Review Article: Ironising the Myth of Linguicism'

 

Alan Davies

NLLIA Language Testing Research Centre, University of Melbourne, 147-149

Barry Street Parkville 3052, Australia

 

Linguistic Imperialism

Robert L.H. Phillipson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. ix+365. ISBN

0-19-437146-8 (pbk): CDN$42.95.

JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Vol. 17, No. 6,1996

 

I said it in Hebrew - I said it in Dutch

I said it in German and Greek,

But I wholly forgot (and it vexes me much)

That English is what you speak. (Carroll, 1876: 4)

 

Is Linguistic Imperialism (LI) meant to be a spoof, similar to the 1901 parody of the philosophy journal MIND (published as MIND!) in which the pragmatist philosopher F.C.S. Schiller provided a mock-serious commentary on Lewis Carroll's 'The Hunting of the Snark'? This poem, (from which the above quotation is taken), Schiller claimed, is a satire on the Hegelian philosopher's search for the Absolute. Is Robert Phillipson (RP) in LI offering a satire on the anarchist's search for absolute political libertarianism such as we find in The Secret Agent (Conrad, 1907)?

Certainly, the spectre of (RP) - sandwich-boarded wiith messages of dire warning about gunpowder, treason and plot - stalks its pages, demonstrating outside the Department of Applied Linguistics in Edinburgh,2 control centre of the capitalist English Language Teaching (ELT) conspiracy. 'Round up the usual suspects', he cries, outing those who have pretended all these years merely to teach applied linguistics, but who have really been plotting with the British Council to take over the world.

Much as I would like this to be what the author intended, I fear that the book is not meant to be a spoof. It is too serious for that, quite humourless in its intent.

Two cultures inhabit LI. One is the culture of guilt - colonies should never have happened, empires never existed, and now we should end their perpetuation, which is made through the imposition (however indirect) of English (or presumably any other language of imperialism). The second culture is that of romantic despair - we shouldn't be doing what we are doing - a theme common to our current cultures of the environment, a Rousseau-like desire to return to nature and to innocence. Despairing indeed! It is impossible to de-specialise western society (unless we do a Burma or an Iraq and retreat from the rest of the world); it would almost certainly be undemocratic and as imperialist (again like Burma and Iraq) as the model RP decries; it would be unlikely to achieve the desired goals (equality, personal rights, etc.). Again, Burma and Iraq warn of what can happen. Of course, there are less contentious examples, such as Tanzania: here the decision to go with Swahili, against the trend of African anglophony, has been much admired. But wait a moment: is Tanzania an example that favours the author's argument? Surely not, on three counts: first, because English remains important in the maintenance of the Tanzanian elite; second, because Swahili itself takes the place of imperialist English in Tanzania by suppressing local languages; and third, because the choice made by Tanzania was always one of the possible choices open to former British possessions at the end of the colonial period. The fact that (in Africa) Zambia, Kenya, etc., chose English does not mean that they were more coerced than was Tanzania. But so simplistic an argument will not satisfy RP.

It will not satisfy him because he sees post-colonial English as a conspiracy, though he denies this. Writing of the 1956 Cabinet Report on 'The Teaching of English Overseas' he admits (p. 151) that:

 

there is no evidence to support a simplistic conspiracy theory ... [but] what it does mean is that when State backing was put into boosting ELT, the motives were various but national political and economic interests were paramount.

 

That report, he points out 'was a secret document which was kept away from public scrutiny for 30 years'(p. 301). And when he questions Bernard Lott, former Controller of the British Council English Language Teaching Division, RP explains away Lott's denial of a master plan, since Britain 'did not really make policies at all in the areas you are interested in' (p. 300), by commenting:

 

Lott's analysis ... ignores the fact that the demand [for English] was largely created and orchestrated by the Centre, and reflected Centre perceptions of what was needed in the Periphery. (p. 301)

 

Other analysts take a more optimistic fine. Pennycook (1994:325) recognises the value of English: 'English offers an expanded community of users'. Sridhar's urban language investigation in South India reaches a similar conclusion:

 As we shall see, counter-arguments (or indeed evidence) of this kind are of no avail since RP's flail of hegemony sweeps all opposition away.

