programmes such as CELTA, is not necessarily appreciated. The job, seemingly, is to entertain and to deliver a live ‘show’ of the type of authenticity that students expect of Western teachers. Again, this demonstrates a Hydra of social imaginaries

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that frame intercultural experiences. Again, this has negative effects on teachers as well as students: I’ve done three or four semesters’ worth of feedback and this word [‘fun’] pops up all the time for the students, ‘fun, fun, more interesting, more fun, we want more fun’… it is quite sobering. I sincerely believe that I delivered probably some of the better classes last semester but I was probably one of the lower-scoring teachers because I didn’t make it a game show. (Phil, academic manager, Shanghai, 2007) One of the staff charged with hiring and managing Western teachers explains the effects this has on staffing decisions: I could go out and demand my teachers to be better but it wouldn’t work. They’ll say, ‘oh but my students love me, my being a clown!’ … I got told ‘keep the cost down, hire teachers, make sure they’re not fucking any students, make sure they’re not turning up in dirty jeans, make sure they’re not sick … and if they can teach or not, oh, that’s up to you’. … If I raised my demands I’d make it more difficult for myself to get teachers. … Why change it if no-one’s telling me to change it and it’s working? … It’s almost like a show. It’s sad to say it, when I first came in I was like, ‘past tense, grammar, that fact’ and I was like, ‘no one’s enjoying this, the students are not enjoying it. The guy [teacher] next to me’s got much better reviews [evaluations] than I do, but I’m definitely working harder than him, what the hell’s going on? That’s it. I’m going to be a clown, a stand-up comedian.’ (Leo, director of studies, Shanghai, 2007) This has a problematic result: the students may naturally, therefore, expect very little of their foreign teachers: My engineering students have the opportunity to go to America at the end of their junior year… They didn’t tell me at first, I found out a little over half-way through. And I asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier? This class would have been completely different if I’d have known. I would have structured it to make it more useful for you going abroad.’ And they’re ‘oh, well, you know, it’s just our English class’. … It just hadn’t occurred to them … they have all of their real classes and then they just get to come to our class and goof around and have fun. (Beth, teacher, Shanghai, 2009) There is a vicious circle here: the students imagine that Western foreigners are fun, funny, bubbly and approachable, but little else, and that they are necessarily unskilled as teachers. Indeed, this seems to be

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exactly the type of teacher ‘profile’ that directors of studies hire. Such teachers are then rewarded by positive student evaluations. The Hydra, here, means that teachers are under pressure to perform, and be, certain ‘types’, at a cost to all teachers’ professional self-esteem and the wider negative social imaginary of all Westerners engaging with China. And, of more pressing concern in the immediate language-learning context, students’ acquisition of intercultural competence is compromised by this Hydra.

Confronting the Hydra As I have described, the Hydra in these contexts is neither the teachers nor students as people. Nor is the Hydra here the ‘fault’ of the directors of studies; those I interviewed stressed the pressure they were under to meet student satisfaction targets, which is perhaps a function of language education taking place largely in commercial environments (whether in universities or privately operated language schools; both are highly subject to student demands). However, what is clear is that there is an enormous and largely unproblematised pressure from students and that this is all too often insufficiently disrupted by directors of studies or teachers themselves, whose jobs are predicated on keeping students happy. Indeed, the students themselves do not seem to be problematising their pre-existing certainties either. The Hydra’s many heads, then, include students, teachers, directors of studies, language-school marketing staff, Chinese nationalism discourses, Tourism Australia and many others complicit in maintaining the dual fiction of, on the one hand, Westernness, whiteness and English as constructs that are often conflated and, on the other, the undisrupted social imaginaries of bubbly, fun, non-threatening ‘Westerners’ and/or of Australians, in particular, as a certain kind of laconic, relaxed ‘Westerner’. How can this be resolved? As with a Hydra, its many heads make it a seemingly impossible foe: attack teachers, for instance, by pushing for quality over bubbliness, and the other heads bite back. Students or directors or marketing staff, for instance, may ‘bite back’ through evaluations, as Mark and Phil describe, in which students’ wants for fun, bubbly performers trump teachers’ attempts to teach ‘properly’, as they understand this from training courses such as CELTA. The answer, I contend, lies in braving the Hydra and fighting all its heads simultaneously. This can be done by resisting the pressure to keep everyone happy. And this does seem to be happening to some extent. The following excerpt is from an interview with a director of studies at an independent Australian language school, which does not rely on multinational marketing agencies and so has much more control over how it portrays itself in its advertising:

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If they’re not aware about [multicultural Australia] they learn pretty quickly. I’m German so I’m not native [Australian] in pure terms, [but I’m Australian]. ...You see that a lot when they turn up and they get a Filipino family picking them up. But all our marketing material and all our brochures and all our orientations, all point to the fact that they’re in Australia which is multicultural. We had a funny situation ... [with] the Adamson family, the wife of Mr Adamson is Japanese, but she spoke in an Australian accent so there’s no way you can ever pick it on the phone. ... But the student [complained], the Japanese [language?] shouldn’t be there, it shouldn’t be part [of the experience] ... But I think that’s the lesson of Australia and I think they should all just hurry up and learn it. ... It’s definitely not what they expect but it’s to be expected so … yes we sort of, in this case it was a high school kid, the student. The high school teachers accompanying the student had to be re-educated a little bit as well and we said, ‘well, this is Australia.’ (Martin, director of studies, Queensland, 2012) To not confront the issues raised in this chapter seems terribly wasteful of the opportunities presented by international education and direct intercultural contact. In the language schools in Australia, to which students travel thousands of miles to experience another culture first-hand, and at the university in Shanghai, which spends money hiring Western teachers so that the students might have a ‘real-life’ encounter with Otherness, students’ prior assumptions about cultural authenticities need to be problematised, challenged and ‘re-educated’, as Martin puts it, rather than perpetuated and encouraged, such as by evaluating teachers purely on the popularity contest of student feedback. So my suggestion for where we might start fighting back against the Hydra is this: start with the way English-language teaching is marketed. Martin is in an enviable position in this respect: his is an independent school, and he controls its marketing. Because of this, and with a good awareness of the issues of student expectations of the conflation of Westernness, whiteness and English, he consciously portrays a multicultural Australia through both marketing materials and on-site follow-up when students complain about their ostensibly atypical, non-white Australian host family. In addition, as suggested already, we might attack the Hydra by broadening our evaluation of teachers: instead of pandering to students’ default expectations and perhaps whimsical wants, we need to consider the extent to which students’ feedback is framed by unproblematised discourses of expected ‘Western’ teacher performances. Instead of simply praising teachers who perform, or conform, might we find ways of evaluating teachers’ attempts to confront the Hydra by helping students acquire intercultural competence through questioning their own pre-existing cultural assumptions? This is doubtless more complex than counting up teachers’ ‘scores’ (as so often happens

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when teachers are evaluated by students), but it would produce a much more nuanced and more useful account of which teachers are confronting the Hydra and which are actually feeding it and keeping it alive. This also means raising these issues − as this chapter has done − in teacher education and beyond. My view is that the key weapon against this particular Hydra is the scaffolding of students’ intercultural learning by engaging critically with implicit local discourses of cultural ‘authenticity’ that operate as problematic certainties. This is what is needed to confront the Hydra in what is, currently, an ‘intercultural’ situation that tends to reify rather than challenge pre-existing socially imagined ‘authenticities’ of stereotyped Western Otherness.

Notes (1) (2) (3)

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. National ELT [English Language Teaching] Accreditation Scheme (Australia). Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (a Cambridge English certificate).

References Crang, P. (1997) Performing the tourist product. In C. Rojek and J. Urry (eds) Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory. London: Routledge. MacCannell, D. (2008) Why it never really was about authenticity. Society 45 (4), 334−337. Stanley, P. (2013) A Critical Ethnography of ‘Westerners’ Teaching English in China: Shanghaied in Shanghai. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Stanley, P. (2014) Language-learner tourists in Australia: Problematising ‘the known’ and its impact on interculturality. In D.J. Rivers (ed.) Resistance to the Known in Foreign Language Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

9 Voluntary Overseas English Language Teaching: A Myopic, Altruistic Hydra Pauline Bunce

Every year several million adventurous, Western-educated young people head overseas for a ‘gap-year adventure’ or a ‘service-learning experience’, joining throngs of other people closer to their parents’ age on ‘meaningful holidays’ in exotic places. The past decade has seen a massive boom in volunteer tourism, in which individuals from privileged backgrounds combine their holiday travel with voluntary work − a significant proportion of which involves the short-term teaching of English. The individuals themselves may see this form of ‘small but beautiful’ travel as a counter to the ‘evils’ of mass tourism, creating instead a sense that both they and their host communities can gain something from their interactions. This outwardly altruistic pursuit is now paving new inroads for the Englishlanguage Hydra to infiltrate communities that may have previously been beyond the reach of mainstream tourists. While these activities often purport to champion the interests of the people in the host communities, they also tap deeply into the selfinterests of both the volunteers and the travel companies that have sprung up to cater to them. The nature and duration of these incursions varies widely, but the majority are quite temporary engagements. Most of the commercial arrangements for such voluntary assignments are managed by tourism-focused operations, rather than development agencies or longterm volunteer organisations such as the Peace Corps (United States) or Voluntary Service Overseas (United Kingdom). School-based ‘service trips’ for younger age groups are often arranged by individual teachers and their in-country contacts with charitable groups. This chapter of Why English? Confronting the Hydra will explore the widespread and almost unquestioned beliefs that ‘anyone can teach English’, that haphazard English lessons from visiting foreigners can fulfil a ‘community need’ and that such visits can only be of benefit to the learners and their communities. It will examine the language used to promote this activity and the relative paucity of research into the effects on host communities,

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compared with far more frequent (and easier) research into the personal reflections of the volunteers. The chapter will focus on those short-term incursions that involve the teaching of English, particularly those undertaken by ‘gap-year’ youth and school students on ‘service-learning trips’.

Volunteer Tourism − the Advertising ‘Pitch’ Online advertisements for volunteer tourism, such as this one, are widespread and easy to find on the internet: Help a poor girl learn English and you help her go on to advanced studies. Help a poor teenager speak English and you help him or her find a better job. Help poor villagers learn English and you help them develop local community-based and sustainable ecotourism, which is less dependent on faraway tour operators. Help poor farmers speak English and you help them to sell their rice, fish or handicrafts without middlemen. You make a difference! You don’t have to be a teacher. Our 3-day complimentary Cross Culture and Volunteer Training will give you the essential skills and confidence to teach basic English to poor children in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Nepal. (www.overseasvolunteerwork.org.uk) The language used in this advertisement is quite revealing. There is the obvious repetition of the word ‘help’ which suggests that the ‘poor’ people referred to are helpless and that their progress in life is contingent upon volunteer assistance with English-language skills. This positions their external ‘helpers’ as rescuers or heroes, and this in turn conjures up an echo of the colonial period. The advertisement also suggests that economic problems can be alleviated by simple interventions and that power and authority reside with the individuals concerned (both the volunteers and the ‘voluntoured’). This completely overlooks the complex community and socio-economic structures and systems that may work against individual agency in vastly different, non-Western countries and cultures. There is also an assumption of an open and seamless acceptance of the presence of total strangers in the community on a regular basis, without disruption to regular routines or daily work practices. This particular advertisement trivialises the local economy and makes outrageous claims for the apparent power of English and the seeming ease of future entry into ‘advanced studies’ and new areas of employment. To top it off, a three-day course is then deemed sufficient to learn how to teach and interact confidently with ‘poor children’ in English in four very different countries. Such simplistic advertisements tap into the naïve desires of some Western youth to assuage a kind of moral ‘guilt’ that they may attach to their own privileged lifestyles and native-speaker competence

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in English. It may also serve to boost their social credibility (via ‘clingy’ photographs with disadvantaged children on Facebook) as well as their future employment prospects. This next advertisement, like many others of its type, emphasises the holiday side of ‘volunteaching’. A well-established volunteer travel agency will make all the air and land bookings that one might expect from a regular tour company. Their volunteer projects last from two to eight weeks and operate in 29 countries. Teach English in Stone Town, Zanzibar Looking to teach and get a tan? On sun-drenched Zanzibar, hidden cleverly in the Indian Ocean and truly away from it all, you will have plenty of opportunity to get in your teaching and tanning time. You will be based in Stone Town, the cultural centre of Zanzibar, known for its narrow alleys, bustling bazaars, mosques and extravagant houses of the Arab elite. Stone Town is so fantastic that it was even declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Trip Highlights: •

Exploring the beautiful beaches of Zanzibar

•

Tasting the excitingly exotic island dishes

•

Bonding with children and adults in the community

•

Experiencing the world in a whole new way

(www.i-to-i.com)

According to their website, this travel company can ‘provide fulfilling travel and TEFL [teaching English as a foreign language] experiences to anyone with a desire to get out there and see the world’. They can also arrange ‘working with children’ holidays: Volunteering to work with children abroad is a popular volunteer travel option for travellers with a genuine fondness of children who want to experience a life-changing opportunity to help develop underprivileged children’s skills and equip them for a brighter future in further education. Whether you choose to volunteer with children in Africa, Asia, or South America, we offer volunteer work with children in over 20 countries, so you’re sure to find the volunteer project in a country that suits you. (www.i-to-i.com) Alongside these large tour companies there are many smaller commercial outfits, in-country, that regularly canvass the tourist hotels and backpacker

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hostels with offers of ‘orphanage and school visits’. Such small-scale agencies may only be interested in selling photo opportunities and in chasing the sympathy dollar. Mixed up in all this feel-good enterprise is the Englishlanguage Hydra, masquerading as a prestigious and door-opening asset that English-speaking tourists can (and should) share with ‘underprivileged children’. It has to be said that such easy and unfettered access to vulnerable children would never be allowed in the volunteers’ home countries.

Criticism of Voluntourism The value and efficacy of short-term volunteer English teaching is rarely questioned, least of all by the tourism industry, of which it has become an integral part. The majority of academic research that has been done in this area has generally relied on the self-reported experiences and reflections of the volunteers themselves. Such evaluations are wide open to any number of biases. When an activity is so loaded with deep assumptions of positivity, it is a rare returnee who would admit to wasting his/her time, money and self-image on a failed or inconsequential project. By the same token, even the recipient community (or its spokespeople) might be wary of criticising a project to researchers who may be connected to the volunteers, thereby risking even the smallest of short-term monetary gain or increased social status that such projects might bring to them. The English-language Hydra itself is rarely questioned − that part of the voluntourism equation is regarded as a ‘global given’. Volunteer teachers themselves may fall into the trap of romanticising their host community’s poverty by focusing on the apparent happiness that people exhibit during their visit. As a result, host communities are often described as being ‘poor but happy’, and the volunteers’ preexisting stereotypes and expectations may actually be reinforced. They may then use these ideas to justify their own presence in the community and the community’s apparently dire need for English. This cycle of ‘seeing what you came to see’ negates any real understanding of how the host society functions. It can, far too easily, degenerate into endless photo opportunities for a Facebook audience. Worse still, these ‘huggy’ photos of volunteers with local children have now found their way into one section of the dating website known as Tinder (www. humanitariansoftinder.com), where Western travellers can post their names, ages and GPS locations in the hope of a nearby ‘hook-up’ with like-minded fellow backpackers. Most of the not-too-frequent critical commentary on volunteer tourism has come through the press and popular media. When the former director of the United Kingdom’s Voluntary Service Overseas organisation, Judith

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Brodie, came out in 2006 and said that commercial gap-year programmes ‘reinforce a colonial attitude that development is something that educated people from rich countries do to poor people who know no better’, she was widely criticised. She followed up these comments with the following elaboration: It’s dangerous to think that digging borehole wells or teaching children English will help a community, without questioning whether local people would prefer piped water to their homes or if speaking English will be of any practical use. Some gap year companies promote these opportunities as real contributions to development, when the lasting difference they will make is questionable. In 2007, Time magazine published an article entitled ‘Vacationing like Brangelina: Does volunteer tourism do any good?’ Its author bravely questioned the roles of celebrities in promoting the industry and wondered whether such activities were little more than ‘overpriced guilt trips with an impact as fleeting as the feel-good factor’ (Fitzpatrick, 2007). More recently, an article on the Al Jazeera website entitled ‘The white tourist’s burden’ (Zakaria, 2014) caused a storm in the online community, many of whom are in the target age range for such overseas trips. There was great offence taken over the fact that someone could criticise their good intentions. ‘Doing something has to be better than doing nothing,’ they roared. And even better, they claim, being able to widen the global reach of the English-language Hydra is surely a ‘good thing’. In 1968, Monsignor Ivan Illich, the philosopher-priest and well-known social critic, made the following biting remarks in a speech that he gave to departing US volunteers, entitled ‘To hell with good intentions’: All you will do in a Mexican village is create disorder. At best, you can try to convince Mexican girls that they should marry a young man who is self-made, rich, a consumer, and as disrespectful of tradition as one of you. At worst, in your ‘community development’ spirit you might create just enough problems to get someone shot after your vacation ends − and you rush back to your middleclass neighborhoods where your friends make jokes about ‘spits’ and ‘wetbacks’. You start on your task without any training. Even the Peace Corps spends around $10,000 on each corps member to help him adapt to his new environment and to guard him against culture shock. How odd that nobody ever thought about spending money to educate poor Mexicans in order to prevent them from the culture shock of meeting you? In fact, you cannot even meet the majority which you pretend to serve in Latin America − even if you could speak their language, which

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most of you cannot. You can only dialogue with those like you − Latin American imitations of the North American middle class. There is no way for you to really meet with the underprivileged, since there is no common ground whatsoever for you to meet on. […] I am here to suggest that you voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you. I am here to entreat you to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right you have to impose your benevolence on Mexico. I am here to challenge you to recognise your inability, your powerlessness and your incapacity to do the ‘good’ which you intended to do. I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help. (Illich, 1968) Unfortunately, in the decades since Monsignor Illich gave this impassioned speech, the voluntourism Hydra has well and truly flourished and grown fat on good intentions. Today, the casual, shortterm teaching of English has become an integral part of a massive voluntourism industry that serves the altruistic desires of millions of paying customers every year.

Service-learning In addition to the global travel industry’s unquestioned embrace of amateur English teaching by tourists who are eager to ‘give back’, there is a parallel (even a preparatory) activity in place in many schools and colleges in developed countries. Often labelled ‘service-learning’, this activity can be a compulsory requirement in some education systems, for example in the International Baccalaureate and in ‘semester abroad’ tertiary programmes. The teaching of English as the centrepiece serviceoffering to non-English-speaking communities has gained unquestioned acceptance and widespread validity. As volunteerism in general has become more popular in the wider community, service-learning has been widely praised by educators, parents and community leaders for working towards the development of a sense of social responsibility among young people. As with volunteer tourism, most of the research that has been undertaken regarding school-organised service-learning has been carried out by educators who, naturally enough, focus on the ‘learning’ side of the equation. Its benefits and virtues are rarely questioned. It is not particularly politic to do so, and any limitations of the actual ‘services’ provided to recipient communities may be overlooked. By definition, service-learning trips by school students are necessarily short-term incursions by groups

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(or T-shirted ‘teams’) of adolescents who usually know each other and come from similar backgrounds. Youthful exuberance is to be expected, yet a great many of these trips involve visits to places and communities where such outings by school students might be well beyond local imaginings of regular school-learning experiences. When such visits place young and pampered outsiders as ‘English experts’ in classrooms in disadvantaged communities, any number of unintended learnings can occur − to the possible detriment of the quality of the ‘service’ being provided. To most people, the very idea of ‘service’ equates with providing ‘help’, and help is something that is performed in response to a ‘need’. Unfortunately, ‘need’ is often defined as a deficiency of some kind, or a lack of something that is necessary. In servicing such needs, the providers can too often locate the problem in the individuals and in the communities that they visit, when the root causes may well lie with the wider social and economic structural inequalities that the young visitors may know nothing about nor be able to fully appreciate. When addressing a need is equated with ‘providing help’, there can be an exaggeration of the importance of the outside agent providing it. This can demean the position of those being served and ignore the community’s own resources and position in the wider society. It is extremely hard to conceive that the very advantages that one enjoys might also be the causes of disadvantages for others. Both voluntourism and service-learning activities demand a huge investment of time and effort from the host communities. They may feel the need to temporarily divert their energies into meeting the perceived needs and interests of their young visitors. They may feel the need to put on a ‘cultural performance’ and to provide food, drinks and even homestay accommodation for them. All such activities can detract from their own priorities and serve to further boost the self-importance of the Hydrabearing visitors.

Why English? When untrained, youthful native speakers of English are placed into classrooms as ‘language teachers’, this affords them the status of ‘expert’ merely because they speak the language. Even if one accepts the premise that English-language learning can be beneficial, its young adult speakers are certainly not trained to teach it. The youthful visitors rarely speak the students’ languages, they have no formal training in language pedagogy, they do not know what their students have already learned nor what they will need to learn to pass the tests and examinations that they will face in the local education system. They may provide some ‘comic relief’ for both teachers and students, but piecemeal language teaching will never

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achieve the aims that are stated in the voluntourism advertisements like those quoted earlier. When the volunteer teachers are Western high-school students on ‘service trips’, such teaching is often a complete shambles. The writer has cringingly witnessed this phenomenon first-hand. As current classroom learners themselves, adolescents often hold the naïve impression that ‘teaching is easy’, and they may resist the sincere efforts of their own teachers to coax them into proper lesson preparation ahead of their service visits. When finally placed into classrooms, many will take one look at the sheer size of the class and insist that a friend accompanies them. Once there, they are often awkward in their stance, manner and speech, they will hurry through their instructions in unmodified teen-speak, they will talk far too much and they will spend a lot of time interacting with their friend at the front of the class. Their ‘lessons’ frequently descend into rowdy game playing and students being allowed to draw on the blackboard and run around the room. ‘All good fun’, perhaps, but what has really been achieved for all the effort and money that has been put into arranging such visits? The host community’s educational objectives for the visit may be hijacked by the desires of the youthful visitors to hug and play and take photographs and the managing travel agency’s need for happy customers and a financial return. Even if such efforts are even modestly successful, will improved English skills be sufficient for young people in marginalised communities to succeed in gaining employment in local hotels or tourism operations? Will their lot in life improve with English alone? Future success will depend on many other aspects of life − proficiency in their own language(s) for a start, and many other factors related to their social status within the wider society. It is a universal truism that members of marginal groups need to be ‘twice as good’ in order to break into mainstream hierarchies of power and influence that are protected by the ‘glass ceilings’ of privilege. Competition will be fierce, hopes may be dashed and the ‘bright lights’ of the beckoning city may only be an illusion.

A Most Myopic Hydra that ‘Cannot See for Looking’ Not only is there a risk of sowing a false hope of the value of Englishlanguage skills, there may also be a number of other, unintended consequences for both sides of the volunteer English teaching-and-learning equation. All such visits by school groups and voluntourists penetrate quite deeply into the personal spaces of the communities concerned. The volunteers’ very freedom to travel, plus their clothing, gadgetry and mannerisms, can be seen as representing an alternative and ‘modern’ way of life, to which the younger members of the host community may aspire. When they are not carefully planned, such visits cannot help but draw

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attention to so many dichotomies of difference rather than commonality: for example, ‘us’ vs ‘them’, providers vs recipients, helpers vs needy, languagerich vs language-poor. The visitors have seen what they expected to see. The hosts have seen playful affluence. The visitors may have their orientalist stereotypes of the ‘Other’ reinforced (Said, 1978), as they ‘thank their lucky stars’ that good fortune has dealt them a winning set of cards in their facility with the English language and material wealth. When such fatalistic discourses of luck enter into post-visit discussions, this can completely mask any learning of the true causes of poverty: the marginalising effects of structural inequalities, oppression and unequal resource distribution − wherever it may occur in the world (Simpson, 2004). If it’s all about luck, then the winners can be excused. The visitors may never learn that the very reasons why their visits can take place at all are the same reasons that make the reverse journey impossible for their hosts. This is a most myopic Hydra that ‘cannot see for looking’. In all these forms of short-term volunteer English teaching, the language itself has come to be viewed and sold as a kind of ‘cure-all’ − a magical elixir that will open doors for all who consume it. In these activities, both language and experience have been transformed into commodities that can be bought and sold. Just add enthusiasm and good intentions. For both gap-year travellers and school service-visitors, these trips are often designed with an eye to their acceptability to the students’ parents, to entry into future courses and to the requirements of the students’ future employers rather than the needs or concerns of the communities that the students are entering. When local communities have to find and prepare easy work for groups of young, inexperienced volunteers and then have to find the linguistic resources to teach them what they need to do, there can be more of a burden than a benefit. When the volunteers then perform unsatisfactory work, time will again be lost in remediation. In a bizarre example, described in an article in the Guardian (Brown, 2003), some Ecuadorean villagers apparently returned home from work one day to discover that their houses had been painted by a well-meaning group of volunteers without any prior consultation. In gap-year voluntourism, it is almost as though the visiting students are practising being adults and ‘professionals’, while using local people as guinea pigs for their own personal development. Not all volunteers would even like to see major changes to the ways of life of the people they hope to ‘serve’. These are the ‘new moral tourists’ (Guttentag, 2009) who may harbour colonial-type attitudes that would prefer to ‘keep things the way they are’ and see people ‘avoid the pitfalls of modernisation’ in many aspects of life. They may even bring bags of English books, toys, toiletries and clothing as handouts for the ‘needy’. Unfortunately, such donations may inadvertently threaten the viability

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of small local shops, engender feelings of forced gratitude and dependency and insult the dignity of local residents. There is even a volunteer tourist organisation called Rustic Volunteers, which arranges ‘life-changing service projects’ for their participants. Their website explains: Since 2008, Rustic Volunteers has been running life changing service projects in 18 countries worldwide to serve poor communities and children. When you join our program, you not only join an unforgettable humanitarian journey but also contribute to make this world a better place. Wherever you go, you will immerse yourself in local cultures, work to uplift lives of the extremely poor people and communities, and return home with life-changing experiences. (www.rusticvolunteers.org) Local communities can, all too easily, become defined by their economic situations in the eyes of such visitors. Their lives may be described as ‘uncomplicated’ and the people viewed as ‘materially poor but spiritually rich’. Such attitudes almost allow material poverty to be excused, as ‘people make do with what they have’ and ‘don’t know any better’.

Confronting a Myopic, Altruistic Hydra This chapter of Why English? Confronting the Hydra has taken a highly critical stance regarding the short-term, commercially driven practices that have sprung up in recent times in order to capitalise on the popularity of ‘gap-year’ experiences and the growing demand for ‘service-learning’ opportunities in schools − a great many of which involve the teaching of English. It does not intend to suggest that all service-learning and voluntourist activities are detrimental, but it strongly recommends the curtailment of the worst forms of ‘poverty voluntourism’ and the de-linking of ‘service’ from ad hoc English lessons. The true ‘need’ in many of these projects has been exposed here as the needs of the travellers rather than the imagined needs of the recipient communities − particularly when it comes to the English language. For many of the ‘serviced communities’, English is a false god that may not deliver on the hopes that people have naïvely placed on it. Huge social responsibilities lie with the sending organisations in both volunteer tourism and service-learning. While short-term interactions may provide participants with some exposure to global inequalities, this does not turn them into ‘global citizens’ overnight, nor even provide them with very much ‘global understanding’. Seeing does not equate to knowing. Such lofty goals require far deeper and longer-term critical engagement with intercultural learning at home, as well as in-depth studies of international development. Schools, in particular, need to frame their volunteer trips as

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‘learning’ and ditch the all-too-missionary-sounding goal of ‘service’. When this includes the amateur teaching of English lessons it can establish, and even feed, the recipients’ unrealistic expectations of easy employment success. Such is the simplistic allure of the English-language Hydra. A discourse of ‘doing to’ needs to be replaced by one of ‘learning from’. Writing in a sustainable tourism journal, Raymond and Hall (2008) describe three aspects of ‘good practice’ that need to be in place in all cross-cultural volunteering assignments. First, these authors recommend that careful consideration be given to the type of ‘work’ that any group of volunteers will be doing. Programmes of engagement need to be planned and developed directly with the local people involved, so that volunteers do not impose upon local staff or local sensitivities. Communities should never be used, nor even feel that they are being used, as ‘training grounds’ for junior foreign professionals. The work should be of genuine value to the community. Such an approach would not permit the ill-informed teaching of English lessons in school classrooms. Any language exchange is best left to occur naturally in social and informal shared-work situations. Ideally, the volunteers should at least be conversationally familiar with the local language before their visit. Secondly, all volunteer incursions should be approached as a learning process, requiring both time and critical engagement. Mere contact will not ‘broaden horizons’. This is a major failing of commercial volunteer tourism, because the sending companies have no pre- or post-visit obligations whatsoever to provide any kind of cultural context for their paying customers. In the case of school-aged volunteers, there should be a preparatory period during which the participants need to read, write, discuss and role-play aspects of their future experiences. Critical discussions and engagement should continue right through the visit itself and for quite some time afterwards. Written journal reflections should be both factual and personal. If students raise the issue of ‘English teaching’, this matter should be closely and critically discussed and its ramifications well and truly understood. Unfortunately, there is precious little critical commentary among school teachers regarding the potentially negative impacts of the English-language Hydra. Thirdly, these visits need to deliberately incorporate opportunities for the volunteers and hosts to experience informal, cross-cultural social interaction. This could involve shared outings, shared cultural performances, shared duties and informal, individual learning exchanges with local peers. Sending organisations need to build in such social opportunities and design them to ensure that they operate on equal terms. The English language may well come along for the ride, but the Hydra should not be driving the bus.

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Conclusion Short-term commercial volunteer tourism just does not have the potential to fulfil the wildly idealistic goals that it claims for itself. Servicelearning experiences in schools, however, could have a greater chance of promoting cross-cultural learning, as long as these experiences are carefully organised, monitored and integrated into wider learning programmes. When they descend into one-off trips in which students ‘do service’ (read: teach English), they are just as flawed as volunteer tourism. The better such activities are planned and critically discussed at school level, the better the choices that these young people may make in their ‘gap-year’ travels a few years later. Everyone with a stake in ‘service-learning’ should heed the very sound advice of Ivan Illich back in 1968, when he ‘entreated’ young people to ‘Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.’

References Brodie, J. (2006) Are gappers really the new colonialists? The Guardian 26 August. Brown, P. (2003) Mind the gap: Why student year out may do more harm than good. The Guardian 6 September. Fitzpatrick, L. (2007) Vacationing like Brangelina. Time 13 August. Guttentag, D.A. (2009) The possible negative impacts of volunteer tourism. International Journal of Tourism Research 11, 537–551. Illich, I. (1968) To Hell with good intentions. See http://www.swaraj.org/illich_hell. htm (accessed 21 November 2014). Raymond, E.M. and Hall, C.M. (2008) ‘The development of cross-cultural (mis) understanding through volunteer tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 16 (5), 530–543. Said, E. (1978) Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin Books. Simpson, K. (2004) ‘Doing development’: The gap-year, volunteer-tourists and a popular practice of development. Journal of International Development 16, 681−692. Zakaria, R. (2014) The white tourist’s burden. Al Jazeera America. See http://goo.gl/ CKkt9S (accessed 19 November 2014).

10 English Language as ‘Fatal Gadget’ in Iceland Ari Páll Kristinsson

The aim of this chapter is to show that the present language situation in Iceland suggests that English is becoming the country’s dominant language, instead of Icelandic. It seeks to reveal the extent to and the sense in which English is such a danger to Icelandic at present. Does parallel language use in certain domains such as commerce, science and technology pose a threat to the existence of Icelandic? Will the eagerness of Icelanders to apply their latest gadget − a Trojan horse containing the English language − turn out to be fatal for their national language? My conclusion is that these questions must, unfortunately, be answered in the affirmative. English poses a very real threat to Icelandic in the 21st century, unless there are changes in the current sociolinguistic development that is at present in favour of English and not Icelandic, and unless the Icelandic government and fiscal policymakers prioritise Icelandic language technology, research and development. Due to ‘market failure’, there is no use in relying on the private sector for such costly endeavours.

English vs Icelandic in Iceland For Icelanders, an island nation of about 320,000 people in the North Atlantic who speak Icelandic as their single national and official language, the relationship with the English language is very much one of love/hate. Sociolinguistic research has shown that the Icelanders use English far more often than any of the other Nordic peoples do (Kristiansen & Vikør, 2006: 200), and at the same time, they rank as the purist of the Nordic speech communities (Vikør, 2010: 27), that is, borrowings from English, such as desktop, online and so on, are usually avoided in prestigious Icelandic language use, even if such foreignisms occur in informal contexts in Icelandic speech. Icelanders are a practical lot, and they tend to be eager to adopt new technologies, new fashion and new gadgets. In 2009, 91% of 10−15-year-old children in Iceland owned a mobile phone, and 58% of children in this age group had a personal computer and/or a laptop in their bedrooms (Kristinsson, 2013: 62). A survey, carried out in November 2011, showed that 92% of Icelanders used the internet at least once a week, and 54%

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of the population claimed to use online social networks (almost) daily, while the average percentages for Europe were 64% and 20%, respectively (Kristinsson, 2013: 56). As for media consumption and recreation, English is by far the most common language of television programmes, films, computer games and so on (Hilmarsson-Dunn & Kristinsson, 2013: 144– 148). The younger you are, the more likely it is that you prefer material in English and not in Icelandic (even if comparable material is available in Icelandic), according to recent investigations (Hilmarsson-Dunn & Kristinsson, 2013: 145–146). English is the dominant language in postmodern Europe in the domains of international commerce, science and technology, among other things. Thus, given that Icelanders tend to be keen on new things, it comes as no surprise that they frequently use English, the language of technological and scientific novelties, for informative and recreational purposes. English invades the lives of Icelandic speakers from the moment they wake up to the alarm sign on their digital clocks, and press the on knob on their coffee makers, and turn on the radio and tune in to one of a variety of radio stations which transmit popular music hits with English lyrics − and so on throughout their day − until they fall asleep at night, dreaming about the American movie stars they watched on television or on the computer monitor before they went to bed. English is part of their lives from the day they are born (at a hospital equipped with high-tech medical tools controlled by commands in English) to their grave (literally: it has become quite common at Icelandic funerals to say farewell to the deceased by singing not in Icelandic but in English; i.e. songs with titles such as When I Think of Angels, I Think of You, or You’ll Never Walk Alone). Since technological innovations today are computer-based, a few words on the necessity of supporting language technology for Icelandic are appropriate. Let us take speech-controlled equipment as the first example. I can control my smart phone with commands in English, whereas this is not yet possible in Icelandic. Such speech control, instead of manual control, is being developed for diverse household appliances, other common devices, cars, etc. In order to be able to use all these ‘cool gadgets’, I need to understand some English and be able to speak it and to write it to some extent, while my knowledge of Icelandic is useless, unless speechrecognition systems are adequately developed for Icelandic and unless all the necessary technical tools and programs are manufactured on the basis of that research and development. As another example of the need for Icelandic language technology, let us take machine translation. This is necessary in order for Icelanders to gain access to information stored in English, in international databases and web portals. Machine translation programs between English and Icelandic have been developed to some extent, but their quality is far from adequate, due among other things to the grammatical complexity and idiosyncrasies in Icelandic. The status of

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Icelandic in Iceland would improve greatly if machine translations were sufficiently developed. The fear of the growing presence and potentially total dominance of English in Iceland is, increasingly, a central topic discussed by the official language body in Iceland, the Icelandic Language Council. The council, founded in 1964, operates under the aegis of the Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. It now consists of 16 members. It provides the government with consultancy services on Icelandic language matters, and it proposes Icelandic language policies to the Parliament and to the Icelandic government. Annually, the council issues a report on the status of Icelandic. Official Icelandic language policy, drafted by the Icelandic Language Council and approved unanimously by Parliament in March 2009, has been published in a book of 113 pages. This official language policy is strongly influenced by the underlying fear that English is taking over more and more spheres of daily life in Iceland. In particular, concerns are raised as to the working language of international businesses that operate branches in Iceland and about the language of instruction in tertiary education, plus the language of computers and software. This official language policy recommends, for example, that computer software in compulsory and upper secondary schools be made available in Icelandic in order to ‘prevent Icelandic from yielding to English in this rapidly expanding field in society’ (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2009: 37). In recent years, the Icelandic Language Council has time and again urged fiscal policymakers to support language technology development for Icelandic. In its most recent annual report on the status of Icelandic (12 November 2014), the council claimed that ‘language technology needs to be greatly supported … so that Icelandic may compete with English’, and ‘if Icelandic lags behind in information technology it will, in the end, not be usable in a major domain in society’ (Icelandic Language Council, 2014). Furthermore, the council pointed out that even if international rankings of the status of the languages of the world (Ethnologue, 2014) do not list Icelandic as an ‘endangered language’ at present, this could change for the worse within a very short period of time. The first-ever language legislation in Iceland, the Law on the Status of Icelandic and Icelandic Sign Language (2011), stipulates that Icelandic is the official and national language of Iceland. The law explicitly determines, among other things, that Icelandic is the language of schools ‘at all levels’, which implies that this also holds for tertiary education. However, instruction in English has increased rapidly at Icelandic universities since the turn of the century. The average proportion of individual courses taught in English at Icelandic universities over the past five years lies between 10% and 20% (it tends to be higher at graduate than at undergraduate level) (Kristinsson & Bernharðsson, 2014: 463–467). Iceland signed a

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common Nordic declaration on language policy in 2006-07, which aims, among other things, at parallel language use (i.e. the national language and English) in Nordic academia. University policymakers had already accepted that Icelandic does not serve as the sole medium of instruction in tertiary education in Iceland. University funding policies in Iceland are increasingly in favour of the ‘international’ and not the ‘local’. For example, among the top priorities is the international mobility of students and teachers. Efforts to attract foreign PhD students to Reykjavik have led to an increasing presence of English as a language of instruction. Academics are urged to publish books and articles in English-language forums, and they must submit research grant applications in English (this also applies for applications that are directed to research funds that are based in Iceland). In most study programmes in Iceland at present, PhD theses are written exclusively in English (Kristinsson & Bernharðsson, 2014: 459–461). The concern that Icelandic is under severe threat from English is every now and then a topic of public discourse in Icelandic social media and other public forums, in particular among known advocates and guardians of traditional Icelandic cultural values, for example some prominent fiction as well as non-fiction writers, some academics and various other (in particular senior) citizens who regularly express their views, for instance in newspaper articles, lamenting the fate of the Icelandic language and the fact that it is yielding to the cultural hegemony of English. As an example of the concerned commentators, one could take a wellknown figure in Icelandic society, Eiður Guðnason, a former television journalist, parliamentarian, cabinet minister and ambassador for Iceland. He is a passionate advocate for proper language use, particularly as concerns the media. Since 2007, Guðnason has published some 1,600 articles on his website (eidur.is) on language use in the media. For example, on 10 November 2014, he published a piece of 350 words, containing seven different comments on language use. The first one began as follows: Sú spurning, by the way, reyndist krökkunum mjög auðveld … sagði íslenskur embættismaður (deildarstjóri innlendra prófa hjá Námsmatsstofnun) úr skólakerfinu í hádegisfréttum Ríkisútvarps (06.11.2014). [Italics and boldface in the original] An explanation: Mr Guðnason is quoting a comment made by an official at the Icelandic School Examination Institute on radio news a few days earlier, on the validity of a particular question in an examination in Icelandic which had been criticised by language professors. In that radio interview, the official had embedded the English phrase by the way in his comment (‘That question, by the way, proved to be quite easy for the kids.’). For Guðnason, this was an example of the poor quality of the language

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used by officials nowadays. Obviously, the English phrase by the way had triggered his comment. Another commentator, quite an influential one in matters of Icelandic culture and politics, is Egill Helgason. He currently hosts a popular television show on Icelandic literature and is an experienced journalist whose regular blog on current political affairs is widely read. On 15 November 2014, he expressed doubts about whether Icelandic will exist in 2100, except among elderly people or for very limited use. He reported that he had often overheard Icelandic children and youths having complete conversations in English only. Helgason (2014) claims that web portals such as Netflix, iTunes, YouTube and so on are primarily to blame. This type of discourse is not necessarily in harmony with the language practices among the population at large, as far as this can be evaluated. The metaphor of ‘voting with your feet’ may be used to describe the discrepancies that are apparent in the Icelandic speech community, that is, as everyday practices are often at odds with official policies, common public discourse and the overtly expressed views of media commentators. An interesting example of the differences between overt policies and individual practices is the language used by computer operating systems. As a result of negotiations between the Microsoft Corporation and the Icelandic government in the late 1990s, this company issued an Icelandic version of their most commonly used office software (i.e. Word, Excel and a few other programs), and this was upgraded in the early 2000s. This had been regarded as some sort of ‘victory’ for ‘the Icelandic cause’, in the sense that the very small Icelandic market, that in practice could quite easily use the English language software (and had done so earlier), had now been delivered a special local version of the Microsoft computer interface in their own language. In return, the government of Iceland initially agreed that for a period of time Microsoft software, and not software from any competitors, was to be used in all elementary and upper secondary schools that were run by the Icelandic state. However, despite these efforts, the schools and other consumers have already voted for English with their feet. Even though these Icelandic computer upgrades are free of charge, and they only take a few minutes to install, most Icelandic-speaking people have not bothered to switch into the version available in their mother tongue. They seem to be quite happy with the English computer interface with commands such as file, edit, view and so on and do not seem to feel any need to use a free interface with the localised Icelandic equivalents, such as skrá, breyta, skoða and so forth. Those individuals who have explained their reasons for this have often answered that they had become accustomed to the English interface (Hilmarsson-Dunn & Kristinsson, 2009: 368), and that they know the meaning of the English computer jargon better than that of the Icelandic translations and, in addition, that they find the Icelandic

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computer interface translations sometimes to be rather poor, and even ridiculous. As has already been implied, popular language practices in Iceland are in favour of English. While one often hears concerns about individual English words and phrases sneaking their way into Icelandic usage, people generally do not seem to be deeply worried about the increasing presence of English as the primary language in a variety of sectors in modern Icelandic society.

What will the Future Bring? A major concern, of course, is that instead of the ‘parallel language use’ of English and Icelandic in important spheres in Icelandic society, in which English and the national tongue share domains in a ‘healthy balance’, there is a real risk of Icelandic yielding completely, and that English-only will be the future reality for more and more domains in Iceland. Earlier, I expressed the view that Icelanders’ attitudes to English could be described as a love/hate relationship. We love the English language and all the possibilities that it has to offer, professionally as well as in the more private spheres of life, while at the same time we go to great lengths to invent native Icelandic lexemes as translations of English terms when writing texts in ‘proper Icelandic’. Love is stronger than hate, and while the love for Icelandic is expressed in purist practices, the love for English is realised in the increased use of that language. There is no doubt in my mind that the use of the English language in Iceland will only increase in this century. I shall now invite the reader into a critical exploration of the validity of two different and opposing claims pertaining to different future scenarios for Icelandic.

