Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices 3030935213, 9783030935214

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Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices Edited by Deborah Hill · Felix K. Ameka

Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices “A volume like this is long overdue. It shows how development studies needs to embrace an agenda that prioritises community-led approaches and builds on what communities themselves want, how they themselves conceptualise the challenges of development, how they talk about it, and what are the channels along which information passes most effectively in the local culture. Hill and Ameka’s volume is impressively broad, bringing together researchers, development practitioners and educators with experience in Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific, on a broad range of development topics. This thoughtful and original volume provides a powerful argument that development projects will not succeed without a deep and sensitive appreciation of how local languages lie at the heart of development challenges.” —Nicholas Evans, Director, CoEDL (ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language), Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, Australian National University “The book comes out at a time when the role of language in sustainable and human development is growingly explored. It critically analyses the affordances of linguistic analysis in development initiatives to promote inter-disciplinary dialogues and shared understanding. Drawing in grassroots-level experiences and collaborative perspectives in development practises, it provides a valuable direction to language and development studies.” —Qumrul Hasan Chowdhury, Department of English, University of Dhaka

Deborah Hill · Felix K. Ameka Editors

Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices

Editors Deborah Hill Centre for Sustainable Communities University of Canberra Bruce, ACT, Australia

Felix K. Ameka Centre for Linguistics Leiden University Leiden, The Netherlands

ISBN 978-3-030-93521-4 ISBN 978-3-030-93522-1 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: mgkaya/GettyImages This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Ná míá víwó Wadaolu galegaruagi For our children

Acknowledgements

This project has been a collaborative endeavour at every stage for all involved (co-authors, contributors, co-editors). We invited contributions to the book through personal and professional networks, and the first author of each chapter subsequently invited their co-authors to join in the project. The interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary nature of the book, and the range of experiences and languages of contributors to the project, provided opportunities to understand other disciplines and explain our own more carefully than we might have imagined. We organised several Zoom workshops in February 2021 to allow many of us to share our initial drafts and ideas for our book chapters. The final shape of the book was determined in part by the ideas shared during those workshops and the feedback we received from one another. Peer feedback followed the initial draft writing stage of the chapters. All chapter authors contributed to this process. We thank Barbara Pamphilon and Ann Hill for extensive discussions and engagement that supported the work of others. In addition to the book contributors, we acknowledge and thank the Centre for Sustainable Communities,

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Acknowledgements

University of Canberra, for providing the funds to support the excellent editing done by Libby Angel on some chapters of the book. We thank Justine Molony for advice and support in developing the index. Jeff Siegel generously provided comments on the language situation in PNG for several chapters. The book was planned and then written during 2020 and 2021 when all parts of the world were affected in different ways and at different times by COVID-19. We are especially grateful to those contributors to the book who suffered loss, sickness, separation, isolation and severe constraints in their professional and personal life while researching and writing their chapters. Some of the professional constraints (e.g. travel restrictions that impacted research) enforced by COVID-19 are documented in some chapters. However, many of the personal challenges that contributors faced are not evident in this book. We would like to acknowledge those challenges and hardships here and thank them for persisting with this project. We are indebted to Professor Salikoko Mufwene for his commentary chapter (Chapter 11). His insights and knowledge contribute significantly to the discussion and ideas presented here. We are very grateful for his time and commitment in reading and reflecting on the chapters despite his over-committed schedule. We expect that his comments will inspire more of the cross-disciplinary dialogue begun here. The initial suggestion for this book came from Cathy Scott, at Palgrave Macmillan, who contacted one of the editors (Deborah Hill) at the International Pragmatics Conference in Hong Kong in June 2019. Her advice and suggestions then and later, through email, helped to clarify the geographical scope, and broad aims of the book. We remain indebted to her for her guidance and support. We also thank other Palgrave Macmillan staff for their support and work on this book, including Alice Green and Supraja Ganesh. Deborah Hill Felix K. Ameka

Contents

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Introduction: What Can Linguistics and Language(s) Contribute to Development Practices? Felix K. Ameka and Deborah Hill 1 Introduction 2 Human Development 3 The Meaning of Development from Below 4 Linguistics and Development Communication 5 Pillars of Development 6 Organisation of the Book 7 Concluding Remark References Localising Global Financial Key Terms: Case Studies from East Africa Froukje Krijtenburg, Michelle Tjeenk Willink, Felix K. Ameka, and Aflatoun 1 Introduction 2 Language and Linguistics in Development Practice 3 Aflatoun International

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Contents

The Basics of Aflatoun’s Social and Financial Programme Contextualisation from the Aflatoun Perspective 4 Methodology 5 The World Bank Save Budget (v) Entrepreneurship Bank 6 Aflatoun Views Save Budget Entrepreneurship Bank 7 Local Understandings The Global Master Trainer in Tanzania The Kenyan Trainer and Teacher 8 Summary 9 Conclusion References 3

Asset-Based Community Development in Diverse Cultural Contexts: Learning from Mindanao, the Philippines Ann Hill, Anselmo B. Mercado, Anne Shangrila Fuentes, and Deborah Hill 1 Introduction 2 Asset-Based Community Development: A Brief Overview 3 ABCD in Mindanao: Adaptions and Examples 4 Language and Other Communication Tools as a Key Component of ABCD+E in Mindanao 5 ABCD—A Description in Simple Words 6 Conclusion References

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Contents

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The Changing Conceptions of Work and the Language of Work in Ghana: Towards a Research Agenda Akosua K. Darkwah and Dzodzi Tsikata 1 Introduction 2 Notes on the Ghanaian Economy and the Changing Character of Work 3 Ghanaian Popular Culture and Depictions of the Centrality of Work in Ghana 4 The Changing Character and Language of Agricultural Work in Ghana 5 The Changing Language of Work in the Mining Sector 6 The Changing Nature of Urban Informal Work 7 Conclusions—Towards a Research Agenda References The Importance of Mutual Understanding of Key Terminology in Development Projects: A PNG Example Jo Caffery, Lalen Simeon, and Kiteni Kusunan Kurika 1 Introduction 2 Understanding Participating Communities 3 Accessible Language 4 Methodology and Results 5 Discussion 6 Conclusion References Peer-To-Peer Learning: The Dynamics of Kin Relations, Matriliny, and Gender Deborah Hill, Delmay Basi, and Godwin Rahe 1 Introduction 2 Peer-to-Peer Learning: An Appropriate Model for the Pacific 3 Matriliny, Households and Kin Relations Matriliny and Longgu

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87 87 91 96 98 102 103 104 106

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Kin Relations: Likely Peers and Non-Peers Family Farm Teams Approach and Peer-to-Peer Learning Preparing for Peer Learning Initial Peer-to-Peer Training Networks Peer-to-Peer Learning as a Reflection of Kinship Relationships and Practices 6 Implications for Development Practices 7 Conclusion References 7

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‘I Could Still Be Myself as a Warlpiri Person’: How Bilingual Education Achieves Community Development Aims Carmel O’Shannessy, Marlkirdi Napaljarri Rose, Elaine Nangala Johnson, and Gracie Napaljarri White 1 Setting the Scene: A Day in a Warlpiri-English School Programme 2 Introduction 3 Background: Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory and in Lajamanu Community 4 How Bilingual Education Helps to Achieve the Aims of Community Development 5 Conclusion References English Language Learning as a Trojan Horse? Examining Early Childhood Teachers’ Views of Teaching Young Children in an English-Medium NGO in India Zinnia Mevawalla and Sanobia Palkhiwala 1 Introduction 2 Indian Linguistic Context 3 Postcolonial Politics of the English Language in India 4 Education Systems and the ‘Double Divide’

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‘Banking Approach’ Pedagogical Practices for English Language Learning in India 6 The Case Study: An English-Medium Balwadi 7 Teachers’ Perspectives of English Language Learning in the Early years 8 English as an Antidote? Teaching Children English as Early as Possible is Necessary for Future Success 9 English-Medium Instruction for Young Children is Important 10 Revisiting the Two Key Arguments 11 Conclusion References

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The Place of a Lingua Franca in Development Practice: The Case of Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea Catherine Levy 1 Introduction 2 Language Choice and Aims of Development Work—A Personal Reflection 3 Why Choose Tok Pisin in PNG: The Place of Tok Pisin in PNG Identity 4 Tok Pisin in Development Practices The Place of Glossaries 5 Benefits of Choosing Tok Pisin in Development Projects Tok Pisin as Middle Language: Examples from Linguistic Research and from HIV and AIDS Awareness Inclusive Translations Tok Pisin in Project Evaluation 6 The Challenge with the Use of English 7 Conclusion References

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Lost in Translation: Disorienting Research Dilemmas in a Multilingual Country Barbara Pamphilon 1 Introduction 2 Language Challenges Survey Translation Workshop Interpretation Qualitative Data Translation Using Plain English 3 Reflections 4 Conclusion References

11 The Linguist, Language, and Economic Development: A Commentary on Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices Salikoko S. Mufwene 1 Introduction 2 The Chapters 3 Some Constructive Addenda References Index

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Notes on Contributors

Felix K. Ameka is a socio-cultural-cognitive linguist, and Chair Professor Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Diversity at Leiden University, The Netherlands. He is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, Australian Academy of Humanities and Academia Europaea. His interests include language documentation and description, language and culture and sociolinguistics of development. He has published on the lexicon, grammar, (ethno-)semantics, (ethno-)pragmatics and language contact of West African languages. Delmay Basi is a Project Officer for the Family Farm Teams project at Live and Learn Environmental Education NGO, Solomon Islands. She is from Kolombangara (Western Province) and Guadalcanal (Guadalcanal Province), Solomon Islands. Delmay speaks several Solomon languages and is an experienced community development worker. Jo Caffery is an Associate Professor with the University of Canberra in Australia. She designs place-conscious, cultural and linguistically appropriate capacity building programmes for international Australian Aid projects.

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Akosua K. Darkwah is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Ghana. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research straddles Sociology of Work, Sociology of Development and Gender Studies. She focuses on investigating ways in which global economic policies and practices reconfigure women’s work in the Ghanaian context. Anne Shangrila Fuentes is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Sciences at the University of the Philippines Mindanao. She is a sociologist with research interests in gender, sexuality, social capital and agricultural extension. She has worked with indigenous communities in conflict-vulnerable areas of Mindanao for years. Ann Hill is Senior Lecturer at University of Canberra’s Centre for Sustainable Communities. A human geographer and community economies scholar by training, she has more than ten years’ experience of community partnering for local development in The Philippines using participatory methods to strengthen livelihoods and food systems. Deborah Hill is Associate Professor in TESOL and Linguistics, at University of Canberra’s Centre for Sustainable Communities, Australia. Her interests include language description, (ethno-)semantics and language in development. She has published on the language and culture of Longgu, Solomon Islands. She currently leads a research for development project in Solomon Islands. Aflatoun International is an NGO with headquarters in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Its vision is to socially and economically empower children and youth with skills, knowledge and resources necessary for participation in their communities. Aflatoun International works with network partners, including NGOs, CSOs, and governments, who implement social and financial education programmes in over 100 countries. Elaine Nangala Johnson worked as a Warlpiri educator and literacy worker (Northern Territory, Australia) for many years. She has been a member of the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust (WETT). Froukje Krijtenburg Ph.D. is an Independent Researcher and a member of the African Studies Centre Leiden Community (Netherlands). She

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is an anthropologist of language. Her main interests are cross-cultural conceptual analysis, semantics and critical discourse analysis. She has done extensive ethnographic field work on Bantu languages of East Africa. Kiteni Kusunan Kurika from East New Britain (ENB), PNG, is the ENB Women and Youth in Agriculture Cooperative Society Association’s Executive Manager. She is an experienced community liaison officer, and capacity building facilitator in agricultural training programmes. Catherine Levy is a social researcher and linguist. She has spent over 25 years living and working in Papua New Guinea. She has been involved in research on local languages and social issues, including literacy and education, HIV and AIDS awareness, gender issues and women’s empowerment and the environment. Anselmo B. Mercado is a retired professor of Rural-Social Development, and former Dean of the College of Agriculture, Xavier University, Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines. His Doctorate Degree in Education is from North Carolina State University, USA. He has held leadership roles in the cooperative movement in Cagayan de Oro, and pioneered ‘Asset- Based Community Development + Empowerment’ (ABCD+E) in Mindanao. Zinnia Mevawalla is a Lecturer in Early Years Education at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom. Zinnia is interested in understanding how initiatives and practices in the early years can foster participation, inclusion and equity for children, families/caregivers and communities. Salikoko S. Mufwene is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor of Linguistics and the College at the University of Chicago, where he also serves on the Committee of Evolutionary Biology and the Committee on African Studies. His current research is in evolutionary linguistics. His books include Bridging Linguistics and Economics (with Cécile B. Vigouroux, CUP, 2020). Carmel O’Shannessy is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, Australian National University. She

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has been involved with Warlpiri language and education since 1998, and documents a new way of speaking, Light Warlpiri. Her ARC Future Fellowship project documents children’s language development in Central Australia. Sanobia Palkhiwala is doctoral candidate at Macquarie University, Australia. Sanobia’s research was conducted in Mumbai, India in an early childhood setting, located in an underprivileged community. Drawing on a postcolonial lens, Sanobia’s research unpacks the assumptions and complexities of transporting pedagogical and reflective practices from the Global North into the Global South. Barbara Pamphilon is a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and Professor of Community Learning and Development at the University of Canberra’s Centre for Sustainable Communities, Australia. She specialises in critical participatory action research with a focus on gender. She has developed innovative research and adult education methodologies that enable multiple knowledges to emerge, especially in low literacy settings. Godwin Rahe is a Project Officer for the Family Farm Teams project at Live and Learn Environmental Education NGO, Solomon Islands. He is from Malaita province, Solomon Islands. His experience as a community development worker has focused on environmental health and community health. Marlkirdi Napaljarri Rose worked as a Warlpiri educator (Northern Territory, Australia) for many years and as a consultant with La Trobe University, Australia. She is a member of the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust (WETT). Lalen Simeon is a Professor and Deputy Vice Chancellor of the Pacific Adventist University, PNG. She is from Mussau Island, PNG, fluent in several PNG languages and is an experienced social sciences and health researcher. Dzodzi Tsikata is Professor of Development Sociology and Director of the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at the University of Ghana. Tsikata’s research and publications in the last 30 years have been on

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gender and development policies and practices; agrarian change and rural livelihoods; and the labour relations of the informal economy. Gracie Napaljarri White worked as a Warlpiri educator (Northern Territory, Australia) for many years. She has been a member of the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust (WETT). Michelle Tjeenk Willink is an American education specialist living in Nairobi, with 11 years’ experience in curriculum development and teacher training. She worked for Aflatoun International from 2016 to 2020. With a Masters in Applied Linguistics and a background in teaching, her areas of interest are in multilingual and multicultural learning settings.

Abbreviations

3SG ABCD ABCD+E ACIAR CD COMIT CONJ COP CSO EAfE ECECD ENB ESL FFT FOC FUT GDP HDI ILO INCL

3rd Person Singular Asset-Based Community Development Asset-Based Community Development + Empowerment Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research Cambridge Dictionary Comitative Conjunction Copular Civil Society Organisation East African Englishes Early Childhood Education, Care and Development East New Britain (PNG) English as a Second language Family Farm Teams Focus Marker Future Marker Gross Domestic Product Human Development Index International Labour Organization Inclusive

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KG LAMI LFP LOC MD MLE NARI NEG NEP NGO NT-ILC OBJ PAR PAU PL PNG POSS PRED PREP PRIV PURP RATE RED SAE SBJ SDG SG UFI UN UNDP USA VCE VSO WaSH WETT

Abbreviations

Kindergarten Low and Middle Income Low Fee Paying Schools (India) Locative Merriam-Webster Dictionary Multilingual Education National Agricultural Research Institute (PNG) Negative New Education Policy (India) Non-Government Organisation Northern Territory Curriculum Framework—Indigenous Languages and Cultures (Australia) Object Participatory Action Research Pacific Adventist University (PAU) Plural Papua New Guinea Possessive Predicate Preposition Privative Purposive Remote Area Teacher Education (Australia) Reduplicative Standard Australian English Subject Sustainable Development Goal Singular Universal Financial Inclusion United Nations United Nations Development Programme United States of America Village Community Educator (VCE) Voluntary Service Overseas Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Warlpiri Education and Training Trust

List of Figures

Chapter 1 Fig. 1

Graffiti in the National Botanical Garden of Ghana, Aburi (Photo Felix K. Ameka July 2001)

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Chapter 3 Fig. 1 Fig. 2

BUKTAMACO signage, Mindanao Lumad housing, Mindanao

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Chapter 5 Map 1

ENB PNG Districts (Map reproduced with the permission of CartoGIS Services, Scholarly Information Services, The Australian National University)

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Chapter 6 Fig. 1

VCE peer-to-peer training: gender and kinship

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Map 1

Map of Solomon Islands languages (Eberhard et al. 2021)

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List of Figures

Chapter 7 Map 1

Map of the Northern Territory of Australia, showing the four Warlpiri communities in the abstract ‘Warlpiri Triangle’ area (© Brenda Thornley in O’Shannessy et al. 2019, used with permission)

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Chapter 10 Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Working together A day in the life of a PNG farmer New Ireland female leadership symbol

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List of Tables

Chapter 2 Table 1 Table 2

Aflatoun’s theory of change Conceptual dimensions of key financial terms in Aflatoun’s educational financial programme and across global to local actors

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Chapter 5 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5

Accessible Language Principles developed by Caffery and Hill (2019, p. 4) Key project terms explored for use in the project Tok Pisin terms for the key project English term ‘Youth’, ‘female youth’, and ‘male youth’ Age of youth by district Cultural marital and child status of PNG youth

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1 Introduction: What Can Linguistics and Language(s) Contribute to Development Practices? Felix K. Ameka

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and Deborah Hill

Introduction

The studies in this book are concerned with the links between languages, linguistics or language analysis and development practice. It is an unintentional response to a call for a ‘long overdue linguistic turn in development discourse’ and for more consideration of the ‘language factor’ in development practice and development studies, especially in the social sciences and economics (Wolff 2016, 1). F. K. Ameka (B) Centre for Linguistics, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] D. Hill Centre for Sustainable Communities, University of Canberra, Bruce, ACT, Australia e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Hill and F. K. Ameka (eds.), Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1_1

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We seek to promote an interdisciplinary dialogue between language experts, i.e. community members, students of language, development sociologists, anthropologists and development practitioners, e.g. NGO workers. One sign of the beginnings of the interactions is that almost all chapters in the book are co-authored and some chapters are collaborations between academics and community members, e.g. O’Shannessy et al. Some other chapters have NGO partners or development practitioners/researchers as co-author with academics (e.g. A. Hill et al., D. Hill et al., Krijtenburg et al.). Other chapters are collaborations with academics from different (sub)disciplines (e.g. Caffery et al., Darkwah and Tsikata, A. Hill et al.). The book demonstrates that interdisciplinary work may not be easy, but it is not impossible. The task has been to bring different perspectives and practices from different disciplines to talk to one another. Inevitably the biases from particular disciplines may be more pronounced in some chapters than in others. Readers with different backgrounds may find chapters focussed on disciplines outside their comfort zone more challenging than those that are closer to their home disciplines. We hope that the little extra effort that may be required will be rewarding. While there is acknowledgement in the literature and discourses about development on the importance of languages for achieving development goals (e.g. Romaine 2013, 2019; Bamgbose 2014; Djité 2008, 2011), development practitioners do not always know how to approach the language question in development. Moreover, there is very little use made of the affordances of language as can be revealed through the analytic study of language use at all levels as is done in the disciplines of sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics. Why should human development be concerned with human languages and their analysis? Human language is a special communication system among the communication systems of all social species. Language is the one feature that sets humans apart from other species. Human language has remarkable features that are not shared by any other species on the planet. First, it is only humans who do not use their ‘evolved communicative displays and possibly signals with all other individuals of their species (even birds with different dialects still recognize and respond

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appropriately to songs in other dialects)’ (Tomasello 2008, 299). Second, in other species, these displays and signals do not change appreciably across generations. For humans, however, ‘even the speakers of the same language at different points in historical time would have great difficulties comprehending one another […]’ (Tomasello 2008, 299). Third is the diversity of human languages: there are over 7000 different languages used by humans whose speakers/signers cannot understand one another. Additionally, ‘there is no other animal on the planet, as far as we know, which has such myriad variants of form and meaning at every level in its communication system’ (Levinson 2012, 2). Given these species-specific features of human languages it is surprising that languages do not have a prominent role in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim at human development, nor in development practice generally. With respect to the SDGs, for example, language is the means at every step of the way to achieving the SDGs: identifying and formulating the goals, interpreting and understanding the goals and implementing and evaluating them (Ezeh and Obiageli 2020). Without attention to languages, development work cannot be successful. ‘Language is not everything, but without language everything is nothing’ (Wolff 2016, 44). An important argument in this book is that languages are and can be important tools in development, and they should be used as resources in development practice. To exploit the affordances of languages fully, the techniques of language analysis should be integrated in the contextual analysis component of development communication. With the linguistic turn in development studies, linguistics has an opportunity to make its findings more relevant to the social life of people. We suggest that approaches to and results from analyses of languages from sociocultural perspectives can have impact in development work. Vigouroux and Mufwene (2020, 2) call for ‘improved cross-disciplinary dialogue’ between economists and linguists, while lamenting that ‘linguists have been unable to make their findings relevant to decision makers in politics’. We echo this sentiment and call on linguists to make their discipline and its fruits more applicable and appliable to human development (see also Mahboob and Knight 2020 on appliable linguistics). We first provide a snapshot of how development has been understood over time (Sect. 2). We then illustrate in Sect. 3 how we can understand

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development from the perspective of people using different languages to talk about development. In Sect. 4, we spell out the way in which attention to languages and their analysis can enhance development practice, and we suggest some practical steps. Section 5 relates the themes of the book to the areas traditionally considered pillars of development. Section 6 outlines the case studies and reflections in the rest of the book.

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Human Development

The framework for development practices today is guided by the UN universal agenda of 17 sustainable development goals and 169 targets with economic, social and environmental dimensions aiming to eradicate poverty in all its forms by 2030. Developing further Raworth’s (2017: 5) metaphor of ‘economics is the mother tongue of public policy’, Romaine (2019: 42) argues that in that case ‘economics must be multilingual and public policy … must rest on explicit recognition of language as both a right and means of inclusive sustainable development’ (cf. Vigouroux and Mufwene 2020). The relevance of language for the SDGs is beginning to be recognised in the UN. During the launch of The World Atlas of Languages (November 18, 2021), The President of the General Conference of UNESCO, Santiago Irazabal Mourão asserted that: ‘We cannot fulfil the promises of the 2030 Agenda to promote quality education and make it a driver for sustainable development without supporting the use of local languages’ (https://en.unesco.org/news/unesco-launchesworld-atlas-languages-celebrate-and-protect-linguistic-diversity). The argument in this book is that local languages and their analysis are indispensable in achieving sustainable development. To give sustainable development local content, to ensure full and inclusive participation, local languages must be placed at the centre. The role of local languages is two-fold: first for communicating about the goals and second to guide the local understandings of the key concepts in development work and practice (cf. Djité 2020). This view calls for a move from development as a socio-economic lens to a human development perspective. Trudell (2009) provides a useful overview of the emergence of the conceptualisation of development, and its accompanying discourse

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and implications for development approaches. Development practice emerged as part of the colonial agenda where contact with the ‘colonised’ viewed these people as being underdeveloped both in terms of level of civilization and in terms of level of production (Robinson 1996; Esteva 2003). Associated with this is the deficit view of development. Development work was seen as benevolence to provide assistance to the underdeveloped. As Wolff (2016, 5) notes ‘[W]hat we call ‘underdevelopment’ mirrors our own Eurocentric perceptions’ which has its roots in evolutionary theory of Darwinian Social theory. Development projects designed from the so-called developed world were designed to address deficiencies in educational, economic and health-related sectors. In the immediate Post World War II era economic and technological considerations were prominent, culminating in the establishment of the World Bank. Although the World Bank view of development is not entirely devoid of human well-being, the World Bank measures development predominantly by economic indicators such as the Gross Domestic Product of countries (GDP). In its 2003 World Development Report, sustainable development is defined as both ongoing economic growth and enhanced human development. Much of the development work in the developing world adopts the World Bank approach focusing on economic growth with an eye to well-being. Various concepts about economic and financial development have travelled from the World Bank and have been assumed to be universally understood and applicable. However, they are English language concepts. For instance, the very concept of bank and the functions and transactions that take place there, such as savings, have different expressions and meanings in various local languages (see Krijtenburg et al. this volume). Even the everyday English word ‘economy’ has a complex set of meanings (Goddard and Sadow 2021). If the meanings of the key concepts differ across languages, it follows that there is misunderstanding when these terms are used in development communication. A linguistic turn in development discourse can help expose the potential pitfalls and reduce such misunderstanding. A parallel approach to development is promoted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The UNDP challenges the use of statistical and economic measures such as GDP or per capita

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income in determining the level of development of people. It is argued that such factors are an inadequate measure of the well-being of a people as income, for example, is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Moreover, there is no correlation between high human development and high GDP. In its 1990 report, UNDP asserts that development is to benefit people and has drawn attention to the negative effects of economic reforms, such as Structural Adjustment Programmes, on the poor. There are thus different approaches to development. Development conceived as a measure of prosperity, measured by GDP and linked to poverty. In this conception development practice and work is aimed at improving the living conditions and alleviating poverty. The measure of GDP leads to a stratification of countries in low- middle- and high-income. Development projects are usually designed and funded by developed countries to help low- and middle-income countries overcome social, political, economic and environmental problems (World Population Review 2021). This is the approach inherent in the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN and of Agenda 2063 of the Africa Union. Several NGOs such as Aflatoun International (see Krijtenburg et al. this volume) work from this perspective to alleviate poverty. It tends to be an external approach. A second approach is one that is internal to the community whose emphasis is not so much on economic poverty alleviation but on human potential and dignity drawing on the resources and assets of the communities. An example of this approach is ABCD (Asset-based community development) (see A. Hill et al. this volume for an example of ABCD in Mindanao, Philippines). One thing that seems to be shared by any development work is that it has some elements of external involvement to different degrees. This may be in terms of funding, facilitators or in terms of determining the goals. One thing that many development practitioners agree on, whether they are focused on alleviating poverty based on GDP or on satisfying a need in the human condition based on the assets of the community, is that language is an indispensable tool for development. For instance, in the latest representation of the ‘diverse economies’ iceberg (https://www.communityeco nomies.org/resources/diverse-economies-iceberg) ‘language’ has a pride

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of place (accessed 30 October 2021). In some previous representations language was not featured at all, (see above for recent recognition of local languages for SDGs). The collection of papers in the volume seeks to highlight not only the importance of languages, but also the importance of analytic studies of languages for enhancing development practices. It is an effort in promoting interdisciplinary collaborations and discourses between language users, i.e. community members, language experts or scientists (linguists) and social scientists and early childhood researchers and development sociologists and practitioners.

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The Meaning of Development from Below

‘The meaning of development is difficult to pin down’ (Trudell 2009, 73). It may be difficult but it is not impossible, and the techniques of language analysis especially conceptual analysis can help in unravelling what people mean by development. Different people talk about development in different ways in their languages. These different ways of talking reflect different understandings. A linguistic approach can contribute to making the similarities and differences in thinking transparent. When linguists work with communities they participate in the social life of the people. An important methodological tool is fieldwork with its ethnographic practice of participant observation. They record everyday language use, typically audio-visually using state of the art technological devices, add value to the recordings by transcribing them; annotating and analysing them. For the analysis of expressions and utterances, linguists employ word-for-word glosses as the initial analysis which gives an idea of the way in which the object language presents information. For others to have a glimpse of the interpretation, there is a free translation into a language of wider communication. Thus, the data is presented in at least three lines: the local language, the word-for-word gloss line and the free translation. The local language segment can be represented in two lines, one reflecting how the utterance is said and the other showing the meaningful units it is made of. If there are complex forms, the units are

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separated by hyphens (to indicate morpheme breaks). It is these meaningful units for which glosses are provided (see below and e.g. D. Hill et al., this volume). Language analysis provides a way to generate awareness of ontological frameworks in development contexts as Forsyth et al. (2017) suggest in their investigation of hybridity (see also Sillitoe 2010 on knowledge systems). To answer the question of how people think about the concept of development we can interview language users. For instance, if we ask speakers of Ewe in West Africa, they would say development is ŋgOyiyi. This term can be initially analysed and glossed as in (1).1 (1)

ŋgOyiyi ŋgO-yi-yi front-red-go ‘moving forward’

From this we get a glimpse of the idea that development is thought of as moving forward (on a journey). A further analysis can suggest that the complex word ŋgOyiyi is a noun formed by regular processes in the language from the verbal expression yi ‘go’ and ŋgO ‘front’ as the third line in (1)—the gloss line—indicates. We also get other expressions that relate to the concept. A view of moving forward is that one only moves forward and does not turn back or look back, as the expression in (2) indicates. (2)

megbémakp´Omakp´Oény’áz˜ Oli megbé-ma-kp´O-ma-kp´O = é nyé back-PRIV-see-PRIV-see = FOC COP ‘Not looking back is walking (forward)’

az˜ Oli march

Reflecting on development from an oral historical perspective in Botoku, an Ewe village in Ghana, Komla Tsey (2011, 151) provides corroborating evidence to the view derived from the linguistic evidence. Tsey suggests that for the Botoku, ‘development is all about the quest for a better future’. He further indicates that an important dimension of The following abbreviations are used in the glossing of the meaningful units: COP = copular, FOC = focus marker, PRIV = privative (i.e. ‘un-’), RED = reduplicative.

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this quest is travel. This resonates with the idea that the Ewe language views development as moving forward on a journey. Armed with such an understanding one can better put programmes in place for the forward movement of the people. Notice how this perspective is different from the deficit view of development and from an undue reliance on economic or statistical indicators. We can also draw on other data such as external representations of thought through writing or visual representations to gain some knowledge about how people would like to go about development. In Fig. 1 we see a view of what a commentator thinks development is using Ghanaian English. The writing in the picture can be spelled out as ‘Development means eye-red’. Eye-red is a calque from various Ghanaian languages including Ewe which can be read as ‘seriousness, focus, ambition’ (Ameka 2002). Putting these pieces of data together from a language and conceptual analysis perspective, we can say that the concept of development in Ewe relates to focus on moving forward in seriousness. As we show below,

Fig. 1 Graffiti in the National Botanical Garden of Ghana, Aburi (Photo Felix K. Ameka July 2001)

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this perspective on development is different from the understanding of the concept that is represented in languages found in Oceania. In Moli (a dialect of Talise, a Guadalcanal language of Solomon Islands) they talk about development as: Vavanoa ago ‘continue to work’. It is expected that the work will have impacts of development. Note the idea of going on to do things which resonates with the moving forward idea discussed above. In Solomons Pijin, development is kamap gud ‘come up good’. This expression has the implication that there is a target to which one comes up to, again a movement is implied. Like the Moli idea, the target seems to be development impacts. Interestingly, the way people talk about development in Tok Pisin, spoken in Papua New Guinea and related to Solomon Pijin, focuses on change, which is related to the ideas we have seen. One can think of moving forward or ongoing activity or coming up well as involving a kind of change of location or position. Catherine Levy informs us that in Tok Pisin NGO-ese, i.e. NGOspeak divelopmen is used. This can be explained as pasin bilong wokim senis ‘way of making/working change’. Indeed, senis ‘change’ is the word used most often at grassroots level to describe a longing of what is effectively development: mipela laikim senis ‘I want change’. To explain development, one might add: olsem niupela pasin bilong wokim bisnis o wokim gaden o narapela niupela wok ‘like a new way for doing business or working garden or another kind of work’. In the village, one would probably hear, as an echo, pasin bilong waitman ‘white man’s way’. This last paraphrase is indicative of the fact that development activities are external to the culture as it is the white man’s way of doing things. Drawing the various threads together, one can say that for Tok Pisin, development seems to relate to change and, by implication, change to external ways of doing things. The Cambridge English Dictionary Online has as a first definition of development ‘the growth or changes that make something become more advanced’. The Tok Pisin and the Solomons Pijin characterisations share some features with the English definition, however they do not completely match. The understandings in Ewe and Moli are a bit further away from the English. This is just what an initial linguistic analysis can reveal. This exploration illustrates the way in which attention to language

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and linguistic expression can give insight into what people think about a concept. This is true of whatever term one uses in areas of development (see for example Caffery et al. on the term ‘youth’ and its equivalent Tok Pisin yut this volume).

4

Linguistics and Development Communication

There are two approaches to communication for development: a diffusional approach with its top-down linear transmission of messages or a bottom-up participatory approach. It appears that the latter approach is more and more used in development contexts where development is seen more as participatory development. Boafo (2006, 42) suggests that Development Communication is ‘the planned and systematic application of communication resources, channels and strategies to support the goals of socio-economic, political and cultural development’. In our view, Development Communication, and also Participatory Development Communication, with its focus on the planning and processes, have not taken account of the full potential of the discipline of linguistics and the dimensions of language. There are several ways in which language factors play a role in development and development communication. One of these is language choice. Given the multilingual contexts in which development usually takes place (Footitt 2017), which language should be used for communication? In most postcolonial societies there is a hierarchical trilingual configuration of languages in use. For the countries discussed in this book–Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania (Africa); India; Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea (Oceania) Philippines (South-East Asia)—English has a privileged position. Then there are a handful of languages of wider communication and at the base are several local languages. The discourse in Papua New Guinea shows the hierarchical and locality relations among the languages at the various levels. Thus, at the top is English which is the official language and the language of governance at the national and international level. Then there is Tok Pisin, the lingua franca across the country, and the local languages which are referred to

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as Tok Ples (see Chapters 5, 9 and 10). In these postcolonial societies, knowledge of English is the passport to socio-economic success in the society. In Chapter 8 we see that the position of English in India is talked about in terms of an economic metaphor where the teachers comment that English is ‘currency’ for the children to be able to function in the socio-economic market or society. It is also the case that these societies are areas of linguistic diversity and the actors tend to have more than one language in their linguistic repertoire. This issue raises the question of which language should be used in development communication. This is one dimension of language factors in development (see Bearth 2013; Beck 2011). Levy (this volume) argues persuasively for the use of Tok Pisin in development work in Papua New Guinea. Apart from choice, language and linguistics play a significant role in various processes. Because the stakeholders involved in the development project tend not to always share the same languages and given that the projects are usually designed from out of the communities and materials prepared in the language of the donor agencies which tends to be English there is the need for translation and interpretation. The quality of translation and interpretation can be improved if it is informed by language analysis and especially conceptual analysis, as demonstrated above for the term development. In Chapter 10 Pamphilon reflects on these processes and the lessons to be drawn from the practices she had implemented in various projects in PNG. Another dimension of language and linguistics in development work relates to the form of language that is used. Many of the contributions point to the importance of using accessible language rather than, socalled ‘expensive’ English (Caffery and Hill 2019; Hill 2021) in PNG or ‘book long’ or ‘big’ English in Ghana. One of the themes in the book relates to how various concepts typically couched in English travel through different layers: from the global stage, e.g. World Bank discourse at the International level; NGOs, and to local communities (see Caffery et al., Krijtenburg et al. this volume). At each level there is a slight difference in understanding of the same concept. This is true of the term ‘development’ itself. The various approaches and applications of the term outlined above give one picture, and the initial analysis of

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terms for development in local languages in Sect. 3 presents alternative views. Attention to the local construal embodied in a specific language and investigated through language analysis can contribute to making these layers of understanding transparent and shape development work activities. An important ingredient in Participatory Development Communication is context analysis. We believe that the outcome of such contextual analysis can be enhanced if explicit attention is paid to linguistics and language analysis. We briefly suggest some ways in which the chapters in this book provide pointers to how language analysis can be integrated to address the questions usually researched at the context analysis stage of development communication (cf. Bessette 2006, 26–27): who are the different groups what are the main customs and beliefs regarding the topic how do people communicate about these topics what are the effective interpersonal channels of communication what groups are used for exchange of views and information in the community what modern and traditional media does the community use? These questions dovetail into one another and different forms of language analysis can provide information on different aspects of the questions. For instance, Chapter 5 shows how, through language, one can identify who are understood as youth in a community in PNG. At the same time, it touches on how people talk about the youth. Similarly, Chapter 6 illustrates how language analysis and an understanding of kinship terms provide clues to kin groups, as well as clan structure, and contributes to an understanding of how learning and information transmission take place in a community. The chapter also shows how gender emerges as important at the intersection of the kin and clan groups. A central task of linguistic investigations is to discover how people communicate about topics (of importance to them). All chapters in this book provide evidence of how people talk about various themes in human development. Chapter 4 for example discusses various ways in which Ghanaians talk about work and how that reflects the conceptions

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of work from the colonial times to the present. Moreover, the chapter draws attention to how this relates to labour relations. This shows that by exploring how people talk about topics, one can uncover information about the nature of interpersonal relations in a domain, addressing one of the questions of the context analysis. Similarly, Chapter 8 explores how teachers in early childhood education in a province in India talk about their practices especially with respect to language use in education. Socio-cultural linguistics, with its attention to ethnography of communication and its analysis, is well placed to contribute to the identification of different media in use in a community. This is the last question cited above. From a linguistic point of view there are various dimensions to the question. One of these is the relevance of oral and written communication in a community. In communities that are the target of development, oral culture is primary. This means that communication in workshops and training should not be predominantly in the written mode. Experience from linguistic work and technological advances have revealed that the old opposition between oral and written language in terms of the former being ephemeral and the latter being the ‘technology of the intellect’ does not hold. Moreover, written language with its bias towards standardisation does not promote inclusive communication (Ameka 2015, 2016). The chapters in this book, especially Chapter 3, show the significance of the use of appropriate multi-modal prompts, visual materials and culturally significant objects in communication in development work. Language and linguistic analysis can contribute to identifying ecologically valid items for this purpose.

5

Pillars of Development

Before turning to the organisation of the book, we review very briefly the themes discussed in the book and how they relate to the areas of education, economy, health and governance which according to Djité (2008, 1) are traditionally considered the four pillars of development. Djité (2008, 2011) for example has amply demonstrated the place and role of language in these four areas, especially from a sociolinguistic point of view in Africa and South-East Asia (see also Beck 2011; Kamwangamalu

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2016; Wolff 2016 for Africa). The chapters all address the question of the role and place of language in these areas. They also discuss language as a factor in each of these areas. Moreover, they provide pointers as to how language analysis and linguistics can advance development practice. Several chapters relate to education. Chapter 8 focuses on language in child education and socialisation in one of the slums of India. It illustrates the challenges of language in education which are not unlike the issues in other postcolonial multilingual societies. It draws attention to how NGO policy of language in education in such contexts needs to be informed by a contextual analysis in order to avoid unintended consequences of development work. In a multilingual context a multilingual approach to language in education can allow for child development. NGOs and development practitioners should not think of multilingualism as a hindrance, but as an approach that provides ample opportunities for advancement. Chapter 7 also focuses on education in the Warlpiri community of Central Australia. It shows how bilingual education and community engagement lead to better educational outcomes. Chapter 6 is about peer learning and shows in great detail the advantage of linguistic analysis for this process. In addition, like Chapters 9 and 10, it is concerned with community training. Chapter 2 is concerned with financial education. Economy is an important pillar of development. Language and language analysis are necessary for development work in this area. Some chapters in this book demonstrate this. Chapter 2 shows how conceptual analysis is necessary for understanding various financial terms used in social financial education by the International NGO Aflatoun. Chapters 3 and 4 also relate to themes of the economy, e.g. work and labour relations. Chapters 6 and 10 deal with agricultural development which is part of the economy. The reflections in Chapter 10 about issues of translation and interpretation in an agricultural training programme shows how language and language analysis are relevant in this area of economic development work. The area of governance is discussed in Chapter 5 in connection with youth as leaders in the community. The role of language analysis in understanding who is considered a youth has been rather critical.

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Finally, Chapter 9 shows how language choice and language analysis as well as the choice of appropriate materials are critical for effective communication about water, sanitation and diseases such as HIV. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the world that we need to disseminate health information in as many local languages as possible.

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Organisation of the Book

The studies in Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices are organised into two parts. In Part I, Chapters 2–6 cover topics that are of broad interest to those working in the development field (e.g. financial inclusion, Asset-based community development—a development methodology, work, youth, and peer-to-peer learning). In addition, and in different ways, language analysis is included within the chapters (e.g. conceptual analyses, exploration of changing language reflecting changing work practices and roles, anthropological linguistic analysis of kinship terms and accessible language). Part II, Chapters 7–10, have language choice and language use at their core. These chapters, on school-based education and community education, all demonstrate the role and impact of language choice and language status in communities, and on the teachers, development researchers and trainers who implement the programmes. The ‘educator perspective’ taken by the authors in these four chapters demonstrates that language choice has significant implications for all stakeholders involved in community development. In Chapter 2, Localising global financial key terms: Case studies from East Africa, Froukje Krijtenburg, Michelle Tjeenk Willink and Felix K. Ameka examine how global concepts travel from international institutions through development agencies to people of different cultural backgrounds. Based on a case study, they argue that global financial discourse ignores cultural diversity in the conceptualisation of key terms and that, the ‘global’ and ‘local’ understandings must be investigated cross-culturally to achieve inclusive communication and sustainable development. In Chapter 3, Asset-based community development in diverse cultural contexts: learning from Mindanao, The Philippines, Ann Hill, Anselmo

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Mercado, Anne Shangrila Fuentes and Deborah Hill also address the challenges of a global approach to development by explaining how the emergence of asset-based community development (ABCD) developed in response to concerns about a one-size-fits all approach to development. It is not just global concepts that travel from international institutions, but also global development approaches. The chapter provides an historical account of the development of ABCD and explains how it has been adapted in Mindanao, The Philippines. Two of the key messages from the chapter are the role of language in empowering the community and also that significant responsibility for communicating rests with those implementing development programmes rather than with those planning or providing funding for the programmes. There is a strong argument to be made for greater awareness by global institutions and donor countries of the importance of languages, and the ‘cost of communication/interaction’ (Bearth 2013) in development practices, and the need for speakers of different languages (community members, multilingual development practitioners) to have a more significant role in project planning, implementation, materials and evaluations. As we set out to show in this book, working across disciplines and fields can contribute to this. Linguistic tools, such as understanding different conceptualizations of key terms and explaining terms like ABCD in simpler words (Chapter 3) can also play a role. Noticing the way language can reflect change and ‘listening’ to what the language says about perceptions and norms of a development domain is yet another way that language can inform an understanding of development. Akosua K. Darkwah and Dzodzi Tsikata do just this in Chapter 4, The Changing Conceptions of Work and the Language of Work in Ghana: Towards a Research Agenda. Focussing on the language of work in Ghana, from an historical perspective, they explain the changing nature and character of labour in Ghana, specifically in agriculture and mining, addressing issues of postcolonialism and gender, as they identify vocabulary and language and the way it reflects the place of work in Ghana. In Chapter 5, The importance of mutual understanding of key terminology in development projects: A PNG example, co-authors Jo Caffery,

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Lalen Simeon and Kiteni Kusunan Kurika, acknowledge the importance of local language in development projects and at the same time note that donor countries, and global languages like English play a significant role within development projects in Papua New Guinea. Their chapter provides an example of how a mutual understanding of key terms, and decisions about which terms to use, was established in a development project. In Chapter 6, Peer-to-Peer Learning: the dynamics of kin relations, matriliny, and gender, Deborah Hill, Delmay Basi and Godwin Rahe focus on the way anthropo-linguistic evidence can be used within a development project to understand how peer learning takes place within a community. The example from the Solomon Islands, shows that linguistic analysis and an understanding of the culture, can contribute to understanding who participants share new knowledge and skills with, and how this has implications for development practice. Chapters in Part II (Chapters 7–10), focus on the use of languages in development—the benefits that arise from using the ‘right’ language, and the challenges and disadvantages of choosing the ‘wrong’ language. Chapters 7 and 8 throw a spotlight on education. In both cases, the role of teachers (reminiscent of the discussion in Chapter 3 on who ‘implements’ policy and projects) is one of ‘implementer’ of policy. Both chapters focus on the teachers experiences and perspectives in terms of using languages within an educational setting. In Chapter 7, ‘I could still be myself as a Warlpiri person’: How bilingual education achieves community development aims, co-authors Carmel O’Shannessy, Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri, Elaine Johnson Nangala and Gracie White Napaljarri provide a window into the experience of teaching in a bilingual education programme in a remote community in Australia, illustrating how the language and culture programme meets community development aims. Three of the co-authors, Warlpiri educators, discuss their community’s perspectives on the programme and their journeys in becoming educators and literacy workers. Their reflections show the many benefits to themselves as teachers, and to their community, of teaching in a bilingual programme with their community’s language.

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A counterpoint to this is the chapter by Zinnia Mevawalla and Sanobia Palkhiwala. In Chapter 8, English language learning as a Trojan horse? Examining early childhood teachers’ views of teaching young children in an English-medium NGO in India, the co-authors writing from the perspective of educators, question the assumptions around the importance of learning English for disadvantaged Indian children, whose access to education is through a Non-Government Organization (NGO). Interviews with multilingual teachers, with varying qualifications in education and with varying proficiency in English, highlight the position that teachers are placed in, and question whether learning English does more harm than good for the students. Chapters 9 and 10 discuss language use in development practice in Papua New Guinea. In Chapter 9, Catherine Levy argues for the importance of Tok Pisin in development practice. Her reflection, based on decades of experience as a development researcher, translator and linguist, sets out the many benefits of using the language of wider communication, rather than English, in the areas of health, and economics. She demonstrates that the benefits come to the development practitioner and researcher, as well as the participants and communities taking part in community development projects. Importantly, her experiences also reveal the problems, misunderstandings and failures that resulted when development projects and development practitioners chose English over Tok Pisin. In Chapter 10, Lost in Translation: disorienting research dilemmas in a multilingual country, Barbara Pamphilon also provides a reflection on language and language use in Papua New Guinea, from the perspective of a researcher working closely with communities. Her chapter highlights the importance of dialogue, to clarify meanings in a multilingual context, when not all participants share the same language. In Chapter 11, Salikoko S. Mufwene reflects on the preceding chapters and situates the theme of the book in the broader context of language, linguistics and economic development.

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Concluding Remark

In their survey of disciplines pertaining to Development Communication, Lie and Servaes (2015) draw attention to development practicebased and communication science-based disciplines. However, they do not consider linguistics or the language sciences. We hope the chapters in this book highlight the potential of language analysis and linguistic approaches to development communication, including culturally appropriate modes of communication. We hope this book can contribute to a linguistic turn and increased attention to language and languages in development discourse and studies.

References Ameka, Felix K. 2002. Cultural Scripting of Body Parts for Emotions: On ‘Jealousy’ and Related Emotions in Ewe. Pragmatics & Cognition 10 (1–2): 27–55. Ameka, Felix K. 2015. Unintended Consequences of Methodological and Practical Responses to Language Endangerment in Africa. In Language Endangerment and Documentation in Africa, ed. James Essegbey, Brent Henderson, and Fiona McLaughlin, 15–35. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ameka, Felix K. 2016. ‘The Uselessness of the Useful’: Language Standardisation and Variation in Multilingual Contexts. In Prescription and Tradition in Language: Establishing Standards across Time and Space, ed. Carol Percy and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 59–71. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Bamgbose, Ayo. 2014. The Language Factor in Development Goals. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 35 (7): 646–657. Bearth, Thomas. 2013. Language and Sustainability. In The Role of Languages for Development in Africa: Micro and Macro Perspectives, ed. Rose Marie Beck, 15–61. Frankfurter Afrikanischer Blatter 20. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe. Beck, Rose Marie. 2011. Bridging the Language Gap: Approaches to Herero Verbal Interaction as Development Practice in Namibia. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe. Bessette, Guy, ed. 2006. People, Land and Water: Participatory Development Communication for Natural Resource Management. London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan and International Development Research Centre.

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Boafo, Kwame S.T. 2006. Participatory Development Communication: An African Perspective’. In People, Land and Water: Participatory Development Communication for Natural Resource Management, ed. Guy Bessette, 41– 48. London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan and International Development Research Centre. Caffery, Jo, and Deborah Hill. 2019. Expensive English: An Accessible Language Approach for Papua New Guinea Agricultural Development. Development in Practice 29 (2): 147–158. Cambridge Dictionary (Online). n.d. Accessed 3 September 2021. https://dic tionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/. Djité, Paulin G. 2008. The Sociolinguistics of Development in Africa. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847690470. Djité, Paulin G. 2011. Language and Development in the Greater Mekong SubRegion. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Djité, Paulin. 2020. Economy and Language in Africa. In Bridging Linguistics and Economics, ed. Cecile Vigouroux and Salikoko Mufwene, 182–202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Esteva, Gustavo. 2003. Development. In The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, ed. Wolfgang Sachs, 6–25. Johannesburg and London: Witwatersrand University Press and Zed Books. Ezeh, Nnenna Gertrude, and Udaba Regina Obiageli. 2020. The Role of Language in Achieving the World’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies 8 (6): 53–61. Footitt, Hilary. 2017. International aid and Development: Hearing Multilingualism, Learning from Intercultural Encounters in the History of OxfamGB. Language and Intercultural Communication 17 (4): 518–533. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2017.1368207. Forsyth, Lia Kent, Sinclair Dinnen, Joanne Wallis, and Srinjoy Bose. 2017. Hybridity in Peacebuilding and Development: A Critical Approach. Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal 2 (4): 407–421. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 23802014.2017.1448717. Goddard, Cliff, and Lauren Sadow. 2021. “It’s the Economy, Stupid”: The Everyday Semantics of a Geopolitical Key Word. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics 5: 226–238. Hill, Deborah. 2021. Balancing the Local with the Universal: Minimal English and Agricultural Training in the Pacific. In Minimal Languages in Action, ed. Cliff Goddard, 29–51. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3030-64077-4_2.

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Kamwangamalu, Nkonko M. 2016. Language Policy and Economics: The Language Question in Africa. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Levinson, Stephen C. 2012. The Original Sin of Cognitive Science. Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (3): 396–403. Lie, Rico, and Jan Servaes. 2015. Disciplines in the Field of Communication for Development and Social Change. Communication Theory 25: 244–258. Mahboob, Ahmar, and Naomi Knight, eds. 2020. Appliable Linguistics. London and New York: Continuum. Robinson, Clinton. 1996. Language Use in Rural Development. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. (Reprinted 2013). Romaine, Suzanne. 2013. Keeping the Promise of the Millennium Development Goals: Why Language Matters. Applied Linguistics Review 4 (1): 1–21. Romaine, Suzanne. 2019. Linguistic Diversity, Sustainability and Multilingualism: Global Language Justice Inside the Doughnut Hole. In Linguistic Diversity, Minority Languages and Sustainable Development, ed. Itziar Idiazabal and Manel Perez-Caurel, 40–61. Servicio Editorial de lat Universidad del Pais Vasco. Raworth, Kate. 2017. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21stCentury Economist. London: Penguin Random House. Sillitoe, Paul. 2010. Trust in Development: Some Implications of Knowing in Indigenous Knowledge. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16 (1): 12–30. Tomasello, Michael. 2008. Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Trudell, Barbara. 2009. Local-Language Literacy and Sustainable Development in Africa. Journal of Educational Development 29 (1): 73–79. Tsey, Komla. 2011. Rethinking Development in Africa: An Oral History Approach from Botoku, Rural Ghana. Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG. Vigouroux, Cecile, and Salikoko Mufwene, eds. 2020. Bridging Linguistics and Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolff, H. Ekkehard. 2016. Language and Development in Africa: Perceptions, Ideologies and Challenges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. World Population Review. 2021. https://worldpopulationreview.com.

2 Localising Global Financial Key Terms: Case Studies from East Africa Froukje Krijtenburg, Michelle Tjeenk Willink, Felix K. Ameka, and Aflatoun

Keywords Financial inclusion · Glocalization · Financial education · Conceptual analysis · Kenya · Tanzania

F. Krijtenburg (B) African Studies Centre Leiden Community, Leiden, The Netherlands M. T. Willink Twain Education Consultancy, Nairobi, Kenya e-mail: [email protected] F. K. Ameka Centre for Linguistics, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] Aflatoun Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Hill and F. K. Ameka (eds.), Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1_2

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1

Introduction

The Universal Financial Inclusion (UFI) programme aims to include all ‘unbanked’ adults worldwide in the (semi-)formal financial system, in a bid to alleviate and ultimately eradicate global poverty by 2030. It has an implicit enabling position within the overall framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although no reference is made to the programme itself in the description of the SDGs, financial services for low-income people are presented as one of the instruments to achieve better living standards for this target group.1 Thus, UFI’s ambition not only resonates with the SDGs, it has been a major incentive to financial inclusion efforts on the ground. The UFI concept was developed in 2010 by international private and public financial institutions, and has been coordinated by the World Bank ever since. In 2014, the World Bank declared impressive progress of account uptake in developing economies (Demirgüç-Kunt et al. 2015). In 2017, it recorded another 9% increase (from 54 to 63) (DemirgüçKunt et al. 2018).2 Case studies, however, make clear that financial access does not necessarily mean financial inclusion; about 17% of the account holders in developing economies do not use their accounts (Rhyne and Kelly 2018). In addition to dire poverty, one major reason for the access/use gap is that people do not identify with the financial products that are being offered (Rhyne and Kelly 2018; Dupas et al. 2016; Dupas and Robinson 2013). This may not come as a surprise. After all, the financial system was developed by, and has been maintained in, the Western world. It does raise the question of how universal financial inclusion programmes can be modified to benefit the socio-economically disadvantaged in the Non-Western world.3 1 For instance, SDG 2.3 highlights ‘financial services’ as one of the instruments to raise the agricultural produce of smallholders. https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal2. 2 Their statements are based on figures from the World Bank Global Findex Database. It is a triannual data set collected between 2011 and 2017 and tracing (semi-)formal financial uptake worldwide. https://globalfindex.worldbank.org/. 3 We are conscious of the overgeneralised nature of the Western vs Non-Western or even the Global North vs the Global South dichotomies. These dichotomies are understood in different ways by different actors. By Western we are referring to the hegemony exercised in the global arena over others by Western European, Anglo-American ways of doing things, which

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In this chapter we explore the language-culture component in global financial inclusion programmes as a potential conceptual barrier and a resource for further integration. Since global concepts travel from the level of the World Bank, through development agencies, to local communities, it is likely that they are imbued with different conceptual dimensions along the way (see Goddard and Sadow 2021, on the everyday semantics of the global keyword ‘economy’). Using a crosscultural perspective, and through the lens of language and linguistics, we focus on financial words and concepts that local instructors in Tanzania and Kenya teach as financial keywords to primary and secondary school students, having been trained within the overall development context of the universal social and financial education programme of international educational NGO, Aflatoun. Overall, the chapter demonstrates that the global financial inclusion discourse is myopic, and that it ignores cultural diversity in conceptualising key resource management terms. Aflatoun’s explicit attention to contextualisation triggered the curiosity of the two language researchers—the first and third authors—involved in the study presented here. We wondered how this contextualisation process takes place, and how the same, or different, key financial terms in the Aflatoun programme are understood in local contexts to successfully implement Aflatoun’s social and financial education programme. Aflatoun staff were happy to partner in a pilot study of the contextualisation of the content of key financial terms in their programme. Discussions with Aflatoun and access to the Aflatoun network offered the language researchers crucial information for this chapter. The second author provided the Aflatoun context in Sect. 3. In sum, the present study is a co-creation of language researchers and development practitioners in an international educational NGO. The following section discusses the role of language and the potential of linguistic tools to enrich development practice. Aflatoun and its universal financial education programme and the principles that guide its training programmes are introduced in Sect. 3. In Sects. 4–7 we explore disempower other players in other parts of the world. Similarly, we are aware that in the post development era, terms such as ‘developing economies’ and ‘developing countries’ as opposed to ‘developed countries’ are contested. However, these are terms that are used in, for example, the World Bank documents that we report on.