RP takes no prisoners from the very beginning of the book:

 This book explores the contemporary phenomenon of English as a world language and sets out to analyse how the language became so dominant and why. (p. 1)

 

It is of course that 'why' that should give us pause.'How' English became so dominant we are well aware of - the spread by bible, trade and flag, like all those more distant empires, the Roman, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Hindu, Bantu, Quechua. But the 'why'is more problematic. The author explains his approach as follows:

 It [LI] looks at the spread of English historically, in order to ascertain whether the language has been actively promoted as an instrument of the foreign policy of the major English-speaking states, and, if so, in what ways. It looks at the language policies that Third World countries inherited from colonial times, 'and considers how well 'aid', in the form of support for educational development and English learning in particular, has served the interests of the receiving countries and the donors, and assesses whether it has contributed to perpetuating North-South inequalities and exploitation. It looks specifically at the ideology transmitted with, in and through the English language, and the role of language specialists in the cultural export of English. (p. 1)

 

Let me address the key 'why's in this programme.

 (1) 'actively promoted as an instrument of the foreign policy of the nwjor English speaking states':

 Here, the only possible response is yes, of course. The major English speaking states, like all other states, use every means at their disposal to promote their foreign policy (cars by Japan and Germany, cheap clothes by China, oil by Saudi Arabia, etc.). Presumably 'as an instrument of... foreign policy' means winning friends and cementing alliances. Isn't that what foreign policy is about? There is no need to appeal to Machiavelli to recognise that what every government does (perhaps must do) is promote its own interests. In a mature state those interests will also have wider benefits.

 

(2) 'how well aid, in the form of support for educational development and English learning in particular, has served the

interests of the receiving countries and the donors':

 

Donor countries differ both in the overall amount of GDP they provide in aid, and in the extent to which they restrict it to their own goods and services rather than offering it untied. It would be uplifting to learn that aid was more generally unrestricted but, like foreign policy, it is unremarkable (and more acceptable to the voters) to note that it is severely restricted to the donor's own goods and services, in English teaching as in other domains.

 

(3) 'the ideology transmitted with, in and through the English language and the role of language specialists in the cultural export of English':

 

Leaving on one side the restriction of jobs to English native-speaking specialists - an issue more for the interests of the donor referred to in (2) above - we reflect on RP's concern with ideology.

 

'Ideology' here appears to relate to what Thompson refers to as the critical concept of ideology:

 

In other words, in this context it is neo-colonialism. moving on to post-colonialism: relations remain unequal, the donor taking on the role and status of the former colonial empire; the recipient remaining the perpetual client. Why should this essentially colonial status persevere in spite of the fight for freedom, the move (now almost universal) to independence? Why go on being exploited, in the terms RP has suggested (creatures of the donor's foreign policy, aid largely supporting the donor, ideologically dominated)? RP's answer here is fundamental to the thesis of LI:

 Antonio Gramsci (d. 1937), Italian Communist leader and Marxist theoretician, developed the idea of hegemony 'to explain how a social and economic system can maintain its hold even when it is identified with the rule of one class over others. [It does so] by persuading the other classes to accept the system of beliefs of the ruling class and share their social, moral and cultural values'. (Bullock & Woodings, 1983: 285).

This is a powerful argument: it leaves no room for disagreement. An RP has to do to make his case is to show that the hegem~ny of English 'is not sustained by economic power or physical force alone' (Bullock & Woodings, 1983: 285). RP allows for no explanation of the domination/ adoption of English other than being persuaded by ideology, a kind of colonial (or post-colonial) cringe. But what if the dominated (in this case the ex-colonial anglophone countries) wanted to adopt English and continue to want to keep it? RP's unfalsifiable answer must be that they don't, they can't, they've been persuaded against their better interests. So what are their better interests? But hasn't RP already indicated this: 'the arguments in favour of English are intuitively commonsensical'.

Let's look at other views on the role of language in establishing and continuing hegemonic stasis.

Here is a political scientist:

 Much the most important thing about language is its capacity for generating imagined communities, building in effect particular solidarities. After all imperial languages are still vernaculars and thus particular vernaculars anyway. If radical Mozambique speaks Portuguese, the significance of this is that Portuguese is the medium through which Mozambique is imagined (and at the same time limits its stretch into Tanzania and Zambia). Seen from this perspective the use of Portuguese in Mozambique (and English in India) is basically no different than the use of English in Australia or Portuguese in Brazil. Language is not an instrument of exclusion: in principle anyone can learn any language. On the contrary, it is fundamentally inclusive, limited only by the fatality of Babel: no one fives long enough to learn all languages. Print-language is what invents nationalisms, not a particular language per se. (Anderson, 1991: 133-4)