Scenario A: ‘By the End of the 21st Century, English will have Killed Icelandic’ In an interview with the Icelandic State Broadcasting Service on 1 December 2013, Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson, professor of Icelandic linguistics at the University of Iceland and an ardent advocate for the need to develop language technology solutions for Icelandic, claimed ‘We are at present not able to use Icelandic in important domains in our daily lives − for example when we communicate with computer-controlled equipment. This causes a real risk that Icelandic will have disappeared in 100 years’ (Rögnvaldsson, 2013). He says: As the fields of everyday life expand, in which one is unable to use one’s mother tongue, there is an increasing danger that people may give up on

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this language and think, ‘Why bother learning this language, why not simply switch completely into English, and thus become better able to compete in this modern world of ours.’ Such claims can be classified as ‘endangerment discourses’ (Heller & Duchêne, 2007). Their purpose is to raise awareness among the general public and fiscal policymakers, as well as among other powerful bodies that decide on various appropriations and grants for Icelandic, e.g. for Icelandic language technology. But is anyone listening? The answer is that occasionally someone is listening, but those in power rarely act. They are not responding appropriately to such voices of alarm, even as these voices become more and more convincing. For a tiny market such as Iceland, the necessary compilation of language resources (e.g. digitalised text corpora in Icelandic) and subsequently the development and production of language technology solutions for the Icelandic language, such as speech control and machine translations, is not commercially viable. In addition, of course, the Icelandic-speaking consumers have shown that they are, in general, quite able − and increasingly so − to cope in English. There is obviously a need for the public sector to step in here. However, at present, no fiscal policymakers in government are ready to prioritise Icelandic language technology. In the wake of the financial (near) collapse of Iceland in October 2008, the public sector in the country experienced severe financial cuts, and a large number of businesses went bankrupt. At the time of writing (late 2014), there are plans to downsize the public sector in Iceland even further in education, culture and academic institutions, along with other areas. In the 1990s, by contrast, there was more reason to be optimistic. Björn Bjarnason, then minister of Education, Science and Culture, understood what was at stake, and he and his ministry acted accordingly, with the aid of the Ministry for Finance. This resulted in a few projects that led to the compilation of some linguistic corpora and to the training of a few specialists in the field of Icelandic language technology. This sensible and timely course of events discontinued when Bjarnason left his post as minister. Concern about the need for language technologies for languages other than English has been expressed throughout Europe for speech communities much larger than Icelandic. Sixty research centres in 34 European countries joined forces in the so-called META-NET network ‘dedicated to the technological foundations of a multilingual, European information society’ (Rehm, Uszkoreit et al., 2014: 1517). This network has published a White Paper series on the current language technology support for Icelandic and 29 other languages across Europe, ‘including all 24 official European Union languages’ (2014: 1518). They observed that

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The differences in support are dramatic and alarming. In all four areas we examined (Machine Translation, speech, text analytics, Language Resources), English is ahead of the other languages but even support for English is far from being perfect. … Many languages lack basic technologies for text analytics and essential Language Resources (Rehm, Uszkoreit et al., 2014). The view that not even English is worked on adequately suggests that the categories for analysis are very comprehensive. The situation for Icelandic was outlined in Rögnvaldsson et al. (2012). Of the 30 languages in the survey, the results for Icelandic and Maltese were the poorest, that is, Icelandic received the label ‘weak or no support’ for all the categories that were involved in the investigation. The poor results for Icelandic in this pan-European survey prompted a proposal for Icelandic language technology, which was presented by a few members of the Icelandic Parliament in January 2014. As first steps for concrete measures, the proposal suggested that a small group of linguists and computer experts draft an action plan on advanced language technology for Icelandic, with suggestions as to the best means to make the Icelandic language usable in the digitalised world. The proposal was passed by Parliament in May 2014, and thus, for a short while, we could see a glimpse of light. However, in September 2014 when the committee was appointed, it turned out that no promises had been made to pay the members of the group for the task they were supposed to deliver. When the budget for 2015 was considered in Parliament in September/October 2014, it became clear that no funds had been allocated for Icelandic language technology research and development. This disappointing course of events was yet another sign that the official Icelandic language policy, which Parliament had unanimously passed in March 2009, was not worth much in terms of financial appropriations. That policy describes (1) the importance of Icelandic, (2) the need to strengthen and support Icelandic by all means available, (3) the will of Parliament to do so and (4) the important goal, in particular, that Icelandic can be used and must be used in all spheres of computer and information technology that concern the daily lives of common people. In short, there is little congruency between words and deeds. The Icelandic government is not likely to prioritise in favour of Icelandic language technology in the near future. The government is in deep trouble in funding the health system adequately, so concern for the special needs of language technology pales by comparison. Consequently, as suggested by Rögnvaldsson (2013), Icelandic could fall prey to English in the 21st century, as a result of poor development in fields such as speech recognition, speech-controlled computer systems and other aspects of language technology.

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Scenario B: ‘Icelandic Thrives, and it will Certainly Keep its Status as Iceland’s Primary Language’ Even if Icelandic may need to share domains with English, as indicated earlier (see also a scenario outlined in Hilmarsson-Dunn & Kristinsson, 2013: 160-161 and Hilmarsson-Dunn & Kristinsson, 2009: 374), this balance is healthy and stable, and it does not presage the imminent death of Icelandic. This is because the intergenerational language transmission of Icelandic is presently 100%, Icelandic is the single official language of a sovereign state and 90% of Iceland’s citizens are monolingual speakers of Icelandic (while a number of Icelandic speakers believe that they master English well, only a small part of the population is truly bilingual). Icelandic is de jure and de facto the language of education at all school levels (albeit parallel with English at tertiary level). Icelandic is at present the language of more than 20 widely read online media containing material in Icelandic only, of three nationwide newspapers, dozens of periodicals and about 800 new book titles annually (including a variety of books for children and adolescents). In accordance with Scenario B, the present language situation suggests that it is unlikely that the Icelandic speech community will abandon its native language for English in the foreseeable future. Language is, above all, a human phenomenon, deeply rooted psychologically and socially, and one’s first language is vital for cognitive processes, self-identity and bonding. Even if some degree of parallel language use is unavoidable when it comes to current media and international communication and in science and technology, it does not seem very likely that language practices will take a complete turn for that reason alone, resulting in language shift. Icelandic did not yield to Danish in the country’s 500 years under Danish colonial rule, so there is no reason to fear that Icelandic will disappear in the 21st century due to (temporary?) pressure from English at this particular point in history. One should also keep in mind that Latin was the language of the learned for centuries, and this did not prevent the development of Icelandic academic language. Among other arguments in favour of Scenario B is the fact that there is much at stake for those Icelanders who have invested the most cultural capital in the Icelandic language as an institution of domestic power. This élite is likely to do its best to propagate and ease the way for improving the status and use of the Icelandic language by any means, such as by supporting language technologies for Icelandic, should they, at some point, become convinced that the prophecy of Rögnvaldsson (2013) is likely to be realised in the foreseeable future.

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Discussion Parallel language use − English/Icelandic − is presently the reality in Iceland in a variety of important domains such as academia, recreation and computers. Such a language situation cannot remain viable and stable for decades, let alone for centuries, in a small speech community such as Iceland. The language that has the most to offer its speakers will survive, and the less attractive one must yield. There is reason to believe that the proponents of the claims in Scenario A, in the previous section, will be proven right in the course of the 21st century. The Icelandic government is unlikely to launch the necessary language technology projects for Icelandic, and market-driven solutions are out of the question for this tiny market. The politicians in power are reluctant to prioritise in favour of Icelandic language technology since there is no ideological consensus on the matter among the voters, that is, among the Icelandic public, who are happy with their English language gadgets. English is perceived as convenient for all modern communication; it is the language of science, a language of trends and coolness. While Icelanders are generally in agreement about their purist stance as concerns the Icelandic linguistic code (as they are, by and large, not in favour of mixing English words into an Icelandic text, at least not in the more prestigious genres), they experience the wholesale use of English as a different matter. Mastering English, and using it at work and/or in leisure time, is a sign of success in life. The most important message in this chapter is that in the 21st century, we are witnessing an unprecedented type of intrusion of an omnipresent dominant language into all spheres of life in a small population, which, by and large, has positive attitudes towards this language.

Conclusion The English language has access to the lives of Icelanders today across the spectrum, from academic texts to popular culture of all kinds. New gadgets serve as Trojan horses for the English language on a daily basis. Traditional ways of measuring ‘language vitality’ are essentially inapplicable to a language that needs to be used in a highly developed information society in a world of digitalisation, as information is stored and retrieved in computers. In the case of Iceland, the language of computers is overwhelmingly English and not Icelandic. Thus, the Hydra head that threatens Icelandic takes the form of an attractive convenient gadget. This course of events can change, however, if Icelandic language ecology takes a sudden turn away from unconditionally favouring the use of English and if the Icelandic language becomes useful, usable and actually used in all sectors of modern technology. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future.

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References Ethnologue (2014) See http://www.ethnologue.com Guðnason, E. (2014) Skrifað og skrafað [Writings and discussions]. See http://www.eidur.is. Helgason, E. (2014) Líður íslenskan undir lok á 21. öld? [Will Icelandic perish in the 21st century?]. Silfur Egils. Web articles. 15 November. See http://eyjan.pressan.is/ silfuregils/page/2/. Heller, M. and Duchêne, A. (2007) Discourses of endangerment: Sociolinguistics, globalisation and social order. In A. Duchêne and M. Heller (eds) Discourses of Endangerment. Ideology and Interest in the Defence of Languages. London and New York: Continuum. Hilmarsson-Dunn, A. and Kristinsson, A.P. (2009) Iceland’s language technology: Policy versus practice. Current Issues in Language Planning 10 (4), 361−376. Hilmarsson-Dunn, A. and Kristinsson, A.P. (2013) The language situation in Iceland. In R.B. Kaplan, B. Baldauf, Jr. and N.M. Kamwangamalu (eds) Language Planning in Europe: Cyprus, Iceland and Luxembourg. London and New York: Routledge. Icelandic Language Council (2014) Ályktun um stöðu íslenskrar tungu 2014 [Resolution on the status of the Icelandic Language 2014]. See http://islenskan.is/images/Alyktanirpdf/Alyktun_2014-11-12.pdf. Kristiansen, T. and Vikør, L.S. (2006) Nordiske språkhaldningar − jamføring og konklusjonar [Nordic language attitudes − comparison and conclusions]. In T. Kristiansen and L.S. Vikør (eds) Nordiske språkhaldningar. Ei meiningsmåling [Nordic language attitudes. An opinion poll]. Oslo: Novus. Kristinsson, A.P. (2013) Evolving language ideologies and media practices in Iceland. In U. Ammon, J. Darquennes and S. Wright (eds) Sociolinguistica. International Yearbook of European Sociolinguistics 27, 54−68. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Kristinsson, A.P. and Bernharðsson, H. (2014) Landerapport Island: Islandsk eller engelsk i islandsk universitetsvirksomhed? [Country report Iceland: Icelandic or English in Icelandic universities and academia?]. In F. Gregersen (ed.) Hvor parallelt. Om parallellspråkighet på Nordens universitet. TemaNord 2014, 535. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers. Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (2009) Íslenska til alls. Tillögur Íslenskrar málnefndar að íslenskri málstefnu samþykktar á Alþingi 12. mars 2009 [Icelandic for everything. Icelandic language policy proposals drafted by the Icelandic Language Council, and approved by Parliament on March 12, 2009]. Reykjavik: Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. Rehm, G., Uszkoreit, H., Ananiadou, S., Bel, N., Bielevičienė, A., Borin, L., Branco, A., Budin, G., Calzolari, N., Daelemans, et al., (2014) The strategic impact of METANET on regional, national and international level. LREC Proceedings 2014 (pp. 1518–1524). Reykjavik, Iceland: European Language Resources Association (ELRA). See http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2014/pdf/405_Paper.pdf. Rögnvaldsson, E. (2013) Hætta á að íslenska hverfi innan 100 ára [There is a danger that Icelandic will disappear within the next 100 years.] Radio interview, Icelandic State Broadcasting Service. See http://www.ruv.is/innlent/ haetta-a-ad-islenska-hverfi-innan-100-ara. Rögnvaldsson, E., Jóhannsdóttir, K.M. Helgadóttir, S. and Steingrímsson, S. (2012). Íslensk tunga á stafrænni öld – The Icelandic Language in the Digital Age. META-NET White Paper Series. Heidelberg: Springer. See http://www.meta-net.eu/whiteppapers/ebook/icelandic.pdf. Vikør, L.S. (2010) Language purism in the Nordic countries. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 204, 9−30.

11 The English Hydra as Invader on the Post-Communist ‘New Periphery’ in Bulgaria Bill Templer

This chapter looks at Bulgaria − in some ways the most successful of the socialist experiments in Eastern Europe, but now the European Union’s chaotic poorhouse − as a distinctive example of the largely failed restoration of free-market capitalism in the former socialist bloc, and the invasion there of the English-language Hydra.

English Dwarfed There was comparatively little English taught in socialist Bulgaria. It was marginalised as a school subject except at the élite and highly selective ‘language high schools’ (the ezikova gimnaziya) in the larger cities. Russian, French and German were the principal foreign languages in the regular state schools. The First English Language School in Sofia, established in 1958 and still one of the top-ranked high schools in the country, is the most prestigious of these foreign-language high schools, an exemplary experimental innovation of the socialist regime in foreign-language-medium, élite education. By the end of the 1980s, there were 20 such language high schools with curricula in English, with very small classes and selective enrolments (Taylor, 2007: 118). Until 1990, there were only two university English departments training experts in English studies: at Sofia University and Veliko Turnovo University. Under socialism, standards at the foreign-language high schools and the two university English departments were rigorous, and they produced a small number of government officials and diplomats with a high level of proficiency in English, as well as a limited number of future English teachers. Most of the older university teachers and scholars of English in Bulgaria today are graduates of such élite high schools. The leading Bulgarian diplomat at the United Nations in 2014 and director-general of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, is a graduate of the First English Language School in Sofia. Before 1990, Russian was the required first foreign language in all Bulgarian schools from Grade 2 to high-school graduation. Other foreign

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languages (especially French and German) were introduced in Grade 7, and in the late 1980s, from Grade 5. In the 1980s, English-language pop and rock music was much liked and broadly listened to, sometimes clandestinely, but it did not spark much interest in learning the language. English was deemed a medium of ‘Western subversion’ during the Cold War. The Communist Party formally rejected Western rock and youth cultures as anathema, although their penetration was clearly evident (Taylor, 2007). When viewed in retrospect, it seems ironical that ‘westernisation’ was what the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) feared most as a threat to the building of egalitarian socialism, socialist morality and a viable people’s republic.

Capital Restored − Enter ‘Westernisation’ and the English Language Hydra As one of the experiments that lost the Cold War − and perhaps the ‘most Soviet-oriented country of Eastern Europe’ (Taylor, 2007: 5) − Bulgaria was subjected to a massive multipronged invasion after 1989: by Western capitalist corporations seeking new profits and markets, by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, by Western nongovernmental organisations, by foundations eager to implant ‘democracy’ and by other Euro-Atlantic actors and interests. On the very same day on which the Berlin Wall fell, 9 November 1989, the BCP leader, Todor Zhivkov, was pressured by the party Politburo into resignation, and reforms were quickly initiated. The BCP renounced its claim to party monopoly in February 1990, leading to free elections in June. Bulgaria joined the IMF in September 1990, and from that juncture it was subjected to heavy pressure for ‘structural reforms’, including the need for a muchexpanded knowledge of English in the society, schools and universities. The Soros Open Society Institute rushed in, launching its operations in Sofia in 1990. This went hand in hand with Washington-based agencies like USAID and the US Peace Corps that were seeking to promote ‘EuroAtlantic values’ and, significantly, a knowledge of English. They were accompanied by an assortment of American missionaries from various Protestant churches looking for new converts and by an American state university setting up an ‘exclave’ campus in Blagoevgrad in southwestern Bulgaria in 1991 to educate a new ‘post-socialist’ youth. Western military expansion into the East brought North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) membership to Bulgaria in 2004 and entry into the new dominion of the European Union and its control regimens in 2007, with its myriad processes of EUropean ‘integration’ − economic, political, cultural, educational and military. What had been an adversarial space for the capitalist West in the Cold War now became its newly vanquished ‘neocolony’. Relations of all kinds

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were marked by the domination of a new Euro-Atlantic centre and ‘Pax Americana’ over a defeated Eastern periphery. That subjugated periphery was inundated by a distinctive intra-European form of neocolonialism, penetrating into a landscape in Bulgaria riddled with new forms of postsocialist corruption, graft, widespread chaos and an economy that was literally in ruins. As on any classic (neo)colonial periphery, language became a key space for struggle. Those seeking Euro-Atlantic hegemony and control understood that language was itself a prime instrument for penetrating mental and emotional space, the structures of government, the military and the economy. The local population and newly emergent élite in Bulgaria, in part members of the former socialist top echelon, had to be convinced of the imperative to learn English, the default lingua franca of the Western victors and of ‘Western’ science. English became the linguistic instrument of a Hydra-headed influx of control, acting to submerge local autonomy. From the first year of socialism’s demise in Bulgaria, the language was promoted and evangelised as a universal utilitarian tool leading to ‘democratic progress’, an Aladdin’s lamp of cultural capital for the individual, a badge of social distinction and class, a lifesaver for economic survival − and for the lucky few, a fantasised springboard to a Euro-Atlantic future. A battery of diverse, invading EuroAtlantic forces, corporations and agencies strove to implant this mythology of English into local education, inculcating an agenda of market values in the schools to advance the aims of corporate interests. The newly refashioned Bulgarian government agencies, the rapidly ‘reconfiguring’ school system, the new privately owned, ostensibly ‘free’ media − all were mobilised by the IMF, Washington and London to instil the belief within the broader population in the wondrous ‘open sesame’ of knowing English as the proper symbolic emblem of access to a liberated ‘European identity’. In particular, they targeted pupils’ parents and the younger adult generation. This necessitated the rapid training of a whole new corps of English-language teachers virtually from scratch, and the importation of teachers from abroad through various official channels, such as the US Peace Corps and the British Council. English was to be trump. The dismantling of the architecture of Russian-language instruction as the first educational move of the new Western-oriented government in the early 1990s led to a precipitous decline in the number of pupils learning this language. The Ministry of Education, responding to multiple pressures, introduced more English from 1991 as the new language of ‘democracy’, and it is now taught from Grade 2 onwards in most primary and secondary schools. In the early 1990s, a ‘reborn’ Bulgaria faced a staggering shortage of trained teachers of English. Along with the creation of new English departments at the state universities in Plovdiv, Blagoevgrad and Shumen, special intensive extramural programmes were established to retrain former teachers of Russian and some other school subjects

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(such as Marxism-Leninism) as teachers of English. This ‘metamorphosis’ of experienced teachers under socialism into English teachers in a crash programme was also common elsewhere in the socialist bloc. Programmes continue today at several Bulgarian universities for the rapid retrofitting of experienced teachers in various subjects as ‘born-again’ teachers of English. The mass influx of US Peace Corps volunteers as English teachers from 1991 onwards was aimed at alleviating that massive teacher shortage. It was also clearly perceived by the US government as a unique opportunity to safely infiltrate their personnel as ‘Western models’ into the Bulgarian secondary-school system and local government and to quietly gather information at the grassroots − all conveyed in the standard reports that Peace Corps volunteers must submit to their superiors. A fact little known: the Peace Corps also entered Ukraine in 1992, and significantly, by mid2013, it boasted the largest single contingent of PC volunteers anywhere in the world, in excess of 300 (Goncharova, 2015), a substantial number teaching English − a clear ‘geopolitical’ initiative. Subsequently, they were all evacuated during the 2014 turmoil (Peace Corps, 2014). The extremely low salaries for teachers in Bulgaria have served to dissuade most expatriate teachers of English from seeking employment on local contracts in state education, whether they are ‘needed’ or not. Other operative factors restricting the hiring of foreign teachers are (1) the desire among local teachers to work extra hours at their institutions to increase income, (2) a reluctance in some schools and universities to have expatriates around, perhaps to observe questionable practices in assessment and even occasional corruption and (3) the constantly shrinking numbers of highschool and university students due to mass emigration. Some teachers from the United States, dispatched as covert missionaries, were probably hired, raising eyebrows and questions in the Bulgarian context about teaching English as a missionary language (TEML) (Wong & Canagarajah, 2009). Both the Orthodox church and Islamic authorities have voiced their concerns about this kind of clandestine Protestant missionising in the guise of teaching English − another distinctive and more ‘veiled’ head of the invading Hydra.

Balance Sheet Twenty-five years later, ‘capitalism restored’ has proven to be a disaster for many, in the veritable ‘downsizing’ of the country. The Bulgarian economy remains largely in a shambles, with a substantial low- to lowestincome working class, widespread unemployment and a very small ‘middle stratum’ that is linked to those sectors where employment is growing, such as tourism, branches of foreign firms and the IT industry. The new ruling class is a plutocratic coterie, grown extremely wealthy by graft, corruption and manipulation after 1990. They are what Bulgarian common

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parlance terms (as in Russia) the ‘oligarchs’. The country ranks as the most impoverished member of NATO and the European Union, with nearly half living at or below the poverty threshold (Standart, 2014). The minimal monthly wage in 2014 was the equivalent in Bulgarian leva of €175, lowest in the European Union. UNICEF recently stated that Bulgaria has the highest child poverty rate in Europe, above 50% (Novinite, 2014d)1. Many ethnic Roma, some 7%−8% of the total population, now live in dire destitution as Europe’s subaltern dispossessed (Pivovarchuk, 2013), with unemployment rates exceeding 80%. (Novinite, 2013d). There are mounting tensions between the Bulgarian ethnic majority, nominally Christian Orthodox, and the large indigenous Turkish-speaking Muslim minority (approximately 12%) (Sofia Echo, 2009). Upwards of an estimated third of the Bulgarian Roma are Muslim and generally speak Turkish as their home language, although precise figures are difficult to establish (Kyuchukov, 2006b; Novinite, 2011). Nationalist sentiment against the Roma and ethnic Turkish population is now clearly on the rise, reflected even in government discourse and parliamentary debate (Novinite, 2014f). In 2014, the total Bulgarian population stood at 7.2 million, down from over 9 million in 1990. It is dwindling by the week due to a mass economic exodus westward and a deepening demographic crisis of plummeting birth rates (Novinite, 2012). Bulgaria today has become the ‘most preferred outsourcing destination’ in the European Union (Novinite, 2014c). It is also known as the ‘sewing sweatshop of Europe’, with wages in that sector often far below the legal minimum (Novinite, 2014a). Significantly, this deformation has transpired in a country where full employment, excellent medical care, inexpensive basic foods, cheap highgrade pharmaceuticals, nearly ‘demonetised’ public utilities and public transport, low-cost restaurants, workplace canteens and vacation resorts, cost-free education and a liveable wage were once the guaranteed norm under socialism, however authoritarian some of its structures and rigid, single-party rules may have been (Templer, 2014: 28, 46). Much of that is still fondly remembered by the generations born around 1970 and before. For them, the term demokratsiya is almost an expletive. But tellingly, a November 2014 survey found that ‘94% of Bulgarians aged 16−30 admit they know nothing about the communist era’ (Novinite, 2014f). In part, this is the result of an education system and a popular media that actively choose to bracket out the socialist past.

The Fallout of Social Class in the Classroom A huge and deepening gap is evident between those with the means to acquire a usable knowledge of English and those from ordinary workingclass backgrounds who achieve scant proficiency in the language, especially at schools outside the major larger cities. Increasingly, English serves as

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dubious cultural capital, a tool to differentiate social class and an entry ticket for future employment in the capitalist market. This is a phenomenon familiar across the globe but with distinctive contours in Europe’s postsocialist, neocolonised East. The teaching of English in the élite foreign-language high schools and some specialist science and mathematics high schools has produced a stratum of teens and young adults who are highly proficient in English. Most have come from the small socio-economically privileged class that has profited from the shift to a free-market economy. Few working-class, ethnic Turk or Roma children can be found in these selective state high schools. Unfortunately, many graduates of such schools are now choosing to study abroad, likely never to return, thereby creating a substantial teen brain drain. The level of knowledge of English among the Roma community is extremely low, and that is also manifest in the rural ethnic Turkish population. This is attributable to the effects of poverty, a lack of access to books at home or in the neighbourhood and the higher dropout rates from school among these minorities, particularly the Roma. Parrish (2013) cites a 2011 UN Country Report which states that ‘only 46.2 percent of the Roma population in Bulgaria completed primary education and only 7.8 percent of Roma completed secondary education; 11.8 percent are illiterate, which is more than 20 times the percentage of ethnic Bulgarians,’ and nearly a quarter of Roma children aged 5-15 do not attend school regularly, even before they may drop out. All this is further framed and influenced by a demonstrable decline in general literacy among Bulgarian teens since 1990. A 2013 report by the Bulgarian Centre for Demographic Policy notes that 41% of Bulgarian students ‘are not fully literate’, a genuine national crisis (Novinite, 2013a). In January 2015, Education Minister Todor Tanev argued that the main problem in primary and secondary education in Bulgaria was the lack of motivation among students and teachers (Novinite, 2015a). Along with the very low overall scores for Bulgarian teens in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 exams (OECD, 2013), the gap in reading, science and problem-solving scores between the 10% with the highest scores in Bulgaria and the 10% with the lowest scores is one of the widest among PISA-participating countries. This highlights the huge gap that has developed between pupils from socio-economically privileged backgrounds versus those from working-class families over the past two decades – something that was not characteristic of socialist education. It is also a classic result of the ‘Matthew Effect’ (Rigney, 2010)2 − in which the rich get richer in social and cultural capital as the economic gaps continue to widen. Private language schools also play a role in generating and reproducing this English-language Matthew Effect. These schools, affordable only for

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the few, offer extra courses and private tutoring. As elsewhere, lucrative private education businesses have developed, offering preparation courses for the IELTS and TOEFL exams, the costs of which are prohibitive for most working-class Bulgarian families. Significantly, some American churches such as the Mormons have organised cost-free English classes in various cities, also as a means to penetrate the community and missionise; a classic example of overt TEML. In part, US Protestant missionaries such as these have directed their energies towards influencing and converting the impoverished Roma, both Muslim and Orthodox Christian, with some success. At South-West University (SWU) in Blagoevgrad, Ellie Boyadzhieva (2014) expressed her doubts about the effectiveness of current English teaching in Bulgarian schools: ‘Unfortunately, my impression is that the widely shared views that “everybody in Bulgaria speaks some English”, and “there are no real beginners today” are just myths’. She described findings from an examination of over 1100 students across several years of undergraduate study in fields other than English at SWU, indicating that nearly 50% scored at a low-beginner level, some 34% at an upper-beginner level and only 17% at low-intermediate level, even after some seven years of prior English study at school. Boyadzhieva concluded that English-language teaching as promoted by the Ministry of Education shows ‘dramatically bad results’, despite the constant official litany about its signal importance, thus pointing out another aspect of the English-language Hydra in Bulgaria − its substantial, often absolute failure at the grassroots. This situation is now compounded by the fact that very few Bulgarians who graduate from university, even those with a major in English studies, wish to become teachers in the schools, due to the rock-bottom salaries even for senior personnel (less in leva than some €300 monthly), stressful working conditions and a diminished social prestige for the profession. There are also fewer job vacancies. The upshot is that a 1990s drive to produce local English teachers has dissipated, with few novice teachers of English now entering the profession. Today, only 3% of Bulgarian teachers are under the age of 30, a statistic that does not bode well for the future (Novinite, 2013c).

English for Survival as Migrant Workers? Due to the shrinkage of much of the pre-1990 Bulgarian economy, there has been a massive labour migration westward, upwards of 20% of the population since 1990 (Novinite, 2013b), particularly since Bulgaria’s entry into the European Union in 2007. In terms of percentage, this ranks as the greatest single population exodus anywhere in Europe (Crowder, 2014). Social class looms as a key differentiating dimension. Increasing numbers from the lowest social strata are seeking survival elsewhere, working as

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manual labourers in agriculture and construction, and in the sex trade. In particular, there is mounting large-scale emigration by poverty-stricken, low-skilled Roma seeking an income abroad and escape from worsening discrimination at home. Few of them have much knowledge of English. For many labour migrants, especially professionals, a working knowledge of English has become part of their imagined ‘survival kit’ in venturing west. But this is often a delusion planted by the Hydra: the language they will actually need will be the local language wherever they settle, not English. Significantly, Bulgarian ethnic Turks and Muslim Roma generally speak Turkish as their first language, and they often gravitate towards well-established Turkish immigrant neighbourhoods in EU countries, such as those in Ghent in Belgium and in many cities in Germany. Here, they can use Turkish to get by. These migratory workers seem to manage; they are able to send remittances back to Bulgaria, and their children attend school.

Imperial Educational Enclaves English-medium education for the privileged few has a thin history in Bulgaria. In the early 1860s, during Ottoman rule, Congregationalist missionaries from the United States established the American School near Sofia. It developed into the American College of Sofia (ACS), the foremost private middle school and high school in Bulgaria and much of the Balkans from the 1870s until its closure during World War II. It was an early example of hands-on TEML and American missionising in the Balkans. The ACS campus was confiscated in 1947 by the socialist government. It was reopened through funding from the United States in 1992, and it has received several million dollars in support since then. Today, it is recognised as the élite private high school in Bulgaria, and it is reputed to be among the most prestigious private secondary schools in Eastern Europe. Current tuition costs €5700 annually, a staggering amount for most Bulgarian families. There are a number of other upscale ‘international’ schools in Sofia, such as the Anglo-American School of Sofia (AAS) (established in 1967) and the American English Academy (AEA) (established in 1992). The current annual tuition fees at AAS range from €11,000 (preschool) to €22,400 (Grades 9-12) and €6400 (preschool) to €16,000 (Grade 12) at AEA, and it is highly profiled in the Bulgarian English-language press (Novinite, 2015b). The British Schools in Bulgaria (britishschoolbg.com), founded in 2009, offer K-12 and a curriculum for the coveted Cambridge exams. These schools form a tiny archipelago of English-medium privilege, in sharp contrast to the broader educational environment and wider Bulgarian society. Shortly after the collapse of socialism, the University of Maine moved to found the American University in Blagoevgrad (AUBG), which opened its doors in June 1991 with assistance from USAID. The AUBG is a

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small, English-medium, private liberal arts college that offers a range of specialties, centring on business studies and journalism. The institution is highly selective, with some scholarship assistance, and, like the ACS, it caters to a small meritocratic élite, many of whom leave the Balkans after graduation. As an enclave, the university has minimal contact with SWU, a large underfunded state university a short walk away. AUBG boasts the largest English-language library in Bulgaria for its current student body of some one thousand students. The America for Bulgaria Foundation (ABF) has granted AUBG generous funding. The ABF supports ‘rule-oflaw initiatives to create an enabling environment for increased inflows of foreign investment and to ensure a modern, prosperous Bulgaria that values free markets and democracy’ (ABF, 2015). It is a major corporate actor on the Bulgarian scene today, also funding a contingent of US English teachers for Bulgarian schools, now that the Peace Corps has left. Here, the Hydra is a symbiosis of American English and cultural norms − the product of US government and corporate initiatives.

English for Military Purposes The Peace Corps may have left, but NATO is now digging in. In the context of the geopolitics of the region, there is considerable stress on English as the ‘language of interoperability’ for NATO, making English for military purposes (EMP) the best-funded single area of English-language pedagogy and materials development for English teaching in the country. EMP also provides the highest salaries for English teachers in Bulgaria. In an interview in 2002, Ian Stewart at the British Council in Sofia commented on the Peacekeeping English Project (PEP) in EMP connected with the Council in Bulgaria from 1998 to 2005 (Novinite, 2002). This programme laid the foundation for a high level of military English proficiency in the Bulgarian armed forces. Stewart noted that the PEP was jointly funded by the British Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence and had spread to more than 20 countries in Central and Eastern Europe. They were working with locally engaged teachers in Bulgaria and applying NATO standards for competence in English, especially for military officers. Stewart related an apocryphal anecdote to make his point: ‘When it was suggested that Hungary might join NATO, a delegation from Budapest went to Brussels with a shopping list for guns, tanks. They were told to go away and learn English, because without communication everything else would not be possible’ (Novinite, 2002). This points to the centrality of English as a military Hydra. Cooper (2005) later noted that PEP teachers in Bulgaria have often studied English literature and linguistics at university, but they are recruited to teach soldiers, police and border guards, and so have to be further trained by PEP in teaching methods and appropriate military discourse functions. The aim of the programme is to bring the soldiers up to a level where they

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can become ‘NATO interoperable’, since regular Bulgarian army volunteers often lack even the most basic of English skills. EMP is one major function of English that is accompanying NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. This is topical again in connection with the chaos in Ukraine and the United States’ clear geostrategic interests there. The Pentagon maintains four military bases in Bulgaria, and Sofia is being pressured by NATO to upgrade its air force with F-16s or Eurofighters at mammoth expense, to replace its Russian MIG-29s (Novinite, 2014c). Bulgarian membership of NATO and EUrope has spawned many problems. Significantly, only the Bulgarian nationalist far right, in particular the Ataka party, has repeatedly protested against both NATO and the European Union and Washington’s ‘meddling’ in Bulgaria − calling for greater national autonomy, a break with Western ‘neocolonialism’ and the inroads of ‘Pax Americana’ and closer ties with the historical ally, Russia. The broader public, the media and nearly all political parties still support the litany of allegiance to Brussels, EUropean values and the United States. There is no audible radical Bulgarian left.

Bilingual Education, Plurilingual Competencies While English proliferates, there is continued government blockage of bilingual programmes. This holds for the two large linguistic minorities in the country, the Turkish-speaking and the Romani-speaking (Templer, 2012), creating a neo-nationalist wall of ‘Bulgarian’ dominance as an antipode to any ‘ecology of languages paradigm’ (Phillipson, 2003: 161) crafted for a more democratic, multilingual Bulgaria. Students’ rights to their own language in early schooling within a mother-tongue-based multilingual education (Skutnabb-Kangas & Heugh, 2012), endorsed where feasible by Council of Europe policy, are woefully neglected in Bulgaria. Although Turkish may be taught to ethnic Turkish pupils in certain Bulgarian provinces as an elective, and teachers of Turkish are trained to BA-level at Shumen University, it is rare for any non-ethnic Turkish Bulgarian to learn Turkish, and no BulgarianTurkish multilingual education (MLE) programmes are permitted. Hristo Kyuchukov (2006a) stresses the need for developing early literacy in Romani (and/or Turkish) among Roma children in Bulgaria through MLE. For many Roma, the language barriers they face in the ‘alien’ classrooms spawn resistance to learning and high early dropout rates. Kyuchukov, a Muslim Rom linguist, established a programme in primary-school education and Romani language at Veliko Turnovo University in 2004 to train teachers for instruction in Romani. The programme was perfunctorily shut down in 2010 by the Sofia Education Ministry, which argued that ‘all the applicants are Roma only’ and that they ‘study a language which does not really exist’ (Kyuchukov, 2013: xi).

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Alternatives and Resistance Some possible alternatives for countering the sting of the Hydra’s omnivorous bite across Bulgarian education may lie partially in the context of an ‘ecology of languages paradigm’ as sketched by Phillipson (2003: 161). As Phillipson (2010: 191) has stressed, ‘English is invariably desirable for the society and individuals, provided that it is additive.’ Experimenting with new perspectives on teaching Russian once again, and introducing Greek, Romanian and Turkish as part of a ‘plurilingual’ mix of competencies, is one viable pathway that could move practices some way towards intercultural bilingual education (Skutnabb-Kangas & Heugh, 2012: 111). The achievements of the foreign-language high schools could also be built upon, expanded and made more democratic and less élitist. However, interview input available to me suggests that many parents would oppose anything but English for their children, from Grade 2 onwards, so pervasive is the mythology of its mystical power. Parents as stakeholders need to become more aware of the need for basic language proficiency in languages other than English. Here as elsewhere, scant attention has been paid to the genuine language needs of migratory workers, especially those involved in seasonal harvesting in other EU countries. Roma activists suggest organising special courses in ‘compact’ English, German, Dutch and other languages for the masses of low-skilled Roma venturing westward. Ultimately, working people should have the right to guaranteed employment in egalitarian local economies, where there is no necessity to emigrate for sheer survival. Bulgarians and Romanians of all walks are today dismayed by the burgeoning animosity they may encounter as migrant-labour in EUrope, fuelled by a virulent anti-Roma animus.

Harambee! Is resistance to English as the hegemonic language feasible in the prevailing dysfunctional late-capitalist world system? In local initiatives, no doubt. In Kenya, people shout harambee! (‘pull together!’) when collectively trying to move huge obstacles in community self-help situations. It would seem that only radical, systemic transformation, from the bottom up − all power to all of the people − can even begin to challenge the English-language Hydra’s global dominion by default and design.

Notes (1) (2) (3)

Novinite is an online daily English-language newspaper. ‘Matthew’ here refers to the Biblical Gospel of Matthew XXV: 29: ‘For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath’. Google’s URL shortener (https://goo.gl/) has been used extensively here, to save space.

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References3 ABF (2015) America for Bulgaria Foundation: Areas. ABF. See goo.gl/puLN6O. Boyadzhieva, E. (2014) Interview with Dr Ellie Boyadzhieva. BETA E-Newsletter March/ April (10) Year III, 7−10. See goo.gl/qlKXDa (accessed 15 December 2014). Cooper, L. (2005) Peacekeeping English. The Sofia Echo, 27 June, 2005. Available at: http:// sofiaecho.com/2005/06/27/642372_peacekeeping-english (accessed 12 March 2016). Crowder, N. (2014) The steep decline of Bulgaria’s population in its post-Soviet era. The Washington Post 10 November. See goo.gl/0uval4 (accessed 15 December 2014). Goncharova, O. (2015) US Peace Corps volunteers gladly return to Ukraine after February 2014 suspension during EuroMaidan Revolution. Kyiv Post July 3. See http://goo.gl/ ID4Kup (accessed 12 October 2015). Kyuchukov, H. (2006a) Early home literacy of Roma children in Bulgaria. Education et Sociétés Plurilingues 20, 51−61. See goo.gl/AtKPb3 (accessed 15 December 2014). Kyuchukov, H. (2006b) Code-switching among Muslim Roms in Bulgaria. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 179, 41−51. Kyuchukov, H. (2013) Foreword. In M. Miskovic (ed.) Roma Education in Europe: Policies, Practices and Politics. London: Routledge. See Google Books: goo.gl/ZYhyVJ (accessed 10 December 2014). Novinite (2002) Ian Stewart: Bulgaria has no reason to lack self-confidence. 22 November. See goo.gl/hIGWBc (accessed 10 December 2014). Novinite (2011) Wikileaks: Islam and Islamic extremism in Bulgaria. 14 July. See goo.gl/ AqpAET (accessed 10 December 2014). Novinite (2012) Latest data confirms Bulgaria faces demographic collapse. 28 November. See goo.gl/KVyp6 (accessed 10 December 2014). Novinite (2013a) Bulgaria with worse literacy rate than Kyrgyzstan, Tonga. 4 February. See goo.gl/cLFtLP (accessed 10 December 2014). Novinite (2013b) Close to half a million Bulgarians ready to leave homeland for good. 5 July. See goo.gl/AuQ6DX (accessed 10 December 2014). Novinite (2013c) Only 3% of teachers in Bulgaria under 30 years – Education Minister. 5 September. See goo.gl/leyM0M (accessed 10 December 2014). Novinite (2013d) Only 20% of Bulgarian Roma have jobs – Study. 8 December. See goo.gl/ atsZ7Y (accessed 10 December 2014). Novinite (2014a) Bulgaria is ‘The sewing sweatshop of Europe’ − report. 19 June. See goo. gl/HRY8Pr (accessed 15 December 2014). Novinite (2014b) Young Bulgarian doctors stage symbolic protest carrying suitcases. 19 August. See goo.gl/QOhIRR (accessed 15 December 2014). Novinite (2014c) Bulgaria is most preferred outsourcing destination in Europe. 30 September. See goo.gl/frBpb2 (accessed 15 December 2014). Novinite (2014d) Bulgaria’s air defense is ‘critical area’, Shalamanov tells BBC. 14 October. See goo.gl/q1luSS (accessed 15 December 2014). Novinite (2014e) UNICEF: Bulgaria has highest child poverty rate in Europe. 5 November. See goo.gl/muZc32 (accessed 15 December 2014). Novinite (2014f) 94% of Bulgarian aged 16−30 admit they know nothing about communist era. 9 November. See goo.gl/HRY8Pr (accessed 15 December 2014). Novinite (2014g) Bulgaria’s DPS calls on health Min. to resign over ‘Roma neighborhoods’. 9 December. See goo.gl/IR8oNB (accessed 15 December 2014). Novinite (2015a) Minister pledges new educational act, substantial increase in teacher salaries. 4 January. See goo.gl/lko8Um (accessed 6 January 2015). Novinite (2015b) Alan Colson: American English Academy tales pride in its rich cultural diversity. 20 November. See goo/gl/TWzREG (accessed 23 November 2015). OECD (2013) PISA Country Profile, Bulgaria 2012. OECD. See goo.gl/qedAFZ (accessed 10 December 2014).

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Parrish, Richie (2013) Roma minority faces uphill battle. The Prague Post 6 March. See goo.gl/jU8yiu (accessed 10 December 2014). Peace Corps (2014) Peace Corps Ukraine Volunteers Evacuated Safely. See http://goo.gl/ OlYIKq (accessed 10 December 2014). Phillipson, R. (2003) English-Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy. London: Routledge. Phillipson, R. (2010) Linguistic Imperialism Continued. London: Routledge. Pivovarchuk, A. (2013) Roma: Europe’s dispossessed. Fair Observer 23 June. See goo.gl/ etFvp (accessed 15 December 2014). Rigney, D. (2010) The Matthew Effect: How Advantage Begets Further Advantage. New York: Columbia University Press. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. and K. Heugh (eds) (2012) Multilingual Education and Sustainable Development Work: From Periphery to Center. London: Routledge. Sofia Echo (2009) Bulgaria has 920 000 Muslims − new report. 8 October. \ See goo.gl/ AAxVtp (accessed 10 December 2014). Standart News (2014) Half of Bulgarians live beyond the poverty threshold. 5 November. See goo.gl/kCb2ss (accessed 10 December 2014). Taylor, K. (2007) Let’s Twist Again: Youth and Leisure in Socialist Bulgaria. Vienna: Lit Verlag. Templer, B. (2012) Re-visioning multiculturalism and bilingual instruction in Bulgarian schools. In P. Petkov and S. Boycheva (eds) Sprache der Kultur und Kultur der Sprache. Festschrift für Prof. Dr. sc. Ana Dimova. Veliko Turnovo/Bulgaria: Faber. Templer, B. (2014) Capitalism reborn, chaos and the post-socialist freefall: A view from Europe’s ‘new periphery’. JCEPS 12 (1), 22−72. See goo.gl/CGqsOE (accessed 10 December 2014). Wong, M.S. and Canagarajah, S. (eds) (2009) Christian and Critical English Educators in Dialogue: Pedagogical and ethical dilemmas. London and New York: Routledge.

12 The English Alphabet: Alpha-Best or Alpha-Beast? Pauline Bunce

Users of the internet, in all its many languages, will be familiar with Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. They will readily recognise its spherical logo depicting an incomplete jigsaw puzzle of 51 pieces, each one carrying a glyph (a letter or symbol) from a different written script. The website claims that each symbol approximates the /w/-like sound or syllable at the beginning of the word Wikipedia. The diversity of the world’s writing systems is presented here in graphical form for our visual appreciation. The complex challenges involved in learning any particular writing system, however, may not be fully appreciated until a speaker attempts to acquire literacy or attempts to cross from one writing system to another. Reading and writing are not innate human skills. Literacy requires instruction, and instruction requires the provision of insights into the ways in which writing systems (and their many scripts) operate. In this chapter, a writing system is defined as a symbolic method of visually recording spoken language (e.g. an alphabet), and a script is the graphical form of the individual units involved in a writing system (e.g. the letters of the English, Greek or Russian alphabets). When anyone is an active, daily user of one particular script, it is immensely difficult to even conceptualise, let alone learn to read or write, in a different one. All proficient users of a particular script have acquired an automaticity in their ease of reading that script. Most literate adults can hardly remember a time when they could not read. There is a Chinese proverb that neatly sums up this situation: ‘You can’t ask a fish to explain water.’ Literate adults have become completely immersed in the script in which their language is written. This is well worth keeping in mind when we consider that the majority of today’s new learners of English are coming to it not only from different scriptal backgrounds (e.g. Eastern Europe) but also from places with completely different writing systems (e.g. South Asia, East and Central Asia and the Arab world). This chapter asks whether teachers in the English language teaching (ELT) industry are fully explaining the ‘water’ to their learners. Here lurks the arrogant Hydra. It is an ignorant beast that just assumes there is alphabetic scriptal competence among its learners. Yet, there is so

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much more to learning this scriptal system than merely ‘knowing your ABC’. Unfortunately, mere letter naming is where too much introductory English-reading instruction stops. A great many biscriptal learners remain unaware, or only partially aware, of the phonological, morphological and cultural insights that are present in written English words (Birch, 2002). As a direct result of this serious shortcoming, an over-reliance on memorised spelling and learned lists of vocabulary has come to characterise today’s increasingly multi-scriptal English classrooms. Teachers are inclined to press on with the assumption that their learners probably understand how an alphabetic writing system ‘works’. Sadly, this is just one of many assumptions that are projected onto English learners every day. The English language and its alphabet are positioned as the norm, from which all other languages and scripts are seen to vary. The romanised English alphabet is portrayed as the Alpha-best of writing systems. This chapter of Why English? Confronting the Hydra will characterise such alphabetic assumptions as a one-eyed Alpha-beast; as another dangerous head on the ferocious, multi-headed giant Hydra that is the English-language teaching, testing and publishing industry. It will examine (1) the simplistic assumptions that are often made in ELT practice with regard to other writing systems, (2) the ELT industry’s reluctance to abandon outdated, ‘whole-language’ approaches to the teaching of alphabetic reading, even to non-alphabetic-background learners and (3) the ELT industry’s apparent ‘blind spot’ regarding the clear findings of 21st-century neuroscientific studies of the reading process. This chapter will characterise ELT as a narcissistic, ‘alphabet-centric’ industry, which has failed to keep up with a changing world.

Don’t Just Assume Alphabetic Skills In an influential opinion piece in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, entitled ‘Most people are not WEIRD’, Henrich et al. (2010: 29) lament that so much research on human behaviour and psychology relies on studies of Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic (WEIRD) individuals and groups. This research is routinely assumed to be representative, and it enjoys ready publication. Perhaps this acronym should be extended to WEIRD AS, in which the word AS could easily stand for alphabet-scripted. Taking this analogy a little further, perhaps the English language itself and its alphabetic script could also be described as ‘weird’. Certainly, some writers have described many features of written English as ‘unusual’ (Majid & Levinson, 2010: 103), ‘idiosyncratic’ (Bassetti et al., 2012: 2), ‘outlier’ (Share, 2008) or even ‘extreme’ (Seymour, 2005: 311). Yet English, and by implication its written script, is positioned as the standard from which all its learners’ languages differ. Too often, it is assumed to be Alpha-best.