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how the concepts of ‘bank’, ‘save’, ‘entrepreneurship’, and ‘budget’, used in global discourse, differ from the local understandings of similar culturally embedded practices in Tanzania and Kenya and the implications for effective development work. A summary of the findings follows in Sect. 8. Additionally, a schematic overview (Table 2) captures the understandings of the terms in World Bank and Aflatoun, as well as Tanzanian and Kenyan trainers’ discourses. In the conclusion we argue that techniques of conceptual analysis employed in linguistic semantics can be applied to identify the differences and similarities, such that one can communicate the concepts with local actors, and develop more locally embedded development practice. This can contribute to the process of bridging linguistics and economics, as advocated by authors in Vigouroux and Mufwene (2020). We recommend that one way of reading this chapter is to read Sect. 2, then Sect. 8, before coming back to the other sections.

2

Language and Linguistics in Development Practice

Language is the one feature that makes us human, and, as such, it has an important role to play in sustainable human development. Development goals cannot be achieved without the use of local languages, and without embedding development in socio-cultural contexts (e.g. Beck 2011). There are several dimensions in which language should impact development practice. First, development communication takes place through language, and the choice of languages to use in a development project is critical for ensuring inclusive participation (Robinson 2013; Trudell 2009; Prah 2012; Bearth 2013; Bamgbose 2014; Wolff 2016). This has been illustrated in relation to Papua New Guinea, for example, by Levy (this volume). To enhance inclusive participation in the Aflatoun training in Tanzania, Kiswahili, the national language of Tanzania and the cross-border language of the East African region is used. In the training in Kenya, both Kiswahili and (Kenyan) English are used. The debate in postcolonial societies about whether the indigenised varieties of ex-colonial languages should be construed as local languages falls

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outside the scope of this chapter. Suffice to say that we consider Africanised varieties of such languages as local languages, e.g., Kenyan English, constitutes an essential component of the repertoire of some language users in the region.4 Second, development practice relates to the understanding of concepts. Given that the content of development notions such as those pertaining to financial inclusion are Eurocentric and Anglo-American biased, as in many other areas of global and scientific discourses (see, e.g., Wierzbicka 2014, Haugh 2016, and Levisen 2019), the conceptual content of the terms needs to be understood and expressed in an accessible form in the language of communication for the context (see also Caffrey et al. this volume). Moreover, such content needs to be contextualised to conform to the local ways of knowing and talking about the relevant topic. Contextual analysis is one of the key requirements of participatory development communication. According to Bessette (2006), it addresses questions such as ‘What are the main customs and beliefs regarding the topic?’ and ‘How do people communicate about these topics?’ A linguistic contextual analysis can contribute a conceptual analysis of the terms related to the topic in the global discourse, and in the local languages, to uncover different conceptualisations. Knowledge of the overlaps and differences between concepts can facilitate communication about them, as well as minimise misunderstandings in interpersonal and cross-cultural communication. In this chapter, we highlight the role of conceptual analysis in the contextualisation process. To give an example, one of the key terms in 4 In the context of Africa, many exclude the so-called colonial languages—English, French, Portuguese, Spanish—from the local language category. They argue that there is no society that has developed using a borrowed language (see, e.g., Djité 2008, Prah 2016). The situation is more complex than that. First, the varieties of these languages used in Africa have differentiated and distinguished themselves from the Euro-American varieties of the languages due to contact with local languages (see, e.g., Mufwene 2015 on the processes). With respect to East African Englishes as used in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, Schmied (2008: 195) comments thus: “The lexicon of EAfE [East African Englishes, authors] comprises … the core lexicon of StE [Standard English, authors] and specific East Africanisms, which would not be interpreted easily or equally by the non-initiated, e.g., readers and listeners not familiar with English usage in East Africa.” The colonial languages have become indigenized and have been appropriated by speakers of African languages. Second, as has been pointed out by many commentators, these Africanised varieties of the so-called colonial languages have become the first languages of some users (e.g., Djité 2008; Mufwene 2015).

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the global discourse about financial education is the English word budget. This form in English can be used as a noun or/and a verb. As a noun it has two senses, according to the Cambridge English Dictionary (online), namely: (i) a plan to show how much money a person or organisation will earn and how much they will need or be able to spend; and (ii) the amount of money you have available to spend. It has to be clear which of the senses is being used. Interestingly, in Dutch, a close relative of English, each of the senses corresponds to a separate word: sense (i) corresponds to begroting while sense (ii) corresponds to budget. As we shall see below, the term budget has been borrowed into Kiswahili as bajeti, but is understood by some farmers as ‘saving crop for planting’, roughly speaking. This understanding is clearly different from the global concept of budget. It is only when the terms are analysed conceptually that the differences can be revealed (see also Table 2 [Sect. 8] for a comparative overview).

3

Aflatoun International

Aflatoun International is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in the Netherlands, with 14 years of technical experience in life skills and financial education programming around the world. It currently works with and provides technical expertise to more than 300 network partners (including NGOs, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), and governments), who implement social and financial education programmes in over 100 countries.5 Aflatoun’s overall mission is to ensure access to high-quality, inclusive, child-centred social and financial education for all children and young people across the globe, especially the most vulnerable. The vision is to socially and economically empower children and young people by providing them with the technical skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to participate and thrive in their communities. This can be achieved with flexibility, and consequently, all programmes are highly

5

Based on the Aflatoun Annual Report 2020 (2021, 10).

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flexible and can (and should) be easily contextualised to local needs and circumstances.6

The Basics of Aflatoun’s Social and Financial Programme A key element of the Aflatoun programme is its focus on behaviour change and learning through action at an early age when children’s habits are forming. This early age focus is in line with other research on early intervention, including the recent work of Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman (Elango et al. 2015). Effectiveness is ensured through both continuous evaluation of the programme and a strong commitment to train teachers. These two elements, together with the child-friendly way in which Aflatoun is delivered by the global network of dedicated partners, ensure the success of the programme. It is important to approach financial capacity building carefully. That is why the combination of the two learning paths (social and financial education) is significant to Aflatoun’s mission and success. Financial attitudes and behaviours are deeply connected to children’s personal and social lives. A balanced curriculum can protect children from sacrificing their social and personal development for the sake of finances. This balance also helps create a sustainable change in young people’s behaviour by linking financial habits to their hopes and future aspirations (Table 1).

Contextualisation from the Aflatoun Perspective Aflatoun’s social franchise approach recognises the need for established local organisations to tailor the content to be as localised as possible. Learning material needs to be relevant to keep children and young people engaged. This means understanding the various influences on learners in the different areas, and capturing the social and economic realities of their society within the learning material. This is a process that goes 6 Extrapolated from the Aflatoun evidence-based insights publication Penner et al. (2019, 30– 34).

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Table 1 Aflatoun’s theory of change

Taken from Aflatoun International (2016, 4).

beyond simply translating the materials into the local language. Names, concepts, activities, stories, or drawings should also be adjusted to cater for the social setting of the learners, while at the same time, promoting and encouraging cultural diversity. The contextualisation process ensures that partners contribute to the continuous development of Aflatoun materials. By collecting the innovations and revisions done by the Aflatoun partners, a sharing network is created whereby all partners can learn from each other’s experiences.

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Aflatoun materials pass through three main stages in the contextualisation process. The process can be carried out pre-emptively, or on demand, through a contextualisation workshop or manual. In addition, there is a glossary of terminology for the main working languages: English, Spanish, Russian, French, and Arabic. The three main contextualisation process stages are: (1) format (2) content-level details, and (3) production and rollout. Format. Before editing the actual content, the local needs of the learner need to be taken into account. This stage can include a needs assessment as well as a contextualisation workshop. Examples of this phase would be to consider practicalities, such as delivery method of the learning, resources available, and acceptance of material and methodology in the local context. This also includes learner and teacher demographics. Content-Level Details. This stage includes translation and further contextualisation through content edits. A template can be followed to ensure that certain elements are not overlooked. Examples are: • names of places and characters • appropriate cultural customs • scenarios with relevant and commonly recognised items, along with correct pricing and currency, if discussing money • proper attention to most relevant topics • key local concerns and realities, included as themes • illustrations representative of local context • translation adhering to approved glossary of terms, in relevant language • content locally age-appropriate • consideration of the literacy level of potential learners relative to their age Production and Rollout. This last step in contextualisation requires a step back, to look at the material as a whole and consider the dissemination plan. For example, the rollout should be reviewed for what is most appropriate, efficient, and effective. A good checklist to follow

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before finalising and rolling out a contextualised piece of material would include: (1) There is still a balance of social and financial education (2) The content is as gender-responsive as possible (3) Child and human rights are presented objectively (4) There is still a cross-cutting theme of inclusivity and acceptance of diversity (5) The monitoring and evaluation tools have been aligned to the content edits (6) The scheduling of training sessions is accessible, and (7) The parents/community members are communicated with about the goals of the programme. This is done to provide the most benefit to learners, to encourage inclusive programming, and to garner more support from the community. The Aflatoun Secretariat has a key responsibility in assisting partners to implement the programme with quality. Quality is ensured through trainings, visits, meetings, monitoring and evaluation tools, technical assistance, and a formal partnership process. This ongoing feedback loop assists Aflatoun in the revision or further development of the learning content.

4

Methodology

Aflatoun’s organisational and programmatic statements, above, have codefined our research practice. We asked two partners of the Aflatoun programme in Tanzania and Kenya how they contextualise the content of Aflatoun financial key terms and how they understand these terms in their own teaching. The discussion includes ‘save/savings’, ‘budget’, ‘entrepreneur(ship)’, and ‘bank’, which were elicited as key terms from the interviews with the two consultants. Next, we collected the meaning descriptions of the corresponding terms in the universal Aflatoun glossary. As a third step in gaining insight into the culture gap between global financial concepts and local counterparts, we traced the meanings of the four terms in the global discourse of the World Bank. In sum, we conduct a comparative conceptual analysis to answer the question of how local understandings of key financial concepts mentioned in the Aflatoun

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social and financial education programme relate to the Aflatoun glossary explanations and the understandings of the World Bank.7 The two partners we interviewed over a period of three months have different positions in the Aflatoun network. The consultant from Western Kenya is a trainer of teachers, and also, a teacher himself. The consultant from Northern Tanzania is a Global Master Trainer. In this capacity, he gives Aflatoun programme workshops to trainers across the southern hemisphere. We talked with the two separately on Skype and recorded the interviews. Further information (including pictures) was provided via email or WhatsApp.

5

The World Bank

The World Bank does not explicitly say what is meant by ‘save’, ‘budget’, ‘entrepreneurship’, and ‘bank’, nor does it offer a glossary of financial key terms. To discover the World Bank understandings, we have used a close reading approach. The selected World Bank texts are publicly accessible and relate to the topics of universal financial inclusion and access, and the four key concepts. Additionally, we have consulted two online dictionaries—the American English Merriam-Webster Dictionary (MD henceforth) and the British and American Cambridge Dictionary (CD henceforth)—for their definitions of the four concepts. Using these dictionaries as a standard of comparison, we can throw into greater relief the connections of World Bank understandings to Anglo-American and Anglo-British meanings of the terms, and compatibilities with, and divergences from, local understandings. The ‘Universal Financial Access 2020 brief ’ (World Bank 2018) sums up the benefits of Universal Financial Inclusion (UFI). Since the text

7 We use the terms ‘meaning’ and ‘understanding’ to talk about different aspects of the significance of key terms in discourse. The meaning of a word or expression is the structured idea or knowledge that is stable and shared by users of a language. Such meaning is reflected in dictionary definitions. The ‘understanding’ of a term is the contextual interpretation and reading of a term. This can become entrenched in a community of practice such as World Bank or Aflatoun.

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includes implicit references to all four concepts under discussion, relevant passages have been selected as a starting point for our exploration: Financial inclusion facilitates day-to-day living, and helps families and businesses plan for everything from long-term goals to unexpected emergencies. As accountholders, people are more likely to use other financial services, such as savings, credit and insurance, start and expand businesses, invest in education or health, manage risk, and weather financial shocks, all of which can improve the overall quality of their lives. (…) The UFA2020 [Universal Financial Access, authors] initiative envisions that adults worldwide – women and men alike – will be able to have access to a transaction account or an electronic instrument to store money, send payments and receive deposits as a basic building block to manage their financial lives. (World Bank 2018)

Save According to the World Bank, one of the basic ingredients for a healthy financial life is the possibility to ‘store money’ in a bank account or electronic device. In another document, the World Bank additionally highlights the ‘future use’ component of ‘storing money’ (World Bank 2019, 33). The online CD describes the meaning of ‘save’ in similar terms: ‘to keep money or something else for use in the future’. A remarkable difference is that what is stored need not be money. The exclusive World Bank focus on money as a saving resource is equally apparent from the 2017 Global Findex Database. The authors explain that in developing economies, the semi-formal way of storing money is a common alternative—for instance, saving clubs or a person outside the family—to the formal ‘saving’; a third way is referred to as ‘through other methods only’ (Demirgüç-Kunt et al. 2018, 70). While the first two ways are considered part of the universal financial inclusion effort, the third way is not, and it is therefore left out of consideration. In East Africa, however—and Sub-Saharan Africa more generally— forms of ‘through other methods only’, such as saving cash at home (‘under the mattress’), or saving in the form of livestock or jewellery,

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are common features of people’s financial lives (Johnson and Krijtenburg 2018; Shipton 2007). The explicit exclusion of common Sub-Saharan Africa saving practices from the universal financial inclusion framework suggests a break with local socio-culturally embedded practices, but possibly also with local understandings. In the summary (Sect. 8), this point will be revisited and juxtaposed with the findings on local understandings. Savings. The focus on ‘money storing’ in the World Bank understanding of ‘save’ becomes even more apparent in the World Bank’s use of the term ‘savings’; it is exclusively used in the context of a financial institution (see quote ‘Universal Financial Access 2020 Brief ’, above). The two consulted dictionaries equally restrict their definitions of ‘savings’ to the domain of money. In line with the World Bank understanding, CD highlights the link with a financial institution: it is ‘the money you keep in an account in the bank or a similar financial organisation’.

Budget (v) In the World Bank quote (Sect. 5), the phrase ‘families and businesses plan for everything [underlining added] from long-term goals to unexpected emergencies’ calls up the verb ‘budget’. However, the term ‘budget’ does not appear to be part of the core World Bank vocabulary of financial inclusion. Of the more than twenty World Bank texts analysed, the term occurred only once in two texts (The World Bank 2015; Helms 2006, 134).8 It may seem like a minor detail, but the detail gains weight in two ways. One is that the Tanzanian and Kenyan consultants we interviewed allot a central place to the term and the concept of ‘budget’ (v/n) in their financial education programme. The other is that the noun, ‘budget’, in the English language, has two distinct meanings,

8

The skill of financial planning is included in the more general terms ‘financial literacy’ or ‘financial capability’ (World Bank 2015; Zottel 2013; Helms 2006).

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while these two senses may be reflected by two separate terms in other languages (see Sect. 2).9

Entrepreneurship Close reading of the World Bank documents reveals that already, in 1989, the World Bank envisioned a central role for entrepreneurs in transforming African economies (World Bank, 1989, 135ff ). In 2012, it argued for the need for ‘entrepreneurship’ in promoting sustainable economic growth in developing countries (World Bank 2012). Categorisations of ‘entrepreneurship’, such as informal and formal, and its manifestations as micro-, small-, or medium-scale enterprises, seem to make it impossible to infer a single understanding of ‘entrepreneurship’. However, the World Bank makes clear that while manifestations and categories of businesses may differ from country to country, and often differ according to the level of national income, the core understanding is the same (World Bank 2012). The World Bank phrase ‘start and expand businesses’, cited in Section 5, gives a first hint of the World Bank concept of ‘entrepreneurship’. This conceptual association is confirmed by the two dictionaries consulted. CD and MD additionally underscore the skills that go with ‘entrepreneurship’. This ‘skills’ component is equally present in the World Bank understanding, as the following quote makes clear. Indeed, ‘skills’ and a ‘specific mind-set’ are important components of (successful) ‘entrepreneurship’ in the World Bank understanding: Entrepreneurship combines innovative capacity to put new ideas into effect with managerial capacity…. Specific psychological traits are associated with entrepreneurship, such as a personal need for achievement, a belief in the effect of personal effort on outcomes, self-confidence, and a positive attitude toward risk (…)

9 For instance, as noted in Sect. 2, in Dutch the word budget refers to one sense: ‘the amount of money available for, required for, or assigned to a particular purpose’; the word for the second sense, ‘a plan for the coordination of resources and expenditures’, is begroting.

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The capacity to acquire skills and to apply them to business seems to be one of the most important characteristics of successful entrepreneurs (World Bank 2012, 111 and 116–117). The World Bank also identifies access to credit as an essential precondition for fostering entrepreneurship. (World Bank 2012, 110; World Bank 1989, 144).

Bank Dictionary definitions of ‘bank’ show similar convergence with the World Bank understanding of it as a ‘number of financial services’ (Sect. 5). In their definitions of ‘bank’, the two dictionaries, CD and MD, highlight the aspects of financial services and the physical and non-physical manifestations of a ‘bank’. A 2000 World Bank publication reports that ‘banks in their very essence have always lent out the funds that were first placed with them by some patient money holders’ (Bossone 2000, 3). In other words, a bank in the World Bank discourse archetypically provides account holders access to credit, and offers them the possibility to ‘store money’. The author later adds payment services as a third core element of a bank’s business (Bossone 2000, 28). From the parallels and convergence between the English dictionary definitions and the World Bank understandings of the financial terms under discussion, it is clear that Anglo-British and Anglo-American concepts in global discourse are assumed to apply universally (see Levisen 2019 for some Anglo biases we live by in global discourse).

6

Aflatoun Views

In the description of key terms in the Aflatoun glossary, we see an educational development discourse perspective.

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Save The Aflatoun glossary, updated in the autumn of 2020, does not include the entry ‘save’.10 However, it has ‘savings’: The money or resources you do not use or spend but rather set aside for later use. Savings are often kept in an account in a bank or similar financial institution.

Different from the World Bank understanding of ‘savings’, Aflatoun’s explanation does not exclusively refer to money. It could refer to materials, cattle, food crops, or other resources that can be set aside. It does include a sense of use in the future. Yet the non-monetary resources are not considered to be the primary focus, as the second sentence makes clear that the resources are often stored ‘in a bank or similar financial institution’. Here Aflatoun’s understanding is close to the World Bank understanding of ‘savings’, which additionally includes digital storing of money.

Budget In the World Bank section, ‘budget’ featured as a verb. The Aflatoun glossary has the term ‘budget’ as a noun and explained as follows: A summary of estimated income and expenditure over a defined period of time. Budget can be negative or positive, depending on whether there is enough income to cover the expenses. A budget is a tool that helps you allocate your investment and profit responsibly. It is useful to use a budget to control your spending and set your goals and limits.

The explanation is not very different from the CD definition: ‘a plan (underlining added) to show how much money a person or organisation will earn, and how much they will need or be able to spend’, and 10 The updated glossary is not yet publicly available. An older version can be found in Penner et al. (2019).

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from the World Bank understanding of the verb ‘budget’. Yet it lacks the second CD definition, which focuses on ‘the amount of money (underlining added) you have available to spend’. The additional information given in the Aflatoun description highlights the benefits of using a ‘budget’. This seems to indicate that the targeted audience is not very familiar with the concept of ‘budget’. In this respect, the Aflatoun description is close to the World Bank conceptualisation of ‘budgeting’, which considers it as a tool to develop financial stability and resilience: ‘It helps a person and an organization to plan everything for long-term goals and unexpected emergencies’ (see Sect. 5).

Entrepreneurship In the Aflatoun glossary there are entries for ‘entrepreneur’ and for ‘entrepreneurship’: ‘Entrepreneurship refers to the process of creating a new enterprise and bearing any of its risks, with the view of making the [sic] profit’. Its definition follows from the description of ‘entrepreneur’ as ‘someone who starts their own business, or attempts to make a profit by starting a company. Typically, entrepreneurs tend to identify a new opportunity or gap in the market’. The Aflatoun descriptions share some of the aspects of the World Bank understanding, such as having a specific mindset and risk-taking. At variance, the Aflatoun concept is restricted to ‘starting a business’ and ‘intending to make a profit’ once a new enterprise has been started.

Bank Aflatoun’s entry on ‘bank’ is based on what a bank can do and the services it can provide. Its description includes concepts that may not be universally understood or understood in the same way (e.g. assets, investments), and unlike the entry on ‘budget’, it is not about how it can benefit people: ‘A bank is an institution designed to manage money, assets and finances. It provides finance-related services, such as loans, savings accounts and investments’.

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Although the explanation seems to suggest that Aflatoun’s concept of ‘bank’ belongs with a world beyond their target audience of (vulnerable) children and young people, reality proves different. Aflatoun collaborated on a school bank pilot in 116 secondary schools in Nigeria, and officially took over the school bank programme from Child and Youth Finance International in 2019.11

7

Local Understandings

This ‘on the ground’ section is slightly different in scope from the previous two sections. It explores how our consultants understand the contextualisation process of the content of the key financial concepts, and how they understand the terms. In other words, it addresses implicit assumptions and potential successes of the contextualisation process of Aflatoun and global concepts. First, we introduce each consultant and his relationship with Aflatoun, and then describe the consultant’s understanding of the financial key terms he presented during the interview.

The Global Master Trainer in Tanzania Jonathan Kifunda is a Global Master Trainer for Aflatoun. He gives workshops on the Aflatoun social and financial literacy programme to trainers in Tanzania, eastern and southern Africa, and across the southern hemisphere. He is also a development practitioner working for an NGO in the northern part of Tanzania. The NGO organises programmes for children, teenage girls, and women, in the areas of education, health, economics, and community development. The NGO is a partner of Aflatoun. In Tanzania, Kifunda teaches in the national language, Kiswahili. The Global Master Trainer explains to us in considerable detail how the contextualisation process of the global Aflatoun educational programme goes. He appears to follow the Aflatoun contextualisation 11

https://www.aflatoun.org/partner-of-the-week-lynx-nigeria/ and https://www.aflatoun.org/afl atoun-international-to-lead-schoolbank-programme/.

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guidelines quite closely.12 The contextualisation process starts with a workshop which brings together representatives from the target groups (e.g. teachers), as well as experts (e.g. Finance Department and educational institutions). During the workshop, the content is made to suit the local context. Next, a pre-test is done on the adapted content among the teachers who are going to teach the Aflatoun social and financial programme. The contextualisation of content follows a distinct pattern. First, an understanding of a concept in the Aflatoun context is established. As a second step, the workshop members transfer the understanding to a local context. The master trainer is the resource person in the process. They have good knowledge of what the terms mean in the Aflatoun programme. Their understandings and terms are likely to be different from those of the finance experts involved in the contextualisation process. In the Tanzanian context, for instance, representatives from the Finance Department use a formalistic Kiswahili finance vocabulary, while Aflatoun trainers advocate ‘popular’ Kiswahili words in line with the language used by their target groups. According to the Global Master Trainer, the golden standard for the contextualisation procedure is that the Kiswahili term reflects the same concept as the Aflatoun concept. If there is no Kiswahili term available, the English Aflatoun term is borrowed and pronounced as a Kiswahili word, then becomes the official term. As a standard procedure, the understanding of a borrowed English term—an English term that has been borrowed, but does not yet have a generally accepted meaning—is explained in the teaching material (following Aflatoun understandings). Bajeti (budget (n)). One telling instance of the Swahilisation of an English noun is the word ‘budget’. Kifunda explains that it was borrowed into Kiswahili as bajeti, with the entry of development workers from the North in the twentieth century. According to him, the Kiswahili word has the same meaning as its English counterpart among highereducated Tanzanians. However, in the rural areas, and among people with less formal education, bajeti is used to mean ‘savings’, in the sense of 12

The guidelines can be found in Sect. 4.

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resources set aside for use in the future. In practice, bajeti often includes part of the harvested crops, such as maize. In view of the diverging understandings of the concept of ‘budget’ in the Tanzanian rural areas, Kifunda explains that the word bajeti needs to be reintroduced in its Aflatoun sense when the Aflatoun social and financial programme is taught in those areas. During the discussion with Kifunda, it becomes clear that bajeti has one meaning for him: ‘What you mean is connecting the plan that you have with the amount of financial resources that are needed’. He then gives the example of going on a holiday: ‘That’s my plan’, he adds; ‘so how much money do I need so that I can achieve my plan?’ Kifunda continues to cite all the expenses that he needs to make, in order to have a holiday. Once the total amount has been established, ‘I get the total budget that I need and then I start finding resources’. The example shows that Kifunda’s understanding of the concept of ‘budget’ is something like ‘the amount of money needed to execute one’s project’. This understanding does not coincide with the Aflatoun glossary explanation, nor with the World Bank understanding, for that matter. In one respect, however, it is similar to the World Bank and Aflatoun understandings, as he considers ‘budgeting’ (kupanga bajeti ‘making a budget’) a major tool in coming to grips with expenses. Yet, while the first two understandings highlight the planning of one’s finances for expenses, Kifunda works the other way around. First, one has a plan, then one calculates the total budget it needs, and finally, one tries to find the resources to execute the plan. As he says: ‘Budgeting is placing/allocating financial resources to your plans, so you can get an understanding that this plan needs an amount of money so I can accomplish it’. The explanation Kifunda gives of bajeti hints at a localised understanding, rooted in Tanzanian reality and culture. In fact, Kifunda’s description of the process that leads to a bajeti is paralleled in savings groups, a common feature in African societies. During each meeting of the group, one person receives that day’s entire collection of member contributions, so that this person can buy something she could otherwise not afford to buy and is in need of. Generally, the person who receives the collection has been planning what to spend the money on long before

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the meeting (FSDKenya 2015). This ‘saving’ component in the process that leads up to the collection of the contributions and to executing one’s plan is not explicitly referred to in Kifunda’s explanation of bajeti, but as the Kenyan colleague makes plain, it is common practice. Ujasiriamali (‘entrepreneurship’). Kifunda explains that there is a Kiswahili word for ‘entrepreneurship’, which is ujasiriamali. Yet, the understanding of the term is quite different from the English counterpart, he argues. Young people in the street associate ujasiriamali with peddling, with guys walking in the streets holding their merchandise on their shoulders and selling on-the-go. The wajasiriamali (‘entrepreneurs’) generally have a negative connotation, as they are illegal, tend to pop up as quickly as they disappear, and sell second-rate goods for high prices. Until Kifunda went to university, this was also his understanding of ‘entrepreneurship’.13 Although Kifunda did not explicitly give his definition of ‘entrepreneurship’, some aspects of his understanding emerged from the meaning components of the term ujasiriamali. The Kiswahili word is a compound, consisting of ujasiri ‘courage’, and mali ‘property’. Kifunda explains that the term was introduced in the twentieth century by development workers from the Global North, who encouraged unemployed youths to start small businesses. This is why ujasiriamali is still associated with petty business. When asked about the rationale for combining the two meaning components in ujasiriamali, Kifunda discovers that the two meaning components in ujasiriamali actually include essential meaning aspects of ‘entrepreneurship’. He says, ‘You have to have courage (ujasiri) to take a business opportunity’. He describes the person’s mind-set as ready to take risks with the property (mali) that one has.

13 The perception of a petty trader whether the owner of a corner shop, or someone who displays wares on a table or a roaming street vendor all engaged in buy and sell as someone who sells at exorbitant prices and cheats is quite widespread. In Ghana they are sometimes referred to as people you go to when you do not have any other choice. They are in Ewe nu kpoto-kpotoe dzralawo ‘vendors of assorted goods’. Similar views are embodied in the Amharic term neggade ‘trader’ from Ethiopia (Azeb Amha p.c.).

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From Kifunda’s reaction we may infer that the English understanding of ‘entrepreneurship’ diverges considerably from the popular understanding of ujasiriamali in Tanzania. However, as Kifunda explains, in the context of ‘bajeti’, the term can be adapted to suit the Aflatoun financial programme. The details which he presents of his own understanding of ‘entrepreneurship’ seem to coincide to some extent with the Aflatoun glossary. It is about taking a business opportunity and about risk-taking. However, it differs from the Aflatoun sense of the term in that it includes any business opportunity, not only one associated with ‘starting a business’. Moreover, Kifunda mentions ‘courage’ and ‘risk-taking’ as two typical characteristics of a mind-set that belong with entrepreneurship. Conversely, those who do not have these qualities cannot be entrepreneurs. In the Aflatoun glossary the mind-set that qualifies for entrepreneurship is the ability to ‘identify a business opportunity or gap in the market’. Risks, on the other hand, are part of doing business. So, rather than part of a person’s mind-set, risks seem to be something that one must accept when going into business. This may also explain why courage is not included in the Aflatoun glossary definition of ‘entrepreneurship’. Finally, Kifunda’s explanation does not highlight the ability to identify a business opportunity or gap in the market as an elementary part of an entrepreneur’s mind-set.

The Kenyan Trainer and Teacher Paul Oluoch is a trainer/teacher from Western Kenya. In addition to training teachers, he teaches the Aflateen and AflaYouth curricula to 15+ year-olds and 18-year-olds and over, respectively. He uses English as his preferred language of communication, but also Kiswahili for explaining concepts. In the interview with Oluoch, the terms, ‘save’, ‘budget’, ‘wise spending’, ‘bank’, and ‘entrepreneurship’ emerged as essential parts of the education. Oluoch told us that his organisation, Siaya Education Project (SEP), became a partner of Aflatoun in 2019. He is the chairperson of this community-based organisation, which teaches financially challenged children how they can be self-reliant as well as socially responsible. In the

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meantime, he has followed Aflatoun workshops in Social and Financial Education in Kampala and at the Aflatoun headquarters in Amsterdam, to be a trainer. At the same time, he is a teacher; this is the role he talked about with us. He is happy that he can integrate the Aflatoun financial education programme in the teaching of SEP. Together with a team of colleagues he teaches the Aflateen and the AflaYouth curricula during socalled mentorship weeks in the school break periods (April, August, and December). The concepts of ‘saving, budgeting and wise spending’ are central to it, he told us. ‘Entrepreneurship’ and ‘having a savings account in the bank’ are additionally part of the curriculum for the 18 and 18+ year-olds. Oluoch’s own NGO runs a programme for the Aflatoun and Aflateen age groups which focuses on social responsibility towards the vulnerable in the community. As Oluoch explains, the students are taught that ‘they are not the ones who need to be helped all the time’. They do charity work for elderly and disabled people, using donations to pay for materials or food for their target group. Oluoch qualifies them as ‘showing compassion to less fortunate people’. Save. During the mentorship weeks, students undertake income generating activities, which help them earn money for ‘budgeting, saving and wise spending’. They do this according to the principles of Aflatoun, which include saving part of the income for college fees and spending a small part on personal needs, Oluoch explains. Saving can be done in every available way. He mentions saving clubs and piggy banks, but as soon as a student turns 18, the teacher takes the student to the nearby bank to open a junior saving account. Oluoch describes this as ‘the next level’, because the students then save without the possibility of withdrawing money instantaneously. Additionally, the consultant considers ‘saving’ a component of ‘budgeting’. When he teaches ‘budgeting’ he does it in the context of an income generating activity. The students, for instance, sell chickens from their chicken rearing activity, or they sell fodder for the animals from their grass cultivating activity.

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From Oluoch’s explanation we may conclude that ‘saving’ is setting aside money with a specific goal in mind. Although this money can be stored in different places, he argues that the ‘bank’ is the safest place for money to stay for a longer period. Budget. As Oluoch teaches in English, he uses the term ‘budget’ (v) to refer to how he and his colleagues teach students to manage their lives and to enact social responsibility to the vulnerable. It is clear from Sect. 7.2 that ‘budgeting’ in Oluoch’s perception is an activity that starts as soon as the students receive money for the things they sell. Having earned a sum of money, students are taught to put some of it aside as savings, keeping a little for personal needs. Implicit in Oluoch’s description of ‘budgeting’ is that it includes certain qualities in the person who does it: One is ‘knowing one’s (money) figures’, i.e., how much money one has, while another is a saving attitude. A third important component is ‘wise spending’, as Oluoch’s definition of ‘budgeting’ makes clear: ‘Having prior knowledge of the amount of money you have versus what you want to spend based on the needs of that particular time. So you go for the need that is most pressing’. If we compare Olouch’s ‘budgeting’ with Kifunda’s bajeti, they both highlight budget as a valuable tool for controlling one’s expenses. The major differences are that Oluoch understands budgeting to start when someone has made some money—while Kifunda’s sense of bajeti is first a plan and then one looks for money—and that ‘budgeting’ in Oluoch’s understanding has a ‘saving’ component. While ‘saving’ is likely to be part and parcel of Kifunda’s understanding, he does not mention it, nor does he hint at ‘saving’ as something that is good to practice. Oluoch also highlights certain personal qualities—among them, a saving mentality, ‘wise spending’—as valuable to good ‘budgeting’. Olouch’s understanding is hardly surprising considering that his NGO focuses on moral values, such as compassion for other disadvantaged people, as a pathway to a more fulfilling life. Entrepreneurship. Oluoch teaches his students ‘entrepreneurship’, using the English term in his teaching. He explains entrepreneurship

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as ‘working to generate an income’: ‘[Students] learn to do something on their own to generate an income’. The self-employment aspect is key to his understanding of ‘entrepreneurship’. He is very explicit about his aversion to regular employment: ‘We are actually discouraging them [the students] from getting into employment, because that is a kind of slavery’. In his earlier explanation on the income generating activities that he involves his students in, Oluoch mentions self-reliance as a learning objective. In ‘entrepreneurship’ he finds the right instrument for socio-economic emancipation of students, and a way of helping them to wrestle themselves out of their underprivileged backgrounds. Bank. The discussion of Oluoch’s explanation of ‘save’ includes reference to ‘bank’ as a safe place. Although he is aware of other ways of saving, including electronically, he considers saving at the bank ‘the next level’, or rather the coming of age in a young person’s financial life. He also highlights the safety of the money, preventing it from being withdrawn by its owner, because it is a savings account, and because the bank is at a certain distance from the account holder.

8

Summary

In this section we summarise the most striking observations, after comparing the understandings of Kifunda and Oluoch of the four key terms, with the Aflatoun glossary definitions and the World Bank financial discourse, in the domain of Universal Financial Inclusion. Table 2 displays the various understandings of different groups; the differences and similarities are quite transparent. At all three levels, the concept of ‘save’ includes ‘storing resources for future use’. While in the World Bank understanding the resource is money, the Aflatoun glossary allows for other resources. However, when it comes to savings, the Aflatoun explanation narrows down to money that is often kept in an account in the bank or similar institution. As Kifunda points out, in popular parlance in some rural areas and among

Savings

Save

• store money for (specific) use in the future • store one’s money at a place away from one’s home -archetypically a financial institution • money stored at a bank or similar financial institution

World Bank

• money or other resources put aside for future use • this money is often stored at a bank or similar financial institution

not mentioned

Aflatoun

• money kept for some time outside one’s immediate reach

• set aside money from one’s income • keep this money for a specific goal • keep this money for some time outside one’s immediate reach

Kenya

Implicit in ujasiramali (entrepreneurship) as starting capital

linked to a different term, bajeti (budget (n))

Tanzania

Table 2 Conceptual dimensions of key financial terms in Aflatoun’s educational financial programme and across global to local actors

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not mentioned

Budget (n)

World Bank

(families and businesses) plan to spend money for a specific purpose

Budget (v)

• a statement of resources and planned expenses over a period of time • a tool to keep people aware of available resources and how much they can spend

not mentioned

Aflatoun • divide one’s money between everyday expenses and saving (for a specific goal) • use it as an effective tool, for which one needs the right personal qualities (‘wise spending’, ‘knowing one’s (money) figures’ and a ‘saving attitude’) wise spending

Kenya

(continued)

Bajeti • an amount of money to meet the expenses necessary to execute a plan • a tool to have control over one’s plans

• kupanga bajeti ‘to plan one’s expenses’

Tanzania

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Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship

Table 2 (continued)

World Bank

• start or expand a business • demanding specific qualities from a person (putting innovative/new ideas into effect with managerial capacity and goal-oriented, self-confident and a positive attitude to risk-taking) • access to credit as a prerequisite • person who demonstrates above actions, capacities, psychological traits, and skills • person who demonstrates above actions, capacities, and ambition

• start a business • demanding from a person a mind-set which sees new business opportunities • risk-taking • the aim is profit-making

Aflatoun

someone who generates their own income

• working to generate an income • done by one person • a tool to move upward socio-economically

Kenya

mjasiriamali a petty trader or street vendor

ujasiriamali • taking business opportunities • demanding a specific mind-set (courage and risk-taking are characteristic elements)

Tanzania

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Bank

World Bank

• a place (physical and non-physical) that provides access to credit and possibilities to transfer, deposit, and store money • a place that works with money and finance • a place that provides savings accounts, loans, and investments

Aflatoun • a very safe place for storing money

Kenya not mentioned

Tanzania

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people with less formal education in Tanzania, bajeti (‘budget’) is considered ‘savings’, referring specifically to resources such as food crops. He did not mention other possibilities of ‘saving’, which may be due to the limited time frame we had for the interviews. Kenyan Oluoch strictly adheres to the concept of ‘saving’ as ‘storing money’. One elementary aspect that the two consultants share is that of resources being saved with a specific goal in mind for future use. In this sense, their understandings of ‘save’ differ in an important way from the understandings of the World Bank and the Aflatoun glossary, which also allow for unspecified goals (Aflatoun and World Bank) and emergencies (World Bank). The conceptual differences surrounding ‘budget’ are more pronounced. While all three consider ‘budgeting’ to be an efficient tool in staying in control of expenditures, Aflatoun and World Bank understandings include a clear sense of financial planning, coordinating resources, and expenditure. Local understandings do not necessarily include this type of planning. In Olouch’s understanding, budgeting comes in only after a sum of money has been earned, and includes planning of ‘wise spending’ (a personal quality) and ‘saving’. Kifunda argues that one first makes a plan, then tries to find the resources. In his understanding, the resources do not come first in the budgeting exercise. Self-employment is likely to be tacitly understood as one of the possible aspects of ‘entrepreneurship’ in all contexts presented. However, Oluoch refers to it as the defining aspect of ‘entrepreneurship’. He argued that it was the result of the combination of the Aflatoun social programme and his personal philosophy of how to thrive as a human being.14 Technically, it is the result of a contextualisation process that takes place on the ground, which is a localisation stage beyond the contextualisation process explained by Kifunda above (Sect. 7.1). Oluoch’s contextualisation process concerns making the concept of ‘entrepreneurship’ relevant for the underprivileged children and young people in his area. Another observation relates to ‘access to financial resources’, which in World Bank discourse is a key element in their understanding of what 14

An objective of Afaltoun’s social enterprise is an initiative that serves the community. This can be likened to Olouch’s insistence on community service as part of the training of the students.

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‘entrepreneurship’ is about. Without access to money, from the bank, investors, or other sources, an entrepreneur cannot ‘start or expand a business’. The explicit reference to ‘access to credit’ cannot be found in the Aflatoun glossary description nor in the explanations of Kifunda and Oluoch. From this we may conclude that taking a loan from a financial institution is not a salient element in their understanding. Kifunda hints that an ‘entrepreneur’ uses their own ‘property’ to start or have a business. This suggests that the person has saved before starting or expanding the business. Oluoch mentions growing grass for fodder and rearing chickens—in other words, natural resources—as a way of starting a business. He adds that it is charity from the environment that enables them to use natural resources as a resource for starting a business. While the World Bank, Aflatoun glossary, and Kifunda’s explanations all mention specific mental qualities in the person who does the ‘entrepreneurship’, Oluoch does not. This may be due to an adaptation of the concept to the local context, but it is more likely his strong belief that all children and young people can be self-reliant as long as they are given the right instruments. The element of ‘profit’, which is mentioned as an explicit goal of ‘entrepreneurship’ in the Aflatoun glossary explanation, does not resonate in Olouch’s understanding—nor in those of the World Bank or Kifunda’s.

9

Conclusion

This study explored the various layers through which global concepts travel: The World Bank and UFI programme, through international NGOs like Aflatoun, to local communities. The exploration showed that Aflatoun’s local contextualisation practices are an example of an essential and effective phase in bringing people of different cultural backgrounds into the global orbit of formal financial practices. It has also revealed that contextualisation in practice may not result in a concept that is entirely in line with Aflatoun teaching. Moreover, we have seen that even though Kenya and Tanzania belong to the geopolitical and cultural East African region, there are differences in the conceptual content of key terms in the financial education domain. Thus, one cannot easily generate an East

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African ‘regional contextualised’ version of learning materials. While this may be desired by Aflatoun, as noted in Sect. 2, Aflatoun may want to reconsider this strategy and focus on location-specific materials that reflect local understandings. We also suggest that Aflatoun should review the outcomes of the process presented here, and incorporate some of the local conceptualisations into their philosophy. Additionally, the chapter demonstrates that the global discourse of financial inclusion is myopic, as it ignores cultural diversity in its conceptualisation of key resource management terms. Using a linguistic and language-cultural approach, we have demonstrated, on a more general level, the enabling potential of cultural understandings in the context of international goals. Our approach could serve as a sustainable model for implementing and realising development agendas more generally. Acknowledgements We are grateful to a number of people who supported us in the development of this chapter. First, we express our profound gratitude to James Lawrie, formerly of Aflatoun, who whole heartedly welcomed us and opened the Aflatoun doors to us. We are also grateful to Theresa Salzer and Livia Remeijers for initial discussions. We are most indebted to Tidjane George for his interest and for introducing us to Aflatoun partners in Africa. Discussions with Tidjane and co-author Michelle clarified the Aflatoun contextualisation process. Above all, we are grateful to Jonathan Kifunda and Paul Olouch for their consent and willingness to discuss their work with us. We are also grateful to our colleagues Azeb Amha and Chibukwe Uche for numerous discussions on the culture gap in the implementation of universal financial agendas. The interpretations and views expressed on Aflatoun are the responsibility of the authors and not associated with Aflatoun.

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3 Asset-Based Community Development in Diverse Cultural Contexts: Learning from Mindanao, the Philippines Ann Hill , Anselmo B. Mercado, Anne Shangrila Fuentes, and Deborah Hill

1

Introduction

Asset-based community development (ABCD) is a development approach that has been widely adopted around the world to help communities harness and build on local strengths, skills, practices, and A. Hill (B) · D. Hill Centre for Sustainable Communities, University of Canberra, Bruce, ACT, Australia e-mail: [email protected] D. Hill e-mail: [email protected] A. B. Mercado FICCCO Community Outreach Foundation, Cagayan de Oro, Philippines A. S. Fuentes Department of Social Sciences, University of the Philippines Mindanao, Davao, Philippines

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Hill and F. K. Ameka (eds.), Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1_3

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knowledge, in order to realise positive development outcomes. ABCD originated in the United States, yet has been used extensively in various Western and non-Western contexts, such as the Philippines, where the approach has been adapted to suit local contexts. To date, little has been written about the specific ways in which ABCD has been adapted. Part of the reason for this, as highlighted elsewhere in this book, is the limited analysis to date of the linguistic dimensions of development practice methodologies. There is a need for further research in these areas, and for further research into the role that language and other communication tools play in development methods. This chapter contributes to expanding knowledge about the application of communication tools in development by focusing on one key global development approach (ABCD), and then exploring how this approach has been adapted, to make it more relevant to a diverse cultural context. In this chapter, we examine ABCD ideas, methods, and empirics from the perspective of Mindanao-based development practitioners, and we consider the role that language and other communication tools play within the Mindanao ABCD approach. In our writing and analysis, we engage in a research conversation that places development researchers, linguists, and ABCD development practitioners in the Philippines in conversation with one another, and with the wider research community of social scientists, agricultural scientists, international aid agencies, and anyone else interested in enhancing development practice today. To set up this conversational space, let us introduce ourselves, and the methodological process by which we have constructed this chapter. Ann is a community education and development researcher who has been working with research partners in Mindanao over the past 14 years. She was invited to contribute to this book based on her interest in re-thinking models of development and her ongoing commitment to using participatory action research methods, such as the asset-based approach, in her work. We began the thinking process in the second half of 2020, by placing the development researcher (Ann) and the linguist (Deborah) into conversation. Ann and Deborah read various writings and poetic reflections by Anselmo, one of Ann’s research partners and a longstanding ABCD development practitioner in the Philippines. Anselmo, and the

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organisations he has worked with, have been applying and adapting the ABCD approach in Mindanao since the early 2000s. Wearing our disciplinary hats, and based on our understanding of the ideas and practices reflected in Anselmo’s work, Ann and Deborah laid out an outline for the chapter. Then we established a Google document to enable to and fro between authors. It was at this point that our fourth author (Anne Shangrila, known as Shang) came on board. Shang brought rich gender analysis and experience working with Indigenous women farmers and other marginalised groups in conflict-vulnerable communities in Mindanao. Shang had adapted the ABCD model in her development practice working with various research partners, including the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). Drawing on our varied experiences, we each added thoughts, local-language terms, notes on process, poetic words, metaphors, and even our visions, to the Google document. The result was a rather unruly set of chapter ‘notes’, which we were tasked with presenting back to the book editors and coauthors, at a book-writing workshop on Zoom, in February 2021. The workshop enabled us to reflect to the group the intentions of the chapter. It also enabled us to gather useful feedback from the development and linguistics research community. Beyond the workshop, we worked again, to and fro, to draft and redraft the chapter, through to completion. Our experience of co-authoring has, itself, been a research conversation, and one model for working across languages and disciplines. For us, it has been a positive, exciting one. The methodological process of creating this chapter models the broader research conversation our work contributes to. It is very much an exploration, and we invite you to position yourself in conversation with us. The aim of this chapter is twofold. First, it aims to explore one locally adapted ABCD approach that has emerged from development practitioners, adapting and translating ABCD concepts and methods to make them more culturally relevant. Second, the chapter employs the linguistic tool of explicating the term ABCD (i.e. describing ABCD in language that is easy to understand and translate), to foreground learnings from Mindanao that may have wider application. Section 2 provides a brief overview of asset-based community development. Section 3 explores the Mindanao approach, coined ‘ABCD+E’, and introduces language and

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communication tools through examples. Section 4 drills further into the role language and other communication tools play as key components of ABCD+E application in Mindanao. Section 5 provides an explication of ABCD, as practised in Mindanao, to explain the Mindanao experience of ABCD to those who don’t share Mindanao language and culture. The explication is provided to promote wider discussion of ABCD and its use within diverse linguistic and cultural settings.

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Asset-Based Community Development: A Brief Overview

Over the past few decades, development discourse has been heavily informed by a needs and capabilities approach. The ‘capabilities approach’, developed by economist Amartya Sen in the 1980s, focuses on ‘what a person is able to do or be’ based on key indicators related to health, education, and income levels (Sen 2005, 153). The Human Development Index, developed by Sen and Mahbub-ul-Haq in 1990, captures human capabilities in terms of these three indicators. It has remained a yardstick, used by organisations such as the United Nations, to measure economic development and growth needs in poorer regions (Sen 2005). This focus on health, education, and income levels and needs, in contexts like the Philippines, is positive in the sense that it expands economic measurement beyond national economic indicators, such as Gross Domestic Product, and aims to uncover development inequalities, and maximise opportunities in relation to local skills, education, and income. But one of the big challenges of these indicators is that they often translate into a focus on lack, or what is missing in communities. This is often coupled with encouraging communities to put faith in external solutions, such as economic growth through exports and outmigration, to solve local ‘problems’ such as unemployment. The asset-based approach to development came about in the 1990s, in response to an over emphasis on the needs and problems in communities, and concern among development practitioners about the detrimental effects this was having. The approach was originally conceived as a measure to support community development in the

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United States, in cities experiencing high rates of crime, violence, joblessness, welfare dependency, and homelessness. Development practitioners were concerned that images of ‘needy, problematic, and deficient neighbourhoods’, and ‘needy, problematic, deficient people’ inhabiting those neighbourhoods, were being presented as the whole truth of those people and places. In turn, this image created the perception that people in those places were clients in need of external programmes and solutions that would fix and solve problems. But what was evident to many, was that the focus on trying to solve problems, through external solutions and one-size-fits-all programmes and policies, wasn’t working. The problems and needs didn’t go away. The 1993 release of Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets, by John Kretzmann and John McKnight, was groundbreaking, as it proposed a radically new way of assessing and responding to development needs. It proposed assessing development needs, not in terms of the lack of resources, employment, education, health, and so forth, but rather, in terms of how existing resources already at hand, such as local labour practices, skills, materials, and networks, could be built upon to maximise community wellbeing and livelihoods (Kretzmann and McKnight 1993). One of the key points of emphasis is that asset-based community development is not a one-size-fits-all model of economic development that necessitates taking a particular approach with a focus on big business, export agendas, or growth through scale-up. ABCD is more akin to bringing to light, and building on, diverse ways of supporting wellbeing and livelihoods. It emphasises starting where people are at, with what they have, and finding out what people in any particular place want to foster and build on. Another key point of emphasis in ABCD is that people are no longer positioned as clients in need of external deficiency-based programmes, but rather, as empowered citizens, who can work together to reverse internalised powerlessness, and strengthen opportunities for collective endeavours (Mathie et al. 2017). An asset-based approach encourages communities to drive their own (re)assessment of what is already working in their community, and what makes for ‘a good life’. It prompts collective consideration of what could be done to further engender social,

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economic, and ecological wellbeing in context. It prompts consideration of how local community can be involved, and take the lead in, initiating positive changes. Outside experts, finances, and resources might be called upon, but they are enrolled as, and when, needed. Their initial absence does not prevent a community development process from beginning (Kretzmann and McKnight 1993; J. K. Gibson-Graham 2006; A. Hill 2021).

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ABCD in Mindanao: Adaptions and Examples

In the 1990s, as asset-based community development gained momentum, news of this approach spread across the United States and into Canada, where researchers at The Coady Institute picked up the ideas and applied them in their research, partnering with universities in places like Mindanao, the Philippines (for example, Mathie and Cunningham 2003). Anselmo was based at one of Coady’s partner universities, Xavier University in Northern Mindanao, where he was Dean of the College of Agriculture, Director of the Southeast Asia Rural Social Leadership Institute (SEARSOLIN), and actively involved in the long-running cooperative movement in Mindanao. He became very interested in ABCD and its application in Mindanao. In the decades that followed, he went on to apply and adapt the ABCD approach, working with various communities, cooperatives, and other groups. Today, he continues to apply the ABCD approach, in his capacity as President of Mindanao’s First Community Cooperative Community Outreach Foundation. In this section we present some of Anselmo’s ideas and experiences of adapting ABCD in Mindanao, and provide examples. Anselmo began using ABCD in Mindanao around the year 2000. One of the first steps was to adapt ABCD to the Mindanao context, by giving it a local name: Kabtangan sa Katilingban alang sa Kausbawan sa Katawhan or ‘KKKK’, translates into English as ‘assets of the community for people’s development’. As local methods and ideas evolved, there

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was a further name change, to the current usage of Kaabag sa Kamalambôan Pinaagi sa Kabtangan sa Katilingban, which translates as ‘Partners in development using assets of the community’. Anselmo and the development practitioners he worked with felt it was important to use local language to communicate the key messages of the ABCD approach, especially when working with Lumads (Indigenous peoples) and Barrio (rural) people. Anselmo and colleagues believed that people had the right to use their own language and be heard in their own language. Adopting the language of KKKK was a way to encourage and promote this. Another important local adaptation was the shift from ABCD to ‘ABCD+E’. For Anselmo, the ABCD approach to development in Mindanao begins with ‘assets’, but should always result in ‘Empowerment’ (E). Within ABCD+E, a key idea is that assets are not assets straight away. They are first thought of as resources that have potential to become something else. A building, for example, can be considered a resource that has the potential to become any number of things. If the idea of building, improving, or expanding a local school emerges from within the community, the building might be imagined as an asset in the development of the school. The idea is, that resources become assets when they are used and applied by the community, for the benefit of the community. The key to resources being used well and applied well is a developed sense of empowerment within the community, to build, grow, and improve things from the inside out, starting with what is at hand. Sometimes, resources being used and applied well means ensuring different resources can work together. In the case of developing the school, the vacant building becomes a much more effective asset when combined with other things: students, teachers, education programmes, materials, and equipment. All of these things become assets in tandem, working together around a common goal, such as quality teaching and learning. Not only do they work together, they are interdependent. Without willing-and-able teacher labour and students keen to learn, and without programmes and materials fit for purpose, the school building cannot realise its potential as an asset. Anselmo and his colleagues emphasise that enacting the kinds of interrelationships and interdependencies identified above is a crucial aspect of the ABCD+E approach.

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To convey the importance of interdependencies, Anselmo and his colleagues use Filipino analogies that are widely understood, such as pinakbet, mixed vegetables eaten hand in hand with meat to nourish the body, and halo-halo, a Filipino favourite mix of different colourful sweet treats that energises the body (admittedly with a lot of sugar, hence why it is regarded as an occasional treat). In earlier research work in Mindanao, Ann came across another example, namely, the use of the Nipa Hut children’s song, a traditional song called Bahay Kubo, by local workers promoting ABCD. The song describes life in a traditional Filipino house characterised by a roof made from thatched nipa palm leaves, and describes diverse vegetables and plant proteins purposefully grown around the house to support the wellbeing of the household (for more on this example, see A. Hill 2011). With each of these analogies, the focus is on a diversity of things working together to produce some kind of benefit. Shedding light on different ingredients or resources coming together for collective benefit, is a key aspect of empowering people to drive their own community development, through ABCD. In Mindanao, collective empowerment and benefit is re-enforced through emphasis on ABCD+E. Below, we provide two examples of Mindanao communities, where these ideas have come to fruition and an ABCD+E approach has been applied to support cultural diversity and community wellbeing and livelihoods. The Bukidnon Tagoloanon Mulahay Ha Kabukalagan Agricultural Cooperative (BUKTAMACO) is described on BUKTAMACO’s social media homepage as ‘the economic arm of Bukidnon Tagoloanon Ancestral Domain’ (https://www.facebook.com/Bukidnon-Tagoloanon-Mul ahay-Ha-Kabukalagan-Agriculture-Cooperative-105950487974722/? ref=page_internal viewed 9 September 2021). The term Ancestral Domain refers to land belonging to the Lumad people of that area. This might sound simple enough, but the issues surrounding ancestral domain claims in Mindanao are complex, and have incited national debate and armed conflict over several decades. While the Philippine government’s Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997 states that Lumad people have rights to their lands and to self-governance, enforcing the law is still a work in progress. There is opposition to the law, even among the government. With this in mind, we can see why empowerment of

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Lumad and other marginalised peoples through ABCD, is crucial for supporting wellbeing and livelihoods. BUKTAMACO has a cooperative office and agricultural store in Malaybalay, the capital of the agricultural province of Bukidnon, but represents and supports Lumad cooperative members from across a larger area of Northern Mindanao. This area includes different municipalities of Bukidnon province, and the Municipality of Tagoloan in the neighbouring province of Misamis Oriental (Fig. 1). BUKTAMACO’S vision is to develop its ancestral domain through sustainable programmes that are in keeping with its Indigenous culture and tradition. It aims to improve the economic condition of its members

Fig. 1 BUKTAMACO signage, Mindanao

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while enabling members to continue to live as Indigenous People, with a focus on passing on cultural knowledge and values to the next generations. Key to achieving BUKTAMACO’s aim and vision has been the identification of various resources already within the community, then implementing these resources as assets in local development efforts. Resources identified in ABCD+E training include: Indigenous cultural knowledge, beliefs and values; Indigenous sharing, reciprocity and governance practices; strong Indigenous leaders and leadership skills, including the skills of a Lumad leader who is also a lawyer; and a 900-hectare parcel of ancestral domain land. These resources have been harnessed as assets in the development of BUKTAMACO as a Lumad cooperative, described as a mestizo or hybrid cooperative, because it blends local Lumad culture and values with cooperative organising and operating principles.1 Some of the Lumad batasan or Indigenous values underpinning the cooperative include: pabaton-batonâ ‘ a mutual responsibility to lift one another up’; pauyag-uyagâ ‘a commitment to mutual help and reciprocity’; pabulig-buligâ ‘a community support system to help those with greatest need’; and Patawil-twailâ ‘complementarity and cooperation between members’. Having established a strong internal foundation based on their own Indigenous values and practices, BUKTAMACO has been able to link effectively to external resources that support its vision and aim. As well as gaining access to Mindanao cooperative development practitioner knowledge and experiences of elsewhere, BUKTAMACO has also gained technical support and financial assistance from government and other institutions. These external resources have enabled cooperative members to undertake diversified farming. Cacao, bananas, and other food crops, as well as giant bamboos, are successfully being grown on the cooperative’s ancestral domain lands, where members live and work together to support each other’s livelihoods. They have established a vermiculture, or worm composting project, and other agroecology projects are being planned. 1 For more information on Mindanao cooperative organising principles and experiences, see the work of FICCO of which Anselmo is currently a member and the Director: https://www.ficco. org/.