 Anderson's argument neatly side-steps RP's negations. He points to the need and the value of a print-language to generate imagined communities and build particular solidarities. Anglophone nations, like others, have to build and imagme with what is available, what is least divisive and what is a print language. English fits on all counts. The negations are always available, whether for English or other post-imperial language. This is what Martha Hardman de Bautista points out, with regard to Spanish, Quechua and Jaqi in the region of the Andes:

 

 

Scholars supporting RP include Pattanyak and Mazrui. Pattanyak, a longstanding critic of English-language hegemony (much quoted by RP, approvingly) maintains that India should replace English with Hindi (Pattanayak, 1985). But such a proposal ignores at its peril the opposition of South Indian Dravidian speakers to the imposition of Hindi, to which they are as hostile as Tamil speakers are to the imposition of Sinhala.

Mazrui, again no great friend of English, hints that he too deplores its hegemony, but he is pragmatic and realistic, pointing to the particular solidarity of an attained pan-Africanism, achieved through English:

 

In a variety of ways the English language was an important causal factor in the growth of African national consciousness. Indeed learning English was a detribalising process. If one found an African who has mastered the English language, that African had, by definition, ceased to be a full tribesman. To an extent ... there was indeed a 'Westernising' process implicit in the very act of learning English. But why should the learning of a language have this effect? The reason lies in the relationship between language and the culture from which it springs. (Mazrui, 1975: 48)

 

And Kiernan, who has pondered on the paradoxes of imperialism (Kiernan, 1995), makes a related point with regard to Islam and the spread of Arabic

 

 What RP ignores is (a) that the choice of English (or other imperial language) has values of openness, access to and connection with modernism; and (b) the possibility that oppressed groups' common sense is active enough for them to reject English if they so wish. Which is what happened in a number of countries in Southeast and South Asia: Burma, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Malaysia. In each of these states English was rejected; then later it was re-introduced. There are of course differences in the amount of time allocated to English in school, and in the age of starting the language, but in all these countries the decision to restore English was a local/national one.

What emerges powerfully from the experience of ELT in these countries over the past 20 years is that, in highly multilingual societies, English (or some substitute) is necessary, and that to restrict it (as, for example, in Malaysia) is to reinforce the special privileges of the Oite (who have English anyway through private and/or foreign education) as against the masses (who do not have English). RP's description of this imbalance is correct: the implications he draws are not. Such an imbalance is not imposed from without but from within. A local 61ite may be no better than a colonial 61ite but it is not imposed externally -unless, of course, RP really does believe in some kind of worldwide capitalist conspiracy which uses English as its vehicle, its control headquarters, it would appear, the University of Edinburgh's Department of Applied Linguistics at 14 Buccleuch Place. RP's lengthy comment on the Edinburgh department and the name Applied Linguistics is surely disingenuous: throughout there is the now familiar sense of plots and secret cabals:

 The reasons for omitting 'English' from the name of the department can only be guessed at. (p. 176)

My own experience of teaching English and of language planning in Nepal is relevant. My contact with Nepal goes back to 1969 when I took up the post of Professor of English at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu. During my first period of working in Nepal, English was widely available in the school system; the basic medium of instruction was Nepali but English was taught everywhere as a foreign language and there were private schools in which English was the medium of instruction. In the early 1970s Nepal withdrew from English for purposes of nation-building (it should be remembered that Nepali, the national language, is itself a colonising language, introduced only about 300 years ago).

English medium schooling was forbidden. But English did not go away. In the 1980s the ban was lifted, to avoid the unfortunate situation whereby middle class parents were procuring English for their children by voting with their feet, sending them to English medium schools in Darjeeling - itself a Nepali-speaking enclave in India.

Eric Glendinning, Alan Maclean and I were asked to survey English teaching in Nepal in the early 1980s and to advise on its future in Nepali education. We were dismayed with what we found. No school-teacher in the sample we investigated possessed adequate English proficiency (which we defined as ability to read at an unsimplified level). For that reason, and in order to avoid the huge waste of time and resource devoted to English for the majority of children who drop out before they have gained any usable language skill, our recommendation was that English should begin in government schools as late as possible, well up in the secondary school. But this went against:

(b) Government acceptance of the local political imperative: starting English in the secondary school would close it off as an option for the masses, whose children are lucky to have 2 or 3 years of schooling at the primary stage.3

It was essential, so government officials argued, for English to start as early as possible, not primarily to teach English but to provide the appearance of equal opportunity (Davies, 1987). Now, of course, this local Nepalese view may indicate that it too is the victim of hegemony. But how can we tell and, in any case, what can we do about it?