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Studies of other writing systems, other scripts and orthographies usually occur quite apart from the world of English-language teaching. In many books on ELT practice, the terms bilingual or biliterate will almost always refer to students from European-language backgrounds, especially Spanish. By contrast, the terms biscriptal or tri-scriptal are rarely encountered in published ELT teaching resources. There are virtually no publications at all on teaching a new handwriting system to students who are already literate in a different script. Rosemary Sassoon’s The Acquisition of a Second Writing System (1995) stands alone. While there are dozens of research journals focused on the reading and writing of English, there are currently only two international journals that closely examine the world’s many writing systems: Written Language and Literacy, which began in 1998, and Writing Systems Research, which began in 2009. The field of ELT too readily assumes that first-language-literate students will be able to directly transfer their established literacy skills across to an additional language such as English. ELT professionals have repeatedly been told that ‘we only learn to read once’ by second language acquisition ‘experts’ such as Jim Cummins and Stephen Krashen. Learners have been assured that the skills and knowledge that they have gained in firstlanguage literacy will be of positive benefit in the acquisition of second or additional literacies. According to Stephen Krashen, whose ideas are widely followed in ELT practice, ‘the ability to read transfers across languages, even when the writing systems are different’ (Krashen, 1997: n.p.). This is not necessarily so. Written scripts can operate at quite different linguistic levels such as phonemes, syllables, words or sentences, or they may vary along completely different scriptal design principles, using different letters, different symbols, complex characters, diacritics or even different directionalities. Most ELT research interests, textbooks and pedagogy have grown out of 20th-century practical teaching experiences (of mainly adult learners) in the United Kingdom and the United States where, until recently, the majority of English-language learners came from alphabet-scripted language backgrounds. The arrival of large numbers of non-alphabetic-background learners in such schools and colleges, and the vastly differing needs of 21st-century English learners across the globe, are both under-researched and under-catered for in current ELT practice. What happens when the literacy skills and concepts that students have learned with great success in their first languages prove to be inadequate, or even inappropriate, in learning to become literate in English? While it could be said that every country on earth has had some exposure to the Latin alphabet in the modern era − on product labels and logos, on television and the internet − there is still a wide geographical sweep of countries that primarily use abjads, abugidas or other nonalphabetic written scripts. This region stretches from northwest and

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northern Africa, through the Middle East and Central Asia, down through the Indian subcontinent, across to Indian-heritage South East Asia and north through China to Korea and Japan. This broad region is also the increasingly dominant source of the world’s newest learners of English. It is manifestly unfair for their English instructors to assume that these learners are fully conversant with the underlying principles by which the Latin alphabet operates in tandem with the 44 sounds of English phonology. It is also unfair to assume that these learners are fully aware of the underlying patterns of English morphology, or the units of meaning, on which English words have historically been built. Some written scripts are closer to each other in graphical design than others. A Spanish reader, for example, can easily see the separate words in an English-language text. Word-boundaries will also be visually obvious to a Russian-background learner, even though there may be new letter patterns to learn. While their written scripts may have some alphabetic elements, readers of Semitic and Indian languages will both experience considerable orthographic distance from the romanised alphabet used in English. Some scripts do not represent word-boundaries at all. The enormous orthographic distance between the horizontal, left-to-right, alphabetic English script and the sometimes columnar, sometimes horizontal, character-based Chinese script is probably as great an orthographic distance as it is possible to go. The world’s written scripts do a lot more than represent their spoken languages in visual formats. They embody the very essence of literacy for their users. They are the ‘water’ in which their users live, as described by the aforementioned Chinese proverb. The literacy skills and assumptions about language that have been learned in different scripts will almost certainly affect the ways in which their users will approach any new script.

Learning a New Script If we leave aside the obvious grammatical and pronunciation differences between languages for a moment and concentrate solely on scriptal differences, there are several significant levels of challenge involved in learning to read in a new script: (1) The first is orthographic distance. Even within the same type of writing system and script, there may be differences between those scripts in which the sound-letter correspondences are quite predictable (e.g. Italian and Malay) and those that are far less regular (e.g. English). (2) A change of alphabet is the next level of challenge for learners. This can present the learner-reader with new symbols and new ways of dealing with familiar ones. There may be considerable frustration and cognitive interference in switching from one written script to the other, for example from Russian to English.

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(3) A third level of challenge arises for the student who is moving between a consonant-dominant alphabetic script (or ‘abjad’) and an all-sounds alphabetic script. This is the case for Arabic-background students who are learning English. (4) The Indian-style scripts of South and South East Asia (or ‘abugidas’) primarily represent syllables with dominant consonants. English learners from these regions will encounter new mixtures of vowels and consonants that construct syllables in different ways. (5) A further level of challenge will be that faced by the phoneme-level, sound-based alphabetic reader who attempts to learn Korean Hangeul, which visually wraps sets of phonemic symbols into square, syllabic ‘bundles’ that can sometimes suggest the places of articulation in the mouth. For the literate Korean learner of English, there will be the obvious challenge of dealing with linear sets of letters and a higher frequency of multisyllabic words. (6) Some South East Asian scripts utilise spacing differently, and they may not always indicate word-boundaries, for example Thai and Khmer. English learners from such a background will need to visually separate the written parts of speech and come to a different understanding of the nature of ‘words’. (7) The hardest level of all will be that faced by a learner who attempts to cross the divide between using visually memorised characters in a meaning-based writing system and an alphabet-scripted, sound-based writing system. This is the challenge for Chinese-literate students learning English and English-literates learning Chinese. Anyone who is literate will have been taught from an early age how to write efficiently in their home script, how to hold their traditional writing implements and how to lay out a page of text according to the expectations of their elementary school teachers. But − are the finer skills of alphabetic letter-formation and advice on efficient handwriting skills being provided for English-language learners beyond the elementary grades? Very rarely, it would seem (Sassoon, 1995). This can result in older students producing clumsy and ambiguous letters and numbers and even an embarrassed reluctance to indulge in handwriting at all. It behoves ELT teachers and publishing houses to explore the field of handwriting instruction for older, non-alphabetic-background learners in English-speaking countries and, just as importantly, for ELT instructors who reside in non-alphabetic-scripted settings to strategically introduce their students to correct and efficient letter and word formation in the English alphabetic script. Without the same care and attention to detail that goes into first-scriptal instruction, these learners of a new script may never fully grasp the fundamentals of alphabetic handwriting − and they may even avoid it (to their peril) in this computer-dominated era.

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Leave the ‘Whole-language’ Approach Behind and Embrace Phonological-skills Development The development of efficient literacy skills in an alphabetic script depends on the learners’ grasp of the alphabetic principle − the fundamental encoding and decoding basis of an alphabetic writing system − in which combinations of letters are designed to ‘capture’ the individual sounds in the spoken language. Unfortunately, even most first-language learners of English do not make these connections between symbol and sound unaided. The alphabetic principle needs to be taught (Byrne, 1998). An introduction to the alphabetic principle must be a core instructional priority for all those English learners who have come into English with non-alphabetic literacy skills. Learners’ first written scripts represent the very essence of writing to them. The principles on which their first writing system is based will be the invisible ‘water’ in which such learners swim. It follows that these scriptal principles will almost certainly be applied to the learning of any new writing system. In the absence of advice to the contrary, learners may construct the letters of the English alphabet in a sequence and style that follows the directional principles and/or the stroke-order rules of their primary script. In the case of Chinese learners of English, such a transfer of ‘scriptal assumptions’ can, and often does, lead to the rote memorisation of huge numbers of English words by their visual shape and spelling sequence. Such a situation is quite common in Hong Kong, even though it completely bypasses the essential skills of phonological encoding and decoding − the absolute core of the alphabetic principle. Such visual learners, and other learners with insufficient decoding skills, will always struggle with new words. They will almost certainly skip over them, rather than take the time needed to fully engage with them. Unfortunately, many have been taught to do just this by the followers of whole-language approaches to reading instruction, in direct opposition to phonological-skills development. While first-language learners of English are currently experiencing a revival in phonological approaches to reading instruction, the same cannot be said for ELT. The author of An A-Z of ELT: A Dictionary of Terms and Concepts (Thornbury, 2006) writes in his eponymous online blog that ‘the phonics debate is less of an issue for us [ELT professionals] since most adult second language learners are already literate.’ Such a comment reveals an extremely limited view of the word literate and the unfortunate fact that the ELT industry has almost completely ignored the overwhelming scientific evidence that has tipped the so-called reading wars of the last two decades away from ‘whole-language’ approaches and firmly back in favour of more explicit instruction in basic phonological skills. Due to its preoccupation with ‘communicative competence’ and its continuing addiction to outdated whole-language approaches, worldwide

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ELT practice largely operates at the level of the sentence. Word-level work becomes mere ‘vocabulary’. In Hong Kong, for example, learners frequently have no idea of the roles played by Latin or Greek roots, prefixes or suffixes in word-building, nor of the existence of word-families beyond those associated with the declension of verbs. Every new word is seen as a ‘oneoff’ and a further burden on the learner’s memory. Hong Kong learners frequently describe the English alphabetic script as looking like ‘chicken guts’ or ‘ugly worms’; mere shapes that give them ‘alphabet headaches’ (Bunce, 2012). In stark contrast to their knowledge of the etymological history of the intricacies of Chinese character-formation, written English words are often viewed as dull and lifeless letter-squiggles. In my own work with adolescent Hong Kong learners, I found that even the simplest lesson on prefixes left my students wondering why such basic insights had not previously been presented to them. They had been taught, and had learned, their English vocabulary ‘Chinese style’, mainly using their visual memories. Aspects of pronunciation and meaning had been ‘tacked on’ to the visual images they had of each word. The very idea that English spelling and sound are directly related, or that meaning could often be worked out from word-building elements, had never been presented to them. No one had explained the new ‘water’ in which they were learning to swim. In ELT practice, very few teachers of post-primary-aged learners of English have been trained to teach the fundamental phonological skills that are needed to work with an alphabetic script (Bunce, 2012). This is usually the preserve of early-childhood educators. Those who do possess the necessary knowledge and skills to teach ‘new literates’ will probably find that there are next to no adult-level resources for older learners of English or that the available adult literacy materials have been designed for Englishspeaking, non-literate adults with established adult vocabularies and welldeveloped communicative competence. There is a desperate need for the ELT industry to adopt new approaches, design new learning materials and seek a deeper understanding of the biscriptal challenges faced by a growing majority of today’s English learners (see Bunce, 2016). The primary indicator of competent reading in an alphabetic script is the learner’s ability to read a ‘new’ word − to work out its pronunciation from its sequence of letters. If students cannot read unknown words, we cannot say that they have truly learned to read. Even students with IELTS scores of 6 or 7 (on a scale of 9) may still lack the level of decoding skills that is required for academic reading and writing in English. How will they cope with the inevitable flood of new and lookalike words that they will meet in their future academic settings? Even a modicum of morphological awareness would greatly assist learners in their future acquisition of multisyllabic technical and scientific vocabulary. Such words are usually built on predictable morphological units, with Greek and Latin components, which competent learners should

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be able to identify, pronounce and comprehend. Multisyllabic words should, in fact, be less daunting for learners than shorter words. Unfortunately, for visual word-learners they pose grave dangers of misinterpretation and misspelling. Lookalike words abound in advanced English. A classic recent example is a sign in a Hong Kong park that read, ‘Do not leave your children unsurprised [sic].’ When English words are not able to ‘speak’ to their readers and writers, serious errors can be made. If someone is unable to encode (spell) or decode (read) previously unknown words, this will place limitations on their ability to study and operate in an alphabetic world. Unfortunately, while they may exhibit an external illusion of reading, such students are really only partially literate. Such partial readers may experience several of the following hidden consequences of an incomplete mastery of an alphabetic script. •

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Business and law students, in particular, must be able to read reports and case studies aloud to colleagues, a practice that inevitably involves decoding previously unseen surnames and business locations. A report by the Hong Kong Law Society in 2000 found that this was a particular weakness among the city’s law students. Partial readers may not be able to closely follow safety manuals, operating instructions or written medical advice. Partial readers will not be able to take good notes in lectures. They will crave handouts and PowerPoint presentations. This is quite obvious at Hong Kong universities, where English-speaking lecturers who do not provide detailed handouts are marked down in student-feedback questionnaires. Students who do some pre-reading for lectures might not recognise the spoken versions of the technical terms that they have read. Students may confuse similar-looking words, such as ‘expectant’, ‘expectorant’, ‘experiment’ and ‘expedient’. This is something that could be quite dangerous in the field of medicine, where a knowledge of Latin and Greek roots is essential to full, professional vocabulary development. Partial readers will be unable to ‘grow their own vocabulary’ − even though this is the fundamentally crucial self-teaching function of reading (Share, 1995). No school situation can ever teach students all the words that they will need in their future. Poor decoders will not read widely nor read for pleasure, so they may have limited (or even incorrect) knowledge of important and current issues. On the telephone, they may not be able to jot down a name or a location without asking the speaker to spell it out for them. Then, they may not be able to make further enquiries about the person or place they have noted, as they may not be able to pronounce what they have written down.

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Any copying from a blackboard or a screen will be done slowly, letter by letter, for unknown words. Their reading of text will be laboured and slow, and their comprehension will inevitably suffer. They may not be able to work out if a text is for or against an issue. They may ‘skip over’ unknown words and will need to reread frequently. As travellers, they will find it difficult to use foreign (alphabetic)language phrase books, maps or atlases. They will be unable to ask directions to written destinations. Many monolingual English-speaking students who have not learned to decode efficiently tend to ‘hit a reading brick wall’ around the age of nine, and their school performance may well fall behind that of their peers. This is known as the ‘Matthew Effect’ (Stanovich, 1986), in which the reading-rich will get richer and the reading-poor will fall further and further behind. In second- or foreign-language situations, this can happen to some students in lower secondary school, or more commonly in the upper secondary years, when the demands of academic reading increase dramatically.

Find Out What Neuroscience Can Tell us About the Reading Process Not only have the English ‘reading wars’ been put to rest by solid, scientific research that has come out firmly in favour of phonologicalskills development (rather than ‘skip and guess’ approaches), we now have brain science working on the side of instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics. Neuroscience can now inform us in detail about the neural processing of different writing systems, even finding different forms of dyslexia in users of different writing systems. These discoveries have been widely published, not only in the scientific press but also in popular nonfiction titles such as Proust and the Squid: The Story and the Science of the Reading Brain (Wolf, 2008) and the award-winning Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read (Dehaene, 2009). Significantly different patterns of energy flows between brain structures have been found between literates and non-literates and between Chinese and English readers (Perfetti et al., 2007). The schooling that is required to read the English or the Chinese script fine-tunes our neural circuits in quite distinctive ways (Tan et al., 2005). Our brains have adapted to doing what we ask them to do. All written text is initially processed by the brain’s visual cortex, but then an interesting short-term diversion takes place. Sound-based written scripts will strongly activate the auditory processing regions of the brain slightly ahead of those that deal with semantic content.

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Meaning-based written scripts (e.g. Chinese) will immediately generate a strong activation of the semantic processing areas, momentarily ahead of the auditory ones. Interestingly, when irregular English words such as ‘colonel’ and ‘yacht’ are encountered, even the English-reading brain’s activation pattern will resemble that of the Chinese reader, as it will need to prioritise meaning ahead of pronunciation (Dehaene, 2009: 118). The cognitive demands of the Chinese script on the human brain are quite different from those of alphabetic processing. When reading an alphabetic script, we assemble the sounds together and derive meaning from the resulting combination. In Chinese, the reader recognises meaning directly, and the associated sound will accompany this realisation. Literacy literally shapes the neural circuitry in our brains; our initial form of scriptal literacy is the ‘water’ in which we have learned to swim. Much of the ground-breaking, cognitive neuroscientific research into the absolute basics of reading has been conducted at the University of Hong Kong over the past decade or two. Unfortunately, this vitally important work is almost unknown to the many ELT practitioners and luminaries who have worked in the very same university over the very same period. This includes David Nunan, whose ‘top-down’, ‘communicative approach’ to all aspects of English teaching (1987) has been slavishly followed by almost all the ELT textbooks in use in this very Chinese city − many written by Nunan himself. I believe that reading instruction, at all levels and among all types of readers, can no longer ignore the hugely significant and scientifically based studies of the reading process that have been carried out over the past 20 years. It is time for English-language teachers to bring themselves up to date with recent scientific studies of the reading process and to learn a great deal more about the ‘bottom-up’ nature of this complex neurocognitive activity. There should be no more ‘skip and guess’ in reading lessons. A heightened awareness of what the reading process involves, and the steps that are needed to make its acquisition firm and efficient, will not only benefit alphabetic-background learners of English; it will also have an enormously beneficial impact on the burgeoning numbers of non-alphabetic-background learners of the language, especially those from China. This chapter of Why English? Confronting the Hydra serves to cast a spotlight on a fundamentally important aspect of ELT that remains barely recognised, under-resourced and scarcely researched in current ELT practice. Such a situation flies in the face of the fact that the majority of today’s English-language learners are coming to it from non-alphabetscripted backgrounds. The ELT industry’s monumental failure to recognise and address the most elementary aspects of reading and writing in an alphabetic script displays a complete and arrogant disregard for the

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fundamental needs of so many of its current learners. This blinkered, ‘Alpha-best’ attitude to English-language literacy has served to create and nourish an Alpha-beast of a head for the English-language Hydra. What will it take to jolt ELT pedagogy out of its resting place in the previous century? How can this one-eyed Alpha-beast be confronted? This chapter makes three demands of today’s ELT industry: (1) Don’t just assume alphabetic skills, (2) Leave the ‘whole-language’ approach behind and embrace phonologicalskills development and (3) Find out what neuroscience can tell us about the reading process. Meeting such challenges will require heightened professionalism from English-language teachers and teacher trainers. It will also require a major confrontation with the voracious commercial interests of language schools, publishers and testing agencies that would force them to better serve the needs of today’s language learners. This book is one attempt to do just that.

References Bassetti, B., Vaid, J. and Cook, V. (2012) Interdisciplinary approaches to second language writing systems. Writing Systems Research 4 (1), 1−7. Birch, B.M. (2002) English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bunce, P.D. (2012) Alphabet Headaches: The bi-literacy challenge for Chinese students. TESOL in Context, Special Edition S3, November. See http://www.tesol.org.au/files/ files/280_pauline_bunce.pdf. Bunce, P.D. (2016) According to the script. An online teaching resource. Available at www.alphabetheadaches.com. Byrne, B. (1998) The Foundation of Literacy: The Child’s Acquisition of the Alphabetic Principle. Hove: Psychology Press. Dehaene, S. (2009) Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read. New York: Penguin Books. Henrich, J., Heine, S.J. and Norenzayan, A. (2010) Most people are not WEIRD. Nature 466, 1 July, p. 29. Krashen, S.D. (1997) Why bilingual education? ERIC Digest. ERIC Clearing House on Rural Education and Small Schools. ED403101. Majid, A. and S.C. Levinson (2010) WEIRD languages have misled us, too. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33, 103. Nunan, D. (1987) Communicative language teaching: Making it work. ELT Journal 41 (2), April. Perfetti, C.A., Liu, Y., Fiez, J., Nelson, J., Bolger, D.J. and Tan, L.H. (2007) Reading in two writing systems: Accommodation and assimilation of the brain’s reading network. Bilingualism, Language and Cognition 10 (2), 131−146. Seymour, P.H.K. (2005) Early reading development in European orthographies. In M.J. Snowling and C. Hulme (eds) The Science of Reading: A Handbook. Oxford: Blackwell. Sassoon, R. (1995) The Acquisition of a Second Writing System. Oxford: Intellect.

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Share, D.L. (1995) Phonological recoding and self-teaching: sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition 55 (2), 151−218. Share, D.L. (2008) On the Anglocentricities of current reading research and practice: The perils of overreliance on an ‘outlier’ orthography. Psychological Bulletin 134 (4), 584−615. Stanovich, K.E. (1986) Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly 22, 360−407. Tan, L.H., Spinks, J.A., Eden, G.F., Perfetti, C.A. and Siok, W.T. (2005) Reading depends on writing, in Chinese. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 102 (24), 8781−8785. Thornbury, S. (2006) An A-Z of ELT: A Dictionary of Terms and Concepts. Oxford: Macmillan Education. Wolf, M. (2008) Proust and the Squid: The Story and the Science of the Reading Brain. Cambridge: Icon Books.

13 ‘Languages’ Tammy Ho Lai-Ming

Languages South China Morning Post, an English newspaper, is delivered To our doorstep every morning, and we let it Stay until all other neighbours know Our language abilities. We dress well, even when taking out The garbage or buying a San Miguel From the store downstairs. But let’s not boast to our neighbours How much more beautiful we are, How much more intellectually trained. They don’t care. They live less ambiguously. They speak One dialect only. Already they are free From feeling embarrassed when pronouncing /r/ as /l/, /n/ as /l/ or /z/ as /s/. They don’t feel Excluded when two real English speakers Are in the same room, commenting on Memoirs of A Geisha or Bill Ashcroft’s postcolonial theories. We dare not open our mouths, lest our strong HK Accent betrays our humble origin. The terrible Flatness of our tone, the inflexibility of our tongue.

I wrote the poem ‘Languages’ when I was an MPhil student writing a thesis on stylistics and Charles Dickens, the quintessential Victorian author, at the University of Hong Kong. The poem describes an educated couple’s anxiety to make sure that everyone living on their floor knows that they are well versed in English, as demonstrated by their subscription to the English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, which they leave on their doorstep for as long as possible every morning. But deep down the couple also know the fact that they can read and speak English is not that impressive, especially since their neighbours probably don’t care about this linguistic remnant of colonial days. Also, the couple know that compared to ‘real English speakers’, their English is accented, awkward and inferior. There is really nothing much to boast about.

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Since writing this poem, my inferiority complex regarding English has subsided. I cannot deny I am a by-product of colonialism and postcolonialism − of this I am neither proud nor ashamed − and that, therefore, my use of English in some sense has deep political roots. I hope to use English as a way of expressing one particular Asian identity, as a means of exploring my own personal, Chinese themes. You do not need to use English as a native speaker. You just need to use it honestly, and your experience will shine through whatever medium you use.

Reference Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. and Tiffin, H. (eds) (1989) The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge.

Part 3 Confronting the Hydra

14 Mauritian Kreol Confronts English and French Hydras Lindsey Collen and the Ledikasyon pu Travayer (LPT)1 team

Background on Mauritius Mauritius, despite often being called ‘Ile Maurice’ in French, is a republic made up of a number of islands and an archipelago: the islands of Mauritius, Rodrigues, Agalega, St Brandon and Tromelin and the Chagos Archipelago. Tromelin is, however, occupied by France, though illegally. And the Chagos Archipelago is occupied by Britain, which has, in turn, sub-let part of its illicitly acquired booty to a receiver of the stolen goods, who is none other than the United Sstates. On Chagos, Mauritian land, the United States has set up a huge military base on one of the islands, Diego Garcia, from which B-52s take off to go and bombard the civilian populations of countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, and on which they ‘render’ illegal prisoners. The scars of colonisation thus remain − not only in terms of the domination of the two Hydras, the English and French languages, which is the subject of this article, but also in terms of a double illegal occupation of land by two past colonisers. The language situation, like a mirror, reflects this colonial anachronism, which has persisted into postcolonial times. The unusual double nature of linguistic domination has contradictory effects: there is not the suffocating oppression of a single hegemonic colonial language, true, so people are perhaps more readily rebellious in promoting their mother tongues; but there is, nevertheless, a twice-over domination by both of the high-status ex-colonisers’ languages. When the mother tongue rises in rebellion against the English Hydra, the French one stands by to take the winnings. And vice versa. All the while, the defenders of the colonial languages erroneously insist that the mother tongues can only free themselves at the expense of English and French. There is an additional factor. This is the particular disdain with which people, including we Mauritians ourselves, even the most wellmeaning and/or especially the most highly educated, regard all Creole languages, including Mauritian Kreol. Despite a 180-degree shift within the academic community of theoretical linguists since the 1970s, people 159

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worldwide, often those who should know better, persist in describing Creole languages in terms of the old 18th- and 19th-century academia’s colonial constructs: as ‘admixtures of different languages’, ‘French-based or English-based languages’, ‘the languages that developed as slaves tried to communicate with their masters in their language’, ‘mere patois’ and so on. The more violent hatred of Creole languages was, until quite recently, openly expressed in terms like ‘gutter-talk’, ‘degenerate French or English’, ‘vulgar dialects’ or, in French, until even now, ‘charabia’ and ‘baragouin’ [both: ‘gibberish’]. But what has persisted − and this, too, is loaded with violence − is the idea that Creoles are not ‘real languages’ at all. The government brags that Mauritians are ‘bilingual’ (Government of Mauritius, 2015). By this, it means we speak English and French. Since language is a defining characteristic of our humanity, not having a ‘real language’ as our mother tongue throws into question our very humanity. And although we have, to some extent, internalised this disdain we also, at the same time, in overt and covert ways, quite naturally, resist. Situated in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar and south of India, the islands of Mauritius were ideal for the colonisers as a stopover, a shopcounter for import-export from the West to the East and back, for picking up fresh food and, eventually, for planting and milling cash crops, in particular raw sugar to supply the European markets with a sweet tooth, via refineries in Liverpool. All the people of Mauritius, now 1,300,000, have come here from somewhere else over the past 300 years. Few chose freely to come here. Some were brought here by force as wives to the colonisers. Others, in much larger numbers, were brought by force as what was a new commodity at the time: ‘labour’. So the country is made up of capital and labour, already organised in social formations, predating by decades the coming into existence and then into power in Europe of industrial capitalism. The first 100 years of Mauritian social history saw labour extracted under the harshest of labour laws: slavery. It was in these times that Mauritian Kreol was born. The second 100 years saw labour regimented by the less harsh, but still cruelly un-free, indenture laws and the population tripling through the immigration of indentured workers. Most of the Indian indentured labourers spoke Bhojpuri, and so Mauritian Bhojpuri took root, mainly in the rural areas and Port Louis. And then, over the past 100 years, labour power has been brought under fairly draconian labour laws, only ever made less draconian by constant ‘unrest’. Mauritian Kreol has become the main language, with Bhojpuri the second largest in terms of the number of native speakers. With a society that has been purposefully created around the extraction of labour, Mauritius has naturally been a place of constant rebellions. Here, there was no being lulled by dreams of a return to a past paradise, either real or imagined.

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The Language Situation In Mauritius, the 2011 Census revealed that as many as 87% of people say they ‘usually speak Mauritian Kreol at home’, while another 5% usually speak Bhojpuri, and another 1% speak these languages and another. So, the mother tongues of 93% of the people are Kreol and Bhojpuri (Statistics Mauritius, 2011). The English language, though spoken by less than 0.5% of people, is nevertheless ‘the official language’ of the state (Statistics Mauritius, 2011). It is the main language used in the National Assembly, the Cabinet, the formal parts of the judiciary and the civil service, as well as, crucially, the sole medium of instruction in government and almost all private schools, from the first year to tertiary level. All this is true, while Kreol is, in fact, used informally as a spoken language at all levels of the state, even for highlevel negotiations of all kinds. It is important to note that the number of people claiming to usually speak English at home has more than doubled since 1990, when it was a mere 0.2% (Statistics Mauritius, 1990). The numbers are so small that this doubling is probably mainly the result of some immigration and some returning emigrants. How does the English language manage to keep its status? There is a continued reliance on the Cambridge Examination Syndicate for School Certificate and Higher School Certificate and London GCE O-levels and A-level examinations. The argument for this is that these institutions are ‘fairer’ and prevent any examination papers being leaked or subjected to other forms of corruption. The examinations, in turn, orient the entire education system, from preschool to university, towards English. Although the British Council is still active, it is in decline relative to other embassy-led activity in Mauritius. And the new offensive, since the World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements, has been in what they call ‘the tertiary education sector’. So, Mauritius has opened its economy up to ‘investment’ in tertiary education. And this has further strengthened the hold of English. Already the most prized scholarships for tertiary education were, and still are, to British universities. Already the legal system leads students who can afford it to British universities. But now there are branches of British campuses, like Middlesex University since 2010, and Aberystwyth due in 2015. Mauritius has declared itself an ‘education hub’ catering for students not only from Mauritius but also from other Indian Ocean countries, the rest of Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Other anglophone universities are getting their foot in the door. The local tertiary education institution called the Charles Telfair Institute offers courses in partnership with Curtin University of Technology in Australia, and the EIILM (Eastern Institute for Integrated Learning in Management), Mauritius Branch Campus is a branch of an Indian university. As if to mirror the commercialisation of education, the minister of tertiary education,

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science, research and technology, the Hon. Rajesh Jeetah, is from the family with the biggest business interest in tertiary education. There is also active recruitment within Mauritius to UK, Australian, Canadian and US universities. Degrees awarded jointly by a Mauritian and an anglophone university now abound. So increasingly, instead of decreasingly, the climate is one of British-defined academic knowledge, whether directly or passing through another country that is still suffering the same fate. This type of presence of English, however, is dangerous only to the extent that it is assumed, and it is generally assumed, that the mother tongue is just so much deleterious interference in children’s acquisition of English. But interestingly, the pressure, as in Wales 100 years ago, is not for ‘mothers to start speaking English to their children’ but for ‘mothers to start speaking French to their children’. For English is not a lone Hydra in Mauritius. With a history of colonisation by France and only afterwards by Britain, the French language, spoken by the land-owners, the sugar barons and the historical ruling class, as well as by the urban intellectual élite, remains the language of high status. The written press is almost entirely in French until today. Films from the West are invariably dubbed into French, and in many formal situations, from banks and some shops to smart cocktail parties, French is the order of the day, the language of politesse. This is true even though only 4.1% of the population claim, in the 2011 census, to usually speak French at home (Statistics Mauritius, 2011). There has been constant political pressure from the international francophone movement to advance French. In France, there is actually a Ministre de la Francophonie to do the job. A cabinet minister promotes French as part of France’s huge fight against the English Hydra − an invasive force there, too, of course. Indeed, Mauritius is the only place in the world where French has, though still marginally, actually advanced. The previous figures were 3.3% in 1990 and 3.4% in 2000 (Statistics Mauritius). The French language lobbyists often rely for their argument on the idea that ‘Mauritian Kreol is derived from French’, and thus Kreol, if any use at all, is a handy ‘stepping stone to French’. This means that it is a stick with which they can hit the English Hydra in the short run, and meanwhile, they continue to ‘assimilate’ Kreol into French in the short, medium and long run. So here there is the curious situation of the mother tongues, the languages spoken by more than 9 out of 10 people, being dominated by twin colonial languages, English and French. The intelligentsia assumes, or pretends to assume, that the mother tongues can only advance at the expense of the high-status languages. The huge body of research indicating that mother-tongue-based education is best for high-level multilingualism is ignored, pooh-poohed or marginalised. Up until very recently, the urban élite, the sugar oligarchy and the Catholic church it financed were the staunch defenders of French, while the

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Indo-Mauritian bourgeoisie rising out of the class of small cane-planters used English for formal communication as a way of feeling equal to the francophone élites. The two languages of the upper classes were thus often in thinly masked, though constant, conflict over the share of nominations into the social hierarchy and the award of contracts and tenders for capital-owners. More recently, there have been two significant shifts. Now, all sections of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie have become more francophone, and often Francophile, thus allowing the increase in those claiming to speak mainly French from 3.3% in 1990 to 4.1% in 2011 (Statistics Mauritius). Meanwhile, in counterpoint, since the 1999 mass riots against police violence, the Catholic church hierarchy is no longer in the anti-Kreol language camp but has, following related internal class rebellions, become a promoter of Kreol.

Flashback: A Brief Outline of the Struggle The struggle for the mother tongues, commencing almost immediately after independence, in particular for Kreol, has continually done four things at the same time and this quite consciously by the participants. Most of the struggles have been contributed to and monitored by our association, Ledikasyon pu Travayer (LPT) (Kreol for Workers’ Education). First, there has been a constant call for a change in policy. The call has especially pinpointed news broadcasts for the introduction of Kreol to replace English as the medium of instruction in schools, for Kreol to be used in the courts of law, for Kreol to be a joint official language with English in Parliament, for Bhojpuri to be allowed therein as French is already and for the Minutes of Registered Associations to be permitted by law to be in the two mother tongues. These calls have been accompanied by petitions, legal actions in the courts, demonstrations, poster campaigns, passive resistance in the case of minutes being kept in Kreol and so on. These actions were possible because political parties created the space for them: in particular, from 1976 to the present, LALIT (which means ‘struggle’ in Kreol and ‘beautiful’ in Hindi), as well as the Les Verts Fraternels over the past 15 years. Without some political clout, all the other means would have been far too precarious to have begun to win the battle. Secondly, there have been ongoing actions in Kreol. Organisations and individuals just went ahead and ignored the English and French joint hegemony: people forged ahead, setting up a whole federation of preschool playgroups using Kreol, nationwide adult literacy groups in Kreol, educational meetings and cooperatives in Kreol, forums by hundreds of associations in Kreol, even a course in Kreol in physiology and pathology by a health cooperative. All public meetings by all political parties are always in Kreol. A nationwide three-week strike movement was run in

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Kreol − written as well as oral − in 1979, this perhaps more than anything else anchoring written Kreol in peoples’ lives. This way the orthography developed mainly by LPT, but also by many other organisations and individuals, became popularised over the whole of the country. Thirdly, there has been massive creation and production of written material in Kreol: books of political content, poetry, plays, short stories, scientific matter, children’s books; pamphlets of every ilk; posters in printed form and hand-painted on subjects as broad as life itself; leaflets addressed to tens of thousands of people; flyers acting as invitations; letters written among organisations; minutes taken by hundreds of organisations; lyrics written by literally hundreds of songwriters and printed on album jackets. Nearly all local posters and even commercial advertisements are in Kreol. People just went ahead and wrote in Kreol. Here, too, LALIT’s contribution has been, and still is, immense. It has regular publications in Kreol, which encourage not just readers but also writers of Kreol. In 1984, LPT published the first Kreol–English dictionary, a 200-page volume. Fourthly, individual academics and researchers like Dev Virahsawmy and Vinesh Hookoomsing, as well as several organisations, have done research, conducted surveys, held conferences and printed and published ideas about the importance of the mother tongue. This has provided the intellectual backbone to the defence of the Kreol language and to the attack on the continued predominance of the colonial languages. This academic work has constantly enriched the ongoing debates and culminated in the production of a Kreol dictionary by the Arnaud Carpooran team. So, the struggle has been a good mixture of ‘political demands and methods’, academic work and ‘go-ahead-and-produce, teach, write, read, sing and act in the mother tongues’ all over the place. From the year 2000, a more ethnic-centred push began, for a brief while adding its sectarian voice to the demand for the Kreol language. This voice, based on communal identity, as opposed to ‘everyone who speaks the language’, was for a while quite loud, but, like all ethno-religious lobbies, it was led by an élite − in this case an élite who are very much in favour of imposing the French language. They are thus satisfied with the introduction of Kreol ‘as a subject’, putting it on a par with the languages of ‘identity’ groups.

The Tribunal as the Peak of the First Phase of the Struggle From around 2004, LPT changed its approach somewhat. For its first 25-30 years, it concentrated on emphasising the poor literacy rates in the country as a result of the language policy, on the class disadvantages of

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having ruling-class languages imposed, on human-rights infringements, on poor examination results, on the emotional harm done to children and on the difficulties people had getting jobs. But then LPT began to put greater emphasis on the harm, in particular the cognitive harm, being done to children as a result of the language policy in schools. The idea came, in fact, from a LALIT political seminar. Over the next five years, LPT planned, and in October 2009 held, an International Hearing into the harm done to children by the suppression of the mother tongue in schools. The hearing was open to the public and was reported on by the press. Attentive to what the witnesses who came forward from the public intended to say, a team of eight ‘prosecutors’, one by one, presented and ‘led evidence’ from them before the panel. The panel was made up of three internationally known mother-tongue promoters, Professors Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Robert Phillipson and Sammy Beban Chumbow; and four Mauritians, linguist Professor Vinesh Hookoomsing, teacher and writer (the late) Vidya Golam, educationist Ms Med Moti and lawyer Jean-Claude Bibi. It was a sign of the perspicacity of the hearing that as well as drawing witnesses from among teachers, parents, writers and psychologists, there were also as many as five ex-cabinet ministers who gave evidence. State institutions also sent representatives − the ombudsperson for children, for example, gave evidence − or written submissions − the Mauritius Examinations Syndicate that prepares and corrects all state education examinations sent its analyses of results. The hearing produced a 140-page book, Kreol & Bhojpuri: Bilingual Handbook on Mother Tongue Rights (Ledikasyon pu Travayer, 2010) and an Executive Summary of the findings, which has been distributed in thousands of copies in both Kreol and English. LPT formally presented the findings to the minister of education. The findings put emphasis on the harm being done to children by the suppression of the mother tongues, and in particular the cognitive harm. The perception, before the hearing, among the élite was that using the mother tongue was dangerous experimentation, misplaced nationalism, ‘outmoded’ class politics and anyway a mere ‘choice’ made towards the gaining of better examination results. It had not been contemplated that the language policy was actually harming our children, and harming all of them, not just those with ‘learning difficulties’ as had been thought before; and harming them not just emotionally and culturally (which is bad enough) but cognitively. The hearing had the effect of summoning all the post-independence struggles for Kreol and giving them the collective thrust that forced the élite to retreat from its position of violent opposition to the Kreol language, especially in written form, and thus to create the space in which the state could react by introducing Kreol and Bhojpuri, at least as subjects, in Mauritian schools.

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Following the hearing, LPT was in fact awarded the prestigious UNESCO Linguapax Prize for its work over time. The prize was then celebrated both by LPT and, surprisingly, by the Mauritius Institute of Education, the official teacher-training body. The press, being Francophile, did not give much coverage to the prize, and the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation, which holds a television monopoly and is governmentcontrolled, did not cover it at all. However, news like this cannot be kept hidden. So, the hearing and the prize continue to have their influence, both on attitudes towards mother-tongue–based multilingual education and on state policy.

Real and Apparent Advances So, in a way, the post-independence struggles for the mother tongues, culminating in the LPT hearing, have met with what look like some remarkable victories. One year after the hearing, in 2010, the National Forum on the Kreol Language was called by the government, and this consultation gained support for the education minister’s proposal to introduce Mauritian Kreol into schools, even if only as an optional subject. The next year, Akademi Kreol Morisien was set up by the government in order to standardise the orthography and to prepare a Kreol grammar for teachers to use. In the same year, the Mauritius Institute of Education, which trains teachers for the government, set up a Kreol unit to train about 100 teachers a year in this subject. The following year, 2012, saw Kreol introduced in the first year of primary school as an optional subject, so that, at the time of writing, three cohorts of students are studying Kreol at school. In 2013, the government set up a Kreol television channel. In 2014, the first batch of court transcribers studied the official orthography for noting down court proceedings from audiotapes, instead of writing down in English what was being said in court in Kreol. The course was organised by two official government organisations − the Institute for Judicial and Legal Studies that organises education for barristers and other legal professionals and the Open University, a mainly distance-learning tertiary institution − together with LPT. At the same time, Bhojpuri was introduced as part of the optional subject of Hindi, which was already on offer. This is less satisfactory, but it nevertheless represents an official recognition of some kind. As well as English and French, other languages referred to as ‘ancestral’ are also taught on an optional basis. These are Hindi, Urdu, Mandarin, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil and Arabic. It would not give a full picture of the situation in schools if we did not here add another piece of information. Although the formal language of instruction in all schools from Year 1 to tertiary is English, French is also taught from Year 1, and a rather stilted and limited

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variant of spoken French is encouraged in teachers in order to ‘explain’ things whenever they become stuck in English. The education minister also announced in 2010 that he would not punish a teacher for ‘resorting’ to oral Kreol in class. However, the law allows inspectors to insist on English from the fourth year of school. In practice, teachers at all levels use Kreol all day long − if only in spoken form.

The Counter-attacks by French: The Danger of the Double English-French Hydras In 2014, a counter-attack was launched by the two Hydras, each one with many renewable heads. Not surprisingly, the subject they chose for counter-attack was the medium of instruction in schools. Our protests were centred against the English medium being used for content subjects instead of the mother tongues: Mauritian Kreol for most children and Bhojpuri in some areas. After the hearing, the state began the move towards introducing Kreol, even if only as a subject. This was not in response to the hearing alone, of course, but because the hearing had galvanised years of pressure. There are, in addition, powerful people in the state apparatus who are in favour of the mother tongue (as medium, even) but who do not usually stick their necks out but could do so with the international hearing to cover them. And the newish ‘sectarian’ movement wanted Kreol as a subject. There has also been the constant UNESCO stand in favour of the mother tongues. So, Kreol and Bhojpuri were able to put a foot in the school door. But, for the moment, there it remains stuck. By 2014, the minister of education had responded on the issue of medium with two measures, both moves towards introducing as medium French, the other Hydra, ailing at international level but robust in Mauritius, as dead a language as English for nearly all pupils. What are the two measures? The crucial (much contested) examination after six years of primary school, the Certificate of Primary Education, up to now in English, was to be offered in English or French for content subjects from 2014. At the same time, the main book in the first year of school, introducing a child to literacy, is now, as from January 2014, ‘bilingual’. In which languages? The two well-nigh dead languages − from the young child’s point of view anyway − English and French. So, the state is attempting to block the mother tongues once again. This time there is relative unity between the two parts of the ruling class, anglophone and francophone, against the mother tongues. This has happened despite all the struggles and despite the unambiguous arguments in favour of mother-tongue-based multilingual education in the hearing’s findings. This has happened despite the Mauritian government paying lip

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service to the academic work on the importance of the mother tongues in education and despite a lot of fawning by ministers and senior civil servants to UNESCO. It is basically a class issue. Two parts of the ruling class, in some conflict over English or French as the foreign language of preference, manage, when faced by a challenge from the languages of the broad masses of the people, to club together against it. This is possible probably because Britain and France, though still rivals, are in the present day united in a single European Union. But the key ‘permitting factor’ remains a kind of cognitive dissonance that persists partly from habit and other unconscious factors, some very painful, and partly from wilful stupidity allowed only to a powerful intelligentsia that is basically not accountable to anyone. Let us explain. Kreol is still today considered an inferior language because, we suppose, we, its speakers, are considered inferior. This ‘thought’ exists in the heads of people like us who are themselves Kreol speakers but, being in higher classes, consider themselves ‘bilingual’, that is, fluent in French and English. So, Kreol is not even considered to be a ‘language’ by their unconscious definition. It is just ‘a something’ that they speak. However, the census question, ‘What language do you usually speak at home?’ put to them invariably in Kreol, is answered 9 out of 10 times as ‘Kreol’. This is the cognitive dissonance. The painful part of it is this: imagine having to face having done harm to your children, or the children you are educating, by your having suppressed their mother tongue in the home or in school. Worse still, imagine having to face the harm done to ourselves, as we grew up, by those we love who suppressed our own mother tongues. Imagine facing up to still suffering the harm now. This is what the entire establishment of teacher education, for example, has to go through on an individual level. Without a big social movement to carry us forward, it is not easy to maintain the gains that we have made against the Hydras over time. So, this is the challenge: to work at what we can − during this downturn in our political struggle − and work at preparing for an upturn. The work on promoting Kreol for mother-tongue-based multilingual education will need to be accompanied by a massive change in pedagogy for second- and third-language teaching; the methods used now, when the languages are used as medium without having been learnt as subjects, are totally inappropriate. Teachers spend years and years undergoing training. The Mauritius Institute of Education does what seems excellent research and training, but it is as though there is always an elephant in the room. Everyone more or less ignores the mother-tongue issue during the years of training and in research. They blithely discuss the dangers of learning off-by-heart, for example, without addressing the issue of the absence of mother tongue as medium.

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Conclusion There is now strong pressure for change from the economy. While the attitudes of the élite still largely reflect times gone by when 60% of the children had to be hurled out of school as ‘failures’, good for nothing (as their mothers put it) but cutting the boss’s cane or doing repetitive tasks in his textile mill, in fact the economy now demands a highly literate workforce. Low levels of literacy are constantly deplored by teachers − even at university level (Leelachand, 2014). The bosses in the information technology sector have repeatedly complained that they do not find creative minds to recruit locally (Sauzier, 2015). Anyway, the battle is far from won. The structural economic crisis that Mauritius has nose-dived into at the close of protected European markets for sugar and textiles is only just beginning. Unemployment is much higher than the official statistics proclaim. Mauritius is polarised in class terms, fragile in terms of food and energy security and integrated into an unstable world economy. The main economic sectors are all heading for crises for different cogent reasons: tourism, sugar cane, textiles, banking and information and communication technology are all threatened by external factors. The people at the national helm, meanwhile, judge the economy as if it were something without social roots or social effects. All this serves to say that Mauritian society can expect to be in upheaval, and it is in this context that the struggle for the mother tongue continues. Meanwhile, at the very last minute − as if to highlight the contradictory pressures − the school examination, due to be set for the first time in both English and French in 2014, was finally set only in English, as usual. This vacillation is just one tiny sign of the unstable times we live in. Yet it is in such unstable times that there are opportunities for change. The aim is not to slay the English or French Hydras, but to stop them stifling the mother tongues. Our mother tongues are our natural means of thinking. When developed to a high level, they enhance the very creativity that humanity now needs so desperately in order to survive multiple crises − whether economic, political, social, military or environmental − that mother Earth is facing. And, as all research shows, high-level literacy in the mother tongue is easily transferred to other languages, including languages that are advantageous for international communication. If the 21st century is not to be an ‘end game’ for the whole of human civilisation, we will need all the collective worldwide creativity that we can muster, not only to solve the geopolitical and environmental problems created by our economies but also to strategise in new ways to make decision-taking more democratic, more rational and in the interests of peace and equality for all. And what better way to nurture this creativity than through nurturing all our mother tongues.