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The Higaunon Lumad community in Barangay Samay is another example of the application of ABCD+E in Mindanao. Higa ‘living’, combined with the words unon ‘mountain people’, translates as ‘mountain-dwelling people’. This community is located in the mountains of Balingasag, about 480 metres above sea level and 17 kilometres from the centre of Balingasag Municipality, Misamis Oriental. The Higaunon Lumad community is currently led by their datus or tribal leaders (Fig. 2). Prior to adopting an ABCD+E approach, Higaunon Samay people were dispersed across their 14,000-hectare ancestral domain and living in traditional nipa huts, which were in a state of disrepair. There was no

Fig. 2 Lumad housing, Mindanao

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electricity, and limited access to fresh, safe drinking water. Today, these people live in new family dwelling units with electricity and running water. Housing improvements were made possible through funding from The National Housing Authority of the Philippines. At first glance we might think of this example as typical of ‘business as usual development’, with the housing authority/external development agency providing around PHP 200,000 (equivalent of AUD 5,500) funding per dwelling, to address a development need that the community could not financially meet themselves. On closer inspection we see the empowerment of the Higaunon Samay people, and how they were able to drive the development process through maximising opportunities associated with external support. In this case, external resources at the start of the development process became a collective asset that was put to use for collective benefit. In conjunction with the housing development, the Higaunon Samay people began working intentionally to maximise collective benefit and harness opportunities for ABCD+E. One way they did this was to make the decision to create a communal housing site, and to ensure the 60 family dwelling units were built in close proximity to one another. The communal housing site created a new sense of community, with greater opportunity for social interaction, mutual support, and communal participation in cultural ceremonies. One of the collective benefits of this initiative is that the Higaunon Lumad culture and value system is being kept alive and strengthened. Communal members share in their respect, faith, and devotion to their Magbabaya Bai ‘Omnipotent Generous God’. At almost every community event, they perform a ritual prayer, with some live animal offering. They also share great respect for their elders and leaders, and vice-versa— their leaders show respect for community members, and support them in actively participating in decision-making on community livelihood projects. A combination of closer dwelling proximity, dynamic leadership, increased community spirit and participation, and maintained community faith and spiritual belief, is generating an internal sense of empowerment in this community. In today’s global and national Philippine context, many traditional cultural practices and beliefs are under threat and regarded as outmoded,

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particularly among younger generations seeking to move from rural and remote mountainous regions to cities, in search of a better life. The drive to modernise, through housing improvements, access to utilities, and other things, such as televisions, motorbikes, computers, and internet, can itself be regarded as something that has the potential to undermine and threaten traditions. In the Higaunon Samay example, traditions have been maintained and modern improvements made. The internal strength and empowerment of the community and its leadership is what has made it possible to blend traditional and modern values. In turn, strengthening and empowering the community has been made possible through the application of a culturally adapted ABCD+E approach. In the next section, we drill down further into what a culturally adaptive approach entails. We consider the specific tools that Anselmo, Shang, and other development practitioners use in their ABCD+E work with Mindanao communities, such as those described above.

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Language and Other Communication Tools as a Key Component of ABCD+E in Mindanao

The Philippines is a multilingual nation. There are 186 languages, 184 of which are still ‘alive’, and 175 Indigenous languages (Eberhard et al. 2021). The official languages are Filipino and English. Development scholars have highlighted the diversity of languages, and the varied culturally attuned practices associated with them. For example, the Monsoon Asia Keywords project identifies local-language terms from across Asia that signify diverse economic practices. It highlights the valuable role that local-language termed practices continue to play in supporting communities that face a range of development challenges, including disasters and climate change (Gibson et al. 2018). It includes an analysis of Kamañidungan, a reciprocal labour-house building practice in the Batanes region in the remote north of the Philippines, where the Ivatan people have survived extreme weather and isolation for centuries. It explains how their survival has necessitated particular housing designs,

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building practices, and artisanal skills, that are still being used today. The Monsoon Asia Keywords project is just one example of work which highlights the importance of maintaining local languages, and the cultural practices aligned with them, in the present day. The importance of working with local languages and culturally attuned practices is not a new argument. Linguists, anthropologists, and social scientists, more generally, have long acknowledged the importance of researchers understanding, and working with, local language and cultural context (Bamgbose 2014; Bearth 2013; Brehm 2019; Khan 2014; Krijtenburg 2017). Attending to this argument is important in the context of development work, and specifically within ABCD, because this work is explicitly about community empowerment. This means the tools we work with in ABCD+E need to be tools that empower the people we are working with. What we are signalling here, is that in addition to descriptive, knowledge expanding uses of language in development, such as in the Keywords example above, we also need to focus on the methodological uses of language. To date, this area has been under researched. In the remaining part of our chapter, we explore the methodological role language and other communication tools can play, first, in the context of ABCD+E in Mindanao. To begin with, it is important to establish that much of the development practice work that takes place in Mindanao operates in a multilingual context. This multilingual context spans the official languages, Filipino and English, the national language, Filipino, regional languages, such as Bisayâ (also known as Cebuano), and local Indigenous languages, such as those of the Teduray, Bagobo-Klata, Tboli, Subanen, Mandaya, and Mansaka. Within this multilingual context there is a hierarchy of languages. Because of its historical and current role as the language of education, English is positioned at the top of the hierarchy, and often associated with ‘intelligence’ and being educated and globally connected. The role of English as the medium of instruction in schools began under American colonial rule (1901–1945), and continued until 1974, when a bilingual policy was introduced. A multilingual language policy was introduced in 2009. This policy called for the use of a students’ native or regional language in the first three years of schooling (Tupas and Tabiola 2017). Filipino is positioned on the next rung, as the national

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language that everybody understands. National television broadcasts are in Filipino. Most Filipinos know Filipino, so this language is usually employed by people whenever they are unsure of the first language of the Filipino person they are speaking with. Indigenous languages are usually relegated to the lowest rung in the hierarchy. Indigenous people strive to learn a more ‘mainstream’ or commonly spoken language, for example, Ilonggo or Filipino in Mindanao, in order to ‘belong’, and to enable them to access employment and other opportunities. This is commonly framed in literature as an indicator that language carries power: the higher up the hierarchy one’s language abilities are, the more access one has to power, resources, and opportunities (see for example, the critique of a Job Enabling English Proficiency (JEEP) project in Mindanao) (Tupas and Tabiola 2017). The way Shang and development practitioner colleagues make use of language in their ABCD work, is through adopting a multilingual approach. A conscious methodological decision is made to reverse the order and status of languages through putting people’s first language first. Encouraging people to use their first spoken language, where possible, and to use local language over others in ABCD activities, is seen as a way to shift the power dynamics and give local communities a sense of ownership of the process. In using participatory methods, such as ABCD, it is crucial that researchers and development practitioners understand choice of language as something that can make or break people’s ability to participate and engage meaningfully. But this can be tricky for the researcher or development practitioner, especially when they don’t understand or speak the local languages being used. In the Indigenous communities where Shang works, the Indigenous language is always inaccessible to her. She often has the same dilemma: she goes to visit a community where they speak Blaan, Tboli, or Teduray, and she doesn’t know how to speak the language and then wonders how best to communicate with the locals. While everyone in the Philippines knows basic Filipino, Shang recognises that using Filipino can cause local people to feel disconnected from her. Where possible, she

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speaks in a regional language, a Visayan settlers’ language,2 usually Hiligaynon or Ilonggo, as she feels that brings a greater sense of trust and belonging, as she is at least speaking people’s second language. If she cannot manage to communicate fully in a Visayan language, she supplements her speech with Filipino words and phrases. The Indigenous people, who usually understand the migrant settlers’ language, come to appreciate the discussion even more, as they can share their ideas freely and spontaneously. In the case of Moro3 communities, however, Filipino or Tagalog is the preferred language, as this is more familiar to them than Visayan languages. Whenever possible though, the team speaks in the local language, such as Maguindanaon or Tausug. It is not just researchers and development practitioners but also Lumad community members themselves who adopt a multilingual approach. Rodil (2015) highlights this with a significant historical example. In 1986, when fifteen of the then-known eighteen tribes of Mindanao came together to discuss governance and self-determination issues, they decided to adopt the term Lumad , the Bisayâ term for ‘Indigenous’, as a collective name. Rodil notes that it is rather ironic that the Lumad peoples of Mindanao chose a collective noun by which to identify themselves from the Bisayân language, the language of the migrants from the Visayas that led to the Lumad dispossession of their lands. He explains the reason in linguistic terms: when diverse Lumad tribes come together in big assemblies, they spontaneously shift to Bisayâ as their lingua franca, as this is the best means by which to communicate effectively among one another (2015, 5). The term Lumad , as discussed by Rodil (2015), is agreed upon by the Indigenous people themselves, and used as a collective noun, in the same way terms such as ‘women’ and ‘workers’ have been used to lobby for change and address injustices.

2 With the waves of migration from the Visayas region of the Philippines to Mindanao, different regional languages for example, Hiligaynon, Ilonggo, and Bisayâ, travelled to Mindanao and were used more commonly among people living in Mindanao. 3 Moro is a term used to refer to Muslim peoples of Mindanao, Palawan, the Sulu Archipelago, and other southern islands of the Philippines. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moro, accessed 4 February 2022.

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Clearly, there are complexities around which language is used, when, and by whom, in development interventions. Understanding the political dimensions and power relations around which language is used, and how, is key. Some community members may be silenced, not deliberately, but simply because the choice of language doesn’t allow for a more open discussion with them. Shang notes that Indigenous and other marginalised people are often uncomfortable sharing in development activities when the language used is less familiar to them. Hence, in their work in Lumad communities, Shang and her team have local site facilitators, who know the local language and can communicate with local people effectively. In instances when the site facilitators do not know the Indigenous language well, having a local translator helps tremendously in facilitating a more active interaction. In Shang’s project work, the criteria for choosing site facilitators are crucial. These people are ‘the face’ of a research project in the community. They must be locals so that they know the terrain of the community, understand and speak the language, and have strong, positive existing relationships and networks, which they have developed over time. All of this puts them in a position of trust. While the element of trust is important in any community development work, it is especially important in the context of conflict-vulnerable areas, as mistrust can be high, discouraging cooperation among and between various groups, such as Indigenous peoples, and Muslims and other migrant settlers. The community develops more trust in working with a project team when team members speak their language. Close bonds can result from the effort project teams have made to learn and communicate in local language, as opposed to expecting communities to adjust to the spoken language of the project workers. One good indicator of trust earned in a community is the noticeable inclusion of jokes in a conversation. This is often regarded as a sign that local people have become comfortable with a project team, and no longer see them as complete outsiders. As well as adopting a multilingual approach, development practitioners and researchers in Mindanao adopt a multimodal approach, by incorporating symbols, pictures, and visual methodologies in workshops and training exercises. Shang’s experience of conducting farm-based training sessions has led her to reflect on the ‘seeing is believing’

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visual aspects of language and farmer training. Shang’s experience is that farmers understand ‘seeing’ a model farm much more than they understand technical language explanations. They see and experience human–plant interactions on farms, often in ways that don’t require words to mediate interactions and generate understanding. In workshops, symbols, pictures, and drawings play an important role as communication tools. Shang observes that drawing is often more powerful than words; through drawing, farmers can more easily convey their ideas. Shang recalls a mapping session where farmers were asked to describe their community, and what resources could be found there. A drawing shared among farmers proved highly effective and interactive. Anselmo and Ann also experienced this. They organised ABCD community food-mapping workshops, where community members interacted with a GIS base map, then used markers to draw symbols, representing key resources and assets they could identify on the map (see A. Hill 2021 for more on this). The visual processes generated rich discussion and interaction. Workshops were also filmed and shared on YouTube and other social media, which generated further discussion and interaction. More recently, with pandemic induced travel and mobility restrictions, Shang and site facilitators adopted online field-based training workshops, and used videos to teach farmers about organic vegetable production and seaweed production. When training can’t take place in situ, videos, photos, and symbols are invaluable training and communication tools. Pictures and symbols speak volumes to people with lower literacy. Just as songs, paintings, and oral storytelling have been used for thousands of years, so too, have pictures and symbols, and part of their power is that they help ideas to travel among people with limited reading and writing skills. These non-word-based communication modes allow room for (re)interpretation, imagination, innovation, and experimentation, and this is one of the strengths of adopting a multimodal approach. The communication tools described in this section demonstrate the complexity of development communication, the variety of ways in which development workers communicate, and the reliance on speakers of different languages in a highly multilingual setting, where no single development worker is likely to have command of the many languages

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they encounter in their work. It is the development workers and community members who bear the transactional cost of communication in development contexts (Bearth 2013, 44; D. Hill 2021, 37). To better implement such multi-modal, multi-lingual approaches in development practices, we suggest that research and development projects should explicitly state in their proposals that they will use the local language as much as possible, especially in Indigenous communities, to ensure maximum participation in each step of the entire process. Institutional and monitoring bodies (e.g. ethics boards, funding bodies during review processes) must play a role in checking that this is implemented on the ground. Local governments, like the Barangay, along with the Indigenous leaders, can also check this as part of the free, prior, and informed consent being sought from the community before the start of any project. In the next section, we use the linguistic tool of explicating a term in Minimal English (Goddard 2021) to explain ABCD, based on the discussion presented here, of its application in Mindanao.

5

ABCD—A Description in Simple Words

Development terms from English do not always fit easily into other cultures. It has been noted that ‘sustainable livelihoods language and concepts have proven very difficult to translate into other languages— and sometimes fit uncomfortably with other culturally-defined intellectual traditions’ (Scoones 2009, 183 [footnote 13]). The ABCD approach to development work is inherently flexible, allowing it to be adapted in linguistically and culturally diverse settings, such as Mindanao. At the same time, the term and the thinking behind it (see Sect. 2), is not necessarily clear to those working outside of the discipline, or, at least at the outset, to communities embarking on a new development project. Defining terms in simple and easy to translate language, using a Minimal Language (e.g. English, Bisayâ), is one linguistic tool that can complement the ABCD approach. Minimal English is a development of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework, developed by Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard (see Wierzbicka 2021 and references

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included there). Goddard (2021) provides a detailed explanation of the differences between Minimal English (and any Minimal Language) and other simplified language forms such as Plain English, highlighting the importance of the translatability of Minimal English. Minimal English differs from research on grassroots English (Meierkord and Schneider 2021) insofar as grassroots English focuses on the spread and use of English in local contexts while NSM and Minimal Languages provide the tools for conceptual analyses, using words and syntactic compositions that allow terms in one language to be translated and explained in another. For the purposes of this chapter, a key point is that using Minimal English ‘helps reduce the so-called invisible misunderstandings that often occur when words of global English circulate in international discourse without necessarily being understood in the same way in different countries and contexts’ (Goddard 2021, 3). A Minimal language explication (or ‘explicitation’) was used in an agricultural development project in the Solomon Islands (D. Hill 2021) to explain a new term (Family Farm Team) to a community, using their own language (Longgu) and English. The explication was presented in pamphlet format, including illustrations based on photographs of daily activities in the community, to support the explanation of the new project. A Minimal Language explication, then, can be used to make ABCD explicit, and to explain the thinking behind this development approach. The explication is, in effect, a paraphrase of a Western concept that is being adapted in a diverse context. The explication below was first written in English, then translated into Bisayâ, by Anselmo. The Minimal English vocabulary, of about 300 words, includes semantic primes (65), (i.e. words that cannot be paraphrased and are expected to be lexical universals) (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018; Goddard 2021), semantic molecules that seem to be near-universal, and that reflect our shared human experience (perhaps 60–80 semantic molecules), and culture-specific semantic molecules. For example, in Filipino, it could be that pinakbet, ‘mixed vegetables eaten hand in hand with meat to nourish the body’ (referred to above), is a semantic molecule, because of its cultural significance and widespread recognition.

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For an English speaker who comes across an explication for the first time, the language may not sound quite ‘natural’. This is because there may be more common ways to express something in English, but this ‘common way’ is not necessarily one that can easily be translated. In addition, some very common function words, including the conjunction ‘and’, are not included in the Minimal English defining vocabulary, because, they too, are not found in all languages. The structure of the sentences, then, is also more restricted than in English. The explication, if successful, should be one that can be linked to a broader discussion of the concept. In this case, writing the explication came from listening to the other authors of this chapter (Ann, Anselmo, and Shang), and reading what they wrote about ABCD. This was checked, to establish whether what is presented here reflected their understanding of ABCD as it is used in Mindanao. The explication was further revised, based on feedback from a peer reviewer, and again discussed with the co-authors, before being finalised and translated into Bisayâ by Anselmo. The explication given below has four sections, reflecting the components of ABCD. The explication is introduced by a sentence: ‘People here think like this’. This sentence frames the explication. The idea that people ‘think like this’, shows that the explication reflects a way of thinking. Including ‘here’ in this sentence, indicates that this way of thinking is relevant to place (‘here’) and does not exclude the possibility that people in another place may not think the same way. In keeping with the ABCD principle of ‘starting where you are with what you have’, the explication begins with a statement about Community: Many people live in this place People here can know many things, can do many things. It is good if people here think like this: ‘We are one’.

We may want to say more than this about the community, using more complex words and phrases (e.g. ‘In Unity, as a Community, we are strengthened and empowered’), however, the Minimal Language approach avoids complex words like ‘unity’, ‘strengthened’, and ‘empowered’, because they are not words that can necessarily be translated into

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other languages, and because the words themselves need further explanation. Note also, that ‘Community’ is a heading, and not a word used as part of the explication itself. In part [B], the explication focusses on Assets. Assets is an English word that may encourage us only to think about money, or material goods. As the discussion above has shown, the way ‘Assets’ is used in the ABCD approach is different. As discussed in Sect. 3, ‘Assets’ are resources that are put to use in a way that benefits the community. They are often interdependent, and should lead to empowerment. For this reason, the explication describes assets as ‘good things’, but as ‘good things’ may be interpreted as vague or unclear, examples from the location are included (e.g. water, trees, earth, schools, churches, markets). These examples demonstrate that assets include the environment, and that the things people build and use (e.g. markets) are just one kind of asset—the ‘earth’ is another. The explication, although reflecting Mindanao, also describes the ABCD approach more generally. For this reason, a line in square brackets is included: [There are many good things in other places, People in other places can say what those good things are in another place.] Part B includes lines to show that these ‘good things’ are things that people can do things with, now, and in the future. Part [C] includes the stages of identifying assets, and making decisions about how they can be used to change their lives. In addition, the explication includes references to the knowledge that already exists within the community (e.g. ‘Some people here know many things’) and the knowledge that exists outside of the community (e.g. ‘Some people not from here know many things’), and the importance of including both groups of people to achieve the goals of the community (e.g. It is also good to do some things with these people). The final part [D] explains that there can be change and improvement, based on doing things, as a group of people who already have some ‘good things’ (e.g. When people here do things with other people, with these good things, it is good for many people here; Many good things can happen in this place.) The proposed explication for asset-based community development, as discussed in this chapter, is given below. The first line is in English. The Bisayâ translation of each line follows.

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Asset-Based Community Development People here think like this: Mao kini ang mga panghunâ-hunâ sa mga tawo dinhi. [A] COMMUNITY Many people live in this place Daghan mga tawo ang gapuyô dinhi ni’ng dapit. People here can know many things, can do many things. Mga tawo dinhi dunay daghan kahibalo-an, ug daghan ilang mahimo. It is good if people here think like this: ‘We are one’. Maayo untâ ang mga tawo dinhi mo-ingon: ‘Kami nagkahi-usa’. [B] ASSETS There are many good things here in this place. Daghan ang mga kasangkapan ug maayo’ng butang dinhi sa among dapit. We can say what these good things are: things like water, trees, earth; things like schools, churches, markets. Ang mga kasangkapan ug maayo’ng butang dinhi, naglakip sa katubigan, kayut â-an, kakahuyan; ug uban pa sama sa eskwelahan, simbahan, mga baligyâ-anan. There are many good things in other places. Daghan pud ang mga maayo’ng butang ug kasangkapan sa uban dapit. People in other places can say what those good things are in another place. Ang mga tawo makasulti unsa ang mga maayo’ng butang didto sa lain dapit. People can do some things with these good things now. Ang mga tawo makahimo sa unsay maayo nga buhaton gamit sa mga maayo’ng butang karon dayon. People can do some things with these good things after some time. Ang mga tawo makahimo unsay maayo nga buhaton sa ngadto-ngadto.

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[C] ASSET-BASED DEVELOPMENT It is good if people here think about these good things. Maayo gayud nga ang mga tawo dinhi maghunâ-hunâ sa mga maayo’ng butang ug kasangkapan. It is good if people here can say what they want to do now with these good things. Maayo gayud nga ang mga tawo dinhi mosulti sa ilang bu-ot himo-on karon sa mga maayo’ng butang ug kasangkapan. Some people here know many things Ubay-ubay sa mga tawo dinhi adunay kahibalo. It is good to do some things with these people Maayo gayud nga magbuhat sa maayo nga buluhaton uban sa mga tawo. Some people not from here know many things Dunay mga tawo nga dil î taga dinhi sa dapit nga daghan ang ilang kahibalo. It is also good to do some things with these people Maayo pud nga dunay mabuhat uban kanila. [D] (Positive) Development outcomes When people here do things with other people, with these good things, it is good for many people here. Kon ang mga tawo dinhi mobuhat sa mga butang duyog sa uban mga tawo, sa paggamit sa mga maayo’ng butang ug kasangkapan, maayo gayud sa mga tawo dinhi. Many good things can happen in this place. Daghan ang mga maayo nga hitabô ang modangat dinhi. People in this place can know more. Madugangan ang kahibalo sa mga tawo dinhi. People in this place can feel something good. Ang mga tawo dinhi sa dapit maayo ang ilang pagbat î People can live in this place, as they want. Ang mga tawo makapuyô dinhi sa ilang dapit sumalâ sa ilang kagustohanan.

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Conclusion

ABCD emphasises starting where people are, with what they have, and finding out what people in a particular place want to foster and build on. This chapter has explained the development of ABCD and its adaption to Mindanao, with a focus on the role of language and communication tools as part of that process. The Mindanao adaption began with translating the term ABCD into KKKK, a new term for a new location and language. From the outset of Anselmo’s work, there was a focus on using local languages as part of the adaption, especially when working with Lumads and Barrio people. The chapter has outlined the importance of the following: incorporating terms that speak to the experiences of Mindanao people when outlining the interdependencies of the assets a community has (e.g. pinakbet, mixed vegetables eaten hand in hand with meat to nourish the body); the identification of Indigenous cultural knowledge, beliefs, and values as important resources in ABCD+E training; and the reciprocal benefits of ABCD+E approaches to the maintenance of Indigenous cultures (e.g. Higaunon Lumad culture). At the same time, as Shang explained, in a highly multi-lingual society, Indigenous languages are not always accessible to development workers. A multi-modal approach (e.g. the use of songs, paintings, oral storytelling), and collaborative partnerships with translators and interpreters, are therefore necessary elements of the ABCD approach in Mindanao. And finally, ABCD is a complex but flexible approach to development, and this chapter has introduced an explication, a paraphrase using words that can be easily understood and translated, to demonstrate how the use and adaption of ABCD in Mindanao can be explained. The explication allows for further discussion and comparison between those practising ABCD in different locations, a means of clarifying and articulating the thinking of those practising ABCD in Mindanao, and a potential tool for explaining ABCD to communities of Mindanao, through the translation of the explication into Bisayâ (and, potentially, into other languages in the region). This chapter has brought together the experiences and perspectives of four authors to examine the role of language and communication tools

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in the adaption of ABCD in a culturally and linguistically diverse setting. Through examining one widely adopted development approach, the chapter has furthered methodological conversations between linguists, and development scholars and practitioners in the Philippines, and elsewhere in the world, with a view to enhancing development practice today. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Jayson Petras for comments and suggestions on explaining the linguistic context of the Philippines, and Froukje Krijtenburg for comments and suggestions on an earlier draft and the ABCD explication.

References Bamgbose, Ayo. 2014. The Language Factor in Development Goals. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 35 (7): 646–657. Bearth, Thomas. 2013. Language and Sustainability, in Language and Development, ed. Rose Marie Beck. Frankfurter Afrikanistische Blatter 20: 15–60. Brehm, Vicky Mancuso. 2019. Respecting Communities: Languages and Cultural Understanding in International Development Work. Development in Practice 29 (4): 534–537. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2019.156 9591. Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig, eds. 2021. Ethnologue: Languages of the World , 24th ed. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. http://www.ethnologue.com. Accessed 22 June 2021. Gibson-Graham, J. K. 2006. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Gibson, Katherine, Rini Astuti, Michelle Carnegie, Alanya Chalernphon, Kelly Dombroski, Agnes Ririn Haryani, Ann Hill, Balthasar Kehi, Lisa Law, Isaac Lyne, Andrew McGregor, Katharine McKinnon, Andrew McWilliam, Fiona Miller, Chanrith Ngin, Darlene Occeña-Gutierrez, Lisa Palmer, Pryor Placino, Mercy Rampengan, Wynn Lei Lei. Than, Nur Isiyana Wianti, and Sarah Wright. 2018. Community Economies in Monsoon Asia: Keywords and Key Reflections. Asia Pacific Viewpoint 59 (1): 3–16. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/apv.12186.

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Goddard, Cliff, ed. 2021. Minimal Languages in Action. Springer Nature. Switzerland. Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka. 2018. Minimal English and How It Can Add to Global English. In Minimal English for a Global World , ed. Cliff Goddard, 5–28. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3319-62512-6_2. Hill, Ann. 2011. A Helping Hand and Many Green Thumbs: Local Government, Citizens and the Growth of a Community-Based Food Economy. Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability 16 (6): 539–553. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2011.557355. ———. 2021. Making Vegetable Visible: Insights from Mindanao. Canberra: University of Canberra. Centre for Sustainable Community Monograph Series No. 4. https://researchprofiles.canberra.edu.au/en/publications/mak ing-vegetables-visible-insights-from-mindanao. Accessed 30 June 2021. Hill, Deborah. 2021. Balancing the Local with the Universal. In Minimal Languages in Action, ed. Cliff Goddard, 29–51. Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_2. Khan, Mariama. 2014. Indigenous Languages and Africa’s Development Dilemma. Development in Practice 24 (5–6): 764–776. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09614524.2014.941789. Krijtenburg, Froukje. 2017. The Sociality of Debt: A Case Study of Kamba (Kenya) Conceptualisations of Borrowing and Lending. In The Language of Money and Debt, ed. A. Mooney and E. Sifaki. https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-3-319-57568-1_11. Kretzmann, John, and John McKnight. 1993. Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets. Evanston, IL: Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University. Mathie, Alison, and Gord Cunningham. 2003. Who Is Driving Development? Reflections on the Transformative Potential of Asset-Based Community Development. Occasional Paper Series, No. 5. Antigonish, Canada: Coady International Institute. Mathie, Alison, Jenny Cameron, and Katherine Gibson. 2017. Asset-Based and Citizen-Led Development: Using a Diffracted Power Lens to Analyze the Possibilities and Challenges. Progress in Development Studies 17 (1): 54–66. Meierkord, Christiane, and Edgar W. Schneider. 2021. World Englishes at the Grassroots. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rodil, Rudy. 2015. Husay, Sandugo, and Kapatiran: Peace Process and Education for Development. Banwa 11A: INV-002. http://ojs.upmin.edu.ph/ index.php/banwa-a/article/view/195. Accessed 23 June 2021.

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Scoones, lan. 2009. Livelihoods Perspectives and Rural Development. The Journal of Peasant Studies 36 (1): 171–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/030661 50902820503. Sen, Amartya. 2005. Human Rights and Capabilities. Journal of Human Development 6 (2): 151–166. Tupas, Ruanni, and Honey Tabiola. 2017. Language Policy and Development Aid: A Critical Analysis of an ELT Project. Current Issues in Language Planning 28 (4): 407–421. https://doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2017.135 1329. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2021. “Semantic Primitives”, Fifty Years Later. Russian Journal of Linguistics 25 (2): 317–342.

4 The Changing Conceptions of Work and the Language of Work in Ghana: Towards a Research Agenda Akosua K. Darkwah

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and Dzodzi Tsikata

Introduction

Work is at the heart of both the production and reproduction of life, societies and cultures. Both at home and outside the home, women and men engage in productive activities that earn them income but also produce goods and services for others to consume. At home, the everyday activities of cooking, cleaning, and care work sustain the current generation and reproduce the next generation of workers. Indeed, the evolution of societies has been marked by the changing nature of systems of production and reproduction, manifested in the world of work. Marx and A. K. Darkwah (B) Department of Sociology, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana e-mail: [email protected] D. Tsikata Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Hill and F. K. Ameka (eds.), Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1_4

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Engels (1967), for example, depicted the changing modes of production in societies over time in terms of the changing production systems and the nature of work. These societies thus evolved from feudalism to capitalism, which itself has been undergoing momentous changes since the nineteenth century. Both agrarian and industrial societies engendered by capitalism produce workers of different kinds in different sectors of the economy, each with its own set of norms. In industrial societies, the blue-collar workers of factories operated under a different set of norms from whitecollar workers in offices and pink-collar workers in the service sector. Similarly, in agrarian societies, plantations and other large-scale agricultural enterprises, self-employed farmers, agricultural labourers, contract farmers, and tenant farmers operate under various land, labour, and capital relations with distinct norms and practices. Work, with its distinct norms and practices, provides a crucial sense of identity for workers. In her inaugural lecture (2018) at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, Tsikata argued that: the importance of work to workers is beyond remuneration and their terms and conditions. Work is a key route to participation in the economy and to full citizenship. It gives people access to public goods and private goods and services, entitlements arising out of paying tax and a stake in the success of the nation. It can also give people an identity and status and is an important tool of social mobility.

Postcolonial societies such as Ghana operate a dual economy created under colonialism with its own structure of work which demarcated some jobs as formal and others as informal. In the modernisation logic of postcolonial development economics, informal work was seen as temporary and expected to change as economies developed and became formalised (Breman 2004). In the 1970s, however, Hart (1973) drew attention to the persistent character of informal work. His words were as true in the 1970s as they are today. A much larger proportion of Ghana’s workforce is engaged in informal as opposed to formal work. Indeed, even bastions of formal work such as the banking sector have become increasingly informalised in the neo-liberal economic regime operated in

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Ghana since the 1980s (Anyidoho and Adomako Ampofo 2015). The negative impact of neoliberalism has raised concerns about rising unemployment, precariousness, and poor terms and conditions of work. In 1999, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) responded with its Decent Work Agenda. There are four pillars to this Agenda: employment creation, social protection, rights at work, and social dialogue. The Sustainable Development Goals signed in 2015, which seek to guarantee a sustainable and improved future for all, also commits to improving working conditions. Goal 8 seeks to promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all. Even as the language of work has evolved at the international level with increasing concern for ‘decent work’ and the eradication of ‘precarity’, workers in Ghana have continued to labour under a range of unacceptable working conditions. From the range of terminologies used to describe various kinds of work, it is clear that workers have developed a lexicon to describe the changing character of working conditions. These terms also suggest that there are conceptual and attitudinal shifts to work taking place. The changing terminology used to describe work is as varied as the linguistic diversity of Ghana. Ghana has a north–south divide with differing histories, linguistic diversity, and socio-economic development. Obeng (1997, 63) notes that there are between 30 and 57 languages spoken in Ghana while Ethnologue (Eberhard et al. 2021) puts the number at 80. Although there are disparities in the numbers because of the conflation of communities with similar cultures and languages, it is widely agreed that there is a linguistic divide in the country, with the southern part home to Kwa languages and the northern part home to the Gur/Mabia language family. Much of the discussion in this chapter focuses on the languages of the Kwa family which include Ga, the language of Accra, the capital city, Akan a widely spoken language across Ghana, Nzema spoken in the southwestern corner of Ghana and across the border into Cote d’Ivoire, as well as Ewe spoken in the south-eastern corner and across the border into Togo. In the northern part of Ghana, the languages include Dagbani, spoken in the central part of the northern

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sector in present-day Savannah Region and Gurene, spoken in the northeastern corner of the country. The linguistic divide maps roughly on to the socio-economic divide in Ghana; the southern part where languages of the Kwa family are spoken is more urbanised, economically more diversified and with fewer people living in poverty than the northern part where the languages of the Gur/Mabia family are spoken. Given that work options expand with economic growth, the language terminologies we investigate in this paper draw much more heavily on the southern part of Ghana than the northern sector although we incorporate some of the emerging language in the north that reflects new job opportunities. This chapter is a preliminary discussion of how the tensions between the aspirational notions of work and the lived realities of workers are reflected in the everyday language of people. In so doing, we add to the small but growing body of work exploring political economy in applied linguistics (Duchêne and Heller 2012; Block 2017). Our foray into this subject is to outline a research agenda that can contribute to building a body of knowledge on this issue. We do this by historicizing the changing language of work in Ghana and interrogating its relationship with the evolving nature and character of work in Ghana. We argue that the language of work in Ghana is dynamic and has evolved to account for the changing nature of work in the country. This evolution also suggests that there are fundamental changes afoot in society regarding conceptions of work and attitudes to certain kinds of work. The chapter draws on secondary research on the changing character of work and the combined primary research we have done over the last three decades on a wide range of work and work conditions. These include traders in Ghana’s largest consumer goods market, factory workers in the country’s industrial city of Tema, domestic workers, miners, and mine workers in the northern part of Ghana, self-employed smallholder and medium-scale commercial farmers, contract farmers and tenant farmers; fisherfolks along the Volta Lake, mangrove harvesters in the south-eastern corner of Ghana, and home workers1 and home-based workers in agricultural processing and arts and crafts in northern and southern Ghana. 1 Homework, as defined by the ILO’s Home Work Convention, 1996 (No. 177) and Recommendation, 1996 (No. 184) is “work carried out by a person … (i) in his or her home or in

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This introduction is followed in Sect. 2 by a discussion on the changing character of Ghana’s economy and in Sect. 3 by a discussion about the ways in which the importance of work is reflected in national life, the economy and in discourse, represented by proverbs and sayings. This is followed in Sects. 4–6 by discussions of the language of work in agriculture, mining, and services. We then set up a summary conclusion, and propose a research agenda for future studies on this set of issues.

2

Notes on the Ghanaian Economy and the Changing Character of Work

Formal, waged work was introduced into Ghana with the arrival of missionaries and then colonial officers in what was eventually known as the Gold Coast. Prior to the arrival of these different actors, work in Ghana was characterised by communal exchanges of labour and barter for mostly agricultural produce. With the introduction of cowries as a form of monetary exchange, individuals could exchange items and labour for cowries. The exchange of labour for cowries is evident in the Ewe word hotsúí-d´O literally ‘cowry work’, which is the word currently used to refer to paid work or labour. When the idea of labouring for another for a wage was introduced, however, it was not without contestation. Written records provide us with a sense of these contestations. Nathanael Berko, Johannes Ata, and James Boama, three members of the Presbyterian congregation in Kwawu Abetifi located in the middle belt of Ghana wrote a scathing letter to the officials in the Presbyterian headquarters of Basel, Switzerland. The letter protested their exploitation at the hands of the Swiss missionary Friedrich Ramseyer. Dated 2 January 1883, it read: We are sorry to say about command of the Principal of this town: I. He makes himself as a King, but not as a Minister.

other premises of his or her choice, other than the workplace of the employer; (ii) for remuneration; (iii) which results in a product or service as specified by the employer, irrespective of who provides the equipment, materials or other inputs used” (Conv. 177, Art. 1).

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II. He commands just the same as Ashante2 ’s King. III. He treats us a[s] animals. IV. If one of us does make any work for him, from 6 ock. [o’clock] in morning to 3 ock. [o’clock] in [the] evening with hard labor, then Revd. Mr. F. Ramsey[er], the principal, pays him 4 1/2 d3 per a day. V. If any one of the Christians want[s] to go to Akuapem or other place [s] to find some work, then he did not allow us; And here at our place we get nothing to do; VI. If one [of ] us does mercenary work from here to Accra, and back then he pays him 10/4 : VII. If any stranger comes here and want[s] to hire one of us; Then [the] principal tells him that he may give us small wages because we are poor; But he did not remember the: ‘Behold the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields; which of you kept back by fraud, crieth’, James V, 4. (Meischer 2005, 80)

Such contestations were not the preserve of Ghanaian workers undergoing proletarianisation. In Nigeria, Lindsay (2005) documented the ways in which railway workers protested the conceptualisation of the male breadwinner and female homemaker dichotomy. One such worker, Mr. S. Okiti, protested calls for disciplining him because he arrived at work 18 minutes late on 24 May 1948 in the following words: Well, on this very day, my daughter fell sick seriously. But being unable to leave her alone with her mother, I sent for my brother at Lagos to look after her. But before the arrival of my brother I found that the time is gone. So immediately [after] he came I left for work. (Lindsay 2005, 143)

Over time, formal work options grew in Ghana. Teaching and nursing became work options for young, educated women although up until the 1960s, women could only work in the formal economy if they were 2

A reference to the Asante, the largest group of ethnic Akan. This referred to pence. This is the currency introduced in the colonial period. Prior to independence, the currency was the responsibility of the West African Currency Board (WACB). The West African pound, shillings and pence, constituted currency issued by the Board and was in circulation in Ghana until July 1958. 4 This referred to shillings. 3

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unmarried and childless (Tsikata 1997). In addition to these two sectors, men also worked in the public sector. Except for a few, most men worked in the lower levels of the public sector as clerks, typists, and secretaries. Other formal work options for men were in mining (Afrifa Taylor 2006) and transportation, specifically the railways (Crisp 1984). As Ghanaians took on more formal work, these workers adjusted to and accommodated the demands of formal work. Soon, terminology developed to signify both where such work was undertaken and the prestige associated with it. In Ewe, the name for formal work referencing its origins is yevúd´O ‘white people’s work’. In Akan, the expression is aban adwuma ‘government work’, referencing the public sector which was and continues to provide the most secure form of formal work in Ghana with respect to the terms and working conditions. Much like the name Smith, which references the smith-working skills of their English ancestors, the names for formal work used in reference to its practitioners have sometimes been adopted as last names thus widening the options for last names. One such name that also highlights the prestige of such jobs, particularly in the late colonial and early independence period, is Okyerefo, the Akan word for ‘teacher’. Formal sector work bestowed prestige, as evident in the new names that have emerged in Ghana. In addition, formal sector workers, especially public service workers, have the most secure jobs of all in Ghana (Darkwah 2005). They receive higher incomes and enjoy social protection and other conditions of work, including paid leave (sick leave, casual leave, and annual leave), fixed hours of work, paid overtime, various allowances that depend on seniority and pension schemes. Although formal sector workers are better off than informal sector workers, they make up only a small proportion of workers in Ghana. The informal economy continues to be the sector of the economy where most workers earn their livelihoods. According to the most recent Ghana Living Standards Survey, 71.3% of Ghanaian workers can be found in the informal economy (2017, 74). The majority of these are self-employed workers who run small businesses. Life for many of the workers in the informal economy, be they self-employed or employees is precarious. Some, like domestic workers, the majority of whom are female, are paid in a variety of arrangements: solely in kind, e.g. with meals, clothing, healthcare as

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well as training and a tool of trade such as a sewing machine at the end of several years of service; in both cash and kind, and in only cash (Tsikata 2011). For those who receive a wage, payments can be erratic and earnings generally low which makes savings and planning for the future near nigh impossible. At the workplace, occupational health and safety standards are largely non-existent. State social protection is also minimal. A national health insurance scheme, which one must opt into, has existed in Ghana since 2003 but it is not the most effective and efficient of insurance schemes. Among other things, health care facilities are poorly distributed across the country with the majority in the urban, southern communities. Secondly, many ailments are exempt from coverage under the scheme. There have also been allegations of poor health care delivery to patients on the scheme. Unsurprisingly therefore, membership on the scheme has been stagnating for a while (Alhassan et al. 2016). While the majority of the employed population works in precarious circumstances, they at least have a job that orders their day and gives them a sense of self. This is not the case for the teeming population of unemployed people, particularly the youth. Although Ghana is a country with a largely youthful population, unemployment rates are acute among this segment of the population. In the most recent census5 conducted in 2010, 45.6% of those aged between 15 and 24 were unemployed, 42% of those aged between 25 and 44 were unemployed while only 9% of those aged between 45 and 64 were unemployed (GSS 2013, 271). Unemployment rates are especially high among young university graduates. In one survey undertaken by the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare, two-thirds of graduates interviewed were unemployed (Baah-Boateng 2008). It is perhaps unsurprising that an Unemployed Graduates Association of Ghana exists in Ghana. It is not unusual for young people to spend several years unemployed. This stalls their ability to transition fully into adulthood. Honwana (2014) has labelled this period of being in limbo as ‘waithood’. To prevent waithood, young people resort to a number of income-earning strategies. Some choose to migrate. In parts of Ghana, migration among young men in particular is viewed as a 5 Due to COVID-19, data collection for the 2020 census was undertaken in 2021 and the results for employment are not yet available.

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rite of passage (Darkwah 2019). Others resort to internet scams known in Ghana as sakawa (Alhassan and Ridwan 2021). Both the state and non-state actors have developed programmes to support youth employment. The state developed the National Youth Employment Programme in 2006 and a Youth Employment Agency was established in 2015. Donor agencies are also supportive of these efforts. For example, SNV Netherlands is currently running a ‘GrEEn Opportunities for Youth Employment Programme’. Similarly, MasterCard Foundation is running the ‘Young Africa Works Programme’. For the employed, jobs can be found in various sectors of the economy: agricultural, services, industrial. The Ghanaian economy has undergone rapid change since the 1980s. The service sector is now the largest segment of the economy in terms of GDP contribution. However, agriculture is still important as it holds the largest proportion of the labour force. Agriculture itself is undergoing rapid changes. Increasingly, agriculture is commercialised and farmers who have large farm sizes resort to hired labour instead of household labour as their children are more likely to be in school than at home providing free labour. The fishing industry, which is made up largely of artisanal canoe fishermen, their employees and a wide range of service providers and input suppliers also has a range of labour relations linked with ownership and control of capital, fishing equipment, and labour. The service sector of the economy consists typically of small- and medium-scale enterprises providing a range of services—hairdressing, catering, dressmaking, event planning for a range of rites-of-passage events, telecommunication services, and trading which has been a quintessential female job in Ghana for over a century. This sector has a large proportion of self-employed individuals. It has also developed a range of informal labour arrangements over time. Ghana’s labour code of 2003 (Act 651) does not account for much of the informal work in the economy so there are few legal protections for informal workers. Formal work is equally hard to find. University graduates spend years unsuccessfully looking for jobs and many simply continue with their educational degrees, taking on multiple Master’s and/or certificate courses in hopes of finding work (Darkwah 2010). The current COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on workers in Ghana, particularly those in informal work who work from hand

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to mouth. A survey of 4311 firms conducted by the Ghana Statistical Service in collaboration with the UNDP and the World Bank gives us a robust understanding of the income and job losses associated with the pandemic. The survey, conducted between May 26 and June 17, 2020, showed that about 770,000 workers representing 25.7% of the workforce had their wages reduced while about 42,000 employees (4.1% of the firms’ workforce) were laid off. Business owners predicted that in the worst-case scenario, 15% of workers would lose their jobs (GSS 2020). Given these realities, this chapter seeks to document how the language of work reflects the momentous changes in the world of work in Ghana.

3

Ghanaian Popular Culture and Depictions of the Centrality of Work in Ghana

Work is of vital importance in Ghanaian society. Work features prominently in various rites-of-passage and national rituals. When a member of Ghana’s Bar Association dies, his or her colleague lawyers stage a court as part of the burial rites. On 6 March each year when Ghana celebrates its independence from Britain in 1957, traders and farmers march at the Independence Square in downtown Accra with their goods and produce. The first Friday of December each year is celebrated as Farmers’ Day, a national public holiday which is set aside to recognise and celebrate the hard work of farmers in the country. Among the Ga of Ghana, one’s coffin can be built to represent the occupation of the dead, a pen or pencil or book for a teacher, a plane for a pilot, a hoe for a farmer, a cooking pot for a chef, and an organ for a music teacher or organist. These work themed coffins, which are now patronised across Ghana, have been the subject of museums, art shows and documentaries (Bonetti 2016). The centrality of work is also evident in Ghanaian popular culture. Many popular musicians have songs with lyrics that celebrate the value of work. For example, Amanzeba Nat Brew, a famed Ghanaian highlife artist has a song in Ga with a line that says ke otsuu, oyee ‘if you don’t

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work, you don’t eat’. Similarly, azonto,6 a dance form that was the craze in Ghana a decade ago is basically a series of hand moves that mimic everyday activities especially those that depict livelihoods, such as the hand motions required to polish shoes. In everyday greetings as well, the centrality of work is evident. Upon encountering individuals involved in manual labour, such as people weeding a field, carting loads at a building site or some such activity, one offers up a greeting either in Akan, edwuma oh, edwuma ‘work, work’, to which the workers reply edwuma yE ‘work is good’ or in Ga, one congratulates them by saying anyeko ‘well done’, to which they respond yaa yei ‘thank you’. Kropp Dakubu (2009) points out that anyeko has now become a pan Ghanaian expression and has even found its way into Ghanaian English as ayekoo. In Ewe, one of the several expressions of thank you for any service or act of kindness or support is woe wO dO, literally meaning, ‘you have worked’ (Ameka 2006). There are proverbs about the value of work as well. In Ewe, the proverb, NuGeãutO me nyana be dO to o is translated as ‘The food-beggar knows not of famine’. This proverb teaches about the value of hard work rather than dependence on others. Similarly, among the Nzema, there is a proverb that discourages dependence on others. It says, asElE ngyenle Ende aleE translated loosely as ‘If you beg for salt, it would not be enough for you to prepare a delicious meal’. Yakub and Osei (2020, 25) explain that this proverb can be translated as ‘Whoever depends greatly on external support does not enjoy life sufficiently’. Among the Akan, the proverb that conveys a similar sentiment is the one that says, se anoma anntu a obua da which Quan-Baffour (2011, 34) translates as ‘if a bird does not fly it starves’.

6

This term may have originated from the Eastern Gbe languages of Fon or Gungbe where the word azOntO means ‘owner of work’ or ‘worker’.

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The Changing Character and Language of Agricultural Work in Ghana

As in other countries in both the Global North and Global South, agriculture is one of the oldest sectors of work in the country. Agriculture evolved over the years from its early forms of small farms worked by largely family labour to a shareholding system that allowed for migrant labour to participate in farming activities. In post-independence Ghana, new agrarian labour forms emerged as the state encouraged private sector-led farms and also developed some of its own. As a result, waged farm labour emerged. Contract farming arrangements have also emerged in Ghana. This is an arrangement where farmers receive inputs as well as seedlings from a large-scale farming enterprise at the beginning of the farming season with the understanding that they will sell their crop to the company at a pre-determined price, often lower than what pertains on the market, at the end of the harvesting season. Various words in Ghana point to understandings about the changing nature and character of work. In the agricultural sector, language terms speak specifically to the terms and conditions under which labour can be contracted. In both the Gur/Mabia language families of the north and the Kwa language families of the south, there are words that can be translated as communal reciprocal work such as Nnoboa, in Akan, kpariba in Dagbani, or asikpliƒoƒo/fidodo in Ewe. Communal reciprocal work refers to an indigenous system where farmers move en masse from farm-to-farm tackling tasks on each other’s farms such as weeding, planting, or harvesting. In a context of household level labour shortages and the lack of resources to pay for labour, this system reduces the tedium of farm work. A task that would have taken an individual farmer weeks to complete could be completed in a day. In contemporary times, farmers can engage in nnoboa or kpariba to demonstrate their appreciation for the voluntary work of one of their members. Such is the case with Maame Anima, a pineapple farmer in the Mampong area of Ghana who enrolled in an agricultural extension training programme organised by the Network for Women’s Rights, Ghana’s leading women’s rights organisation. Having been trained in basic extension services such as the appropriate way to apply fertiliser, she had returned to her community

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and shared her knowledge with her colleague farmers as was expected of her. In appreciation for the useful knowledge gained from her, her farm would be weeded for free without her having to ask for the service. She thus ends up saving huge sums of money that she would have had to expend if she had contracted day labourers. Day labourers are paid a specified sum of money as a daily wage. This amount is usually higher than the state-sanctioned minimum daily wage and is evenly applied across farming communities. Another indigenous form of contract commonly used on farms in Ghana is the sharecropping contract, known in Ewe as deme. There are two types, the abunu or abusa. Derived from the Akan words for two and three, mienu and miensa, respectively, abunu means split in two and refers to the system where a sharecropper is given half of the harvest or the farm while the landowner takes half. In the abusa system, the land owner takes one-third of the proceeds while the sharecropper who is expected to provide both the labour and inputs for the farm takes two-thirds of the proceeds. The abusa system of labour relations emerged during the economic depression of the 1930s. During this period, landlords found it difficult to remunerate their workers and similarly, migrants did not have the financial wherewithal to purchase land outright for their farming activities. This abusa system worked for both parties because it offered landlords access to labour and migrants’ access to land (Austin 1987). These sharecropping arrangements persist to this day in parts of Ghana. The agricultural commodity for which Ghana is best known is cocoa. Often ranked as either the world’s top producer or second leading producer of cocoa globally, cocoa farming shaped the fortunes of many an individual in the farming belt of Ghana in the early part of the twentieth century. At that time, being linked to the global export trade provided cocoa farmers with access to incomes hitherto unknown to them. Three storey buildings begun to emerge in urban communities as testament to the hard-won earnings of these farmers and with it came new terminology to signify the status and identity of these farmers. Cocoa krakye, literally translated in Akan as ‘cocoa gentleman’ signified the gentlemanly status that accrued to certain cocoa farmers. Krakye is adapted from the English word ‘clerk’, hence the gender bias in the term.

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The fact that the term refers to men and not women is not insignificant. Although Ghanaian women in food crop production are estimated to produce half of what the nation consumes (Duncan 1997; Baanante et al. 1999), colonial policy, which is largely unchanged today, created a series of measures that favoured men over women in cash crop production (Austin 2005). Thus, it is that even in contemporary times, only a fifth of Ghana’s cocoa farmers are female (Vigneri and Holmes 2009). Cocoa krakye ‘cocoa gentleman’ is not the only term that provides insights into the marginalisation of women and the disregard for their labour that the colonial process wrought. As already alluded to in the case of Nigeria (Lindsay 2005), the idea of the woman as a housewife was also a colonial invention that Africans fought vigorously in the early years of its introduction. Nonetheless, the colonial project cannot be faulted fully for the marginalisation of women and the disregard for their labour. In the northern part of Ghana, the language of work also speaks to the disregard for women’s agricultural labour. In what used to be the Upper East and Upper West Regions of Ghana, women are considered as farmers and farm hands and their productive and reproductive responsibilities are valued. In the Northern Region of Ghana (now broken into North East, Northern, and Savannah Regions), on the other hand, women are considered as non-farm hands; their productive labour on farms is not considered as work in its own right, but merely as assistance to their male relatives. Apusigah (2009, 56–57) notes: Farm hands…are obliged to play both productive and reproductive roles in the household subsistence process…where women are considered nonfarm hands, their roles are perceived largely as non-productive and at best as reproductive….When wives [in the Northern Region] engage in farmbased activities, their labour is not considered work on its own merit but as help to the male members.

Non-farm hands may very well help with different aspects of the agricultural process such as sowing and harvesting but their labour will be considered inconsequential. New forms of labour arrangements have evolved in the agricultural sector, and with them, new terminologies. In the 1970s, the postcolonial

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government encouraged the development of private sector farming in Ghana. Entrepreneurs from northern Ghana took up the challenge and took up the farming of rice, a crop well suited to the lands in northern Ghana. With the development of capitalist farming ventures came the need for casual labour, workers who could be assigned a series of tasks to complete on a daily basis for a wage. These workers came to be known as by-day labourers, a reference to the wage rate for such workers (Van Hear 1984). The term ‘by-day’ is now used in daily parlance among many language groups in Ghana. Agriculture has long been subject to the vagaries of the weather. Given the lack of mechanisation and irrigation on most farms in the country, farmers continue to find themselves at the mercy of the weather. Increasingly, rainfall patterns are changing; the rains either come too late or too early and can be either too much or too late when it does arrive. The uncertainty in the rainfall patterns makes it difficult for farmers to plan planting seasons which ultimately affects yields. The entire exercise is risky to say the least. In recognition of this uncertainty, farmers have developed new language to capture their current reality. Interestingly, this new terminology is in English, the language of our colonial masters now nativized and appropriated, and reflecting perhaps, the increasing pervasiveness of English not just in our classrooms (Mazrui 2002) but in our communities as a whole. Ma Patricia, a maize farmer who plants on the banks of the Densu river describes her activity as ‘game’, not ‘a game’, reflecting the risk involved in the activity, and not the fact that she was planting for fun so to speak. Whether or not her maize crop would do well depended on whether or not the Densu river flooded its banks in a particular year. She could never be sure. For all intents and purposes, she was playing a game of chance. Her activities could very well yield no productive gains.