At bottom, LI is an attack on the domination of power and a heartfelt appeal for the rights of the weak and the powerless. Such a righteous position is hard to fault. But RP's critique of the ELT profession, etc., implies that they do not support the weak and help the powerless by their furthering of and imposition of English.

RP spends 35 pages of the book attacking the organisation and findings of the famous Makerere conference , held in Uganda in 1961. I propose to look at his arguments here in some detail since they seem to me to be indicative of his deterministic approach:

The tenets are then discussed and all shown to be false, each being redesignated as a fallacy:

 

There was an almost exclusive concentration on English at the Makerere conference itself ... The conference did not look at the overall educational needs of periphery-English children, or even their overall linguistic development, but at English and ways of strengthening English. This anglocentric focus, the professionalism endorsed at Makerere, and the structural and ideological consequences of adhering to the tenets amount to English linguistic imperialism. (p. 216)

 In my view, the 'Report of the Commonwealth Conference on the Teaching of English as a Second Language' (Makerere, 1961) held at Makerere College, Uganda in January 1961, and published by the Government Printer, Entebbe, Uganda (4 shillings, 1961), deserves a more generous response than RP offers.

In the first place it is hardly surprising that the conference concentrated on English. After all, its purposes were:

 

(a) to provide opportunity for the exchange of ideas and experience among people from different parts of the world who may not be aware of developments elsewhere: and

(b) to discuss ways and means of increasing the efficiency of the teaching of English as a second language at all levels, particularly in the difficult initial stages, and in accordance with the needs and wishes of the countries concerned. (Makerere, 1961: 2)

 

To provide for the exchange of ideas and experience (Purpose 1), the conference brought together representath~es from about 30 countries.

In the second place, it cannot seriously be maintained that the conference 'did not look at the overall educational needs of periphery-English children, or even their overall linguistic development', for while the discussion during the conference may have concentrated exclusively on English, the recommendations certainly do not. Annex 5 (pp. 54-5) sets out a list of 'Topics for Research and Investigation'. Between a third and a half of these topics refer to the leamer's linguistic and cultural background.

Priority areas included:

• Further research in the field of other languages than English.

• Methods of comparative and contrastive analysis of English with other languages; the use of errors from examination answers at all stages to assist bilingual comparison; the use of comparative and contrastive analysis in the classroom.

• The adaptation to different regions of the principles of multilingual and comparative multilingual research; the typology of multilingual situations. The psychological effects of a second language medium.

. Research into the needs and demands of the learner and the community from the point of view of practical bilingualism.

• The subjects to be taught through English and the subjects to be taught through the vernacular.

• An examination of the suitability of reading material in terms of its relationship to the local culture in order to establish the readiest points of contact in the second culture.

• The measurement of bilngual background in a given individual; relative language dominance in the individual.

  • Necessary adaptations in the curriculum to meet the demands of a bilingual education.
  • The relative merits of using separate teachers or the same teachers for more than one language. (Makerere, 1961: 54-5)
    •

     

    Commenting on what happened after the Makerere Conference, RP maintains that very little progress has been made on these topics for research and investigation, and that little British aid has been channelled into support for languages other than English (p. 265).

    Too much English, too little research on its impact, very little on local languages. These are RP's conclusions. Are they (post-Makerere) correct?

    His last point (very little on local languages) probably is correct. But he is wrong about the lack of progress on the topics for research listed in the Makerere Report. After all, many studies have been carried out in postgraduate dissertations in Commonwealth (including UK) universities, investigating language contact between English and one or other local language, and the authors of many of these dissertations have been students funded by British aid moneys.

    If he means that research still hasn't delivered on what to do about the impact of English (or any similar language of wider communication) on local languages, then of course he is correct. We don't, but that is not a failure of research effort, rather it shows the seriousness and the intractability of the problems.

    As for the 'tenets' RP claims were fundamental to the Makerere doctrine, he is not on firm ground.

     

     

    These 'tenets' do not accord with Recommendation (b) on page 6 of the report:

     

    (3) The earlier English is taught, the better the results.