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Note (1)

LPT won the UNESCO World Literacy Prize in 2004 and the UNESCO Linguapax Prize for 2013.

References Government of Mauritius (1996) Mauritius Laws. Constitution, Mauritius: Government Printing. Government of Mauritius (2015) Board of Investment homepage. See http://www. investmauritius.com/why-mauritius.aspx. Ledikasyon pu Travayer (2010) Kreol & Bhojpuri: Bilingual Handbook on Mother Tongue Rights (the executive findings of the International Hearing into the Harm Done to Children by the Suppression of the Mother Tongue in Schools). See http://www. lalitmauritius.org/resources/documents/227-Kreol-Bhojpuri.pdf. Leelachand, P. (2014) Literacy in Mauritius: How essential is our mother tongue? Interview with Dev Virahsawmy. See http://www.defimedia.info/news-sunday/ nos-news/item/59508-literacy-in-mauritius-how-essential-is-our-mother-tongue. html. Sauzier, H. (2015) The next wave of our ICT transformation. Business Magazine 1174. See http://www.businessmag.mu/article/next-wave-our-ict-transformation. Statistics Mauritius (1990, 2011, 2012) Housing and Population Census 2011. Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, Mauritius. For all census data see http:// statsmauritius.govmu.org /English/CensusandSurveys/Pages/Housing-andPopulation.aspx. Venchard, L.E. and Angelo, A.H. (eds) (1988) Education Regulations 1957, Schedule Act 39/57. Available in: Subsidiary Legislation of Mauritius. Mauritius: Government Printing.

15 ‘Hydra Languages’ and Exclusion versus Local Languages1 and Community Participation in three African Countries Kathleen Heugh, Blasius Agha-ah Chiatoh and Godfrey Sentumbwe

Introduction The linguistic ecology of Africa features at least 2,000 languages hierarchically arranged in precolonial, colonial and postcolonial layers of linguistic dominance. Whereas much postcolonial literature dwells on the Hydra-like destructive qualities of colonial languages, particularly English, the discussion here demonstrates that two languages (English and one other) can often work in tandem to effect linguistic exclusion. Since the mid-20th century, considerable resources have been borrowed from international ‘development’ agencies and spent on inappropriate and unworkable education systems. While these may begin with early primary education in one or more African languages, they ultimately progress towards English-, French- or Portuguese-medium education from upper primary onwards. Although local languages (or mother tongues) were used in early primary education in most former British colonies of Africa, the position of English-medium education strengthened subsequent to independence in much of eastern and southern Africa from the 1960s onwards. In several countries, two languages have privileged status − an African language of wider communication and English − and together these languages serve to limit access to education and power for the majority of people living in those countries. In one case, that of Cameroon, two former colonial languages, French and English, have crowded out local languages, and thus their speakers, almost entirely. 171

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This chapter offers a brief discussion of the effect of language education policy in three countries in which English has gained prominence through different colonial histories and in which policies of exclusion play out through ‘twin Hydras’. English together with French in Cameroon (West Africa), Kiswahili in Uganda (East Africa) and Amharic in Ethiopia (the Horn of Africa) serve to marginalise those children who are located in especially vulnerable contexts. Much of the conventional literature offers a lament of the failure of the post-independence systems to retain students through primary and secondary education and of the failure to offer students viable opportunities to escape poverty. Former colonial languages have little practical or immediate use for communities that live in rural or remote settings, and they serve as gatekeepers, excluding many or most people from access to full participation in matters of citizenship, education and the formal economy. Where one dominant African language, for example Kiswahili (Tanzania, Kenya or Uganda), Amharic (Ethiopia) or Chichewa (Malawi), has been adopted for use in primary schools, it has also served to marginalise less powerful communities that use local languages rather than those with wider reach. Thus, in several countries, marginalisation occurs twice: first, through a more powerful African language and secondly, through a former colonial language. Alternatively, marginalisation occurs through two European languages simultaneously, as in Cameroon. UNESCO’s Education for All campaigns, which began in the 1990s, have obliged governments to reconsider language education policy. Although governments have agreed in principle to make greater use of local languages in education, with the exception of Ethiopia, they have been slow to implement these changes. Alternatively, they have not been able, or they have not wished, to sustain a commitment to local languages, and they are repeatedly mesmerised by English, Portuguese and/or French. It was African scholarship (e.g. Bamgbose, 1987; Chumbow, 1987) that led to the conceptualisation of language planning initiatives from within civil society and a critique of the canonical or top-down model of language planning. We illustrate this in each of the three small case studies in this chapter. First, we begin with an emphasis on the effect of English-medium education in each setting, and then we turn towards the particular manifestations of language planning ‘from below’ in Cameroon, Uganda and Ethiopia where local languages are used purposively in the interests of equity in non-formal (adult) and formal primary-school education. The result has been a noticeable increase of community agency and participation in education, improved student retention, the growth of micro-economic enterprise and a recognition of the role of local languages in the claiming and exercise of citizenship. We note that English (and/or French) is not discarded in this process. Rather, the local languages have gained precedence and status, and their functional value has become recognised and valued as

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indispensable in the process of building communities, building sustainable models of education and facilitating ‘voice’ in the three examples that we have chosen.

Cameroon A history of language education policy in Cameroon Cameroon, with 279 languages, is linguistically complex. Despite this degree of diversity, two ‘foreign’ language Hydras have dominated language policy since colonial times. Before the German annexation of Cameroon in 1884, British policy permitted Cameroonian languages in education. During annexation rule, these languages were encouraged in religious circles but not in education. But the defeat of Germany in World War I and the partitioning of the territory between Britain and France at the Versailles Treaty in 1919 brought about policy change. British Cameroon was administered from Lagos as part of Nigeria under the Indirect Rule System that tolerated but did not encourage the use of Cameroonian languages in education. French Cameroon was administered from Paris as part of France within the framework of the policy of Assimilation that completely disallowed local language use in the public sphere. While, with Indirect Rule, Africans were not considered fit enough to acquire British citizenship, with Assimilation, Africans had the right to second-class French citizenship (les Français d’outre mer). Although different in formulation, the British and French policies fundamentally shared the same objective. This was, through the use of English and French, to colonise the minds of citizens. At independence in 1961, French Cameroon adopted French as its official language and when, in the 1961 plebiscite, Southern Cameroon voted for reunification with French Cameroon, an official English-French bilingual policy came into existence. Since then ‘bilingualism’ in the country has been widely perceived as proficiency in English and French with no consideration of Cameroonian languages. With the arrival of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL, now SIL-Cameroon) in 1969, interest in national languages resurfaced. Driven by evangelism and a mission to provide access to scriptures in local languages, SIL began to standardise and promote adult literacy in mother tongues. Within a decade, local voices joined a campaign against exclusive foreignlanguage policies in education with the establishment of the Operational Research Programme for Language Education in Cameroon (PROPELCA) at the University of Yaoundé in 1978. PROPELCA proposed the integration of local languages into education within a mother-tongue–based bilingual framework. According to the model, mother tongues (local languages also known as national languages of Cameroon) would serve as mediums of instruction for the first three years of primary education with a gradual

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transition into the first official language (English for anglophones and French for francophones). PROPELCA went operational in 1981, beginning with two languages (Ewondo and Lamnso). Thirty-nine languages have now been successfully developed and used in the programme. Although PROPELCA practices early-exit transition from mother tongue to English or French medium, this has been shown to have had more successful educational outcomes than the English-French bilingual system. In 1995 the General Forum on Education endorsed the PROPELCA findings and recommended the programme in primary schools. Regrettably, the government has been reluctant to implement this recommendation in formal education, and children continue to learn in exclusively monolingual English or French classrooms. In 2000, the government introduced the second official language as a subject, that is, French for anglophones and English for francophones. This, and decreasing funds for PROPELCA, diminishes the prospects for expanding its programme.

Negative effects of colonial policy The implementation of an official language policy in two ‘foreign’ languages has had multi-layered negative consequences. Educational access and inclusion remain extremely limited as children are compelled to learn in languages they neither speak nor understand. Young people and adults literate in Cameroonian languages continue to be excluded from decisionmaking processes and opportunity because educational institutions do not value learning in these languages. The privileging of English and French has generated widespread corruption, a lack of creativity, external dependency, self-devaluation and a lack of self-confidence among many in the society (Tadadjeu, 2004). The overvaluing of the official languages has had the effect of stigmatising Cameroonian cultures, languages and expertise as ‘primitive’ knowledge systems and values. As such, they are positioned as not requiring preservation in a ‘civilised’ or ‘modern’ world of English and French. In urban settings, young people can grow up not speaking an indigenous language and may even consider speaking such languages as ‘causing rain to fall’ (Chia, 2006: 120). English-French bilingualism has also provided the platform for community disenfranchisement, with Cameroonian languages serving as the basis of sociopolitical fragmentation and marginalisation facilitated by the politics of divide-and-rule. As a result, the processes of democratisation and citizenship participation are today cultivated strictly on the exogenous values represented by English and French (Chiatoh, 2011). Official bilingualism has also deepened a growing anglophone-francophone divide. Despite the constitutional equality of English and French, the former is systematically subjugated in the public sphere. After a failure to francophonise the country (1961-90), Cameroon is today gradually being

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transformed into a bilingual country with an increasingly francophone identity. The English-French bilingual policy has also widened socio-economic gaps. Formal employment and economic opportunities are only available in official languages. Those without a high level of proficiency in either or both of these languages are thus marginalised from mainstream economic activity.

Language planning from below When PROPELCA lost its university support in 1993, it was succeeded by the National Association of Cameroonian Language Committees (NACALCO). Although NACALCO’s mission was to empower local communities through the promotion of adult literacy in mother tongues, it soon became evident that such empowerment would not be complete in the absence of formal education. Since then, NACALCO has prioritised the complementarity between non-formal and formal learning. But the government’s reluctance to engage in the promotion of Cameroonian languages has persisted, and public authorities continue to evade mothertongue–based education in state primary schools. Meanwhile, non-state agencies have contented themselves with experimental programmes. Language committees, NACALCO, the Cameroon Association of Bible Translation and Literacy (CABTAL) and churches have continued to promote mother-tongue adult literacy classes. Through their advocacy, policy has significantly evolved in recent years. The Constitution now provides for the promotion of Cameroonian languages while other legislation recognises the value of these languages in both formal and non-formal learning. However, in practice, Cameroonian languages are continually undervalued as neither the government nor the general public seems to understand the benefits of learning in these languages.

Risks and opportunities In a poverty-stricken country like Cameroon, grassroots-based language planning becomes extremely challenging. Sustainability is hard to achieve because local agencies, especially language committees, lack financial viability, and consequently they cannot ensure continuity in the long term. At the policy application level, the élites are determined to maintain the status quo. Cameroonian languages are positioned as ‘primitive’ and not worthy of learning in an era of globalisation. Despite policy evolution, the importance of mother tongues in enhancing educational access, sociopolitical and economic justice and empowerment goes unrecognised by élites. Instead, English-French bilingualism is highly valued as a source of official pride (Chiatoh, 2012).

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However, opportunities also exist. The 1996 Constitution and other legislation such as the 1998 law on the orientation of education, the 2004 law creating pedagogic inspectorates for mother tongues and the 2004 decentralisation laws empowering regions and councils to promote mothertongue literacy all provide unique opportunities for the country. Within the university system, too, there is a growing interest in Cameroonian languages. The University of Yaoundé, through its Higher Teacher Training College, operates a Department of National Languages and Cultures with the mission to train teachers of Cameroonian languages and cultures in secondary schools, while the University of Buea is finalising preparations for the start of a mother-tongue component of its undergraduate degree programme by 2016. In conclusion, however, it needs to be noted that the development, resourcing and implementation of Cameroonian languages in governmentprovided school education is progressing rather timidly. Despite the promising work of PROPELCA and NACALCO, the government has not taken up the opportunity to implement Cameroonian languages as mediums of learning in primary schooling. Rather, most administrative and public focus is on the contest between the twin exogenous Hydras, English and French, to the detriment of the young generation of Cameroonian children.

Uganda A history of language education policy and the role of English Uganda has over 60 indigenous languages. Of these, Luganda, Luo, Runyakitara, Ateso/Akarimajong and Lugbarati have the largest number of speakers, and they serve as ‘area languages’ (known elsewhere as regional languages of wider communication). However, English and Kiswahili, which have few if any indigenous speakers, are the official languages of the country. Since British colonisation in 1894, language-in-education policies have continued to vacillate over the role of English, Kiswahili (a language promoted as a cross-border and regional language of wider communication in East Africa) and Ugandan languages. However the relentless overvaluing of English and the negation of Ugandan languages is evident in each of the country’s colonial and post-independence language-in-education policies. Missionaries introduced formal education in the 1890s, and locallanguage medium was used in the early grades. However, this was mainly for missionary interests in proselytising, as evidenced in the scant attention paid to, and the systematic undervaluing of, African culture in the curriculum. Much as the 1924 Phelps-Stokes Commission on Education in Africa drew attention to the injustice of depriving children of their languages in education, the commission nevertheless elevated English as the medium of education in upper primary schooling. Kiswahili was introduced

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as a ‘vernacular’ language of teaching in Uganda in 1927 alongside a select number of area and smaller local languages, but this confined the Africanlanguage medium to lower primary education grades, setting a precedent that continues to the present. The colonial education policy in East Africa from 1935 to 1945 sought more assistant administrators who could use English, and the teaching of Kiswahili was subsequently discouraged on the assumption that it might interfere with the development of English proficiency. This position was upheld as a joint policy decision of the Directors of Education of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania in 1947, and Kiswahili was scrapped as a language for teaching in 1952. Instead, the teaching of English was introduced even earlier, as a subject from the second grade. From independence in 1962 up until 2006, local-language medium was used more haphazardly as the government overtly promoted English. The 1967 primary curriculum opted for English as a subject from the first grade of primary school and area languages as mediums from first to fourth grade, but this remained a policy without an implementation plan. Insufficient teacher development, the allocation of the least qualified teachers to lower primary classes and the more qualified into Englishmedium upper classes and the disregard for local languages as examinable subjects enhanced the superiority of English over local languages in the minds of teachers, parents and learners. High-stakes testing in English became the established measure of achievement on the education ladder. This produced a pyramid-like education structure with a broad primary base and a very narrow top at post-primary. By the 1970s, nearly all primary schools had adopted English-medium instruction from the first grade, and local languages were dropped as subjects. Teacher training colleges that had been established according to area languages ceased to offer training in the local languages and thus teachers qualified without knowing how to teach through them. Just one decade after independence, therefore, Ugandan languages had been devalued further than they had been during the colonial period. Subsequent to the ministers of Africa agreeing to uphold UNESCO’s Education for All frameworks from 1990 onwards, the deficiencies of a subject-based, English-medium curriculum compelled Uganda to restore local-languages-as-medium in the early primary grades, although this was delayed until the National Thematic Curriculum was released in 2007. This curriculum is designed for local-language medium for the first three grades of primary school. This is an early-exit, transitional model that prepares the ground for the introduction of English-medium in the fourth grade. There is a growing body of literature in Africa that demonstrates that three years of mother-tongue–medium education is not sufficient to ensure successful language development in both the local language and English (e.g. Heugh et al., 2012). The UWEZO-Uganda Report (2012) shows that

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only 10% of children in the third grade are able to read and understand a local story written for second-grade students. To the powerful, pro-Englishmedium advocates, the problem is erroneously attributed to the use of locallanguage-medium education rather than to the lack of teacher development and a lack of reading and learning materials in local languages.

Language planning from below Building on its experience and countrywide reputation for implementing adult basic education projects since 1995, the Ugandan nongovernmental organisation Literacy and Adult Basic Education (LABE) started a new mother-tongue education (MTE) project in 2009 to support the national education authorities in implementing the National Thematic Curriculum. Despite the shortcomings of the early-exit transitional model, LABE intervened in six remote, post-conflict districts in Uganda for several reasons. First, at the time, fierce opposition to the use of mother tongues/local languages in education came from teachers, parents and various authorities at district and national levels. Secondly, education policymakers understood the adoption of an early-exit model as a significant concession at a time when local languages continued to be regarded with disdain. Thirdly, LABE took its cue from a Luganda proverb: ‘Nyama ntono, okayana eri mu nkwaawa,’ literally translated; ‘First tuck away the small piece of meat you get before haggling for a bigger chunk.’ LABE realised that it would be important to demonstrate some positive elements of local language instruction before contesting the early-exit model. Finally, LABE was able to draw on its earlier expertise in developing a ‘Freirean’ problem-posing, consciousness-raising and transformative approach to adult literacy. This approach, which facilitates learners’ voices and abilities to construct their own meaning of the world, even in marginalised communities, has been extended in the MTE project. MTE activities are designed to strengthen community, local and national government partnerships in language education planning while building capacity, raising consciousness and advocating for MTE in these remote Northern Ugandan districts. The aim has been to transform education stakeholders from foes to allies in MTE through several strategies at micro-community, district and national levels. Documents such as UNESCO’s MTE policy document (Ouane & Glanz, 2010), developed to promote African languages, have been used to develop easy-to-read advocacy sheets in five local languages. For community participants, these have helped to achieve four important objectives: to dispel the myths associated with MTE, to disseminate informative messages every 21 February (International Mother Language Day), to provide adult literacy reading materials and to bring the rarely accessible conference declarations (relevant across Africa) closer to people

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on the ground. Clarifications of concepts like learning of the local language and learning in the local language are made in adult literacy sessions, to enable parents to become better informed about the new curriculum. Multiple stakeholders, including teachers, teacher-tutors and area language board members have been enlisted to build school-level commitment to MTE. These stakeholders have developed local language orthographies, picture-story books, fiction books and non-fiction books used in primary schools and adult literacy centres as a way of giving them more visibility and ownership in the development of their languages. Children in the first three grades are being supported to create stories in their own languages. LABE, through external donor funding, has been able to publish a limited number of these in children’s magazines. This is to encourage children’s reading and writing for pleasure at school and at home and to instil a love of their languages from an early age. The national government has taken on board LABE’s MTE collaborative and capacity-building mechanisms for school change, not only in remote and difficult post-conflict settings in the northwestern districts of Uganda but across the country. This is in evidence in the jointly produced LABE and National Curriculum Development Centre’s Pedagogy Handbook for Teaching in Local Language for future use in teacher education countrywide. The first four-year phase of MTE in five northwestern districts has led to the collaborative establishment of village-based learning centres. In many cases, communities have swiftly transformed these to include early childcare, after-school learning support, adult education and village saving schemes. The results show increased retention of early primaryschool children, especially of girls; improved educational achievement of students; development of orthographies and reading materials in four local languages; and teacher education approaches that have been developed in local contexts extended to the national level.

Risks and opportunities Despite positive interventions such as the LABE MTE project discussed above, the Hydra-like position of English remains largely unchallenged in many parts of the Ugandan education system. One of the reasons for this is the limited funding available for the adequate resourcing of local languages in the school system. A second reason is the national government’s policy of decentralisation, with the establishment of district and local government in order to satisfy regional and ethnic demands for political power. On the one hand, the districts value language as a means of expressing identity, and this has provided an opportunity for initiating area or local language boards responsible for developing languages for education. On the other hand, this has encouraged the fragmentation of larger-area languages into smaller district- or local-based varieties. One example is Southern Luo, the

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language of the Acholi, Alur and Lango people. Speakers of the different varieties of Southern Luo share between 84% and 90% of their vocabulary. However, government articulation of policy and the kind of orthographic development offered by the SIL have jointly encouraged speakers of each variety to focus on their differences rather than their similarities. This has led to a splintering of larger languages, and this complicates the economies of scale in literature production and makes preparing teachers to teach these languages more difficult. Such complications tend to amplify the arguments against the use of local languages towards those that enhance the status of English. This, in turn, feeds the Hydra-like nature of English in the Ugandan setting. Long-term disinvestment in local languages has resulted in a dearth of well-trained teachers in these languages. Ill-prepared teachers, coupled with system-wide factors like inadequate monitoring of schools and a high population growth rate (at 3.3%), have contributed to high failure rates in primary-school leaving examinations countrywide. Local language instruction is blamed rather than the under-resourced conditions for its implementation and the early transition to English. There is therefore a grave risk of a policy reversal as a result of an élite pro-English lobby mobilising public opinion against local-language-medium education. Finally, by confining local-language-medium to lower primary levels, and by not extending this to at least six years of primary education, the opportunities for students to specialise in these languages in higher education are limited. A consequence of this is that future writers who could play a crucial role in developing and enhancing the status of local languages are unlikely to be nurtured.

Ethiopia A history of language education policy and practice The history of Ethiopia is unusual in that it is the only African country that was never formally colonised. It has a very long tradition of literacy in the Ethiopic script, Ge’ez, dating back to the second century BCE. For the last century or more, Amharic, the contemporary descendant of Ge’ez, and the first language of 27% of the population (Benson et al., 2012: 32), has dominated political, economic and educational functions in a country of approximately 87 languages. English, however, came to receive privileged status subsequent to the British involvement in the removal of an Italian military occupation of the country between 1935 and 1941. Education prior to the end of World War II was offered in Amharic and only in a few schools. Despite post-World War II reforms in education, which introduced English-medium in secondary and post-secondary schools, proportionately fewer Ethiopian children attended school than in any other African

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country. Until 1990, one of the reasons for this was political opposition to the imposition of Amharic as the medium of instruction, particularly among speakers of Afaan Oromo who constitute 34.5% of the population (Benson et al., 2012: 32). Linguistic antagonism, therefore, has largely been directed towards Amharic, and this has positioned English as a politically ‘neutral’ language of aspiration that promises access to the international world and capital. As elsewhere in Africa, the 1990s ushered in educational reform. In the Ethiopian case, this accompanied a shift away from an oppressive political regime and a new transitional government in 1991. A new education policy in 1994 was ideologically designed to limit the emphasis on Amharic, and it requires the use of regional and/or local languages as mediums of instruction for the duration of primary school across the country. It also privileges the teaching of English as a subject from the first grade in each region and the teaching of Amharic as the national working language from the third grade where students speak different regional or local languages. In other words, for political reasons, there is a multilingual education policy at the federal level. At the regional level, this is either a bilingual policy (Amharic and English) intended for the 27% of speakers of Amharic, or a trilingual policy for all other students. In practice, this does not work as planned in each region, and it is notable that only 0.3% of people are speakers of English in the country (Heugh et al., 2012).

Language planning from below At first sight, this new policy offers a democratisation of education policy, and its greatest success has been found in those areas where the largest linguistic groups reside: the Oromo Region where Afaan Oromo is dominant, in the Amhara Region and in the Tigray and Somali Regions, where these languages have been developed as mediums of instruction for up to eight years of primary schooling. Much to the surprise of many, the successful development and implementation of smaller regional and district level languages has also occurred in the Harar Region and in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR), the home of the majority of smaller linguistic communities. By 2012, the development of orthographies and educational materials for primary school had been undertaken in approximately 23 of the 87 languages in the country, and mostly in SNNPR. Development of another 13 languages for use in education was already underway (Benson et al., 2012: 51).This southernmost region is far from the infrastructural resources of the federal capital, Addis Ababa, and since this is the most linguistically diverse of the regions, responsibility for education has devolved through several levels: first to the region, then to zones, then to Woreda (district) level and even further to Kebele (village) level. Although resources are few, decentralisation here has had the effect

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of enabling communities to take responsibility and to become involved in educational decisions that include the building of classrooms, fashioning desks and seats from local timber, and participating in local language development activities. These, in turn, have led to the emergence of small language industries, including translation and local printing businesses. They have also led to innovative pedagogies in classrooms where principals and teachers have developed their own context-based approaches to bilingual and trilingual teaching. By contrast, schools closer to Addis Ababa and the infrastructural support of the federal and regional educational authorities are characterised by low levels of community participation. School achievement in schools in Addis Ababa, in fact, does not match that found in the more remote and linguistically diverse SNNPR.

Risks and opportunities for the future The extraordinary progress in various parts of Ethiopia, and the speed at which a multilingual education system has been established in a particularly poor country, is unparalleled. However, this success is at risk of being undermined and reversed by another trajectory. In 2004, 10 years after multilingual education was introduced, development specialists from the United Kingdom began to offer contrary advice to the federal Ministry of Education. In essence, this advice has been to push for a greater emphasis on and the earlier use of English-medium education. This is despite the considerable body of research evidence that was available to educational linguists at the time that demonstrated the educational disadvantages of such a move in Africa and elsewhere (e.g. Ouane & Glanz, 2010; Heugh et al., 2012). An additional point of pressure has come from UK-based publishers of textbooks in English. The Ethiopian authorities had steadfastly refused to permit foreign-owned publishers access to education markets inside the country; however, their presence was becoming increasingly evident in the advertising of their materials on posters displayed in the regional educational bureaus by 2006. The advantage of Ethiopian published and printed textbooks is that these have been inexpensive and thus made available to students across the country. In other African countries, the cost of UK-published textbook materials makes these less affordable, and they serve to limit access to reading. The push for an earlier introduction of English-medium has had a negative washback effect into the primary school system, and this is evident in a decline in student achievement in the system-wide assessment of students at the end of primary school (eighth grade). In a country in which fewer than 1% of people use English in their homes and everyday lives, Hussein (2010) draws powerful attention to how the supremacy of English as Hydra in schools and universities effectively undermines and destroys the confidence of students whose home language is any of the local languages of the country.

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Conclusion It needs to be emphasised that, in each of the three countries discussed here, English functions as a language of administrative, legislative and economic power at the highest levels in the capital cities and, albeit to a significantly lesser extent, in the other major centres. The relatively high status of Kiswahili in Uganda and Amharic in Ethiopia does play a significant role in diminishing the status of local languages; however, it is English (and French in Cameroon) that ultimately dominate. Those who have acquired access to English and power are reluctant to diminish the symbolic and material capital associated with English and are resistant to democratised language practices in local languages. For most people in rural and remote villages, however, English is essentially a language that has little functional use. Education systems that draw children swiftly towards English medium, either from the beginning of primary or halfway through primary school, are unlikely to offer, and have not offered, access to secondary school for most children on the continent. While government authorities in Cameroon and Uganda have been reluctant or unable to implement their own policies and sustain an adequate use of local languages in education systems, we recognise that community-based initiatives have been able to do what government does not. We also see that local language education offers opportunities for community participation, agency and small-scale industry. There is a risk, however, that externally supported orthographic development by agents that encourage fragmentation of local languages may be counter-productive and may serve to support those who seek to advance English (and/or French) and their Hydra-like qualities. In the case of Ethiopia, although the government successfully implemented multilingual education across its decentralised system, the English Hydra has taken another form. It has come in through consultants and publishers who are anxious to offer costly English second-language pedagogies, textbooks and other materials that have been produced in the United Kingdom.

Note (1)

The terms used to identify languages (e.g. local language, mother tongue, regional language, area language, national language) are used in different ways in each of the three countries discussed here. The term local language is used wherever possible across the three case studies in order to ensure equivalence of meaning across all three. The context-specific term is used where local language is not appropriate. Roughly, ‘local language’ is equivalent to the concept of ‘mother tongue’, and it can be used in association with any indigenous African language. ‘Regional languages’ are usually used in the context of languages of regional, provincial or ‘area’ languages of wider communication, except in Ethiopia where a regional language can also mean a language used in a small community. In Cameroon, the term ‘national language’ is used for any of the Cameroonian languages, whether

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spoken by small or larger communities. In other words, a national language in Cameroon is roughly equivalent to a regional language of Ethiopia and could refer to either a local or area language of Uganda.

References Bamgbose, A. (1987) When is language planning not planning? The Journal of West African Languages 7 (1), 6−14. Benson, C., Heugh, K., Bogale, B. and Gebre Yohannes, A.M. (2012) Multilingual Education in Ethiopian Primary Schools. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas and K. Heugh (eds) Multilingual Education and Sustainable Development Work: From Periphery to Centre. New York and London: Routledge. Chia, E.N. (2006) Rescuing endangered languages for national development. In E. Chia (ed.) African Linguistics and the Development of African Communities. Dakar: CODESRIA. Chiatoh, B.A. (2011) Medium of instruction and the challenge of early childhood learning in Cameroon. Cameroon Journal of Studies in the Commonwealth (CJSC) 1 (1), 1−28. Chiatoh, B.A. (2012) Official bilingualism and the construction of a Cameroonian national identity. In G. Echu and A.E. Ebongue (eds) Fifty Years of Official Language Bilingualism in Cameroon (1961−2011): Situation, Stakes and Perspectives. Paris: L’Harmattan. Chumbow, B.S. (1987) Towards a language planning model for Africa. The Journal of West African Languages 7 (1), 15−22. Heugh, K., Benson, C., Gebre Yohannes, M.A. and Bogale, B. (2012) Implications for multilingual education: Student achievement in different models of education in Ethiopia. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas and K. Heugh (eds) Multilingual Education and Sustainable Development Work: From Periphery to Centre. New York and London: Routledge. Hussein, J.W. (2010) English supremacy in Ethiopia − autoethnographic reflections. In K. Heugh and T. Skutnabb-Kangas (eds) Multilingual Education Works. From Periphery to Centre. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. Ouane, A. and Glanz, C. (2010) Why and How Africa Should Invest in African Languages and Multilingual Education. An Evidence- and Practice-based Policy Advocacy Brief. Hamburg: UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. Tadadjeu, M. (2004) Language, Literacy and Education in African Development: A Perspective from Cameroon. Washington, DC: SIL International. UWEZO-Uganda (2012) Are our children learning? Annual Learning Assessment Report, Twaweza, Kampala-Uganda. See http://twaweza.org/uploads/files/ UwezoUganda2012ALA.pdf.

16 The Destruction of Nadia’s Dream: The English Language Tyrant in Pakistan’s Education System Zubeida Mustafa

Nadia (aged 14) is a typical victim of the tyranny of the English-language Hydra in Pakistan. Coming from an underprivileged socio-economic background,1 this girl is required to master an alien language if she wants to realise her dreams. Thanks to the easy accessibility of electronic media and a concerted movement for reform by concerned members of civil society, public interest in education has been stirred, and expectations are high. There are millions of teenagers like Nadia who want to acquire a good education to uplift their socio-economic status. But many are headed for disappointment. The facilities needed to educate such large numbers have not been created in Pakistan by the state, notwithstanding the growing demand. Worse still, the curricula and textbooks have not been designed to meet the specific needs of these children. Hence, aspirations and motivation will not prove to be enough to help Nadia and others like her to achieve upward mobility. Although there are many hurdles in Nadia’s way, language − especially English − is a major one. Even though the government institutions may not be insisting on English as the language of education, their poor performance disqualifies them as trendsetters. Given the ambiguity in the official education policy, the English-language Hydra has become the driving force. This policy was announced in 2009 by the education ministry in Islamabad, as it was its prerogative to lay down the guidelines for the entire country. The policy defined in detail its vision and strategy, but it was vague about the language to be used as the medium of instruction. It was left to the provinces to decide whether they wanted to use the national or regional language in the public-sector primary schools in their jurisdiction. But it was specified that English would be used to teach science and maths in Years 4 and 5 in these institutions. Private schools were given a free rein. They generally opted for English. In 2010, constitutional amendments

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devolved powers to the provinces. To the detriment of all, the provincial governments chose to be equally vague and adopted an ad hoc approach to language in education. There has been no clarity in the governments’ policies ever since, on account of the policymakers’ ignorance of education and language-learning matters and their misguided belief that English promotes progress. Their failure to adopt a firm approach on the medium issue has allowed market forces, societal pressures, élite private-school owners (some with political clout) and the leverage of foreign aid givers to gain the upper hand.

The Hurdles I interviewed Nadia for a video, and this is how the dialogue went: Q: N: Q: N: Q: N: Q: N: Q: N:

What is your name? Nadia. Do you go to school? Yes. In which grade are you studying? Grade 4. What do you want to be when you grow up? A doctor. What is it you like about a doctor that makes you want to be one? (in Urdu) My mother wanted to be a doctor [midwife] but my father did not allow her to be one. Now I want to fulfil her wish.

This is the pattern the conversation followed throughout the interview. Since all my questions were straightforward and in simple English, she understood them perfectly. Any answer that could be managed in a single word or a simple sentence came in English. But anything a bit complex requiring the expression of an abstract idea was beyond Nadia’s ability to answer in English, and she slipped into her own language. If I had not given her a choice on that count, she would have remained silent − to be dubbed a slow learner. This is something to be expected. In a country where the literacy rate is low (60%), according to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2013-14, imparting education to children, a majority of whose parents have never been to school, is in itself a daunting challenge. They receive little educational input from home. The parents have scant knowledge of educational strategies, and they are only keen to see results, which for them mean material success. In the process, their children are robbed of their confidence, and their education and cognitive development suffer, without the parents as much as realising it. Since they see the children of the wealthy speaking English, they believe that their own sons and daughters will also prosper if they are given education in English.

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Educationists, the education departments, the lawmakers and others who shape public opinion, such as the media, have all failed to understand the significance of the language-in-education policy for the mental development of a child. They simply cannot differentiate between learning in English and learning English. Many of them simply link the English language with progress and a quality education. This fallacy in thinking will relegate many Nadias of Pakistan to the ranks of mediocrity because they cannot articulate so well in English. Will she progress much further? It is doubtful whether she will realise the dreams she had when she embarked on her journey in schooling.

The Privileged Class The destruction of Nadia’s dreams is not the only tragedy that the English language has inflicted on many disadvantaged children. It has also ensured that the class-based society in which she lives will continue to be sustained. The fact of the matter is that there are the privileged ones in Pakistan whose children are bilingual − they are actually more fluent in English than in their ‘mother tongue’ − and their entire schooling takes place in institutions that are, in common parlance, ‘English-medium’. It is unwittingly assumed that if these privileged children can cope well with education in English, so can the others. While theoretically speaking this may be a valid assumption, the ground realities are different. Pakistan, like most other decolonised states, has a split society. There is a small élite class, which constitutes the power-wielders; those who can influence policies and social attitudes. This class was created by the British colonisers in India to act as interpreters between the small class of rulers and the huge majority that was ruled. The subservience of the interpreters suited the masters since it gave them space for manipulation. The bilingual children who learn two languages and learn them well are the privileged of society. They generally come from the affluent class, are well travelled and have highly educated parents fluent in English, and they study in private élite schools that uphold those traditions. They have excellent teachers from the same social background who make them proficient in English. Children like Nadia have none of these advantages. Many of them attend public-sector institutions that are dysfunctional. Others go to low-fee private schools that seek to imitate the language policy of the élite by describing themselves as ‘English-medium’ − written in the local script on their signboards. Generally their teachers are the product of the state education system that has been stagnating for decades. They can hardly speak English − let alone teach English. They teach in their own language to explain the concepts and then ask the students to copy the answers from the textbooks that are in English. The children may or may not fully understand the meaning of the passages

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that they copy. Hence they memorise the text. Thus, a culture of rote learning is created.

Ill-informed Language Policies and the Hydra Why has this colonial legacy become so entrenched in the decolonised countries that are now free to walk out of it? The English language has emerged as the proverbial Hydra from which there is no escape. Behind it are political and economic factors, strong social pressures in an iniquitous society, imperceptibly backed by the might of the English-speaking AngloAmerican establishments and the international structures they control. Many linguists in Pakistan have been arguing the case for the use of mother tongues at the primary level. Dr Tariq Rahman, distinguished National Higher Education Commission professor and professor emeritus, is the most widely known, and his works are acknowledged as highly authoritative (e.g. Rahman, 2004). But no impact of these deliberations has been made on either public opinion or the policymakers. The forces pushing for English have proved to be stronger. The biggest defeat for informed academic opinion and a victory for the Hydra came in 2010-12. In this period, the government of Pakistan enlisted the services of Sir Michael Barber, a British educationist, to advise Islamabad on the most effective education policy for a country that was failing to make much headway in educating its children. Sir Michael was probably intrigued by Pakistan’s failure, and the British Council decided to look into the matter. Hywel Coleman, an internationally recognised language expert from Britain, came onto the scene, and in his report (Coleman, 2010) he very categorically spoke of a ‘dream policy’ that envisaged the home language being used as the medium of instruction in the early years of school, followed by a transition to the national language, plus English being taught as a subject from Grade 6. It was only in Grade 10, which is the last year of a child’s schooling in Pakistan, that English would be introduced as a medium of instruction. This report was circulated in Pakistan’s academic, educational and policymaking circles to elicit feedback. A second round of consultation established without doubt that Coleman’s dream policy had very few takers. Hence he prepared another report, this time in partnership with the British Council’s Englishlanguage adviser, Tony Capstick, in which the dream policy was retracted (Coleman & Capstick, 2012). This time the co-authors recommended a campaign of advocacy and further research on the language issue, data mining and research training. Thus the prevailing confusion was papered over and a way sought to prepare the ground for a rational approach. Meanwhile, the British Council has continued to support Englishlanguage teaching in Pakistan in a concerted way. True, a number of foreign missions in the country, namely French, German, Iranian, Italian and so

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on, promote their own languages as a part of their cultural programmes. But given the controversy surrounding the medium of education issue and the anomalous status of English, the British Council’s role has not been viewed with equanimity in all quarters. I was unable to obtain statistics from the British Council of the burgeoning number of students sitting for A- and O-Level examinations conducted by British examination boards for students in Pakistan. The British Council does not divulge this information, I was told. The school-leaving examinations that are obviously in English have become a big source of revenue for the United Kingdom. At one stage, a programme for improving the English proficiency of teachers was undertaken with the British Council’s cooperation in which trainers were teaching English to teachers in workshops spread over just three weeks! Sir Michael Barber was once again in the news in Pakistan when the Punjab government commissioned him to prepare a roadmap for education in Punjab for 2011-13. His report, titled Good News from Pakistan and written even before the roadmap period had ended (Barber, 2013), described Punjab’s progress in education as ‘unprecedented’. The roadmap focused on school infrastructure and teachers’ performance in terms of training, methodology and attendance. The learning outcomes of students were not evaluated. As could be expected, there was no mention of the language to be used as the medium. A calculated failure to tackle the English-language Hydra in education has led to it penetrating all walks of national life, be it industry, trade or the service sectors; English is made out to be indispensable for success. Even those who may never need to use this language in their working lives are assessed, not by their skills or their quality of workmanship but by their proficiency in English. Enjoying, as it does, the privilege of being the most commonly used international language, English is overly emphasised by its protagonists in their economic, commercial, legal and consular interactions in a globalised world. This sentiment filters down from the international to the national sphere. Let us take the case of a report commissioned by the British Council to assess the benefits of the English language for individuals and societies in five Afro-Asian countries (Euromonitor, 2011). This report found that hiring practices and salary structures in the multinational companies in Pakistan were, to a considerable extent, influenced by the candidates’ knowledge of English. According to its findings, the salary gap between an employee who spoke English and one who could not ranged from 10% to 15%. It also found that 65% of these companies’ salaried employees were English speakers. In a way, this indicates how skewed the employment market is and how English has emerged as a dominant element in the economy of Third World countries − much to the disadvantage of the poor. At times, inaccurate data may be used to promote a point of view. The British Council’s commissioned Euromonitor report (2011: 114) estimates

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that 49% of the total population of Pakistan spoke English to intermediate level in 2009. This would give the impression that English did not create hurdles for most people. But this is so obviously an inaccuracy, as according to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2009-10 (145) only 55% of the population was officially said to be literate at that time, of which only a fraction would have been educated up to the intermediate level to speak a foreign language. Such an approach excludes the majority of the labour force from coveted jobs in multinationals that demand proficiency in English as a precondition for recruitment and justifies this by declaring English to be important for company growth. What we have is, in Euromonitor’s words, ‘a direct correlation between English as a language and economic prosperity’. The ruling class keeps a firm grip on power by using English as the language of government, the language of the courts and the language of legislation. Thus the non-English speakers are kept out of the charmed circle of the power-wielders. The Hydra selectively gobbles up the chances of the underprivileged, leaving an élite class, in league with their international partners, that is entranced by its magical powers and blithely ignores the Hydra’s iniquitous, socially reprehensible behaviour.

A Losing or a Winning Battle? Voices have begun to be raised as an awareness of the Hydra has grown. But the battle against the English-language beast is a tough one, and it has only just begun in Pakistan. There are some noteworthy examples that could set a new trend and become leaders in the movement advocating the use of the home language, at least in the early years of a child’s schooling, but it will be a difficult battle. People have begun to realise that communication can best take place in a language that people understand. Numerous seminars and symposia that are organised to educate public opinion on social issues are now conducted in local languages, and speakers are requested not to use English, as had been the past practice. Another significant blow to the English-language Hydra came in the aftermath of the decision by the government of Punjab (Pakistan’s largest province) to introduce English as the medium of instruction from August 2013 in public-sector schools. It is not clear whether this was Sir Michael’s brainwave or the idea of the provincial government. Within a few months, the teachers rose in protest, saying they could not teach in a language in which they were not proficient. The language decision had to be rescinded. These instances give rise to hope. There are some other examples where the English-language Hydra has been an impediment to educational endeavours, and it has been an uphill battle all the way for those attempting to reform the system. The mixed experience of four such institutions is recorded here.

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Mazmoon-i-Shauq (Theme of Passion) School, Islamabad This school was established in 2000 in the federal capital, where there was no dearth of children from élite families. When Yameema Mitha, an educationist by training, could not find a school that she regarded as being ideal for her children, she set up Mazmoon-i-Shauq to promote a holistic philosophy in which language played a key role. It had to be a local language in which resources would be generated. She chose Urdu because it is the national language; it is widely understood and links people of different provinces, even though it is the mother tongue of barely 7% of the population (Y. Mitha, personal communication, 17 July 2014). She found it fascinating to teach all the subjects in Urdu. The children’s expression, understanding and facility in the subjects were unhindered and free. In her words, ‘It was like a blossoming, like pointing out a destination and watching the children run towards it, instead of pointing out a destination and then holding their hand to help them walk every step of the way’ (Y. Mitha, personal communication, 17 July 2014). While it was functioning under Mitha, the school ran classes from preschool to Grade 5. In the initial year, the medium of instruction was Urdu, with 15% of the teaching time devoted to English. This ratio gradually moved towards a language balance aimed at making the children bilingual. The school’s mission was to build each child’s self-confidence and to reclaim her enthusiasm for learning in a happy environment. It described itself as a ‘movement to reclaim and create our own agenda instead of selling out to alien cultures or being buried under fundamentalist interpretations of our own’ (as stated in the school’s handbook, Mazmoon-i-Shauq, n.d.). While emphasising the importance of English in modern education, the school stated that ‘a sudden introduction to English as THE school language in the Pakistani environment definitely warps a child’s own identity as well as her perception of her environment and the people who occupy it’ (school handbook, Mazmoon-i-Shauq, n.d.). Sadly, Mitha’s experiment ended in failure. Her goals, direction and strategy were spot on, yet the school had to be closed in the summer of 2014. As Mitha explained to me, ‘We did not earn enough in fees. No one took any profit ever. It was because we did not get enough children because we did not have enough resources to publicise the school and its philosophy, to maintain and improve the school syllabus and curriculum and standard, which has to be done constantly. Low enrolment meant we did not generate enough resources to employ and keep teachers of the calibre required.’ She admitted that ‘Finally the bulk of people did not want what we were offering, a progressive interpretation of our culture

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in a bilingual environment which emphasised Urdu. Of course there were some parents who shared the philosophy and were supportive and constructively critical.’ She may well have added that the majority wanted their children to be taught in an English-language environment.

Idara Baraye Taleem-o-Taraqi (Institute for Education and Development), Bahrain, Swat District The Institute for Education and Development (IBT) is a local civil society organisation founded by Zubair Torwali and his friends, located in a Torwali-speaking region of Swat. Torwali is the language of a small minority. IBT adopted a mother-tongue-based multilingual education programme after this pioneering band of youth had developed a script for their language under expert guidance. The IBT proceeded to set up Mhoon School in 2008, with the idea of demonstrating the capacity of a language, however underdeveloped, to be used as a medium of instruction for its native speakers. This school has educated 180 students in the last seven years. The IBT website states its basic philosophy is ‘to link the learner’s home culture with that of the school’ (Institute for Education and Development, n.d.). It warns that ignoring the child’s home culture can ‘create hurdles in the cognitive development of the child’. Most importantly, the IBT recognises that the mother tongue of a child can play an effective role in promoting quality education in other languages and subjects. In the first year, Torwali, the mother tongue of the children, is taught exclusively. In the second year the child is bridged to the second language, Urdu, first orally and aurally and then through literacy. Sometimes, towards the close of the second year, a third language (English) is introduced in the same manner as the second language. Under the language progression plan, the second and third languages gradually come to replace the mother tongue by Grade 8. The founder of the programme, Zubair Torwali, recalled that when the school was launched the public response was enthusiastic, and 60 children were registered for a class of 25. But within three months a high dropout rate caused the class size to shrink to 17. That was mainly because of the parents’ demand for their children to be taught English. They did not appreciate the use of their own mother tongue in school, and they viewed it as a barrier to progress. ‘The traditional schools, especially the so-called English-medium private schools, launched negative propaganda against our programme, saying we were backwardising our children,’ Zubair informed me. That is an argument commonly used by the proponents of the Englishlanguage Hydra to scare parents and discredit the teaching of children through their mother tongues.