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The Changing Language of Work in the Mining Sector

Small-scale mining in Ghana was outlawed between 1905 and 1989. The legalisation of small-scale mining operations in 1989 led to new opportunities for work and new terminologies to describe the changing labour relations. The term to describe small-scale mining in northern Ghana is alakpi-kira, a Gurene word which means ‘pushing’ or ‘rising’. It comes from the idea that gold is pushing people to acquire wealth. In the 1990s, gold mining was seen as a more viable livelihood activity than seasonal migration to southern Ghana which used to be a major source of earnings prior to that. People who went to the mines were quickly able to purchase significant markers of wealth in these communities, such as motor bikes. A variety of jobs were available in these mines (Awumbila and Tsikata 2010). Men worked as dynamiters who blasted the ore, chisellers who broke up the ore into smaller bits, transporters who moved the blasted ore from the mine pit to the surface and pounders who broke up the ore into even smaller bits. Women, on the other hand, were involved in sifting the pounded rock to separate the powder from the chippings. Women also provided a variety of services in the mining community including cooking, cleaning, laundry and sexual services. The local terms developed to describe this range of work activities are interesting. Firstly, many of the terms are English terms. The women who sift the pounded rock are known as shanking ladies, the chisellers are referred to as moya men, the transporters of the rock ore are called loco boys while the men who pound the ore are the kai men. The gendered nature of the jobs is inherent in the terminology developed to refer to the various tasks. It is unclear whether there are age dimensions to the tasks as well. It would be interesting to investigate whether the chisellers and pounders are generally older than the transporters, hence the reference to moya men and kai men versus loco boys. Awumbila and Tsikata (2010) point out that while the financiers of the mining activities and the owners of the pits tend to be migrants, the workers tend to be local. Yet another interesting term to interrogate is the term shanking ladies. According to Awumbila and Tsikata (2010), the shanking ladies are the lowest paid of all the workers

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in the mines and their wages varied greatly. Those shanking ladies who in addition provided sexual services to the ore owners earned more than those who only sifted ore. One shanking lady describes the situation as such: You can’t determine your pay because we are paid differently from day to day and between two shanking ladies. You don’t complain because you do not know the relationship between the miner and the shanking girl . Some women sleep with the miners, but it is out of choice. (Awumbila and Tsikata 2010, 117)

It is unclear if the language used to describe these occupations is derived from the local Tallensi, English or Akan, the language of the mines in southern Ghana. Many of the miners had come back to northern Ghana after years of work in the mines of southern Ghana in places like Tarkwa and Obuasi. They brought with them technologies, practices, and language from those places. Of significance was the naming of their informal mining settlements to convey how large and overcrowded they were or how rich they were in gold. Names such as Kejetia, after a very densely populated market in Kumasi, the Ashanti Region capital; Tarkwa and Obuasi, after two mining towns, and Kumasi and Accra, after busy and high-density urban areas; World Bank after a rich and influential foreign institution; Cratia, believed to have been named for Croatia which was in the news at the time. A closer interrogation of the origins and meanings of these terms may provide deeper insights into the changing nature of work and the associated labour relations in Ghana. This should certainly be an aspect of future studies.

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The Changing Nature of Urban Informal Work

The importance of urban informal work has long been noted in Ghana with Hart’s (1973) pioneering work on this group of workers engaged in a number of businesses that offered a range of services to their clients including shoemaking, laundering, catering, vehicle repair, and the like.

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While urban informal workers are usually stationed at their work site, others are itinerant and offer their services in various communities for a fee. Over the last two decades, the services sector has grown in Ghana to the extent that even though it does not necessarily employ the largest number of workers, it has overtaken agriculture as the largest contributor to the nation’s gross domestic product. A major development in the services sector is in the rites-ofpassage/entertainment industry. A whole host of service providers have emerged to ease the drudgery of organising these events. These include providers of crockery, canopies, chairs and tables, decorators, disc jockeys, lighting specialists, graphic designers to design invitations and place tags, and of course the caterers and drinks specialists. In transportation as well, the importation of small motorised trucks into the country has created an opportunity for young men to earn a living transporting both people and goods. As with taxi cabs, these young men pay the owner of the truck a fixed amount daily. In the rites-of-passage industry, for example, the exact nature of the labour relations between employers and employees is unknown. Neither has there been a close examination of the emerging terminology to describe these new labour relations. Similarly, the extent to which COVID-19 has wrought changes in labour relations as evident in new terminologies is yet to be explored. These gaps in our knowledge point to the need for a robust research agenda to explore the language of contemporary work in Ghana.

7

Conclusions—Towards a Research Agenda

The world of work is experiencing many transitions characterised by an increase in precarity, informality and unemployment. In response, the International Labour Organisation has developed a Decent Work Agenda. Similarly, the global community of nations developed Sustainable Development Goal 8 to address the challenges and changes in the world of work. These global responses were developed prior to the emergence of COVID-19, which has dramatically transformed the world of work. Now, more than ever, we need a concerted effort to address the

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challenges of work. Various nation states have responded to the lifealtering conditions caused by the pandemic. In Ghana, the government offered a number of packages to ameliorate the dismal conditions of workers wrought by the pandemic, key among which was the Coronavirus Alleviation Programme Business Support Scheme. Its success can be debated. Without a doubt, however, our current reality of precarity, informality, unemployment, and job losses in a time of COVID-19 calls for renewed attention to the world of work. Given the different terminologies for work that we have described above, we are particularly interested in the terminologies that are emerging to capture and/or explain the changing nature of labour relations in the Ghanaian context. To that end, we propose a research agenda that will bring social science and language scholars together to collaborate on the meanings of work in the Ghanaian context. Three key research questions can guide this research agenda. One major research activity would be to explore the changing nature of labour relations in specific sectors of the economy. For example, the services sector of the economy is growing and with it, new forms of labour relations are emerging. In one example, employees of an events management company would show up at your home to deliver chairs, tables, and canopies for an event planned at your home and insist that set up costs are distinct from delivery costs, leading the client to pay an additional fee to the employees for a service already purchased. What other forms of labour relations are emerging and what do they suggest about the changing nature of work? As in the agricultural sector where the term ‘by day’ was introduced to refer to an emerging form of labour relations in that sector, it would be interesting to document what new terms emerge in the services sector as well. Secondly, as attested to above, a range of new words in English and the various Ghanaian languages are being deployed by workers to speak to the changing nature of labour relations they are experiencing. Increasingly, new job opportunities are being created for young people. The Mastercard Foundation, for example, is expending significant resources on digital training to enable young people to work in this sector of the economy. This could potentially create a new language that speaks not only to the changing nature of labour relations but perhaps its sources

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as well. A careful cataloguing of these words along with their origins and changing meanings over time will give deep insight into the ways in which everyday people both experience and make meaning of the labour relations in which they are currently embedded. Third, the insights gleaned from a careful analysis of the new lexicon of work in Ghana, can serve as the basis for the exploration of the changing shifts in attitudes towards work. Work cultures are dynamic and change to reflect the changing contexts of work. The language deployed to reflect these changing contexts of work and labour relations can thus serve as the basis for the exploration of changing work cultures in Ghana. This three-pronged research agenda will offer insights into the language of contemporary work in Ghana and set the stage for future explorations in other contexts as well. This preliminary exploration of popular culture and descriptors for labour relations has demonstrated that there is a lot to be mined and explored in this area of research. It is our hope that linguists will find this an interesting area of research and seek to collaborate with social scientists such as ourselves to begin this journey of exploring the language of work.

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5 The Importance of Mutual Understanding of Key Terminology in Development Projects: A PNG Example Jo Caffery , Lalen Simeon, and Kiteni Kusunan Kurika

1

Introduction

Youth––what does that mean to you? Do your friends and colleagues have the same interpretation of the word? Perhaps, but do people from other linguistic and cultural groups have the same interpretation? As it turns out, probably not. This chapter explores the use of language in a PNG capacity development project and the advantages of research team members interpreting key project definitions in the same way as J. Caffery (B) University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia e-mail: [email protected] L. Simeon Pacific Adventist University, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea K. K. Kurika East New Britain Women and Youth in Agriculture Cooperative Society Association, Kokopo, Papua New Guinea

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Hill and F. K. Ameka (eds.), Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1_5

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the project’s participants. Having a shared understanding of key capacity development project terminology (words) and concepts (their meanings) helps development research teams to understand and use the terms in the same linguistic and cultural ways as their participants. Mutual understandings and consistent use of key project terms reduces the possibility that some project team members assume that others are interpreting the terms in the same way. Development projects are often undertaken in low- to middle-income countries, also known as developing countries. A country is defined as developed or developing based on its citizens’ life expectancy, access to education, and standard of living (the Human Development Index (HDI)). The HDI ranks countries on a scale of 0 to 1: most developed countries have an index above 0.80 (Roser 2014). Development projects are usually designed and funded by developed countries to help lowand middle-income countries overcome social, political, economic, and environmental problems (World Population Review 2021). As communication is the core of development projects (Oketch and Banda 2008), effective communication is vital to getting messages across in a manner that is meaningful for the people whom the project is designed to benefit: ‘Development is not possible without language’ (Bamgbose 2014, 650). It is through communication that training programmes, training materials, monitoring, evaluation, and the reporting of the project’s impacts are undertaken. It is common, however, for such communication to be undertaken in the language of the donor country, which is often different to the language spoken by the in-country project team and the project participants. As a result, the communication may be ineffective, as there can be complex cultural, or even subtle, differences in the concepts of common terminology, such as the term youth (which is the focus of this chapter). When these differences are understood by both the donor country and in-country project teams and participants, a shared understanding of key project terms can be developed. Having a mutual understanding of key project terminology enhances learning, and helps everyone involved in the project to understand complex concepts, and to solve complex issues and problems (Stein-Smith 2016).

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There are currently 7,139 languages spoken around the world (Eberhard et al. 2021). Two thirds of these languages (80.5%) are spoken in the Pacific (18.5%), Africa (30%), and Asia (32%); just 23 languages are spoken by over half of the world’s population. Research demonstrates that the use of local languages is valuable in assisting people to learn and engage in new concepts (see Caffery, Coronado, and Hodge 2016; Levy [this volume]; Oketch and Banda 2008). However, it is not always possible to use the language of participants in development training programmes, due to the number of languages spoken in the country. The language used in development programmes is a complex issue, and not easy to address, given the number of languages spoken in low- and middle-income countries and that the higher-income countries that fund development projects usually speak a different language. This is also true for countries where the language of the donor country is spoken in the recipient country, but as a second or third language. For example, in the project addressed in this chapter, the language of the donor country (Australia) is Standard Australian English (SAE)– –whilst English is spoken in PNG it is usually as a third language. Speaking a language as a second or third language is different to speaking a language as a first language as a person’s culture is intimately tied to their language (Cahill 2020). There are often cultural differences in the dialect of English spoken in each country, which adds more complications to the language used in development projects. Simple processes can be incorporated into the early stages of development projects, however, to establish effective communication so that the project team in both countries, as well as the participants, have mutual understandings of the development programme’s messages. This chapter explores how using effective communication through culturally and linguistically appropriate language helps to effectively transmit key project terminology and concepts, in a manner that is appropriate to the participants of the development project. Using culturally and linguistically appropriate language builds participants’ confidence, identity, and a sense of ownership of the project. This chapter first provides an overview of the development project, including an overview

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of the recipient country and region. It then describes the socio-cultural and linguistic background of the project’s participants, before discussing why this development research project chose to use Tok Pisin as the main language of communication with participants. The key steps undertaken to come to a mutual understanding of key project terms, concepts, and the associated benefits are also discussed.

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Understanding Participating Communities

The mainland of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and its 600 islands are home to over nine million people, with a median age of 22.4 years (Worldometer 2021). There are more than 800 languages spoken across the country, with English, Tok Pisin, and Hiri Motu as the official languages (Eberhard et al. 2021). Approximately 200 of these 800 languages are Austronesian, and 600 are Papuan (Paul 2020). Tok Pisin is spoken by approximately two-thirds of Papua New Guineans, and is the mothertongue of over half a million people (Redman-MacLaren et al. 2019). PNG is rich in natural resources but faces significant development challenges. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) ranks PNG at 155 out of 189 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI), and 161 out of 189 countries for gender inequality (UNDP 2020). The UNDP (2020) also report that only 10% of females and 15.2% of males over the age of 25 have had at least some secondary education. More than 85% of PNG’s population live in rural or remote fertile communities and are subsistence or small-cash crop farmers, who provide over 83% of PNG’s food supply (Department of Foreign Affairs Australia 2021). East New Britain (ENB), one of PNG’s north-eastern islands, is home to the youth development trial project discussed in this chapter. It has PNG’s third-largest population: 328,369 (168,760 males (M)/159,609 females (F) (National Statistical Office 2011), and consists of four districts (see Map 1): Gazelle District—129,317 (66,428 M/62,889F); Pomio District—71,836 (36,865 M/34,971F);

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Map 1 ENB PNG Districts (Map reproduced with the permission of CartoGIS Services, Scholarly Information Services, The Australian National University)

Kokopo District—87,829 (45,284 M/42,545 F); Rabaul District— 39,387 (20,183 M/19,204F). Whilst culturally similar, the four districts differ in their language, environment, and agricultural production opportunities. The project ‘Gender equitable agricultural extension through institutions and youth engagement in Papua New Guinea’ is a four-and-a-half year Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) funded project, led by the University of Canberra. The part of the project relevant to this discussion aims to explore and develop pathways

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for increasing PNG youth involvement in sustainable farming futures. Youth are vital to the future lives of all Papua New Guineans, as 80% of PNG’s population depend on agriculture for food and employment; youth are the future of PNG’s agricultural industry (Laraki 2012). PNG’s social structures often exclude youth from decision-making processes, however, as it is customary for older members of society to hold the decision-making power (McPhee and McLachlan 2017). Having limited or no voice in decision-making in the family and community leads to the invisibility of youth perspectives in agricultural development policies and plans. As there is ‘no motivational thrust to get [youth] engaged in entrepreneurship development or enter into either subsistence or commercial agriculture’ (Halim 2013, 4) youth are leaving rural communities and family farms, in the hope of finding employment and a better future in urban communities (McPhee and McLachlan 2017; Halim 2013). In response to this concern, this gender-based project is designed to empower PNG youth, particularly female youth, to engage further in their family farm, family decision-making, and in the wider agriculture sector. It is specifically designed to explore challenges and successes in building gender equitable approaches within ENB farming families and communities, and to further understand future aspirations of ENB youth and further engage them in agriculture, now and in the future. The project is developing and trialling a ‘Youth as Change Agents’ capacity-building programme that will enhance youth’s agricultural skills, improve their self-esteem, and enhance their engagement in their family and community, to help set their future goals and aspirations. It will contribute to building respect for youth who want to contribute to improving community agricultural practices and technologies, and will help address social issues around ENB’s youth. This project is designed as a youth participatory action research project, where male and female smallholder farmers, male and female youth, church and community leaders, and the PNG and Australian project teams work together to develop the ‘Youth as Change Agent’ training programme. Such a collaboration helps base the capacitybuilding programme on youths’ aspirations, assets, needs, place, culture, and language. The project is guided by an ENB Advisory Committee,

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chaired by two youth (1F:1 M), and prioritises the empowerment of participants, particularly female and male youths, in an agricultural setting, through the process of constructing and using participants’ own knowledge, lived experience, concerns, and languages (Anyon et al. 2018; Bettencourt 2020). The project began just four months before the COVID-19 global pandemic restricted international travel. These travel restrictions meant that the project leader in the donor country (Author 1) could not travel to PNG. Therefore, the in-country project leader (Author 2) and the ENB Project Coordinator (Author 3) took on more project responsibilities than initially planned. Even though the main project capacity-building activities and research were to be undertaken by Tok Pisin speakers, rather than the project leader, it was vital that key project terminology and concepts were interpreted in the same way by the Australian project leader and the ENB participants, to ensure effective communication and accuracy in the capacity-building programme design and data analysis. As in most Pacific countries, people in ENB are multilingual. ENB is home to fifteen Austronesian languages and seven Papuan languages; five spoken in the Baining mountains (Eberhard et al. 2021). ENB people speak at least three languages, including their Tok Ples (a language specific to their own region), Tok Pisin (a lingua franca), and English. Tok Ples differs from district to district and within districts. English is commonly spoken but it is not a first language and its fluency differs across and within the districts. However, Tok Pisin is the dominant language in all four districts (Eberhard et al. 2021). For our capacity-building project, it was also important for everyone involved to have a shared understanding of the cultural and linguistic differences of the communities we work in, to minimise misunderstandings of the communities’ cultural and linguistic norms. Whilst the in-country project team are familiar with the concepts it was clear that the concepts did vary across the project’s participating communities. Knowing our participants’ interpretation of the key concepts used in our capacity-building project was vital to the success of our project, so it was clear to our team that we needed to use local concepts of key terms where possible, and to use an accessible language at all other times.

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Accessible Language

In PNG it is common for the donor country of agricultural development projects to use their own language in development projects (usually English) due to the number of languages spoken in the country (Caffery and Hill 2019). However, as Catherine Levy (this volume) argues, it is important to use community members’ first language in developing capacity projects. This argument is supported by the relevant literature which argues that using people’s first language reduces ‘lost in translation’ issues; provides a sense of identity; allows speakers of minority languages to keep and develop their traditions; enables intergenerational communication; provides cognitive advantages; and contributes to general wellbeing (e.g., see Caffery, Coronado and Hodge 2016; Caffery and Hill 2019; Hill 2020). Whilst it may not always be possible to use the local language in development training programmes, it is important for projects to use an accessible and effective form of communication. Effective communication helps create active, inclusive, and empowering community participation (Pemba 2019). When Caffery and Hill (2019) explored the language used in one PNG agricultural development project, they found that parts of the English language were challenging to some participants. Participants called this challenging language ‘Expensive English’, language that included unfamiliar words, or words that needed to be explained. Expensive English can also include everyday terms, such as youth, family, and farm, but have different interpretations in different languages. This paper focuses on the terms ‘youth’, ‘female youth’, and ‘male youth’. The concepts behind these terms are familiar to most people regardless of their language, culture, or country, however, the actual interpretation of the terms differs across and within various cultures and countries. This is the case in PNG. As explained below, participants and the donor project team had similar but slightly different interpretations of these terms. The accessible language principles designed by Caffery and Hill (2019) were based on Minimal English and Plain English principles. Minimal English includes vocabulary that is easy to understand and easy to translate (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018). Drawing on Minimal English in development projects can support the understanding of

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Western concepts to people in non-Western contexts (Hill 2021). Similarly, Plain English principles were used to develop Caffery and Hill’s accessible language principles to simplify both the oral and written capacity-building materials. It is important to note that whilst Plain English includes the use of everyday words, these words may not be easily translatable into the contexts in which they are intended to be used (Caffery and Hill 2019), so these should be checked with participants. The accessible language principles include the use of local-language terms and concepts, which is the preference of the ‘Youth as Change Agent’ project, and the adaption of typical features of the English language to align more closely to those of local understandings and/or use of the English language. For example, to avoid the use of synonyms and instead repeat the word, to provide clearer understandings; to use easily translatable verbs such as ‘think’ instead of ‘attitude’, and to avoid pronouns and use noun phrases instead. The principle also highlights the importance of avoiding the use of culturally specific English words that are not easily translatable to the local context, or that are complex in meaning. Table 1 provides an overview of the principles, Table 1 Accessible Language Principles developed by Caffery and Hill (2019, p. 4) Use

Avoid

Verify

Easily translatable verbs, such as ‘know’, ‘think’ ‘want’ Noun phrases Repetition Shared human concepts Short sentences Simple sentences/clauses Simple, clear, paragraphs Dot (bullet) points rather than complex sentences Existing Tok Pisin translations to replace complex English words Tok Pisin counterparts, e.g., tingting ‘think’, ‘thinking’

English culture specific words that are complex in meaning English culture specific words that are not easily translatable Pronouns Synonyms Nominalisation Complex clauses/sentences English idioms and metaphors

with relevant language collaborators

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clearly stating what to use and what to avoid, to create effective relevant capacity-building programmes. Caffery and Hill also stress the importance of involving the project’s in-country team and, where possible, the participants, to verify the terminology and concepts match that of the participants’ language (see Caffery and Hill 2019 for further detail on the Accessible language approach). These principles support development projects to design a language that is clear and shared to build effective communication that helps the donor-country team, the in-country team and participants to minimise the language barrier. For this ‘Youth as Change Agent’ project, it was not possible to use participants’ first language (Tok Ples) due to the number of languages spoken across the four participating ENB districts and the project team not speaking these languages. As using an accessible and effective style of communication in this project was a main priority to the project research team, we discussed this with the participants in one of our first meetings. During this meeting, the project team and participants decided on four key language points for the project: 1. As much as possible, the language of discussion and instruction in our development project would be Tok Pisin, as it is widely spoken in all four districts and many of the younger people spoke it as a mother-tongue; 2. As the project leader (Author 1) does not speak Tok Pisin, she would use the English language in a simple form, drawing on the accessible language principles, and an interpreter would be available to translate the messages to participants as needed, and to translate the participants’ discussions to the project leader; 3. Tok Pisin terminology and concepts would be adopted for key project terms, for example the term ‘youth’ has a different concept in and between the ENB communities, and different to that English (as discussed below); and 4. As many of the literate participants were literate in both Tok Pisin and English, all training materials would be in both languages so participants could choose the written language that was most familiar to them, however these written materials would also use the accessible

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language principles, and, to highlight the value of Tok Pisin in the project, Tok Pisin would always be placed first and the English would be in a smaller font. The participants appreciated the recognition of their local language, Tok Pisin, as an important element of the project, which allowed both themselves and the project team to have clear understandings of key terminology and shared concepts (Lonyangapuo 2015), and which ensured inclusivity, relevance, and sustainability (Caffery and Hill 2019; Pemba 2019). The next step for the project team was to learn the participants’ terminology and interpretations of each of the key English project terms and concepts. We therefore undertook a language definitions activity with each participating district, and as a group, we determined the key terms and concepts that would be used in the project. This activity was a short 1.5-hour activity which was fundamental in building effective communication for the duration of the project.

4

Methodology and Results

The key terms explored in the language activity workshop include everyday project words and research-specific words. Table 2 identifies all the terms explored in the activity and simple instructions––this chapter addresses the analysis and decisions behind three of these key terms: youth, female youth, and male youth. Whilst the concept of ‘youth’ in Table 2 Key project terms explored for use in the project In small groups talk about the following words and write what they mean to you as a group on the papers provided youth

male youth

challenge family

success farm

female youth enabler team

family farm team

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English is the same for both female and male youth, Blank (2008) states that in the PNG context, the term ‘youth’ can refer to males only, which is reflected linguistically in many Pacific languages, where the word for youth insinuates young, unmarried men (Luker and MonsellDavis 2010). Hence, it is was important and right to explore whether there is a difference in the ENB concept between female and male youth. The language activity was undertaken in the first meeting between the project team and project community leaders––youth and their parents. The same activity was subsequently undertaken with youth and their families across the four participating ENB districts, and in Australia, with the Australian project team. The activity was facilitated orally by the in-country project team in Tok Pisin, with the written materials in both Tok Pisin and English. A list of key project terms in English were shown on a board or on butcher’s paper (depending on where the activity took place), so the participants could easily see the list of words. The participants were grouped into districts, and where possible, separated into adult women, adult men, youth female, and youth male groups. They were first asked to discuss each word in their groups, and to consider an equivalent term in both their Tok Ples and Tok Pisin languages, and to describe what each term meant to them. Participants were provided with a worksheet that was formatted and written in both Tok Pisin and English, so it was easy to read and use. Participants filled in the worksheet as a group, to enable all participants, regardless of their literacy skills, to contribute. Twenty-one groups across the four ENB districts provided written responses on their worksheets. These responses were analysed and the results shared with the groups, so key project Tok Pisin terms and concepts could be determined and agreed upon for use in the project, to ensure everyone involved interpreted the terms in the same way. As Tok Pisin is the main language used in the project, the following discussion focusses on Tok Pisin and English––Tok Ples data is not included here. The findings of the ENB language activity are first discussed, followed by those in English, before addressing the comparative data. The results showed that the Tok Pisin key project terms, ‘youth’, ‘female youth’, and ‘male youth’ were similar in form across all four

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districts, though the spelling often differed. Table 3 provides a list of equivalent Tok Pisin terms used by participants in two districts for the three related youth terms. Exact duplicates of words have been excluded here, but the various spellings of the same words have been retained to show the differences in the spellings, and to highlight the similarity of the terms––this was probably a literacy issue, since the terms are similar in pronunciation. Overall, there were three Tok Pisin terms for the English word ‘youth’: lida ‘leader’; yangpela ‘young fellow’ (man ‘male’ or meri ‘female’ can be added); and yut ‘youth’. As the term lida was stated only once, it was determined that there were two main equivalent Tok Pisin terms for the English term youth: yangpela and yut. The terms yangpela and yut are used interchangeably. A woman in PNG is usually referred to as meri, and a male is referred to as man. Similar to the term ‘youth’, there were three Tok Pisin terms for the English words ‘female youth’. The results overall show that to Table 3 Tok Pisin terms for the key project English term ‘Youth’, ‘female youth’, and ‘male youth’ District

Tok Pisin—youth

1

Lida yangpela / yangpala youngpla / youngpla man yut yangpla young young pela yut young pela man / meri yangpela

2

Not stated

yangpela youngpla young pela man

Tok Pisin—female youth

Tok Pisin—male youth

yut blo of meri yangpela meri yangpla meri meri yut

yangpla man man yut manh yang pela man yangpla man young pela man youngpla man

youngpela meri yangpla meri yang pla meri meri yut yangpela meri Merie youngpla meri yangpela meri youngpla mery Merie

men yut

manh yangpla man youngpla man yangpela man

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determine the sex of a youth, the relevant gender term is added; yangpela meri ‘young fellow female’ or yangpela man ‘young fellow male’ and meri yut ‘female youth’ or man yut ‘male youth’. Our analysis showed that there were two terms to consider for the term ‘youth’: yangpela ‘young fellow’ and yut ‘youth’. Each of these terms were equally used in the ENB Tok Pisin language, however, the term yangpela ‘young fellow’ could also include children. As the focus of the project is age defined (18 + ) from the point of view of the funding body, the project team, in consultation with the participants, agreed the project term for youth would be yut with the Tok Pisin gender term: meri yut ‘female youth’/man yut ‘male youth’. Whilst determining a Tok Pisin term equivalent to the English word ‘youth’, ‘female youth’, and ‘male youth’, we also analysed the cultural definition of youth––female and male. We asked five questions to determine the following: ‘In your district/community …’. • • • • •

How old are youth? Can a female who is married be called a youth? Can a male who is married be called a youth? Can a female who has children be called a youth? Can a male who has children be called a youth?

In response to the age question, participants’ answers ranged from 15 and 35 years of age (see Table 4). Two people in District 1 stated the age at which people are identified as a youth as between 15 and 18 years, but others in that district stated that youth are aged between 18 and 30, or 20 and 30. It is clear that in District 1, a youth is no longer a youth once they reached the age of 30. District 2 differed in the age range of youth, stating that people can be defined as youth up to the age of 35. Some participants did not state which district they were from, but their responses were in line with the responses from Districts 1 and 2. Whilst the responses to the age range of youth varied, participants stated that the upper age of a youth is 35 years. Interestingly, in a later meeting, when participants were electing two youths as Co-Chairs for the Youth Advisory Committee, one of the people they elected was 39 years of age.

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Table 4 Age of youth by district District

In your district/community, how old are youth?

1

15 18 18–30 years 20–30 years 15–30 18–25 years 18–35 years up to 33 years 16–18 years 15–25 18–30 years 15–30 years

2

Not stated

When asked why, they said he was recognised as a youth in his community, so it was okay. This highlights the varying cultural interpretations of just one term, ‘youth’, and that that term is culturally determined by measures other than age. To further understand participants’ cultural definition of ‘female youth’ and ‘male youth’, they were asked to explore questions 2 to 5. Twenty of the twenty-one groups stated that a female and male youth can be married and/or have children (see Table 5). They said that the status of youth depended on the youth’s ‘mindset’ (attitude), their behaviour, and dependence. To compare the ENB Tok Pisin cultural use and interpretations of ‘youth’ with the English spoken by the Australian project team, the project leader interviewed the one other Australian project team member. Given that the Australian research team predominantly consisted of the project leader, the project’s Australian casual research assistant was interviewed. To gain an understanding of the English term from a youth in the donor country, a non-project youth was also interviewed. As understandings of the key definitions of youth between this project’s participants and the donor-country team was established for the purposes of effective communication across the project team, we didn’t explore the English concept of youth any further; however, it would be an interesting relevant study to do in the future. These interviews included the same questions as those asked of the ENB project participants: What does the

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Table 5 Cultural marital and child status of PNG youth

District 1

2

District not stated

Can a female who is married be called a youth?

Can a male who is married be called a youth?

Can a female who has children be called a youth?

Can a male who has children be called a youth?

Yes Yes, still at the youth age Yes Yes because she still behaves like a youth in terms of how she socialises; her mindset yes, youngpla mama yes, youngpela mama yangpla mama Yes, yangpela mama

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes Yes, because of how he behaves, his mindset

No Yes Yes, because some are young and still they have children

No Yes Yes, because of how old they are; if he is dependent or not

yes, youngpla papa yes, young pela papa yangpla papa yes, yangpela papa

yes, youngpla mama yes, youngpela mama yangpla mama yes, yangpela mama

yes, youngpla papa yangpla papa yes, yangpela papa

term youth mean to you? The Australian participants’ responses were similar to that in ENB, but did have subtle differences. Both Australian participants stated that the concept of youth ‘is an evolving concept’ and that it’s not about age. One participant argued that traditionally, youth was defined as ‘someone in high school but is now extended to people who don’t have responsibility and obligations to other people’ and that it is more related to their mindset. The other participant said the term generally means that ‘someone is less experienced than others’ and that ‘age is just a number … There isn’t really an age range as someone who is 40 is a youth compared to a 60-year-old … it is more about experience’. The Australian participants also stated that there was no difference between female and male youth, as ‘gender is just a label’; that ‘male and female youth fall under the same category of youth’; and that ‘there are

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also other genders between female and male’. Both participants agreed that youth can be married and/or have children. The comparative Australian and PNG data highlighted the subtle differences in the terms and concepts of youth. The Standard Australian English (SAE) and ENB terms for ‘youth’ closely resemble one another in form: youth and yut (respectively). Whilst it is not common in SAE to distinguish between genders for youth, it is in ENB man (male) / meri (female) yut ‘youth’. Participants in both countries agreed that a youth can be married and/or have children and still be recognised as a youth. One difference that was clear between participants in both countries was the age of youth. In ENB, the age of youth varied between communities and districts, with some recognising youth as up to 35 years of age. This is a significant finding, as in the initial design of the project, it was understood that the age of youth, as generally used in organisations in Australia, is between 18 and 24 years; 18 being the voting age, and 24 as the upper age of youth (Muir et al. 2009). The project expected to work with PNG youth within that age bracket, but culturally, this was not an accepted option for participants and their families, so the project works with youth as it is defined and accepted by the participating communities. This short language activity, undertaken early in the project, has helped the project team, in both countries, to understand the linguistic, cultural, and subtle differences of key project concepts between Tok Pisin and SAE. Exploring these small language and cultural differences has enabled a deeper understanding of the culture and norms of the communities we are working in, which in turn helps to deepen our understanding of our research data and its impacts. Using the terminology and concepts of the participants’ local language has provided ongoing effective communication in all aspects of the project, and minimised miscommunication of the key terms. Whilst this chapter has explored just one key project term, we have found similar benefits in the other terms explored for the project. Having mutual understandings and consistent use of key project terms builds consistency in use and understanding between both the participants and the project research team.

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Discussion

Across the Pacific, there is no widely recognised definition of ‘youth’ (Lee and Craney 2019), though ‘youth’ is recognised as a phase of life that sees an individual transition from childhood to adulthood, dependence to independence (Curtain and Vakaoti 2011). The UN Funds Population Activities (2019) state that the ages of youth as identified in the Pacific Island States is between 12 and 35 years, depending on the state. In PNG, the cultural definition of youth is largely linked to the obtainment of social responsibilities (Luker and Monsell-Davis 2010; McPhee and McLachlan 2017) and, in some rural communities, ‘economic responsibilities as these have effects on the social relationships, including those connected to land and its use’ (Bacalzo 2019, 58). Youth transitioning from dependence to independence differs from country to country and community to community, and even within the same language group, as seen in the data provided in this chapter. The current rapidly changing cultural and economic context of PNG is having a large impact on the definition and experience of youth (Luker and Monsell-Davis 2010; Bacalzo 2019). As an individual’s independence is defined in relation to cultural values and knowledge, it is natural that people’s interpretations of the concept of youth vary globally, even though there may be similarities. Using cultural markers to classify youth has caused policy and programme implications (Lee and Craney 2019; Noble et al. 2011), therefore, age boundaries are commonly used by government and nongovernment organisations to allow for comparative data use, and to place limits on programme participation (Mou-Vagi 2013). The 1983 and 1996 PNG youth policies defined youth as 12–35 years to reflect the strong role of cultural markers (National Youth Commission of Papua New Guinea 2007). However, the most current PNG youth policy, The National Youth Policy of Papua New Guinea 2007–2011, defines ‘youth’ as between the ages of 12–25 years (McPhee and McLachlan 2017), but also recognises that the definition of youth varies across PNGs regions and can be determined by marital status, roles, and involvement in community life (Noble et al. 2011).

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The idea of international and national definitions and age boundaries of youth are valuable for policy and programme development. However, they do miss important cultural understandings that could fully inform the policies and development programmes. Age boundaries also exclude people who are culturally defined as youth but outside the policy or programme age boundary. For example, people outside the 12–25-year age group (PNG policy) could be excluded from opportunities and other supports that youth within the age boundary are eligible for. Whilst our project agreed to use the term yut ‘youth’, we need to ensure we interpreted this word in the same way as it is interpreted culturally by our participating communities. The concept of yut ‘youth’ in ENB is not about someone within a certain age range but more about how that person is culturally recognised, and the role they play within their family and community. It is also related to their status and their agricultural and social opportunities. Many of the youth in our project cannot own land, and they are generally not involved in family, community, or agricultural decision-making. Traditionally, in ENB, youth inherit land and status from their parents, so it is challenging for them to own land to help gain the status of an adult and to be involved in decisions relating to their family farms. The role of our research project is not to change the cultural norms of participating ENB communities or families, but to understand the cultural norms of youth to see if we can work with them, as change agents, to be more engaged in their own, and their families’ and communities’ agricultural futures. Youth are the future leaders and farmers, so hearing their voice is important, both in understanding their current situations and in working with them as change agents so they become more engaged in their agricultural futures. For our project to work successfully with youth and their families in exploring and developing pathways for their increased involvement in family farms and sustainable farming futures, we needed an in-depth understanding of the ENB communities’ interpretations of youth. Understanding the cultural variations of the concepts of key project terminology is vital for our project. Such understandings help to provide a deeper understanding of our participating communities’ interpretations of ‘youth’ and other key terminology, to help reduce misinterpretation of participants’ meanings, having a clearer understanding of why older

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people are participating as youth in our project, and to help us develop and deliver a culturally and linguistically appropriate programme for communities.

6

Conclusion

Language is an important tool for achieving sustainable human development, building pride, and strengthening identity in local-language speakers, as well as building sustainability of the project after the project funding ends. Using an accessible language approach in dual-language projects helps to ensure that everyone in the project––participants and researchers––have the same understanding of terminology and concepts. When everyone in the project has the same interpretation of key terms, stronger project relationships are built. When participants’ language and culture are reflected in the project, it builds pride and a sense of identity within the project, as it highlights the importance of their language and culture and that their language and culture is valued. Building on participants’ language also sets an important foundation for the project, by highlighting equality between participants and the project team. Acknowledgements We acknowledge the support of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) for funding this project and providing ongoing support. We also acknowledge the support of staff at the Pacific Adventist University, PNG, and the University of Canberra, Australia, who provide support for our project with much administrative and research support––too many people to name, but they know who they are. Of course, the project could not have been possible without the support of the participating ENB community leaders, families, youth, youth leaders, and local governments, and we sincerely thank them for their ongoing engagement and support.

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Devette-Chee, Kilala. 2011. Decreolization of Tok Pisin: Is there a Tok Pisin -to -English Continuum? Journal of the Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea 29: 95–103. https://c-cluster-110.uploads.documents.cimpress.io/ v1/uploads/9bf15ddc-c475-48aa-8530-6bfb93a4584f~110/original?tenant= vbu-digital. Eberhard, David, Gary Simons, and Charles Fennig. eds. 2021. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Twenty-fourth edition. Dallas, TX: SIL. International. http://www.ethnologue.com. Accessed 21 September 2021. Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka. 2018. Minimal English and How it Can Add to Global English. In Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words, ed. Cliff Goddard, 5–28. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Halim, Abdul. 2013. Retaining Youth in Agriculture in PNG: Challenges and Opportunities. Achieving Vision 2050 Through Higher Education, Research, Science & Technology. PNG University of Technology Lae, PNG. Hill, Deborah. 2020. From Expensive English to minimal English. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication ed. Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters and Kerry Mullan. Singapore: Springer Nature. Hill, Deborah. 2021. Balancing the Local with the Universal: Minimal English and Agricultural Training in the Pacific. In Minimal Languages in Action, ed. Cliff Goddard, 29–51. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3030-64077-4_2. Laraki, James. 2012. Future Farmers: Exploring Youth Aspirations for Agriculture. PNG National Agricultural Research Institute. PNG. Lee, Helen. and Craney, Aidan. 2019. Pacific Youth, Local and Global. Pacific Youth: Local and Global Futures Australia, ed. Helen Lee, 1–31 ANU Press. https://doi.org/10.22459/PY.2019. Levy, Catherine (this volume). The Place of a Lingua Franca in Development Practice: The Case of Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea. Lonyangapuo, Mary K. 2015. Language and the Development of Agriculture in Kenya. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences 5 (2): 27–34. Luker, Vicki with Michael Monsell-Davis. 2010. Teasing Out the Tangle: Raskols, Young Men, Crime and HIV. In Civic Insecurities: Law, Order and HIV in Papua New Guinea, ed. Vicki Luker and Sinclair Dinnen, 81–115. ANU Press. https://doi.org/10.22459/CI.12.2010. McPhee, Lachlan, and Sandy McLachlan. 2017. The Youth Bulge in Papua New Guinea: Challenges and Opportunities. Oaktree. https://devpolicy.org/Eve nts/2017/PNG%20Update%20Conference/Presentations/PS3_Oaktree_r eport.pdf Accessed 15 September 2021.

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Mou-Vagi, Limu C. 2013. Struggles of Rural Youth: Factors That Empower and Disempower Youth in Rural Villages—Central Province, PNG Thesis, Master of Social and Community Work. University of Otago. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10523/4515. Accessed 2 September 2021. Muir, Kristy, Killian Mullan, Abigail Powell, Saul Flaxman, Denise Thompson, and Megan Griffiths. 2009. State of Australia’s Young People: A Report on the Social, Economic, Health and Family Lives of Young People, 2009. Office for Youth: DEEWR Social Policy Research Centre University of New South Wales, October. National Statistical Office. 2011. 2011 National Population and Housing Census of Papua New Guinea—Final Figures. National Statistical Office. https:// png-data.sprep.org/dataset/2011-census-report. Accessed 2 September 2021. National Youth Commission of Papua New Guinea. 2007. National Youth Policy of Papua New Guinea, 2007–2017 . National Youth Commission of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby. Noble, Cameron, Natalia Pereira, and Nanise Saune. 2011. Urban Youth in the Pacific: Increasing Resilience and Reducing Risk for the Involvement in Crime and Violence. UNDP Pacific Centre. Suva, Fiji. Oketch, Omondi, and Felix Banda. 2008. Multilingual Discourse Practices in Community Development in Nyanza Province, Kenya. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 26 (1): 1–11. https://doi.org/10. 2989/SALALS.2008.26.1.1.416. Paul, Bimal Kanti. 2020. A Response to ‘Islands, Languages and Development: A Commentary on Dominant Languages.’ The Professional Geographer 72 (4): 648–650. https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2020.1764372. Pemba, Phillip. 2019. Communication Mechanisms and Community Participation in the Planning and Implementation of Community Development Projects: A Case Study of a Girls’ Education Project in Malawi. Master thesis. Centre for Development Support. University of the Free State. South Africa. Redman-MacLaren, Michelle, Tracie Mafile’o, Rachel Tommbe, and David MacLaren. 2019. Meeting in the Middle: Using Lingua Franca in CrossLanguage Qualitative Health Research in Papua New Guinea. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 18: 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691 9883459. Accessed 7 September 2021. Roser, Max. 2014. Human Development Index (HDI). Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/humandevelopment-index. Accessed 7 September 2021. Stein-Smith, Kathleen. 2016. The Role of Multilingualism in Effectively Addressing Global Issues: The Sustainable Development Goals and Beyond.

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6 Peer-To-Peer Learning: The Dynamics of Kin Relations, Matriliny, and Gender Deborah Hill , Delmay Basi, and Godwin Rahe

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Introduction

Kin relations underpin the social organisation and social networks in Solomon Island communities. In this chapter, we argue that an understanding of the kinship system, and the language used to talk about kin relations, can contribute significantly to understanding and engaging with peer-to-peer interactions in the Solomon Islands and other Pacific communities. Peer-to-peer learning is an integral component of the family-based gender awareness approach to livelihood training: the Family Farm Teams (FFT) program. The FFT approach was developed in D. Hill (B) Centre for Sustainable Communities, University of Canberra, Bruce, ACT, Australia e-mail: [email protected] D. Basi · G. Rahe Live and Learn Environmental Education NGO, Honiara, Solomon Islands

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Hill and F. K. Ameka (eds.), Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1_6

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Papua New Guinea (Pamphilon 2019), and is being trialled and adapted in the Solomon Islands. The chapter describes the socio-cultural context, and reports on peer-to-peer learning in the context of this program in Longgu district, north-east Guadalcanal. The aim of the chapter is to contribute to the understanding of the social practices of learning in a Pacific community, and to explore an under-researched aspect of peer-to-peer learning: kin relations as the source of peers. The discussion will highlight the contribution that anthropo-linguistic knowledge can make to development practices and to farmer learning in the Pacific, and contributes to literature, demonstrating that research from a range of disciplines (e.g. education theory) can provide insights to enhance existing practices (Sewell et al. 2017, 314). The chapter is organised in the following way. Section 2 provides a background to peer-to-peer learning in the Pacific; Sect. 3 describes the relationship between matriliny, kinship and households in the Solomon Islands community discussed in this chapter; Sect. 4 describes kin relations and the linguistic and anthropological evidence that suggests which kin relations are likely peers and which are not; Sect. 5 describes the Family Farm Teams project in which the peer-to-peer training takes place; Sect. 6 discusses implications for development practices; and Sect. 7 offers a conclusion.

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Peer learning, that is, learning from, and with, each other, is an effective and valued form of learning in the Pacific. However, the relationship between social relations, social organisation within communities, and peer-to-peer learning in development programs, is an under-researched area. In the Pacific, peer-to-peer learning has been incorporated into international and regional practices, as the title of a Pacific Islands Forum blog suggests: Pacific Countries are Innovators and Global Champions of

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Peer to Peer Learning (PIF 2016). The United Nations Pacific Financial Inclusion Program utilises peer networks at the community level to address ‘the knowledge gap’ between information provided about financial services and Solomon Islands women, and does so across the Pacific (PFIP 2019). Peer learning has been promoted within women’s church group networks in Solomon Islands and Melanesia, as they have been shown to be effective networks for peer learning and women’s empowerment (e.g. Barnes 2000; Boseto 2000; Douglas 2000; Pollard 2003; Scheyvens 2003). Peer learning activities have been described as activities where peers learn ‘from and with each other in both formal and informal ways’ (Boud et al. 2001, 4). They encompass small group learning, collaborative and cooperative learning, and formal and informal learning contexts (Riese et al. 2012). Riese et al. (2012) note that, while the activities that peers engage in are discussed in the literature, the social relationships between peers and their prior knowledge of each other are not discussed as being of importance to the learning activity. Nevertheless, they highlight that the issue of social relationships may be indirectly addressed through topics such as gender, status and ethnicity, and in terms of friendship and acceptance. Peer-to-peer learning is integral to the FFT approach to learning. Pamphilon, Bue, and Wantum point out that in PNG people often ‘resist change when it comes to outsider inputs’, and that peer-to-peer learning by educators, who were part of the community, took place first in families, before other members of the community (2019, 141). Peer learning in development projects, then, reflects the wider wantok system of Melanesia. Nanau defines the wantok system from perspectives both anthropological and political. From an anthropological perspective, the wantok system reflects the way village communities are organised, as ‘a way of organizing a society for subsistence living that ensured the survival of a group of people. It emphasises reciprocal networks and caring for each others’ needs as and when necessary and ensures the security of members from external forces and threats’ (Nanau 2011, 35). Peer-to-peer learning reflects a traditional way of sharing information and teaching others within the socio-cultural context of Melanesia.

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The importance of social networks in farmer learning and, significantly, the relationship between social ties and the kinds of information shared in the social system (Thuo et al. 2014, 340), has been described with respect to many geographical regions. In the Pacific, peer-to-peer learning in the area of savings and banking has been closely associated with women’s church group networks (Pollard 2003). While literature on women’s church group networks in the Pacific demonstrates their significance in terms of peer-to-peer learning, the network of kin relations that constitute a wantok system has received less attention. In the following section, the kinship system and social organisation in the matrilineal Longgu community is described.

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Matrilineal societies, that is, those in which inheritance comes through the female line, have been present in parts of the Pacific for perhaps 3000 years. The ancestors of today’s Oceanic societies are believed to have been matrilineal (Hage 1998; Marck 2008). Matriliny is estimated to constitute about 12% of societal organisations, while 46% are patrilineal (i.e. inheritance is through the male line) (Ethnographic Atlas cited in BenYishay et al. 2017). Matriliny is not evenly spread throughout the world’s societies. Central Africa and South Asia (Lowes 2020), and the Solomon Islands (Hviding 1998; BenYishay et al. 2017) are regions that are home to many matrilineal societies. Guadalcanal, the largest and second-most populous island of the Solomons and the island on which Longgu is located, is overwhelmingly matrilineal. Matrilineal or patrilineal inheritance has consequences beyond land inheritance. At the same time, land itself has social, spiritual, customary, and economic significance (Sykes and Jourdan 2020, 183), highlighting the connection between kinship, culture, and development. Matriliny has societal consequences in terms of the productivity of labour and economic efficiency, the effectiveness of land right reforms, and fertility, among other things (see BenYishay et al. 2017 and references provided there). It has been argued that the prevalence of matrilineal kinship

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has implications for behavioural differences between men and women (Gneezy et al., 2009), and implications on autonomy in decision-making and the educational levels and health outcomes of children (Lowes 2020). Kinship systems and marriage are ‘fundamental social institutions for many societies’ (Lowes 2020, 1) and are key to the distribution of resources, to determining social obligations to family members, and to supporting conflict resolution (Leonetti and Chabot-Hanowell 2011, 18). Keesing describes kinship as the ‘prototypic mode of social attachment’ (1980, 41) for the Kwaio of Solomon Islands. Kinship systems and households are interdependent. As Leonetti and Chabot-Hanowell have argued, the roles of women as gatherers and processors of food (grinding grains, cooking) creates bonds, including intergenerational bonds, within the household, and so play a central role in the development of kinship systems, bringing ‘activities of and reproduction together in a way that allowed complex kinship systems to evolve’ (2011, 18). In matrilineal societies there is a potential conflict between household and kinship obligations (Fox 1934, cited in Lowes 2020, 1), as husbands have obligations to support their sisters, and wives receive support from their brothers. There is thus a need to consider different forms of kinship systems in the context of household and family development research. This chapter contributes to research on the social consequences of a matrilineal society by exploring the relationship between matriliny and peer-to-peer learning within a family-based agricultural project.

Matriliny and Longgu The Longgu society discussed in this chapter is matrilineal (Hogbin and Wedgewood1953, 25; Hogbin 1964). It is located on the north-east coast of Guadalcanal (see Map 1). The Longgu language is classified as a South-east Solomonic language of the Oceanic language family (Hill 2011).

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Map of Solomon Islands languages (Eberhard et al. 2021)

Like other Guadalcanal societies, Longgu has five matrilineal lines. These are named as follows: Thibo, Thogo, Habata, Naukama, and Lasi. The clans are not of equal size: the largest is Thogo and the smallest, Lasi. These clans exist in other Guadalcanal societies and in the Central Solomons, although the names may differ. For example, in Talise (Guadalcanal), the clan line, Manukiki, is the same as the Thibo line, which is the same as Tanakidi (also referred to as Sibo) on Savo island (Wegener 2013, 322). People marry across clan lines. It is unusual to marry within the same clan, although this happens, on occasion to secure land within a family. Inheritance of land, and the right to knowledge about clan histories and food taboos, comes through the maternal line. Matrilineal societies are not all the same. While inheritance comes consistently through the female line, in societies such as Longgu, women live in their husband’s area after marriage. Brideprice, or bridewealth, is practised in Longgu. When a couple marries, the man’s family pays the women’s family with traditional shell money, cooked and uncooked food, pigs, and cash. After marriage, the woman goes to live in her husband’s area, giving her access to gardens and housing, but not to her husband’s

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land (as this belongs to his sister) (Maetala 2008, 46). Ownership and access to land can then be seen as a reflection of a complex network of kinship and marriage. The household unit, consisting of husband, wife, and children, is the central family unit in Longgu, in that husband and wife work together in a garden, caring for their children and planning for their future. Hogbin describes the Longgu household as one where ‘the father is head of the household and exercises full domestic authority’ (1964, 8). But as Fox (1934, cited in Lowes 2020, 1) noted, there is a potential conflict in matrilineal societies, between the obligations a husband has towards his wife and their children, and those he has towards his sister and her children; and for a woman, between obligations she holds towards her husband and her brother. This significant relationship, between a man and his sister’s children, or a person and their mother’s brother, is reflected in a specific, reciprocal, term for maternal uncle (mother’s brother), and for a man’s sister’s children. The term is sa’i.1 It is used as a form of reference (i.e. talking about someone) rather than a form of address (i.e. talking to someone), and is therefore found in referring expressions that include a possessive pronoun (e.g. sa’i ngaia ‘his/her mother’s brother’; sa’i nau ‘my mother’s brother/ my sister’s child’; sa’i oe ‘your mother’s brother/ your sister’s child’). This term, sa’i, expresses a significant relationship within Longgu society, and as discussed in Sect. 4, this relationship plays a key role in peer-to-peer learning. As we will see, it is not just the kin terms themselves that reflect relationships, it is through behaviour and interaction that these relationships are expressed.

1 The term mama ‘father’ refers to one’s father and to one’s father’s brothers. It is used to talk about someone and to talk to someone. Cousins (children of one’s mother’s siblings and children of one’s father’s siblings) are referred to with the same term, ula.

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Kin Relations: Likely Peers and Non-Peers

The question could be asked, ‘Where do peers come from?’ In communities where almost all relations are kin relations, new peers come from marriage.2 On Savo island (a matrilineal society that is geographically and culturally close to the community discussed here but whose language, Savosavo, is Papuan rather than Austronesian), siblings of a spouse are of particular importance in enlarging the peer group, if they are of the same sex (Wegener 2013, 326). In the same way, new peers through marriage fit into the existing kinship system in Longgu. Longgu kinship terminology includes separate terms for older (to’ona ‘his/her older same-sex sibling) and younger same-sex siblings (sina ‘his/her younger same-sex sibling’), a common pattern in Oceanic languages. For opposite sex siblings, there is one term that covers both older and younger siblings (vavune-na ‘his/her opposite sex siblings’). Opposite sex siblings and opposite sex cousins and in-laws (parents in law, children in law) are described as being in a relationship of ‘respect’. It is not forbidden to do things with this sub-group of relations, but it is forbidden to do things alone with them. As Gabriel Ropovono (pers.comm.) explained, this is e tatea nene a kinikini mai, ‘to show respect’. From the perspective of peer-to-peer learning, this respect relationship is marked by doing things in small groups, with at least three people. In the following short passage, Gabriel Ropovono, a Village Community Facilitator (VCF) in the FFT program and a longterm collaborator with the first author, explains the respect relationship between opposite sex siblings:

2 The discussion in this paper focuses on a matrilineal society. The argument that likely peers come from marriage is not linked to matriliny specifically, but refers to the societal context discussed here.

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‘It is forbidden to hold hands together, it is forbidden to work at a house together, it is forbidden for the two to (lie down) sleep together, three people stay, sit, go to work, hold hands together. It is not forbidden, it’s okay to sit, work together [when there are three people]’. a Leipzig

Glossing Rules are followed for the abbreviations of grammatical terms. For example: PURP ‘purposive’, 3SG.SBJ ‘3rd person subject’. See https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/pdf/Glossing-Rules.pdf.

It is not surprising then, that kin relations that are in a ‘respect’ relationship, are not natural peers when it comes to peer-to-peer learning. At the same time, there is no prohibition on them being together and doing things together when part of a larger group. There are stronger prohibitions on peer-to-peer teaching with opposite sex siblings and cousins, people of the same classificatory generation, than among people of different generations. For example, in-laws (parent or child) may undertake peer-to-peer training in groups. In exploring this question with Gabriel Ropovono, written questions were submitted to him through co-author Delmay Basi. Gabriel was asked, in Longgu, ‘Is it forbidden to teach your opposite sex sibling?’ He responded:

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‘It’s forbidden. They are respectful [in a respect relationship]. It’s forbidden for a woman to teach her brother, for a man to teach his sister. They are respectful’.

Similarly, Gabriel Ropovono was asked if it was forbidden to teach your parent/child-in-law. The answer was different—it was not forbidden, but it should be done in a respectful way, at a time when they are with other people (example (3)).

‘It’s okay, they teach with respect, woman and man, it’s good to teach when many people are sitting at the house’.

Opposite sex siblings and cousins are therefore less likely to be included as ‘peers’ than in-laws of a higher or lower generation. In Longgu, we can also look at who is a natural peer. A specific construction that exists in the language provides a way to explore whether the language reveals which kin relations are more likely to be peers. There are about half a dozen terms that refer to two kin who have a specific relationship (e.g. husband and wife). There are also a small number that refer to a larger group (e.g. a group of brothers). These are called ‘dyadic constructions’, defined as denoting relationally linked groups of the type ‘pair/group of brothers’, ‘mother and child(ren), ‘teacher/student pair’

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(Evans 2006, 24). Dyadic constructions are uncommon in the world’s languages, but are quite widespread in the Western Pacific. They occur in languages of matrilineal (e.g. Longgu) and patrilineal societies (e.g. Fijian). These constructions reflect something important about social practices—they identify who can do things with, or care for, whom. It could be said that they identify who can be seen with whom. Dyadic relationships in Longgu may be asymmetrical and non-reciprocal (i.e. one member of the pair is viewed as looking after the other), as in parent and child, or reciprocal (e.g. a husband and wife are ‘spouses to each other’). Many Longgu kin terms are reciprocal, including vua ‘grandparent/grandchild’, mama ‘father/son’ and sa’i ‘mother’s brother/sister’s child’. The reciprocal kinship terms vu’a ‘grandparent/grandchild’ and sa’i ‘mother’s brother/sister’s child’ are found in dyadic constructions, but the term mama ‘father/son’ is not. Reciprocal kin terms and dyadic constructions are linguistic expressions of the reciprocal nature of the wantok system, described by Nanau (2011, 235). In order to illustrate the difference between dyadic constructions and other non-dyadic constructions, we can compare Longgu sentences with the following sentences in English: (4) My mother and father went to the garden. (5) A husband and wife went to the garden. (6) The mother and her child stayed home. In English, the structure of the sentences is the same in each example. If there are two people referred to, the first noun phrase (e.g. in example (4) My mother ) is joined to the next noun phrase (e.g. father ) with a conjunction (and ). In Longgu, example (4) can be translated with a very similar structure, in that two noun phrases (tia nau ‘my mother’, mama nau ‘my father’) are joined by a comitative co-ordinator (va’inia ‘with’).