     

    This tenet ignores the complexity of the concerns outlined in the Report, for example:

     

    In countries where English is recognised as a second language, its teaching should be based on its direct use as a spoken language, and it should be introduced as early as possible in the child's school life when this is of advantage to the child. (Makerere, 1961: 8; my italics)

     

    (4) The more English is taught, the better the results.

     

    Again the discussion in the Report underlines the complexity of the decisions to be taken. RP's conclusion on length is based on the previous tenet, the earlier the better. But what does the Report actually say? Chapter 4 states that it is necessary to take into account inter alia psychological factors such as:

     

    (5) If other languages are used much, standards of English will drop. (p. 5)

     

    It is unclear where in the Makerere report RP finds evidence for this tenet. What I find is a summary of the range of options open to educational authorities planning to move to English medium. These may be summarised:

    These alternative suggestions surely indicate that the Makerere Report cannot be convicted of subscribing to RP's 5th tenet:

     

    (5) If other languages are used much, standards in English will drop.

     

    At this point, and after nearly 300 pages of polemic attacking both ELT and aid, we long to know what ought to be/have been done. What remedies does RP offer? So it is with relief that we come to the solutions he sets out on page 297, where he sums up the advice he and colleagues offered to the Organisation for African Unity in 1985, after experience in Namibia. Here are the conclusions they came to, with my comments in brackets:

    (2) Resistance to the use of mother tongues is an expression of a colonised consciousness, which serves the interests of global capitalism and South Africa, and the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie who are most dependent on capitalist interests.(This seems to be a statement of belief rather than a plan for action.)

    (3) Namibia should follow the example of those states which have alternative language programmes leading to bilingualism.(Which states are those? What type of bilingualism is to be adopted?)

    (4) Educational aid from 'donors' should be long-term and explicitly accept Namibian multilingual goals.(This is unrealistic, nice like apple pie, but unattainable. No donor country can make such an open-ended commitment.)

     

    It is perhaps relevant to note that Namibia is a small country (population c. 500,000). To what extent can we generalise to large highly populated multilingual states?

     I began this article by distinguishing RP's how from his why. LI does provide the reader with an interesting collection of materials relating to the how. It is unfortunate that that interest is disturbed and eventually destroyed by the insistence in the book on the why. Let me set out my reasons for making this judgement:

    (4) The book is ahistorical. Until the 18th century 'the "choice" of language appears as a gradual, unselfconscious, pragmatic, not to say haphazard development'. The post colonial promotion of English seems much more like this earlier movement than the 'self-conscious language policies pursued by 19th century dynasts confronted with the rise of hostile popular linguistic-nationalisms' (Anderson, 1983: 42). Post-colonial nationalisms do indeed need language to generate imagined communities. But that language does not have to be the former imperial language: any print language will do, as shown in Anderson's (1983) discussion of Indonesia.

    (5) The book scapegoats language as the major cause of the anglophone Third World's disadvantages. Apart from its absurdity, such a view exaggerates the importance of language (Brass, 1979). Language is indicative, it is not causal of social divisiveness.

    LI may not be a spoof but it is a clever book. Clever, not because it illuminates our understanding in a new way but because it taps delicately and accurately into the widespread guilt felt by the rich North about the poor South. But, as a general theory to explain the growth of ELT in the world, it will not do.

    The role of language in the imperial enterprise is indeed important. It deserves the attention RP has given it, as is shown by the interest expressed by scholars in his treatment. But the attention and the interest do not make up for the treatment's inadequacies. It has two fundamental flaws:

    (2) The deterministic insistence of the author means that his judgements are impervious to the facts, thereby trivialising history in favour of myth.

     Edward Said (1993), a more reflective critic of the racial, religious and political divisions of imperialism, avoids these flaws. He urges us not to abandon history for the essentialisations and nativisms that have the power to turn human beings against each another. We need to recognise, he maintains, that the imperial legacy is complex and contradictory.

     

    Or, as Abraham Lincoln reminded Congress in his 1862 Annual Address: 'We cannot escape history'.

     

    Notes

     

    1. A version of this paper was read at the Conference on Language Rights, Hong Kong, June 1996.

    2. See pages 174-6 in Ll.

    3. We were told at the time that, of the children who entered primary school, about 501Y dropped out at the end of the first year.

    4. Commonwealth Conference on the Teaching of English as a Second Language, held at Makerere, Uganda in 1961.

     

    References

     

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