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Zubair feels that he and his colleagues have achieved what they had set out to do − namely, to prove that their children could be educated in Torwali. For that, they had to undertake the unique strategy of identitybased community development to strengthen the people’s pride in their culture and language, which they sought to preserve and promote. Advocacy campaigns were launched. Zubair says, ‘We cannot have any significant change in the “language attitude” of the communities which have a legacy of centuries of marginalisation and demonisation triggered by the various language and education policies of the rulers unless and until we connect the work on language development with an integrated development of the communities. Only through a holistic approach can we achieve our ends of securing mother tongues in education; and revitalising the moribund culture(s)’ (email message to author, 28 July 2014). At the time of writing, Zubair is persisting, and it is his devotion to his community that sustains him.

Montessori Teachers Training Centre, Karachi Accredited by the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) in Amsterdam, the Montessori Teachers Training Centre (MTTC), according to AMI’s website, is one of its 67 training centres located round the world (Association Montessori Institute, n.d.). The MTTC runs a nine-month, internationally recognised diploma course for training Montessori directresses. Approximately 70 or so students enrol every year for the course, regulated by the head office, which sends a supervisor to oversee the final examinations. The course is the only one of its kind in Pakistan, though unauthorised institutions have mushroomed, holding their own pseudo-versions of Montessori training courses in the country. The MTTC organises two programmes simultaneously − one in English and the other in Urdu. There is a greater demand for the Englishmedium course, although the performance of the Urdu-medium students is infinitely better, according to the director of the centre. In spite of the low response for the course in Urdu, the MTTC has persevered in organising its dual programmes − mainly with support from its headquarters in Amsterdam − while giving identical treatment to the courses run in the two languages. The same teachers, who are bilingual, conduct both courses, and the books that are used have been translated into Urdu by an academic. Adhering faithfully to Dr Maria Montessori’s philosophy, the MTTC holds the belief that a child learns best in her own mother tongue. Since most people in Pakistan have not mastered English, which is not commonly heard in the environment either, education through the English medium offers minimal advantage to the majority, which can benefit more from a local language. Yet again, social and economic pressures preempt the application of this obvious dictum based on common sense.

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The English-language Hydra emerges again as a major obstacle to mothertongue education. Farida Akbar, who has been the director of the MTTC since 1999 and has 39 years of Montessori training experience behind her, confirms a trend of applicants seeking admission to the English-medium section, even if their proficiency in the language is poor. Some students, who managed to get admission into the English section, switched over to Urdu midyear when so advised. These trainees were found to perform dramatically better in Urdu, but not everyone accepted the transfer advice. Many applicants who were offered admission in Urdu preferred to turn it down altogether, as they insisted on studying only in English, despite having poor knowledge of the language − and this adversely affected their performance. Giving the reason for this misguided choice, Akbar explains, ‘When our graduates from the Urdu section look for a job, they say they do not get one easily as having studied in Urdu becomes a disqualification for them. Even though we do not disclose the language used as a medium on the diploma, the applicants’ speaking skills betray the language in which they have been educated. This is a pity because their English skills do not improve simply by doing the Montessori course in English. Yet the myth persists.’ Akbar suggests to her students that they should study the Montessori course in Urdu first and then follow it up with courses in the English language. ‘No one wants to do that as they are looking for shortcuts,’ she adds. ‘They are afraid of being sidelined’ (from an interview conducted on 31 July 2014).

The Citizens Foundation, Pakistan A nongovernmental organisation formed in 1995 by a group of businessmen with social vision and professionalism, The Citizens Foundation (TCF) has been setting up purpose-built schools all over the country to provide affordable schooling to underprivileged children (The Citizens Foundation, n.d.). In August 2014, TCF was awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for building 1,000 schools in 100 towns, cities and villages in a country with the world’s second highest number of children who are out of school. They were educating some 145,000 children. TCF’s vision as described on its website is to remove the barriers of class and privilege to turn the citizens of Pakistan into agents of positive change. Its mission is to impart quality education to enable moral, spiritual and intellectual enlightenment to provide opportunities to improve the quality of life of the country’s citizens. The values it emphasises are integrity, ownership and continuous improvement.

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TCF has produced some success stories over the years. However, most TCF children who come from low-income families take up low-paid jobs soon after passing their school-leaving examinations without working towards a university degree. Some of their outstanding students, however, have seized the opportunity they were provided by joining prestigious institutions of higher education. TCF has wisely decided not to adopt English as the medium of instruction. English is taught, but as a subject or as a second language. This is generally not advertised. The success of some of its students in gaining admission into the best educational institutions on merit demonstrates convincingly that not studying in an Englishmedium school has not placed them at any disadvantage. The only problem that has been faced by TCF in terms of the language of education has been vis-à-vis the provincial languages. TCF’s decision to use Urdu as the medium in all its schools across the country, where different indigenous languages are spoken in various provinces, has posed challenges of a different sort. Urdu is not the mother tongue of most people, and not all young children understand it at an early age. TCF has responded to social pressures in Sindh and has introduced Sindhi as a language but not as the medium of instruction. This issue will have to be resolved, but resisting the Englishlanguage Hydra has given TCF the confidence to adopt an education policy that is not English-centric. TCF’s success can be attributed to the fact that it targets the poorest of the poor who do not have choices and will accept whatever is offered to them. As most of them are not in a position to aspire for highly paid jobs, and the influence of the English-language Hydra has yet to filter down to the lowest levels, TCF has not felt threatened. It has done well by teaching English as a subject. These are small efforts. There are others, too, working at the grassroots, who have managed to dodge the Hydra. Were they to succeed, they could serve as models. They would show others that by saving our young children from the tyranny of an imposed language, we can save our education system itself. The most important achievement would be that our children will learn to think critically and creatively, which most of them cannot do in the alien language that English is for them. By sustaining these experiments we can help our people reclaim their sociocultural values and encourage greater equity in society. Success in resisting the English-language Hydra will enhance the children’s language skills by allowing mother-tongue-based multilingual programmes to establish themselves.

Note (1)

According to Pakistan’s finance minister (Dawn, 2014), over 60% of the country’s population are living under the poverty line.

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References Association Montessori Internationale (n.d.) List of AMI training centres. See http:// ami-global.org/training/centres (accessed 12 August 2014). Barber, M. (2013) The Good News from Pakistan. London: Reform. The Citizens Foundation (n.d.) Quality education for the less privileged. See http:// www.tcf.org.pk (accessed 12 August 2014). Coleman, H. (2010) Teaching and Learning in Pakistan: The Role of Language in Education. Islamabad: British Council. Coleman, H. and Capstick, T. (2012) Language in Education in Pakistan: Recommendations for Policy and Practice. Islamabad: British Council. Dawn (2014) Dar: Over half of Pakistan lives under poverty line. 3 June. See http://www. dawn.com/news/1110248 (accessed 29 November 2015). Euromonitor International (2011) The Benefits of the English Language for Individuals and Societies: Quantitative Indicators from Cameroon, Nigeria, Rwanda, Bangladesh and Pakistan. London: British Council. Institute for Education and Development (n.d.) Programmes. See http://ibtswat.org (accessed 12 August 2014). Mazmoon-i-Shauq (n.d.) Handbook. Islamabad: Unpublished. Ministry of Finance, Pakistan (2010) Pakistan Economic Survey 2009−10. Government of Pakistan, Islamabad. See http://www.finance.gov.pk/survey_0910.html (accessed 29 November 2015. Ministry of Finance, Pakistan (2014) Pakistan Economic Survey 2013−14. Government of Pakistan, Islamabad. See http://finance.gov.pk/survey_1314.html (accessed 29 November 2015). Rahman, T. (2004) Denizens of Alien Worlds: A Study of Education, Inequality and Polarisation in Pakistan. Karachi: Oxford University Press.

17 The (Illusory) Promise of English in India A. Giridhar Rao

The previous Hydra volume1 and this second one provide a great many examples of the hegemonic spread of English worldwide. What about India? This chapter tries to map the current place of English in the multilingual landscape of India. For this we need to know something about the language hierarchies in this deeply unequal society; the ‘emancipatory promise’ of English as a way to bypass these hierarchies; the state of the education system in the country; and what can be done to move towards an empowering multilingualism that includes English. The country, like many others in the region, is multilingual in complex ways. Jhingran (2009) offers one overview of the number of languages spoken in India, the complex ‘organic multilingualism’ of speech communities and the challenges of labelling some speech variants ‘languages’ and others ‘dialects’. References to more recent discussions can be found on my blog on language and education, Bolii (21 February 2014). Similarly, the number of English-speakers in India has various estimates (Bolii, 22 June 2011): from ‘no more than one per cent’ (a 2009 government report) to ‘almost one in three Indians’ (a 1997 poll by a magazine, both figures cited in Graddol, 2010: 66). Clearly, these numbers do not offer a sufficient basis for judging the spread of English in India. However, what is clear is that English is increasingly perceived as a key factor in social and economic mobility. One indication is the mushrooming of English-medium private schools − even in rural India. Nearly 30% of India’s school children were enrolled in private schools in 2012. With an annual growth rate of 10%, half of the children in rural India are expected to be in private schools by 2018 (ASER, 2013: 47). Private tutoring has also expanded considerably. Increasingly, government schools are providing an English-medium section side by side with nonEnglish-medium sections. However, private and government schools are often only nominally English-medium. The actual teaching happens in the regional language. We will look at the education system more closely in the following section.

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Language, Caste and Exclusion In India (and in the South Asian region, generally), livelihood arguments for English are one part of the story. Another part of the story in these societies emerges from caste-based discrimination − still a daily reality for many. Unsurprisingly, languages, too, are deployed to maintain and reproduce caste inequalities. Institutionally (e.g. through the education and legal systems) and culturally (e.g. through the mass media and film industries), some dialects are valorised as ‘standard languages’ while others are deprecated as mere, even ‘impure’, dialects. Evidence for those rigid hierarchies and discrimination abounds in writings in various genres by Dalits, religious and linguistic minorities and women in many Indian languages over the last several decades. Here are two examples that provide a sense of how language hierarchies function within caste- and genderbased discrimination. In a poem called ‘Steel Nibs are Sprouting ...’, the Telugu poet Sikhamani (2013) recalls becoming aware of caste discrimination: When in literary discussions my two brahmin friends found my language inept − my suspicion came home to stay. And later in the poem, someone asks, ‘Is Sikhamani SC? I mistook him for OC2 − judging by his poetic sensibility.’ And the poet observes, This distinguished person’s thoughtless compliment hardens my suspicion. I cringe at his confidence that only a certain caste can write poetry. Speaking of his ‘steel nib’ as a sword, Sikhamani menacingly concludes in Telugu, ‘It has just changed hands / and no longer recognises you. / No Manu3 to save you now!’ Marathi is another literary tradition with a vibrant body of ‘writing from the margins’. In ‘The story of my “Sanskrit”’ (1992), Kumud Pawde describes her even greater ‘transgression’: ‘That a woman from a caste that is the lowest of the low should learn Sanskrit, and not only that, also teach it – is a dreadful anomaly to a traditional mind’ (1992: 110). As she reports,

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All sorts of indirect efforts were systematically made to prevent me from learning Sanskrit. ‘You won’t be able to manage. There will be no one at home to help you. Sanskrit is very difficult,’ etc., etc. But I was firm as a rock. (1992: 116) At university, she encounters the head of the department, a scholar of all-India repute. He didn’t like my learning Sanskrit, and would make it clear that he didn’t. And he took a malicious delight in doing so. The sharp claws of his taunts left my mind wounded and bleeding. In a way, I had developed a terror of this great pundit. His manner of speaking was honeyed and reasonable, but filled with venom. (1992: 119) Even as she appears for job interviews, the taunts do not stop: In other places, the moment I had been interviewed and stepped out of the room, there would be a burst of derisive laughter. I would hear words like sharp needles: ‘So now even these people are to teach Sanskrit! Government Brahmins, aren’t they?’ And the ones who said this weren’t even Brahmins, but so-called reformers from the lower castes, who considered themselves anti-Brahmin, and talked of the heritage of Jyotiba Phule, and flogged the mass of the lower castes for their narrow caste-consciousness. And yet they found it distasteful that a girl from the Mahar caste, which was one of the lower castes, should teach Sanskrit. (1992: 120−121) This, then, is the other part of the story of English in India: English holds the promise for Dalits and other socially excluded groups to bypass the rigid linguistic hierarchies that exist in the other Indian languages. The emancipatory potential of English must be seen in the context of this anti-Dalit discrimination and the cultural politics of Dalit writing in various Indian languages. African-American writing (in English) was an inspiration for Dalit writing. In a discussion on Dalit literature at one of the colleges set up by Ambedkar, the leader of the Dalits, ‘a couple of scholars said that it should be revolutionary literature, a literature that takes us forward, a literature like that of America’s Black people’ (Mukherjee, 2009). The dramatic declaration of English as ‘the Dalit Goddess’ represents an attempt to create an ‘alternative hegemony’ that can challenge both traditional linguistic hierarchies as well as the élite appropriation of English (see Mukherjee, 2009, for other deluded hopes of English functioning as a language for the masses). As English in India becomes widespread, it is called upon to serve many functions. Among these are the aspirations of the traditionally marginalised − where it is seen as a tool for social advancement and a means

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to equalise opportunities − to re-calibrate historical power equations, as we saw from the examples here of Dalit narratives. In order to serve these needs, English-medium education in India needs to reconfigure its relationships in the language economy of India.

English as a Panacea for India’s Educational Crisis? There are two main reasons to think of this promise of English as illusory. The first is a systemic reason − the state of the education system in India. The second is pedagogic − to do with the need for mothertongue–based multilingual education. India’s ‘crisis in learning’ has been meticulously documented since 2005 by the Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER) − a citizen-led survey of about 700,000 children. These surveys test reading and arithmetic skills in every district of rural India. As the ASER website explains, ‘All children in the age group 5-16 are administered a “floor level” reading test in the language of their choice (the test is available in 16 Indian languages).’ The survey found that in 2014, in rural India, only 48% of enrolled students in the fifth grade were able to read a grade-two text. That means that 52% were not able to do so. Over half of the children are at least three grade levels behind where they should be. Further, this is a declining trend: 54% of students were able to do this task in 2010. Even in India’s best-performing state, Himachal Pradesh (75.2%), nearly a quarter of the children are three years behind. This is in rural India, and mostly in the mother tongue (see the section following on children of indigenous peoples and linguistic minorities). What about India’s ‘élite’ schools? In 2011, Educational Initiatives and the IT company Wipro together published the Quality Education Study (QES), a study of 89 ‘top schools’ (as the report called them) − all urbanIndian, and English-medium. It concluded that ‘performance in class 4 is found to be below the international average’. However, Indian students catch up in the eighth grade, ‘mainly due to their higher achievement in procedural questions (i.e. questions that require the straightforward use of techniques or learnt procedures to arrive at the answers)’. This study also compared students in these schools to an earlier study (conducted by the same organisations). As in the ASER reports (noted at the start of the section), ‘learning levels were found to be significantly lower than what was observed in 2006 in the same schools tested and on the same questions.’ The fall was highest in mathematics and English. The study comments, ‘our top schools don’t promote conceptual learning in students. QES results show that there has been a further drop from the already unsatisfactory levels of 2006’ (cited in Rao, 2013). A recent international comparison was the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, which compared 15-year-old

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boys and girls from 74 countries and territories in mathematics, science and reading; India figured 73rd. Students from only two Indian states participated. The report concluded that ‘the 15-year-old student populations in Tamil Nadu-India and Himachal Pradesh-India were estimated to have among the lowest reading literacy levels of the PISA 2009 and PISA 2009+ participants with more than 80% of students below the baseline of proficiency. Around one-fifth of students in these economies are very poor readers’ (cited in Rao, 2013). Whether in rural or urban environments, there are many household factors that contribute to a child’s learning: parents’ educational levels (especially the mother’s), parental involvement in education, family income and paid, private tuition. As the ASER 2009 report notes, once those factors are controlled for, the contribution of private schools to the child’s learning seems negligible in many states: ‘the learning differential between government and private schools falls drastically ... from 20% to a measly 5%.’ An Azim Premji Foundation (APF) 2013 report, Private Schools Are No Panacea, goes even further − it ‘suggests that contrary to popular perceptions, private schools are not adding value as compared to government schools to the children in the main subjects’ (2013: 15; also see Bolii, 4 July 2014). Previous analyses like ASER 2009 ask the rhetorical question: ‘Are private schools really performing better than government schools?’ Their answer is ‘No’. APF’s School Choice study follows a different methodology (see details in Karopady, 2014). Government-school children in 180 villages in Andhra Pradesh were offered a scholarship (voucher) to study in a Telugu-medium or an English-medium private (fee-paying) school if they wished to. Then the three groups − the scholarship children in private schools, the non-scholarship children in private schools and children in government schools − were all evaluated over a five-year period (2008-13). Analysis of five years of test data shows that the scholarship children in private schools (children who voluntarily shifted to private schools) performed no better than their counterparts in government schools in Telugu, English, mathematics and environmental science. This observation over five years implies that private schools did not add any significant value to the learning achievements of these children (Karopady, 2014). Indeed, the data suggests that those who shifted to English-medium private schools performed significantly worse in both mathematics and Telugu compared to those who shifted to Telugu-medium private schools (Muralidharan, 2013). So, the persistent illusion that English is the ‘path to a better education’ once again turns out to be false. This observation is further borne out in interviews with parents of the scholarship children in private schools. Parents indicate that they are happy with the private schools. The APF report concludes that ‘parents are possibly evaluating

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school outcomes on softer factors like uniforms, discipline, attendance in school (both of children and teachers) and social standing in the community’ (and this is no doubt that much truer of those who sent their children to English-medium private schools). The ASER reports as well as the QES and APU studies indicate that it is not easy to convince communities that English-medium education and private schools do not automatically mean better learning. Only one in four Indian students who finish 10 years of schooling enters college (UIS, 2015). But given the quality of education that this student has had, it is not surprising that he or she struggles – not least with English, which is the medium of higher education in India: ‘It is a familiar fact of Indian higher education that while the mandated medium of instruction is English, the default language of the classroom is the local one’ (Niranjana, 2013: 14). Not surprisingly, Indian students enter higher education and the workplace with inadequate English skills. One company reports that it ‘rejects 92%-93% of applicants for poor English’ (Puri, 2008). About 65%75% of applying engineers are rejected for the same reasons. Indeed, for students preparing for professional courses (mainly engineering and medicine) the language situation is often even more dire. Millions go to private, English-medium cram-schools (usually after the 7th or 10th grades) in order to train for countrywide and statewide entrance exams to these engineering and medical colleges. These private schools focus exclusively on mathematics and science, with a low priority for English (as a subject) and none at all for the local language. In an article titled ‘English Speaking Curse’, Anjali Puri (2008) notes the result: The teachers make an important fundamental point, which I hear repeated, time and again, by teachers in other institutions. These problems have their roots in students being language-impoverished rather than just English-impoverished (that is, demonstrating a poor ability in regional languages too), and being virtually cut off from the humanities stream from senior school [i.e. from about the age of 14]. Thus, while there is tremendous pressure to privatise mass education, and make it English-medium, a body of research and voices in the media are appearing, providing evidence, both research-based and anecdotal, that counsels caution. The task is to make this evidence available to policymakers by locating it in a larger context of mother-tongue-based multilingual education.

The Larger Context: Mother Tongues and Other Tongues The foregoing remarks should be seen in the context of what worldwide research tells us about the importance of mother-tongue-medium education. Decades of work confirm that learning is most effective when a child has

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8 to 10 years of good teaching through the medium of the mother tongue, accompanied by a gradual introduction of other languages, first as subjects, then partly also as teaching languages. This ensures a solid, cognitive foundation for learning non-language subjects. It allows for the acquisition of other languages while retaining and developing the mother tongue. And it results in better learning of other languages, when compared to nonmother-tongue teaching models (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2008). These facts are routinely ignored the world over in assimilationist language policies for indigenous peoples. This has resulted in disastrous educational outcomes. In India, if indigenous children attend school at all, the medium of instruction is the dominant regional language, not the child’s mother tongue. Together with other infrastructural barriers, this situation ensures that of the 22.35 million enrolled indigenous children, over a third are ‘pushed out’ before the fifth grade. By Grade 10, among indigenous girls in the state of Andhra Pradesh, the dropout rate is 83.61%. A quarter of all rural children attend primary schools where the medium of instruction is different from their home language (Rao, 2013). So, strengthening a mother-tongue–based government-school system is a critical component of any strategy to address the poor learning outcomes noted in the previous section. But this does not mean a rejection of English. It does, however, mean rethinking the two most common fallacies about language education (Phillipson, 2009: 12) in the Indian context: for the indigenous and linguistic-minority child this relates to the regional medium of education (which is not his or her home language); for the child who speaks at home a regional language, these fallacies relate to English-medium education. The first fallacy is that of ‘early exposure’. This argues that the earlier the child begins English, the better. The second fallacy is that of ‘maximum exposure’. This claims that the more subjects one teaches in English, the better. Early-exit and early-transition to teaching in a non-mother-tongue have repeatedly been shown to produce poor results (for references see Rao, 2013). Teaching everything in a foreign language is precisely what promotes rote learning without understanding and kills creativity.

Multilingual Education Initiatives in Odisha State In the state of Odisha (in eastern India; until 2011, the state was called Orissa), the coordinator of an education project kept an ‘education diary’ where he documented the large gap between the enlightened policies of the federal government in New Delhi and the situation in the schools to which the indigenous Koya children go. Only after his patient explanations did the teachers realise that it is possible for the children to both learn the mother language and acquire the chief regional language − that language acquisition can be additive, not necessarily subtractive. What is true for

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Koya-speaking children being taught in Odia (the language was formerly called Oriya) holds for Odia-speaking learners being taught in English (see Rao, 2013, for details; also Bolii, 8 July 2009). Indeed, Odisha is also the site for a ground-breaking 2014 project on implementing mother-tongue-based multilingual education (MLE) for indigenous children. After decades of advocacy by researchers and activists, the state collaborated with the National Multilingual Education Resource Consortium to produce a policy document. The document surveyed worldwide evidence for MLE and made specific recommendations on MLE for Odisha. As the document notes, with 22% of the state’s population being indigenous peoples speaking 72 mother tongues (grouped into 38 languages), Odisha is in particular need of urgent action in this matter. Based on the policy document, the government of Odisha issued orders making the following provisions: • • • • • • •

MLE will be extended to all indigenous children in Odisha. The mother tongue will be the medium for the first five years. Introduce Odia in Class 2 and English in Class 3 as language subjects (the policy document recommended that English be introduced in Class 4). Indigenous languages ‘may’ be used as language subjects at the postprimary level (the policy document recommended that this be ‘actively considered’). Teachers fluent in the children’s language as well as competent in Odia and English will have priority in recruitment. A long-term plan will be instituted to attract indigenous people into teaching jobs. Intensive teacher training for MLE pedagogy will be undertaken (see details on Bolii, 16 July 2014).

Regarding the pedagogy of this MLE programme, the government order says that it should ‘effectively challenge the hegemonic positioning of some dominant languages and cultures, fostering a strong sense of identity and pride in [the] children’s own language and cultures’. The Odisha government’s MLE initiative is one that respects the linguistic human rights of the indigenous learners. It has the potential to become a template for similar MLE efforts elsewhere in the country (and indeed the region). Much, as ever, will depend on how it translates into educational practice.

Challenging English in Higher Education The domination of English as a medium for higher education poses enormous difficulties for students. Earlier interventions to address the issue have usually been limited to translating material into Indian languages.

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Recently, however, a more systematic effort to strengthen Indian languages as knowledge languages has been mooted. A Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education was set up in 2012 with the ‘long-term objective [of] ... bilingual (and where possible, multilingual) proficiency for teacher and student, a proficiency that would bridge the different knowledge worlds that converge in Indian higher education’. The centre − a consortium of several universities and institutions − seeks to create new materials in Indian languages and use them in the curricula. Such materials ‘would necessarily involve not just textbooks but also interdisciplinary readers, translations from other Indian languages, mediated translations from English, bridge materials for existing curricula, and non-print materials including audio and video. Building digital resources would be a complementary task’ (see Niranjana, 2013, for references). Simultaneously, the centre is exploring strategies of bi- and multilingual pedagogy. At the policy level, the centre plans to lobby and push bodies such as the University Grants Commission to validate Indian language work for faculty promotions and salary increases. Other universities too, like the Azim Premji University, are setting up mechanisms to move away from English as the sole voice of the university.

Conclusion The craze for English in India has had multiple effects at various levels. A small number of urban and semi-urban, well-resourced private schools produce English-enabled students who enter prestigious colleges and universities and later obtain plum jobs in the private and public sectors − these are the ‘linguistic-haves’. However, typically, these students learn English subtractively, that is, their other languages remain underdeveloped. The demand for English in the country is high. The policy and market responses to this demand have been to push English down to earlier and earlier grades and to teach more and more subjects in English only. However, these developments are happening in an educational system in which students are not learning well at all. This is at least partly because the pedagogy is not based on a strategy of mother-tongue–based multilingual education. The result is a vast number of ‘linguistic-have-nots’ − students who are from run-of-the-mill private schools, and the government-school system, in both urban and rural areas. For these academically ill-prepared students, English-competence remains a mirage. Only a small proportion of these students will enter higher education. There, one of their greatest challenges will be the medium of instruction: English. These graduates generally remain at the lower levels of the workforce. English has certainly benefited the already privileged − those economically well off and those with a tradition of formal education in the family. For the vast majority of Indian students, however, English promises much but delivers little. In a country with increasing inequalities,

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English has become a source of social division and exclusion, thereby undermining the social justice agenda of education in a democracy. Besides, India is heavily invested in integrating itself into the global corporate economy. Aspirations, especially among the young, are soaring. Both for the health of India’s democracy and in order to realistically prepare a workforce for the modern world, India needs urgent measures to resist and relativise the hegemony of English. English needs to be learnt well, but learnt additively (not subtractively at the expense of the other languages of the learner). Further, English must remain a part (but only a part) of the country’s multilingual ecology. We need to stop English from becoming yet another tool that reproduces traditional inequalities and a Hydra that gobbles up other languages. The false, illusory promise of English for the entire population is an existential threat for a large section of the Indian population, both the underprivileged and the aspiring middle classes. However, the examples of innovation in both the school system and in higher education are an encouraging trend. They show that it is, indeed, possible to confront this Hydra.

Notes (1) (2)

(3)

Rapatahana, V. and Bunce, P. (2012) English Language as Hydra: Its Impacts on NonEnglish Cultures. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. SC is ‘Scheduled Caste’, the official designation for ‘Dalit’. As part of affirmative action, SC candidates have seats and jobs reserved in government and governmentfunded institutions. Upper castes belong to the ‘Other Castes’ or ‘Open Category’, that is, OC. Manu is the mythical author of the classical text, The Laws of Manu, which legitimises caste discrimination.

References ASER (Annual Status of Education Reports 2014 and earlier), New Delhi: ASER Centre. See http://www.asercentre.org. Azim Premji Foundation (2013) Private schools are no panacea. Available at: http:// azimpremjifoundation.org/pdf/School Choice Prelim Report.pdf (accessed 12 March 2016). Educational Initiatives & Wipro (2011) Quality Education Study. http://www.ei-india. com/quality-education-study-qes/ (accessed 12 April 2016). Graddol, D. (2010) English Next India: The Future of English in India. London: British Council. Jhingran, D. (2009) Hundreds of home languages in the country and many in most classrooms: coping with diversity in primary education. In A.K. Mohanty, M. Panda, R. Phillipson and T. Skutnabb-Kangas (eds) Multilingual Education for Social Justice: Globalising the Local. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. Karopady, D.D. (2014) Does school choice help rural children from disadvantaged sections? Evidence from longitudinal research in Andhra Pradesh. Economic and Political Weekly 49 (51), 20 December, 46−53. See http://www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/2014_49/51/ Does_School_Choice_Help_Rural_Children_from_Disadvantaged_Sections.pdf.

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Mukherjee, A.K. (2009) This Gift of English: English Education and the Formation of Alternative Hegemonies in India. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. Muralidharan, K. (2013) Private vs. government: New evidence on school performance and implications for India’s Right to Education Act. See http://www.ncaer.org/ video-popup.php?vId=78. Niranjana, T. (2013) Indian languages in Indian higher education. Economic and Political Weekly 48 (12), 23 March, 14−19. See http://download.tiss.edu/School_of_Education/ CILHE/EPW_report_Indian_Languages_in_Indian_Higher_Education.pdf. Pawde, K. (1992) The story of my ‘Sanskrit’. Tr. Priya Adarkar. In A. Dangle (ed.) Poisoned Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. Phillipson, R. (2009) Linguistic Imperialism Continued. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. Puri, A. (2008) English Speaking Curse. Outlook 24 March. See http://www.outlookindia. com/article/English-Speaking-Curse/237015. Rao, A.G. (2013) The English-only myth: Multilingual education in India. Language Problems & Language Planning 37 (3), 271–279. Rao, A.G. (2015 and earlier) Bolii (A blog on language and education). See http://bolii. blogspot.com. Sikhamani (2013) Steel nibs are sprouting. Tr. Kiranmayi Indraganti. In K. Satyanarayana and S. Tharu (eds) Steel Nibs are Sprouting: New Dalit Writing from India. Dossier II: Kannada and Telugu. London: HarperCollins. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2008) Language, education and (violations of) human rights. Symposium on Linguistic Rights in the World, the Current Situation. Geneva: United Nations. See http://www.linguistic-rights.org/tove-skutnabb-kangas. UIS (UNESCO Institute of Statistics) (2015) Education: Gross enrolment ratio by level of education − India 2012. See http://data.uis.unesco.org/.

Part 4 Resistance and Cohabitation with the Hydra

18 A Personal Reflection on Chican@ Language and Identity in the US-Mexico Borderlands: The English Language Hydra as Past and Present Imperialism Aja Y. Martinez

For a people who cannot entirely identify with either standard (formal, Castilian) Spanish nor standard English, what recourse is left to them but to create their own language? (Gloria Anzaldúa, 1999)

My Dilemma As a subject of the US-Mexico borderlands, I yearn for the knowledge and practice of a language that has been denied me. My parents suffered and endured physical pain and punishment because they spoke Spanish. They did not want that life for me. Like Gloria Anzaldúa, I view language as a specific aspect of my identity, and Chican@1 English as the tongue of the Arizona borderlands in which I’ve grown up (Anzaldúa, 1999: 77). However, I continue to ask, ‘Who am I with regard to language? How does my relationship with Spanish and English − two tongues of the coloniser − affect affirmation of my existence in education, in American society, in life?’ (79). In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was signed, concluding the Mexican–American War. This treaty ended the North American invasion of Mexico and forcibly annexed one-half of Mexican territory to the United States. Ever heard the saying, ‘the border crossed us’? The border crossed my family. This treaty claimed to guarantee the linguistic, cultural and educational rights of Mexican people who, like my maternal great-greatgrandmother, found themselves in conquered territory (Villenas & Deyhle, 1999: 418). Spanish would be retained as a primary language of my now 211

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Mexican-American ancestors, even after US colonisation. However, we know from evidence (the best/worst example is what the United States has done to Native Americans) that complete colonisation goes much further than just conquering a people through force of arms. Imperialism and domination are most effective when the mind is conquered, when a people’s worldview and way of life are crushed and essentially obliterated. This domination, as many Mexican Americans and other Chican@s2 of my parents’ generation can affirm, was enforced through their formal primary and secondary educations here in the US Southwest. My mother recalls the ‘standard rule’ of not being allowed to speak Spanish at school and being punished (e.g. being put in the corner or hit with a ruler) if she was caught speaking the language. My father will not discuss this period in his life; he refuses to remember. When faced with the decision of how to raise their children, the next generation of Chican@s, they subconsciously3 decided it would be in our (my brother’s and my) best interests to learn English only. It was at this point for me, through no decision of my own, that American colonisation took root: the domination of my mind. Fortunately, I did get some Spanish out of my parents through the Chican@ English/Spanish spoken at home (‘Mija dame a huevo from the fridge’), but language purists in both American and Mexican contexts would deem it a bastard language, not really English or Spanish (Anzaldúa, 1999: 80). I thought I knew how to speak a solid and passable version of English, but I did not realise at the time that I was learning what would be my primary language from parents who are second-language English speakers. On the other hand, my Spanish was bad, broken and wrong. I was surrounded by grandparents and other family members who spoke perfect Spanish (one grandparent spoke Spanish only), and my parents, when they chose, could speak what I perceived was perfect Spanish as well. However, I could never catch a solid grasp of Spanish, as if it were evading me, wisplike. So family members would instead speak to me in Spanish, and I would answer in English, and we understood each other. In the second grade I was placed in a bilingual education class to ‘encourage me’ and ‘set an example’ for the Spanish-speaking students. I guess my placement in this class meant that I was brown but spoke, by comparison, relatively good English and very bad Spanish. I was a good example of what assimilation can be. I remember being scolded on the city bus by an elderly Mexican woman who wanted me to speak to her in Spanish. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked (in Spanish). ‘Didn’t your parents teach you Spanish?’ I tried to explain that I understood, but I just couldn’t speak, but she was done with me, as she saw the kind of Mexican that I was. So I started watching telenovelas4 on Spanish-language TV in the hope that my broken Spanish would mend itself. My comprehension improved, but my spoken attempts are still not good enough; I’m still not really Mexican. I’m more a Mexican’t than a Mexican.

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Yet my English apparently isn’t good enough either. I was embarrassed and confused when an English professor said my writing suffered because of my background in ESL (English as a second language). ESL? This was why he was convinced I wrote like a B student, yet I was too ashamed to correct him. I was too embarrassed to tell him that I was never an ESL student and that I suffer identity insecurities because I never had the honour of claiming Spanish as my primary tongue. I let this professor believe that I was the Mexican that I wish I was. I couldn’t let him know that I have two broken languages. I couldn’t face it myself. So now, after a life’s worth of struggles with Spanish, I have to think about how this bastardised Spanish has affected the other language my parents intended me to master − English. Even though US imperialism denied me Spanish, society will never permit me to be the person who can truly claim Standard American English. I’ll never be white. I am not middle-class white. I am not the standard; American standards do not apply to me. My Mexican and American selves comprise an identity that relates directly to my language. As Anzaldúa asserts, ‘if you want to hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity − I am my language’ (1999: 81). Thus, I struggle. I struggle because I am embarrassed when I go to Mexico and am accused of being a gringa5 due to my funny pronunciations and my Spanish that is perceived as borderlands slang. I am ashamed when the real gringas here in the United States can speak ‘proper’ Spanish better than I can. I mourn the loss of the indigenous tongues I never knew, due to my mestiza ancestry that involves a Spanish coloniser of the past. I am angry when I face the reality that my English is not perfect, not the standard, not the norm. Like Anzaldúa once said, ‘until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself’ (1999: 81). Thus, I have turned to what I view is my only viable option: a Chican@ identity and a mestiza consciousness. Instead of forcing myself to choose one identity over another, and one language over another, I refuse to choose either/or and will instead seek a both/and mestiza approach.

Affirming Our Language When I was in graduate school, all students were required to demonstrate language proficiency in a ‘foreign’ language. This requirement applies mainly to domestic US students, and proficiency must be established in a language secondary to English. One assumption behind this requirement is that all domestic students possess Standard American English as their primary tongue. While this assumption may be accurate for the many white students6 traditionally in post-baccalaureate programmes, the Chican@ student whose primary language is Chican@ English falls under the radar. My graduate programme seemingly presumed that the same language

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standards applicable to my white peers also applied to me because I speak the standard English I have learned to use in academic spaces (Anzaldúa, 1999: 78). However, because I can speak this English dialect, the assumption should not be made that this is my primary language; Chican@ English is. But because Chican@ English is not accepted in academic spaces as a ‘real language’, Chican@ students are viewed as not proficient in more than one language and are thus forced (through the taking of a translation test7 ) to prove their proficiency in formal, Castilian-informed Spanish, a language Chican@s have been historically denied. Predictably, Chican@ students either have difficulty with this translation test or do not pass it at all. We are then forced to take a Spanish grammar course for an entire semester, and if we are able to pass this course, then the programmatic language requirement is considered satisfied. What graduate programmes like this remain unaware of, and unmoved by, is the anguish and embarrassment such requirements cause Chican@ students. Anzaldúa contends that as we’ve grown up speaking Chican@ Englishes and Spanishes, we ‘have internalised the belief that we speak poor Spanish’, and graduate programme language proficiency requirements only serve as an additional reminder of ‘how our language has been used against us by dominant culture’ (1999: 80). Instead of being viewed as individuals proficient in several languages (e.g. Chican@ English, Chican@ Spanish, standard English, working-class English), Chican@s are made to feel deficient in a language they were systemically denied and are then relegated to a course meant to remedy this ailment. We, in turn, blame ourselves and wish we had tried harder to learn proper Spanish as children, when in fact we never had any choice in the matter. Ana Castillo claims that Chican@s, as people of colour in the United States, have been ‘forced to succumb to white dominant society’s rules, are educated in Western culture’ and are thus made subject to this country’s assimilationist English-only policies (1995: 5). American Dream ideology insists on a melting-pot model in which all peoples, no matter their countries of origin or backgrounds, are supposedly invited to join. However, as Castillo contends, this insistence on assimilation into the dominant society works mainly ‘for white people regardless of their ethnic background’ (emphasis added) (1995: 2). For Chican@s, blending into the ‘infamous’ melting pot has not successfully happened for a number of reasons, all of which Castillo lists. Of all her given reasons, the one that I view as the most important is her assertion that Chican@s are not immigrants. We are neither newly arrived nor from Europe or other far-off countries. Many European immigrants had only to pay their dues and, in time, due to shifting perceptions of whiteness and other government-created racial projects (see Sacks, 1994, or Omi & Winant, 1986), were eventually admitted into the melting pot that is whiteness. On the other hand, a large percentage of Chican@s, like

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me, have ancestral ties to the US Southwest and only became Americans when the border changed as a result of the Mexican–American War (Castillo, 1995: 2-3). We are thus neither wholly Mexican nor American, ‘we are a synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness and Angloness. … When not copping out … we call ourselves Mexican … and mestiza when affirming both our Indian and Spanish (but hardly ever Black ancestry); Chicano when referring to politically aware people born and/or raised in the US’ (Anzaldúa, 1999: 85). Because we are all these things, out of necessity we have created a ‘language with which we could communicate with ourselves, a secret language’ (1999: 77). This secret language affirms our identity as a distinct people, and this is validated when Chican@ literature and art such as la Chrisx’s poem, ‘La Loca de la Raza Cósmica’ [The Crazy Woman/Queen of La Raza Cósmica] (1993), is taught in an academic course.

Chican@ Literature Courses and the New Mestiza Many of us − starved for affirmation about who we are … realise from strenuous research (usually having to go beyond the university classroom and certainly beyond our local bookstore) that we have descended from people with blood ties traceable on these continents for many thousands of years, people who left phenomenal records demonstrating artistic and scientific brilliance. (Castillo, 1995: 6) Both Castillo and Anzaldúa have felt their existence affirmed when reading novels and poetry written by Chican@s. I too have felt this affirmation, but in line with what Castillo states in this chapter, my encounters with Chican@ literature were non-existent in an academic context until my final semester as a graduate student. In the same way Spanish has been systemically denied, so has any affirmation of my existence through the institutional dismissal of my people’s writings. Anzaldúa recalls: ‘When I started teaching High School English to Chicano students, I tried to supplement the required texts with works by Chicanos, only to be reprimanded and forbidden to do so by the principal’ (1999: 82). Similarly, teachers at schools in my hometown of Tucson, AZ, have been banned by the state legislature from teaching any curriculum involving the histories and literatures of Mexican–American people because of its perceived threat to US white supremacist ideology. On 11 May 2010, Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed House bill 2281 into law; the brainchild of then State Superintendent of Public Instruction (now State Attorney General) Tom Horne. It bans the following from Arizona K-12 public education:

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Promotion to overthrow the US government Promotion of resentment towards a race or class of people Courses designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group (with the exception of courses for Native American students, or the instruction of the Holocaust or any other instance of genocide, or the historical oppression of a particular group of people based on ethnicity, race or class) Advocating ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals (Carcamo, 2013; Martinez, 2013)

Effective 8 March 2013, House bill 2281 was upheld by US Circuit Court Judge Wallace Tashima, so the ban on Mexican-American studies remains (Carcamo, 2013). The few ethnic studies courses not affected by this ban still face difficulties persuading the school district to approve AfricanAmerican, Native-American and Asian-American courses. Although teachers have clearance to teach ethnic history and literature courses, the district designates only elective credit for these courses, when counting towards students’ high-school graduation requirements. If students are to satisfy the required (for college admission) four years of English and history credits, then they must take alternate classes in which real ‘“American” and English literature’ and history are taught (Anzaldúa, 1999: 82). I attended the same high school that came under fire during this ethnic studies ban. This school is on the southwest side of Tucson, and upon graduation, my class of 250 consisted of 95% students of colour, split more or less between Chican@ and African American students. Of the 250, only 11 of us would go on to attend a four-year university because only 11 of us were granted access to the idea that a college education was an option for us. At my high school, only students in the Honors and Advanced Placement cohort were allowed to meet with the local university’s minority-student recruitment representative, so the 11 students with whom I began and finished my high-school career were the only students in my grade who were ever told by the institution, ‘Hey, you should go to college.’ Because I was in this college-bound cohort, the only curriculum we were made to believe as valid was the ‘real American and English’ literature, histories and ways of knowing taught in Honors and Advanced Placement courses. As Castillo notes, ‘white society insists that only European history and Greco-Roman civilisation have intellectual importance and relevance to our society. … The ignorance of white dominant society about our ways, struggles in society, history, and culture is not an innocent and passive ignorance, it is a systemic and determined ignorance’ (1995: 5). Thus, I am not surprised that I managed to get through nearly 20 years of a US education without ever being taught a Chican@ novel or poem; it is this ‘determined ignorance’ that make ethnic studies courses all the more crucial.

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Reflecting on my experience in my first-ever Mexican-American literature course, I realise that because of my Chican@ identity (in terms of language, culture and history), I occupied a liminal space between white students and the professor. On most days I felt like a witness: an outsider looking in on how the novels, short stories and poems made radiant the few Chican@ students in the course. The course materials gave Chican@ students an agency over course content and knowledge that, in all the years I attended school, I seldom experienced. This experience demonstrated to me that ‘although dominant society has rendered us powerless and silent, it does not naturally equate that we are indeed powerless (inconsequential) and silent (stupid)’ (Castillo, 1995: 17). In particular, poems, such as la Chrisx’s ‘La Loca de la Raza Cósmica’ (1993), illustrate very well the power and voice that Chican@s can express through the sonic use of the Chican@ English and Spanish that many of us know so well, and this power of voice and language was most obvious and powerful when we (as a class) read the poem aloud. Many characterise ‘La Loca de la Raza Cósmica’ as a feminist response to Corky Gonzales’ ‘I Am Joaquin’.8 While I agree with the feminist reading, I contend that this poem also serves as an illustration of a mestiza consciousness. Chican@ language and identity are represented through la Chrisx’s use of a code-meshed voice (Young & Martinez, 2011): ‘Soy “tank you” en vez de thank you/ soy “chooz” en vez de shoes’ and her embracing of all the contradictory aspects of Chican@ identification: ‘soy dumping my old man, even though I’m/ pregnant with his child’ (lines 61-62 and 42-43). As Anzaldúa asserts, the mestiza ‘has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode − nothing is thrust out, the good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not only does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalence into something else’ (1999: 101). Anzaldúa’s notion of the mestiza is represented through la Chrisx’s likening her people to ‘capirotada’ (line 6), a dish made essentially of a little bit of everything, both good and bad, and even old leftover ingredients whose tastes may contradict one another. The ambivalence Anzaldúa refers to can also apply to capirotada because one can have both positive and negative feelings towards the dish. Sweet foods and salty foods may be separately appetising but put together may result in an inedible concoction. However, with a mestiza consciousness we embrace the contradictions and turn ambivalence into a strategy that assists us in coming to terms with our split-selves. Instead of having to choose one identity over another or one language over another, mestizo@s embrace all aspects of our identities and create a new tongue out of multiple and separate languages. The language/identity dilemma detailed above can only be resolved by sustaining the contradictions and channeling the ambivalence into strategies. As a Chican@, I have received mixed messages all my life: ‘Don’t learn Spanish, but hey, why don’t you know Spanish?,’ ‘Get an

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education, assimilate, but you’ll never really be one of us,’ ‘Do us proud mija, but don’t start thinking you’re better than us.’ These contradictions are enough to drive any person insane, but when viewed through the lens of Chican@ literature in a course that actually honours these writings, the mestiz@ can (re)imagine her/himself in relation to language and identity, just like la Chrisx’s poem establishes Chican@ English as a real language with rules which those outside Chican@ culture do not know. Although theoretical texts can discuss the existence of Chican@ English, this language, as represented through Chican@ literature and art, is brought to life and has the potential to affirm Chican@ language and identity. However, beyond this self-affirmation is the more revolutionary task of convincing programmes within institutions, and institutions within systems of ideology, that Chican@ English is a real language that should be acknowledged and honoured. In this sustained era of standardised Englishlanguage imperialism, though, this is admittedly and, alas, no easy task.

