The Multilingual Reality

Living with Languages

Ajit K. Mohanty

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781788921954
• eBook ISBN:
  9781788921985
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Educational Policy
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book is a multidisciplinary analysis of the meaning and dynamics of multilingualism from the perspectives of multilingual societies and language communities in the margins, who are trapped in a vicious circle of disadvantage. It analyses the social, psychological and sociolinguistic processes of linguistic dominance and hierarchical relationships among languages, discrimination, marginalisation and assertive maintenance in multilingualism characterised by a Double Divide, and shows the relationship between educational neglect of languages, capability deprivation and poverty, and loss of linguistic diversity. Its comparative analysis of language-in-education policies and practices and applications of multilingual education (MLE) in diverse contexts shows some promises and challenges in the education of indigenous/tribal/minority children. This book will be of interest to students, researchers, educators and practitioners in sociolinguistics, educational linguistics, psycholinguistics, multilingualism and bilingual/multilingual education.

1

Introduction: Languaging Without Borders and Binaries

Living with languages is a beautiful experience. It is colourfully diverse; there are patterns in this diversity and yet it is not trite. It is like strolling through a huge floral garden in which you are drawn into a gestalt of colours while each type of flower has its own hue. But that in itself is not what the experience of a garden is all about. It is much more than all the hues put together.

The experience of living with many languages is unique and enriching. It gives you the richness of a diverse world – a kaleidoscope of languages, cultures and world-views. I grew up in a beautifully multilingual world, moving naturally and spontaneously between people and languages, unconcerned by any boundaries and infringement. I did not have to bother about my own inadequacies in the languages I encountered, nor did I have to count the languages I knew or did not know. Levels of my competence in languages around me did not have to be judged. The binaries between knowing or not knowing the language and the borders between them did not matter. What mattered is that I could move between the languages without any self-consciousness and, at the same time, with a sense of transient completeness.

It is a beautiful world of many languages. I grew up believing in the capacity of multilingual societies to accommodate diversity, to make people feel at ease with their own languages, with many languages synergistically weaving their communicative world into the harmony of their life and living. It did not matter whether the common person out there was monolingual, bilingual, trilingual or multilingual. Sometimes people did speak of ‘English-knowing persons’, ‘Sanskrit-knowing scholars’ or ‘polyglot pundits’ who knew and cultivated many languages. But that was only a matter of formal learning and scholarship in languages. The common person moved between languages with agility and elegance, but there was usually no consciousness or self-ascription of multilingual competence; living with languages was unmarked and natural.

Sometimes, when people are asked to identify themselves as monolinguals or multilinguals or to name the languages they know, as in the census enumerations, they are clearly uncomfortable. Languages are perceived as being different to each other, language labels are psychologically real and language identities crystallised, but they are experienced as a network or a totality in routine communicative acts. In Chapter 2 of this book I have attempted to conceptualise what it means to be a multilingual in a multilingual society, the nuances of growing up amid complex encounters with many languages and their speakers, and how children learn to negotiate the complex communicative demands of a multilingual social milieu. I have also attempted to delineate some distinctive features of multilingualism and multilingual societies.

My encounters with the Western monolingual and bilingual worlds and academic engagement with the issues in respect of languages in society made me realise that my early experiences in a world of many languages were different from those of most people, although I was not quite able figure out how and why. I needed to look closer and critically into my own experiences of the multilingual world and to engage with a broader canvas of multilingual societies. My work since 1978 with tribal¹ peoples in India, beginning with the Kond (or Kandha) people in the erstwhile district of Boudh Phulbani, now Kandhamal, in Odisha (India), made me question some of my own assumptions (and also some prevalent academic generalisations) about the place of languages in the multilingual world. Looking closer into linguistic diversity, I realised that all is not well, that an idealised and somewhat romantic view of multilingualism is perhaps just that: romantic but not real.

I began with the Kond community, and they fitted initially into my imagined world of many languages. However, the longer I worked with them the more uncomfortable I felt, because I began to see the reality not just from my own perspective but from the perspective of the Konds, the tribal people. In their silent ways, the Kond adults and children – in particular Nalini Jani and Barun Digal,² but also hundreds of others like them – made me see a sad reality that while using many languages is good, it is better if one speaks certain languages rather than ‘others’. I was struck by the realisation that the Kond people, who take pride in their Kui language as a marker of their identity, did not share my optimism about speaking one’s own language while living in a diverse world of many languages. My continued engagement with the tribal people in different parts of India made me understand the dynamics of languages in multilingual societies. I had some structured and planned agendas for research into the issues in respect of the indigenous, tribal, minority and minoritised (ITM)³ languages in multilingual societies. But the people and children I worked with primarily in the community and educational contexts added much more to my insights than the ‘hard data’ from my research.