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‘My mother and father went to the garden’. However, English sentences (5) and (6) would be translated using a different kind of construction: a dyadic construction. The dyadic construction has the form rua mi KIN-na ‘two and KIN-his/her’. Kin terms that can be used in this construction are burunga-na ‘his/her spouse’, gale-na ‘his/her child’, vu’a ngaia ‘his/her grandparent/grandchild’, to’o-na ‘his/her older same-sex sibling’, si-na ‘his/her same-sex younger sibling’, sa’i ngaia ‘his/her maternal uncle/his sister’s child’. There is one non-kin term that can form a dyadic construction, and that is udu ‘friend’.3 Examples (8) and (9) show the form of the dyadic construction.

‘A women and her husband/Man and his wife went to the garden’.

‘A mother and her child stayed in the village/stayed home’.

3

Hogbin makes the point that this term was originally used for regular trading partners—a person that someone got to know over the years of visiting their village and trading items such as pigs or traditional shell money. Such a person was described to Hogbin as being ‘like a brother’ (1964, 49). In other words, the kinship system expanded to include those outside of Longgu society. Today, udu means ‘friend’, and is also found in the phrase tori udu (lit: ‘catch friend’) to refer to a boyfriend or girlfriend. The phrase suggests chasing after someone, as one chases after a pig (tori boo ‘catch pig’)—a valuable commodity.

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A similar construction, using the term tala ‘group’, rather than rua ‘two’, is used for small groups of kin relations, who can be seen together and do things together. The kin terms used in this construction are galena ‘his/her child’, to’o-na ‘his/her older same-sex sibling’ (example (10)), and si-na ‘his/her younger same-sex sibling’.

‘A boy and his older brothers went fishing. / A group of brothers went fishing’.

To emphasise that dyadic constructions are special constructions, we can note that the nearby Papuan language (Savosavo) has borrowed a dyadic term from neighbouring Austronesian languages (Gela and Ghari), tamadale ‘father and at least one of his children’, but it has not borrowed the terms that make up the dyadic construction (i.e. tama ‘father’, dale ‘child’) (Wegener 2013, 331). To sum up, there is linguistic and anthropological evidence (evidence of behaviours and practices) to suggest that within the set of kin relations, there is a subset of kin relations that are unlikely peers, and another set that are likely peers. The dyadic construction provides linguistic evidence of patterns of social organisation that are relevant to peer-topeer learning. Understanding the kinship system and the importance of clan lines in a matrilineal society can contribute to contextual knowledge about the community, and tell us something about potential paths for peer-to-peer learning in the community. In the next section, we describe the FFT approach, and discuss how knowledge of the kinship system has been used to collect baseline demographic data, and to track who trains whom in a peer-to-peer context.

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Family Farm Teams Approach and Peer-to-Peer Learning

Families, and the shared work done by men and women in households (including gardens and farms in semi-subsistence environments), are the focus of the Family Farm Teams (FFT) approach to family-based agricultural training. The FFT approach includes gender-inclusive learning activities that build the business acumen, skills, and knowledge of semisubsistence farming families, who increasingly need to engage in the cash economy to improve their livelihoods. The research for development project discussed here, like the earlier FFT project undertaken in PNG, focuses on understanding the gender, cultural, and regional enablers and barriers faced by farming families. The FFT approach was developed to encourage more effective, sustainable, and gender-equitable farming and business practices in Papua New Guinea, in conjunction with communities participating in the program in Papua New Guinea (PNG). https://www.canberra.edu.au/research/faculty-researchcentres/csc/family-farm-teams-program. The program uses a peer-topeer learning approach: local farmers are trained as Village Community Educators (VCEs), to train others in their family and community, using their preferred local language or Tok Pisin. The FFT Solomon Islands program is adapting this approach to the linguistic and cultural contexts of the Solomon Islands. At the same time, the overall structure of the program is the same as the FFT (PNG) program. The FFT program is made up of two complementary components (Pamphilon 2019): 1. FFT development training workshops, which focus on reorienting women and men towards a gender equitable and more effective planned approach to farming as a small family business. This training helps families look at the work done by women, men, and youth, and to work towards a more equitable and effective distribution of agricultural and household work. It assists farming families to plan and make decisions together. It encourages opportunities for women to have access to their own income, and promotes the wider benefits of women having a voice within the family and community.

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2. Business of Farming training, which introduces farming families to a livelihoods approach, better practice agriculture, foundational business practices, and financial literacy. The FFT (Solomon Islands) project was designed to include a small group of community researchers to support, learn from, and liaise with, a Project Officer based on Honiara. The Senior Project Officer and co-author (Delmay Basi) is from the same island (Guadalcanal) as the community members, but is not a member of the same community, and does not speak the local language, Longgu. The assistant Project Officer and co-author (Godwin Rahe) is from a different island (Malaita). The language of wider communication, Solomons Pijin, is spoken by the Project Officers, community researchers, and a large portion of the community. However, in the community, the main language is Longgu.4 The Longgu District Mothers Union is a community-partner organisation in the project discussed here. Participants in the training, called Village Community Educators (VCEs), include a male and female member of a family. The female participants are drawn from the Mothers Union. VCEs are encouraged to ‘use the Family Teams learning for their own family and then further disseminate the training to other smallholder families through farmer-to-farmer peer education and/or through their affiliations, such as churches’ (Pamphilon and Mikhailovich 2019,13). The program aims to ultimately train 20% of the population (approximately 720 people based on the latest Census figures, 2009), after initially, training only 56. It is, then, important to have some idea of how those initial 56 VCEs will train others, that is, of the social networks they will use to reach a representative sample of the community.

4 The project was designed before the coronavirus pandemic began and the initial stages of the project coincided with the initial stages of the pandemic. The first author and project leader, has not travelled to the Solomon Islands since November 2019.

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Preparing for Peer Learning Peer-to-peer learning takes place after FFT training-of-trainer workshops. The program is designed to include equal numbers of men and women, however, more women than men participated in the first workshops, held in March and June 2021. In addition to seeking a gender balance in the participant numbers, workshop participants in the VCEs were drawn from the five larger villages and an additional seven smaller villages in the area. Religious affiliation was also considered in the selection process. Religious affiliation is closely associated with specific areas and villages in the Solomon Islands. Most Longgu villages are Anglican, and Longgu District Mothers Union is an Anglican organisation. In addition, there are a small number of other Christian denominations in the district: Catholic, Seventh-Day Adventist, and South Sea Evangelical Church. Of the 56 VCEs, 51 are Anglican, three are Seventh-Day Adventist, and two are members of the South Sea Evangelical Church. VCEs reflect a range of ages: of the age data collected, 32 (11 men, 21 women) were between 20 and 40, and 18 (10 men, 8 women) were between 40–60, three men were over 60, and for one woman, age data was not collected. As noted above, female VCEs are members of the Longgu District Mothers Union. It is important that development programs work within existing social structures, such as women’s church networks (Pollard 2003), yet it is the kinship system, as expressed through lines and kin relations, that provide the central organisational structure through which knowledge is shared. For this reason, VCEs were drawn from all five clans. The number of VCEs in each clan line reflects the different size of the line to some extent: with the largest number (17 (10 men, 7 women)) coming from the Thogo clan. A small number of VCEs have married into the area (both men and women), and their clan lines are associated with other islands.

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Initial Peer-to-Peer Training Networks Following workshops in two Longgu district locations (March and June 2021), the project team returned to the villages 4–6 weeks after each workshop to provide further support for the VCEs, and to ascertain what peer-to-peer interactions had taken place. The project team collected data on the number of people trained by each VCE (on the understanding that not every VCE may have begun that process at that time), and identified the kin relation of the people they had trained. VCEs also identified people who were not kin, for example, one man included the school teacher who was from another area. However, nearly all peer-topeer training took place with kin relations. 40 (14 men, 26 women) of the 56 VCEs had begun their peer-to-peer training by the time the monitoring trips were undertaken. The 40 VCEs had reached 376 community members through peer-to-peer training. To track kin relations, the project team recorded the number of people trained by VCEs and their kin relationships. This was done by preparing a table that included kin relations in the Longgu language. The use of Longgu terms was considered important, as the Solomons Pijin or the English terms do not map perfectly with the Longgu terms. As we have seen above, the term sa’i ‘mother’s brother/ sister’s child’ is not one that corresponds to an English term. The term ‘uncle’ in English and ‘unkol’ in Solomons Pijin refer to both mother’s brother and father’s brother, and does not refer to someone in the generation below you. In other words, if we want to understand the patterns of peer learning and kin relations in a language, we need to use that language to do so. The data collected from the two workshop locations show very similar patterns. The key finding is that there is a strong tendency for men and women to undertake peer-to-peer learning within their clan lines, but that women also train across clan lines. Fig. 1 shows gender disaggregated data from the two workshop locations. In the larger of the two locations, Longgu village, 285 people received some peer training from 25 VCEs (17 women 8 men). In the smaller location, Bouna village, 91 people received some peer training from 15 VCEs (9 women, 6 men). A total of 376 people were trained by 26 women, and 14 men. These numbers are expressed as percentages of the total number trained in

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40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

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Fig. 1

Male Training

VCE peer-to-peer training: gender and kinship

Fig. 1. For example, of the people trained by women, 31.6% of them were same-sex siblings (older or younger), and 27% were same-sex inlaws. 22% of people trained by women were a parent (or sister of a parent) or child of the trainer, while 11 per cent trained a mother’s brother (sa’i ). Some kin terms are conflated for simplicity, e.g. samesex siblings refers to both older and younger same-sex siblings. Parent and child includes aunt (mother’s sister and father’s sister) and paternal uncle, as the same Longgu term is used to refer to these relations (i.e. tia nau ‘my mother/my mother’s sister/my father’s sister’).

Peer-to-Peer Learning as a Reflection of Kinship Relationships and Practices The most significant thing to notice in Fig. 1 is that men seldom train their children (or parents), and that they are training a significant number of people who are uncles/nephews/nieces (in the maternal line). Men train primarily within their matrilineal line rather than in their household group. For women, who train people in both their line and in other lines, there is greater overlap between clan line and household. This reinforces the point that within matrilineal societies, there is potential for conflicting demands between the household and the line, and

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that the ‘conflict’ has a greater impact on the choices of men. Confirmation of the generalisation that men undertook peer-to-peer training within their clan lines, and women trained in their clan line and across lines, was sought by asking Gabriel Ropovono’s opinion on the matter. He responded, metamola ‘that’s right, that’s true’. In discussions with community members after the data was analysed, practical reasons were given as to why men were not training their children. The responses focused largely on the point that young men often left the village for work, or to marry into another area, and so were not available to the male parent. In addition, some men had young children and did not consider them to be of an age appropriate to be trained. By contrast, their nephews and uncles were more readily available, and constituted a larger group of potential trainees. Women’s daughters were more likely to stay in the village and were therefore available to be trained. Both men and women trained their same-sex siblings and in-laws (of the same sex) at similar rates. Same-sex siblings, by definition, share the same line, assuming that siblings have the same mother. The consistency with which both men and women include in-laws of the same sex in peer-to-peer training can be seen in Fig 1. Co-author Delmay Basi reports that in another matrilineal society in Guadalcanal, Talise, husbands do not speak directly to their sister’s or female cousins, but that his wife will talk to them on his behalf. ‘This relationship does not stop peer-to-peer learning’, but it is important to ensure peer-to-peer learning takes place in a meaningful and respectful way. A final point to make from this initial data, is that there is a strong preference for VCEs to conduct peer-to-peer training with kin in the same classificatory generation (siblings and in-laws). When kin relations who are one-generation removed are trained, men and women make different choices: women choose the parent–child relationship, and men choose the uncle-nephew-niece relationship. There is little evidence of peer-to-peer training taking place between grandparents or grandchildren. The limitations of this analysis relate to the numbers of VCEs who have undertaken peer-to-peer training (about 40), and the need for further qualitative data exploring the range of contextual factors beyond

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kin relations, that influence peer-to-peer training. Nevertheless, there is strong evidence that in matrilineal Longgu society, peer-to-peer training takes place overwhelmingly within a person’s clan, and for this reason, the sa’i (mother’s brother/sister’s child) relationship, and the older and younger same-sex sibling relationships are significant in peer-to-peer learning, as they are in other areas of knowledge sharing (e.g. telling clan stories).

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Implications for Development Practices

Development practices benefit from close attention to language and culture. The reasons for this can be presented as two sides of a coin. From one perspective, greater attention to language and culture can help avoid funded projects from becoming a source of conflict. Allen et al. (2013) views funded projects as potential sources of community conflict in the Solomon Islands. On the other hand, the erosion of social cohesion linked to other societal issues, such as substance abuse, and land and natural resource-related conflicts, are also sources of problems (Allen et al. 2013). Communities are not always easily able to resolve these conflicts, as they may not be the cohesive social groups that development practitioners often assume them to be (Foale 2001). The role that strong social networks play in effective agricultural extension and farmer learning is well understood (e.g. Sewell et al. 2017; Thuo et al. 2014). Understanding how relationships within these networks impact learning and adoption of innovative practices in agriculture has been described as critical to researchers and policymakers (Thuo et al. 2014, 341) helping them to develop targeted strategies to promote agricultural innovations (Matuschke and Qaim 2009, 494). Supporting social cohesion through social learning and understanding social networks may also have implications beyond the aims of the project. For example, social learning and strong social networks, along with factors such as diversification of livelihood strategies, have been described as affecting resource management practices, which foster ecological diversity (Ticktin et al. 2018, 1086). Projects such as the FFT project can support social cohesion by focusing on families, and the

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important roles that both men and women play. We can go further in supporting social cohesion by understanding the significance and roles of specific kin relations and of clan membership within the broad concept of ‘family’. In Delmay Basi’s previous experience as a trainer within an international NGO, ‘the organisation only focused on how the activities are going to be done rather than considering peer-to-peer learning between father, mother, son, daughter, nephew, niece, in-laws, cousins and line to line or different lines’. Closer attention to language and culture in development practices can put greater focus on the ‘peers’ and their relationships, as well as on the ‘activities’. Lotte van der Vleuten describes the family as a ‘measurable cultural institution’ whose characteristics ‘provide information about the underlying rules, norms, and preferences regarding women’s appropriate role and behaviour’ (2016, 48). Family systems (e.g. matrilineal family types) allow us to understand gender relations and preferences and to ask whether family systems have different types of influence (van der Leuten 2016, 53). While matrilineal systems are less common than patrilineal or bilateral systems, research in a range of disciplines (e.g. economics, agriculture), shows that the matrilineal family system can have an impact on many aspects of life beyond land inheritance. Matrilineal societies provide an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between the concept of ‘family’ in the context of a household, and ‘family’ in the context of kin relationships. In the Pacific, the organisational structure of societies notwithstanding, the household remains the basic unit of production (Schoeffel 1983 cited in Douglas 2003, 12). Yet, as literature has shown, there may be tension or conflict between household obligations and kinship obligations, and preferred patterns of interaction in matrilineal societies, like Longgu. While overt, formal networks of organisations, such as women’s church groups, are understood to play an important role in peer-to-peer learning in the Pacific, the evidence from this project highlights that understanding and documenting kinship relations can also contribute to our understanding of peer learning in the Pacific. For training programs that include, or aspire to, a peer-to-peer learning component, this research suggests that including anthropological and linguistic information within a contextual analysis at the outset

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can help frame the project so that the reach of peer learning reflects and/or leverages the community structure. In the case of societies such as the one discussed here, this includes information about clans, which are the primary networks for the transmission of information and knowledge. In the project discussed in this chapter, we used clans as one of the criteria for choosing participants (along with gender, age, home village), to ensure a representative sample of participants. The importance of including clans as a criterion for participant selection in the project ensured that the participants were representative of the community. However, the role of clans in peer-to-peer learning was revealed only by tracking the kin relations that participants chose in the peer learning stage of the program. To understand the peer-to-peer network in this study, it was important to use the correct terms for kin relations in the local language. English terms and Solomons Pijin terms do not map directly onto the Longgu kin relation terms. Development practitioners do not themselves need to be fluent in a specific language (see Ann Hill et al. this volume), but can work with local communities, and linguistic or anthropological literature, to ensure that local terms are consistently used and understood. Information about kin relations and family systems can be used within development projects to adjust activities to reflect the family structures of the community. Faysse et al. point out that such recommendations are seldom put into practice, as the networks are usually informal and not easy to identify (2012, 286). In the research discussed here, however, the networks are embedded within the community, and with some linguistic and anthropological knowledge and discussion with the community in the planning stages of the project, the networks based on kin relationships become visible to outsiders. In the process of undertaking this research and analysis, the project team (including members of the community) have developed an additional learning activity to reflect the potential challenges of conflicting obligations between household and the broader family, by introducing a drama that included a sa’i (mother’s brother/sister’s child) relationship, as well as a relationship between a husband, wife, and children.

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Conclusion

In this chapter, we have explored peer-to-peer learning in the context of the social structure of the community. Understanding the importance of clan lines and specific kin relations within a matrilineal family system is relevant to understanding how peer-to-peer learning takes place. The discussion has demonstrated that linguistic and anthropological knowledge can contribute to understanding likely peers in a community. For example, in many languages of the Western Pacific, dyadic constructions referring to specific kin relations, are evident. These dyadic constructions reflect the social organisation of a community, and provide linguistic evidence for likely peers. Matrilineal societies are well represented in a number of regions in the world, including the Solomon Islands. In this chapter, we have seen that one of the implications of a matrilineal society is the way men and women engage in peer-to-peer learning. The FFT approach focuses on understanding the gender, cultural, and regional enablers and barriers faced by farming families. The research discussed here contributes to this, by exploring the enablers and barriers to peer-to-peer learning. Acknowledgements We gratefully acknowledge the Longgu community and the Village Community Educators who participated in this research project for their time and contribution to the research. We are indebted to Gabriel Ropovono, Matilda Maetala, Michael Matea and Elizaeth Damuponoa who are key members of the community and research project. We thank Elmah Panisi Sese and the Live and Learn Environmental Education team for their support in undertaking the research for this chapter. The authors acknowledge and appreciate the funding provided by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) https://www.aciar.gov.au/project/sss-2018-136.

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7 ‘I Could Still Be Myself as a Warlpiri Person’: How Bilingual Education Achieves Community Development Aims Carmel O’Shannessy , Marlkirdi Napaljarri Rose, Elaine Nangala Johnson, and Gracie Napaljarri White

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Setting the Scene: A Day in a Warlpiri-English School Programme

It’s early morning in the desert community, the sun is by now above the horizon, the sky becoming a solid cobalt blue, and the just-onzero temperature of dawn has risen to a few degrees Celsius above zero. Japanangka1 drives the school bus along sealed and unsealed streets, welcoming children as they ready themselves for school and climb on 1 Warlpiri has a complex system of kinship naming practices, as do many Australian languages. The terms are known locally in English as ‘skin names’. In Warlpiri there are eight names for females and eight for males, and these are the most-used forms of reference, along with kin terms such as mother, brother, and so on. For information about Warlpiri kin relationships see Laughren et al. (1996). In this chapter, these kinship names are used to provide a sense of personalisation as well as retain anonymity.

C. O’Shannessy (B) Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia e-mail: Carmel.O’[email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Hill and F. K. Ameka (eds.), Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1_7

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board. At school the children have a hot breakfast and go to their classrooms. In the early years classrooms two of the Warlpiri teachers are preparing for the day ahead. They spent time on Sunday planning and preparing, using the ‘Goanna Planner’ programme2 that focuses on all four language macro-skills, speaking, listening, reading, and writing, using a Warlpiri written text as a focus text, and revisiting the text in different ways through different activities across the curriculum. The teachers welcome the children using their skin and kin names. A five-year-old girl is addressed by her teacher as pimi ‘father’s sister’, spoken in an affectionate Baby Talk style, in keeping with the skin name system. All of the teaching is conducted in Warlpiri, and the children respond using two styles of Warlpiri, the traditional style, Warlpiri pirrjirdi ‘strong Warlpiri’, and a newer, local style, Warlpiri rampaku ‘Light Warlpiri’. The Non-Indigenous teacher linguist checks in with the Warlpiri teachers. In other classrooms, Warlpiri and non-Indigenous teaching teams begin their day. They’ll work together to teach in English and Warlpiri for different parts of the curriculum. In the literacy centre three Warlpiri literacy centre workers, Nangala, Nungarrayi and Napanangka, continue their tasks from last week. Nangala revises the transcription of a story told by elders on a school trip to traditional lands the week before, Nungarrayi illustrates a traditional song using Warlpiri iconography, and Napanangka revises a fictional, contemporary story to use in class. During the day Warlpiri teachers come to the literacy centre to plan and prepare classes, practise reading Warlpiri texts, and make and collect teaching resources.

M. N. Rose Institute for Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia E. N. Johnson · G. N. White Lajamanu, NT, Australia 2 The Goanna Planner is a pedagogical cycle developed to sit alongside the Walking Talking Texts methodology (Murray 1995; 2017) for Indigenous languages. It draws on the Turtle Planner created earlier in Tiwi schools.

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During the morning a group of senior women walk to school and work on the daily programme of speaking with the children in strong Warlpiri. They go to classrooms where they sit with small groups of children and draw on small chalkboards in their own Warlpiri styles. They draw and talk with the children about important traditional places and journeys of ancestral beings. At the same time Warlpiri and non-Warlpiri teachers read written texts with other small groups, in either Warlpiri or English. At lunchtime the Warlpiri teachers meet for the weekly yapa ‘Warlpiri’ staff meeting. Here they speak together in Warlpiri and English and raise and discuss issues about the school programme. They have an agenda and keep minutes, and two Warlpiri teachers then report to the whole school staff meeting later in the week. The Warlpiri teachers report feeling more comfortable to raise and respond to issues in the yapa staff meeting than in the whole school staff meeting, which can often be dominated by the non-Indigenous teachers. In the evening there’s a meeting of school staff and community members, to discuss the reasons for bilingual education and to encourage community involvement in the children’s education. Key leaders in the community speak in favour of the revitalising programme and promote its benefits for the children.

2

Introduction

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages context of Australia is complex, with different configurations of languages spoken in different locations (Angelo et al. 2019). It is estimated that before British invasion and colonisation more than 250 languages were spoken across the continent (Walsh 1993). Since 1778 deliberate and incidental policies have caused the loss of many of these. Yet through resilience and cultural continuity, many people still speak their traditional languages and/or newer languages and varieties, and maintain the essential connection between languages and land. In the Northern Territory many Aboriginal people live in small remote communities, often, but not always, on their traditional lands. The communities are, on the one hand, often far from major regional centres, but on the other, are on or near the lands that

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people are inextricably connected to, along with the continuing linguistic and cultural practices that also belong to the land. Despite continuing colonising policies and practices many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have remained committed to teaching their languages and cultures to their children within the formal government education system, as well as beyond it. One pathway for this is to teach in, through and about both the local language(s) and English through a systematic planned, agreed curriculum, that is, through a Bilingual Education or ‘Two-Way’ Learning programme. This sits within a substantial international body of evidence supporting the approach of mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) (Asia Multilingual Working Group 2014). The snapshot above provides a fictional account of one day in the life of a bilingual education programme, including illustrating the in-school activities that took place very regularly. In this chapter we focus on one of these programmes in one community in the Northern Territory, and specifically on the role of adult education within the implementation of the programme. We discuss how this kind of programme can achieve the aims of community development. We take the key factors of community development in the remote Australian Indigenous context to include: (a) building the capacity of individuals and groups in a range of areas, (b) developing cohesion within a community, (c) increasing empowerment of individuals and groups to identify and address challenges, and (d) increasing active participation of community members in developing and sustaining initiatives. (Adapted from Central Land Council, 2016; Community Development Framework 2016–2020). In this chapter we reflect on our experiences as educators in a Bilingual Education, or Two-Way Learning programme, in the remote Warlpiri community of Lajamanu in northern Australia to illustrate how the programme meets the community development aims outlined above.

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Lajamanu Community is one of four Warlpiri communities. It was established through the forced relocation of Warlpiri people in 1948–1949 to a place about 600 kilometres from the other Warlpiri communities (Berndt and Berndt 1987; Rowse 2002), see Map 1. The triangle overlayed on the figure, known as the Warlpiri Triangle, connects the four Warlpiri schools (see Sect. 3). We first give a brief overview of the history of the programme in the Northern Territory and in Lajamanu Community. Following this we discuss the importance of the community members’ first language in developing leadership and capacity in communities, and how bilingual education programmes contribute to increased adult education levels. Our focus in this chapter is not on the immediate educational outcomes of the children (for discussion of this see, e.g. Collier and Thomas 2004; Devlin 2017; Genesee et al. 2006; Nicholls 2005), but it should be clear that where the programmes are able to operate fully, each generation of children will benefit from the continuation of this model of education as they become the next generations of bilingual leaders.

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Background: Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory and in Lajamanu Community

Bilingual education, here meaning learning in, through, and about the children’s home language(s) and English, including wider socio-cultural aspects of both, began as part of the formal government school system in the Northern Territory in the 1970s.3 The term bilingual education, and the goals of programmes with this label are varied and often contested. In the Northern Territory Indigenous languages context, there is much more involved in the enterprise than simply using one’s first language as a tool for teaching and learning.

3 Much earlier, in the 1870s, an Arrarnta-English Bilingual Education programme had begun in a non-government school in Hermannsburg community and continued for many years (Hoogenraad 2001, 128).

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Map 1 Map of the Northern Territory of Australia, showing the four Warlpiri communities in the abstract ‘Warlpiri Triangle’ area (© Brenda Thornley in O’Shannessy et al. 2019, used with permission)

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The history of bilingual education must be set as part of a larger story of Aboriginal people’s struggle to take back control of their lives, to express and live their own identities, and to organise their communities according to their values and aspirations. The active involvement in education that bilingual education programs afforded Aboriginal people was an important manifestation of its transformational moment in Australia’s history. Schools were a site for Aboriginal adults, not only to take an active role in educating their children, but also to take up meaningful employment, as well as leadership and authority roles. This larger struggle was for the right to choose to use their own languages in formal education settings, to retain and pass on knowledge and cultural practices, which were all part of determining how they should live as Aboriginal people. (Devlin et al. 2017, 2)

The aims of these programmes in terms of community aspirations and Northern Territory Government Department of Education4 aspirations overlap but are not always identical, with each sometimes seeing a different role for the home language. From the perspective of the education department, first language education was a means to achieving high level skills in English and maths, especially English literacy. The goal was a transitional bilingual education programme, in which the home language would mostly give way to English during the primary school years. The 1975 aims (under the Australian Government) included both the Indigenous languages and English, but placed the Indigenous languages first, suggesting that Indigenous language maintenance was a significant priority aim: (a) To help each child to believe in himself and be proud of his heritage by the regular use of his Aboriginal language in school and by learning about Aboriginal culture. (b) To teach each student how to read and write in his own language (Australian Department of Education 1975, 1). 4

The programmes were first implemented under federal government jurisdiction, but soon after the Northern Territory gained political independence from federal government oversight in 1978, and the programmes since then have been administered by the Northern Territory government. The acronyms have changed over time, e.g. NTDE for Northern Territory Department of Education, DoE for Department of Education.

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By 1980, now under the newly established Northern Territory Government, the aims were re-ordered. The following aim, which had been lower in the list before, was raised to the top, suggesting that transfer to English had now taken over as the priority aim: 1. To develop competency in reading and writing in English and in number to the level required on leaving school to function without disadvantage in the wider Australian community (Northern Territory Department of Education 1980, 2) (McKay 2017, 92).

In 19745 the Northern Territory Bilingual Education programme was described by two internationally renowned linguists in the following way, based on visits to four programmes. We are extremely impressed with the Northern Territory Bilingual Program - so much so that we are inclined to assert that this program constitutes one of the most exciting educational events in the modern world. It is, of course, just beginning and has a long and difficult road ahead of it. … If the force of this initial impetus is enabled to continue apace, and if the effort to achieve maximum integration of the schools in to the communities they serve is successful, the academic promise of the bilingual education program will, without question, be fulfilled. (O’Grady and Hale 1974, 2)

O’Grady and Hale (1974) present the aspiration of the programmes, the need to ‘achieve maximum integration of the schools in to the communities’, and allude to the difficulties that have in fact affected the programmes ever since. They set out 25 recommendations to assist the Education Department and schools to achieve success (O’Grady and Hale 1974). Unfortunately, these have been only intermittently adopted, at best. Since their beginnings, the programmes have faced both open and passive resistance (Hoogenraad 2001, 132) from people within and beyond education and politics, and each time Aboriginal teachers and community members have fought for their programmes to continue. In this chapter we use the term ‘teachers’ to include both formally qualified teachers and teacher assistants. 5

Before the education system was administered by the Northern Territory government.

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For the Warlpiri, education in Warlpiri was a major strategy for cultural and linguistic maintenance, and for strengthened and more effective learning (Vaarzon-Morel and Wafer 2017, 42). In Lajamanu community the elders stated that they wanted the children to have the language and socio-cultural skills to take their place in both Warlpiri and non-Indigenous worlds. Pirrjirdi kajili wangkami Warlpiri manu English, jirramarla jarungka. ‘The children need to be strong in both Warlpiri and English.’ (Gracie White Napaljarri)

In at least some communities, Warlpiri adults had been punished as children for speaking Warlpiri at school, so for their children and grandchildren to have the opportunity to learn in Warlpiri within the school system was a great contrast (Vaarzon-Morel and Wafer 2017, 41). The community members see the learning of English as important, made clear in this comment from the Northern Territory Department of Education Learning Lessons Report: ‘There is widespread concern, most of it from Indigenous informants, on the need to expose students to a higher level of spoken Standard Australian English as soon as possible’ (Northern Territory Department of Education 1999, 128). Adult education was and is key to the development of the programmes, as adults need to be able to read and write in Warlpiri to create written texts and resources, to teach literacy skills and to teach across the curriculum. Some examples of the roles of adults were given in the ‘Setting the Scene’ section at the beginning of this chapter. An alphabetic system for writing Warlpiri was developed in Lajamanu community in the 1960–1970s (Hoogenraad 2001, 129). From the 1960s documentation and linguistic analysis of Warlpiri was taking place, feeding into the development of school materials and an enthusiasm for the aim of training Warlpiri adults to teach their children in their own language (e.g. Laughren 1981; Bilingual Resources Development Unit 1986). In Lajamanu, translation of the Bible was under way (Swartz 2020; Tasman and O’Shannessy 2020). At the Yuendumu school there was a Bilingual Resource Development Unit to develop resources for the Warlpiri schools. Under the guidance of an area linguist a dictionary was being

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compiled (e.g. Hale 1990). In Lajamanu adults were taught literacy skills at the school and adult community education centre by school personnel and others in the community, including missionary linguists. People also studied at the School of Australian Linguistics (Martin 2018). The programme in Lajamanu was at its strongest during the 1980s, under the leadership of a highly engaged non-Indigenous principal and teacher linguist (both of whom learned and spoke Warlpiri) in partnership with local Warlpiri leaders. During this time resources and pedagogical practices were developed for teaching in Warlpiri across the curriculum (e.g. Laughren 1981) and Warlpiri teacher development was a central, shared activity. Both Indigenous and non-Indigenous teachers were engaged in developing their professional practice including methods of team teaching (Graham 2017). Many of the Warlpiri teachers who became the centre of the programme in later years were trained during this period. In keeping with local Warlpiri aspirations, the school curriculum included teaching and learning of Warlpiri cultural knowledge as well as that of a more general curriculum. This included travelling to sites of significance to the Warlpiri and the learning and teaching of traditional stories, songs, dances, kinship knowledge, and skills of searching for foods and water, all linked to traditional law, beliefs and practices. These journeys would be followed up in the classrooms and aspects of traditional values were also taught in the community. The leadership of the elders of the community is essential for this teaching to occur and these trips are significant moments of school and community embeddedness. This part of the programme has remained a highlight for both adults and children over the years. A key to the success of teacher professional development, and therefore to the programmes, was the establishment of annual professional development workshops for the teachers in all of the Warlpiri schools. The workshops are known as Warlpiri Triangle workshops, because the communities can be thought of as being located within a triangle (see Map 1), and have been held more-or-less regularly for more than 40 years. In the workshops, teachers share practices, plan teaching and advocacy, create new resources, and undertake new learning, among other things. These help to create a community of practice (Browne and

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Gibson Napaljarri 2021; cf. Wenger 1998) for teachers to develop their understandings and their teaching practices. When individual Warlpiri educators walk into their classrooms, they bring with them 40 years of community articulation and rearticulation of their role, its importance and the ways in which they can achieve community goals of maintaining ‘strong Warlpiri language’. The Warlpiri Triangle professional development meetings have historically served as platforms for forming, restating and expanding on consensual ideologies, collaboratively and intergenerationally. (Browne and Gibson 2021)

It is clear that the annual workshops are not only about developing practice in the classroom, they also provide a forum for marginalised teachers who live hundreds of kilometres from each other to support each other, revisit their rationale for the work they are doing, and re-energise themselves to continue doing it. There was systemic, Territory-wide support for a good amount of time that the programme operated in the 1980s in Lajamanu, but unfortunately, due to a complex political situation and a great deal of misunderstanding, the Warlpiri part of the programme in Lajamanu community was stopped by the Northern Territory Education Department in the early 1990s. The school programme operated mostly in English-only for the next seven or so years. Unfortunately, this alludes to the pressures a local school might be under from the wider system, with appointments of principals and senior staff who might not support the rationale of the programmes. Active steps to end the Bilingual or Two-way Learning programs mean that there are times when local staff do not feel empowered to teach the programme effectively. At the local level, school principals have a great deal of power in terms of which aspects of a school policy or programme are supported and enacted (Hoogenraad 2001), and this may be based on opinions they bring with them to the community. The Warlpiri teachers have challenged and survived the often unsupportive attitudes of many principals over many years. At the wider Territory level, the education system has actively tried to close the programmes several times. For example, in December 1998

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the education department announced that bilingual education would be stopped (e.g. Adamson 1998). In this instance, the communities with bilingual education programmes challenged the decision and a review was commissioned.6 The work of challenging the government’s decision and responding to the review took up valuable time and energy on the part of the school staff and community members that could have been spent on teaching and learning. In response to the review (Northern Territory Department of Education 1999) the programme was able to continue and was then called Two-Way Learning. But only ten years later an announcement was made that the first four hours of the school day had to be in English (Scrymgour 2008). Along with this, departmental support for the programs was significantly reduced, at Territory-wide and local levels. This meant that a bilingual education programme could not operate fully. This was a major blow to the programmes and despite some push-back from communities the decision was not over-turned for several years. By this time many local teachers had experienced not feeling welcome in the schools or able to contribute effectively. Through these years some Warlpiri teachers continued to teach Warlpiri to some extent, but the programs were reduced and the number of Warlpiri staff at the schools decreased significantly. Coinciding with the lack of systemic support for local language education was a reduction in support for local teachers and teacher assistants to be trained. A consequence of this is that there was no cohort of younger teachers being trained to teach alongside, and ultimately in place of, those who by now were retiring or relocating due to ill health. Currently, the Remote Area Teacher Education programme is being revamped, but this is in its infancy. In Lajamanu, from 1991 community members repeatedly called for the bilingual programme to be returned. From 1998, working with a Principal who could see the potential of Warlpiri and English education, the school staff worked to rebuild the programme, engage more with the community and employ more Warlpiri as teachers and in many roles across the school (despite the announcement to stop the programme in December 1998). The teacher linguist at the time, O’Shannessy, reflects: 6 Northern Territory Department of Education 1999. Learning lessons: An independent review of Indigenous education in the Northern Territory. Darwin: NT Department of Education.

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When I arrived in Lajamanu I soon saw that my main job was to rebuild the structures that would allow the Warlpiri teachers to bring back their collective and individual strengths, expertise and experience to the program. There were two fully-qualified Warlpiri teachers in the school, the two Napaljarri sisters, several teacher assistants and a literacy worker. We began by working together on planning and pedagogy in the early years classrooms, where the two Napaljarri sisters were teaching. At the same time, Nungarrayi (the literacy worker) and I began to develop some of the resources the teachers would need, in the literacy centre. Luckily the resources from previous years were still there. Nungarrayi and I shared a table with a single desktop computer among rows of library shelving. As the Warlpiri teachers and community members saw that the school management was committed to Warlpiri education again, experienced people returned to working in the school. Over the next year I had the image of seeds dormant in the desert beginning to flower once the conditions were right. It was amazing to see the expertise and experience of the Warlpiri staff returning to life in the school. The Warlpiri carried us kardiya ‘non-Indigenous’ staff along with them, because they knew what the program could be. (Carmel O’Shannessy)

Over many years the schools, teachers, and community members developed the Warlpiri Theme Cycle curriculum document (Disbray and Martin 2018) in partnership with all Warlpiri schools. In partnership with other bilingual schools and the Northern Territory Education Department the Northern Territory Curriculum Framework—Indigenous Languages and Cultures (NT—ILC) was developed. The underpinnings of both curricula began in the 1980s and were developed and refined in subsequent years. There have been many iterations and there is currently a national curriculum that contains a First Language Learner Pathway (ACARA). Yet the issue of implementation in specific schools continues. It is important to keep sight of the fact that a Bilingual Education or Two-Way Learning programme involves teaching and learning in and of two languages, in this case, Warlpiri and English, not just one. In 1998 the school had a strong practice using solid English as a Second Language (ESL) pedagogy, which had been built up over previous years. This point matters because the Education Department has historically

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mainly been interested in children’s learning outcomes in English and maths, with the local language education seen as a vehicle for that. Much of the education literature suggests that learning in the children’s first language will facilitate learning in their second (e.g. Baker 2006; Collier and Thomas 2004), yet this is of course dependent on the quality of the second language program, in this case, an ESL programme. The children need a high-quality ESL programme in order to achieve in English. The Walking Talking Texts ESL programme (Murray 1995, 2017) was developed in the Northern Territory specifically for children learning English in remote communities where they have little access to English in their daily lives. It emphasised the learning of speaking and listening in English in contextualised ways as a foundation for learning to read and write in English. A focus English written text would be revisited with explicit teaching in different ways during a teaching cycle so that the children became very familiar with many aspects of the text, and they were actively taught these. In this way both teaching in English, and teaching in Warlpiri, were a priority of high-quality practice in the school.

4

How Bilingual Education Helps to Achieve the Aims of Community Development

In the previous section we provided a brief overview of some key points in the history of Bilingual Education programmes in Lajamanu and in the wider Northern Territory. In this section, to show the connection between the programmes and community development aims, we focus on the reflections of chapter co-authors Napaljarri and Nangala. Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri, Gracie White Napaljarri and Elaine Johnson Nangala have been educators and literacy workers for most of their adult lives in the remote Warlpiri community of Lajamanu in Australia’s Northern Territory. They worked in the local school, Lajamanu Community Education Centre (CEC). The other co-author, Carmel O’Shannessy, worked as a non-Indigenous teacher linguist in

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Lajamanu CEC with the Napaljarri sisters, Nangala and others for four years (1998–2001), and has returned to the community for language research annually since. The four of us talked together about these ideas in the course of writing this chapter. The two Napaljarris grew up in Lajamanu Community and went to boarding school in Alice Springs as teenagers for a few years. Marlkirdi Napaljarri ‘fell in love with reading’ in English as a child at school, with cartoons first, and has always enjoyed written texts. People in their families frequently read magazines, newspapers and books at home, mostly in English. When this skill was transferred to Warlpiri it opened up new possibilities. ‘In Warlpiri the words are more meaningful to me’ (Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri). Napaljarri is a published poet (Rose, 1988), and one of her poems, Marlu-kurlu ‘The kangaroo’ was made into a play by the Tracks Dance Company in 1988 (Tracks Dance Company 2012). Napaljarri is also a qualified interpreter, and works as a Senior Warlpiri Researcher at La Trobe University. Elaine Nangala grew up in Yuendumu Community, and moved to Lajamanu as a young woman with her partner. There she worked with missionary linguists and others in the 1970s, at the adult community education centre, to learn Warlpiri literacy. She then worked for many years as a literacy worker and assistant teacher in Lajamanu CEC, and later worked as an interpreter. She currently divides her time between the nearby centre of Katherine (570 kms from Lajamanu) and Lajamanu community, because she is a renal patient, but when in Lajamanu she continues to work at the school, working with Warlpiri staff and students on the development of their Warlpiri literacy skills. Marlkirdi Napaljarri explains why learning in two languages is important. Speaking, listening and working in our own language, Warlpiri, is easier than in English. The people who are listening understand better, and for the person talking it’s easier to explain. When Warlpiri people come together in meetings, we share ideas in both languages, Warlpiri and English. Explaining concepts in Warlpiri makes it easier and faster for everyone to learn new concepts, and to better understand ideas. (Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri)

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Marlkirdi Napaljarri was about sixteen years old when the bilingual education programme in the school was gaining momentum in the early 1980s, and she began to work in the literacy centre. She had not long returned from boarding school in Alice Springs. On her return, wardinyi-nyayirni-lparna karrija nguruku ‘I was very happy to be on the land again’. I felt that the land was welcoming me back and I had missed it. It was wrapping itself around me, like cuddling a baby. I wanted to work in the literacy centre, and to teach Warlpiri. I saw other yapa teachers as role models and wanted to be like them. (Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri)

Being a teacher and literacy centre worker helped me to be a better Warlpiri person. Yungurna nyina Warlpiri-jiki tarnnga ‘it helped me to be myself ’. Being in those education positions didn’t change me not to be Warlpiri anymore. I could still build my skills, but I could still be myself as a Warlpiri person. Pirrjirdi karna karrimi walyangka ‘my feet were firmly on the ground.’ (Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri)

Working in the literacy centre in the school programme, and as a teacher, made me really appreciate my culture, my family, my community. I was very young when I started out, having to know about all these other things - relationships with the community, with the family, and with kardiya ‘non-Indigenous people’ too. How do you work with them, and do it in the right way? And I carried that with me. Now that I’m older, how I interact with others is the same as when I was young. I’ve still got those skills that I learned then. (Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri)

In the 1980s the two Napaljarris, along with other teachers across the Northern Territory, completed a Diploma of Teaching at what was then Batchelor College (now Batchelor Institute for Indigenous Tertiary Education), in the Remote Area Teacher Education (RATE) Program. They spent large amounts of time away from the community to do this. Nangala began this training but was unable to continue to graduation.

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The two Napaljarris’ and Nangala’s higher education achievements and their work in the school meant that they increased their skills in both Warlpiri and English, learning both yapa ‘Indigenous’ way and kardiya ‘non-Indigenous’ way. When I started working at the school literacy centre, I learned to read and write in Warlpiri. And by doing that, at the same time, I learned more about reading and writing in English. Because the school had a program in Warlpiri, we developed materials in Warlpiri and in English, so we learned more about reading and writing in Warlpiri and in English. Developing our skills in a Two-Way Learning program helped us to grow, to understand more. I had a good feeling teaching in Warlpiri. It involved working with the elders, and planning in Warlpiri. The elders always said that they wanted the children to be strong in yapa way ‘Warlpiri language and culture’ and kardiya way ‘non-Indigenous language and culture’. They wanted the program to help children to become leaders in the community. (Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri)

Key to the connection between the local language and the skills development of teachers is that the motivation to teach in their own languages and work in literacy centres at schools motivated individuals to achieve in higher education, creating a network of tertiary-educated people in remote communities. Aboriginal teachers trained by Batchelor College and employed by NTDE make up the largest cadre of trained Aboriginal professionals from rural communities in the Northern Territory. The majority of them started their teaching apprenticeship as assistant teachers in bilingual schools. (Hoogenraad 2001, 137)

It is important to understand that it was precisely the opportunity to teach their own community’s children and to work using their own language(s) that drove these teachers to study, and carried them through the hardships involved. Several teachers report seeing another person in their community teaching or working in a literacy centre or school program, and wanting to do the same work (see e.g. Anderson, Oldfield, and Martin in Hall 2018).

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Education in one’s home language can have a significant effect on the children”s readiness for learning and ability to learn. The two Napaljarris point out that very young children might not know English when they begin school. Learning to read and write in Warlpiri first, and being taught by Warlpiri teachers, feels comfortable for them. They are familiar with Warlpiri people, concepts and ways of being and knowing; they can feel at home and also be learning. As Warlpiri teacher, Madelaine Dixon says, ‘they learn because they understand’ (Ross and Baarda 2017, 257). They can observe at home and in the community the kinds of activities they read about in Warlpiri texts at school. This is in line with the principle of children’s literature that children need to see themselves reflected in the texts they read and listen to (Bishop 2003). The attribute of being a skilled bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural person makes the two Napaljarris and Nangala valuable cultural and language brokers. Marlkirdi Napaljarri is a qualified interpreter and Nangala has completed some interpreter training. Recently Marlkirdi Napaljarri has become a spokesperson for key organisations she is involved with. She was nominated to be a committee member of the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust (WETT), a major Warlpiri educational organisation that grew partly from advocacy put forward during Warlpiri Triangle workshops, and Warlpiri-patu-kurlangu Jaru Inc., an independent association of Warlpiri educators. The WETT organisation won the Australian National Indigenous Governance Award in 2018 (Reconciliation Australia 2018). Marlkirdi Napaljarri drew on her skills as a teacher and spokesperson for the Warlpiri staff in the school to be a spokesperson for WETT. ‘I could say things in a way that made sense to a kardiya ‘non-Indigenous’ person’ (Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri). She retired from active teaching when she relocated to the city of Darwin (900 kms from Lajamanu) as a renal patient. Marlkirdi Napaljarri now has a lead role in a research project in partnership between WETT and La Trobe University, evaluating children’s learning of language and culture. She is currently also a spokesperson for Panuku, a centre for renal patients (https://www.purplehouse.org.au/communities/darwin). The Napaljarri sisters are able to help new patients understand what is involved in being a renal patient.

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It’s scary for new renal patients. Warlpiri purda-nyanjaku wangkanjaku kuja kalu yuka wijipitili-kirra. ‘Many people speak and understand only Warlpiri when they go to the hospital’. Kamparruju Warlpiri-wiyi yungulu purda-nyanyi manu miyalu rarralypaku nyinanjaku. ‘Speaking to them in Warlpiri is important because it helps them to feel comfortable.’ We understand how it works, because we’re also patients, we’re good at English and we can ask questions. We’re good at English because of our training and experience as teachers. We say to the patients, don’t be afraid to ask questions. There’s still a lot to learn about being on dialysis. (Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri and Gracie White Napaljarri)

The Napaljarris’ stories show how their involvement in the Two-way Learning programme aligns with key aspects of community development. Their high levels of education clearly built capacity in a way that aligns with their personal aspirations. Their journey through higher education and employment was driven by their want to be teachers and literacy workers in the Two-way Learning programme. The emphasis on adult education is central to the programme’s effectiveness and to its role in community development. This theme appears frequently in reflections on Bilingual programmes, as the following quotes show. ‘Investing in the development of teachers’ learning, particularly in a cross-cultural context, impacts them as life-long learners’ (K. Gale 2017, 55). ‘It was the development of all the adults involved, as we learned from each other, that in the long term would have the most lasting results’ (Graham 2017, 28). Day-to-day activities in the school programme involve working together with newer and more experienced teachers, and with community elders, increasing social cohesion within the community. It also involves working closely with non-Indigenous staff, learning to operate effectively in both languages and cultures. As the Napaljarri sisters gained more experience and stepped into more roles, their spheres of influence and empowerment increased. ‘When you work in two languages, with two people acting as teachers for the same group of children, not only do the children learn more effectively, but power and control are shared and development occurs’ (Graham 2017, 32). Initiatives in the school such as the Warlpiri teachers’ staff meeting, and having both Warlpiri and non-Warlpiri staff on the school Executive Committee contribute to this. Marlkirdi Napaljarri is now a leader in

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several sustainable initiatives beyond the immediate area of the school, in both health and education. The perspective of sustainability can also be viewed in terms of the longevity of the school programmes. They are only able to be maintained because of the continual presence of the Indigenous teachers. ‘The Aboriginal teachers in the school matter more than the non-Aboriginal teachers - they are the long-term future of the school and won’t leave after a couple of years. They are also crucial role models for the children’ (M.-A. Gale 2017, 76). That the local Indigenous teachers are the backbone of the school programmes is also noted by Warlpiri teacher Barbara Martin Napanangka: ‘we are local people and we always stay’ (Martin 2018, 100). Many teachers and assistant teachers who were trained in the 1980s and 1990s taught in the schools for 30 or more years. This is in contrast to the high turnover of non-local non-Indigenous staff that most schools experience continuously. Leadership and first language education. The history of community members being involved with Warlpiri education in the community shows that being strong leaders and being involved in education in Warlpiri often go hand in hand. Napaljarri and Nangala list many strong leaders over the years who promoted and were actively involved in education in Warlpiri. Many of them spent time at different time points regularly teaching children at school. Very often they were actively engaged in teaching on ‘bush trips’ and ‘country visits’—single-day and longer trips to significant cultural sites, where elders with authority to speak and teach at specific places would teach children the stories, songs, and dances that belong to them, as well as practical cultural skills of hunting for animals, gathering foods and finding water. Importantly, the converse is also true. People who became teachers are often the most bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural people in a community. They are in demand by many organisations and are usually board members of several organisations. Many take on leadership roles elsewhere in the community after working at the school for several years. These roles often involve facilitating understandings between Warlpiri and non-Indigenous administration systems and cultures. One example is of a woman who, after leaving teaching, worked for many years in a

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government position in the community and as an interpreter. Having a highly skilled bilingual, bicultural person in a role like this. helps people to understand better. We need someone like that in each place. It helps people’s lives to go more smoothly, helps people to understand the systems they are now part of, and are dealing with. (Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri)

5

Conclusion

Community development aims are highly consistent with those of a local school Bilingual Education programme because of the need for, and emphasis on, adult education and leadership. An important aspect of this is that being able to teach and work with their primary language, Warlpiri, was a major part of the Warlpiri educators’ reasoning for being involved and seeking further education and professional development. Through the process, they developed their skills in English also. The roles of both their first and their second languages, and learning in and about both languages in accordance with the wishes of the community elders, are central to the programme. Key to implementing a programme in both a local language and a language of wider currency such as English is the education of adults as teachers and literacy workers, building educational and leadership capacity. This is a long-term process but one that many local teachers commit to because of the benefits for them and for their community. A Bilingual Education programme in a small community requires that the school and community actively engage with each other, in day-to-day support for the school and long-term support for the development of the teachers through formal study. The collaborative work promotes cohesion and learning within the community. The Warlpiri educators have reflected on their personal growth as leaders in areas of the local and wider community beyond the immediate school arena. The teachers have sustained the programmes in different formats for over 40 years despite active steps to close them and day-to-day acts against them, partly because the teachers have been able to draw on

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each other and their communities for support, and because they are committed to achieving the outcomes for their communities. Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge the Warlpiri and all people and organisations who have worked in and supported these school programmes, teacher education programs and Indigenous languages literacy programmes over the years. We were funded to work together on this chapter by the Australian National University Futures Scheme. We thank Lajamanu Community Education Centre and Charles Darwin University for hosting us.

References ACARA. 2019. Australian Curriculum Framework for Aboriginal Languages and Torres Strait Islander Languages. Sydney: Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. Adamson, Peter, the Honourable. 1998. English a high priority in bush schools [Press release]. Angelo, Denise, Carmel O’Shannessy, Jane Simpson, Inge Kral, Hilary Smith and Emma Browne. 2019. Well-being and Indigenous Language Ecologies (WILE): A Strengths-Based Approach. Literature Review for the National Indigenous Languages Report, Pillar 2. Canberra: The Australian National University. Asia Multilingual Working Group. 2014. MTB-MLE: Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education: Lessons Learned from a Decade of Research and Practice. 4th International Conference on Language and Education. Bangkok, Thailand, 2013. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000 231865. Australian Department of Education. 1975. Handbook for Teachers in Bilingual Schools in the Northern Territory of Australia (2nd ed.). Darwin: Australian Department of Education, Northern Territory Division, Bilingual Education Section. Baker, Colin. 2006. Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Clevedon/Buffalo: Multilingual Matters. Berndt, Ronald Murray, and Catherine Helen Berndt. 1987. End of an Era: Aboriginal Labour in the Northern Territory. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island.

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Gale, Kathryn. 2017. Lessons Learned from Bilingual Education. In History of Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory: People, Programs and Policies, ed. Brian Devlin, Samantha Disbray, and Nancy Friedman Devlin, 49–60. Singapore: Springer. Gale, Mary-Anne. 2017. Boom and Then bust: Lessons Learnt from My Time Teaching in Three Bilingual Schools in the Northern Territory. In History of Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory: People, Programs and Policies, ed. Brian Devlin, Samantha Disbray, and Nancy Friedman Devlin, 73–84. Singapore: Springer. Genesee, Fred, Kathryn Lindholm-Leary, Donna Christian, William Saunders, and Bill Saunders. 2006. Educating English Language Learners: A Synthesis of Research Evidence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Graham, Beth. 2017. Reflecting on Team Teaching. In History of Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory: People, Programs and Policies, ed. Brian Devlin, Samantha Disbray, and Nancy Friedman Devlin, 27–34. Singapore: Springer. Hale, Ken. 1990. An Elementary Warlpiri Dictionary. Alice Springs: Institute for Aboriginal Development Press. Hall, Lisa. 2018. We Always Stay: Stories from Seven Remarkable Aboriginal Teachers in Remote Australia. Batchelor, NT: Batchelor Institute Press. Hoogenraad, Robert. 2001. Critical Reflections on the History of Bilingual Education in Central Australia, In Forty Years On: Ken Hale and Australian Languages, ed. Jane Simpson, David Nash, Mary Laughren, Peter Austin, and Barry Alpher, 123–150. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Laughren, Mary. 1981. Number Strand -Warlpiri. 49+2pp. ms. Mathematics in Aboriginal Schools Project. A joint project of the N.T. Department of Education and the Curriculum Development Centre, Canberra. Laughren, M., Hoogenraad, R., Hale, K., & Granites, R. J. 1996. A Learner’s Guide to Warlpiri. Alice Springs: Institute for Aboriginal Development Press. Martin, Barbara. 2018. Barbara’s story. In We Always Stay: Stories from Seven Remarkable Aboriginal Teachers in Remote Australia, ed. Lisa Hall, 84–101. Batchelor, NT: Batchelor Institute Press. McKay, Graham. 2017. The Policy Framework for Bilingual Education in Australian Indigenous languages in the Northern Territory. In History of Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory: People, Programs and Policies, ed. Brian Devlin, Samantha Disbray, and Nancy Friedman Devlin, 85–100. Singapore: Springer.