Notes (1)

@: Sandra K. Soto states that her use of the ‘@’ ending in Chican@ ‘signals a conscientious departure from the certainty, mastery, and wholeness, while still announcing a politicised collectivity’ (2010: 2). This ‘@’ keystroke serves as an expression of the author’s ‘certain fatigue with the clunky post-1980s gender inclusive formulations’ of the word and announces a ‘politicised identity embraced by a man or woman of Mexican descent who lives in the United States and who wants to forge connection to a collective identity politics’ (2010: 2). It also serves to unsettle not only the gender binary but also the categories that constitute it. (2) Chican@ is used in my work synonymously with Mexican-American. I use terms such as these in my work to refer to women and men of Mexican descent or heritage who live in the United States. According to Yosso (2006), ‘Chican@ is a political term, referring to a people whose indigenous roots to North America and Mexico date back centuries’ (2006: 16). Also see Acuña (2010) for more on the history and origins of this term. (3) I have discussed with my parents their decision to primarily speak English in our household, and they deny making a planned, conscious decision not to teach their children Spanish. However, I gather from what they have shared about their schooling experiences and the educational plans they had for my brother and me that English was viewed as the language with which we would have the least trouble navigating through society. (4) Spanish-language soap operas. (5) A white American. (6) I acknowledge that proficiency in Standard American English depends on both race and socio-economic status. I acknowledge also that some argue ‘Standard Academic English’ is a foreign language to all; that all people in the process of becoming educated must learn. However, I maintain that acquisition of academic English is a raced and classed experience that favors white middle-classed backgrounds over others. (7) This test involved translating one written paragraph of English into a paragraph of written Spanish. This practice thus privileges written literacies of Spanish over sonic literacies. (8) See http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/latinos/joaquin.htm.

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References Acuña, R.F. (2010) Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (7th edn). New York: Pearson Longman. Anzaldúa, G. (1999) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. Carcamo, C. (2013) Judge upholds Arizona law banning ethnic studies classes. Los Angeles Times 12 March. Castillo, A. (1995) Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays in Xicanisma. New York: Plume Publishers. la Chrisx (1993) La Loca de la Raza Cósmica. Infinite Divisions. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. Martinez, A.Y. (2013) Critical race theory counterstory as allegory: A rhetorical trope to raise awareness about Arizona’s ban on ethnic studies. Across the Disciplines, Fall. Omi, M. and H. Winant (1986) Racial Formations in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Sacks, K.B. (1994) How did Jews become white folks? In S. Gregory and R. Sanjek (eds) Race. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Soto, S.K. (2010) Reading Chican@ Like a Queer: The De-Mastery of Desire. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Villenas, S. and Deyhle, D. (1999) Critical race theory and ethnographies challenging the stereotypes: Latino families, schooling, resilience and resistance. Curriculum Inquiry 29 (4), 413−445. Yosso, T.J. (2006) Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline. New York: Routledge. Young, V.A. and Martinez, A.Y. (eds) (2011) Code-Meshing as World English: Policy, Pedagogy, and Performance. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

19 The Struggle to Raise Bilingual Children in the Belly of the English Hydra Beast: The United States of America Christof Demont-Heinrich1

This chapter is written from my heart, which, along with my marriage of 17 years, was recently torn asunder due in large part to my commitment to raising my two daughters, Alexis, 10, and Caetlyn, 8, as German-English bilinguals. It is also written from the heart of the English-language Hydra, the United States. Although America’s global hegemony is being increasingly challenged (Todd, 2003), the United States and Englishspeaking Americans continue to have a profound influence on countless lives around the world (Phillipson, 2008; Schiller, 2000; Tsuda, 2008). This includes significant linguistic impact on others, both within and outside of the world’s self-proclaimed bastion of ‘freedom’. As a second-generation American whose father migrated to the United States from Germany 50 years ago, linguistically speaking, I have experienced America as anything but free. For me and for my two daughters, with whom I have been working for 10 years to raise as GermanEnglish bilinguals even though German is a second, not a first, language for me, the United States feels very much like the heart, or, perhaps more aptly, the belly of the English Hydra beast. Here, we are constantly on the verge of falling victim to linguistic subtraction (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000). Tragically, throughout the 239-year history of what has often been referred to as a ‘language graveyard’ (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006), countless others, both of immigrant and indigenous heritage, have found themselves staring down the Hydra of English monolingual ideology in the United States (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000) and, as a result, facing the very real prospect of the erasure of their multilingual being and identity. My story of a personally taxing struggle to raise bilingual children in the United States is the story of others, and their stories are ours. We are the multilingual minority in a covertly but also deeply monolingual United States (Schiffman, 1996), a country of millions of multilingual immigrants,

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hundreds of native languages and, sadly, hundreds of millions of people for whom English is the only language they know, or, in many cases, the sole language they care to know. Our stories may be ‘subjective’, and they are definitely ‘anecdotal’. They still matter. While scholarly discourse often remains distanced and abstract, we, those actively fighting to raise meaningfully bilingual children in the United States, are locked in a very personal battle over language and cultural values. The everyday, actually practiced and actually lived multilingualism we value − to the point where we seek, whether consciously or unconsciously, to swim against the monolingual stream and literally, through ourselves and our children, grow new multilingual individuals − is not valued by most Americans. Some of us pay a heavy personal price for swimming against the monolingual stream. I am one of those people: During the past 18 months, I have seen my marriage and my own personal mental well-being dissolve, largely over intra-marital disagreement sparked by the private economic and social costs of raising children multilingual in a monolingual United States. Because the wider American society does not value meaningful multilingualism for its citizens and, therefore, does not pay to create a public educational system capable of producing meaningfully multilingual citizens, we, as individuals, were forced to pay − more than my wife wanted to pay, and probably more than we could realistically afford to pay − for access to a formal multilingual education for our daughters. There is the sense, incorrect I know, that I am alone in my struggles. This sense is tempered when I see, and hear, the stories of others engaged in similar struggles. Their stories validate my own, and my story validates theirs. Human beings acquire the strength to exercise counter-hegemonic agency by seeing or, in this case, reading about the strength of others around them fighting a similar counter-hegemonic fight. It is for this reason that I believe the very personal story I tell in this chapter is worth telling. My aim is not to produce a standard academic piece with ‘appropriate’ distance and ‘objective’, generalisable social scientific data but to, in writing from my heart, touch others’ hearts − the hearts of both those who have experienced something similar to what I and my family have and those who have not.

Organisation of the Chapter I begin my story by reflecting on the nature of the Hydra beast, or beasts, that my family and I have faced and continue to face. I then move to a discussion of my childhood and the role my father’s status as a German immigrant to the United States played in my own and in my children’s language story. Next, I discuss my decision to raise my daughters as German-English bilinguals and the conflict this created with my wife over preschool childcare. I then examine the transition from creating a Germanlanguage-friendly home-rearing environment to sending our children to

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school. This transition unfortunately created serious intra-marital conflict and ultimately put my wife and I on a path to divorce. I then discuss an ill-fated move to Germany where multiple life stresses − work, family and health − led to a nervous breakdown on my part six months into what was supposed to have been a 12-month stay. A longtime dream of mine, our move to Germany, ended with me having to give up Fulbright and German Academic Exchange Program fellowships and my family and I coming home early to the United States. I close by reflecting on what I view as the significance of our experience vis-à-vis our ongoing and often challenging attempts to live our lives according to multilingual values in a country, and a world, increasingly characterised by the hegemony of English. Throughout the telling of my language story, I relate my own and my children’s experiences to the larger social context in which we, and others living similar stories, are enmeshed. It is a largely unsupportive and unforgiving context; one in which countless social actors pay lip service to multilingualism and the value of multilingual education but go no further in what amounts to a gaping chasm between rhetoric and practice.

The Multi-Hydra Beast I am still not quite sure how best to describe and represent the Hydra, or Hydras, against which my two daughters and I are battling. I am, however, certain of one thing: the Hydra of English cannot be reduced to language alone. The Hydra of English comprises but one of many multi-headed Hydras, all of these connected and related to additional multi-headed Hydras in what constitutes a Medusa-like mass of writhing, snapping Hydra heads. The multi-faceted Hydras I view as especially crucial to contributing to an American language context characterised by a seemingly all-encompassing English monolingualism are – – –

the Hydra of modern nationalism the Hydra of monolingual ideology the Hydra of neoliberal capitalist efficiency

The Hydra of English monolingualism and what I call an expanding English-centric bilingualism − a particular type of multilingualism according to which language practitioners are typically highly fluent, often across multiple domains, in their mother tongue and English and not nearly as fluent, or as competent, in any other foreign language (DemontHeinrich, 2012) − imposes far-reaching and often tragic consequences at both the macro-social and micro-individual levels. The most tragic of these is ‘language murder’ (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000). As this chapter will show, the killing of languages can occur vis-à-vis powerful languages, including German. Such instances do not spell the death of a language for all its speakers. However they do mean that this language dies for individuals

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and groups of speakers. For instance, if I and/or my children stopped speaking German to each other, German would effectively die for us. A similar scenario is possible, and is occurring, vis-à-vis English-centric bilingualism. Several of my German cousins who work in the software industry in Germany qualify as exemplars of English-centric bilinguals. They are highly competent in both written and spoken English. None is anywhere near as competent in a third language as they are in their first language, German, or in their second language, English. In a certain sense, English-centric bilingualism is killing other bilingual formulations − for example German-Danish and Danish-German bilingualism − as more and more Germans and Danes opt for English and cease to invest in learning, and using, each other’s languages to communicate with each other. The relentless advance of the interconnected Hydras of monolingual ideology, neoliberal capitalism and efficiency, all of which dramatically threaten multilingualism of all kinds − with the notable exception of English-centric bilingualism − have forced hundreds of millions of previously multilingual people and their potentially multilingual children to miss out on the joy of multilingual being and identity. Indeed, with the death, or ‘killing’, of their multilingual capabilities, these countless millions have fallen victim − mostly by way of hegemonically bound and heavily directed ‘choice’ − to the English monolingual and English-centric bilingual Hydra seeking to conquer the world.

Our Family Story In my own instance − which serves as the lens through which I critically examine the Hydra of English and the much bigger Hydra of the ideology of monolingualism − you can trace the socio-historical fabric of the story of my English-German bilingualism back centuries, with especially crucial moments occurring with the rise of a particular ideology and politics of the ‘modern’ monolingual nation state (Herder, 1793) and with the advent of so-called print capitalism (Anderson, 1990). Collectively, these developments created a push towards the political, ideological and cultural valorisation of a single dominant form of ‘a language’ in the hegemonic sociopolitical and socio-geographic containers we call nation states. On a more personal − and micro − level, my language story, and that of my two daughters, begins with the emigration of my father, Georg Heinrich, from Germany to the United States in 1963. My father met my mother, Mary, an American, in 1964. They married in 1965. I was born in 1966, with a younger brother, Tony, following in 1967 and a younger sister, Elana, in 1970. Like so many other immigrants, my father acceded to the ideology of linguistic assimilation and made a decision to not pass German on to his children. He did so despite the entreaties of my mother (who had acquired

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good fluency in German by the time I was six) and many of my German relatives that he should pass German on to his children. At the age of six, and with my brother aged five and my sister just two, we appeared poised to adhere to the ‘third generation rule’ (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001). According to this rule, in the United States, multilingual heritage is strong for first-generation immigrants, weaker or even nonexistent for second-generation immigrants and completely gone by the third generation. However, when I was seven my father managed to arrange, in Germany, a required internship for the MD he was working towards at Case Western University. As a result, my brother and I spent seven months attending a German elementary school in Stuttgart. Seven months in Germany temporarily cut one of the heads off the Hydra of English for my siblings and I. The Hydra head quickly grew back, however, when we returned to the United States. My brother, sister and I were re-enrolled in the American public education system, a system infamous for its lack of investment in foreign-language teaching and learning. In my case, as is typically true to this day across the United States, no foreign languages were available to study until middle and high school. German was not one of the languages offered at the public middle and high schools I attended. I took two years of French and two years of Latin, acquiring only very superficial abilities in either one. As a college student, I chose to major in German. During my third year, I studied for a full year abroad at Albert-Ludwigs Universität in Freiburg, Germany. It was here that I began to reclaim some linguistic ground against the monolingual English Hydra. Upon graduating from college in June 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in German, I started work as a journalist in the Boston, MA, area, and I no longer used or practiced my German. I would not regularly use German again, until − urged on by a German professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where I was a PhD student at the time − I made the decision in the fall of 2004 to speak German to Alexis, with whom my wife, Carolyn, was then pregnant.

One Parent, One Language I have used a wide variety of strategies in order to ensure that Alexis and Caetlyn have had an opportunity to grow up bilingual in German and English. The first, and perhaps most important, strategy has been my stubborn dedication to the so-called one-parent, one-language approach. Since before birth (I started reading German stories to Alexis and Caetlyn when they were in the womb), I have spoken only German with Alexis and Caetlyn. They have responded by speaking only German to me and, amazingly, by speaking exclusively in German to each other. I chose the one-parent, one-language approach − and have stuck with it for the past 10 years in virtually every situation and context − for two

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reasons. First, a German professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, gave me enough confidence in my own German ability so that I believed I could, in fact, speak German to my children despite some personal linguistic imperfections. Second, because I realised, after reading a range of academic and popular literature on raising one’s kids multilingually, how a strict one-parent, one-language approach was the only way I was ever going to have a chance of seeing any children of mine and of my wife’s − my wife is a lifelong American English monolingual − achieve meaningful fluency in German. I knew as well that I would not be able to accomplish by myself what I viewed as an ideal linguistic outcome for Alexis and Caetlyn, one in which they were highly fluent in German in terms of the four basic linguistic skill categories: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Overall, in the ongoing and frequently difficult quest to raise Alexis and Caetlyn as German-English bilinguals, the most formidable challenges have been (1) exposing Alexis and Caetlyn to native spoken German on a regular basis and (2) ensuring Alexis and Caetlyn receive a formal education in both German and English. In 2007, Carolyn decided to attend graduate school full-time to pursue a master’s degree in public health. Since my wife and I needed childcare, in the winter of 2008 I persuaded her that we should hire a German au pair. Unfortunately, our first au pair left us after six months to jump to a family with teenagers who, of course, spend the whole day in school. Our second au pair was a ‘party animal’ and an inveterate liar who was eventually arrested for shoplifting at a local supermarket. We fired her in December 2008. Our bad experience with German au pairs demoralised me because it severely undermined my efforts to persuade my wife that German was a worthwhile investment for our children. Fortunately, our unfortunate experience with our two German au pairs was followed by a wonderful 18 months with a live-out German-speaking nanny. Our nanny treated Alexis and Caetlyn, and us, with respect and was very much invested in her job and in our children. She left us in July 2009 to study for a bachelor’s degree at a large university in Colorado. Up to this point, July of 2010, when Alexis was five and a half and Caetlyn was about to turn three, one could say that if we had instead spent our childcare money on an American au pair, nanny or day-care centre it would have cost nearly as much as, possibly more than, the $50,000+ we had spent on Alexis’ and Caetlyn’s bilingual upbringing. However, when it came time for Alexis to enter kindergarten, that argument − which I had been pitching successfully to my wife − no longer held true. ‘Free’ public education beckoned (of course, public education is not free in the United States; individuals’ tax dollars go to support it). My wife wanted to enrol Alexis and Caetlyn in a so-called magnet public school. I wanted to enrol them in a language immersion school where children learn languages not as a subject but by using them as a medium to learn

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other subjects. However, there were no public language immersion schools within reasonable driving distance from our home. Just as I was losing hope that I would find an educational context that would not erase Alexis’ and Caetlyn’s German, in the summer of 2010 I discovered that the Rocky Mountain International School (RMIS) a private, tuition-based language immersion school, located one mile away from where I work at the University of Denver, was starting a German immersion program. With an annual tuition of $10,000 per child, RMIS is expensive for most Americans, including us. However, I knew if Alexis and Caetlyn went to an English monolingual school they would quickly lose their German and be swallowed up by the tidal wave of English monolingualism that washes over far too many in the United States. I prevailed vis-à-vis my wife, and we enrolled Alexis and Caetlyn in RMIS in the fall of 2010 at a cost of $20,000 per year, the equivalent of 20% of our combined gross income at the time. Alexis and Caetlyn attended RMIS for two years, until the spring of 2013.

A Dream of a Year in Germany Falls Apart − in Germany With the aid of a sabbatical year and the award of Fulbright and German Academic Exchange Program fellowships, my family and I headed off in midsummer 2013 to Germany, where I was hoping Alexis and Caetlyn would become even more fluent in German than they already were. I was also hoping to successfully conduct research for a book project I had planned and hoping that my wife, Carolyn − who on the grounds that it would take too much time had, up to this point, refused invitations on my part for her to learn German − would learn and even fall in love with German. Sadly, due to a combination of marital stress, which eventually led to divorce, and fully unanticipated workplace stress, my dream for a full year in Germany turned into a nightmare. The trigger for a personal and familial collapse was the extremely unsupportive, even hostile, environment I landed in with my Fulbright host at a university in Germany. There, I planned to explore German attitudes towards the globalisation of English, especially in terms of how Germans view this social phenomenon as impacting upon the rationale for promoting German as a foreign language. A debilitating physical injury that eventually required surgery further compounded my marital and professional workplace stress. This, along with an anxiety-driven inability to sleep, threw me into a mental-health tailspin. In a decision that will forever remain painful for me, I was forced to give up my two fellowship awards. Six months earlier than I had hoped, on a gloomy, foggy midDecember morning during which I was experiencing such profound anxiety I thought I would experience a full-blown panic attack on the plane, I flew 12 hours home to Denver in a desperate attempt to rescue myself from

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a situation that had led me to have frequent suicidal thoughts. Though I ultimately had no choice − extreme life stress had literally altered my brain and body chemistry − the hardest part for me in leaving Germany six months earlier than anticipated was that we were forced to cut off our kids’ German experience far too soon. It has since taken me a full year to recover from the professional and personal trauma that I experienced in Germany. I cannot completely blame my nervous breakdown and the sad, irretrievable break up of our multilingual family on the Hydra of English and the Hydra of (English) monolingualism in the United States. But these Hydras clearly played a big role. I am quite certain that my own and my family’s collapse would not have happened given different macro-level sociopolitical and ideological circumstances − circumstances conducive to and supportive of widespread, lived multilingualism for all Americans. Had there been a public, non-tuition-based language immersion school offering German available to us, had there been true, deep support in the United States for creating, via the widespread presence of language immersion schools, meaningfully multilingual children, including children who hail from white, middle- and upper-middle-class American families of largely European heritage, I would not have been swimming against the linguistic stream on a micro- and a macro-level. Furthermore, thanks to an education system invested in producing meaningful multilingualism, my wife would not have been monolingual but multilingual, though perhaps not in German and English. And I would have been able to plug into a macrosocio-educational structure in tune with my strongest personal values. To wish for such a system in the United States may be ‘unrealistic’. But, if this is so, it is not because some things are inherently ‘realistic’ and others are not. The ‘realistic’ reflects values particular to a specific, dominant fundamental group − values that powerful groups have sought to construct as common sense, or the ‘way things are’, and by extension, the way things ought to be − for everyone. Indeed, repeated references to ‘realistic’ − a word that carries more hidden ideological freight than perhaps any other − are crucial to reproducing the hegemonic, monolingual social order against which I and many others have discovered it is so very difficult to swim. Our story profoundly illustrates the difficulty of raising truly multilingual kids in a national context characterised by the largely covert imposition of monolingualism. It is a story being lived by millions of others, in the United States and worldwide; one that resonates far beyond the walls of our own home. I know this because countless strangers have approached me in the United States when they hear my daughters and I speaking German to each other. They tell me their language stories. Inevitably they are stories of inter-generational language loss and personal regret at having missed out on a chance to realise the joy of multilingual living. I also know that our story resonates because I have read, both in

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scholarly literature and in mainstream accounts, of the ongoing death of languages in perhaps the world’s most prominent language graveyard. And I know our story resonates because I have heard of other stories in which parents, and families, break up in large part because of disagreements over the multilingual upbringing of their children. Their stories and ours cannot be reduced to isolated, individual micro-instances. They must be understood as inextricably bound up in a larger social whole characterised by the Hydra beasts of monolingual ideology and monolingual English.

Conclusion The story I have told here about the struggles I have faced as a nonmother-tongue speaker of German fighting to raise my two daughters as German-English bilinguals began, as I suspect do the stories of so many others who have sought to do what I am doing, with the immigration and linguistic assimilation of a parent into a national context dominated by a monolingual ideology. It could have ended, as so many other language stories do, with total language loss after just one generation. It did not. The turning point came with time spent abroad in Germany, the homeland of my immigrant parent, while I was a child and then again while I was a young adult. My story continued seemingly in part by sheer chance with a university foreign-language professor making a suggestion − ‘Try speaking your father’s language to your kids’ − and me acting upon this suggestion. This inter-generational family language story has played out with substantial personal and familial tragedy. This is, in large part, because this story stands in conflict with the monolingual stories of so many others in the United States, including my wife’s. I am hopeful that my own story and that of my two daughters will continue to be a multilingual one in which German does not die for any of us but lives on, in everyday practice and life. I so strongly wish the same for the countless other parents in the United States. They are struggling valiantly, like I am, to raise meaningfully bilingual or multilingual children in a national context at once so wonderfully linguistically diverse and, by virtue of the tide of the hegemony of monolingual English ideology, so powerfully and thoroughly monolingual. I hope as well that telling my story will inspire others to continue to forge ahead with raising multilingual children in the United States and elsewhere. I feel especially for those who face the extra challenge of raising multilingual children in less powerful languages than German − Native American languages or immigrant languages with far fewer native speakers, such as Icelandic, Slovenian or Thai. How our story − representative of the stories of so many others in the United States − moves forward hinges not only on me, and on my daughters, as individuals but on the larger social order in which we are

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enmeshed. I have not yet figured out how to move an entire society, to alter it in the short amount of time in which I must change it, in order to meet the multilingual needs of my children, who in just a decade will both be young adults. In truth, a single individual, or even a small group of individuals, cannot change a society. This is especially true when one, as an individual and/or as a (small) group, is facing off against a social beast such as the Hydra of English. I continue to send Alexis and Caetlyn to a once-a-week, two-hour German-language education program put on by the German After School Programs of Denver, a local organisation dedicated to teaching children and adults German. There, they are being taught the skills necessary to pass the different levels of the German Sprachdiplom test. If my children achieve a fluency in German that allows them to pass the highest level of the German Sprachdiplom test battery, they would qualify to study at a German university, thereby fully achieving the status of the globally conscious, multiculturally aware and deeply and broadly bilingual young adults I so very much wish they will become. As of today, ten and a half years into a multilingual path rarely forged by non-native, second-generation immigrant speakers of a ‘foreign’ language in the United States, Alexis’s and Caetlyn’s German is, in fact, amazingly active and robust. In fact, until sometime this past summer (2014), both were German-dominant rather than English-dominant. This gives me room for moderate optimism: my aim was always to get them as far as possible in using German regularly so that when they (inevitably?) reached the point where they would no longer use German regularly, they would have made it far enough so that they could not lose their German. But of course they could, and might very well, largely lose their German. This scares me − a lot, not only because German also mostly dies for me if it dies for them, for we are each other’s Germanlanguage interlocutors, but because it would close off so many potential life opportunities and experiences that true, deep multilinguals have before them and monolinguals simply do not have. I have never accepted, and most likely will never accept, things the way they are, especially in terms of the two social issues that most matter to me: language/multilingualism and environmentalism. This proclivity to not accept things as they are, to fight against domination and abuse, to swim against the stream rather than with it has gotten me into trouble and has even affected my individual psychological health to such a degree that, for a span of eight months of this past year, I could barely function as a human being. Swimming against the monolingual stream in the United States may well be bad for my health. But I cannot help myself. I will keep stabbing away at and battling the Hydras − the Hydra of the modern nation state, the Hydra of monolingual ideology and the Hydra of neoliberal capitalist efficiency, plus the related Hydra of the hegemony of English. I will do so because I view all as pushing the human social order

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more and more towards homogenisation and singular ways of thinking, doing and being and thereby fundamentally threatening our individual, and collective, capacities to regularly realise the sheer joy of active multilingual living. Indeed, no matter what the cost, I will never give up the fight against linguistic homogenisation and monolingual stupidity − for my own sake, for my kids’ sake and for the sake of humanity.

Note (1)

To protect the privacy of those involved in this highly personal, auto-ethnographical account of a lifetime of struggle, pseudonyms have been used for my children, for my wife and for my parents and siblings. (All have given permission for this story to be told.) The names of particular schools and universities have also been altered.

References Anderson, B. (1990) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Demont-Heinrich, C. (2012) Debating English’s hegemony: American, Australian and Slovenian students discuss ‘the’ global language. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 9 (4), 346−375. Herder, J.G. (1793) Letters for the Advancement of Humanity. First Collection. Office of Immigration Statistics (2012). 2012 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. United States Homeland Security. See http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/ ois_yb_2012.pdf (accessed 9 March 2015). Phillipson, R. (2008) Lingua franca or lingua frankensteinia? English in European integration and globalisation. World Englishes 27 (2), 250−267. Portes, A. and Rumbaut, R. (2001) Legacies: The story of the Immigrant Second Generation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Portes, A. and Rumbaut, R. (2006) Immigrant America: A Portrait (3rd edn). Berkeley: University of California Press. Schiffman, H.F. (1996) Linguistic Culture and Language Policy. London/New York: Routledge. Schiller, H. (2000) Living in the Number One Country: Reflections from a Critic of Empire. New York: Seven Stories Press. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000) Linguistic Genocide in Education − or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Todd, E. (2003) After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order. New York: Columbia University Press. Tsuda, Y. (2008) The hegemony of English and strategies for linguistic pluralism: Proposing the ecology of language paradigm. In M. Asante, Y. Miike and J. Yin (eds) The Global Intercultural Communication Reader. New York: Routledge.

20 TEFL and International Politics: A Personal Narrative1 Julian Edge (writing in 2003)

I wonder how many people read Bill Templer’s article in IATEFL Issues (2003) about English language teaching (ELT) and Iraq, and how many were turned off by the topic and how many found themselves engaged by it. In my own case, my position has changed over the years, and I do believe that we now [2003] live in critical times. In 1969, when I started out teaching English as a foreign language (EFL), I made a point of insisting that I just taught the language. What people did with it was up to them, and whether they were bothered about my cultural background, or I about theirs, might be a matter of some interest, but it was definitely not central to how I earned my living. Something changed for me in the mid-70s, when an Egyptian medical student, whose English was unlikely to see him through the upcoming exams, asked me with a great deal of passion exactly why I thought he should be stopped from becoming a doctor in his own country simply because he couldn’t learn my language. I came to see that English is a barrier to personal and professional aspiration to exactly the same extent that it is a gateway. Except, of course, that it is a barrier to many times more people than it is a gateway. I came to see myself as inevitably implicated in this system of repression and reward, and I came to live with this perception. It is, after all, little different from any other educational situation, isn’t it? A student might ask, ‘Why should I be stopped from becoming a carpenter just because I can’t learn to use tools precisely?’ or ‘Why should I be stopped from becoming an accountant just because I can’t learn to calculate numbers accurately?’ The list is endless, and the answer is always the same: ‘Because that’s the way things are. Because those are the skills that you need. Because not everyone can realise every aspiration.’ And in the bigger political picture, the English language itself is also neutral. It is the particular situation that determines its role and function. So, the same language that had to be displaced in the Tanzanian struggle for independence was a tool for liberation in the South African struggle. As an EFL teacher, I provide access to an international language that a lot of people want to learn − their politics is their business, and mine is my own.

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An important next step for me was coming to understand the concept of hegemony: that we act in ways that reinforce the power structures that control us because, in the end, we see it as being in our interests to do so. We may do this consciously or unconsciously. So, I go to the cinema and watch almost exclusively Hollywood movies, even though I dislike the hegemonic relationship through which Hollywood styles and values of storytelling threaten to eliminate other indigenous styles of filmmaking. My Egyptian medical student continued to study English (finally passing the requisite exam) and, in so doing, supported the system of English requirement that angered him so much. We have choices, albeit constrained by the overarching systems and power structures of ‘the way things are’. Recently [2003], things have changed for me again. The invasion and occupation of Iraq by the United States, Britain and Australia opened up a new chapter in my political awareness and in my sense of the political significance of what I do for a living. It is not simply that the United States, Britain and Australia are the three major English-language teaching providers in the world, although that point helps highlight what is going on. It is, for me, more important to consider the change from a relationship of economic, cultural and political hegemony, which involves constrained consent, to one of outright and overt military force. If it is true that the United States is shifting from its age of republic to its age of empire, English becomes once again an imperial language, and that is significant. If Iraq, for example, is to emerge from its current turmoil in any way that is foreseen by its present rulers, then that will be an Iraq in which the ability to communicate effectively in English is of paramount importance. Without ELT, imperial policy would be infinitely more difficult to impose. To put that another way, ELT is an arm of imperial policy − out in the open − in ways that were not so obvious before. I believe that it is now possible to see us, EFL teachers, as a second wave of imperial troopers. Before the armoured divisions have withdrawn from the city limits, while the soldiers are still patrolling the streets, English teachers will be facilitating the policies that the tanks were sent to impose. And wherever, and to whomsoever, I teach EFL, I am a part of that overarching system. That is where I have come to now and, like every such statement, it invites the question, ‘So what?’ Either there is a so what, the pragmatist might say, or all of this is so much hot air. I believe that there is a so what, but I’m not altogether clear at the moment what it is or how to articulate it. I no longer believe that it is sufficient to say, ‘That’s the way things are.’ I have come to see the above parallel with carpenters and accountants as facile and self-serving. It is no longer credible (if it ever was) to teach EFL and blinker out the political impact of the large-scale endeavour to which one contributes. It is not that I am forgetting the

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personal triumphs and individual aspirations that one can enjoy being a part of, it is more that I feel now [2003] that the shadow has grown larger beyond those sunlit images. We need to look again at the materials we use in class and the worldviews that they represent, at the methods that we use and the interactional and learning styles that they foreground, at the choices we make in selecting the content of our courses, at the extent to which we teach a language of compliance to the exclusion of a language of protest, at the tests we use, to what purpose, and at the policy decisions we make in language planning. We need to develop further some responses to these ‘so what’ aspects of a growing perception that we are implicated up to our communicative necks in the building of an empire with whose purposes we may not wish to align ourselves but whose uniforms we may be seen to be wearing. Fundamentally, when we are asked, as EFL teachers, what contribution we make to a better world, we need to be ready to reply. […] I am aware that there is a literature to which I have not referred, and I in no way wish to disrespect those concerned, any more than I would want to endorse without reservation their varying analyses. […] My purpose in this article has been to chart a personal shift of perception and, with it, of response. And to seek a resonance in the profession.

Note (1)

This article first appeared in IATEFL Issues 175 (October 2003), 10−11. It is reprinted here with permission.

Reference Templer, W. (2003) ELT in the ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq. IATEFL Issues 173, 4−5.

21 Hungary: A Sham Fightback Against the Domination of English1 Miklós Kontra

In his Introduction to English Language as Hydra: Its Impact on Non-English Language Cultures, Rapatahana (2012: 8) mentions, as one of its five themes, the fightbacks against the domination of the English language. In this contribution I will illustrate the case of a sham fightback, one that is neither honest, nor serious nor successful. This is the ‘fightback’ mounted by the current Hungarian government, led by the right-wing Fidesz 2 party. Fidesz first held office between 1998 and 2002 then returned to power in 2010. It was re-elected with a two-thirds majority in the Hungarian Parliament in 2014. To enable readers to understand how such a sham fightback can effectively serve domestic political ends in Hungary, I will briefly summarise the pertinent political- and language-related events in the country after 1990. Clearly, Anglo-American foreign-policymakers lost no time in seizing the opportunities that were created by the fall of the Iron Curtain. The British government declared in 1990 that it aimed to ensure that English would replace Russian as the second language throughout Eastern Europe (Phillipson, 1992: 10). US president George H.W. Bush dispatched Peace Corps volunteers into Hungary, telling them that ‘The key you carry with you will be the English language … the language of commerce and understanding … Your investment is America’s investment in the consolidation of democracy and independence in central and eastern Europe’ (Crawford, 1992: 206). When the Iron Curtain collapsed, the first post-communist Hungarian government was eager to receive Western aid, including the British Council’s English Language Teacher Supply Programme (ELTSUP), which successfully modernised English-language teacher education in Hungary (costing £1 million, with matching funds from the government of Hungary). As a result of ELTSUP, the quality and quantity of Englishteacher education dramatically increased in the 1990s, and the Centres for English Teacher Training (CETTs) in the Universities of Budapest (ELTE),

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Debrecen and Szeged created considerable competition for the traditional philology-dominated teacher education programmes across the country. The increased external influence on English language teaching (ELT) resulted in quite radical changes to teaching materials and pedagogical approaches in national education. This impacted on the professional identity of language teachers (Kontra, 1997: 83, 87): Until 1989 there was little serious danger of English-American cultural and linguistic imperialism in Hungary but today there are unmistakable signs of such penetration and voices of concern are heard from a growing number of Hungarians ... Most ELT materials produced in, and exported from, the United Kingdom and the United States disregard the learners’ L1, and in this respect we might question their professionalism ... business interests override a fundamental professional interest, or: business shapes our profession in ways that we know are unprofessional. This puts us, both native and non-native teachers of English into quite a schizophrenic position. The challenge that we are faced with is to keep the professionalism and get rid of the embarrassment. This ‘embarrassment’ was lucidly articulated by a Greek colleague who was also concerned about being on the receiving end of Anglo-American norms, both linguistic and pedagogic (Dendrinos, 1999): There is a systematic construction of reality whereby, by not knowing English, one is excluded from anything of social importance … Greek ELT practitioners persistently evaluate their proficiency in English against the English of the native speaker … This underlying contradiction of a ‘culturally neutral’ language used in a ‘culturally appropriate way’… the claim that the native speaker is the ideal ELT practitioner construes Greek ELT practitioners as ‘knowledge deficient’. By about 2000, however, owing to the launch of the Bologna process in Hungarian higher education, the CETTs were forcibly re-merged with the philology-dominated departments of English, and the greater part of the innovations that they introduced has since evaporated. So much so that according to one study (Nikolov, 2011), the classroom teaching of English and German is mainly characterised by grammar-translation and frontal (rather than student-centred) instruction. One of several possible readings of the rise and fall of the British Council’s ELTSUP project in Hungary could be that the traditional English philology departments in the major universities perceived a measure of real competition from the innovative teacher-training programmes and succeeded in fighting against the English Hydra’s teacher-training attack. But, as will be

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shown below, sham fight-backs of the Hydra’s influence have also been occurring. Left- and right-wing governments have alternated in power in Hungary. The country became a member state of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) in 1999 and of the European Union in 2004. In general, one could say that the various governments before 2010 paid considerable (but not nearly enough) attention to the protection of the several-million-strong Hungarian minorities in the countries adjacent to Hungary, including their language rights. These governments, with some characteristic differences, paid a tremendous amount of lip service to the cause of the Hungarian language, partly to court constituencies in Hungary and partly to demonstrate how much they care for Hungarians in the neighbouring countries. Readers should note that ‘the cause of the Hungarian language’ and the ‘fight’ for it has been an extremely important theme in Hungarian social and political discourse since the 1830s (Sherwood, 1996). It has also been equated with ‘the cause of the nation’, so much so that champions of the language are oftentimes equated with champions of the nation, and, predictably, traitors to the language are seen as traitors to the nation. In 2001, the Fidesz government passed a law in Parliament designed to protect the Hungarian language from what it deemed unnecessary and harmful foreign influences. English was seen as having a pernicious influence, increasingly endangering communication in the land of the Hungarians. Most of the debates in Parliament demonstrated the linguistic ignorance and politically driven agenda of almost all members, both right and left. Most members supported ‘the noble cause’ of protecting the mother tongue, and the law was passed. In essence, it was to make it compulsory for public signage (e.g. Dohánybolt ‘tobacco store’; bolt ‘shop’) to also display the supposedly Hungarian equivalents of allegedly nonHungarian words. Several leading linguists, including this writer, argued in national newspapers that for a linguistic scientist it is not possible to distinguish Hungarian words from foreign words, hence the law would be nonsensical from a scientific point of view but could, on the other hand, be used to generate social strife (e.g. one store owner reporting on another and getting the authorities to levy a fine on his/her competitor). The law was passed, the saviours of the nation patted themselves on the back, and nothing changed in the linguistic landscape of Hungary. Not only did English words and phrases, as well as pseudo-English ones, proliferate, but Chinese and other lesser-known languages are as visible today as they were 15 years ago. In short, the Fidesz government had passed a law in Parliament against the spread of English that has turned out to be totally toothless. In fact, English thrives on the government’s symbolic fight against it. The spread of English in Hungary has been much debated since the 1990s, but few academics have written articles of an analytic nature on the

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topic (e.g. Kontra, 1997, 2001; Petzold & Berns, 2000, 2001, in English; some other texts have been written in Hungarian but have not been referenced in this chapter). Language-policy decisions, when made at all, tended to be ad hoc, especially concerning foreign-language teaching in public education. English, and to a lesser extent German, took centre stage, dwarfing or even extinguishing the teaching of Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin and other languages in state schools. Table 21.1 demonstrates the changes in the numbers of primary-school learners of English, German, French and Russian between 1990 and 2013: The percentages are fairly similar for secondary general schools (Hungarian gimnáziumok): English rises from 30% in 1990 to 50% in 2013; German from 23% in 1990 to 33% in 2013; while Russian drops from 32% in 1990 to almost 0% in 2001; and French remains stable with 0.07% of all Hungarian secondary general school learners. In 2006, the Socialist and Free Democrat government went as far as making the learning of English in public schools a ‘civic right’ − it was not mandatory to learn English, but if one pupil wished to learn it, his/ her school had to offer English classes. No other foreign language, not even German − a historically and culturally more important language than English in Hungary − enjoyed this privilege. This obsessive focus on English as a ‘civic right’ originated from a liberal minister of education, who did not consult teachers, parents, pupils or languagepolicy experts. It is hard to know if this was an attempt to promote English linguistic imperialism in Hungary or simply one politician’s idea to make his nation happier. Perhaps to counter this ‘liberal’ educational policy, in 2011 the Fidesz government voiced the idea that English should not be the first foreign language taught in Hungary because it was ‘too easy’. Instead, languages ‘with a fixed, structured grammatical system, the learning of which presents a balanced workload, such as neo-Latin languages’ should be taught first (Racz, 2011). This turned out to be a short-lived, rhetorical attempt at slaughtering the English Hydra. The plan has not been implemented.

Table 21.1 Learners of English, German, French and Russian as foreign languages in Hungarian primary schools between 1990 and 2013 Foreign language studied

1990/91

2001/02

2012/13

English

16%

54%

73%

German

23%

44%

26%

French

1%

0%

0%

Russian

59%

0%

0%

Source: Ministry of Human Resources, 2013: Statistical Yearbook of Education 2012/2013 (29–31)

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When Fidesz won the elections with a two-thirds majority in 2010, they began to drastically restructure Hungarian society and politics. They altered the Constitution, packed the courts and the chief prosecutor’s office with loyalists and changed laws so that Fidesz can dominate as much as possible. On 7 November 2014 the International New York Times wrote ‘[Prime minister Viktor] Orbán is rapidly centralising power, raising a crop of crony oligarchs, cracking down on dissent, expanding ties with Moscow and generally drawing uneasy comparisons from Western leaders and international opponents to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia’ (Lyman & Smale, 2014). Following criticism from US Presidents Clinton and Obama, a New York Times editorial (5 November 2014) stated that the Hungarian government is sliding toward authoritarianism and defying fundamental values of the European Union - and getting away with it. … In July [2014], Mr. Orbán said he would mold Hungary into an ‘illiberal’ state, citing Russia, Turkey and China as models. His government has promoted ethnic nationalism that helps foster anti-Semitism and anti-Roma prejudices. Orbán said Hungary will be ‘breaking with the dogmas and ideologies that have been adopted by the West’ and will instead build a ‘new Hungarian state’ that will be ‘competitive in the great global race for decades to come’ (Lyman & Smale, 2014). Orbán’s building of a new Hungarian state is packaged in the false rhetoric of ‘fighting for Hungarian freedom’ and being against the kind of ‘cowboy capitalism’ − a popular topos in Central European politics − that led to the financial collapse of 2008. The ‘fight for the cause of the Hungarian language’ is now part of the greater ‘fight for Hungarian freedom’. Fidesz started its ‘fight for the mother tongue’ soon after returning to power in the summer of 2010. In fall 2010, the president of Hungary, Pál Schmitt, began his campaign for the envisaged new Constitution to include in the preamble a statement that, ‘The Hungarian language is the most important repository of our national identity.’ He also proposed that ‘It is the State’s quintessential duty to safeguard, nurture and develop the Hungarian language.’ (In April 2012, this president resigned because investigative journalists revealed that he had plagiarised his 1992 PhD dissertation.) The government’s rhetoric for Hungarian freedom went hand-in-hand with its anti-Eueropean Union, anti-World Bank and anti-globalisation rhetoric. In April 2014, Orbán’s government established a new office, called the Hungarian Language Strategy Institute, which is supposed to encourage the correct use of Hungarian, prepare materials to be written at the government’s behest for its decisions on language policy and language

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cultivation and establish and monitor a medium-term strategy for the Hungarian language (Feher, 2014). This is one of at least five new institutes that they have established in recent years, all with the mission to counter the well-established scholarly Hungarian Academy of Sciences research institutes. The goal is to produce ‘scientific studies more in line with the nation’s true interests’. One of these ‘true interests’ is to whitewash Hungary’s alliance with the Nazis during World War II (Lyman & Smale, 2014). When the plans to establish the Hungarian Language Strategy Institute came to light, dissenting opinions were immediately published in Hungary and abroad. The establishment of such an institute was seen as a frontal attack on academic freedom and the existing internationally renowned Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Laakso (2014), who is a Finn, a professor of Finno-Ugric Studies at the University of Vienna and thoroughly at home in Hungarian language and culture, concluded What we see now on the fringes of Hungarian linguistics resembles what is happening on the fringes of Hungarian history-writing. Alongside the established and internationally connected institutions of science and learning, a parallel national research is being built up. So far, these parallel institutions have been playing their own games and haven’t even tried to compete with serious academic research on their own field. Instead of aspiring to real academic merits, the people active in these parallel scholarly enterprises contribute a pseudo-academic glaze to the government’s nationalist rhetoric. In return, they receive pseudo-academic merits and nice-looking additions to their CVs, and some of them can even get a nice pseudo-academic position at a new ‘research’ institute. Win-win. It should be pointed out here that nyelvstratégia (‘language strategy’) is a mere euphemism for native Hungarians today. It covers all kinds of interference with language matters, by means of autocratic, centrally directed stipulations that are supposed to impact even on private language use (similar in kind to the ‘correct’ use of English different from vs different than), including irrational and dilettante messing around with the language. This is being undertaken in fields where professional researchers into language policy and language management would exercise caution and be reluctant to intervene. As Alexander Pope put it, ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread.’ The important point I would like to make here − one that I have made several times in Hungarian publications − is that there is no Hungarian language policy today, and there has not been any for at least six decades, in the sense that Grin (2003: 30) defines the term:

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Language policy is a systematic, rational, theory-based effort at the societal level to modify the linguistic environment with a view to increasing aggregate welfare. It is typically conducted by official bodies or their surrogates and aimed at part or all of the population living under their jurisdiction. In Central Europe, as in a great many parts of the world, there is no shortage of discussion about the spread of English. Some see it as a welcome march of the language of globalisation, super-modernity and social and economic advance. Others are sensitive about the roles English is being made to play, including the reduction of linguistic diversity and the use of mother tongues caused by subtractive (rather than additive) language policies locally, nationally and supranationally. Bulgaria is one example of a post-communist country where English is seen as a neocolonial invader (see Templer, this volume). Serbia, by contrast, is one where ‘there is a great need to establish, build and institutionally teach contact linguistics competence’ (Prćić, 2014: 19) to all well-educated non-native graduates of English language and linguistics, in order to contribute to strengthening peaceful coexistence between English as the nativised foreign language in Serbia and the other languages there. English as the nativised foreign language (ENFL) is defined by Prćić (2014: 19) as being different from English as a foreign language in as much as (1) it is audio-visually readily available globally, (2) it is often first acquired non-institutionally, that is, picked up spontaneously by children through exposure to television, cartoons, picture books, computers and so on and (3) it is allowed to exert continuous influence on both the international community and the individual language communities with which it comes into contact. In conclusion, I have attempted to demonstrate here that in Hungary, passivity and incompetence in dealing with language policy can be successfully sold as an apparent ‘fightback’ against the spread of English. The current government is buttressing its nationalistic policies by claiming to deal with the English Hydra but in a fraudulent, sham-like way. They operate in a culture that will buy into this, and they are mean enough to sell it to their clientele. This, of course, helps the insidious expansion of English due to market forces and does so in a way that does not directly criticise the forces behind its spread.