I started with naive assumptions and some straightforward research questions, narrow and mundane in many ways and focused on micro-issues. But as I ‘researched’ the children and adults I worked with (then called subjects), they taught me much more than I bargained for; they reoriented my views of research and instilled in me a desire not just to locate problems but to try to do something about them, not just to suggest changes but to try to be the agent of change, not just to curse the darkness but to attempt lighting even a tiny little lamp, as Barun Digal taught me some 40 years ago.

This book is an account of my journey into the world of many languages, a journey in which I have progressively been prodded to partake views from the margins, to understand the dynamics and share the agony of linguistic discrimination and the disadvantages of the ITM communities in the multilingual world of cumulative neglect and regressive marginalisation. I started with looking into how multilingual societies and individuals – children and adults – were different and why. The initial findings reaffirmed my positive views of the multilingual world and of multilingualism. These findings did add to the emerging views of bilingualism and multilingualism as resources. In Chapter 3, I discuss our early studies of Kond children, showing how they are related to contemporary views of the cognitive processes of bilinguals and multilinguals. With the methodological advantages of the unique sociolinguistic context of the bilingual⁴ and the monolingual Kond communities, the findings of these studies reinforced the growing view of bilingualism as a cognitive resource and an asset to the community. The bilingual Kond children who retained their indigenous language in addition to learning the contact language were found to be endowed with a host of cognitive advantages and with better academic achievements when they started school; the cognitive advantages were also there for the bilingual children who never went to school.

The advantages, however, seemed to be nullified by the social and educational conditions the Kond communities were subjected to. The Kond children, like many others from ITM language communities in the world, suffer educational neglect of their language and culture in a system of submersion education in a dominant language. Such neglect of languages in education in a multilingual society is consequential for children from ITM communities and, at a broader level, also for the very conception of multilingual societies as having a place for all languages. In contrast to my early experience and view of the beauty of multilingualism, I found myself in an encounter with the other side of multilingualism, which compelled a reappraisal of my idealised view. It is also equally disturbing that the societal neglect of some languages is pervasive, not just in education but in all other spheres of social life. Among the Kui mother tongue children who joined formal schooling, there was large-scale educational failure and high ‘push-out’ rates during the early school years. My analyses of the macro-level data on the socio-economic mobility of the Konds show that educational neglect of the language of the Konds and other ITM language communities does contribute to their educational failure, capability deprivation and poverty, as I discuss in Chapter6.

If education is a site where the neglect of ITM languages leads to failure, capability deprivation and poverty, it can also be a site for change. I found this an exciting possibility. I believed that even some small changes in the education of ITM language children can be seen as powerful advocacy for sustained changes. I also saw in such possibility some opportunities to redeem my silent commitments to the tribal people I worked with for my research. At the same time, I realised that understanding of the complex processes of discrimination and neglect of languages in multilingual societies was necessary for any change to be effective. Why are ITM languages disadvantaged and neglected? And why so in multilingual societies, which are expected to have a place for many languages? As I moved between micro- and macro-level aspects of societal neglect and impoverishment of languages, I realised that the disadvantages are cumulative and that they are integrally related to the societal power relationship of languages and their speakers.

My analyses of the role of languages in Indian society and the power and privileges associated with different languages reveal a hierarchy of languages. The sociolinguistic hierarchy is characterised by a broad pattern of languages organised in three tiers, with major power gaps between these tiers. I have labelled this ‘the double divide’. In discussing the sociolinguistic double divide in Chapter 4, I have shown this to be a common feature across different multilingual societies. The hierarchy and the double divide are closely linked to the role of languages in education. My engagement with the issues of language and education of tribal communities in Odisha and in other national contexts in India gave me a closer view and understanding of the processes involved in language-in-education policy and practice for the tribal mother tongue children. Evidently, ITM language communities are cumulatively victimised in a social system that weakens these languages by prolonged neglect, and then justifies further exclusion of those languages on the grounds of their weakness. The vicious circle of disadvantage of the ITM languages and their exclusion from children’s education, discussed in Chapter 4, seems to be a common feature in multilingual societies in which ITM languages are located on the lowest rungs of power in the sociolinguistic hierarchy with a double divide.

The hierarchy of languages in multilingual societies is reflected in the dominance of some languages in the significant domains of use, including education; the language(s) that people use or do not use become a basis of their access to resources, power and privilege. The public domains of communication are gradually taken over by the dominant languages. Over the years of my work with tribal communities, I experienced rapid displacement of the languages of the tribal people from marketplace transactions and other domains of socio-economic significance. Over a few decades, the Kui language of the Konds, for example, became confined to use in family and community communications only. Progressive domain shrinkage and gradual decline in intergenerational transmission of languages are usually associated with language shift and loss of non-dominant languages in contact with dominant languages. In contrast, some Indian sociolinguists have pointed out that language maintenance rather than shift is a more likely outcome of language contact in India. Our studies with the Kond people show that when ITM languages are kept out of intergroup domains and confined to in-group use, there is partial language shift. ITM languages may continue as markers of identity for the language community, but the instrumental value of these languages is taken over by the dominant contact language. In the process, rapid loss of languages does not happen, but the languages remain marginalised; there is a passive acceptance of the dominance and marginalisation as I found in the case of the Konds in our studies.