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Murray, Frances. 1995. Walking Talking Texts; A Program for Teaching and Learning English as a Second Language. Northern Territory Deptartment of Education for the Northern Territory Board of Studies. Murray, Frances. 2017. The Development of Successful Bilingual, Biliterate and Bicultural Pedagogy: Place for Tiwi Teachers and Tiwi Language in Learning. In History of Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory: People, Programs and Policies, ed. Brian Devlin, Samantha Disbray, and Nancy Friedman Devlin, 113–126. Singapore: Springer. Nicholls, Christine. 2005. Death by a Thousand Cuts: Indigenous Language Bilingual Education Programs in the Northern Territory of Australia, 1972– 1998. The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 8 (2&3): 160–177. O’Grady, William, and Kenneth Hale. 1974. Recommendations Concerning Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory. Darwin: Northern Territory Department of Education. O’Shannessy, Carmel, Samantha Disbray, Barbara Martin, and Gretel Macdonald. 2019. (Re)turning Research into Pedagogical Practice: A Case Study of Translational Language Research in Warlpiri, 18. Language Documentation and Conservation: Special Publication. Rose, Pansy Napaljarri. 1988. Marlu-kurlu. In Inside Black Australia: An Anthology of Aboriginal Poetry, ed. Kevin Gilbert. Melbourne: Penguin. Ross, Tess, and Wendy Baarda. 2017. Starting Out at Yuendumu School Teaching in Our Own Language. In History of Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory: People, Programs and Policies, ed. Brian Devlin, Samantha Disbray, and Nancy Friedman Devlin, 247–258. Singapore: Springer. Rowse, Tim. 2002. White Flour, White Power: From Rations to Citizenship in Central Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scrymgour, Marion. 2008. Education Restructure Includes Greater Emphasis on English [Press release]. Swartz, Stephen. 2020. Broken Pot: The Making of the Warlpiri Bible. Port Orchard, USA/Mona Vale, NSW/West Harbour, NZ: Ark House Press. Tasman, Maxwell Walma Japanangka, and Carmel O’Shannessy (Writers). 2020. Kaja-Warnu-Jangka ‘From the Bush’. In Maxwell Walma Japanangka Tasman and Carmel O’Shannessy (Producer). Australia: PAW Media. Vaarzon-Morel, Petronella, and Jim Wafer. 2017. ‘Bilingual time at Willowra’: The Beginnings of a Community-Initiated Program, 1976-1977. In History of Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory: People, Programs and Policies,

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8 English Language Learning as a Trojan Horse? Examining Early Childhood Teachers’ Views of Teaching Young Children in an English-Medium NGO in India Zinnia Mevawalla and Sanobia Palkhiwala

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Introduction

Before we begin, we (the authors) would like to acknowledge, first and foremost, that we write this chapter from a standpoint that is grounded in early childhood education, care and development (ECECD)—that is, the multidisciplinary area of research, policy and practice that is concerned with the lives of children from conception to the age of eight. Researchers have emphasised the significance of individual, relational, environmental and experiential factors in the early years—highlighting how positive and negative experiences during this time (e.g. toxic stress, racism, poverty, and more recently, COVID-19) can have wide-ranging Z. Mevawalla (B) University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK e-mail: [email protected] S. Palkhiwala Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Hill and F. K. Ameka (eds.), Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1_8

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and lifelong impacts on a child’s development and flourishing (Harvard University Center on the Developing Child 2021). Researchers have also demonstrated that initiatives in the early years can improve the immediate and long-term outcomes of children, families and communities—particularly those who experience disadvantage. For example, the Nobel Laureate economist James J. Heckman and his colleagues have shown how investment in the early years leads to the highest returns – as ‘every dollar spent on high-quality, birth-to-five programmes for disadvantaged children delivers 13% per annum return on investment’ (Heckman 2017, para 1). Partly because of some of this research, the earliest years of life are now often positioned as an ideal breeding ground for actualising peace, justice and prosperity goals—such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In working towards these goals, several aid agencies and development organisations have focused their efforts on early intervention and investment in ECECD in vulnerable or disadvantaged communities in low and middle-income (LAMI) contexts—such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and India (World Bank 2021). At times, such interventions have included teaching young children English. Some research suggests that there is a ‘sharply-defined critical period for language acquisition’ in childhood (Hartshorne et al. 2018, 1) which makes it easier for children (as compared to adults) to learn an additional language. Others have indicated that there is no clear cut-off for second language acquisition (Genesee 2015), challenging the logic of the critical period hypothesis for second language learning (Birdsong and Molis 2001; Marinova-Todd et al. 2000), and suggesting that learning a second language earlier does not necessarily mean learning it more effectively (Marinova-Todd et al. 2000). Nevertheless, the assumption that language learning should take place as early as possible remains pervasive. These discourses have significant implications for development workers in the context of education. For example, early English language learning for children whose first language is not English is a unique site for investment and intervention by some Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) in India, with researchers arguing that English language learning might be a way in which to meet certain SDGs (e.g. goal 10—reducing inequality) (Sharma 2020).

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Whilst some programmes focus on teaching young children using English-medium education (rather than Mother Tongue), recent research indicates that ‘models of education which ignore the Mother Tongue in the early years can be unproductive, ineffective and have a negative effect on children’s learning. Mother-tongue education at least in [the] early years can enable teachers to teach, and learners to learn more effectively’ (Nishanthi 2020, 77). This sentiment is echoed widely in the research, with evidence from Eastern and Southern Africa (UNICEF 2016, 8) demonstrating that: Using the mother tongue in the classroom enhances classroom participation, decreases attrition, and increases the likelihood of family and community engagement in the child’s learning. Research also shows that using the mother tongue as the medium of instruction enhances the child’s cognitive learning process, and that learner-centred learning has to be carried out in a language the child speaks in order to be effective.

Yet the symbolic power of English and its ties to social and cultural capital, cannot be underestimated. Importantly, our intention throughout this chapter is not to dichotomise and essentialise Englishmedium education and local/national language medium education in terms of economic gain. Indeed, we acknowledge that there are also elite Hindi-medium institutions and that many bureaucrats and professionals are educated in local and national languages. However, as the focus of some NGOs (including the one reported on in this chapter) remains on teaching young children English (which is not children’s Mother Tongue), our focus throughout this chapter has remained on the forwarding of English-medium education for young children. In doing so, in the context of this chapter, we draw on the analogy of the Trojan horse to explore how English, a remnant ‘gift’ of colonisation, has subversively contributed to social and economic inequities. Specifically, we explore key discourses of neoliberalism and colonisation that have strategically ‘tricked’ education-based NGOs into willingly pursuing early English language learning programmes, even as such practices contribute to the solidifying of socio-economic inequities, language

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hierarchies and arguably, the degradation of local languages (SkutnabbKangas and Phillipson 1996). To begin, in the subsequent section, we provide a brief overview of the linguistic context of India, before outlining the two key arguments that we will discuss in this chapter.

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Indian Linguistic Context

India has 22 official languages (including English) and a population of 1.366 billion. There are 463 established languages in India (451 living and 12 extinct). Of the living languages, ‘423 are indigenous, and 28 are non-indigenous… 61 are institutional, 118 are developing, 132 are vigorous, 124 are in trouble, and 16 are dying’ (Eberhard et al. 2021). Multilingualism is a key feature of the Indian linguistic context— with children experiencing early multilingual socialisation, therefore making multilingualism a ‘first language’ for many (Mohanty 2010). However, as Mohanty and Panda troublingly point out ‘nearly 80% of Indian languages are endangered. India is a multilingual country in which many languages coexist… but at the same time, many languages are also treated with neglect, discrimination and deprivation’ (2017, 226), leading to what Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson (1996) refer to as linguicide or linguistic genocide. The pervasive use of English in high-status contexts further positions it as the language of privilege and globalisation. Scholars therefore point out that although India is a linguistically diverse context in which the majority of its people communicate using ‘two or more languages in different domains of their daily life’ (Mohanty 2010, 133), English remains the ‘language of power and privilege’ (Skutnabb-Kangas et al. 2009, 325). As several writers note, problematising the power and privilege afforded to English in postcolonial contexts such as India is necessary (Annamalai 2005; Mohanty and Panda 2017; Skutnabb-Kangas et al. 2009). Challenging the power and privilege of the English language in India at the grassroots level is fraught with difficulty, partly because of the reported benefits that English proficiency brings. Research shows that there may be some correlation between an individual’s English fluency and their economic prosperity (Azam et al. 2013; Chakraborty and

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Bakshi 2016). This has implications for children from vulnerable, disadvantaged and marginalised backgrounds, as local charities and NGOs— such as the one reported on in this chapter—have sought to invest in ECECD programmes that support young children to gain linguistic capital through English language learning. However, several scholars discuss how programmes such as these, although well-intentioned, require deeper exploration, problematising and re-thinking (Mohanty 2017; Mohanty and Panda 2017; Skutnabb-Kangas et al. 2009). In this chapter, we discuss some of the arguments and counterarguments for the implementation of English-medium NGO-run education programmes in the early years, drawing on a case study of a group of Early Childhood Teachers (hereafter referred to as teachers) working with children living in slum communities in Mumbai, India. We approach this chapter from the perspective of the teachers, who are often caught ‘between a rock and hard place’, trying to implement policy, working to improve outcomes for children, delivering highquality learning and ensuring that they meet the needs and desires of children, families/caregivers, funders, advisors/board members and their own leaders and managers. Exploring their experiences in an NGO delivering an English-medium early education programme, we unpack (and problematise) the following arguments raised by teachers: 1. Teaching children English as early as possible is necessary for future success. 2. English-medium instruction for young children is important. To explore these arguments, in the next section, we adopt a postcolonial and critical pedagogy lens to provide an overview of the origins and impacts of the English language in India.

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Postcolonial Politics of the English Language in India

Re-meeting history in the present moment is necessary for understanding the nuances of power and privilege at play (MacNaughton 2005). There are many potential rabbit holes which we might go down in attempting to explain the postcolonial politics of the English language in India. Indeed, the diverse and rhizomatic nature of India’s social, cultural, historical, economic, political and religious and caste systems could all be examined extensively for their relationship to English privilege. However, it is not within the scope of this chapter to explore the numerous and varied theories, causes and correlations of postcolonial language politics in India, as has been done elsewhere (Annamalai 2001; Mishra 2000). Whilst many factors have impacted on the privileging of English in India over time, two key roots of English privilege emerge from ‘colonial modernity and capitalism’ (Mishra 2000, 384). In the interests of brevity, we focus on aspects of these two well-documented themes for understanding English-language privilege in India. Learning English during the period of colonisation served a particular socio-political and ideological agenda that sought to reaffirm colonial dominance and superiority (Mishra, 2000). Several strategies were adopted to meet these aims. For example, the Anglicist position, officially adopted into policy in 1835, involved the actualising of Thomas Macaulay and John Stuart Mill’s Filtration Theory (Annamalai 2005; Mishra 2000), whereby English-medium education would be given to the leisure-class (elite groups of the population), through whom it would filter down to the masses. This strategy, in turn, created a new elite or rather, sub-elite (below the English), who became the so-called ‘noble savages’ or, in Macaulay’s words, ‘a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect’ (as cited in Mishra 2000, 388). The positional power afforded to this group ensured that they were well-placed to work for the colonial government (therefore, forwarding the colonial agenda), whilst acting as intermediaries that could provide access to resources, exhort labour and source materials that would ensure the continued growth of the industrial economy (of the colonisers) (Annamalai 2005).

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Arguably, through this colonisation of the mind, a breed of suboppressors (sub-elite) were created, who, having adopted the mentality of the oppressors, in turn, acted in the interests of their own rulers to perpetuate the othering and oppression of those ‘below’ them (Freire 1970). English language learning appears to have played a seminal role in further widening the socio-economic divides between the sub-oppressors and oppressed, by ensuring the socio-economic privileging of this subelite (Stein 1998). For example, limiting the number of Indians who had access to English learning meant ‘demand for jobs in the government would be under control and, consequently, social unrest arising out of being unable to get white-collar jobs after English education would be kept in check’ (Annamalai 2005, 22). Educating a chosen few meant that the ‘cost of providing universal education was accepted to be primarily the responsibility of the government of the independent country’ (Annamalai 2005, 22). Stein (1998) offers a similar argument, suggesting that there was a clear focus on profit over people—which meant that there was little investment or interest in public entities such as schools for the masses. Notably, limiting access to education was not only a colonial practice but also a way of maintaining caste-based privilege, as schools developed by Christian missionaries to educate the masses were seen as upsetting the social balance of the existing caste-system (Kumar 2005). Freire (1973) suggests that such a system served the interests of the oppressors (colonial and Indian) by (re)producing slavocratic hierarchies that dehumanised and domesticated the oppressed into internalising the status quo. That is, the lack of mass education ensured that people would learn their place as uneducated workers (including as slaves), in society (and then remain in that place), accepting inequities as a natural tragedy of their birth; rather than an unnatural tragedy created by broader socio-political decisions about where and how to allocate resources. Thus, it could be argued that although a colonial logic underpinned the desire to ensure (some) Indians would become ‘more English than Hindus’ (McCully, as cited in Annamalai 2005, 22), social and colonial practices also ensured the widening of inequalities in hierarchical power relations that already existed (such as those related to class, caste, gender, dis/ability, etc.).

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Post-independence, political leaders sought to replace English with a national language, and Hindi was chosen as the official language of India—alongside English, which was allowed to remain an associate official language for a transitional period of 15 years from the initiation of the Indian Constitution in 1950 (Sharma 2020). However, the end of this transitional period saw disagreements between States and Union Territories, which consequently led the Indian government to maintain English as an official language for administrative and governance purposes (Sharma 2020). This policy contributed to the creation of a ‘double divide’ (Mohanty and Panda 2017). As Mohanty and Panda explain, the double divide involves, firstly, the English-Vernacular divide ‘between English and the dominant Indian languages’ (2017, 541), and secondly, the Vernacular-Other divide, ‘between the major Indian languages and the ITM [Indigenous and Tribal Minority] languages’ (2017, 541). This double divide is significant and troubling because researchers suggest that it has further solidified existing language hierarchies and increased the inequalities already experienced by linguistic minorities and marginalised groups (Skutnabb-Kangas et al. 2009).

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Education Systems and the ‘Double Divide’

This double divide also continues to be perpetuated through India’s education system, with English remaining the most pervasive language of instruction (Annamalai 2005). This is further complicated by the fact that English is the major medium of instruction at university level (Mohanty 2010). The use of English in higher education has a backwash effect on earlier schooling, perpetuating a desire for English language learning across the system (Meganathan 2011). Annamalai echoes this argument, contending that ‘the students with English medium at the lower level are advantaged at the higher level and this pushes the English medium down to lower classes, even to pre-school, by demand from parents’ (2005, 24). This, in turn, can be seen to extend to

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programmes run by NGOs that seek to provide English-medium education in order to level the playing field for young, disadvantaged children, thus inadvertently perpetuating the colonised experience. The three-tiered language system was introduced by the government of India in 1968 in order to remove language inequities whilst promoting efficient multilingualism and national unity through education (Annamalai, 2005). Essentially, the three-tiered system advocates for children to learn ‘two or more languages other than their first language’ (Pai 2005, 1801). The implementation of the three-language formula varies across states to allow for linguistic diversity. For example, in Maharashtra (where the research reported on in this chapter took place), for children who are learners in English-medium settings, ‘Hindi is treated as a second language, and Marathi the third… English is the third language to all other students, and Hindi is the second [language] for Marathi medium students, and Marathi [is the second language] for Hindi medium students’ (Pai 2005, 1801). Notably, several scholars have critiqued the implementation of this formula in India, with Pai suggesting that ‘unfortunately the three-language formula has not been successful, mainly because these languages do not follow second language teaching methodology’ (2005, 1801). Similarly, Mohanty has commented that ‘a true form of multilingual education is yet to emerge in India’ (2006, 273). The newly introduced Indian National Education Policy (NEP) (2020) (Government of India 2020), which replaces the 1986 National Policy on Education, reflects recent research which emphasises the importance of teaching children in their Home Language/Mother Tongue1 or Regional Language ‘where possible’ until Class V (age 11) and preferably beyond. However, social commentators have already begun to question what this means for English-medium schools, and news reports indicate that there will be ‘no switch in instruction medium from English to regional languages in NEP ‘20’ (Vishnoi 2020). As the NEP offers only guidelines for states and educational institutions to implement, the policy to practice gap requires closer examination. 1 We acknowledge that there are contesting arguments for the use of the term ‘Mother Tongue’ in multilingual societies. Throughout this chapter, we use the term ‘Mother Tongue’ as this is the phrasing used throughout the National Education Policy (2020) in India.

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Similarly, as the boundaries of what constitutes learning in the Mother Tongue ‘where possible’ are vague, questions about the enforceability and effectiveness of the policy also remain. However, the emphasis on Mother Tongue as the medium of instruction has several potential implications for the power and privilege afforded to English, since the policy advocates for teachers to ‘use a bilingual approach… with students whose home language may be different from the medium of instruction’ (NEP, Government of India 2020, 13). Although the policy moves away from an English-only focus in low-fee-paying (LFP) schools (Kalyanpur 2020), it emphasises the importance of high-quality language learning for all languages across government and non-government sectors (Government of India 2020), and that young children, from preschool onwards, are supported to develop multilingual proficiency and fluency (Kalyanpur 2020). Recently, during an address on the one-year implementation of the NEP, the prime minister launched several initiatives, including Vidya Pravesh, a play-based module for all first graders, including in regional and remote India (NCERT, 2021). It is worth noting that this is an emerging space. The National Curriculum Framework which is set to soon accompany the NEP will outline strategies for promoting Indian languages (Gohain 2020). Despite these new policy developments, some writers have concluded that it is impossible to reverse the tide of English privilege, since ‘with globalisation, English is now so well entrenched in India as a language of power, economy, and privilege that any reversal of this position seems very unlikely’ (Mohanty and Panda 2017, 541). This raises questions, not only for NGOs and charity-run ECECD programmes that aim to equip children with English literacy skills, but also for the broad nature of pedagogical approaches used for teaching English as an additional language in India.

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‘Banking Approach’ Pedagogical Practices for English Language Learning in India

When English is taught in a decontextualised, standardised and abstract manner (e.g. C is for Cat), it perpetuates the exclusion of marginalised groups as it imposes a curriculum that neither reflects nor recognises the knowledge, experiences, cultures or values of the learner. Often children and teachers in India have little or no exposure to English in their communities but are expected to learn and teach the syllabus content through English (Kalyanpur 2020). Freire (1970) argues that a focus on building ‘technical skills’ perpetuates the use of traditionalist English-teaching methods also known as ‘banking approaches’—that is, where practices of rote learning, uncritical acceptance and the regurgitation of facts is considered effective pedagogy. However, the teaching of only technical skills in the early years has long been disputed on pedagogical and developmental grounds (Fielding and Moss 2012). India’s new NEP (2020) and the more recently launched Vidya Pravesh programme NCERT (2021) emphasise the importance of play-based and activity-based learning. Despite this, the current push down of banking education approaches (e.g. rote learning and repetition) into ECECD spaces remains a prominent issue in the Indian context (Palkhiwala in preparation). Sriprakash et al. discuss how banking education approaches to pedagogy act as a means for training children to behave according to the rules of the ‘rigid competitive structures of schooling’ (2020, 332). Bénéï indicates that in the Indian context, pedagogical best practice is seen as one where discipline, order and control prevails—with children ‘sitting at their tables and doing their homework without a word, no noise’ (2005, 144). Mishra reaffirms this, noting ‘the system of forming syllabi at the central level, the lecture method as a primary means of conducting classes, and the exam and certification system based on rote-learning – all colonial practices – continue to this day’ (2000, 402). This also appears to be true of early years contexts, where teachers use rote methods of teaching, such as demonstrating how to write the letters of the alphabet

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on the chalkboard at the front of the class, before children are required to practice this new skill on their slates or in their own workbooks (Palkhiwala in preparation). In the context of the NGO reported on in this paper, this pedagogical approach was used to teach all subjects, including expressive arts, where the teacher was observed demonstrating a drawing, then asking the children to draw the same picture, after which the child was graded on their ability to replicate the picture. These banking education practices are further exacerbated by increased standardised testing and teacher responsibilisation (McLeod 2017). Responsibilisation reflects a mindset where, for example, individual teachers are tasked with the sole responsibility of supporting disadvantaged students to pass standardised tests through teaching in education systems that exclude, dehumanise and further marginalise them. Then, where children do not achieve in standardised tests or ‘succeed’ through these education systems, public discourses blame teachers for learners’ so-called inadequacies (Peters 2017). Teachers working in NGOs with disadvantaged learners face additional pressures as discourses of teacher responsibilisation imply that these educators are responsible for uplifting children from situations of poverty. Thus, rather than being supported, trained or provided with adequate resources, teachers and NGOs are often blamed when learners fail, reject, (or rather, are rejected by) education systems that dehumanise and marginalise them. To begin to explore possibilities for addressing these grand challenges, listening to the experiences and perspectives of educators in NGOs becomes paramount. Thus, in the subsequent section, we provide an overview of the English-medium ECECD setting reported on in this chapter before exploring some of the perspectives of teachers in this setting.

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The Case Study: An English-Medium Balwadi

The research reported on in this chapter forms part of a dataset from a doctoral research study by one of the authors of this chapter (Palkhiwala in preparation). The broader research adopted a single case study

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methodology informed by a postcolonial lens and yoga philosophy to investigate the views and experiences of eleven early childhood teachers’2 experiences and understandings of pedagogy and reflective practice in an English-medium Balwadi (early childhood setting run for disadvantaged children).3 This section provides an overview of this research context. Pseudonyms are used throughout the chapter to refer to all participants. The Balwadi was run by an NGO catering for children and families/caregivers primarily living in slum communities in one part of Mumbai, India.4 Data collection occurred over a period of seven months, and involved non-participant observations, semi-structured interviews, wall charts and focus groups. A noteworthy limitation of the current study was that the data collection was itself conducted primarily in English—with questions translated from English, thus drawing largely on educational concepts and ideas framed from Euro-centric rather than Indo-centric traditions of thought and affording greater participation to the English-speaking teachers. Within a postcolonial lens, Battiste (2014) questions the sole reliance of the colonial language to conduct research. However, the use of English was problematised throughout the data collection process—with participants being encouraged to contribute in any language they felt comfortable in across all data collection tools, in an attempt to disrupt the hierarchy of language (Cannella and Viruru 2004). The researcher spoke a basic level of Hindi herself. However, it was the diversity of languages spoken amongst the teachers which enabled them to use any language they felt comfortable using, with another teacher being able to translate this into English for the purposes of data collection. For example, in the focus groups, a combination of 2

The term ‘teacher’ was used by the participants to refer to themselves and is thus used throughout the doctoral study and this chapter. Most teachers held a certification in Education, such as a six-month course offered by the Balwadi. However only the head teacher held a bachelor’s degree in Education. Furthermore, the term ‘educator’ is not part of the Indian lingua franca and is therefore not used in this chapter. 3 This study was underpinned by a framework using the yogic concept of Swadhyaha (selfstudy) to explore culturally relevant reflective practice in one early childhood context in India. More detailed information on the development and use of this framework can be found in Palkhiwala (in preparation). 4 It is worth noting that as NGOs are often initiated to meet the local needs of a particular community (or communities), their service provision and approaches to educational instruction are often significantly varied.

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English, Hindi, and Marathi was spoken by participants, and then translated and clarified for meaning during the focus group itself. Four of the eleven teachers were able to seamlessly transition between English, Hindi and Marathi. Participants also shared Indo-centric concepts and views of education through language (e.g. through referencing Indian yogic practices such as Om chanting, Asanas and Tratak 5 )—thus reflecting culturally situated practices and understandings. Moreover, where participants did communicate in languages other than English, every effort was made to translate meanings into English in a way that reflected the authenticity of participants’ intended meanings. Participants also reviewed their data, to ensure transparency and accuracy of shared meaning-making. Notably, data collection occurred prior to the introduction of the New Education Policy (NEP) (2020)—however, as the NEP is relatively new, it is likely that pedagogical practices reported on here remain reflective of current practices. The setting had ten classrooms that catered for children according to their age group—with separate classes for two-year-olds (playgroup), three-year-olds (nursery), four-year-olds (Junior KG6 ) and five-year-olds (Senior KG). On initial conversation with the teachers as to what led them to work at this Balwadi, most of them spoke about being of service to God and helping children escape poverty. Teachers did not necessarily hold formal qualifications in early childhood pedagogy, bilingual/multilingual education or additional language teaching, and most were not from middle-class backgrounds. Although teachers were expected to teach in English, teachers in the lower stages (playgroup and nursery) spoke in Hindi and Marathi. Notably, the teachers’ comfort and proficiency with English dictated the classes they were allowed to teach, with English-speakers assigned to the upper stages (Junior KG and Senior KG). The teachers noted that without English proficiency, they were held back from teaching the older (more prestigious) age groups. It was also observed that positional power was tied to English proficiency, as the English-speaking teachers 5 Asanas refer to body postures and a meditative pose. Om, a sound recited during meditation or prayer, is believed to hold spiritual significance as it encapsulates the vibrations of the universe. Tratak refers to a visual meditative practice (e.g. candle gazing). 6 KG is used as the short form for kindergarten in this context.

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were observed to be more actively involved in pedagogical decisionmaking, which was in turn, expected to be implemented by teachers in the lower classes. For example, the senior KG teacher and the principal would decide the monthly syllabus for each classroom, and every month teachers in each grade were informed which letters of the alphabet they would teach. Significantly, the syllabus in this setting was written by the head teacher who had a degree in education and was reviewed by the school principal. This syllabus was not guided by national policy or additional language learning principles, but rather by rote learning practices. Notably, there was little to no support for the teachers, head teacher or principal to access training on learning English as an additional language. In accordance with national policy, teachers were aware that the State language (Marathi) was now mandated to be taught in schools. However, in this setting, there was a definitive push to teach children English as early as possible so that they could compete in the education market. As a result, English language instruction focused heavily on English literacy and numeracy. Furthermore, the English alphabet was taught out of context and attached to words that may not be familiar to the children. Notably, due to the migration of families from various villages, many children in the setting did not speak Hindi, Marathi, or English, but rather rural dialects, or other languages such as Urdu. Thus, since children’s first languages were made up of various regional dialects, there was no common first language in the setting. Hindi and Marathi were the most common languages but still not understood by all children (i.e. those from a village outside of the state of Maharashtra). The teachers used Hindi and Marathi to explain and bridge the gap between children’s knowledge and the new word in English. For example, the teacher would say ‘A is for apple’ in English, and then repeat the word apple in Hindi and Marathi in an attempt at making this connection for the child. Notably, it is highly unlikely that learners from this English-medium Balwadi would move to (public or private) English-medium schools. With some support from charities and NGOs or through affirmative action reservations for disadvantaged students, some learners may be taught in English-medium primary

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schools, however, most young learners would transition into free Hindimedium or Marathi-medium public government schools. Nonetheless, as we explore below, teachers emphasised the importance of young children learning English.

7

Teachers’ Perspectives of English Language Learning in the Early years

The complexity of language choice emerged as a prominent theme throughout this study. From the earliest observations, it was evident that although it was an English-medium setting, teachers in the playgroup and nursery instructed primarily in Hindi and Marathi using some key English phrases (e.g. sit down, stand up, come here), whereas teachers in Lower KG and Senior KG encouraged the children in their class to use English. During group discussions, teachers explored the reasons behind their language choice and use in the classrooms. For example, playgroup and nursery teachers explained that they used Hindi and Marathi because children were more comfortable with these languages. Similarly, Deepa (Junior KG teacher) acknowledged that children were developing their English use, and it was for this reason that she interspersed Hindi and Marathi into her classroom instruction, noting ‘English is a language which they’ve started to learn so that’s why we use their languages to help them understand.’ Despite this view, in the ensuing discussion, Deepa later reiterated the importance of English-medium instruction, later clarifying: They have come to learn English only, this is an English medium school. So they have to learn English, no? So why teach in the other languages. It is only for their entertainment we use Hindi and Marathi… they know that language already so they are very happy when we sing the songs in their language.

Similarly, Ankita (Senior KG teacher) described some of the external pressures that teachers experienced, noting that the families/caregivers of

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the children expected teachers to equip children with English language skills: But while taking admission, na, parents are asking first only ‘Ye English medium school hey na? English me paradthey na?’ [This is an English medium school, isn’t it? They will study in English, won’t they?] Their first question is that… So English is compulsory. Though it is a Maharashtrian state but Marathi is the local language, compulsory it is now. But English also is very, very important.

There was widespread agreement with Ankita’s sentiment throughout the group discussion. Some teachers expressed the belief that if English was not taught early (i.e. in prior-to-school settings), this would mean that children would be ‘robbed’ of the opportunity to improve their life chances. At times, teachers indicated that this was because English provided a ‘currency’ that was key to children (particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds) being able to enter (and make it through) the educational system—thus enabling them to access opportunities for social mobility. For example, Harshita (Junior KG teacher), explained why English was a necessary skill that children would need to succeed, citing globalising, socio-economic and technological forces as key reasons for English language learning: English is the language of computers actually… We are living in the era of computers that is why we have to speak and we have to learn in English so our children have to learn English. It was primarily the English-speaking teachers who advocated for the use and importance of English. Whilst there was a level of agreement amongst the eleven teachers, some ideas were challenged by the playgroup and nursery teachers, who were themselves less confident English-speakers. For example, Indira (Nursery teacher) and Neha (Playgroup teacher) challenged Harshita’s argument, raising the following counterpoints: No, Hindi and Marathi also comes on the computer. For your job you need Hindi and Marathi, don’t you, you can’t do without them. You need to know them first. So you need Hindi and Marathi first then after that you can learn English (Indira)

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When you know Marathi the meaning of some words in English are also better. You should know some words in Marathi so that [you know] your words in English, otherwise you say ‘elle peela, uska aaka’ [indicating poorly spoken words] (Neha).

As these snippets indicate, teachers held differing views of the roles of languages. Though there was a consensus that English was necessary for children, some teachers (particularly those who primarily used Marathi and Hindi and were therefore given lower status in the hierarchy of teaching) felt that Marathi and Hindi were important to learn before English, thus reflecting the importance of English not being taught at the cost of local languages (we discuss multilingual possibilities for learning English later on in the chapter). Reflecting on the pedagogical practices used in the setting, observations and focus groups revealed several practices of technical skillteaching, and what could be called ‘teaching to the test’ approaches that reflect a prescribed and narrow syllabus. For example, as a discussion with Ankita (Senior KG teacher) revealed: Sanobia: Okay, and the syllabus, how do you decide what to put in the syllabus every month? How do you decide what to do because like this month I saw certain standing line letters? Ankita: Because there are 24, 26 alphabets are there no, so each month four, four for nursery. Sanobia: But is it just ABCD EFGH? Ankita: Yes but not starting from ABCD only. We are starting with the standing and sleeping line words. Easy ones. I F H T L. We are starting with that and at last the A will come. Sanobia: Oh okay, and do you think the children and the teachers understand why you have selected those? Ankita: Ya, ya I told them and parents also we told them because before some are asking why you are not starting with A. So I explained to them, I told them see that children have just started learning, so standing and sleeping lines are easy so we are starting with those alphabets.

Concurrently, teachers revealed a lack of professional autonomy, indicating that they were sometimes dissuaded from using more play-based

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learning approaches. For example, Deepa (Junior KG teacher) suggested letting children play in the rain, using puppets, or showing children the balloon seller in the local complex—however, these were considered impractical approaches for teaching children and were therefore not implemented. For several complex reasons, it is evident that there is a culture of compliance and a clear hierarchy of teachers in this setting (Palkhiwala in preparation), which meant that there was a high level of obedience to authority. This positional power resulted in an understanding that knowledge and instructions are transferred in a top-down manner (from the perceived ‘more knowledgeable’ to the ‘less knowledgeable’). This complicated dynamic has implications for teachers who feel the need to obey managers, and yet who also hold ultimate responsibility for children’s outcomes. The lack of access to research and support for engaging with Multilingual Education (MLE) for teachers is particularly problematic in a context where teachers are restricted from engaging in creative pedagogical practices and must instead focus on technical skills for language learning, partly due to pressures faced from leaders, families/caregivers and donors. Whilst additional data from the broader study explores the nuances of language in relation to pedagogy and reflection in this setting, this chapter focuses on this sub-set of the data, covering two key themes emerging from teachers’ perspectives which we unpack in subsequent sections: 1. Teaching children English as early as possible is necessary for future success. 2. English-medium instruction for young children is important.

8

English as an Antidote? Teaching Children English as Early as Possible is Necessary for Future Success

Some research indicates that in India, English fluency increases the ‘hourly wages of men by 34%, which is as much as the return to completing secondary school and half as much as the return to

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completing a Bachelor’s degree’ (Azam et al. 2013, 1). Drawing on an analysis of public schools in West Bengal, Chakraborty and Bakshi (2016, 1) similarly report that a ‘10% lower probability of learning English in primary schools leads to a decline in weekly wages by 8%. On average, this implies 26% lower wages for cohorts exposed to the policy change’ (that abolished English in public primary schools). However, some research also shows that it is difficult to separate the benefits of English language learning from other socio-economic variables such as ‘gender, sector, class and location’ (Erling 2014, 3). Erling (2014) also notes that ‘the benefits of education may not be equalising, particularly in India. Moreover, large numbers of school children in South Asia are not experiencing education at levels that will allow them to benefit economically. Therefore, without provision of quality education and without targeting the long-embedded inequalities in terms of gender, caste, etc., education is not likely to provide disadvantaged individuals with the resources that they need to catch up’ (p. 3). Despite this, some NGOs and teachers aim to support children with learning English in the early years in an attempt to address inequalities of gender, caste and class. However, as noted earlier, there is clear evidence pointing to the importance of local language instruction (UNICEF 2016). Despite this, English language learning ECECD programmes appear to play in to discourses that position English language learning as an almost clinical and financial ‘cure’ for social inequities—where a large ‘dosage’ of English language learning acts as a form of early intervention (or investment) that ought to ‘immunise’ or enable children to pass through an unequal, fragmented and exclusionary education system, unscathed. Most teachers in this study emphasised the importance of young children learning English listening and speaking as early as possible, believing this would be the best ‘antidote’ to enable children to access future educational opportunities. On the whole, high-quality English-medium schooling appears to remain a privilege of middle or upper classes—since access to highquality English-medium education is almost exclusively reserved for those attending higher-fee-paying schools (Kalyanpur 2020). Conversely, quality education (public, private, English-medium or otherwise) still remains inequitable and inaccessible for the most marginalised groups

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and the lowest income earners (Woodhead et al. 2013). As Mohanty explains, there are four ‘tiers’ to the language hierarchy in India’s education system, with the ‘the privileged social class educated in high-cost English-medium schools’ (2006, 277) at the top, followed by ‘the less privileged social class educated in low-cost English-medium schools’ (277), then ‘the under-privileged class educated in the regional language (also the Mother Tongue) medium schools’ (277), to finally, the ‘least privileged stratum, who are forced to be schooled in the medium of a regional language other than their home language’ (277). One of the issues with this system is that the fractured nature of provision leads to the increasing ‘ghettoisation’ of public schools (Woodhead et al. 2013). That is, the mixed nature of public–private provision—partly justified by the discourse of ‘consumer choice’—ensures that public education systems remain under-funded and under-resourced (Hill and Kumar 2012). Such a system not only ensures that schooling reinforces traditional socio-economic inequities and cultural divisions (Woodhead et al. 2013), it also perpetuates the ‘double divide’ through unequal access to linguistic capital. When reduced to a pragmatic question, this could understandably lead to teachers and NGOs believing that access to high-quality English education is the problem, and that surely providing such access through NGOs is a viable solution. However, even where children from socio-economically disadvantaged and lower-caste backgrounds are able to access English-medium education, this remains problematic, as Kalyanpur explains, ‘government-mandated reservation of 25 percent seats in private schools for children from socio-economically marginalized communities to ensure access of education resulted in many children… [being] subjected to overt discrimination by teachers who viewed them as “slow learners” or “unteachable”’ (301). This leads Kalyanpur to conclude that ‘few LFP students obtain in actuality the improved quality of life to which they aspire’ (2020, 302). Similarly, from a critical perspective, one of the key reasons why the ‘English as a cure’ mentality is problematic is because children—rather than inequitable, piecemeal education systems and approaches—are positioned as the ones in need of ‘fixing’ (Darder et al. 2009; McLaren

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2003). Meanwhile, education systems (riddled as they are with problems) continue to be updated under neoliberal paradigms that perpetuate inequities (Kalyanpur 2020). As noted above, this leads us to ask if this development model of ‘dosing’ younger and younger learners with higher and higher amounts of English is the antidote to inequality in a system that is designed to be unequal, or, if English language learning is simply another Trojan horse that raises false hopes for future success, in turn leading learners to believe that they are somehow deficit if they do not ‘make it through’ the system (Kalyanpur 2020).

9

English-Medium Instruction for Young Children is Important

Whilst several scholars reaffirm that learning in the Mother Tongue supports children’s linguistic rights (Mohanty 2017; UNICEF 2016), Sharma argues that ‘only focusing on the linguistic rights of minorities and trying to elevate the status of their languages, will not, necessarily or automatically, raise their socioeconomic status’ (2020, 2). Following this line of thought, Vaish (2005) concludes that ‘in the twenty-first century when India is fast globalizing and urbanising, English is a language of decolonisation’ (189). Sharma (2020) affirms this view, indicating that English-medium instruction has the potential to enable children to overcome socio-economic deprivation. This, in turn, has the potential to lead to marginalised and disadvantaged groups ‘talking back’ to, and transforming, situations of oppression by drawing on their own lived experiences (hooks 1989). However, as hooks points out, ‘language is also a place of struggle’ (1989, 28). Others have highlighted how the Indian system of education (including NGOs that ‘feed into’ the system) impose colonial and modernist ideas that condition individuals into a mindset of economism (that is, collapsing the social, political, cultural into the economic) (Fielding and Moss 2012; Neusiedl 2021). In this way, broader education systems continue to perpetuate singular (Western) schools of thought where the purpose of education is about economic livelihoods, or what Jain (2021) has called deadlihoods (since current

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education systems continue to lead to the unsustainable destruction of the planet’s resources). Thus, the privileging of English-medium instruction over local languages and approaches removes the possibility for alternative schools of thought that emphasise culturally situated (in this case, Indo-centric) ways of thinking, being and doing. In opposition to these ideas and reaffirming the perceived power and privilege afforded to English, the teachers in this study emphasised the importance of children engaging in English-medium instruction, suggesting, like Sharma (2020), that this was crucial to improve a child’s life chances for social mobility and economic prosperity. Teachers rationalised this sentiment by suggesting that English was a universal language as it was the ‘language of computers’ and was therefore necessary for children to understand in order for them to ‘get a good job’ further down the line. Such views reflect not only concern for children’s future earning capacity, but also broader economic concerns, as English proficiency is considered to increase the country’s capacity for competing in global markets (Skutnabb-Kangas et al. 2009). This has led Phillipson (2009) to question the role of English as a lingua franca or indeed, a lingua frankensteinia in perpetuating ‘linguistic neo-imperialism’ and, arguably, the swallowing of alternative ways of thinking, being and doing. Such a perspective is evidenced in this study as some teachers suggested that the use of Hindi and Marathi was simply ‘for children’s entertainment’, implying that the learning of Hindi and Marathi was not useful in supporting children in a globalised market economy. Vaish echoes elements of these teachers’ assertions, suggesting that ‘opposing globalisation unconditionally’ would be counterproductive since ‘the real issue is the equitable distribution of globalisation’s benefits’ (2005, 202), and that therefore, not teaching learners English reproduces the status quo and results in gate-keeping that limits access to social or cultural capital. Such views have implications for the continued push down of English language learning for children at younger and younger ages and stages of learning and development. Vaish (2005) goes on to suggest that in India, the way in which English is taught, only adds to (rather than diminishing) Indigenous languages and further enables social mobility. In contrast, Jhingran, also writing from the Indian context, indicates that ‘when children are forced to study through

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a language they cannot fully understand… they face a serious learning disadvantage that can stunt their cognitive development and adversely affect their self-esteem and self-confidence for life’ (2009, 263). In this highly fragmented system, English-language learning appears to be a question of either-or—that is, where children either learn in English or in their Mother Tongue or Regional language (Mohanty, 2010). Sharma (2020) questions why there is a need for such either-or thinking when policy documents reflect the rhetoric of multilingualism. However, there appears to be a significant gap between rhetoric and reality, since: There is very limited teacher education for the early years on India, with the few teachers who do attain a degree entering elite private institutions. Due to the limited teacher training and ongoing professional development, teachers are also not supported in the implementation of multilingualism in their classrooms, but are rather expected to teach through trial and error. Bilingual or multilingual education is thought of only as a system in which multiple languages form part of the curriculum (Mohanty 2010, 77).

This is particularly relevant when thinking about the role of NGOs running early language programmes, as children (aged 2–9) appear to develop multilingual functioning through incremental processes of multilingual socialisation (Mohanty 2010). Recent research on Multilingual Education (MLE) programmes in India highlight the possibilities for ‘true multilingualism’ as an avenue for inclusion for children from disadvantaged backgrounds in the Indian context (Das 2021). For example, Mohanty discusses the benefits of MLE programmes in India, citing outcomes such as: ‘positive effects on classroom achievement, school attendance and participation, and teacher and community attitudes’ (2019, 247). However, as information on MLE in India is not widespread, this leads most NGOs and teachers to teach in English whilst reverting to limited and natural approaches to supplement communication, such as gestures and body language in order to bridge linguistic divides. Thus, there is a need for greater teacher education and training for educators in NGOs, ECECD settings

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and schools for true multilingualism, particularly given the forthcoming implementation of the new National Education Policy.

10

Revisiting the Two Key Arguments

There are many complexities underpinning the arguments and counterarguments we have raised above. Teachers in NGOs are often positioned in difficult situations whilst attempting to actualise broader goals (such as supporting equitable outcomes and opportunities for children). Examining the two central arguments made by teachers (that early English language learning and English-medium instruction are necessary for future success), and repositioning them as answerable questions, we might ask: 1. Do we need to teach English as early as possible to ensure future success? 2. Do teachers need to teach in English-medium instruction for young children? Our (over)simplified answer to both of these questions is no. Above and beyond ideological and symbolic arguments, Sonntag explains: ‘whether dissemination of English language skills can overcome exclusion, in India as well as elsewhere, is debated by language policy experts’ (2016, 478). Whilst some writers argue for the further constraint of English language learning, others highlight the need for genuinely multilingual approaches to English language acquisition through education systems and policies (Skutnabb-Kangas et al. 2009). NGOs, as ‘third sector’ organisations working both within and outside education systems, are particularly wellplaced to engage with researchers and in experimental programmes that support MLE (Mohanty 2019). Whilst research demonstrates that there is a correlation between English language proficiency and economic prosperity, research has also demonstrated the importance and value of Mother Tongue instruction (UNICEF 2016). Additionally, further research is needed to see if ECECD programmes run by NGOs result in socio-economic benefits in

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the long-term. Therefore, the question of whether early English-medium instruction affords future success for those who only receive early level English-medium instruction prior to school through an NGO, and how this ‘success’ is defined, remains pertinent. This is a complex question for teachers who are working in the ‘here and now’ as awaiting the results of such research seems at best, impractical, and at worst, unethical. However, a key consideration may be for NGOs to support teachers to access current research (including work written in English), resources and training on how to teach English as an additional language, and to limit academic gate-keeping (Vaish 2005) such that teachers and NGOs are not forced to make uninformed decisions about best practices, in terms of pedagogy and medium of instruction. Finally, some scholars have advocated for the importance of learning English, emphasising technical aspects of language acquisition as being beneficial to the development of skills such as code-breaking, translating and copying (Vaish 2005). However, other critical and postcolonial writers have argued that such approaches lead to the dehumanisation, domestification and massification of learners—particularly for oppressed groups (Freire 1970). This leads us to question the validity of arguments that such an approach to teaching English can enable English to be a language of decolonisation. We recognise that the situation of education is rarely uniform, and that ‘bottom-up’ alternatives to ‘top-down’ banking approaches exist in seeming abundance. However, in settings where teachers are forced to operate within cultures of compliance and hierarchy that pre-determine the need for technical learning of English, and which simultaneously perpetuate responsibilisation, the ethical and political ‘ends’ of English as a language of decolonisation appear to be somewhat at odds with the ‘means’ of English language learning.

11

Conclusion

India is a linguistically diverse context, in which many children develop multilingual functioning, however, there is also a clear hierarchy with English playing a particularly prominent (and some have argued, problematic) role in this linguistic pecking order (Mohanty and Panda 2017).

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In this chapter we have explored the colonial and capitalist origins of postcolonial politics of the English language in the Indian context. In doing so, we have unpacked arguments that the education system in India perpetuates a ‘double divide’ where English continues to be privileged. We subsequently shared the perspectives of teachers in an ECECD programme focused on developing the ‘linguistic capital’ of children, before exploring and problematising two central arguments: (1) teaching children English as early as possible is necessary, and (2) English-medium instruction for young children is important. In exploring the points and counterpoints for teaching English through ECECD programmes run by NGOs we have questioned, not only if English is the ‘antidote’ to social inequity, but also if how NGOs and education systems are currently teaching English to meet broader goals, such as the SDGs, and what this means for teachers who are caught ‘between a rock and hard place’ between policy, practice and the demands of stakeholders with whom they work. We advocate for greater access to research and information on MLE for NGOs and teachers in order to support the inclusion and flourishing of young children from disadvantaged communities, such as children from slum communities. Acknowledgements We would like to thank the teachers from the NGO who gave their time and insights for this study.

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9 The Place of a Lingua Franca in Development Practice: The Case of Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea Catherine Levy

1

Introduction

The chapter illustrates the importance of careful consideration of languages to be used in development projects and argues for Tok Pisin, Papua New Guinea’s language of wider communication, as the language of choice in development projects. Tok Pisin is one of the three official languages of Papua New Guinea, alongside English and Hiri Motu. English is, of course, an international language, and the language used by donor countries in development projects in PNG. However, it is important that development practitioners include Tok Pisin in project design and practices, and understand its importance within PNG, to ensure that there is optimal intercultural understanding and reciprocal sharing of information. C. Levy (B) Birkdale, QLD, Australia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Hill and F. K. Ameka (eds.), Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1_9

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Development practitioners in PNG should develop some level of communicative competence in Tok Pisin. Developing communicative skills in Tok Pisin is made easier by the fact that Tok Pisin can be rather easily learned by outsiders, particularly English speakers, as English is the lexifier language, that is, the language from which much of Tok Pisin’s vocabulary has developed. This shared vocabulary can also be a challenge because the meaning of Tok Pisin and English words is not necessarily identical. Many English/Tok Pisin ‘false friends’ can jeopardise mutual understanding. For example, at an HIV and Aids awareness programme using drama in rural communities, the word tieta ‘theatre’ had been used to refer to a drama. Later, in rural highlands areas, we realised there was confusion by the audience. The communities there associated tieta ‘theatre’ with a surgery context at their local hospital, and preferred the use of the word ‘drama’. The choice of Tok Pisin in development work acknowledges PNG’s multilingual and multicultural context. There are 840 living languages in PNG (Eberhard et al. 2021). Tok Pisin is the first language of over half-a-million of PNG’s nine million people (World Population Review 2021) and is spoken by approximately two thirds of them (RedmanMacLaren et al. 2019). Tok Pisin is the language with the capacity to reach large audiences. As a young country of astounding cultural and linguistic diversity, PNG is still identifying and consolidating elements of national unity. Hence Tok Pisin plays a part in PNG’s intrinsic national identity. The chapter is organised in the following way: in Sect. 2, the relationship between language choice and the aims of development work is discussed from a personal perspective. Section 3 provides some historical context to the development of Tok Pisin and its role in PNG identity. Section 4 describes examples of the impact of the choice of Tok Pisin in development projects. Section 5 discusses the benefits of choosing Tok Pisin in various development projects. Section 6 discusses the challenges created by using English only in development projects. Section 7 offers a conclusion to the discussion.

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Language Choice and Aims of Development Work—A Personal Reflection

In development work, the language we use reflects the principles that underpin our approach to the project. When our principles are respect, trust, communication, and participation, we choose the language that will foster the inclusion of all partners. Bearth (2013) sees ‘communicative sustainability’ as the fourth dimension of development, which serves as an umbrella to the other three: social, environmental, and economic. Language choice is integral to the notion of communicative sustainability. In his view, the test of the right language choice is that community members can reproduce the content (i.e., of the programme, of the training) using their own words, and achieving intra-community understanding. His wording appears particularly suitable to describe the impact of the choice of a local language: Inversion of the default language hierarchy, as we might call the result of this process, was the decisive factor in enabling the population and its leaders to assimilate external information completely foreign to their thinking, transforming it into comprehensively negotiated working knowledge of their own. (Bearth 2013, 40)

Paradoxically, it is a counterexample of such views that fuelled my reflections on language choice. In 2005, as I started development work, I met missionaries and development workers, and was immediately struck by the difference in cultural sensitivity between those who had learned Tok Pisin (often as an organic part of their training, such as Lutheran missionaries), and those who had not. One anecdote stays with me to illustrate how the choice of language can jeopardise genuine development efforts. At that time, the PNG AIDS Council, based in Port Moresby, was presenting workshops in urban centres, with the laudable intention of spreading life-saving information to rural populations. The provincial centre of Madang hosted such a workshop, and local women’s groups’ representatives were invited to listen and learn from presentations, which were well documented and

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supported by sophisticated PowerPoints. All interaction was in English, and there was no provision for interpreters in the room. At a time where feelings of fear and urgency were associated with the epidemic’s progress, I witnessed the distress of participants who, outside the meeting room, were expressing anguish at their perceived inadequacy. They had come hoping to gather information that would potentially save lives in their communities, and felt like utter failures because they did not speak enough English, and the use of any other language appeared to be non-negotiable. As for the (non-PNG) presenters, whom I met later in Port Moresby, they were blissfully unaware of this impact on the participants, and were congratulating themselves on the number of workshops organised, rather than on their impact. This example remains with me, and underlines the importance of language choice for the success of an initiative. In the context of the HIV and AIDS awareness sessions with the Madang women, the same presentation in Tok Pisin would have supported the communities’ capacity to face the epidemic, and given them the confidence to know they were equipped to do so. The view that local languages must be included more in development work has been discussed in depth, particularly in African context by Djite (2008), Romaine (2019), and by Bamgbose, who refers to ‘language as a missing link’ (Bamgbose 2014, 100). Prah’s arguments for mutual understanding and inclusion, and larger recognition of local multilingualism resonate throughout this chapter: Ultimately, development should mean the steady improvement and optimization of the quality of life for increasingly broader sections of the population; that the existential options and the ability for people to choose freely their life-routes and circumstances are steadily augmented. (Prah 2012, 2)

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Why Choose Tok Pisin in PNG: The Place of Tok Pisin in PNG Identity

Tok Pisin is a Melanesian Pidgin, along with Solomon Islands’ Pijin, and Bislama in Vanuatu. All three can be described as expanded pidgins, as they have become more lexically and grammatically complex over time, and are the first languages of some speakers, often those living in urban centres (Siegel 2005). Tok Pisin, like the other Melanesian Pidgins, is an English-lexifier language, but its substrate languages are the numerous Oceanic Austronesian languages of the Pacific islands (Foley 2006), that is, while the vocabulary has developed from English, particularly in the last few decades, the grammar follows the patterns of one family of languages of the Pacific: Oceanic Austronesian. Melanesian Pidgin developed as a trade and contact language in the Pacific. Map 24 of Wurm et al.’s Language Atlas of the Pacific (1981) identifies the contexts in which pidgins and creoles spoken in the region have developed, today and in the past: coconut plantations in the New Guinea islands, sugar cane plantations in Queensland, harvesting of beche de mer (hence the name Bislama) in Vanuatu (Crowley 1990), and Solomons Pijin. The map features, among others, the German Pidgin developed as a lingua franca in Rabaul’s coconut plantations (Maitz and Volker 2017), and a now-extinct Japanese Pidgin in Bougainville, developed during the Japanese occupation during World War 2. Such examples illustrate how pidgins have developed as they were needed, and today’s Tok Pisin is no exception. On average, people over 25 have 4.7 years of education (UNDP 2020; see also Pamphilon this volume). This is relevant for the choice of language used in development projects. Such a large proportion of the population speaks or understands Tok Pisin that its use promotes the inclusion of participants at all levels, and crucially, at a grassroots level. In using Tok Pisin, we ensure that most participants share a mutual understanding, and so can fully understand the content, participate in its elaboration, and reproduce it to share with their community peers, but also to make informed decisions (see Caffery et al. this volume). Tok Pisin is taught in schools in the three introductory years of education. It is used in churches, on the radio, on TV, in Parliamentary

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debates, and on the internet. It has its own newspaper, the Wantok, and its poets, including Steven Winduo (https://www.poetryfoundation. org/poets/steven-edmund-winduo). Inside PNG, the use of Tok Pisin stretches across a language continuum, that goes from local language only, to English only. To this day, a couple of days’ walk outside of town might be enough to bring one into contact with community members speaking only their local language. Fieldwork evaluating HIV and AIDS awareness in parts of the Jimi Valley (Western Highlands Province) (Levy 2007, 2008), and researching the population’s knowledge about the referendum process in Bougainville in 2015 and 2019 (Thomas, Levy, Vetunawa and Rawstorne 2017), for instance, required the assistance of a Tok Pisin or Tok Ples (local language) translator for the interviews.1 Between both ends of this geographic and linguistic spectrum, we encounter the large majority of Papua New Guineans, who code-switch, to varying degrees, between Tok Pisin, English, and /or their parents’ language(s). Tok Pisin, like English, continues to change as new technology arrives. Mobile phones, for example, have brought about innovation and neologisms in Tok Pisin (King 2014). Handman (2013) illustrates Tok Pisin’s dynamic character through its use in text messaging. These developments are reassuring as to the good health of Tok Pisin as an independent language, and help dispel apprehension by some people that it might lose its identity and become merely anglicised: Overall, Tok Pisin is not being invaded or displaced, but rather becoming richer from the introduction of new technology and the words and concepts needed to talk about it. (King 2014, 152)

The rapid expansion of Tok Pisin has been shaped alongside its social importance as a language of upward mobility, in competition with English. Milroy (2010) reflects on this aspect and cites Sankoff (1983) on the concept of a hierarchy of languages (see also Bearth’s (2013) discussion of default language hierarchy): 1 At the other end of the spectrum are Papua New Guineans who speak English exclusively. They often belong to families where English is the first language, perhaps because one parent is a native English speaker and/or because they have been educated overseas—in Australia.

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In pre-colonial Papua New Guinea (…), great linguistic diversity (…) did not seem to be associated with the notion that one ‘language’ or ‘dialect’ was in any sense better than another (…) The socially symmetrical relationship of dialects and languages in Papua New Guinea changed with the growing influence of the colonial power. First, the local lingua franca, Tok Pisin, and then English came to be viewed as special or superior varieties. (Sankoff 1983 cited in Milroy 2010)

In PNG, not everybody speaks nor understands English. As an official language and a language of education, English is a language of prestige, but not the language that can reach the largest number of people. By contrast, Tok Pisin plays two complementary roles: a practical role and, equally important, a symbolic one, as I develop below. PNG is a country proud of its linguistic and cultural diversity. But 800+ languages and cultures hardly create one national identity. Over time, since Independence in 1975, Papua New Guineans have found, or created, an echo of the wantok (literally: one talk) system by raising the status of Tok Pisin. Papua New Guinea has traditionally thrived on the concept of wantok, which points to relationships of closeness and trust between speakers of the same language. Nanau (2011) describes the historical and current importance of a concept that has been traditionally part of Melanesian cultures, a long time before the word wantok itself was coined as part of the development of Melanesian Pidgin. Originally, wantok referred to the relationship between speakers of the same language, conveying mutual privileges and responsibilities. The times of foreign contacts saw the development of a lingua franca in PNG, Solomons, and Vanuatu, called Melanesian Pidgin, in parallel to the development of a regional identity, forming an ‘overarching wantok identity’ (Nanau 2011, 5). Melanesian Pidgin further evolved in PNG Tok Pisin, Solomons Pijin (Jourdan and Angeli 2021), and Vanuatu Bislama (Crowley 1990). Within PNG, Tok Pisin has become the local language, unifying Papua New Guineans and representing part of their national identity. Tok Pisin, then, is the most appropriate language choice for development work at the community level in Papua New Guinea, and therefore, must also have a place in development practices.