Notes (1) (2)

I am extremely grateful to László Cseresnyési, Magdolna Kovács, Petteri Laihonen and Peter Sherwood for their assistance with this chapter. Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége: originally the Alliance of Young Democrats, but a conservative party since 1994. In 1995, it added the Hungarian Civic Party to its name: Fidesz − Magyar Polgári Szövetség.

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References Crawford, J. (1992) Hold Your Tongue: Bilingualism and the Politics of ‘English Only’. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Dendrinos, B. (1999) The conflictual subjectivity of the periphery ELT practitioner. In A.-F. Christidis (ed.) ‘Strong’ and ‘Weak’ Languages in the European Union: Aspects of Linguistic Hegemonism. Proceedings of an international conference, Thessaloniki, 26–28 March 1997. Thessaloniki: Centre for the Greek Language, 2 volumes, 711–717. Feher, M. (2014) Mind your language, says Hungary’s government. The Wall Street Journal 20 March. Grin, F., with contributions by Jensdóttir, R. and Riagáin, D.Ó (2003) Language Policy Evaluation and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kontra, M. (1997) English linguistic and cultural imperialism and teacher training in Hungary. In Report on the Second ELT Conference on Teacher Training in the Carpathian Euro-region, Debrecen, Hungary, 25–27 April 1997 (pp. 83–88). Budapest: British Council, English Language Teaching Contacts Scheme. Kontra, M. (2001) Disinformation on English in Hungary. World Englishes 20, 113–114. Laakso, J. (2014) Brave new linguistics. See http://hungarianspectrum.wordpress. com/2014/07/07/johanna-laakso-brave-new-linguistics/ (accessed 3 January 2015). Lyman, R. and A. Smale (2014) Defying Soviets, then pulling Hungary to Putin. International New York Times 7 November. Ministry of Human Resources (2013) Statistical Yearbook of Education 2012/2013. Budapest: The Ministry of Human Resources. New York Times [Editorial] (2014) Hungary’s dangerous slide. 5 November. Nikolov, M. (2011) Az idegen nyelv tanulása és a nyelvtudás. Magyar Tudomány 9, 1048–1058. Petzold, R. and Berns, M. (2000) Catching up with Europe: speakers and functions of English in Hungary. World Englishes 19, 113–124. Petzold, R. and M. Berns (2001) Truth, heat and light. World Englishes 20, 114–116. Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prćić, T. (2014) English as the nativised language and its impact on Serbian. English Today 30, 13–20. Racz, G. (2011) English too easy for Hungarians. The Wall Street Journal 18 August. Rapatahana, V. (2012) English language teaching as thief. In V. Rapatahana and P. Bunce (eds) English Language as Hydra: Its Impacts on Non-English Language Cultures. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Sherwood, P. (1996) ‘A nation may be said to live in its language’: Some socio-historical perspectives on attitudes to Hungarian. In R.B. Pynsent (ed.) The Literature of Nationalism: Essays on East European Identity 27–39. London: SSEES/Macmillan.

22 The English Language as a Trojan Horse within the People’s Republic of China Mobo Gao and Vaughan Rapatahana

Conquer English to make China stronger! Li Yang, ‘Crazy English’

Introduction The overall language situation in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is complex, contradictory and subject to roller-coaster type shifts in policy as dictated by the state, which has always been somewhat ambivalent about English: ‘official support for the language has traditionally been grudging and circumspect, although stimulated by the perceived benefits to the nation’ (Gil & Adamson, 2011: 17). While there are many languages and ‘dialects’ on the Chinese stage, modern standard Mandarin (MSM) is the major player, followed by English, and there is considerable and continued debate regarding both of their roles. We will argue that a language embodies its cultural values and that the dominance of any language will mean the dominance of the cultural values wrapped in that language, whether manifestly through the actions, attitudes and resources of its ‘native’ speakers, or latently via the incorporation of words into indigenous tongues or indeed via the cultural nuances of the words themselves. English is no neutral medium. Whether we term the phenomenon cultural imperialism, spreading by soft power, exporting Anglo-American cultural capital or globalisation by default, the dominance of English, not just in China but globally, threatens cultural and value diversity. It is in this sense that we will argue that the English language is a Trojan horse; another very potent head of this beast, the Hydra. Cooke (1988) first utilised this description of the ways in which the English language infiltrates and then corrupts another culture, as well as its languages. This subterfuge, over the years, has seriously impacted upon Chinese culture.

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In this chapter we will specify more clearly just how the promoters of the English language in China have furthered the incorporated Western cultural influences that the language introduces, and we will specify some of these negative impacts. We will also argue that the state − the Chinese Communist Party authorities − have been and are, indeed, aware of the non-Chinese, non-socialist values implicit in the English language and its dissemination and that they have, especially in the last few years, made determined efforts to diminish this impact and to counter it. Whether they are successfully able to control the spread and impact of English within China remains rather doubtful. The Trojan horse that is English, initially invited in and encouraged by these Chinese authorities (also under the influence of imperialist offshore actors such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), for which China spent 15 years negotiating its terms of membership) and now being confronted − is not yet tamed. In other words, we believe that what Adamson (2002: 231) described as ‘the government of China … adopting a strategy of selective appropriation under state control’ in order to avoid the ‘potential pitfalls of cultural transfer’ will not be able to contain this English-language Hydra.

The Penetration of English into China Prior to 1949 Although British and American missionaries had tried to penetrate China for hundreds of years, their efforts in spreading the gospel were generally not successful. One of the reasons for their lack of success was the language barrier. The missionaries considered ‘the Chinese language’ baffling at best, with so many different ‘dialects’ and a non-alphabetic script. On the other hand, not many Chinese were keen to learn English, the barbarian language or yi. However, this situation started to change after China was forced to confront Western imperialism, the military superiority of which overwhelmed them. They found that they had to learn English to deal with ‘the foreign devils’. By 1862, formal English education in China was officially introduced when Tong Wen Guan1 and a number of new, often missionary, schools were set up. More than this, the British had also established a cadre of English-speaking compradors for trade purposes in cities such as Canton. Prior to the establishment of the PRC in 1949, English had already had a huge impact on Chinese life at the élite level because many of the most influential public intellectuals and academics such as Hu Shi had been educated in the United States. Therefore, the spread of English in China had a political nature from its very beginning. From the outset, English was the servant of imperialism, and the Chinese situation was but part of the modernity narrative of the global spread of English. Indeed, acquiring English was a ‘barometer of modernisation’ (Ross, 1992).

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English and the Culture of Modernity in Post-Mao China After the Chinese Communists took power in 1949, ideological concerns as well as changes in international relations led to a major policy shift in foreign-language education. Russian rose to become the first foreign language in middle and higher education, while English, once a privileged foreign language, was limited to the tertiary syllabus and did not appear in middle-school curricula until 1956. Then, following the split between the Chinese Communists and their Soviet Russian counterparts in the early 1960s, English regained its primary status. However, during the late 1960s, the learning of foreign languages was practically non-existent because of the political climate during the Cultural Revolution. After the death of Mao in 1976, the Communist Party leadership under Deng Xiaoping saw clearly that English would be a means to attract foreign investment and for China to integrate into the global economy. This fed on the modernisation discourse, first prioritised there as the Four Modernisations policy. This discourse regarding the instrumental value of the English language became an important part of their determined attempt to uplift China as a major world actor, both economically and politically: English language competency would provide more impetus for China on the global stage, and it would also be a tool by which the country could manifest and restore pride in itself as a potent global player. This major political change brought about a dramatic rise of the English language in Chinese education and social life. Moreover, the course design, the criteria for the selection of teaching materials and the importance that the English language received in the curriculum reinforced the assumption that such ‘standardised’ English embodied cultural superiority. English was symbolic not only of international political power, modern science, technology and business but also of higher living standards, of a ‘better’ culture, a more ‘advanced’ civilisation. So the learning of English began to regather momentum. At tertiary level, the Chinese government started to send groups of students to study English in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries. The first group arrived in the United Kingdom as early as 1971. Indeed, the expansion of English language education has been one of the most impressive developments in China over the past 40 years. The China Daily (2006) estimated that there were as many as 300 million English-language learners in the first decade of the new century, while Wolff (2010) estimated that there were up to 250,000 expatriate English as a foreign-language teachers in both state and private education facilities. English was also set up as one of the three major courses to be studied at middle school, the other two being Chinese language and mathematics.

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On average, a Chinese student spends 1200 class hours learning English at middle school. In the fierce and strict annual national college entrance examination, gaokao, the English examination paper was set up to have 150 marks out of a total of 750 in all subjects; although very recently this has changed, a point we will later return to (Zhang, 2007). In higher education, China runs six national universities of foreign languages located in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Xi’an and Dalian. Besides these, more than 3000 institutions of higher education have a foreign-language college or department, with the largest enrolment in English. At tertiary level, all students have to take English as a compulsory course and have, on average, 380 hours in undergraduate study and 320 more in postgraduate study (Zhang, 2007: 2). Students need to pass the national English competence examinations (College English Tests, CET) such as CET 4 and CET 6 in order to graduate, although Wolff (2010: 54) writes that ‘passing any of these tests … has hardly anything to do with real language competency’ − one major reason being the lack of emphasis on an oral English component. Unfortunately, the language is neither taught nor internalised particularly well. As Jianbo Li (2006: 27-28) noted, ‘the general teaching result is that students only memorise words for their test, but are weak at language … the students may pass the test, but cannot communicate in English.’ English learning does not stop at graduation or within the school system. One learns English at professional institutions or via private or self-study classes. English is one of the essential qualifications for all the scientists, academics and professionals working in state-run sectors. In fact, it is a prerequisite for gaining career promotion. An academic may have to pass an English test before he or she can be promoted to become a professor of Chinese literature. A professional may have to acquire his or her English many years after leaving university. Recently, there has been a further drive towards acquiring Englishlanguage skills − as China seeks to strengthen its overall international stature via the hosting of international events and gatherings of ‘world bodies’ such as the 2008 Olympic Games, 2 the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010 and for the country’s entry into the WTO back in 2001. Such events have driven a requirement for English as international communication.

English Language as a Trojan Horse for Western Values: How did the Horse get in? There are two important agents at work in this spread of English. The first, as indicated already, is the Chinese government itself, the national language policymaker, which attempts to act as a gatekeeper of English in that it stipulates just how much English can be taught, examined and disseminated within the country. The blocking of many Western websites

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via the Great Firewall is evidence of this. Recently the government has made some attempts to further regulate the educational requirements for, and to restrict access to, the language, precisely because they see the Trojan horse implications involved with its learning and teaching − and that these are detrimentally affecting China. The second agent is the intellectual élite, the supporters and implementers of the policy, who have created a tremendous desire and ‘necessity’ for learning English and who continue to be the individuals at the forefront of those calling for ‘more’ English, primarily as they have so much to gain from it. This linear narrative of modernity has also been expressed by Chinese authors writing in English, which has further strengthened the demand for the language within China. The core of this narrative is that China is seen as a communist regime on the wrong side of history. The 1980s backlash against the era of Mao by almost all the Chinese political and intellectual élite not only embraced this narrative theoretically but also provided empirical evidence to support it. The ‘telling bitterness’ literature by the Chinese intellectual élite as expressed in ‘the literature of the wounded’ and Chinese expatriates’ memoirs and autobiographies such as Jung Chang’s Wild Swans (1993) and Nien Cheng’s Life and Death in Shanghai (1987), all written in English, reinforced the ‘correctness’ of Western values. At this stage, China did not seem to have any obvious strong ideological values that could compete with these values. This modernity narrative portrayed English not just as investment capital but as a necessity, a part of life, at least for some elements of Chinese society. One of the leading dissident public intellectuals, Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, expressed this sentiment graphically by saying that China could become part of the civilised world only ‘if it had been colonised for two hundred years’ (Gao, 2012: 182): for him, one could become modern only if one also learned English. These joint efforts of the government and the intellectual élite undoubtedly pushed Chinese society much closer towards an ‘English consciousness’. Chinese cultural values were definitely under pressure in the early days of the Reform and Opening policy that commenced at the end of the 1970s, despite the best intentions of the state. This was epitomised in the slogan, zhong xue wei ti, xi xue wei yong (Chinese knowledge as the foundation and Western knowledge for utility). This is one reason why so many Chinese students today go to countries such as the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to study English. This was also a prime factor in the spread of the Crazy English fad, which has since ensured enormous monetary gain for its idiosyncratic originator, Li Yan. Crazy English consists of yelling out English words and phrases en masse. The irony here is the fact that so many

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Chinese are still not capable of even the most rudimentary spoken English, despite this faddish drive to learn the tongue. However, by so actively promoting the English language as a means of up-skilling China economically and putting the country on the world stage, the inherent cultural values of the language in and of its words and phrases have also crept in and threatened to outweigh the perceived ‘benefits’ of acquiring the skills the language supposedly enhances. At the social level, critics found that Western ideas have had unintended consequences. Hsu (1995: 882) observed, ‘Almost everything foreign was attractive: political thought, social theories, futurology, novels, plays, art, fashion, and even such mundane things as Coca-Cola, Maxwell House Coffee, and Kentucky Fried Chicken.’ In particular, such Western ideas worked on the minds of the younger generation. Zhang (2007) has demonstrated very well how English has become such a Trojan horse in the People’s Republic of China, by presenting two case studies − one that of Voice of America (VOA) in English and the other, George Orwell − which show that the state has allowed such English language resources to come in as part of their effort to promote language skills. Why did the Chinese authorities allow this to happen? This was not a blind mistake but a decision made on the − to them at least − rational basis that English is the portal to modernisation: their overall strategy. The intellectual élite who implemented this strategy also benefited personally in the process. They were promoted in their careers, received funding for their projects and were invited to visit various prestigious universities and institutions in the West. No wonder they supported the need for the acquisition of this tongue. In short, English was identified with Western modernity. The expected economic benefits of speaking English became a top motivator for many individuals, not only to promote China and to regain her political power globally but also for their own personal ‘success’, for a ‘better life’. English had become one of the determiners of an individual’s occupational prospects. A graduate with an official Band 6 English certificate is more competitive in the job market and is perhaps more likely to obtain employment. Unfortunately, the reality, not only in China, is that this promise is all too often only that. Competence in the English language in no way guarantees employment, fiscal ‘success’ or promotion. For those who do gain employment, many do not make use of the language that they spent so much time ‘learning’, and they soon forget it. All of these contradictory aspects continue to form the poles of an ongoing debate as to the value of English in China; a debate that continues in online forums. The debate also incorporates the important question as to whether the English language undermines Chinese cultural values. For example, Lin Pan and Seargeant (2012) argue that the Chinese state always had things under control as they downplayed any nefarious effects of the

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tongue. We take the opposite view entirely: for us, the English language remains a Trojan horse in China as its words and phrases creep and seep into everyday use, while at the same time inculcating alien cultural values.

How the West also Pushed the Trojan Horse into China Thus far we have focused on the pull factors that have driven the dramatic spread and influence of English within China from the 1970s onwards. Anglo-American quasi-governmental agencies − like the British Council and some nongovernmental organisations − have further encouraged the rush to English-language empowerment, and these have been equally complicit in influencing the Trojan horse’s ‘positive’ grooming: the push side of the equation. Phillipson (2010: 151-166) reviewed Kerr writing about an attempt by the British Council to break into China by offering to supply foot-in-the-door English-language trainers who were to infiltrate China with a creed of free marketism − ‘the aim of British “development assistance” was to penetrate the Chinese academic world and convert it to British approaches … through the cachet of native speakers.’ Kerr noted, however, that there was ‘massive Chinese resistance’ (2010: 154) to this attempt. English was wanted, but not at all costs. Stephenson (2006: 200) also writes of a determined effort by American interests to deliberately introduce a Trojan horse to subvert Chinese legal infrastructures, by introducing American-sponsored legal reforms, in order for China to attain their desired economic goals. It was hoped that such reforms would take on a life of their own: ‘the US strategy is to “plant seeds in patches of sunlight”’ − all via the English language, of course. This was exactly the way in which the United States had finally prodded China into joining the WTO. There are also a number of technical reasons that have to do with some dominant Anglo-American models in English-language teaching today, such as ‘scientisation’, ‘trivialisation’ and ‘marketisation’ or what Phillipson (1992: 11-15) calls ‘professionalism’ in English-language teaching. These models claim to divorce culture from structure and pretend to limit language education to its technical and skill aspects. As Pennycook (1994: 142) notes, ‘many English-language teachers [have] been presented with a view of language that denies any notion of the worldliness of language.’ In reality these apparently non-political models have also turned English into a political Trojan horse. The Chinese official ideology has changed beyond recognition since the death of Mao, whereby the so-called socialist planned economy has been replaced by what is called a ‘socialist market economy’. This is a telling case where Western economic models have increasingly blurred the boundary between ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism’, while many of the inherent mores and motives of the latter have also crept in.

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In a country where any overt challenge to official ideology is forbidden, the seemingly ‘apolitical’ has stolen into China with significant political implications. Concepts such as democracy, individual freedom of choice and universal suffrage, which traditionally were foreign to Chinese culture, have now been introduced. These tenets have also arrived via Englishlanguage teaching textbooks: for example Longman International entered the Chinese market in the late 1980s, while the People’s Education Press lost its textbook publishing monopoly during the 1990s. Western media sources, Western-educated Chinese citizens and a veritable army of expatriate native English-speaking teachers have also been significant factors. This latter point regarding Western concepts is, of course, especially relevant to the Occupy movement that took place in late 2014 in Hong Kong. Such ideological tenets are right at the forefront of this movement’s political agenda and part of their vision for this special administrative region of China. The draconian Chinese state, of course, has been adamant in its refusal to allow any of the movement’s demands. Indeed, in January 2015, ‘Education Minister Yuan Guiren urged a tightening of control over textbooks that spread “Western values”’ (Yeung, 2015).

Negative Effects of English Dominance: The Trojan Horse in Full Gallop There is increasing concern that there will be detrimental effects of the pro-English campaign on the Chinese language, Mandarin (or Putonghua) and Chinese culture in general. Online forums such as those sponsored by sina.com.cn carry warnings that there is an English linguistic imperialism that is ‘slaughtering the Chinese language’ (yingyu diguozhuyi zhengzai tuzai hanyu). Another example is a Sino Daily online report of 22 December 2010 claiming that the ‘purity’ of the Chinese language is ‘in peril’ because of English words and phrases being incorporated into everyday life and disrupting ‘the harmonious and healthy language and cultural environment, causing negative social impacts’. The state, too, is increasingly concerned about the Chinese language and its values losing out to English. Commentator Guo Haiying (2006) pointed this out when he wrote that ‘China places too much importance on learning English … A sense of national pride and identity will be lost … China’s national culture will stop developing.’ This view echoes alarm about English-language global domination reducing the importance of a nation and increasing the role of globalisation, with all of the American implications of that process. The extraordinary efforts by the state and the mainstream intellectual élite to spread the influence of English have, of late, encountered further doubts, questions and criticism regarding the practicalities of acquiring

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the tongue. Many people have started to question the need to devote so much time and energy to the learning of English, believing it is a great waste of the country’s limited educational resources. Many web users have also felt the learning experience to be far from rewarding and satisfying because of insufficient teachers with competency in the language and a lack of opportunities to practice. As a result, rote ‘learning’ has been dominant. Zhang Shuhua, head of the Intelligence Research Agency, lamented that ‘despite their efforts, Chinese students may be mastering useless “mute English”, referring to poor language skills’ (Lou, 2013; also see Bunce, this volume). A further negative impact is that the totality of English-orientated education also promotes a brain drain. Indeed, the two universities that enjoy the highest reputation in China, Peking (Beijing) and Tsinghua (Qinghua) universities, which are believed to recruit China’s brightest, are said to be the ‘preparatory schools’ for students to study in the United States, because so many of their students go on to do graduate or postgraduate studies there, due to their superior English-language skills. And many of them never return to China. At the end of 2013, the cumulative number of Chinese students who were studying abroad reached 2.64 million, while the number of people who studied abroad and came back was only 1.09 million − the ‘deficit’ between going abroad and returning exceeding 1.5 million people (reported by Xinhua online, Xinhua News Agency, 2013). Why? Essentially because this élite expatriate group can now earn more money and taste intellectual and academic freedom beyond their homeland. This search for English-language mastery has also increased the social stratification process within China, as those with the means to do so can buy their way via extra tuition and superior resources to the privileges that they believe English will bring them. According to Johnson (2009: 150), ‘the … quest to put English to use for the good of [their] country is now in fact [further] splitting the state into class strata and undermining the validity of China’s governmental system.’ Indeed there is ample evidence that in China now, there is an English-proficient urban middle-class student body with markedly more internationally influenced ideas, a point we will soon return to. Inevitably also, Chinese ethnic minorities miss out on learning English, precisely because there are neither the funds, resources nor policies available for them to access it in their rural provinces.

Some Measure of Confrontation Haltering the Horse The Chinese authorities are by no means blind to all of these effects of Trojan horsemanship but have for years been somewhat trapped between a rock and a hard place. English had been seen by them as a necessary evil, a kind of untasty medicine that the state force-fed its citizens. As Gil and Adamson (2011: 19) have noted, ‘it is unpalatable to a nation

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that, historically, has a proud sinocentric worldview, to acknowledge the political and economic hegemony that English is perceived to represent, and accept that mastery of this language is necessary for China to restore its self-esteem and prestige.’ The Chinese authorities have absolute power and jealously guard what can and cannot be done in the Republic, thus any confrontation of what they see as English hegemony, given they were complicit in the process, will come directly from the current administrative regime with no recourse to appeal. Of late there have been deliberate attempts to counter these perceived negative effects of the English language in China. Confrontation here is, in actuality, enforced diminishment and a restriction of access to the language and the ideas it may convey; democracy and a free press being examples of such ideology. In 2010, many English acronyms and words were banned by the General Academy of Press and Publication, while CCTV was told in the same year to avoid using English abbreviations on Chinese television programmes. In Business Week online (Roberts, 2014) we read that ‘Chinese authorities are waging a war on American culture and the use of English.’ Other government measures in 2013 and 2014 include taking popular American television shows off Chinese streaming sites while increasing the number of courses on traditional culture in schools. Indeed Yang Rui is quoted in Business Week as stating, ‘China has developed and become more confident about its own identity, and we think we can and need to say No to certain things; that, unfortunately, includes Western culture and [the] English language’ (Roberts, 2014). Therefore, as China has restored pride in itself, the state now wishes its citizens − pawns in the process − to have more pride in Chinese (MSM dominant) culture and to diminish what is increasingly seen as the ‘spread of pernicious values’ (Roberts, 2014) that English entails. The sheer irony here is that it was the British who initially severely dented Chinese pride and potency via their determined attempts to colonise, yet it has been ‘the communicative and instrumental function of English as a global language [which] has accelerated China’s foreign trade and helped China’s economic growth in the past decades’ (Yang Rui, 2014: 13). As this drive towards economic good health continues, there is far less requirement for English-language skills anyway, as the Wall Street Journal (Murphy) pointed out late in 2013: ‘as China’s economy matures, creating a domestic consumer class and home-grown companies to serve it, many Chinese … see new job opportunities that don’t require English.’ Conversely also, the English-language proficiency of the academic élite has increased − peer-reviewed papers in English written by Chinese researchers have risen 64-fold over the past 30 years, according to Yang Rui (2014) − so cultural confidence is now high. As China becomes less dominated by a drive towards English, so resistance to the language follows.

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Because of this − and also because the administration is very concerned by the infiltration of Western cultural values − in 2013, several universities dropped the English test requirement for entry into certain fields such as engineering, while at the same time the weight given to English test scores in the vital gaokao or college admission tests was reduced from 150 to 100 points and students could resit the examination. At the same time, starting in 2015, the weighting of Chinese in the gaokao will rise to 180 points. More recently, then, there has been a definite backlash against English. The roller-coaster ride continues, as China is now re-evaluating the value of the tongue for its citizens.

Concluding Remarks One question begs to be asked. Even if English mania abates in China and is abated by the powers that be, hasn’t the damage already been done? To be blunt, the Trojan horse has left just too many droppings. Even if − as Lin Pan and Seargeant (2012: 65) claim − most Chinese are not concerned about English as a threat (yingyu weixie lun), there is the very real sense that even this latter discourse is merely another hegemonic ploy on the part of the state, the very body that implemented the perceived ‘need’ for immediate English discourse in the first place. These two writers also stress that ‘the public discourse of “English is not a threat” may be seen as an indicator of a successful process of governance by the state’ (2012: 65). Indeed they further stress that the rapid rise in the numbers of Confucius Institutes worldwide is a deliberate counter to the perceived threat of the values and culture behind the English tongue. In fact, such institutes are the state’s very own Trojan horses. As Cole (2007) sums up, ‘any admission on the part of the authorities that English has indeed become nativised in China would make government censorship of English language media … more difficult to justify … even now such campaigns are generally ineffective.’ As Botha (2014: 9) also points out, many mobile and adaptable urban university students are acquiring English from the internet, movies and computer games. They are at least bilingual and can speak English with the rising number of foreigners in China. Consequently they are far more open to Western, primarily American, ideas, as they ‘have managed to gain access to foreign media by somehow circumventing the government censors’ (Botha, 2014: 8). Like a set of Chinese boxes, the authoritarian Chinese state is implementing several interwoven discourses all at once, as they also intentionally attempt to promote MSM internationally and domestically. Admittedly, there is a strong probability that this other mighty beast, Mandarin, is deliberately overwhelming all the other − minority − languages in China (far more than English, given the latter’s role in this

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domain), and there is also a danger that it may dominate other versions of Chinese, though the latter threat seems less imminent. This final point, however, must continually be measured against the very real possibility that the massive English-language Hydra is mightier and even more destructive than Mandarin globally, while it remains a continued threat within China. It would, of course, be more spectacular and stunning if the Hydra was more of an obvious menace in the PRC, ‘genociding’ its way through the multifarious ‘dialects’ there and really threatening MSM. But this is not the case. Rather it is insidious. Despite the purely instrumental rationales for its implementation in the People’s Republic, it does have its large foot in the door as it continues to influence the culture and mindsets − especially of wealthier young people. The Trojan horse aspect of the Hydra, then, is highly significant, and it is most unlikely that the state will ever be able to eradicate these influences, despite their strong wish to have English merely serve China. The Mandarin-English power-play can only grow in significance. Watch this space.

Notes (1) (2)

‘Interpreters College’ − the first institution in China for the study of Western thought and society − originally established in 1862 to teach Western languages and thereby free Chinese diplomats from reliance on foreign interpreters. China will also host the Winter Olympics in 2022.

References Adamson, B. (2002) Barbarian as a foreign language: English in China’s schools. World Englishes 21 (2), 231−243. Botha, W. (2014) English in China’s universities today. English Today 30 (1), 3−10. China Daily (2006) English craze is baffling. See http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ bizchina/2006-03/31/content_557211.htm (accessed 15 October 2013). Cole, S. (2007) The functionalist account of English in China: A sociolinguistic history. See http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/eng6365-cole.htm (accessed 7 October 2013). Cooke, D. (1988) Ties that constrict: English as a Trojan horse. In A. Cumming, A. Gagne and J. Dawson (eds) Awarenesses: Proceeding of the 1987 TESL Ontario Conference. Toronto: TESL Ontario, 56−62. Gao, M. (2012) Transitional rule of the Hu-Wen leadership in China: A case study of Liu Xiaobo. In J. Cheng (ed.) An Assessment of the Hu-Wen Leadership. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press. Gil, J. and Adamson, B. (2011) The English language in China: A sociolinguistic profile. In A. Feng (ed.) English Language Education across Greater China. Bristol: Multilingal Matters. Guo, H. (2006) English – not a prerequisite to internationalisation. See http://english.people. com.cn/200609/18/print20060918_303834.html (accessed 7 November 2013). Hsu, I. C.Y. (1995) The Rise of Modern China. New York: Oxford University Press. Jianbo Li (2006) Policy and the space of English in China − from liberation to globalisation. US-China Foreign Language 4 (5), May, 24−28.

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Johnson, A. (2009) The rise of English: The language of globalisation in China and the European Union. Macalester International 22, art. 12, 131−168. Jung, C. (1993) The Wild Swans, Three Daughters of China. London: HarperCollins. Lin, P. and Seargeant, P. (2012) Is English a threat to Chinese language and culture? English Today 111, 28 (8), 60−66. Luo, C. (2013) English-language studies ‘destructive’ to China’s education, says CPPCC deputy. See http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1189754/english-languagestudies-destructive-chinas-education-says-cppcc-deputy?page=all (accessed 27 November 2014). Murphy, C. (2013) English may be losing its luster in China. See http://blogs.wsj. com/chinarealtime/2013/11/07/learning-english-may-be-losing-its-luster-in-china (accessed 2 November 2014). Nien Cheng (1987) Life and Death in Shanghai. New York: Grove Press. Pennycook, A. (1994) The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education. Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Phillipson, R. (2010) The politics and the personal in language education: the state of which art? A review of J.C Alderson (ed.) The politics of language education. Individuals and institutions. Language and Education 2, 151−166. Roberts, D. 2014. China’s War on English. See http://www.businessweek.com/ articles/2014- 05-22/china-moves-to-protect-its-language-from-english#p1 (accessed 5 October 2014). Ross, H. (1992) Foreign language teaching as a barometer for Chinese modernisation. In R. Hayhoe (ed.) Education and Modernisation. New York: Pergamon Press. Sino Daily (2010) China bars English words in all publications. See http://www.sinodaily. com/reports/China-bars-english-words-all-publications (accessed 1 October 2014). Stephenson, M. (2006) A Trojan horse in China? In T. Carothers (ed.) Promoting the Rule of Law Abroad: in Search of Knowledge. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Wolff, M. (2010) China’s English mystery − The views of a China ‘foreign expert’. English Today 26 (4), December, 53−56. Xinhua News Agency (2013) Why are overseas Chinese students not returning to China? See http://www.chinasmack.com/2013/stories/why-are-overseas-chinesestudents-not-returning-to-china.html (accessed 13 December 2014). Yang R. (2014) China’s removal of English from Gaokao. International Higher Education 75, 12−13. Yeung, L. (2015) Campus crackdown on ‘Western values’. See http://www. universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20150206084252332 (accessed 9 February 2015). Zhang, E.S. (2007) The Impact of ELT on Ideology in China (1980−2000). Wuhan: Central China Normal University Press.

23 TEFL1 as Hydra: Rescuing Brazilian Teacher Educators from ‘Privilege’ Clarissa Menezes Jordão

The Hydra Descends upon us The teaching of English in Brazil has been subjected to the doctrine of the communicative approach, mainly in its threefold assumptions of ‘nativeness’ as a model of proficiency, English-only in class and the particular form of ‘English’ to be taught. Brazilian teachers tend to see themselves as knowledge consumers when it comes to English: teaching methods and textbooks are considered best when developed in England or the United States; native speakers of English are regarded as superior, and many teachers become nervous when meeting one; references to English language and culture drive the national imaginary first and foremost to England and the United States, rather than anywhere else. There is no doubt that we have been subjected to the four dimensions pointed out by Kumaravadivelu (2012) and that we are in urgent need of an epistemic break. We have an overdependence on Western knowledge production, centre-based cultural competence, centre-based methods and the Western textbook industry. Such dependency on Western knowledge and its knowers positions Brazilian public school teachers of English and teacher educators (TEs) on a tightrope. On the one hand, we are expected to challenge English as manifested by American influence all over the country. On the other, we are supposed to emulate specific native speakers of English − those whose accents and ways of using English are legitimated − and to reproduce their knowledges and ways of being. Public-school English teachers in Brazil are seen as knowing very little English, having limited resources and professional knowledge, working in restrictive conditions, facing undisciplined and demotivated students and often teaching in violent environments. When taken from the perspective that informs our imaginary, Brazilian publicschool English teachers are represented as incompetent and working in devalued places where effective language learning is conceived to be 255

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impossible. As TEs, we reproduce such mainstream knowledge about language teaching: teachers are organised into small groups according to the results of international placement tests to measure their language proficiency; lessons for teachers take place in well-equipped classrooms, with imported textbooks in an English-only environment. This creates ‘sanitised’ classrooms for teachers’ learning and serves to reinforce the message that effective teaching is impossible in public schools. This chapter follows a cohort of Brazilian TEs working at a languageteacher education centre over a period of two years. We were a group that worked in partnership with in-service Brazilian English teachers. Both the teachers and the TEs had a variety of teaching experience in public schools, ranging from 0 to 30 years. Some had PhDs and master’s degrees in English or other areas. Their ease with English varied, but most felt extremely insecure about their knowledge of the language. When we shared our life stories, especially our stories with English, we saw a common thread uniting them: English seemed to all of us, teachers and TEs, to play the role of a ‘Dear Auntie’ (Aquino, 2012) − someone who had come for a visit but then lingered on and started to meddle with family business, as she was here to stay. Our Dear Auntie English was part of our lives and had good and bad stories to tell. English seemed to be both a burden and a relief, at once making our lives heavy with the responsibility of mastering what we understood and taught as ‘someone else’s language’ but also making our lives light and motivating with the possibility that this language could open new worlds and new meanings for us and our students. Our teacher centre, called Nucleo de Assessoria Pedagogica da Universidade Federal do Paraná (NAP-UFPR), and housed by a public university in Brazil, is especially dedicated to public-school foreign-language teachers. As a continuous education centre, our work there consists mainly of outreach courses offered to teachers with some regularity. Our cohort congregates teacher educators from different universities in the area, gathered to promote our own continuous education and to work with school teachers. The centre provides a rare opportunity for collaboration between language TEs and public-school teachers of English. Created in 1995, NAP-UFPR is part of a network of eight similar centres in different public universities all over the State of Parana, the first dating back to 1989. Such networking has had more and less active times, establishing erratic partnerships with local and state secretariats of education and/or working with teachers independently. One of the most effective collaborative jobs the network has done began in 1999 with a partnership between the Secretariat of Education in Parana State and the British Council, which was aimed at granting continued education for the entire population of English-language teachers working in state schools. While it initially disregarded the work already being done by public universities and different NAPs in that field, the programme known as

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Parana ELT (English language teaching) did help us build, and later sustain, this wide network of TEs. The British Council called upon the NAPs to help them to implement their programme, for as soon as the English arrived on the scene they realised that a partnership with us was the only viable way to make this programme happen. This was not, however, a partnership in a productive sense. We soon realised that we had been called in not as partners but as executors of a programme, which was not to be discussed or worked on but implemented as planned by the external specialists. It was a programme with a colonial design. The imposition of methods, materials and educational practices and policies as conceived by the ‘English mind’ needed local TE ‘bodies’ to make it happen. Since the British needed us, we also needed them to make our network happen, to help us get together and construct our voices as a community of practice − and ultimately, resistance. Parana ELT was a great site for learning − for both loving and hating the English Hydra. Maybe, after all, we and they were not so different − some of us did act like them in our local contexts, imposing our ideals and practices on the teachers we worked with, inconsiderate of their classrooms, their beliefs and educational backgrounds. It was our getting together under the wings of the Parana ELT programme that helped us to realise what was happening to all of us. It was only after a long time, when the physical presence of the British was no more, that we were brave enough to look back over our history to understand the present and to design our practices locally. It was only when the group of teacher educators at NAP-UFPR was ready to exercise reflexivity and agency that we managed to consciously start the process of an epistemic break, around which this text has been written. Looking back meant realising that many instances of our own practices reinforced the traditional concepts of ideal English teaching-learning imported from the global North. We silenced the teachers’ contexts, prejudging them as ineffective and subliminally sending the message we had learned in our teacher-training courses and applied linguistics classes − that good foreign-language teaching-and-learning was almost impossible in crowded classrooms, with mixed-level groups, without good (imported) textbooks and without a near-native command of English on the part of teachers. We were also convinced that unless teachers could master both the language in its native uses (‘standard English’) and the knowledge produced internationally about English and how to teach it, students would not be able to learn it ‘properly’. We had not, until then, openly questioned what we meant by ‘standard’ or ‘properly’. Our course structure at NAP-UFPR reinforced the idea, learned in mainstream applied linguistics, that multi-levelled classrooms were a hindrance to learning. We used to have teachers take a placement test in order to establish their level of English before they were assigned to their

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groups, a procedure they could never have with their own students, since they all had to teach students with varying proficiency in English in the same class. It is not difficult to imagine the degree of anxiety such tests created in the teachers and ourselves. We were definitely not comfortable testing how much English our colleagues, teachers of English, knew and could use, or attributing number grades to their knowledge. We somehow felt like impostors (Bernat, 2008), since we ourselves weren’t confident about our own English. We strove to teach the teachers ‘perfect lessons’, to be used as models for their own teaching. However, when we heard the teachers describing their attempts to recreate, in their school classrooms, some of the activities that we had done with them at NAP-UFPR, we realised that we had failed to consider that their contexts were different and, therefore, the activities would not work for them as teachers, only for them as students. In a ‘sanitised’ environment like the one we had built at NAP-UFPR, teaching English was all too good to be true, despite the teacher educators all being non-native speakers of English. That created in us the discomfort of feeling inadequate as agents of change, since the only change we could attempt to promote was an improvement of the teachers’ individual English proficiency, a language proficiency we couldn’t be sure would be adequate for their pedagogical needs, since we were teaching them to act in contexts we ourselves knew little about. In our discussions between classes and in our study group, we seemed to think there was nothing to be done regarding the adversities presented by the teachers’ teaching contexts. These were judged as improper for good English teaching and learning to happen, as they contradicted the main assumptions that we had of language acquisition theories and applied linguistics for language learning to be successful. But, we were not ready to talk back, not yet.

The Unbearable Heaviness of the Hydra Our readiness to act back came about some years after the programme with the British Council was over, when the cohort of teacher educators at NAP-UFPR received some ‘fresh’ postgraduate students who were willing to make changes. We finally found room to voice our uneasiness at the colonising work that was being done. We started to informally share our practices for teaching Brazilian teachers of English, talking about the rationale we saw in our work, questioning both the structure of our courses and our own attitudes to teachers’ practices in their schools. Our uneasiness became almost unbearable when we found ourselves as research subjects and were invited to take part in doctoral research on the education of English TEs (Halu, 2010). As research subjects, we were asked to openly reflect on our practices, our aims at NAP-UFPR and our goals as teacher educators. As we gradually detected a high degree of distress among our group, we

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became convinced that we needed to voice such discomfort, and we decided to create an extension course for ourselves. This was a course on curriculum theories, aimed at studying different perspectives on English teaching and, more specifically, on the education of TEs. The topics to be discussed in the course came from an initial meeting of the cohort in which we responded to a series of questions asked by the school teachers at a previous course we had offered on the official National and State Parameters for Foreign Language Teaching. Such questions focused mainly on concepts of language, especially around which ‘English’ we (are supposed to) teach and why and on the role of English in our school syllabi. From those issues and our difficulties in reacting to them, we focused our discussions on the following: theories of knowledge; student discipline and languages; multiple intelligences and language teaching; language acquisition theories, language teaching methods and approaches; (post-)critical reading, critical literacy and multiliteracies; English and globalisation, citizenship, (national) identity and cultures. Our meetings worked as a locus of deconstruction for NAP-UFPR courses in terms of content, structure and aims, as well as for our own identities, through the problematisation of our role as English-teacher educators in a public university in the south of Brazil. They led to a complexification of what we believed to be our fixed identities and roles, as we de-essentialised our identities, reconceptualising them as performative, as constructed in our social practices. My own impressions of this course, as a participant observer, and of how it contributed to dismantle our essentialisations will be used in the analysis (in retrospect) of the unlearning process we underwent in those two years of deconstruction: the meetings of the cohort, especially during the course, were first and foremost a space for what we may call a process of ‘discursive treatment’ for our syndromes. As part of the aforementioned research process, we were asked to collectively tell our story at NAP-UFPR by putting together some individual drawings that we had produced to visualise our professional lives in that centre. One of us volunteered as the narrator, and we all took part in putting the pieces together and constructing a story. Here is a translation of the narrative, collaboratively produced and later entitled A Tale of Resistance: [Forlin, pointing at the drawings] Once upon a time there was a teacher centre called NAP-UFPR [Walesko: Traditional]. Traditional, with small, isolated groups. There were occasional attempts at conversation between them, but they never converged [laughter] and people [Martinez: did not listen] did not listen, [Martinez: but opened their eyes wide] but opened their eyes wide; they did not talk, but [Pazello: produced heavy thinking] produced heavy thinking, [Pazello: were in doubt] and were in doubt. On a beautiful sunny day there was a [Martinez: shower of ideas] shower of ideas, and it was high time, for everything in life has its time − kairós time, rather than

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kronus time − that fits, right? Those who like mythology can talk to me later − and the ideas started to converge to a similar space, mouths opened and the ears too, and [Martinez: doubts too] doubts too. [Jordao: Can I make questions as the narrative progresses?] Yes, you can [Halu: Yeah, I feel like asking questions too] [Jordao, pointing at a drawing: what is this space where the ideas converged to?] [Koppe: I think it’s a point…. The beginning of this year…] The first semester [Martinez: improvement] [Koppe: when it started to change… the first semester was the first time we managed to bring ideas about assessment, about many things we…] we created the study group [Martinez: the group started to spend more time together, we started to meet on a regular basis] [Koppe: assessment was one of our first steps, that we managed to…] [Jordao: our discussions about assessment were the first?] [Koppe: yes, from our thoughts on assessment] [Procailo: metamorphosis, right?] [Jordao: when we discussed how to assess the teachers] [Group: oh, yes, right, that’s it] [Martinez, bringing the group back to the narration: and then] the groups, right, converged, they have different ideas but we are in search of this approximation, we are all talking, [Martinez: we can see a light at the end of the tunnel] [laughter] there is light and it’s raining, ok, because everyone [Martinez: they are people] [laughter] everyone is available giving high fives to this conversation. [Martinez: thank God] Everyone is open, giving thumbs up to the discussion and already, right now, laughing their hearts out. [Halu, ironically: we are in paradise, aren’t we?] [Procailo: far from that, far from that] [Becker: but we are on the way, we can already see that something better can happen, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel] [Martinez: and we hope to have fun in the process] [laughter] [Koppe: we hope to be able to be more open, right, not only us TEs but the teachers themselves too, right?] (translated from Halu, 2010: 239) There was no end to the story, however, and we decided it would be a better story without an ending. The main point here is to notice how important the feeling of belonging was for the TEs. Having a group in which to share and think together, and to question and to establish truths, was our ultimate turning point in confronting the Hydra.

The Hydra is Confronted: Unlearning Privileges Our confrontation of the Hydra was both made theoretically possible and ultimately provoked by our studies in post-structuralism (Foucault), postcolonialism (Bhabha) and critical literacies (Street, Souza). Those perspectives helped us to legitimise the instability and complexity that we faced in our work, conceptualising conflict and power as productive and

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restrictive forces. There we found grounds for unlearning our uncomfortable positions as fountains of wisdom, as those responsible for transmitting legitimate information about mainstream English teaching and learning. Our discussions of the post-theories helped us to understand and to reposition ourselves, our knowledges and ways of conceptualising language, identity, culture, teaching and learning. This theoretical background played a very important role in equipping us, as teacher educators, for the risks involved in our journey of unlearning, giving us some support for the ‘difficult knowledge’ we were moving into (Britzman, 2000). This perspective required us to question our privileges as teacher educators, and we bravely contested the authority of the knowledge that constituted us as such, realising that most of it was based on monolingual learners and did not suit the teachers we were working with. We also pondered whether the teaching-learning strategies we used and believed to be effective were feasible or even relevant for teaching teachers in our local contexts, questioning the very knowledge that was the core of our profession and our training. This brought about a need to let go of our privileges as knowledgeable selves, promoting ‘a suspension of the belief that one is indispensable, better or culturally superior; refraining from thinking that the Third World is in trouble and that one has the solutions; it is resisting the temptation of projecting oneself or one’s world onto the Other’ (Spivak, 2002: 6, cited in Kapoor, 2004: 642). That process of unlearning showed us that we could have been reinforcing the position of teachers as a-lumni, conceiving of them as unknowing subjects that needed our help to become ‘full’ selves. Our noblest intentions could, in fact, be having the opposite effect: they could be subjugating teachers to our authority, creating a paralysing dependency and severely limiting their agency. Our genuine disposition to help teachers could be expressing a desire to colonise them, positioning ourselves as some sort of ‘second-level Hydras’. Our debates were deep and lively, sometimes painful, as we analysed our assumptions and dispositions and those of different approaches to teacher education, focusing on our concrete contexts and discussing their relevance and feasibility in different loci. We tried to see our courses from multiple perspectives, looking for the assumptions that made them possible and their implications and messages between the lines. We discussed the possibility that our practices in designing courses could be both colonised and colonising, as they were based on (1) forming groups according to teachers’ proficiency levels, measured by TEs in placement tests, (2) keeping groups to a maximum of 20 teachers per class and thus not dealing with the teachers’ local contexts with classes of around 40 students, (3) using imported textbooks, (4) banishing Portuguese from our teaching routines, (5) assessing their course performance through oral and written tests designed by us based on the ‘native-speaker’ model or (6) deciding

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beforehand, and for the teachers, in their absence, what the syllabus should be. These practices could be seen as attempts at disciplining teachers’ bodies and minds by turning them into us. We debated the postcolonial idea of colonisation as a process of hierarchising knowledge and knowers, of creating and sustaining the desire to be the coloniser, at the same time as reinforcing the essential differences between coloniser and colonised, so that the oppressing, hierarchised difference is kept in place. In face of these possibilities, most TEs in the group agreed on a new design for the teachers’ courses. Those who did not kept on offering courses in the traditional manner. The same choice was given to the teachers themselves: they could join either of the course formats. The new design had the following characteristics, among others: •

•

•

•

Teachers were grouped according to their own choices. We ‘allowed’ them to choose to join a group just because they wanted to be with friends, for example. Therefore, no placement tests were done, and there were larger and smaller groups depending on the teachers’ choices. The course syllabus was established after the groups were formed. We discussed with the teachers a list of questions that were meant to help us focus on our desires, needs, positions and stakes in the group. The syllabus was worked out from the initial conversations around those questions. Some examples of questions, since they varied depending on each teacher educator’s choice, were: Why are we at this centre? Do we want to learn English for communication? If yes, what, where, when and who do we want to communicate with? If not, what do we want English for? This way of working with the syllabus was aimed at helping the groups to open up, to get teachers to know each other better and to become comfortable enough to feel secure sharing teaching practices and learning with and from one another. Assessment was negotiated in each group, and there were discussions around the options, tools and assumptions of each assessment perspective chosen by the group. There could be written tests, oral tests, project work, homework, essay writing, oral presentations, portfolios, self-evaluation pieces and so on, to be used in a combination or exclusively as each group found fit.

This structure was introduced to the teachers in 2010, and about 40% chose to remain in the traditional course design, while 60% were eager to try the new design. They formed a total of eight groups, only two in the traditional structure. The groups in the new design chose the most diverse syllabi: some focused on grammar, others on pedagogy and others on the

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status of English as an international language. Each of these groups chose not to have written or oral tests but decided instead to use short essays and seminars as assessment tools. Most wanted their TE to share responsibility with them for the final grade and evaluation. This course also served to redesign our relationships at NAP-UFPR, especially those between TEs and teachers. As we teacher educators questioned the relevance of placement tests, oral and written exams, textbooks and the ‘ban’ on Portuguese in our context, we revised the meanings of good language teaching-learning and what it takes for teachinglearning to be effective. We brought to the fore our specific teaching practices; we legitimated and questioned our teaching and learning experiences on contextual grounds. We empowered disempowered praxes and also challenged them, attentive to the specific frames of reference that allowed us to position certain bodies of knowledge, exploring the theoretical and experiential bases that framed our judgements. Instead of reinforcing the colonising messages conveyed by traditional languagelearning theories (a message that pre-empted teachers’ − and our own − teaching conditions, positioning schools as places where teaching-learning can hardly be effective, as mentioned already), we organised practices that not only discussed the possibilities of effective teaching in specific contexts but brought them to the scene and tried to reproduce them so that teachers could experiment with effective learning in adverse conditions. Those practices became the central scene of the courses and group discussions, producing partnerships in which TEs and teachers planned and taught lessons together in their specific contexts. The abandonment of the desire to create sanitised teaching-learning situations brought teachers and TEs closer, establishing links of complicity and the need for them to work in collaboration, considering what mainstream theoretical knowledge had to offer but also empowering participants to question and develop practices for specific contexts, such as interdisciplinary learning projects and group work. The process of unlearning and decolonisation briefly described here created a productive space for meaning-making, as we re-conceptualised the teachers as selves, as knowledgeable subjects whose knowledge had been constantly devalued by institutionalised knowledge and, therefore, by TEs, by the teachers themselves, their students and society as a whole. This required us to unlearn our privileges as teacher educators, positioned as the knowing selves in charge of rescuing teachers from ignorance and malpractice. This privilege was precisely what had started our movement for change. The trigger of our collective unlearning process was the very opportunity to voice and share our discomfort in our awareness of our position as saviours of the teachers and of being responsible for ‘rescuing’ those that did not need rescuing.

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Living with the English Hydra: Teacher Education Re-signified The teacher educators in this cohort were individually interviewed about their work at NAP-UFPR after a period of two years and asked to comment on the changes that had happened at the centre during that time. They foregrounded the ways in which they saw themselves as TEs and their relationship with teachers. This had changed from a transmissive perspective of instructors teaching teachers how to speak and teach English to that of co-workers trying to find solutions to specific issues related to actual teaching-learning practices. In these interviews, teacher-educator Walesko stressed the importance of her relationship with the teachers and their teaching practices. In her own words, she reports: I myself felt more valued, you see, because teachers overvalue us, to the point we become afraid of creating a desire, raising expectations and not corresponding to it … I think that now we are reaching out to the teachers, to create a space where they are valued … so I think this thing of valuing their practices is paramount and makes NAP-UFPR a unique place to work. (translated from Halu, 2010: 240) She seems to appreciate establishing a rapport with the teachers on a more equal basis than she sees happening elsewhere. All the TEs foregrounded collaboration within the group and how the sense of belonging created in the cohort contributed to their careers, by motivating them to undertake formal studies, by reflecting on their practices and by helping them to overcome feelings of isolation as TEs. Walesko: I think we [TEs] also wanted to be valued because, whether we want it or not, if we look at ourselves as a group, we continued our studies formally, we looked for graduate courses, master degrees and the like ... I think NAP-UFPR allows us to do that. (translated from Halu, 2010: 240) Becker: In the other place where I work there is nothing, the impression is that you go there just for show, just to teach a class, nobody talks to nobody, and here it’s good because we exchange ideas ... now these meetings [the cohort meetings] are extremely important, they make us think a lot about many things and then you start to change and think, and pay attention to some aspects you hadn’t noticed before. (translated from Halu, 2010: 241)

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Halu: One of the lessons I learned in the past four years was to learn to be humble, to understand and respect the practices of the teachers I make contact with. I’m still learning to be more responsible for my choices. (translated from Halu, 2010: 200)

Conclusion The working definition of ‘responsibility’ that we used in our cohort was framed around postcolonial perspectives, and it referred to the locality of our practices and knowledges, to the need for unlearning and the decolonisation of our personal and professional thoughts and identities. ‘Responsibility’ for us meant developing an attitude of collective respect and engagement with difference, rather than silencing it in the name of ‘good teaching’; it referred to creating and maintaining a sense of alertness to avoid giving in to the desire of eliminating difference and turning all teachers into our image, or the images projected for them by our theories and beliefs. We had moved into the perspective of ‘learning as response’, in our encounters with people and thoughts, in our being challenged and provoked in such encounters (Biesta, 2007). What we learned was that, instead of trying to kill the oppressive Hydra in quixotic battles, we needed to tame it, learning to live comfortably in the discomfort that it had caused us (Andreotti & Souza, 2009). We teacher educators had learned to perceive the existence of the Hydra as an opportunity to move, to think differently, to look into the theoretical and practical shortcomings of institutionalised knowledge regarding language teaching and learning. We had learned to examine the assumptions and implications of different knowledges and practices for our own contexts. As the foreign Hydra had already been internalised and become constitutive of our ways to perform our identities as Brazilian Englishteacher educators, our unlearning taught us to seriously confront the beast. This attack on the professional Hydra means that we TEs no longer emulate ‘native speakers’ or their knowledges. By adopting mixedmethod approaches and performative identities and by not silencing our non-nativeness, new, invigorating and independent practices have emerged.

Note (1)

Teaching English as a foreign language.

References Andreotti, V. and de Souza, L.T.M. (2009) Culturalism, difference and pedagogy: Lessons from indigenous education in Brazil. In J. Lavia and M. Moore (eds) Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Policy and Practice: Decolonising Community Contexts. London: Routledge. Aquino, L.F.Y. (2012) English language as Auntie: Of ‘good intentions’ and a pedagogy of possibility − ELT in the Philippines and its effects on children’s literacy development.

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In V. Rapatahana and P. Bunce (eds) English Language as Hydra: Its Impacts on NonEnglish Language Cultures. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Bernat, E. (2008) Towards a pedagogy for empowerment: The case of ‘impostor syndrome’ among pre-service non-native speaker teachers in TESOL. English Language Teacher Education and Development Journal 11, 1−8. Biesta, G. (2007) The ‘problem’ learning. Adults Learning April, 8−11. Britzman, D. (2000) If the story cannot end: deferred action, ambivalence and difficult knowledge. In R.I. Simon, S. Rosenberg and C. Eppert (eds) Between Hope And Despair: Pedagogy and the Remembrance of Historical Trauma. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Halu, R.C. (2010) Formação de Formadoras de Professoras de Inglês em Contexto de Formação Continuada (NAP-UFPR). PhD thesis. Federal University of Parana, Brazil. Kapoor, I. (2004) Hyper-self-reflexive development? Spivak on representing the Third World ‘Other’. Third World Quarterly 4 (25), 627−647. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2012) Individual identity, cultural globalisation, and teaching English as an international language. In L. Alsagoff, S.L. McKay, G. Hu and W.A. Renandy (eds) Principles and Practices for Teaching English as an International Language. New York: Routledge. Rapatahana, V. and Bunce, P. (2012) English Language as Hydra: Its Impacts on Non-English Language Cultures. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

24 Writing back (to the centre) Vaughan Rapatahana

king’s english1

sloop of discourse2

the conqueror never sub mits even as we chop off his fingers at the nub

so, you whiteman mariners continue to skim your sagging seas of perfidity.

even as we sliver & shiver as we sliver skeins of his tight white skin as counterpoint to our taonga kua tā hae; seared mokomokai − heads stored in surrey or some such sibilant. yes, the conquistador surr end ers

never

exporting your barmy lexis for warm flurries of money, girding your gallivant galleons in academy rigour, a logomachic cargo fishing for finance with name-dropping élan, while netting the neophytes who pay for your prattle: so

they’re c a s t a d r i f t

london’s smug sails/salesmen, as i e l t s rules the waves.

even as we write with his tongue. Māori: taonga kua tā hae – already stolen treasures mokomokai – shrunken heads

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In their seminal book The Empire Writes Back (1989, 1st edn), Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin write of the determined efforts by many colonised-by-Britain writers to write back against the standardised English the coloniser has imposed on them as a means to control and subjugate them and their own respective indigenous cultures. These editors nominate such anti-colonialist, postcolonial efforts as writing in english − a deliberate lower-case oppositional ploy to the capitalised English − One of the main features of imperial oppression is control over language. The imperial education system installs a ‘standard’ version of the metropolitan language as the norm, and marginalises all ‘variants’ as impurities … Language becomes the medium through which a hierarchical structure of power is perpetuated, and the medium through which conceptions of ‘truth’, ‘order’, and ‘reality’ become established. Such power is rejected in the emergence of an effective post-colonial voice. (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, 2002: 7) One way, then, to counter the English language Hydra of ‘standardised’ English is to write back to the centre of the empire; to write against it via non-standard english. I do this frequently in my own poetry via both its content and form, as here.

Notes (1) (2)

‘king’s english’ was first published in Calalyst, Vol. 12, Aotearoa-New Zealand in 2015. ‘sloop of discourse’ was first published in Carillon Magazine, United Kingdom, in 2013.

Reference Ashcroft, B., G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin (eds) (2002) The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures (2nd edn). London: Routledge.

Afterword: Decentring the Hydra: Towards a more Equitable Linguistic Order Ahmed Kabel

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. Steve Biko

It is not uncommon among mainstream historians of the British Empire to stand perplexed, and sometimes awed, before the ‘enigma’ of how a small and relatively backward island could in such a short time soar to global supremacy. In 1109, Adelard of Bath left England and headed for the East in pursuit of Arab learning. Arabic was then the lingua franca of science, philosophy and knowledge, and Muslims were charting new frontiers of inquiry and understanding of the secular world at a time when Europe was wallowing in the stifling ecclesiastical tenebrousness of the Middle Ages. ‘Of course God rules the universe,’ Adelard wrote, ‘but we may and should enquire into the natural world. The Arabs teach us that’ (Lyons, 2009: 201). Daniel of Morley, an English seeker of learning and wisdom in Al-Andalus (Muslim/Moorish Spain), was so mesmerised by the vibrancy of intellectual life and cultural sophistication (especially ‘Arab Reason’) that when he returned to England with loads of manuscripts from Toledo, he and his patron embarked on transforming his small town into a hub of intellectual life. That small town is Oxford (Hughes, 2005). There is plainly no enigma or sense of intellectual advantage or civilisational superiority to explain it. The historical record is clear. It was a combination of colonialism, slavery, plunder, intrigue, intellectual and literal piracy and of course violence (Gott, 2011) that catapulted England to global hegemony. The empire on which the sun never set was also one in which the ‘blood never dried’ (Newsinger, 2004: 9). It is this colonial legacy that the Hydra is heir to, and it continues to animate its global expansion. The contributions in this volume, each in its own way, attest to that fact. It has to be reiterated that the argument here, as in this book, is not against English as such. It would be both utterly irrational and hypocritical to try to make a case for such a thesis. The argument is meant to document the Hydra’s primitive linguistic accumulation 269

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and dispossession, its various excesses and power entanglements, in the hope of creating a more linguistically equitable and sustainable world.

Why English? Colonial Continuities That we live in a postcolonial world is as expedient a fiction as the postmodern demise of grand narratives. Not only do neocolonial relations of power continue to define the daily routines of large swathes of humanity, colonialism weighs insufferably on the bodies and psyches of Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghans and, in its internal incarnation, on indigenous peoples as well as on the subalternised non-white communities in the West. Nor are the metanarratives of progress, modernity and development a relic of a defunct modern age, similarly so as they relate to English. Linguistic colonialism and imperialism feed on and further entrench this configuration of power with the English Hydra running amok. As Phillipson (this volume) rightly points out, this reconfiguration plainly represents a ‘smooth transition from colonial linguistic imperialism to contemporary linguistic neoimperialism’ while the same structures of oppression and domination remain intact if not more amplified. From Pax Britannica to Pax Americana (Mazrui), cycles of linguistic dispossession have intensified, perhaps irreversibly, diminishing linguistic diversity worldwide. These are not matters of pure academic interest; they bear on survival, dignity and solidarity, at least for those who entertain any remote notion of a possible non-coercive and sustainable humanity. Colonial inflections continue to dog the Hydra. In the past, it used to be promoted as the language of deliverance from barbarism and moral decadence. Presently, it is marketed as the language of access, opportunity and development in the age of globalisation. This is merely a shift in ‘language games’. The only substantial difference is that now globalisation in lieu of enlightenment is at the core of ‘manifest destiny’; the underlying colonial, paternalistic logic is writ large but remains fundamentally unquestioned. The Hydra is an ‘intimate enemy’, invading historical memory (Tupas), foregrounding select representations and foreclosing others. It acts as an agent of historical ‘dis-membering’ and ‘re-membering’ and mummifies memory as a potential site of resistance and imagining, and reconstitutes forgetfulness as the default of politics. Mahmoud Darwish tells us that oppression breeds memory for forgetfulness, pitting memory ‘against the fangs of a forgetfulness made of steel’ and sedimented ‘history raining down on it’ (1995: 146). Such is the story of Hydra-induced historical amnesia. English also inhabits the historical wounds of fractured identities (Martinez). Dis-membering here is embedded in colonisation, the ‘empire of the mind’ and ‘tortured tongues’. This is embodied linguicism.

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Colonial discourses are being reproduced and repackaged as a part of linguistic neocolonialism. Phillipson tears down the thin colonial veneer behind David Graddol’s conceptualisations of English and how they resurrect the same ideological suppositions underlying Macaulay’s prescriptions for Indian education. Graddol’s strictures go far beyond India. He was recently invited to promote ‘English for development’ in Morocco with apparently the same educational/linguistic ideological underpinnings undisturbed (MFAA,1 2013). It is questionable whether Graddol is in any meaningful position to address Morocco’s language policy and ‘development’ problems. Such stance is driven by the assumption that English is a solution to Morocco’s development problems and that the United Kingdom and United States have the necessary knowledge and expertise to deliver the goods, which is equally questionable. Nowhere is there an apparent awareness of the complex historical and global political economic determinants of (under)development or of the dubiousness of the proposition that all that is needed for development is a ‘good’ (English) language policy. The troubled state of Moroccan language policy and planning (Kabel, 2012), the profound class divisions, poverty, illiteracy and unemployment hobbling the country cannot be ignored. The class implications of strengthening English are glossed over, as is the fact that educational opportunities are mapped on class and linguistic lines. This attitude underlies much of Western educational ‘aid’ and professional expertise, which, whatever noble intentions there might be, has a blatant record of failure to produce purported ‘development’. William Easterly, a leading development expert, concludes in this regard that foreign educational aid is ‘another magic formula that failed us on the quest for growth’ (2001: 84). Graddol’s policy prescriptions may thus be another magic formula promising much in terms of ideology and market share but delivering little in terms of genuine development for the people. Linguistic imperialism is perpetuated by neocolonial ‘internationalism’. The Washington linguistic consensus means the aggressive promotion of English to serve Western political and economic interests and the effective marginalisation of local languages. This scheme is bolstered by the marketing of English language teaching (ELT) worldwide, foisting ‘congruence between export-oriented industrialisation and language policy’ − with the additional benefit of a little linguistic ‘aid’: making a local English-speaking ‘labour force attractive to foreign investors’, approvingly reported by one scholar (Suárez, 2005: 475). The World Bank and its godfather, the United States, employ their leverage to fashion educational policies in Sri Lanka attending to their globalising agendas by legislating English as the unavoidable vehicle for (neoliberal) globalisation (Perera & Canagarajah, 2010: 111). English operates as the handmaiden of neoliberal empire (Phillipson, 2008). Similar cases of the World Bank’s educational and linguistic imperialism are in evidence, as in Bangladesh (Imam, 2005)

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where the Bank considers English education only as a lucrative market in disregard for national development but in scrupulous adherence to the neoliberal ‘vile maxim’ of ‘profit over people’ (Chomsky, 1999). Mazrui exposes the contradictions underlying the Washington linguistic consensus, which is preaching education quality and excellence (all smacking of neoliberal-speak) while setting conditionalities on Third World countries to drastically slash social spending in order to maintain macroeconomic ‘balances’. Even when local languages are paid lip service, this is done for the proletarianisation of large segments of the Third World in order to create reserve armies servicing the need for degrading, low-ranking jobs so crucial to the functioning of neoliberal economies. What one observes here is a consistent pattern of economic, social and educational disempowerment underlying the Washington linguistic consensus. Despite recent attempts at ‘rebranding’ the British Council as a champion of linguistic diversity and multilingual education (see e.g. Knagg, 2013), its actual policies and modus operandi, as many contributors show, are hinged on the same fallacies that have historically characterised its ELT work. Knagg’s apparent opposition to those assumptions is pragmatic. Initial early-exit education through the medium of the mother tongue is only a means to an end, an instrumental groundwork for English as medium of instruction. This rests on the profoundly problematic presumption that advanced learning can be achieved only or desirably through English. The argument is not direct but subtly cloaked in utilitarian language. These protestations of ‘multilingual love’ are, therefore, no less than an ideological ploy to couch English supremacy in more benevolent terms. The colonial politics of English, its class entanglement, its lucrative underside for British testing, publishing, consulting, training, research and development and higher education industries are conveniently ignored. The linguistic underside resides in the functional displacement of local languages as a result of later institution of English-medium education. The latter creates a regressive effect in terms of how future expectations affect present language ‘choices’ and ideologies. The later introduction of English as medium effectively signifies creating an earlier demand for and, much to the delight of the British Council, earlier supply of English. This patently compromises the effectiveness of any mother-tongue-based education. It follows then that the enlightened ‘multilingual turn’ of the British Council is little more than enlightened linguicism that enhances the power and prestige of English, undercuts linguistic vitality and diversity and aggravates educational failure. It should be also emphasised that the brand of ‘multilingualism’ bandied about in these discourses is a commodified, McDonaldised, market-friendly version of multilingualism tending to neoliberal empire. The Hydra possesses ‘warheads’. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is now a major player in English worldwide. English and ELT are central to NATO’s expansion both in Eastern Europe (Templer)

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and in ‘hot spots’ such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The British Council is deeply engaged in English for ‘peace-keeping’ (British Council, 2015) in cahoots with NATO (Woods, 2006). When one looks at the theatres of that peace, the Orwellian twist of ‘peace-keeping’ is unmistakable. The ‘war on terror’ (in actual fact a ‘war of war’), in which NATO is a major actor, is responsible for thousands of civilian deaths in Afghanistan (Crawford, 2015: 1) and has claimed an estimated total ‘death toll’ of 1.3 million in the Middle East (IPPNW,2 2015: 15). The New Scramble for Africa is linguistic jockeying. As is the case with NATO, English-language training is critical to the military operations and strategic objectives of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) tasked with fighting ‘terrorism’ and safeguarding America’s economic interests and energy resources on the African continent. With its military tentacles spreading in 35 African countries, establishing ‘a network of supplicants’ (Pilger, 2013: 38) becomes a strategic need for America. The ‘supplicants’ also need to be handed out English-language rations. The role English can play in servicing AFRICOM can be gleaned from the following assessment: ‘Providing police and army officers with English-language skills increases peacekeeping capabilities by enabling them to attend professional training, thereby improving their ability to tackle issues such as conflict prevention, terrorism and people trafficking. It also allows … officers to join multinational peacekeeping forces that use English as their medium of communication’. The writer is none other than Martin Davidson, chief executive of the British Council (Davidson, 2011). Colonial legacies shape linguistic and educational realities and perpetuate hierarchies. The history of slavery, indentured labour, and plantation economies still warps educational opportunities and language ‘choices’ of ordinary people (Collen & the LPT Team). Language divides are largely a reflection of colonial hierarchies refracted through social lines. Colonial language ideologies underpin differential valuations of the worth of colonial languages and local ones. Colonial beliefs of benevolence and salvation shape ELT volunteerism, and the ideological ‘white volunteer’s burden’ is carried by the Hydra (Bunce). The native imploration ‘come over and help us’ is greeted by the Hydra’s ominous hissing. But the real existential burden of white cultural exhibitionism, vanity and ‘guilt’ is borne by the natives whose real needs, aspirations and existential concerns are disregarded, not least as a result of asymmetrical linguistic exchange. New facets of colonial encounters are emerging in new economies. The call-centre industry represents a hub for the recrudescence of colonial language practices and relations. Call centres cement asymmetrical relations between the West and the rest, evocative of colonial social and political organisation (Boussebaa). The ‘new interpreters’ between the colonised and the coloniser are middle managers who embody the outlook of the coloniser and ‘refine the vernacular impurities’ of the language of the

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colonised, thus generating hierarchies based on ‘purity’ of language. Power is reproduced through the constellation of coercive linguistic and racialised regimes. Linguicism meets racism.

Interlocking Oppressions English is thus over-determined as a function of the continuing structures of neocolonialism and neoliberal globalisation. The Hydra similarly derives its potency from the interlocking of multiple forms of domination. Although the Hydra is employed to promote diversity and a sense of national commonness, it is deeply entangled in ethnic domination and class privilege (Tupas). Likewise, English as a tool of linguistic stratification in Indonesia (Coleman) is also an instrument of social exclusion and discrimination. English peddles illusory promises and dons the mantle of the ‘Dalit Goddess’ of salvation (Rao). In addition, English is a marker of exclusion and privilege with language hierarchies interweaving with social hierarchies. The language divides are class divides where social hierarchies buttress and are undergirded by the power of colonial languages. The glass ceiling of English and a mirage of social mobility remain the order of the day. The linguistic trickle-down effect of the Hydra is a ‘gushing up’ of opportunity and power for the privileged. The purported democratising effect of English on social mobility and opportunity thus flounders on the determinations of social and linguistic hierarchies. English may indeed be the new ‘opium of the people’. (Il)legitimate language and linguistic practices interact with racial stratification. Legitimate linguistic capital is interwoven with racialised and ethnicised capital (Kubota & Okuda). Native-speakerism as the ideological mainstay of applied linguistics and ELT (Kabel, 2009) is parasitic on and reinforces white mythologies and racial classification. Local chauvinistic racialised classifications can also be subtly effectuated through the promotion of English. These divides are magnified by educational reform promoting English and testing (the Test of English as a Foreign Language − TOEFL) and operating as a Darwinist mechanism to create a new class of ‘global leaders’ in the neoliberal era (Kubota & Okuda). Language, race and culture in tandem mould expectations and ‘perceived’ authenticities. Outgroups’ social imaginaries define forms of cultural authenticity and speakerhood (Stanley) where experiences and expectations of authentic racialised and cultural identities are embedded in perceptions of legitimate language and pedagogy. This brings into relief the interconnectedness of pedagogic, commercial and economic discourses and the way they shape classroom expectations in terms of learning and teaching. The cultural expectations not only are an artefact of Tourism Australia or promotional material but are reflective of the reality of how official Australia, at least after the ‘White Australia Policy’, constructs itself on the basis of a white

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narrative (Lake & Reynolds, 2008: 137−165) that trumps colonial history and its contemporary diverse cultural and ethnical social fabric. Colonised identities, bodies and knowledges are (per)formed in the crucible of the Hydra. Martinez’s is a passionate personal account of the Hydra’s existential implications for those souls caught in the borderland of identity and loss, colonialism, mental enslavement and social stigmatisation. Their attempts at identity affirmation and cultural agency are countered by attempts on the part of the state and academic authority to impose white supremacist ‘official knowledge’ to deny them history and memory. White supremacist constructions of history and knowledge operate in tandem with oppressive language regimes in ways that combine linguistic, educational and existential violence. Life in the Hyphen (Stavans, 1996: 7-30) does not embody just the struggle to perform a colonised ‘hyphenated identity’, but is in great part a constant struggle to negotiate the wounds of the racialised linguistic hyphen and epistemic hyphen. Nationalism, chauvinistic linguistic dogmatism and oppressive economic and knowledge systems form the background to Hydra oppression. The hegemony of English piggybacks on modern nationalism and neoliberal capitalist efficiency. The suffering and costs are deeply personal, with families and psychologies torn asunder by the monolingual, subtractive Hydra and the nationalist and economic regimes that sustain it (Demont-Heinrich). English monolingual, social and educational dogmas are subtractive of life quality and well-being. Mainstream systems of professional knowledge and expertise are embedded in the politics of the spread of English. The export of centre-based expert knowledge and professional practice consolidate linguistic, professional and knowledge hierarchies unwittingly embraced by local professionals (Jordão). This complex entanglement of multiple forms of oppression with linguistic domination gives the Hydra its formidable force.

A Little Help from the ‘English Nanny’ State The dominance of the Hydra is institutionalised within the hierarchies of class, caste and race. Institutionalised monopolies of political power equally shape linguistic dominance. States are crystallisations of class and racialised power. They are also concentrations of linguistic power. They institute language hierarchies by design through language policies and legal instrumentation. They similarly do so by dint of active neglect and laissez-faire policies, which is no less political. The consequences of this on weaker, minoritised languages are well documented (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000). Even languages with high degrees of vitality are being threatened either by extermination or functional displacement. There is increasing encroachment of the Hydra and a distinct possibility that Icelandic will be displaced by English in the not so distant future. This is happening

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with the connivance of the state as, because of the stifling economic crisis, the latter does not provide resources and is lukewarm about providing the necessary support for the development of Icelandic (Kristinsson). Despite sham attempts to protect Hungarian from English encroachment, opportunist linguistic nationalism, combined with authoritarian politics and realpoliticking agendas, produces adverse results (Kontra). The lack of a clear language policy and laissez-faire fortify language hierarchies. There is little willingness to consider multilingual mothertongue-based education in Indonesia. This leads to a dismal language scene with a number of languages made moribund or effectively killed off. Stigmatisation, exclusion from education and public services and inequity in public visibility are leading to the gradual ‘vernacularisation’ and further ‘subalternisation’ of local languages, turning them into oral and ‘private’ media (Coleman). This might result in a situation of bilingual diglossia with the stratification consequences it entails and, ultimately, in functional desuetude. The state provides the camouflage for the local naga to do its linguicidal work while the latter falls prey to the venomous attacks of the more ferocious English naga. Ambivalences in policy, de jure tokenistic endorsement of local languages and a de facto Darwinist policy refuel the Hydra (Martin, 2012). In addition to this, the Hydra also feeds on local language-policy feuds and local linguistic discord and establishes its hegemony as a ‘neutral’ arbiter in different parts of Africa. Where linguistic nationalism and autonomy are feeblest, English triumphs (Mazrui). Such is the nexus of English and the ‘nanny state’.

Hydras Linking Heads Colonial/dominant languages link heads with other Hydras in ways that negatively impact local languages. In Indonesia, the English Hydra and Indonesian naga together dominate and gobble up local, weaker languages. The compelling image offered by Coleman vividly encapsulates this state of slow linguicide: the Hydra devouring Indonesian, which is, in turn, devouring local languages. Local nagas can also function as proxies for the Hydra. The increasing expansion of English and the dominance of Indonesian entail uneven allocation of resources, domain erosion and de-vitalisation for local languages. The latter are similarly being cannibalised by regional Hydras, which are being devoured by the English Hydra in India (Rao). Mandarin and the English Hydra, running for different offices (modernity and nationalism), link heads against local languages in China (Gao & Rapatahana). The colonial imprint endures through the combined sway of colonial languages in Africa. It is still disgracefully customary to define African countries, cultures, literatures and knowledges with reference to colonial languages: anglophone, francophone and lusophone. This labelling renders

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Africa a cultura and lingua nullius (Phillipson, forthcoming) existing only by virtue of colonial language munificence. It also casts on colonial languages an aura of naturalness that conceals the realities of linguistic stratification and imperialism. This is exacerbated by the prevalence of combined linguistic oppression. Language dominance in Mauritius is characterised by the joint hegemony of English and French and the consequent stigmatisation and marginalisation of Mauritian Kreol and Bhojpuri (Collen & the LPT Team). The two colonial Hydras compete for power while the local creoles are crushed to insignificance in the process. Monopoly of the colonial languages means effective social and economic control. French remains the language of class and status, buttressed by francophonie. Even when little progress is made, the colonial Hydras are always prepared to bite back (Collen & the LPT Team). Realities of linguistic colonialism persist, with intersectional oppression from English and one other language: English and French in Cameroon, English and Swahili in Uganda and English and Amharic in Ethiopia (Heugh, Chiatoh & Sentumbwe). The combined and cumulative effect of joint linguistic domination is deepening the plight of local languages.

Educide and Linguicide The promotion of the Hydra is shored up by false claims with grave educational and linguistic implications. The argument that English as medium of instruction is a solution to the ‘achievement’ gap is hollow (Laitin et al., 2015). It runs roughshod over massive literature in language policy and sociology of education. Pedagogical precepts such as early exposure and native-speaker competence are definitely myths. These claims are attractive and presented as unquestionable truths by the ELT industry and consultants (Phillipson). Alpha-beastial literacy norms are unquestionably exported and imposed on speakers of non-alphabet-scripted or non-romanscripted languages (Bunce).3 Language myths as ideologies mediate and legitimate practices. They affect educational achievement and language practices. The power of these fictions is buttressed by testing regimes such as TOEFL (Kubota & Okuda) and IELTS. The tyranny of the latter transcends their legitimation of language and competence myths or their fetishisation of an idealised linguistic proficiency. Their ‘consequential validity’ should be extrapolated to their educational consequences and educational imperialism. Testing and pedagogical regimes are new shibboleths. Poor education capability is exacerbated by the imposition of unsound language policy. The promises of Hydra salvation in India are illusory because of the lamentable state of public education and the class/caste fault lines that define it. English-medium schools are an educational failure because of an inhibitive lack of resources and dismissal of the

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solid body of research evidence in favour of mother-tongue-based education (Rao) (see also Mohanty, 2009). In Pakistan, the combination of a grim educational reality and an ambivalent official language policy is debilitating (Mustafa). The demand for English is spawning mediocre supply with inadequate human and material resources (mis)put in place to meet it. Colonial continuities endure, with the British Council now calling the shots and reaping profits in disregard for sound linguistic and educational policy and practice. The expansion of English and its active promotion are a major determinant of language shift. The introduction of English as medium of instruction has a direct impact on family language policy and planning. English thus invades schools and the privacy of homes (Tupas). It is squarely a result of this intimate incursion that Singapore can boast a ‘successful’ English-medium education policy and is hailed as a model to be emulated. This is another instance of the ‘fangs of forgetfulness’ in action. Demont-Heinrich’s case illustrates the struggle to reverse language shift and subtractive family language policies reflective of dominant societal language ideologies. The structural is staged in the very privacy of the personal and intimate. The intimacy of language shift is enmeshed in the colonial history of stigma and shame reflected in family language ideologies (Martinez). Language policies built around colonial languages have led to the marginalisation of mother tongues and the stigmatisation of local knowledges and values. This has engendered language shift among youth in urban areas and leads to political disenfranchisement and marginalisation and the further widening of the gulf between rich and poor (Heugh, Chiatoh & Sentumbwe). These are the educational and linguistic fallouts of a ‘heady’ Hydra.

Confronting the Hydra: Decentring Discontinuities Linguistic autonomy and regionalism Productive forms of resistance can be thought and enacted by human agency that is cognisant of its structural location. An awareness of the multi-headed, over-determination of the Hydra is thus a necessary condition for constructing multi-sited and multifaceted modes of resistance. This is the kind of awareness that informs the studies in this volume. They depart from the supposition that meaningful resistance is contextual and cannot be divorced from the structural arrangements that give it meaning. One significant subtext in the contributions is also the inadequacy of perceiving structure and agency as separate entities and the necessity to conceive of them as subtly interwoven and overlapping. That agency is not a transcendental human quality but always contextual and embedded in power is a significant departure from the habitual binary oppositions

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between agency and structure or the fetishisation of ‘structure-less’, localised appropriation. There is equally a profound sense of optimism coupled with a feeling of urgency that animates the proposals to confront the Hydra. It is this mix of acute appreciation of the workings of power and radical hope that provides the ethical and intellectual sustenance for human agency. Effective resistance entails multi-thronged political projects predicated on strong political and economic sovereignty. It follows, then, that locally responsive language policies can be successfully designed and implemented in contexts where linguistic sovereignty is exercised alongside economic and political autonomy. There are possible resistance venues in Africa and Asia in this direction, namely modes of linguistic autonomy and regionalism that do not jettison English out of hand, but build local linguistic capacity while adopting a pragmatic approach towards English. Indonesian is being promoted to play a more regional role, especially as a working language of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Coleman). Strengthening regional languages as lingua francas, such as Swahili in Tanzania and Kenya (Mazrui), may be a bulwark against the onslaught of English and as a non-stratifying and socially democratising force in East Africa − two propositions also put forward by Ngũgĩ. The institution of Swahili as the language of higher education in Tanzania and as co-equal with English in Kenya is a promising prospect, not least because it enhances the prestige of the language and undercuts the hegemony of English as the ‘legitimate’ language of intellectual labour and knowledge generation. There is a distinct possibility that these initiatives might succeed, despite lingering ambiguities and possibilities to reverse this by the imperialist forces (Mazrui). Language nationalism aided by economic sovereignty and growth present alternative venues of resistance to the Hydra. Protectionist language policy measures, resurgence of national pride and local economic growth in China (Gao & Rapatahana) rein in the predatory Hydra and curb the perceived need for English. One or two qualifications need to be stated, however. Regional and autonomy alternatives should not adopt a rejectionist attitude but ought to neutralise the subtractive tendencies of the Hydra. Great effort should be expended in revitalising and nurturing weaker, non-dominant languages in ways that enhance sustainable language diversity and ecologies. Regional political and economic integration as an anti-imperialist option is likely to offer the conditions of possibility to start redrawing the global linguistic map. Shifting geopolitical priorities can have important implications for confronting the Hydra. Arabicisation and Islamisation in Sudan and Iran, respectively, are conscious radical reorientations of language policy resulting from geopolitical rearrangements (Mazrui). Anti-imperialist orientations and ‘isolationism’ by the Sudan and Iran relatively cushioned Arabic and Persian as languages of education and knowledge production. Iran’s pragmatism towards English is measured, however. Its pragmatist thrust

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has been ambivalent and is subject to the political persuasion of presidential incumbents. This is illustrated by the ‘rise and fall’ of the fate of the British Council in Iran between 2001 and 2009 when Iran under reformist president Khatami was attempting to break away from international isolation. This partnership came to a deadening halt with the election of the conservative Ahmadinejad (Borjian, 2011). Such a pragmatist orientation has also, paradoxically, fuelled the demand for English and an explosive supply by the private sector, whereas official English language-in-education policy remains ambiguous and haphazard (Davari & Aghagolzadeh, 2015). As pointed out already, a ‘free linguistic market’ and haphazard, laissez-faire policies strengthen in favour of the Hydra. With the signing of the new nuclear programme deal between Iran and the West, it is not at all clear what the future holds in store for language policy. The deal may amount to ‘a political earthquake in the Middle East’ and, according to one seasoned analyst, is likely to turn Iran into ‘America’s policeman in the Gulf ’ (Fisk, 2015). While this is pure speculation at the moment, it remains to be seen whether a globally politically and economically integrated Iran will mean an encroachment of the Hydra on Iranian social, cultural, educational and linguistic life. People power and small action is a cornerstone in confronting the Hydra. Political activism can be effective. Protests at the grassroots level by teachers against English-medium policy can lead to some positive outcomes (Mustafa). Community-based, non-formal initiatives continue the uphill challenge to adopt multilingual mother-tongue-based education programmes, despite fierce opposition. Alternative schools are set up but often fail because parents also have cold feet and sometimes take the promises of the Hydra on trust. Constitutional recognition of local languages, however tokenistic, helps enhance the prestige of local languages. Decentralisation of policy, implementation and decision-making and local teacher education initiatives for local languages are promising routes. Community-based initiatives, coalition-building, empowerment, language planning and materials development have proven vital for ownership and sustained success when carried out at the local/grassroots level and on the margins of the state. Linguistic democratisation and the success of multilingual education in a poor country such as Ethiopia is impressive and provides a model to be contemplated (Skutnabb-Kangas & Heugh, 2012). Bilingual and multilingual education policies remain the most empirically established and effective instrument to muzzle the Hydra. There are signs of healthier futures as a result of bilingual and multilingual education in the Philippines (Tupas). The need for mother-tongue-based education is also strongly felt in India (Rao) and is taking root in some states, such as Odisha and Andhra Pradesh; a ‘small beginning’, but one that ‘shows the way’ ahead (Mohanty, 2009: 15). These initiatives ‘have demonstrated the potentials of multilingual education in enabling and empowering the tribal communities to escape the vicious circle of language disadvantage’ and may open up

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new horizons for creating ‘quality education and a just society’ in India (Mohanty et al., 2009: 296). In Indonesia, progress is also being documented as provinces advocate the teaching and promotion of local languages and as increased resources are allotted for Indonesian in the school system. The future of Indonesian remains unclear with reference to English (Coleman), but prospects appear definitely gloomy for local languages. If Indonesian is set to elbow English out of favour, the wounded English naga will back-bite with a vengeance. Legal tactics to discontinue schools point to new resistance strategies against the Hydra. Attempts at multilingual policy in higher education are underway despite challenges. A language ecologies paradigm where all flowers bloom additively and sustainably is the way ahead. Symbolic forms of confrontation are also in evidence. The burgeoning of contestatory literatures and dissident voice (Rao) can weaken the symbolic grip of the Hydra. This can also be accomplished through refusal to accept the relegation of local languages to ‘folkloric’ heritage while presenting English as the language of contemporaneity (Smith). Affirming one’s own language, mestiza and border identity breaks the mental yoke of English and offers productive horizons of being in the world (Martinez). A combination of ‘militant’ research, political activism, and affirmation of identity can produce effective results when hope and perseverance are sustained (Collen & the LPT Team). Resuscitation of historical memory is a force for language policy change (Tupas) especially when nurtured by collective political awakening, as happened in the 1980s in the Philippines. Pedagogy is another site of resistance. Our conception of the aims of competence needs to be revisited. Forms of competence based on the myths of the native speaker or a narrow understanding of communication need to abandoned. Language competence needs to move beyond simply linguistic skills to include the ability to communicate (dispositional ability) across divides; pluralism should be encouraged and its importance and reality in international communication be recognised. Celebration of linguistic diversity, exposure to varieties of English and consciousness-raising about the politics of English and the commercial interests it serves are pedagogical options (Kubota & Okuda). So is emphasising intercultural learning and competence rather than a confirmation of stereotypes and a complacent pedagogy and curriculum catering to imagined cultural constructions of the other. Cultural assumptions and reductive constructions of otherness need to be problematised and unsettled in pedagogy, curriculum and teacher training (Stanley). There is also need for more socially responsible volunteer teaching where the community defines its needs, has control over planning and process and agency over outcomes and their assessment (Bunce). The Hydra also needs inoculation in teacher education. The soaring supply of English entails the deskilling of teachers (Templer) and the devaluing of locally relevant professional knowledge. Decentred teacher programmes should redefine agency, responsibility and professionalism based on new

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understandings of knowledge, growth and learning. Teacher educators should engage in an unlearning experiment in which they are willing to tear down the veneer of authority and ‘expertise’ and the pretence of knowledge to expose themselves to the disquieting possibilities of starting afresh, un/relearning and reconnecting with professional selves in the materiality of praxis and intellectual humility (Jordão). This produces locally authentic professional selves in communion with local contexts and their genuine exigencies. It seems patently clear that the decentring imperative is the way ahead. Ng ũg ĩ convincingly argues that ‘decolonising the mind’ is conditional on ‘moving the centre’. Decentring the Hydra means the Herculean task of severing its heads and tail from its neocolonial moorings and commercialism. Neocolonial ideologies and practices have to be provincialised and offset by organic counter-narratives of local autonomy and diversity. Universal theory and claims to validity are imperialistic. Conditions of relevance are contextually and locally determined and negotiated. Imperialist language policies therefore ought to be decentred. What this implies is the decentring of the whole institution of Western-centric applied linguistics and ELT practice. This primarily includes the ‘technocracy’ of institutions such as the British Council and the World Bank and the platoons of experts that do the industry’s bidding. We should abandon altogether the colonial framework that instructs us that education and development ‘problems’ require ‘technical’ solutions and that the West possesses the expertise to offer those solutions. One need not tarry on the havoc such a system has wrought on the oppressed. Epistemic decentring should aim at dismantling ELT knowledge structures and the Western-centric assumptions underpinning them. ‘Epistemist’, culturalist, linguicist and racist pedagogical, educational and curriculum precepts permeate scholarship and educational materials. This should be unhinged through locally informed pedagogy and curriculum frameworks. Local professionals should be empowered to think for themselves and build professional self-defence mechanisms against professional imperialism. Local pedagogical knowledges, linguistic traditions, learning and educational cultures should be nurtured and revitalised. State monopoly of linguistic and symbolic violence must be decentred. People power, grassroots activism, decentralisation, small and community-based action are counterweights to centralised, authoritarian policies. The fixation on economic rationality and bureaucratic planning has proven to be ineffective and counterproductive. The infatuation with outcomes, measurement and the tyranny of numbers masks the actual failure of policies to meet human needs and enhance their well-being. What is needed are language and education policies that empower individuals and communities to take matters into their own hands, to have control over

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their own lives, and provide them with meaningful opportunities to exercise their agency and make genuine choices. These reorientations require that we radically shift our focus from the paternalistic and colonial attitude of helping and rescuing ‘them’ to working with and for communities to affirm their natural entitlement to cultural and linguistic autonomy, rights and self-actualisation. The freedom to exercise linguistic and cultural agency necessitates the freedom from structures and ideologies that undermine that agency. A little less than a decade ago, the late Joshua Fishman (2006: ix) posed the fundamental dilemma that confronts the business of language policy and the holders of its office, namely ‘whether not to intervene at all or to do so wisely and effectively in a world brimful of unanticipated and often undesirable consequences’. But now that innocence is a relic of a bygone age and that the ‘Rubicon has been crossed and it is no longer possible to “put the toothpaste back into the tube”’ (2006: ix), Fishman exhorted language communities: ‘do not leave your language alone’. That call is just as timely, and the need just as pressing, as they both were a decade ago. And only historically, culturally, educationally, epistemically, politically and locally responsive thinking and policy can provide the agency to decentre and domesticate the predations of the Hydra.

Notes (1) (2) (3)

Moroccan Fulbright Alumni Association. IPPNW: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. This attitude underlies current projects to overhaul the Arabic literacy curriculum in Morocco, meant to overcome the achievement and ‘reading crisis’ crippling the educational system. The project is entrusted to Creative Associates under the aegis of USAID. It is ironical that Creative Associates was the same organisation that supervised teacher training as part of the profiteering bonanza in post-invasion Iraq. The results were catastrophic for Iraqi education, but Creative Associates walked away with handsome profits (Saltman, 2009). It is also ironical that consultancy and training are provided by US agencies at a time when, according to official reports, the magnitude of the literacy crisis in the United States itself is alarming. Large numbers of students are unable to read at the most basic level and comprehend factual information or form general understandings (NASBE, 2006: 4), making them severely ill-equipped to meet academic and professional literacy demands (Salinger, 2011: 1).

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