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Tok Pisin in Development Practices

My experience in development work is that, once Tok Pisin has been chosen as the language suited to foster understanding and participation, we then choose the words and the processes to share these words. Tok Pisin should be present in each stage of the programme: to explain and negotiate the aims of project; in all interactions between the community and development practitioners: design and pilot of research instruments, workshop outlines, interviews, and focus groups; and after analysis, a Tok Pisin version of the results gives the community access to the research results. The processes used to include Tok Pisin in development projects could follow this template: 1. The initial focus on the introductory steps and documents that outline the project and its aims. 2. Relevant concepts, whether in health, human rights, or the environment, defined and translated into Tok Pisin. 3. An educational component to follow, during which, the meaning of concepts and suitable Tok Pisin translations are shared and developed. 4. The Tok Pisin terms are then used consistently until they become familiar to their audience and part of their working vocabulary. An example of this process is the initial discussion I had at the start of a session on financial literacy, where it was important that all participants would have a clear understanding of the meaning of ‘budget’. The original introduction read: Develop a realistic budget, looking at where you can save on costs. So, you will make a good, accurate budget, and you will follow it precisely. And you will see where you can save money.

As our participants may be unsure of the meaning of ‘budget’, we changed the first sentence as follows:

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In English, the word ‘budget’ refers to all the money you will need for your project, from the start to the end. In Tok Pisin, we will write baset .

We then translated the introduction into Tok Pisin2 :

By adding the explanation of the term ‘budget’, we made sure that all participants could take part in the discussion and reflection, armed with a full understanding of the key concept ‘budget’, and the way it was used in the workshop.

The Place of Glossaries The definition of key concepts and the choice of Tok Pisin words to express them can be effectively supported by a glossary of terms to be reviewed and discussed by the participants and communities, and development practitioners (see Caffery et al. this volume). An example of developing glossary terms is described below. It was used in a pamphlet 2

Leipzig Glossing Rules are followed for the abbreviations of grammatical terms. For example: 3sg.sbj ‘3rd person subject’. See https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/pdf/Glossing-Rules.pdf.

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explaining the principles of a WaSH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) intervention, aimed at sharing sanitation and hygiene principles with the community. The original text read: ‘WaSH. What is WaSH? WaSH is Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene’. A word-for-word translation into Tok Pisin would have been: WaSH em wanem? WaSH em i wara, sanitesin na haisin. Despite the translations, the words ‘sanitation’ and ‘hygiene’ may not have been clearly understood. Consequently, we developed a translation starting with definitions of the three key concepts: ‘water’, ‘sanitation’, and ‘hygiene’.

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In both the financial and sanitation contexts, the participants could take part in the discussion with a satisfactory understanding of the key concepts. This approach can and should be used for discussions around any development issues, whether human rights, gender issues, or health and environment. By contrast, the level of confusion and misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines on social media may have been exacerbated in PNG by the lack of adequate translations of key terms. Fox (2021) uses examples from attitudes among the PNG population towards COVID19 understanding and vaccination, to highlight the correlation between relevant information and trust in concepts and procedures. In the same way, an English-Tok Pisin glossary providing accurate definitions of key environmental concepts is urgently needed to help grassroot communities make sense of discussions about the environment and climate crisis, and choices being made, for example, about energy provision in their country. In many places, communities will not know what the English word ‘sustainable’ means, even though their traditional practices may reflect this concept. The discussions about the push for a coal mine in Gulf Province and a coal-powered station in Morobe (Jubilee Australia n.d.) should be based on a sound understanding of terms such as ‘sustainable’, ‘fossil fuel’, ‘green energy’ and ‘coal’. For any programme, it is important that participants have a complete understanding of the process they are engaging with, whether it is learning skills or acquiring new knowledge, so that the content can be further shared with the community and used by all. Evaluation activities serve to verify that concepts have been understood and integrated. For instance, have the participants rephrased key concepts in their own words? Have they illustrated them through role plays? Tok Pisin can be used in development programmes for improved results in the following ways: 1. In workshops, using the language spoken and understood by participants, to ensure they are not spoken at, but with, in a spirit of exchange and respect.

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2. Translating and piloting research instruments in Tok Pisin in a participatory way, taking the participants’ feedback into account, and adapting the translation where needed. 3. Translating awareness material through ‘inclusive translations’ that make concepts explicit—this includes creating a glossary that paraphrases the concepts in Tok Pisin, then consistently uses this vocabulary. 4. Translating the findings, or at least, the relevant parts of the findings. This is crucial when the next step is for participants to take decisions and make informed choices, particularly involving community and third party. The current debate about the consequences of allowing new mines in the country might be a good example.

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Benefits of Choosing Tok Pisin in Development Projects

Tok Pisin can be used in different stages of a project. The examples described here have been taken from personal participation in projects as a researcher, trainer, and translator.

Tok Pisin as Middle Language: Examples from Linguistic Research and from HIV and AIDS Awareness In PNG, Tok Pisin is an effective middle language when one is needed between a local language and English. Academic linguistic research. During linguistic fieldwork for the description of the Awar language (Lower Ramu family, Madang Province) (Levy 2002), Tok Pisin was the obvious middle language between the Tok Ples, Awar, and English, as local informants only spoke Awar and Tok Pisin. All in-depth discussions took place in Tok Pisin, allowing for reliable communication required for accurate linguistic description. The three main outputs were:

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1. The agreement on an alphabet for Awar, based on the language relevant sound system; 2. The creation of neologisms for the geometry terms required as part of the elementary school curriculum; and 3. Awar/Tok Pisin/English dictionary, required prior to the start of their elementary school in Awar. Linguistics for development work. In 2005, I developed HIV and AIDS awareness material in the Mareng language of PNG Highlands (Levy 2008). A baseline study in the Jimi Valley (Western Highlands Province) established that the local Mareng language was the first language, and for many, the only one for reliable communication in the valley. The drama programme developed for HIV and AIDS awareness was entirely in the local language, except for interaction with the (Morobe) trainer, which was in Tok Pisin. As a complementary initiative meant to reinforce the newly acquired knowledge, it was decided to create printed educational material on Basic Facts about HIV and AIDS in Mareng language. For this, a group of community members agreed on key messages in Tok Pisin. We then proceeded, using the alphabet previously established by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), to translate the information on HIV and AIDS. One sentence at a time, the group would discuss the best translation, then dictate it to me. I would write it on the blackboard as I heard them say it, then read it back to them, and keep correcting it until they were satisfied that my pronunciation reflected the orthography. The exercise was completed with the creation of posters, slogans, and photos around the theme (for example, ‘All together against HIV’, ‘Protect yourself ’, ‘Respect women’). The printed documents, pamphlets, and posters, with slogans and photos, were then distributed in the Mareng villages along the valley. The impact was truly inspiring: the literate, often younger, community members would read to older or nonliterate ones, all equally thrilled to see their own language in writing. The posters were displayed as openly as possible in the local public places available: church, school, aid post. The villagers’ sense of ownership prompted in-depth conversations on the topic, hence disseminating the

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information as hoped. Within this project, Tok Pisin played an important, but non-intrusive part as a middle language, culturally acceptable enough to contribute to the participatory process.

Inclusive Translations Tok Pisin translations may need to be adjusted in different locations, as there are several varieties of Tok Pisin. Three regional varieties of Tok Pisin are generally agreed upon: the Highlands, Momase (North coast), and Islands (New Ireland and New Britain provinces, Manus) varieties. In Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea’s capital, increased English fluency equates to increased employment opportunities. In Port Moresby, many varieties of Tok Pisin coexist and blend, spoken by migrants from all parts of PNG, who rub shoulders at work, at school, at church. Tok Pisin, as spoken in Port Moresby, can be described as a fourth variety, and is closer to English (Devette-Chee 2011). This last variety of Tok Pisin has developed among the population working in an English-speaking environment, possibly in contact with Westerners, and at a level of higher literacy associated with the use of technical, legal, economic, or political vocabulary. It could be described as ‘Expensive Tok Pisin’, and, like the ‘Expensive English’ referred to by Caffery and Hill (2019), it is not understood by all Papua New Guineans, and can be alienating when used in rural contexts. An example of Port Moresby Tok Pisin comes from a PNG colleague’s translations of the expression ‘meeting expectations’: at a workshop with rural participants, it became inapim tingting bilong mi ‘satisfy my thinking’, but it was mitim ekspektesin ‘meeting expectation’ with another group in Port Moresby. The speaker consciously made a choice according to their environment, making sure to reach the different audiences. Translation of articles on the PNG economy: As part of a team translating sophisticated economic ideas, I was involved in translating articles on the PNG economy. The challenge was to make the concepts understood, and the discussions about them accessible to non-economists.

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To translate these concepts, we followed the method that the economists explained to us: the concepts were broken down into simpler concepts, expressed in familiar (enough) notions and images, and put into simpler words and sentences. As an example, in an article on PNG’s economy (PNG Economics n.d.), the author discusses ‘excess trapped liquidity’, which he explained as ‘when a businesses’ money is trapped in PNG because of exchange rates shortages’. We endeavoured to convey the concept as:

Like examples (1) and (2), this exercise presented the double challenge of introducing concepts and the words to designate them. The Tok Pisin translations were requested by the publishing organisation to enlarge the readership of economic articles. It could be argued that people who understand economics have a level of education that makes the Tok Pisin translation redundant. A counter-argument is that there is no need for formal education to understand economic concepts if they are explained in the appropriate language. Economic concepts belong to the area of financial literacy. The goal of the translation was to promote understanding of economic concepts affecting the population’s daily life, even when the reader had not had access to formal education.

Tok Pisin in Project Evaluation Tok Pisin is an important component of project evaluation in Papua New Guinea. In 2004, we began annual evaluations for the Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) Tokaut AIDS programme in remote areas of Western Highlands, Madang, and Sepik Provinces. Tok Pisin was the language

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used between community members and the evaluation team. It must be noted that some members of the community did not speak Tok Pisin. Some older men and woman, and middle-aged women spoke their local Mareng language only. Yet they were comfortable with Tok Pisin as they recognised it as part of their community life, and they could rely on local interpreters. The evaluation team’s use of Tok Pisin was perceived as taking a step in the direction of the community, to meet them on their own ground. Initially, some people were intimidated by my appearance as a white woman (most children and quite a few women had never seen a white person). Speaking Tok Pisin ensured that interviewees felt comfortable to speak freely, without hesitation, expressing themselves in their own words. Tok Pisin terms for the same English phrases varied in different locations, leading us to consider whether the Tok Pisin phrases reflected differences in perceptions and practices. For example, when talking about domestic violence, the Jimis would use paitim meri ‘bash the wife’, while the Sepiks would most often use krospait ‘argue’, which led to discussions about the women’s comparative strength in the latter area. In other locations, women referred to decisions being taken by papa bilong mi. Papa in Tok Pisin can be translated as ‘father’, ‘owner’, or ‘husband’. Checking the meaning of this phrase in different locations resulted in discussions about differences in a community’s social structure. Understanding the words used by respondents increased the quality of the investigation, as the analysis could take into account their understanding of the term and its reflection of their society. Speaking Tok Pisin has other benefits. In a research project in Jimi valley, the baseline research showed that women were quite diffident about the research process—in their view, answering questions was equivalent to taking an exam, and they felt their lack of knowledge about HIV and AIDS would expose them as failures. Chatting in Tok Pisin while eating bananas together by the fire helped us bridge the gap, to the point that they insisted on being interviewed, some of them requesting a (female) local Tok Ples/Tok Pisin translator to make sure their precise views would be expressed and recorded accurately. Traditionally, women would not have been permitted to ask questions or voice an opinion in public. Once they were offered an opportunity to participate and made

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up their mind to do so, these women showed remarkable perseverance and adaptability to take this opportunity.

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The Challenge with the Use of English

I often seem to hear development workers saying that while they do not speak Tok Pisin, they ‘understand almost all of it’. Very well, but is it important that we understand ? Isn’t the point that we want to be understood ? When we choose English, how far do we go to make sure we are fully understood, to the point that our collaborators are able to reproduce the message in their own language? Relying on English can exclude and alienate local voices. The use of English may be perceived as effectively establishing a language hierarchy, undermining local self-confidence and self-reliance. In PNG, additional colonial connotations cannot fail to be associated with that choice; in rural contexts, where imposing the use of English still has connotations of speaking down to somebody. By contrast, promoting the choice of local languages supports ownership, pride, and commitment to community-driven results. The fact that English is an official language may be convenient for native speakers of English, but the official status of English should not solely guide the choice of English in the field. We should choose the language that will produce the most direct benefit, rather than secure the comfort of one side of the partnership. The sole use of English sends a message of entrenching the position of development workers as distributors of aid. While communication with donor countries and funding bodies is most effective in a recognised international language, as development workers we must also honour our commitment to achieve the donors’ aims. Our position as development workers is affected by the choice of language. If we choose English only, we risk restricting or negatively impacting the aims. Goddard (2018) highlights the point that using English in a nonEnglish environment may lead to deceptive results in terms of the participants’ mutual understanding, particularly if they are based on a generalised assumption that everybody speaks English—most often

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promoted by native English-speakers who may equate the level of education with command of the English language. Education in PNG is a privilege accessible to only a small proportion of the population, and English itself remains a second language for most students. As a result, interlocutors of different linguistic backgrounds may not interpret concepts or terms in the same way. An example of ‘invisible misunderstanding’ during a field trip in Milne Bay Province highlights the need for caution, even in cases where the language choice is obvious, where English appears as the natural choice for work. In this case, the project required the creation of audiovisual material to support community members who had been victims of sorcery accusation-related violence. Our work included interviewing survivors and activists. In Alotau, the dominant common language is English.3 One can even detect among locals a certain disdain of Tok Pisin as a lesser language in comparison with English, although Tok Pisin has been increasingly used there in the last 15–20 years. Within this context, the interviews took place in English. Early on, I heard that the English word ‘witchcraft’ was used locally to designate a ‘witch’. From then on, I was easily able to interpret the interviewees’ words when they used ‘witchcraft’, but this alerted me to the possibility of misunderstandings, and made me wonder what other Milne Bay English words had local meanings that I did not recognise. Such incidents are reminders that the researcher should not be complacent, but rather keep testing the accuracy of their understanding. In this environment, speaking English could well lull researchers into a false sense of security.

3 Milne Bay has been colonised and missionarised in English. The Northern part of PNG was originally colonised by Germany, and TP developed as a contact language among plantation workers in that area. By contrast, the Southern part of PNG was colonised by Great Britain, then Australia, and English was used throughout the South and eastern parts of PNG. TP has only started to really take a foothold in those areas in the last 20 years, maybe. For more information, see Waiko (1993).

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Conclusion

To go back to this chapter’s title, ‘The place of a lingua franca in development practice: the case of Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea’, the reality is that Tok Pisin is thriving in PNG. It is a language spoken by millions. It encourages national identity and unity, and as such, is an essential practical tool for better outcomes of development collaboration. Development work can and should be multilingual, and Tok Pisin can and should be used as a tool to promote participation. Tok Pisin acts as national cement. In a nation shaped by over 800 languages and cultures, it is a key element of national identity. When we base development work on principles of respect and participation, we must take this most ‘uniting’ language into account. Using Tok Pisin engages development partners and participants at a deeper level. Using it acknowledges the native speakers’ national and cultural pride. Using it expresses non-native speakers’ acknowledgement of PNG cultural sovereignty. The importance of using the language of wider communication in development practices invokes intentions of respect and trust. The choice of using Tok Pisin is an expression of goodwill, reflecting the effort it takes for English speakers to get out of their comfort zone and make a step towards another culture, to walk in other people’s shoes, and to try and understand others’ perspectives, and by doing so, to show respect and humility. After several decades of living and working in PNG, a recent personal experience helped me perceive better the benefits and stigmas attached to the choice of language. At initial contact with a large aid foundation in Port Moresby, I felt to be seen as yet another middle-aged, professional, assertive English-speaking white woman, coming from outside for a specific project, and expected to leave afterwards. However, as soon as I started speaking Tok Pisin, the perception changed dramatically. I repeatedly saw my interlocutors physically relax, and the discourse shifted to closer, more confidential tones. With a big grin of happy surprise, I was put in the ‘local’ basket. This experience threw a clearer retrospective light on my journey in the country, and highlighted the amazing enrichment I still enjoy, both on personal and professional level, by choosing to step towards the local

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people and their culture. Learning and speaking Tok Pisin opens so many doors to individual and community contacts. It has made me a better, more respectful and more grateful development practitioner, and I believe it has enhanced the quality of my work, as it has enhanced the quality of my personal contacts in this beautiful country. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the many wonderful people I have met throughout my time in Papua New Guinea. All of you, individually and together, have introduced me to multiple facets of your beautiful country and cultures, and made my life infinitely rich. I could not be more grateful for all you have taught me and still teach me today.

References Bamgbose, Ayo. 2014. The Language Factor in Development Goals. In The Cape Town Language and Development Conference: Looking beyond 2015, ed. Hamish McIlwraith, 108–113. British Council. Bearth, Thomas. 2013. Language and Sustainability. In The Role of Languages for Development in Africa: Micro and Macro Perspectives, ed. Beck, Rose Marie, 15–61. Frankfurter Afrikanischer Blatter 20. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe. Caffery, Jo., and Deborah Hill. 2019. Expensive English: An Accessible Language Approach for Agricultural Development in PNG. Development in Practice 29 (2): 147–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2018.153 0195. Caffery, Jo, Lalen Simeon, and Kitini Kusunan Kurika (this volume). The Importance of Mutual Understanding of Key Terminology in Development Projects: A PNG Example. Crowley, Terry. 1990. Beach-la-Mar to Bislama: The Emergence of a National Language in Vanuatu. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Devette-Chee, Kilala. 2011. Decreolization of Tok-Pisin: Is there a Tok Pisin to English Continuum? Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 29: 95–103. Djité, Paulin G. 2008. The Sociolinguistics of Development in Africa. Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/978 1847690470.

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Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig, eds. 2021. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 24th ed. Dallas, TX: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com. Accessed 22 September 2021. Foley, William. 2006. Universal Constraints and Local Conditions in Pidginization: Case Studies from New Guinea. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 21 (1): 1–44. https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.21.1.01fol. Fox, Rohan. 2021. COVID-19 Communication and Trust in PNG: Results from a Survey. Devpolicy Blog. Development Policy Centre. ANU. https://devpolicy.org/covid-19-communication-and-trust-in-png-res ults-from-a-survey-20210701/. Goddard, Cliff. 2018. Applications of NSM: Minimal English, Cultural Scripts and Language Teaching. In Ten Lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage Exploring Language, Thought and Culture Using Simple, Translatable Words. Leiden: Brill. Handman, Courtney. 2013. Text Messaging in Tok Pisin: Etymologies and Orthographies in Cosmopolitan Papua New Guinea. Culture, Theory and Critique 54 (3): 265–284. https://doi.org/10.1080/14735784.2013.81828. Jourdan, Christine, and Johanne Angeli. 2021. The development of weak normativity in Solomon Islands Pijin. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 36 (1): 46–76. https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.000069.jou. Jubilee Australia. n.d. www.jubileeaustralia.org. King, Phil. 2014. Tok Pisin and Mobail Teknology. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 32 (2): 118–152. Levy, Catherine. 2002. A Tentative Phonology and Morphology of Awar, Lower Ramu Family, Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. PhD. Free University of Brussels, Belgium. Levy, Catherine. 2007. HIV and AIDS Awareness Programs in Remote Areas of PNG: An Evaluation of VSO PNG Tokaut AIDS’ Impact in the Second Year of Activity. Contemporary PNG Studies 6: 53–62. Levy, Catherine. 2008. Mareng Language HIV/AIDS Awareness Material Production and Distribution. Contemporary PNG Studies 9: 88–97. Levy, Catherine. 2009. Overview of an evaluation: VSO PNG Tokaut AIDS HIV/AIDS Awareness Programme from 2005–2007. Catalyst 39 (2): 158– 192. Maitz, Peter, and Craig A. Volker. 2017. Documenting Unserdeutsch: Reversing Colonial Amnesia. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 32 (2): 365–397. https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.32.2.06mai.

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Milroy, Lesley. 2010. Language and Group Identity. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 3 (3): 207–216. https://doi.org/10.1080/014 34632.1982.9994085. Nanau, Gordon Leua. 2011. The Wantok System as a Socio-Economic and Political Network in Melanesia. OMNES: The Journal of Multicultural Society 2(1): 31–55. Papua New Guinea. 2011. National Report. 2011. National Statistics Office. Port Moresby. PNG Economics. http://pngeconomics.org/. PNG Economics. http://pngeconomics.org/?p=956. Prah, Kwesi. 2012. The Language of Development and the Development of Language in Contemporary Africa. Applied Linguistics Review. https://doi. org/10.1515/applirev-2012-0014. Redman-MacLaren, Michelle, Tracie Mafile’o, Rachael Tommbe, and David MacLaren. 2019. Meeting in the Middle: Using Lingua Franca in CrossLanguage Qualitative Health Research in Papua New Guinea. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 18: 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691 9883459. Romaine, Suzanne. 2019. Linguistic Diversity, Sustainability and Multilingualism: Global Language Justice Inside the Doughnut Hole. In Linguistic Diversity, Minority Languages and Sustainable Development, ed. Itziar Idiazabal and Manel Pérez-Caurel. Servicio Editorial de la Universidad del Pais Vasco, 40–61. Sankoff, Gillian. 1980. The Social Life of Languages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Siegel, Jeff. 2005. Literacy in Pidgin and Creole Languages. Current Issues in Language Planning 6 (2): 143–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/146642005086 68278. Thomas, Verena, Catherine Levy, Cynthia Vetunawa, and Patrick Rawstorne. 2017. Bougainville Audience Research – Niupela Wokabaut Bilong Bogenvil. Centre for Social and Creative Media, University of Goroka, Goroka. Available at https://eprints.qut.edu.au/108457/. United Nations Development Program (UNDP). 2020. Human Development Report. The Next Frontier: Human development and the Anthropocene briefing note for countries on the 2020 Human Development Report, Papua New Guinea. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/Country-Profiles/PNG.pdf. Waiko, John Daidemo. 1993. A Short History of Papua New Guinea. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

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World Population Review. 2021. Developing Countries 2021. https://worldp opulationreview.com/country-rankings/developing-countries Accessed 20 July 2021. Wurm, Stephen, Shiro Hattori, and Theo Baumann, eds. 1981. Language Atlas of the Pacific Area. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics C66.

10 Lost in Translation: Disorienting Research Dilemmas in a Multilingual Country Barbara Pamphilon

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Introduction

As a researcher in community learning and development, the invitation in 2010 to work with Australia’s nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea (PNG), was an exciting opportunity. I had worked in a number of projects with participants where English was a second language, for example, in community development evaluation studies in Vietnam, Fiji, Samoa, and Vanuatu, and I felt confident that this experience would stand me in good stead. The new project, working with women and families to help them move from semi-subsistence to more effective and equitable farming, also built on my gender research experience. And so, it was with enthusiasm and excitement that I began. My first step was to understand more about the PNG context. B. Pamphilon (B) Centre for Sustainable Communities, University of Canberra, Bruce, ACT, Australia e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Hill and F. K. Ameka (eds.), Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1_10

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PNG is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, with some 839 Indigenous languages spoken (about 12% of the world’s total), however, many languages (generically known as Tok Ples) have fewer than 1,000 speakers. There are three official national languages: Tok Pisin, a creole language that is widely used and understood, English, and Hiri Motu, each with full literacy of less than 2% of the population (CIA 2020). The language of school instruction is English, however, depending on their own linguistic background, teachers can use either Tok Pisin or Tok Ples up to Grade 2. It is important to note that across PNG, people aged 25 years and older have an average of only 4.7 years of schooling, with only 10% of women and 15.2% of men completing secondary education (UNDP 2020). Approximately 87% of the PNG population (8.7 million) live in rural areas, and 85% are dependent on agricultural-based activities (CIA 2020). Smallholder families produce the majority of food for the country, however, women carry a ‘triple burden’ by providing labour for agriculture, the home, and through informal community contributions. As in many other countries, much of PNG women’s work is invisible and under-acknowledged. As Charmes of the ILO (2019, 3) notes, ‘Across the world, without exception, women carry out three-quarters of unpaid care work, or more than 75 per cent of the total hours provided’. Despite women’s significant contribution to agricultural production and marketing, PNG men typically control household income. PNG women are further disadvantaged due to low school completion rates, and low literacy and numeracy, which have a flow-on effect to limited financial skills, low banking rates, and lack of access to credit (ADB 2012). High rates of gender-based violence (Human Rights Watch 2015) and personal safety and mobility (Lakhani and Willman 2014) further impact PNG women, leading to the country ranking 161 of 162 in the Gender Inequality Index (UNDP 2020). Despite these many challenges, PNG women are resilient and resourceful, and are keen to take up any opportunities that will benefit their family. Given this context, our project team determined that we would focus our work on the many farming families who had not been able to access training due to their low literacy and education and/or remote locations. We would work at a village level with local partners as we believed that

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they would have credibility and the trust of the community, and by working collaboratively we would enhance sustainability of the project activities. Most importantly, we knew that local partners would be able to provide the interpretation and translation support, and insights into the cultural and farming issues that we might need to consider. As a community-development researcher, I brought to the project a commitment to participatory research processes, which focus on valuing knowledges inside a community (Pamphilon, 2015), and the use of appreciative inquiry (Cooperrider et al. 2008), concentrating on the strengths of families and communities, rather than their deficits (Mikhailovich, Pamphilon et al. 2016). The core of this approach is to create opportunities for dialogue within a group, to enable them to see the range of assets they have as individuals, families, and communities. The process also focuses on the range of ‘capitals’ that exist in any community: the natural, built, financial, political, social, human, cultural, and spiritual. Participatory research for development supports families and/or communities to draw on their different capitals (Emery and Flora 2006), in this case, in order to develop sustainable livelihoods. Through action-research cycles across a project as families and communities develop, research questions are deepened, and the data collected shows, if, when, and why, families and communities take up new ways of being and doing. In applying this approach to PNG, many of the research activities were designed to help farming families look at their daily lives, their farming activities, and their community and regional contexts, in order to consider where and how their work could be more efficient, effective, and equitable. Given the low levels of education in PNG, these activities used experiential and visual processes to facilitate full participation in the project workshops, and to also ensure that the families could later use the activities with their wider family. The activities can help families step back from their busy lives and see the many practices and processes that are taken for granted, and then consider together, how they can build on the assets, skills, and strengths in their family. As such, these activities were designed to facilitate learning within the group, as well as provide data for the research project.

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Overall, the participatory-research activities were well received by the farmer participants in the project sites. The strengths-based and appreciative inquiry process was highly valued by both the PNG project staff, and community members, who particularly appreciated the identification of the many strengths in the PNG culture and in families. Despite the careful focus on participatory and collaborative processes, however, at times, as a researcher, I found my community development research practice challenged, as I came to see the complexity of language and related cultural concepts.

2

Language Challenges

In this section, I will use four language and communication issues as examples: the languages of the baseline study, the process of trilingual workshops, the analysis of the qualitative data, and the use of English loanwords. In presenting these, I will outline the project-research process, then use a box named ‘disorienting dilemma’ to outline each dilemma, and to present my reflection and learning, concluding with the implications for development practice. The concept of ‘disorienting dilemmas’ is taken from the work of Mezirow (2000) who has identified that transformative learning typically arises following a situation where previous knowledge and understanding do not help resolve an issue, and as such, invite a perspective transformation.

Survey Translation An administered survey was a major component of the baseline study (which also included focus groups, community workshops, key informant interviews, village leaders’ workshops, and field observations). The survey was designed to gain information on family practices and attitudes, health, assets, income, and roles, and agricultural assets, production, income, and roles, as well as the standard demographic information. Our colleagues at Pacific Adventist University and the National Agricultural Research Institute played a key role in the design of questions that

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would be meaningful to village farmers. For example, knowing that most farmers did not keep written records or have a bank account, rather than ask, ‘How much do you earn each week from selling your produce?’ two other questions were asked: ‘What has been the highest amount you can remember getting this year from selling your produce?’ and ‘What was the lowest?’ The assumption was, that people would remember the joy of a successful market day and the disappointment of the low sales day. In the agricultural section, people were asked how big their garden/plots were in comparison to a rugby field, as rugby is well known, and rugby fields are found in many villages across the country. After piloting the survey with PNG key informants, we were ready to work with the partner agency and the staff who would lead the enumerator team (all of whom were bilingual in Tok Pisin and English). As the survey was primarily comprised of closed questions (demographics, farm/garden production, assets, income, saving, spending, gender roles, and family health and diet), with ranking questions on gender attitudes and only one open-ended question on aspirations/hopes for the future, we planned a two-hour workshop to work through the survey with the local staff. We assumed that straightforward areas, such as demographics, types of crops, market places etc., would be easily explained, but that time would be needed to explain questions on gender and financial practices. Five hours later we had reached an agreement. Disorienting Dilemma 1: The Demographic ‘Facts’ I had confidently started with the standard questions concerning gender, age, education level, marital status, family size, and the number of children. The first small hiccup was that some older people did not know their age, in which case the advice was to add ‘born before World War 2’, or, ‘born before Independence’ (1975)—done! Education was amended from how many years of schooling to the highest grade completed. The first big issue then emerged. The standard question of marital status had options of single, married, divorced, widowed, or other. From the ensuing discussion, it was clear the ‘other’ category would be large, as there were polygynous families, and words for first, second, and third wives; there were grandparent-headed households, and some women

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were deserted, while others were separated but would never be able to divorce. The ensuing advice on cultural meanings was that ‘divorced’ could be combined with ‘separated’, as this was an artificial distinction in PNG, that could comfortably be chosen by deserted women. I was further advised that some women, who were no longer with their former spouses, may choose to answer ‘single’, as this was a statement of their current identity. As the marital history of a person was not relevant to their current farming and family practices, the answers were changed to ‘single, married, divorced/separated, widowed, other’, and in areas where relevant a question on polygynous families would be added. When we moved on to ‘How many adults in your family?’ and ‘How many children?’ I expected that these two questions could be easily translated into Tok Pisin. Again, complexity emerged. What were the ways in which ‘family’ was named and understood? Did we count the family members who worked in a distant town, the now ‘single’ mother who had returned with her children to her natal family, the unmarried ‘big boy’ who was not often at the house, or the ‘auntie’ and her children who lived in a hut close by? Again, the local translators raised these important insights. I suggested that we ask ‘How many people eat the evening meal together at your house?’ but learnt that the wantok ‘kinship’ system meant that anyone in the extended family could join the evening meal but may not contribute in any way to the family/farm activities. The final agreement was the question, ‘How many adults (female/male) usually sleep in your house?’ I further learnt that the Tok Pisin word, haus, translates as both ‘home’ and ‘house’, so would be clearly understood by the many PNG families who had a number of small huts (haus) that comprised their home (haus). We also included the simple question, ‘How many children in your family?’ We were aware that we may need to ask about ‘youth’ as well as ‘children,’ and knew that current PNG youth policy (2020–2030) identifies youth as 12 to 25 years of age, but notes that culturally, ‘youth’ can mean people of up to 38 years of age, with families of their own. The policy level definition was clearly not relevant to our participants, and so a locally relevant term was needed. I sensed an unexpected tension when I suggested the word manki or mangi, which was listed in some Tok Pisin dictionaries for ‘children’. Discomfort and coldness were evident in some PNG staff and the term was rejected. I later heard from close PNG

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colleagues that, for many PNG people today, the word carries negative colonialist overtones. One school of thought holds that the word comes from the paternalistic German word männchen ‘little man’, the other from the derogatory English ‘little monkey’. The word was so controversial that there was a movement in the 1980s to ban its use, clearly illustrating the pitfalls for those who do not understand that words have history as well as meaning. The group advised that the Tok Pisin word pikinini encompasses both ‘babies’ and ‘children’, and that youth were usually understood as older children who were no longer at school. For our purposes, we agreed to ask, ‘How many children under 18 are in your family?’ as 18 is the age that a child would have finished high school (given the opportunity). I later learnt that we had accidentally used the correct question, ‘How many children in your family?’ rather than, ‘How many children do you have?’ as PNG families often have ‘adopted children’ from their wantok ‘kinship’ networks, and there is no differentiation made between adopted and biological children. Again, this gave me an important cultural insight, as it reflected the kinship, rather than the nuclear, social construction of ‘family’ in PNG. Implications for development practice. It is clear that for rigorous development practice, be it research and/or community development, we need to have a profile of our community participants. This enables us to tailor our work to the range of individuals, families, and groups in the community, and to track how our work may have differing engagement, uptake, and outcomes across sub-groups. The dilemma I have analysed suggests that the most effective way to collect demographics would be to start with community knowledge and their emic categories, and proceed from there. By utilising the local team’s knowledge of the dominant cultural meanings, the ones that will be most relevant to the project objectives can be selected. Certain ‘outside’ categories can then be added, for example, international social inclusion categories such as ‘people living with a disability’. By beginning from the community knowledge, the categories should resonate within that community and make sense to the local informants. As such, these will gain more meaningful data than outside categories that may be translated accurately but not understood accurately.

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Workshop Interpretation Most of our workshops with village farming families were designed to trial and develop activities that could be used for farmer-to-farmer learning, that is, we would train local volunteers to be peer educators, and in this way, the activities would be localised and the peer educators would be readily available to other farmers. This meant that the initial workshop design was done by the English-speaking team, refined with the PNG team, and then delivered in many villages with a Tok Ples interpreter. In some large communities, where there were more than one Tok Ples, Tok Pisin was the shared language, hence, no Tok Ples interpreter was needed. It was in our most remote area in the Western Highlands that the first training interpretation issue arose. Here there was just one man in the community who was able to work across the three languages. As in much of PNG, he had learnt to be an interpreter through his work as a Bible translator with the SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics). This not-for profit body has worked in PNG since 1956 and with 389 Tok Ples languages to date. In the first workshop we worked from English directly to Tok Ples, however, immediate feedback from the community members who were trilingual indicated that Tok Pisin was a valuable bridge between English and Tok Ples, and that most farmers were competent in both Tok Pisin and Tok Ples. The next workshops, therefore, featured an overview and explanation in English interpreted to Tok Pisin, with groupwork and discussion in Tok Ples. Although this was slow, feedback suggested that the groups appreciated this approach, and it became our ongoing delivery model. Disorienting Dilemma 2: The Long and Short of Interpretation As part of my participatory and collaborative approach, I encouraged the PNG staff to take the lead and to deliver the majority of the workshop in Tok Pisin, with Australian staff providing only the introduction. However, when we were trialling activities for the first time, it was necessary for the Australian team member who had designed the activity to

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lead it, and the PNG staff member provided interpretation. This proved to be a good model for piloting and developing the learning activity in different locations, however, I noticed with concern that one interpreter gave very long interpretations and the other very short interpretations. Whilst I was able to understand a lot of Tok Pisin, I did not have enough language skills to assess what was happening. My initial observation of the staff member who talked in Tok Pisin at length, was that she seemed to be talking at the group, albeit with passion and commitment, which later was described by her colleague as ‘preaching not teaching’. Whilst many of the words may have been accurately interpreted, the delivery itself was inappropriate for a collaborative learning environment in which farmers’ knowledge was valued. I was equally concerned when the interpretations by another staff member were extremely short. I knew that usually Tok Pisin translations are longer than English, as the language is discursive rather than direct. I felt that the interpreter was using ‘short hand’ rather than providing full translations. When I checked this with her, she was surprised I had noticed, and justified herself by saying that people already knew a lot of the material being presented. Given that the workshops were based on experiential learning activities, this was doubtful. It was clear that the interpreter exercised significant power in her role as interpreter. This reminded me of an experience working with a Mandarin interpreter in China, who admitted that instead of interpreting a humorous part of a presentation, he would say, ‘Please laugh now, the presenter has just told a very silly joke’. Implications for development practice. Whilst it is ideal for development practitioners to speak the national lingua franca, this takes some time and is not often possible for those leading projects across a number of countries. However, if we are working in a country for any length of time, it is important to develop our understanding of a language, even if we do not reach the confidence to speak it. This enables us to monitor the topics being discussed and assess the intra-group body language and other reactions as group activities progress. In turn, this enables us to interact more effectively with the interpreters on our team. Although it is well known that interpreters can be gate-keepers (albeit in many cases inadvertently), they can equally become crucial informants for a project. Their bilingual skills give them access to two socio-linguistic

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knowledge frameworks, which in some cases also gives access to individualistic and collectivist understandings. This is a major asset for any community development project.

Qualitative Data Translation As a community development researcher, qualitative data is at the heart of my work. Although I use the standard pre- and post-tests and baseline and endline studies as needed, for me, what is most important for the development of programmes and materials from a research project is that the work resonates with, and is useful to, the local participants. Therefore, my goal is to understand and harness the meanings made by the diverse participants in any setting. This diversity typically includes age, gender, education levels, disability, and socio-economic status, but in PNG can extend to clan groups, geographic location, tribal conflict areas, and the like. As a result, my own data collection processes often focus on single gender groups of a similar age who live in the same village or area and who are comfortable sharing their ideas in English, noting that other bilingual staff also collect data directly in Tok Pisin. In this work, a key practice in both the data collection and analysis is to retain the participants’ exact words and phrases in order to keep close to the sociolinguistic meanings. Whenever possible I resist using a pre-determined thematic analysis to organise the data, as these themes inevitably arise from English language concepts. The focus groups I typically conduct are co-led by a Tok Pisin speaking staff member, with both of us taking notes to complement the digital recording. Notes are key, as group recordings can be poor quality, due to voice levels and background noise. Non-verbal expression and group reactions often provide clues to depth of feeling, concern, or enthusiasm, and it is only through note taking that these can be captured. It is when the note takers compare their records that language and meaning complexities emerge.

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Fig. 1 Working together

Disorienting Dilemma 3: Is That What They Really Mean? In an evaluation focus group conducted with community women, who had been part of the leadership development training, one activity was for women to talk in pairs (in Tok Pisin or Tok Ples) and identify what they now saw as the key attributes of a ‘good women leader’. Reporting back was often in a mixture of English and Tok Pisin, and even when the report was mainly in Tok Pisin, a number of English words were frequently integrated, in particular, ‘faithful’, ‘humble’, and ‘able to submit’. As a feminist, I felt some discomfort as I held that women should see themselves and be seen by others as equal to men, albeit with different skills, attributes, and contributions. It was not until I mapped the recurring English and Tok Pisin words used to describe leadership attributes, it became apparent that many of these attributes came from the Bible. This made sense, as PNG was primarily colonised by Christian countries (England, Germany, Netherlands) and today, is predominantly Christian. Many Tok Pisin words reflect this history, for example, the word for woman, meri ‘Mary’. However, I still needed to

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understand more about the recurring English words: faithful, humble, and able to submit. After I re-read the transcripts and talked with my PNG colleagues, the depth of the meaning became clearer. Being faithful, humble, and willing to submit had direct links to the Bible, and using these terms in English was not uncommon in church activities. However, the ways in which the women explained what the terms meant for them, were far from the submissive female identity that I had assumed. ‘Faithful’ encompassed showing Christian principles in all life activities, but also indicated that the woman would stay true to the goals of the group or the activity. ‘Humble’ indicated that the woman did not see herself as above, or better than, others in the group, but recognised that all of the women in the group would have talents and contributions to make. Finally, ‘being submissive’ was similarly linked to a willingness to acquiesce to the priorities of the group, even if they differed from her own. The following example from a photo elicitation group illustrates one New Ireland woman leader’s use of the word ‘submit’ in her understanding of what makes a good leader (Fig. 1). ‘This picture means we have to work together and must submit. Working together means leaders share ideas together so the programme will run well. If we put our ideas together and work together and stand together, we will make things well. United we stand, divided we fall.’

Implications for development practice. One of the key practices in community development is to identify the strengths of a community in order to build on them––a key to this is to identify the words and concepts that resonate within a community. When these concepts resonate with our language and cultural knowledge, for example, the ‘wisdom of the elders’, we can readily identify and integrate them into our work, but in other cases, it challenges us personally and/or professionally. This does not mean we should take up all words and concepts of our participants, but it does mean we must critically reflect on their cultural history and its implications.

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Using Plain English Interpreting the data, and careful listening in focus groups and informal feedback sessions, provided the project with key words and concepts that could be trialled in educational materials and learning activities across PNG. Whilst these materials would be written in English to ensure that other development projects around the world could access and adapt them, for PNG, Tok Pisin was our language of choice. From the groupwork with farmers, it was clear that some English words were quickly adopted, and as demonstrated by the above leadership example, appeared to be unproblematic. An example of this is ‘family goal’, which in Tok Pisin, is femili gol . PNG staff explained that although gol is not a traditional Tok Pisin word, but due to introduced sports such as rugby, the word is well understood. This explanation also enabled us to make the link to a gol being the result of teamwork in the family, just as in a sporting team. This also validated our choice to name our work the Family Farm Team approach, as this reinforces the principle of everyone in the family having roles and responsibilities in their ‘family farm team’. Disorienting Dilemma 4: Is That Really the Right Word? The PNG team had chosen the Tok Pisin word baset ‘budget’ in the annual seasonal planning activity to encourage farmers to plan how to allocate the money generated from their farm produce to farm, family, and cultural needs. This was unproblematic for me until I heard the very same Tok Pisin word used in our participants’ explanation of why our ‘Day in the Life of a PNG farmer’ activity was highly valued in one of our coastal sites. This gender awareness research activity had groups of men and groups of women map their typical day from waking to sleeping on a table divided into hours across the day. Both groups then shared the information with the large group, which made gender inequality visible in a non-threatening way, and also gave us research data (Fig. 2). However, I was surprised to hear the word baset used in this ‘Day in the Life’ activity, and immediately thought, ‘Is that the word they really mean?’ What I then learnt, was that many families had adapted this activity to be used as a daily planning tool within the family. Each

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Fig. 2 A day in the life of a PNG farmer

family member would be allocated a baset, a taim baset ‘time budget’, so that all activities would be completed and everyone knew their role. As one young mother in East New Britain explained, ‘Now I want to work instead of sitting around; I time my day in 2-hour blocks and it is really enjoyable’. It was heartening to see this adaptation, as I knew that introducing high-income countries’ ways of organising family life and agricultural activities would be an act of neo-colonialism, and as the concept of a ‘time budget’ had arisen in one area of PNG, this gave me the confidence to suggest it in new sites.

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Implications for development practice. At first glance, when a word appears to have been used incorrectly, especially one used for a new English concept, it may appear that is simply needs to be corrected. However, rather than immediately assume it is a mistake when a word is taken up in an unexpected way, it presents an opportunity to explore whether this reflects a syncretic dynamic, in which a group has repurposed a word in a meaningful way. As development practitioners, it is a powerful discovery to find words that bridge the concepts of two cultures—words which can be effectively taken up in our work. As such, words are used within the community, and they have the potential to develop deeper place-based nuances and a sense of ownership by the participating community members.

3

Reflections

These unexpected language challenges provided me with a number of lessons. Whilst I had always ensured that we used skilled Tok Pisin and/or Tok Ples translators/interpreters, I learnt that words cannot be translated in an instrumental way, especially in the social development aspects of a project. There may indeed be some merit in technical projects using a fixed translation, or even an English word across a country: for example, the word ‘prune’ when teaching ways to manage a fruit tree for greater production, may be more effective than the multi-meaning Tok Pisin word, katim, that can mean to ‘cut the skin’, ‘cut off talk’, or ‘cut materials’. Whilst katim could be used in conjunction with the word plaua ‘flower’ or han diwai ‘branch’ in technical fields, in the development field it may be more effective to add a new English word to the Tok Pisin or Tok Ples. However, in community development we are more often sharing ideas rather than facts, and it is important to acknowledge that the words and concepts that a community chooses to take up will be related to their culture and their meaning-making. Further, within a community, women and men may take up ideas in gendered ways. For example, in PNG agricultural planning, men

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reported that planning should be seasonal, whilst women recommended planning weekly or monthly. This reflects the gendered roles of men’s responsibility for seasonal cash crops (coffee, cocoa), and women’s responsibility for daily and weekly food production. These responsibilities can be complementary and effective if both women and men agree how the labour is shared and how the income will be used for agreed family goals, but, if gender roles are hierarchical, they can be divisive. In contrast, there are some situations where gendered understandings taken up by both women and men need to be challenged. For example, in past PNG cultural traditions, through braidprais ‘bride price’, customary marriages were formalised and the husband’s family showed their respect to the bride’s family by giving symbolically valued articles, such as feathers, a pig, and certain produce. Today, however, bride price is now a major expenditure of thousands of kina, many pigs, and other costly items. The increasingly common Tok Pisin term, baim meri ‘buying a wife’ is very telling, and has led to many men and women, believing that, because a man ‘paid’ for a wife, he is then able to bossim ‘to control or boss’ her in every way (see also Eves’ 2019 article citing other commonly used terms such as full prais, full bodi ‘full price, full body’. Understanding the implications of this gendered language application alerts us to the need to work with women and men to explore the original cultural notion of ‘bride price’ and its important symbolic meaning and to make visible the current distortion towards the commodification of women and its implications in terms of abuse and violence. The challenges of interpretation and translation also suggest that as development professionals, we may benefit from including activities that use other linguistic forms, such as metaphors or parables, known in PNG as Tok Bokis. As Bartell explained (2015, 97), Tok Bokis can be a traditional parable handed down from older days or be created by a person to explain an issue in a deeper and/or less direct way to usual speech acts. In the former example, the Tok Bokis lesson is handed down with the story, however, in newly constructed Tok Bokis, it is up to the teller to give the meaning at the end of the speech act. For example, in one of our Highlands’ sites, a male gave the following Tok Bokis:

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There’s a corn plant growing in the ground. If the ground is not good, the plant dies because there are no good nutrients in the ground. If the soil is good, the plant grows. The sun and the rain contribute to it growing healthy.

The meaning he gave was that the mother is the soil, the father is the corn, the sun and rain are the children. The father needs the mother and children to grow strong. Although Tok Bokis is by nature a specific locally constructed parable, it can be shared with other regions, as a stimulus to develop other culturally appropriate parables that inspire or guide positive development. Similarly, images (photographs or drawings) can ‘evoke deeper elements of consciousness than can words as they utilise different sensory experiences’ (Gomez 2020, 53). This is evident in the Tok Pisin concept of Tok Piksa, that combines words for talk and picture, again reflecting the PNG knowledge that pictures can tell a story. In learning settings, such stories can hold multiple levels of meaning, and are often remembered more readily than verbal explanations (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 New Ireland female leadership symbol

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This example drawn by a woman in New Ireland elicited a complex understanding of what it is to be a leader in her culture. Reading from outside her culture, the drawing does make sense, as the waves and the leader standing strong in the centre are clear. However, her explanation was that the flag with the word ‘God’ indicates the direction in which they should head, and that she stands to watch out for all the women who are travelling with her, while the local canoe shape of the boat shows the strength and safety provided by her culture. On reflection, I was reminded of Freire’s work on language, knowledge, and power, in which he made visible the ways that education can be a tool of either oppression or liberation. In his seminal work, ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ (1970/2006), Freire used his work as a literacy educator to show that if an educator merely ‘filled’ a learner with words and concepts from the dominant language, learners would be unable to see the power structures that ultimately constrained and oppressed them. Instead, Freire argued for ‘liberatory learning’ and ‘emancipatory education’, in which learners become active collaborators in a learning exchange. In doing so, as part of the learning process, they become aware of the structures of language that may disenfranchise or construct them as lesser. Importantly, as learners contribute their knowledge, a two-way dialogue and dialectical exchange blurs the hierarchical division between ‘teacher’ and ‘learner’, and opens new understandings for both. Later in ‘Pedagogy of Hope’ (1992), Freire called for a move towards building knowledge ‘with’ others instead of ‘about’ others. He reminds us that it is through democratic dialogues that we enact emancipatory praxis. Importantly, we are not emancipating ‘others’ but emancipating ‘ourselves’ in a collective sense, as collaboratively we critically examine the world that we ‘know’ through what Freire called, ‘a “reading of the world and reading of the word.” Not a reading of the word alone, nor a reading only of the world, but both together, in dialectical solidarity’ (1992, 87). Freire’s work provides both a philosophy and practice for partnerships in development that harness the power of language. As a project brings in global ideas and concepts to a partner team, a foundation of ‘two-way learning’ promotes the value placed on multiple meanings and knowledges and of a learning exchange, in what Freire named as a ‘problem-posing’ approach. It signals a joint endeavour in which

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words and language are not seen as instrumental and objective but rather subjective and socially constructed. For example, as the discussion of the word ‘bride price’ above shows, by providing opportunities for women and men to trace and discuss the multiple meanings of the word and its implications for power, they can reveal the ramifications for individuals and the society today. Once people have experienced this process of conscientização, or ‘education for critical consciousness’ (Freire 1970), they develop an awareness of the power of words and the potential empowerment that can result from using the process of critical thinking. As Freire reminded us, people should not be seen as empty vessels to be filled with experts’ words and concepts through banking education, but rather as lifelong learners who can become critical thinkers through the experience of problem posing education. I would suggest that a ‘problem posing’ philosophy, incorporating the lens of language, can provide a meeting point for development practitioners, linguists, and community members.

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Conclusion

As a qualitative and narrative researcher, the words and concepts of my participants have always been the focus of my analysis. As a community development practitioner, I value how the words and concepts of participants can reveal indigenous strengths and knowledges that can be affirmed and become the basis for co-constructed place-based action. However, this reflection on my experience of linguistic and language disorienting dilemmas in community development research reveals that the words and concepts of our participants cannot be instrumentally interpreted or translated, as they are individually, socially, and culturally located. Equally, those of us who engage in development bring our own individual, social, and cultural lenses to our engagement and analysis. By overtly acknowledging these different, and sometimes differing, lenses as a focus for mutual exploration and analysis, the potential for transformative work is enhanced, and hopefully, nobody finds themselves ‘lost in translation’.

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank our research team for their many insights and shared learning across the life of the project: PNG: Dr Norah Omot and Kiteni Kusunan Kurika (PNG National Agricultural Research Institute), Dr Lalen Simeon (Pacific Adventist University) and Fredah Wantum (Baptist Union of PNG); Australia: Dr Katja Mikhailovich and Dr Kym Simoncini. I gratefully acknowledge the funding provided by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research https://aciar.gov.au/project/asem-2010-05 and https://www.aciar.gov.au/project/asem-2014-095.

References Asian Development Bank (ADB). 2012. Papua New Guinea: Critical Development Constraints. Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Asia South Pacific Association. https://www.adb.org/publications/papua-new-guinea-critical-develo pment-constraints. Bartell, Ray. 2015. Governance and Community Capitals: Understanding How Governance Works in Three Faith-Based Schools in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea. PhD thesis, University of Canberra. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 2020. The World Factbook—East and Southeast Asia: Papua New Guinea. Washington, DC: CIA. https://www.cia.gov/ the-world-factbook/countries/papua-new-guinea/. Accessed January 2021. Charmes, Jacques. 2019. The Unpaid Care Work and the Labour Market. An Analysis of Time Use Data Based on the Latest World Compilation of Time-Use Surveys. Geneva: International Labour Office (ILO). https://www.ilo.org/ gender/Informationresources/Publications/WCMS_732791/lang--en/index. htm. Cooperrider, David, Diana Whitney, and Jacqueline Stavros. 2008. Appreciative Inquiry Handbook: For Leaders of Change, 2nd ed. Brunswick, OH: Crown Custom Publishing. Emery, Mary, and Cornelia Flora. 2006. Spiraling-Up: Mapping Community Transformation with Community Capitals Framework. Community Development: Journal of the Community Development Society 37 (1): 19–35. https:// doi.org/10.1080/15575330609490152. Eves, Richard. 2019. ‘Full Price, Full Body’: Norms, Bride Price and Intimate Partner Violence in Highlands Papua New Guinea. Culture, Health and

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Sexuality. 21 (12): 1367–1380. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2018. 1564937. Freire, Paulo. 1970/2005. Pedagogy of the Oppressed , 30th anniversary ed. London and New York: Continuum International. ———. 1992. Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed . London: Bloomsbury. Gomez, Ricardo. 2020. Photostories. Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries 9 (1): 47–63. http://www.qqml.net/index.php/qqml/article/vie w/588. Human Rights Watch. 2015. Bashed Up: Family Violence in Papua New Guinea. https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/11/04/bashed/family-violen cepapua-new-guinea. Lakhani, Sadaf, and Alys Willman. 2014. Drivers of Crime and Violence in Papua New Guinea. Research and Dialogue Series: The Socioeconomic Costs of Crime and Violence in Papua New Guinea. Research Report No. 2. World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/18970. Mezirow, Jack. 2000. Learning to Think Like an Adult. In Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress, ed. J. Mezirow and Associates, 3–33. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Mikhailovich, Katja, Barbara Pamphilon, Barbara Chambers, Lalen Simeon, and Julio Zapata. 2016. Exploring the Lives of Women Smallholder Farmers in Papua New Guinea Through a Collaborative Mixed Methods Approach. Cogent Social Sciences 2: 1143328. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2016. 1143328. Pamphilon, Barbara. 2015. Weaving Knowledges: The Development of Empowering Intercultural Learning Spaces for Smallholder Farmers in Papua New Guinea. Multicultural Education Review 7 (1–2): 108–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/2005615X.2015.1061921. United Nations Development Program (UNDP). 2020. Human Development Report. The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene Briefing Note for Countries on the 2020 Human Development Report. Papua New Guinea. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/Country-Profiles/PNG.pdf.

11 The Linguist, Language, and Economic Development: A Commentary on Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices Salikoko S. Mufwene

1

Introduction

In the introduction chapter to Bridging linguistics and economics (2020), Vigouroux and Mufwene note that governments have sought advice more readily from economists than from linguists regarding economic development. They attribute this bias partly to the fact that linguists have typically not used a language that is accessible to politicians nor have they engaged in practical terms with the choice of medium of education in extensively multilingual polities and what languages are more suitable for economic development. To be sure, linguists have advocated using the child’s mother tongue as the medium of education, especially in elementary school. However, there are sometimes so many of them that governments of developing countries have favoured making choices, while typically promoting their respective European official languages S. S. Mufwene (B) University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Hill and F. K. Ameka (eds.), Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1_11

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as assets for economic success and modernization, on the model of the European metropole! In the case of economic development, a few linguists like Djité (2008) have observed that in Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, farmers are unable to peruse publications destined to them, because many of them are illiterate and/or unable to read the technical terminology in the European languages in which they are written. Djité (2021) also points out that during the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the number of fatalities could have been less extensive if health care providers had generally communicated with the masses of the population directly in their local vernaculars. He thus exposed some shortcomings of nationstates that have privileged foreign languages rarely used by the majority of the national populations. The present book, Languages, linguistics, and development practices, addresses such concerns. More specifically, it also shows how collaboration between linguists and economists or health care providers can guarantee the success of sound and empirically well-grounded development projects. As Felix K. Ameka and Deborah Hill articulate in Chapter 1 (to which I return below), one of the justifications for the book is “language [as] one of the factors in the pillars of education, economy, governance and health.” The leitmotiv of the book is that non-linguist experts on economic development—which include not only the industry and jobs but also adequate formal education and health care services (aside from communication and transportation infrastructures)—should be inspired by and/or collaborate with linguists or other language experts. The latter are individuals that speak the local languages and are competent in the language used by the experts from outside the communities where development projects are being tested or implemented. It is imperative to use vernaculars or lingua francas of the stakeholders, depending on the extent of multilingualism (where this is the case), in order for them to understand the significance of the projects for them and to take ownership of the enterprises for the success of the latter. The development experts must make sure that the translations are accurate but also sensitive to the indigenous culture. The necessary adjustments may entail adapting some of the development projects themselves, to ensure enthusiastic involvement of the

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population being assisted. It will help the outsider experts to learn as much of the work language as possible and to make sure that there are no counterproductive deviations from the goals of the project. Linguists with expertise on language practices in the relevant regions can provide advice or partner productively with the development experts for the best possible outcomes. In the next section, I summarize my interpretations of some select aspects of the contributions and explain why I think they are significant in terms of what linguists and other language experts can contribute to development endeavours. I apologize for cases where I repeat either part of the editors’ introduction of the chapters or what I found equally significant in a previous chapter. In both cases, I underscore the relevance of the specific approach to development as interpreted above. In Sect. 3, I focus on the big picture, especially highlighting what linguists interested in development issues stand to learn from other disciplines in order to make linguistics more relevant to the subject matter and expect governments to turn to them where their expertise matters.

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The editors, Felix K. Ameka and Deborah Hill, set the tone adequately, in their Introduction chapter. They start by identifying language as a “resource in human development, linguistics and development communication.” In the language of Bourdieu (1977), it is an important capital, social and cultural in the present case, which must be recruited towards the goal of accomplishing economic development. The nature of the discourse in which information is conveyed to the stakeholders is critical. It bears on the success of the relevant development project. I must also underscore the editors’ promotion of “interdisciplinarity,” to which I prefer “cross-disciplinarity” in the context of collaboration across disciplines, which is the primary message from this book. Nonetheless, interdisciplinarity is especially recommended for situations where the expert in development cannot partner with a linguist but is aware of what approach linguists interested in the endeavour would advocate. One recommendation would definitely be to identify locals

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who can act as competent interpreters. Generally, the contributions to Languages, linguistics, and development practices show how productive this approach can be. The significance of the concept “development from below” must also be highlighted, because the approach aims at engaging the target population as much as possible, so that these stakeholders can take ownership of the development project and be(come) invested in the success of the enterprise, although the idea and financial support are brought from outside their polity. After all, if it is successful, the project must continue even after the outsider experts have left. The bottom line is that the relevant indigenous languages must be empowered by recognizing the critical role they are expected to play in economic development. Linguists can contribute to such endeavours by partnering constructively with both the investors and the intended beneficiaries even if only by articulating in the reports of their field research experiences how useful it is to involve the locals as teammates rather than as consumers of imported ideas, in order to get insights into their cultural practices. Development projects should not be colonial and patronizing. Ignoring the local customs and/or failing to realize that some concepts may not be absorbed faithfully by the locals can cause the project not to succeed. One should watch for unwanted deviations associated with misinterpretations by the stakeholders that may vow the project to unsatisfactory outcomes. In the same vein, Froukje Krijtenburg, Michelle Tjeenk Willink, Felix K. Ameka, and Aflatoun are very helpful in introducing the reader of Chapter 2 to the difficulty of translating into the local languages (in this particular case, Kiswahili in both Kenya and Tanzania) some technical terms of economics used in the literature brought by the outsiders. Meanings can be lost in translation just as it is colonial in not considering the cultural context in which the new concepts are introduced. They may need to be adapted in ways that the stakeholders will find usefully informative in their engagement. Seemingly clear Western concepts such as “saving,” “budgeting,” and “entrepreneurship” may not only be untranslatable into the local languages. They are also associated with economic practices not familiar to the target population, whose economic practices are confined to subsistence farming. Realizing that the imported

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development project is culturally foreign to these stakeholders is a good starter that calls for a mix of the new and old in a language intelligible for those being assisted. It also calls for explaining why the economic practices associated with these concepts are worth adopting for sustainable modern economic development. It is critical for the agents of the donor agencies to understand what the current cultural practices are and how to insert the new ones in them with little adjustments of the projects. The authors are right on target in asking “the question of how universal financial inclusion programs can be modified to benefit the socio-economically disadvantaged in the Non-Western world.” The foreign terminology and/or concepts can be so alienating, which is why the development experts should invest in understanding the host cultural practices, presumably thanks to adequate descriptions by linguists or linguistic anthropologists who have conducted research in the community or a related one. In some cases, modifications of the development project are in order, because the purpose is to help the stakeholders improve their economic potential but not to change their cultural ways if they are not standing in the way of the development program. It is easier to integrate the project, in the form of improvement of the local modus operandi, consistent with local economic practices. A development need not be a concomitant of Westernization. Indigenous languages and cultural practices are assets that must be capitalized on. Chapter 3 connects well with Chapter 2 in focusing on how a development model brought from the USA can be adapted to the Philippines. Ann Hill, Anselmo B. Mercado, Anne Shangrila Fuentes, and Deborah Hill promote “starting where people are at, with what they have, and finding out what people in any particular place want to foster and build on.” This approach motivates the stakeholders to commit themselves to the development program. The community members, operating in their own indigenous languages, identify the human and natural resources they can capitalize on. These include their own ancestral lands, which they can exploit to profit in ways consistent with their “cultural knowledge and values.” They can capitalize especially on “Indigenous sharing, reciprocity and governance practices; strong Indigenous leaders and leadership skills” familiar to them, without being directed by outsiders.

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Thus, the locals take ownership of the development project. They invest in their own local produce, including bananas and cacao, which they can turn into cash crops. By supporting and collaborating with each other, they form a united and stronger community. What took place in the Mindanao part of the Philippines shows that a population can modernize their lifestyle and improve their living conditions without Westernizing. They can modify their traditional customs just enough to be(come) more productive and remain mutually supportive. While economists such as Alesina et al. (2003) and Ginsburgh and Weber (2011, 2020) have interpreted the multitude of languages in several countries of the Global South as fragmentation that stands in the way of economic development, this study makes evident some indigenous ways of managing linguistic diversity especially among people who otherwise have related cultures. They have their own indigenous regional lingua francas, rather than Filipino, the “national language,” which bridges them well. We must remember that the monolingual approach, which the Western world has adopted since adopting in the nineteenth century the policy that every nation-state must adopt one single language that unites its citizens, cannot be implemented (faithfully) in polities of the Global South. An important reason is that the political and economic infrastructures that could eradicate ethnolinguistic diversity are far from being a reality yet. Besides, political conflicts in the West grounded in claims of ethnolinguistic diversity (such as the Catalan separatist movement in Spain) prove that the approach was probably not the way to go, especially if it also reflects injustices. At the very local level, the ethnic languages remain the basic and most effective means of communication. The choice of language should not privilege the outsiders. Instead, it is the latter that should adapt themselves to the local language dynamics. On the other hand, we should not ignore that some concepts brought from abroad are useful though difficult to translate into indigenous languages; and cultures can be enriched by foreign influence. There must be other means of capturing the useful new concepts, such as through drawing and explaining what must be done, especially in the context of agriculture. Sometimes paraphrasing is

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more effective than translating word for word, especially when the latter obfuscates understanding. Akosua K. Darkwah and Dzodzi Tsikata show in Chapter 4, in the context of Ghana, the extent to which technical terms used in economic development can reflect concomitant changes in the socioeconomic structure, owing especially to the adoption of new economic practices, such as mining. Languages of work vary in important ways depending on whether the relevant population practices a predominantly formal or informal economy, as in, respectively, industrial or agrarian societies. In Ghana, several terminological changes are occurring in the northern, Gur/Mabia-speaking area, which has been less urbanized and is economically less diversified than the southern, Kwa-speaking area. Several new trades have been innovated in both the formal and the informal sectors of the economy that have entailed adjustments in, for instance, labour relations. To wit, successful farmers now hire wage workers instead of relying on relatives or neighbours; and some young entrepreneurs provide service work that fits between the formal and informal economic practices. It’s noteworthy how English terms such as clerk > krakye “cacao gentleman [farmer]” and game interpreted as “risk” in one’s economic activity are also part of the indigenization of the European language. Thus, the adoption and adaptation of the Western model of development has its local linguistic consequences too. At the same time, several partly English words used in mining reflect the extent to which the industry still operates in the artisanal style, with, for example, the rock ore sifters identified as shanking ladies and the transporters of rock ore as loco boys. The terms also suggest gendering of some jobs, apparently consistent with the division of labour in traditional economic practices. Also reflecting stratification among wage workers, the terminology itself reveals the way the socioeconomic structure is generally changing from traditional ways of earning a living. Adequate linguistic analysis should shed light on how society is changing and whether the changes are in all respects improvements for the people. Linguists should share their findings with those overseeing the relevant development projects, in the interest of the community. In this particular case, the authors report interviews with some female employees that reveal some practices which

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apparently need the attention of the political leaders: the sexual exploitation of women. Economic development may generate some negative side effects that can be prevented. In Chapter 5, Jo Caffery, Lalen Simeon, and Kiteni Kusunan Kurika aptly explore “key [English] project concepts, youth, female youth, and male youth, of participants in East New Britain, Papua New Guinea” (PNG) in comparison with their use by the Australian development project team. It turns out that in a country where “only 10% of females and 15.2% of males over the age of 25 have had at least some secondary education” these terms are not interpreted the same way by the locals as by the Australians, owing to cultural differences between PNG and Australia. In PNG’s English, youth is used in reference to unmarried young men. For a while, it appeared fitting to use either the term yangpela or the alternative yut in Tok Pisin, as they are unspecified for gender. However, yangpela was also avoided by the locals because it can also include children. So, the team settled on yut , despite the way youth is used in local English. When gender needs to be specified, the phrases man yut and meri yut for male or female, are conveniently used, respectively. Then the question of the age range for membership in the youth category arose, because the criteria for assignment vary from one ethnolinguistic group to another. The project leader decided to overlook age as a critical factor and to focus more on experience. These examples illustrate the kinds of linguistic issues that can influence how a development project is implemented, calling evidently for adjustments to local cultural practices. Trying to change the latter can alienate the relevant population that should benefit from the development project. Like in the Philippines and many other polities of the Global South, multilingualism also poses a problem for the outsider experts in PNG. Fortunately, the problem is for the latter rather than for the locals, as in the present case it is resolved by the wide acceptance of Tok Pisin as the national lingua franca. The local leaders bridge between English, Tok Pisin, and the local languages, hoping that the chain translations are accurate or the development project, which need not proceed uniformly, is adapted to local cultural traditions.

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Deborah Hill, Delmay Basi, and Godwin Rahe focus, in Chapter 6, on “the dynamics of kin relations, matriliny, and gender,” because the language used to talk about them “can contribute significantly to understanding and engaging with peer-to-peer interactions in the Solomon Islands and other Pacific islands.” The understanding can help in the implementation of “the Family Farm Teams (FFT) program” that they discuss. Family relations are “key to the distribution of resources, to determining social obligations to family members, and to supporting conflict resolution.” These are factors that all bear on economic development. For instance, in a matrilineal system, a father feels as responsible for his children and for his sister’s. Such social networks also help the development experts understand who can invite whom to work with them productively in an economic venture, under whose authority or supervision, and who can be selected to teach new skills to whom. Grouping people in ways consistent with local interaction patterns is for the better of a development project. Linguistic anthropologists can certainly help identify these patterns in the relevant population. The “family-based agricultural training” should be planned in ways that do not disrupt what works already among the intended beneficiaries of the development project. New knowledge spreads fast(er) following the local networks of interaction and collaboration. Like in PNG, the question of language choice arises in the Solomons Islands too in the interactions between the Australian advisors and the Natives among whom (societal) multilingualism prevails. The solution is the same for both polities, substituting Pijin for Tok Pisin and making sure that the key concepts are translated adequately and/or adapted to local cultural patterns. Carmel O’Shannessy, Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri, Elaine Johnson Nangala, and Gracie White Napaljarri focus on “How bilingual education achieves community development aims.” This is a common scenario in places where the economically disenfranchised segments of the population have been led to think that economic success is not possible without knowledge of the colonial language. Yet most of the affected people are too poor to attend schools that are long distances away from home. Or even if they learn the colonial medium of education, the socioeconomic structure does not allow them to practice it in ways that

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should improve their competence and make them competitive in the modern formal economy. In places such as Australia, the other side of the coin of being schooled in English is the feeling of being uprooted from one’s ancestral culture, which is contrary to the interest of the Aborigines, including the Warlpiri discussed in this Chapter 7, to sustain cultural diversity. No adequate economic development program should undermine this desideratum. The catch is of course not to prevent the children from competing in the larger socioeconomic structure in which English is the dominant language associated with more lucrative jobs, at least in the imagination of those who have been disenfranchised by colonization. The compromise is therefore a bilingual education program. On the other hand, the school faces the challenge of how to teach Warlpiri when it is already endangered and only a few elders speak it fluently, while the regular teachers’ knowledge of it is limited. Involving the elders in the teaching of the language and the associated nonlinguistic culture is the solution. Interactions between senior Warlpiri-speaking women and the school children turn the school into an excellent immersion setting for learning the language from people that look like themselves. By the same token the community members feel empowered by being asked to contribute to the development and sustainability of the new initiatives of forming the generation of future bilingual leaders. They hope that the latter will raise bilingual offspring with inputs from the home, which should make the vitality of language sustainable and the commitment worthwhile. The Aborigines feel thus empowered “to take back control of their lives, to express and live their own identities, and to organise their communities according to their values and aspirations.” After all, being Warlpiri is not mutually exclusive with being Australian; and the latter identity need not displace the former nor subject it to a subaltern status. This is a worthy project that needs substantial financial and staff investment from the Australian government, largely also because “Education in one’s home language can have a significant effect on the children’s readiness for learning and ability to learn.” And “The elders always said that they wanted the children to be strong in [both the] yapa way

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[i.e.,] ‘Warlpiri language and culture’ and [the] kardiya way [, i.e.,] ‘nonIndigenous language and culture’.” What we should bear in mind is that schooling is a part and parcel of development as presented in the present book (see also Mufwene 2021). In Chapter 8, Zinnia Mevawalla and Sanobia Palkhiwala tackle questions that arise in many polities of the Global South, although they focus on India: Does teaching the European language in elementary school favour the development of an adequate competence in the target language or contribute to disadvantaging several of the school children? What are the conditions under which they learn the former colonizer’s language? Do the economically disadvantaged generally manage to become fluent speakers of a language they seldom practice outside the classroom? The conditions are aggravated when the teachers themselves have limited command of it! In the case of India, the authors aptly compare English to a Trojan horse that winds up doing more harm than good. As children who are not taught in their mother tongue cannot learn effectively in a medium of education that they have hardly ever heard at home, the practice impedes adequate learning of different subjects taught in the medium of education. Thus, the school system contributes more to sustaining current socioeconomic inequities than to helping bridge the gap. Children from poor families pay the price. They cannot attend the private schools that children from affluent families, in which English is also spoken at home (at least by one parent), can. A practical problem is that India is highly diverse linguistically and it is too expensive for the government to make it possible for every child to be educated in their mother tongue. Note that, as explained in Mufwene (2021) in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa, the child needs education in a language they speak well and not necessarily in their mother tongue. Using an indigenous language of wider communication, a “regional language” (often on a smaller scale than Hindi or Marathi), is better than teaching (in) English. At least the child can learn the indigenous lingua franca more easily than English, and indeed naturalistically in a context where speakers of minoritized languages usually speak another language in addition to the mother tongue. It is in fact

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in this spirit that a “three-tiered language system” was introduced by the government of India in 1968. Unfortunately, those who favour starting with English as the medium of education already in the first grade, or just teaching it that early in the formal education of the child, have not realized the extent to which they are widening the gap between, on the one hand, children of affluent families, who receive “high-quality English-medium schooling” and, on the other hand, those of the majority of families whose experience is not the same at home and in school. In the end, the inequities apply not only to fluency in English but also to how much the child has learned (well) in school to be competitive for better paying jobs associated with this colonial language. The irony of the situation in India is that since English remains the language of economic and political power, hence of socioeconomic success (with an additional amount of luck!), it is hard to convince poor parents that early English education for their children will not necessarily provide the latter a ticket out of poverty. The authors speak adequately of “unequal access to [this] linguistic capital.” The problem is not resolved by reserving seats in better schools for the underprivileged children, since these find themselves in a socioeconomic environment where they appear not to belong and are discriminated against as “slow learners” or “unteachable.” Thus, those born as untouchables—a term conjured up by “unteachable”—appear doomed to remain forever disenfranchised socio-economically. There is yet a possible solution to this conundrum, which involves, on the one hand, assigning to English the status of an international language that is not needed for the internal governance of India and, on the other, allowing the country to function, on the model of (say) Switzerland, in its major languages, which children can learn hopefully more easily than English, on less inequitable terms. The change must obviously start from the top, with the affluent socioeconomic class giving up some of their privileges, including the use of English as the language of the white-collar sector of the economy. However, I am an outsider whose emotional biases may not be shared by the Natives (see, e.g., Ramaswamy’s 1997 account of the Tamils’ resistance to Hindi); and this is a big problem for the

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Global South whose economic development is too often patterned on the Global North, typically for disastrous outcomes. In a way, I am suggesting more questions in addition to the two that the authors answer negatively. They include: Must English be maintained in its present status at the top of language stratification in India? Can English really serve as the language of decolonization in India or is it perpetuating the role that Thomas Babington Macaulay intended it to play when he wrote the “Minute on Indian Education” in 1835? It has produced a minority class of (post)colonial auxiliaries who do not appear to care much about the subalternity of the majority who remain disadvantaged economically. In Chapter 9, “The place of a lingua franca in development practice,” Catherine Levy discusses the way in which Tok Pisin as a language of wider communication that is more accessible to Papua New Guineans than English is “fulfilling a unique niche in a country that thrives on relationships defined by the concept of wantok [‘a common language’].” It represents an important point of entry for an outsider from the Global North that must be naturally struck by the very large number of indigenous languages (reportedly 840) spoken in PNG. However, although it is an expanded pidgin that has evolved from the contact of English with the local languages, the meanings of a lot of words of English origins have indigenized and acquired different meanings, as noted also in Chapter 5. This calls for a close examination of how words in the working materials that were originally written in English are translated into Tok Pisin, especially since the translations may in turn be re-translated into local languages identified as Tok Ples. As the reader must also have guessed from Chapter 5, English itself is spoken by only a small minority of the population and remains a foreign language, despite its status as an official language—just like in several British former exploitation colonies. By contrast, Tok Pisin is more likely to involve locals as partners in the development project, which apparently targeted (primarily) the economically disenfranchised. However, one must also pay attention to the ways in which the wantok varies from one part of the country to another. The variation entails adjusting the translations when the relevant terminology varies too. Moreover, since even the same meanings do not lexicalize in a

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uniform fashion from English to Tok Pisin, the local linguistic practices must be respected. This remark is connected to the Catherine Levy’s observation that words such as hygiene and sanitation are actually among the most difficult to translate. In the same vein, care must be taken to use the varieties spoken by the common people rather than the “Expensive Tok Pisin” of the upper class, which may also be spoken by some of the Natives interacting the most directly with the outsider experts. Using Tok Pisin in the development project, health care in this particular case, helps win the trust of the people, as the language choice reflects respect for indigenous cultural practices. In a former colony such as PNG and the likes elsewhere in the world, the last thing that outsiders who look and sound like the former colonizers would like to do is to suggest that they are coming back to “civilise” and “subordinate” the Natives again. Barbara Pamphilon tackles the role and adequacy of translation again in Chapter 10. Negotiating the translation of key concepts is a process that fosters “democratic dialogue and a dialectic learning exchange [that] can enable community development that is transformative for all.” The present project involves helping PNG’s “women and families (…) move from semi-subsistence to more effective and equitable farming.” The enterprise involves recruiting “their different [cultural] capitals,” including traditional farming practices, “in order to develop sustainable livelihoods.” In the process, one must also learn which particular translations to avoid, because of the negative connotations associated with them. Using the culturally correct words is critical not only in the context of the advice that is offered to the population but also because the practice determines whether or not the critical aspects of the development information is transmitted not only accurately but also appropriately, because even the pragmatics of communication is relevant to the success of the project. Barbara Pamphilon notes correctly that “the categories [expressed in Tok Pisin or in Tok Ples] should resonate within that community and make sense to the local informants.” Her advice is that if the outsider expert is going to stay in a setting of the development project for a long time, he/she should invest some time in learning the lingua franca or the relevant Tok Ples, as well as other non-linguistic ways in which the

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locals communicate about him-/herself and the project, to be certain that there are no misunderstandings that harm the project and especially that the latter is not being miscarried. The relevant knowledge is being constructed jointly and in collaboration; and adequate communication with the interpreters is critical to the success of the project.

3

Some Constructive Addenda

While discussing the last chapter, I was reminded of an article by Ana Deumert (2010) titled “‘It would be nice if they could give us more language’: Serving South Africa’s multilingual patient base.” It discusses the predicament of doctors attending to patients in rural South Africa who do not speak English while the doctors do not speak the latter’s languages either. Interpreters are needed but sometimes they are not particularly competent. This is indeed the situation in several polities of the Global South, where many of those who provide critical services to the masses of the populations cannot adequately provide them in the vernaculars of the latter. Since the colonial period the linguistic gap has been accepted as the normal condition. An important reason is that the language of professional training is not that of the professional interactions with the receivers of the services, a disconnect that Djité (2008, 2020) rightly condemns as unacceptable. Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices obviously highlight the fact that both languages and linguists are assets to economic development, which is not limited to making a population economically self-sustaining but extends also to providing adequate health care and schooling, among other matters. When the experts are outsiders, it is imperative that a language that is familiar to the stakeholders be used during the presentation and implementation of the development project. The most obvious candidates are the stakeholders’ vernaculars or lingua francas. Linguists lend their expertise to development experts by showing how their findings can contribute to the success of the engagements. Linguists can indeed work together with the development experts when such collaboration is necessary.

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However, they will help better if they also understand the goals and technical language of the experts. In matters such as which language to use as a medium of education in a multilingual population, it certainly helps to enter in dialogue with economists and political scientists, whose scholarship on the influence of economic activities and aspirations of particular people and how they intend to realize the latter can inform language policy recommendations. We must of course also bear in mind that the coexistence of languages in different contact ecologies have evolved differentially rather than uniformly; thus, policies that have worked in some part(s) of the world may not work in another. When it comes to the colonization of several parts of the world by Europeans over the past half-millennium, we must also note that it was primarily an economic venture intended to solve economic problems of Europeans (Crosby 1986). One of its most evident payoffs was the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Language policies in the colonies were developed to serve the interests of Europeans first (e.g., Harvey 2018 for Anglophone North America, Macaulay 1835 for India). The cultural (including linguistic) consequences in the colonies varied depending on whether they were of the settler kind, in which cultural assimilation was the rule—despite the minoritization and marginalization of the Natives—or of the exploitation kind. In the latter case, the colonizers primarily intended to amass raw materials at the lowest cost possible to fuel the European Industrial Revolution, whereas in the former case, the colonists wanted to engage in an industrial revolution that would improve their lives in the colonies. In the exploitation colonies, the Natives remained the overwhelming majority populations and were reduced to the status of subalterns generally excluded from the economic benefits of the colonial enterprise. The schooling of Natives was instituted to form a small class of colonial auxiliaries rather than to educate the larger population into modern economic and political practices, after they had in most cases been regrouped into multilingual nation-states that violated several of their ancestral ethnic and political allegiances. This generally worked contrary to the modern position that a formally educated workforce contributes to the economic development of a nation, but the system facilitated the exploitation of the colonies.

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The new, non-traditional socioeconomic structures help explain, for instance, the three-tiered stratification of languages, with the ethnic languages allocated to the very bottom of the hierarchy, the European colonial ones—now the (co)official languages of the new independent States—to the top, while the co-official indigenous languages have a symbolic function with little economic power. In this world order, the indigenous or indigenized lingua francas (e.g., respectively, Hiri Motu and Tok Pisin in PNG) bridge the un- or little-schooled masses of the populations with the small upper stratum reaping the benefits of political independence from the former metropole. Consequently, ethnic and otherwise-based social inequalities have become the norm that has prompted several linguists to recommend various reforms promoting the use of indigenous languages as media of formal education (see, e.g., DeGraff and Stump 2018 in the case of Haiti and Mufwene 2021 regarding Sub-Saharan Africa and several important publications cited in both). The central reason for these publications is that current language policies continue to serve the interests of the former colonizers and of the indigenous rulers who replaced them after Independence. We can say that the governance of the relevant polities continues through intermediaries acting as interpreters (Lawrance et al. 2006), raising communication problems and issues that are indeed similar to those discussed in Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices. Becoming informed in the economic and political histories of the polities where they conduct research and can advise the political rulers and administrators may help them advocate not only for the protection and promotion of minority languages (which is often done without a well-articulated action plan) but also to propose how the recommendations can be implemented. Issues of economic realism arise, especially when the economies are weak and the national treasuries are being depleted by the ruling class. Although economists have often invoked linguistic fragmentation without considering the payoffs of education in the learner’s mother tongue, the issue of whether governments of poor countries can afford using all the mother tongues deserves serious attention, because economic development involves more than adequate and productive schools. It also involves substantial financial investment in other aspects

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of economic development, such as adequate housing, sanitation, and health services as well as transportation and communication infrastructures (which all also bear on the success of well-designed school systems) as discussed in Mufwene (2021). Understanding the scholarship on economic development and governance-related topics can help linguists make recommendations that are realistic. Sometimes satisficing solutions, rather than ideal ones, are all we can shoot for. The kind of cross-pollination recommended by, for instance, Grin et al. (2010) between the linguistics and economics is definitely in order. Practical questions include what was mentioned above, viz., whether the country’s economy is strong enough to afford schooling every child in their mother tongue, while it is definitely wrong for schools to adopt media of education that are literally foreign to the school children. How can languages be empowered economically, by way of using them in the economy without keeping them less competitive in financial rewards? Does what work for informal economy (typically operating in the practitioners’ vernaculars—see Djité 2008 and Vigouroux 2013) also work for the formal sector? Are parents really naïve in rejecting the schooling of their children in their vernaculars when they suspect that the proposed reforms concerning media of education are ploys to exclude their children from “European knowledge and power” (Makoni and Trudell 2009; see also Ramaswamy 1997 and Fandy and Vigouroux 2018) which has indeed benefited the current political leadership and senior administrators? It is myopic to encourage particular populations to continue using their disadvantageous languages when no recommendations are concurrently made to governments to create more well-paying jobs for which indigenous languages are assets. In fact, language policy changes should begin with government institutions and administrative structures themselves. The suggestion underscores the need for linguists to consult with experts on governance and to learn to articulate their sensible recommendations for reforms regarding the media of formal education and the languages of work in ways that are likely to be effective. Sometimes such reforms should start from the top of the socioeconomic structures, which should motivate the economically disenfranchised to accept them.

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The same is true of health care. Providing the services in the languages that patients understand and speak empowers the latter to connect with the providers, express themselves adequately, and benefit from appropriate care. Of course, the providers of the services should also be paid adequately to enable them to earn a decent living in their professions. Feeling satisfied with the compensations motivates them to invest themselves more effectively in the practice of their profession. A health care provider who must engage additionally in a parallel economic activity to make ends meet financially has less time to invest in an effective practice of their profession. Note also that, generally, when it comes to right terminology, the professionals rather than academicians are perhaps more qualified to propose terms that are easy to understand in the indigenous languages they know. In other words, the success of endeavours to sustain languages and other cultural traditions depends on how well the socioeconomic structure supports the efforts. The demise of the languages is typically the outcome of socioeconomic marginalization, which leads the victims to shift languages, hoping thereby to be able to be integrated. Note that this does not contradict Vaillancourt’s (2008) observation that minority/minoritized languages are likely to survive the competition of the dominant language if the speakers are kept outside the domain of the competition. The question remains how to help them out of poverty and exclusion from economic comfort without assimilating them by fiat linguistically or keeping them excluded from the new socioeconomic world order. How can governments operate in select indigenous languages without disempowering the majority of ethnic languages? Does empowering several languages economically and politically necessarily disfavour plurilingualism? Shouldn’t this capacity be rewarded professionally rather than favouring good command of one single language that is considered as the key to socioeconomic success? Is what is characterized by some economists (e.g., Alesina et al. 2003; Ginsburgh and Weber 2011, 2020) as linguistic fragmentation really an obstacle to economic development? Note that Alesina et al. (2003) provide counterexamples, with

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some countries such as Somalia and Burundi, which are not (so) linguistically heterogeneous still in as much poverty as their linguistically heterogeneous neighbours. As explained in Mufwene (2021) and in Vigouroux and Mufwene (2020), language and economic development are intertwined in various ways; and the relevant issues need addressing globally (Mufwene 2010, 2016, 2017) rather than partially. A global approach underscores the need for collaboration between, on the one hand, experts on the relevant aspects of language choice and practice in school and in the economy and, on the other hand, experts in the other disciplines. The collaborations discussed in Languages, linguistics and development practices are just the beginnings of what can evolve into numerous productive applied ventures in which linguists can both inform their collaborators and learn from them. They are a step towards answering a question asked by Vigouroux and Mufwene (2021): Why do governments tend to turn to economists for advice about language policy matters rather than to (applied) linguists, who are nominally the experts on language matters? Given the vibrant engagement of linguists over the past three decades with language revitalization, I would be remiss not to note that there should have been concurrent engagement with Bourdieu’s (1977, 1991) notion of language market, as it plays a central role in determining which language prevails and which ones are disadvantaged and why. With languages conceived of as resources, assets, or capitals, linguists will be well served in learning from economists how resources are managed by the stakeholders—who stand to benefit from them—and how the dynamics of competition and selection, as well as various factors influencing these, apply to language. There are a host of other aspects of interdisciplinarity and crossdisciplinary intellectual exchanges that can be discussed, but space and time limitations are equally important constraints that prevent me from engaging with them. I have focused primarily on economy and economics because the management of resources has always been central to social organizations, including kinship and marriage. I hope the reader takes this book seriously and that linguistics can widen the scope of its interests in order to venture across its traditional boundaries. The move will increase its relevance to the world in which the practitioners of

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languages evolve and sometimes struggle really hard for their survival. Expanding our potential to solve real-world problems adequately will make linguistics a discipline deserving more attention from governments and development workers. Acknowledgements I’m grateful to Cécile B. Vigouroux for feedback on the draft of this commentary. I’m solely responsible for all its shortcomings.

References Alesina, Alberto, Arnaud Devleeschauwer, and William Easterly. 2003. Fractionalization. Journal of Economic Growth 8: 155–194. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. L’économie des échanges linguistiques. Langue Française 34: 17–34. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Crosby, Alfr. 1986. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DeGraff, Michel, and Glenda S. Stump. 2018. Kreyòl, Pedagogy, and Technology for Opening up Quality Education in Haiti: Changes in Teachers’ Metalinguistic Attitudes as First Steps in a Paradigm Shift. Language 94 (2): e127–e157. Deumert, Ana. 2010. ‘It Would Be Nice if They Could Give us More Language’– Serving South Africa’s Multilingual Patient Base. Social Science & Medicine 71: 53–61. Djité, Paulin. 2008. The Sociolinguistics of Development in Africa. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Djité, Paulin. 2020. Economy and Language in Africa. In Bridging Economics and Linguistics, ed. Cécile. B. Vigouroux and Salikoko S. Mufwene, 182– 202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Djité, Paulin. 2021. Health, the economy and language in Africa: A case study. In Language and the Sustainable Development Goals, ed. Philip Harding-Esch and Hywel Coleman, 135–151. London: British Council. Fandy, Cosme Z., and Cécile. B. Vigouroux. 2018. L’initiative ELAN et l’enseignement des langues africaines : Une nécessité ou une chimère? In La crise de l’apprentissage en Afrique francophone subsaharienne: Regards croisés sur

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la didactique des langues et les pratiques enseignantes, ed. Laurent Puren and Bruno Maurer, 7317–7338. Bern: Peter Lang. Ginsburgh, Victor, and Shlomo Weber. 2011. How Many Languages Do We Need? The Economics of Linguistic Diversity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ginsburgh, Victor, and Shlomo Weber. 2020. Economists Do Need Linguists. In Bridging Linguistics and Economics, ed. Cécile. B. Vigouroux and Salikoko S. Mufwene, 56–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grin, François, Claudio Sfreddo, and François Vaillancourt. 2010. The Economics of the Multilingual Workplace. New York: Routledge. Harvey, Sean P. 2018. Native tongues: Colonialism and Race from Encounter to Reservation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lawrance, Benjamin, Emily Osborn, and Richard L. Roberts, eds. 2006. Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Macaulay, Thomas Babington. 1835. Minute on Indian Education. In Sketches of Some Distinguished Anglo-Indians: (Second Series) Including Lord Macaulay’s Great Minute on Education in India, compiled by William Ferguson Beatson Laurie. London: J. B. Day (1875). Makoni, Sinfree and Barbara Trudell. 2009. African Perspectives on Linguistic Diversity: Implications for Language Policy and Education. In Languages of Africa and the Diaspora: Educating for Language Awareness, ed. Jo Anne Kleifgen and George C. Bond, 32–47. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2010. The Role of Mother-Tongue Schooling in Eradicating Poverty: A Response to … Language and Poverty. Language 86: 910–932. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2016. A Cost-and-Benefit Approach to Language Loss. In Endangerment of Languages Across the Planet, ed. Luna Filipovi´c and Martin Pütz, 116–143. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2017. Language Vitality: The Weak Theoretical Underpinnings of What Can Be an Exciting Research Area. Language 93: e-202–223. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2021. Linguistic Diversity, Formal Education, and Economic Development: The Sub-Saharan African Chicken-and-Egg Dilemma? In Language and the Sustainable Development Goals, ed. Philip Harding-Esch and Hywel Coleman, 153–164. London: British Council. Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 1997. Passions of the Tongue: Language Devolution in Tamil India, 1891–1970. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

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Vaillancourt, François. 2008. Language and Poverty: Measurements, Determinants, and Policy Responses. In Language and Poverty, ed. Wayne Harbert, et al., 147–160. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Vigouroux, Cécile. B. 2013. Informal Economy and Language Practice in the Context of Migrations. In Language, Migration and Social Inequalities: A Critical Sociolinguistic Perspective on Institutions and Work, ed. Alexandre Duchêne, Melissa Moyer, and Celia Roberts, 296–328. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Vigouroux, Cécile. B., and Salikoko S. Mufwene, eds. 2020. Bridging Linguistics and Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Index

A

ABCD. See Asset-based community development ABCD+E 61, 62, 65, 66, 68–72, 83 Aborigines 276 Abunu 99 Abusa 99 Accra 89, 96, 103 ACIAR. See Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research Aflatoun 6, 15, 25, 26, 28–33, 37–42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 52–54, 270 Agriculture or agricultural development 15, 78, 116, 118 sector 98, 100, 105 training 15, 148, 275 work 98

Aid 60, 190, 233, 239. See also Development aid workers 237 Akan 89, 93, 97–99, 103 Alice Springs 177, 178 Alotau 238 Appreciative inquiry 247, 248 Asante 92 Ashanti 103 Asset-based community development (ABCD) 6, 16, 17, 59–67, 72, 73, 76–80, 83, 84 Assets 6, 39, 65, 68, 70, 76, 80, 83, 116, 247–249, 254, 268, 271, 281, 284, 286. See also Resources Australia 18, 113, 122, 127, 165, 166, 168, 169, 176, 226, 238, 245, 274, 276

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Hill and F. K. Ameka (eds.), Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1

291

292

Index

Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) 61, 115 Awar 232, 233

B

Bagobo-Klata 72 Baining 117 Balwadi 200–203 Bangladesh 190 Bank 5, 26, 32, 33, 35, 37–40, 44–48, 51, 53, 101, 249. See also World Bank Barangay Samay 69 Barrio 65, 83 Bilingual 15, 18, 72, 165–167, 169, 170, 174–176, 178–183, 198, 202, 212, 249, 275, 276 Bisayâ. See Cebuano Bislama 225 Blaan 73 Brideprice or bridewealth 140 Britain 96, 274 Budget (V. N) bajeti (Swahili) 28, 41–44, 46, 48, 49, 52 baset (Tok Pisin) 229, 257 begroting (Dutch) 28

C

Capacity building 29, 116, 117, 120 Cebuano 72 Childhood 128, 190 early 7, 14, 19, 189, 201, 202 young children 19, 153, 180, 190, 191, 193, 198, 204, 207, 208, 210, 213, 215

Clans 140, 147, 150, 151, 153, 156. See also Lines Coady Institute, The 64 Cocoa 99, 100, 260 Code-switching code-switch 226 Colonisation 165, 191, 194, 195 colonial 5, 72, 91, 93, 100, 101, 194, 195, 199, 201, 210, 215, 227, 237, 270, 275, 278, 281–283 Communication communicative competence 222 communicative sustainability 223 development communication 3, 5, 11–13, 20, 26, 27, 76, 269 system 2, 3 tools 60, 62, 71, 72, 76, 83 Community(ies) aspirations 169 development 16, 18, 19, 40, 62, 64, 66, 75, 166, 176, 181, 183, 245, 248, 251, 254, 256, 259, 263, 275, 280 disadvantaged 190, 215 education 16, 60, 172, 177 learning 245 remote 18, 165, 176, 179 slum 193, 201, 215 Contact language 225. See also Language of wider communication; Lingua franca Contextualisation 25, 27, 29–31, 40, 41, 52, 53 Cooperatives 64, 67, 68, 137 Lumad 67, 68 Corona virus. See COVID-19; Pandemic

Index

COVID-19 16, 95, 104, 105, 117, 189, 231. See also Pandemic Culture cultural context 16, 60, 72, 148, 270 cultural diversity 16, 25, 30, 54, 66, 227, 276 cultural knowledge 68, 83, 172, 256, 271 cultural practices 70, 72, 116, 166, 169, 270, 271, 274, 280 Higaunon Lumad 70, 83 Melanesian 227 popular 96, 106

D

Dagbani 89, 98 Decolonisation 210, 214 Deme 99 Densu River 101 Development approach 5, 17, 59, 60 community 16, 18, 40, 62, 64, 66, 75, 166, 176, 181, 183, 245, 248, 251, 254, 256, 259, 263, 275, 280 economic 15, 62, 63, 267–276, 279, 281–284, 286 human or sustainable human 2–6, 13, 26, 130, 269 methodologies or methods 16, 60 practice 1, 3–7, 15, 17–20, 25–27, 60, 61, 72, 77, 84, 136, 154, 155, 227, 228, 239, 248, 251, 253, 256, 259, 279 practitioners. See Development, workers programme 17, 113, 129, 231

293

project 5, 6, 17–19, 26, 77, 111–113, 118, 120, 137, 148, 156, 221, 222, 225, 228, 232, 257, 268–275, 279–281 research 112, 114, 139 researchers or scholars 16, 19, 60, 71, 84, 247 workers 41, 43, 76, 77, 83, 190, 223, 237, 287 Dialect 2, 113, 203, 227 Disorienting dilemma 248, 249, 252, 255, 257, 263 Diversity 32, 66, 154, 254 cultural 16, 25, 30, 54, 66, 227, 276 linguistic 12, 89, 197, 222, 227, 272 Donor country. See Funding bodies Double divide 196, 209, 215 Dyadic constructions 144–147, 157

E

Early Childhood, Care and Development (ECECD) 189, 193, 198–200, 208, 212, 213, 215 East Africa 27, 34 Kenya 11, 25, 26, 32, 48–51, 53 Tanzania 11, 25, 26, 32, 40, 44, 48–53 East New Britain 114, 258, 274 ECECD. See Early Childhood, Care and Development Economies 88, 283 African 36 developing 24, 34 diverse 6

294

Index

Economists 3, 29, 62, 190, 234, 235, 267, 268, 272, 282, 283, 285, 286 Economy cash 148 dual 88 economic concepts 235 economic development 15, 62, 63, 267–276, 279, 281–284, 286 economic growth 5, 36, 62, 89, 90 economic indicators 5, 62 economic prosperity 192, 211, 213 globalised 211 industrial 194 PNG 234 Education. See also Learning adult 166, 167, 171, 181, 183 banking 199, 200, 263 bilingual 167, 202, 212 curriculum 166, 171, 212 early childhood teachers 193 early childhood teachers’ perspectives 204, 207 ECECD 189, 199, 208, 212, 215 financial 15, 25, 28, 29, 32, 33, 35, 45, 53 first language 169, 182 formal 41, 52, 169, 235, 268, 278, 283, 284 language of 72, 227 medium of instruction 72, 191, 196, 198 multilingual 166, 197, 202, 212 New Education Policy (NEP) 202 systems 166, 173, 196, 200, 208–211, 213, 215

universal 195 Educators 16, 18, 19, 166, 176, 200, 201, 252, 262. See also Teacher Employment 47, 63, 73, 89, 95, 116, 169, 181, 234. See also Labour; Work Empowerment 65, 66, 70–72, 80, 117, 166, 181, 263 women’s 137 English English as a Second language (ESL) 175 Expensive English 118, 234 language learning 19, 190, 191, 193, 195, 196, 199, 204, 205, 208, 210–214 language privilege 194 loan words 248 medium instruction 193, 204, 207, 210, 211, 213–215 native speakers 237 Plain English 78, 118, 119, 257 Entrepreneur 36, 37, 39, 43, 44, 50, 53, 101, 273 Entrepreneurship 26, 33, 36, 37, 39, 43–48, 52, 53, 116, 270 Ujasiriamali (Swahili) 43, 44, 50 Euro-centric 201 Evaluation 17, 29, 32, 112, 231, 245, 255 project 235 Ewe 8–10, 89, 91, 93, 97–99

F

Family(ies). See also Kin farming 116, 148, 149, 157, 246, 247, 252

Index

practices 248, 250 system 155–157 Family Farm Teams 135–137, 142, 147–150, 154, 157, 275 Farmer knowledge 99, 136, 253 learning 136, 138, 154 sharecropping 99 smallholder 90, 116, 149 Farming 68, 98, 99, 101, 116, 148, 149, 157, 245–247, 250, 252, 270, 280 sustainable 116, 129 Filipino 66, 71–74, 78, 272 Finance or financial education 15, 25, 28, 29, 32, 33, 35, 45, 53 institutions 24 literacy 40, 149, 228, 235 terms 15, 25, 37, 48 universal financial concepts 33 universal financial inclusion 24, 33, 34 First language 73, 113, 117, 118, 120, 167, 169, 176, 182, 190, 192, 197, 203, 222, 225, 233 Freire, Paolo 195, 199, 214, 262, 263 Funding bodies 77, 237

G

Ga 89, 96, 97 Gazelle District 114 Gela 147 Gender 13, 17, 18, 61, 99, 114, 127, 137, 148, 150–152, 155, 157, 195, 208, 231, 245, 249, 254, 257, 260, 274, 275

295

equitable approaches 116 equity 148 Ghana 8, 9, 11, 12, 17, 88–106, 273 languages 9 Ghari 147 Globalisation 192, 198, 211 Global North 43, 98, 279 Global South 98, 272, 274, 277, 279, 281 Glossary 31–33, 37–39, 42, 44, 47, 52, 53, 229, 231, 232 Gold Coast 91 Guadalcanal 10, 136, 138–140, 149, 153 Gulf Province 231 Gur/Mabia 89, 90, 98, 273

H

Hierarchy 73, 207, 209, 214, 223, 237, 283 of languages 72, 201, 226 slavocratic 195 Hiligaynon 74 Hindi 191, 196, 197, 201–206, 211, 277, 278 Hiri Motu 114, 221, 246, 283 Household 66, 95, 98, 100, 136, 138, 139, 141, 148, 152, 155, 156, 246, 249 Human Development Index (HDI) 62, 112, 114

I

Identity 88, 99, 113, 118, 130, 222, 226, 227, 250, 256, 276 national 222, 227, 239

296

Index

ILO. See International Labour Organisation Ilonggo 73, 74 Independence 92, 96, 128, 169, 227, 249, 283 post-independence 98, 196 India Constitution 196 education system 196, 209, 215 Indo-centric 201, 202 linguistic context 192 three-tiered language system 197, 278 International Labour Organization (ILO) 89, 104, 246

J

Jimi Valley 226, 233, 236

K

Key concepts 4, 5, 33, 117, 229–231, 275, 280 Kin or kinship names 164 opposite-sex siblings 142–144 relations 18, 135, 136, 138, 142–144, 147, 150, 151, 153–157, 275 same-sex siblings 142, 146, 147, 152 skin name system 164 systems 135, 138, 139, 142, 147, 150, 156, 250 terms 141, 145–147, 152 Kiswahili 26, 28, 40, 41, 43, 44, 270 Kokopo District 115

Kumasi 103 Kwa 89, 90, 98, 273 Kwaio 139

L

Labour. See Work agrarian 98 agricultural 88, 100 casual 101 force 95 practices 63 relations 14, 15, 95, 99, 102–106, 273 Labourers 88, 99, 101 Lajamanu 166, 167, 171–177, 180 LAMI. See Low and middle income contexts Land 66, 68, 74, 88, 99, 101, 128, 129, 141, 154, 164–166, 271 inheritance 138, 140, 155 Language(s) accessible 12, 16, 117–121, 130 acquisition 190, 213, 214 analysis 1, 3, 7, 8, 12, 13, 15, 16, 20 choice 11, 16, 204, 222–224, 227, 238, 275, 280, 286 colonial 101, 201, 275, 278 contact 225, 279 diversity 3, 71, 201 endangered 192 ethnic 272, 283, 285 first 73, 113, 117, 118, 120, 167, 176, 182, 190, 192, 197, 203, 222, 225, 233 hierarchy. See Hierarchy, of languages in development 18, 72, 118

Index

Indigenous 71–73, 75, 83, 169, 211, 246, 270–272, 277, 279, 283–285 learning 19, 190, 191, 193, 195, 196, 198, 203–205, 207, 208, 210, 211, 213, 214 local 4, 5, 7, 11, 13, 16, 18, 26, 27, 30, 65, 71–75, 77, 83, 113, 118, 121, 127, 148, 149, 156, 166, 174, 176, 179, 183, 192, 205, 206, 208, 211, 223, 224, 226, 227, 232, 233, 237, 268, 270, 272, 274, 279 middle 232, 234 native 72 Oceanic 139, 142, 225 of communication 27, 44, 114 of education 72, 227 official 11, 71, 72, 114, 192, 196, 221, 227, 237, 267, 279, 283 of wider communication. See Lingua franca politics 194 power of 262 regional 72, 74, 197, 209, 277 second 74, 176, 183, 190, 197, 238, 245 use 2, 7, 14, 16, 19 vernacular 268, 281, 284 Language of wider communication 7, 19, 149, 221, 239, 277, 279 Leadership 68, 70, 71, 167, 169, 172, 182, 183, 255, 257, 261, 271, 284 Learning. See also Education adult 166, 167, 171, 181, 183 community 245 exchange 262, 280

297

language 19, 190, 191, 193, 195, 196, 198, 199, 203, 205, 207, 208, 210–214 peer-to-peer model 136–139, 141–143, 147, 148, 150–157 play-based 199, 207 transformative 248 two-way. See Bilingual Light Warlpiri 164 Lines 7, 140, 147, 150, 151, 153, 155, 157. See also Clans Lingua franca 11, 74, 117, 211, 225, 227, 239, 253, 268, 272, 274, 279–281, 283 Linguicide 192 Linguistics or linguistic capital 193, 209, 215, 278 diversity 12, 89, 197, 222, 227, 272 fragmentation 283, 285 rights 210 Linguists 3, 7, 60, 72, 84, 106, 170, 172, 177, 263, 267–271, 273, 281, 283, 284, 286 Literacy centre 164, 175, 178, 179 financial. See Finance low 246 worker 18, 175–177, 181, 183 Livelihood 63, 66–68, 70, 93, 97, 102, 135, 148, 149, 154 economic 210 sustainable 77, 247, 280 Longgu 78, 136, 138–146, 149–152, 154–156 Low and middle income (LAMI) contexts 190 Lumad 65–68, 74, 75, 83

298

Index

M

Madang 223, 224, 235 Maguindanaon 74 Maharashtra 197, 203 Mahbub-ul-Haq 62 Mampong 98 Mandaya 72 Mansaka 72 Marathi 197, 202–206, 211, 277 Mareng 233, 236 Marginalisation 282, 285 marginalised groups 61, 196, 199, 208 of women 100 Marriage 139–142, 260, 286 Matriliny 18, 136, 138, 139, 275 line 138, 152 matrilineal inheritance 138 matrilineal kinship 138 matrilineal system 155, 275 Milne Bay 238 Mindanao 6, 16, 60–62, 64–69, 71–75, 77, 79, 80, 83, 272 Minimal English. See Minimal Language Minimal Language 77–79 Mining 17, 91, 93, 102, 273 job 102, 273 settlement 103 towns 103 MLE. See Multilingual Education Monolingual approach 272 Morobe 231, 233 Mother tongue. See First language Multicultural 222 Multilingual Education 207, 212 Multilingualism or multilingual approach 15, 73–75, 213

context 11, 15, 72 education 166, 197, 207, 212 nation 71, 282 polities 267 society 12 Multimodality multimodal approach 75, 76 Mumbai 193, 201

N

NARI. See National Agricultural Research Institute National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) 248 Natives 275, 278, 280, 282 Neo-liberalism 89, 191 Network church group 137, 138 for Women’s Rights 98 peer-to-peer 151, 156 social 135, 138, 149, 154, 275 New Ireland 234, 256, 261, 262 NGO. See Non-Government Organization Nigeria 40, 92, 100 Non-Government Organization (NGO) 2, 6, 12, 15, 19, 25, 28, 40, 45, 46, 53, 128, 155, 190, 191, 193, 197, 198, 200, 201, 203, 208–210, 212–215 Northern Territory 165–170, 174, 176, 178, 179 Nzema 89, 97

O

Occupation 96, 103, 225 Oceanic language 139, 142

Index

Oppressors 195

P

Pacific 113, 117, 122, 128, 135–138, 155, 225, 275 Pacific Adventist University (PAU) 248 Pakistan 190 Pandemic 16, 76, 95, 96, 105, 117. See also COVID-19 Papua New Guinea 10–13, 17–19, 26, 111, 113–118, 122, 123, 126–128, 136, 137, 148, 221, 222, 225–227, 231, 232, 234, 235, 237–239, 245–261, 274, 275, 279, 280 PAR. See Participatory Action Research Participatory Action Research (PAR) or participatory appreciative inquiry 247 methods 73 processes 234 research 247 Pedagogy 175, 199, 201, 202, 207, 214. See also Education banking approach 199 critical 193 pedagogical practices 199 Peer-to-peer learning 16, 135–139, 141–143, 147, 148, 150–157 network 137, 138, 151, 156 training 136, 143, 151–154 Philippines 6, 11, 16, 17, 60, 62, 64, 70, 71, 73, 74, 84, 271, 272, 274 Pidgin 225

299

expanded 225, 279 Melanesian 225, 227 Port Moresby 223, 224, 234, 239 Postcolonialism 11, 12, 15, 17, 26, 88, 100, 192, 193, 201, 214 language politics 194 politics 194, 215 Poverty 4, 6, 24, 90, 189, 200, 202, 278, 285, 286 Precarity 89, 104, 105 Proverbs 91, 97 Prune 259 Q

Qualitative data 153, 248, 254 R

Rabaul District 115 Resources 3, 6, 11, 28, 31, 36, 38, 42, 47–49, 52, 53, 63–66, 68, 70, 73, 76, 80, 83, 98, 105, 114, 139, 164, 171, 172, 175, 194, 195, 200, 208, 211, 214, 271, 275, 286 S

Saving(s) 5, 34, 35, 38, 41, 43, 45, 46, 52, 270 save 26, 32–35, 38, 44, 45, 47, 48, 52 Savosavo 142, 147 School. See also Education bilingual 175, 179 English-medium 197, 203–205, 208, 209, 278 Hindi-medium 204 Marathi-medium 204

300

Index

medium of instruction 72, 196, 198 of Australian Linguistics 172 program 40, 65, 163, 165, 173, 174, 178, 179, 181–183 SDG. See Sustainable Development Goal Sen, Amartya 62 Sepik 236 Social relationships 128, 137 Society(ies) agrarian 88, 273 industrial 88 matrilineal 138–142, 147, 152, 153, 155, 157 multilingual 15 Solomon Islands 10, 11, 18, 78, 135–140, 148–150, 154, 157, 225, 275 Solomons Pijin 10, 149, 151, 156, 225, 227 Southern Africa 40, 191 Standard Australian English (SAE) 113, 127, 171 Subanen 72 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3, 4, 6, 7, 24, 89, 190, 215 Switzerland 91, 278

T

Talise 10, 140, 153 Tallensi 103 Tausug 74 Tboli 72, 73 Teacher. See also Educators; Trainer assistant 177, 179, 182 early childhood 14, 19, 193, 201

English-speaking 201, 202, 205 linguist 164, 172, 174, 176 perspectives 18, 200, 204, 207, 215 qualified 170, 175 responsibilisation 200 Teduray 72, 73 Tema 90 Tok Bokis 260, 261 Tok Piksa 261 Tok Pisin 10–12, 19, 114, 117, 120–125, 127, 148, 221–229, 231–240, 246, 249–255, 257, 259–261, 274, 275, 279, 280, 283 Momase variety 234 Tok Ples 12, 117, 120, 122, 226, 232, 236, 246, 252, 255, 259, 280 Trainer 16, 33, 40, 41, 45, 152, 155, 232, 233 Global Master 33, 40, 41 Kenyan 26, 44 Training 14, 15, 25, 26, 32, 44, 52, 68, 75, 76, 83, 94, 98, 105, 112, 113, 116, 118, 120, 148, 149, 151–153, 155, 178, 180, 181, 199, 203, 212, 214, 223, 246, 252, 255, 281 for educators 212 livelihood 135 Translation 7, 12, 15, 31, 80, 83, 118, 119, 171, 228, 230–235, 247, 248, 253, 254, 259, 260, 263, 268, 270, 274, 279, 280 Trojan horse 19, 191, 210, 277

Index

U

Unemployment 62, 89, 94, 104, 105 United Nations, The (UN) 4, 6, 62 United States of America (USA) 60, 63, 64, 271

V

Vanuatu 225, 227, 245 Village Community Educator (VCE) 148–153 Visayan 74 Volta Lake 90

W

Wantok 226, 227, 251, 279 system 137, 138, 145, 227, 250 Warlpiri community 15, 166–168, 176 Education and Training Trust (WETT) 180 educators 18, 173, 180, 183 teachers 164, 165, 172–175, 180, 181 texts 164, 180 Theme Cycle 175 Triangle workshops 172, 180 Wellbeing 63, 66, 67, 118 ecological 64 economic 64 social 63

301

West Bengal 208 Western Highlands 235, 252 Work agricultural 98 centrality of 96, 97 formal 88, 92, 93, 95 household 148 informal 88, 95, 103 in mining sector 102 language of 17, 89–91, 96, 100, 102, 106 lexicon of 106 Workshop 14, 31, 33, 40, 41, 45, 61, 75, 76, 121, 148, 150, 151, 172, 173, 180, 223, 224, 228, 229, 231, 234, 247–249, 252, 253 World Bank 5, 12, 24–26, 32–39, 42, 47–53, 96, 103, 190

X

Xavier University 64

Y

Youth 11, 13, 15, 16, 94, 95, 114–116, 118, 120–129, 148, 250, 251 yut (Tok Pisin) 11, 123, 124, 127, 129, 274 Yuendumu 171