Marginalisation is a common outcome of language contact in India. But there are also instances of assertive maintenance and revitalisation of ITM languages, as in the case of the Bodo language in Assam. My studies of the major turns in the history of Bodo–Assamese contact and the dynamics of the Bodo movement for assertion of the linguistic rights of the Bodo people show the dynamics of assertive maintenance of a marginalised language and intergroup relations in a situation of contact between dominant and non-dominant languages. In Chapter 5 I have sought to analyse the processes of identity negotiations in the two contexts of language contact. I have tried to show the contrasts between the passive acceptance strategies of the Konds, which led to the prolonged marginalisation of the Kui language, and the assertive maintenance strategies of the Bodos, which led the Bodo language from marginalisation to revitalisation.

Exclusion of ITM languages from education is known to be a major factor in loss of linguistic diversity across the world. Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) describes the situation as ‘linguistic genocide in education’ and shows how state policies and discriminatory social practices lead to the loss of linguistic diversity. My studies among the Kond and continued engagement with other tribal communities in Odisha have convinced me that it is necessary to promote educational use of ITM languages both for high-quality education and for the socio-economic mobility of tribal people. The seminal work of Jim Cummins and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and many others has shown convincingly that language-in-education is a royal road to high-quality education and the development of languages. Developments in the theory and practice of mother tongue based multilingual education (MLE) offers some hope for the tribal people I have worked with. In my writings since the 1980s, I kept pleading for the education of tribal children in India to be based on their mother tongue (MT). Among the many pioneering educators and linguists in the country, Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, a leading linguist of India and the then Director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages, had also done the same quite forcefully through several publications as well as experimental programmes for tribal MT children in different parts of India. In the state of Odisha, where I worked for my research with tribal languages and education, there were some weak but early signs of interest in the use of tribal languages in education as a strategy for dealing with the educational failure of tribal children. During the 1990s and early in the current century, there were sporadic attempts to use MTs in the early education of tribal children in the state. Through my academic and popular writings and several reports and documents sent periodically to the government of Odisha, besides presentations in different fora, I kept pressing for MT-based education. There were also many others doing the same: in their own ways, trying to influence the state and induce some actions for the MT-based education of tribal children. Having worked for nearly three decades by then for and with the tribal people in the state, I kept moving between hope and despair as reports and documents gathered dust in the government files. In Chapter 8 I discuss some occasional initiatives and promises for bringing selected tribal MTs into early primary education, primarily with the goal of a soft transition of the tribal MT children to education in the dominant state language, Odia. These experimental initiatives were short-lived. It appeared that some policy-level changes were necessary for sustained programmes of MT-based MLE.

Analysis of language-in-education policy in India and many other multilingual countries shows a broad statutory and constitutional commitment to the principle of education of ‘linguistic minorities’ in the MT, at least in the early years of primary education. There are also several policy proclamations regarding and commitments to education in children’s MT, mostly in a multilingual framework. However, the characteristic hierarchical positioning of languages in multilingual societies and the double divide between dominant national/colonial languages, the major regional/national languages and the ITM languages seems to create gaps between the declared and de facto policies in many multilingual countries. As a result, education in these societies perpetuates social inequalities by undue emphasis on the dominant languages and neglect of ITM languages. My discussion of language-in-education policies in multilingual societies in Chapter 7 shows the multilingual social realities and monolingual practices in education. The focus in education in post-colonial societies also seems to be shifting in the direction of the major colonial and international languages, such as English. Effective education of linguistic minorities needs both macro- and micro-level changes in language-in-education policy and in educational practices.

Education in children’s MT has been seen as a basic requirement for high-quality education. As early as 1953, UNESCO (1953) made a clear recommendation: ‘It is axiomatic that the best medium for teaching a child is his [sic] mother tongue’ (p. 11). In multilingual contexts it has become necessary to develop multilingual competence through schooling and to move from MT to many languages. The history of education in India and in rest of the world shows that bilingual/multilingual education has been emphasised for quite some time (Baker, 2011; Mackey, 1978; Mohanty, 2008). Substantial work on the development of bilingual and multilingual skills through schooling and education by a number of scholars (e.g. Cummins, 1984; Skutnabb-Kangas, 1984) have provided the rationale for MT-based MLE particularly (but not exclusively) for minorities. In India, experimental projects on the bilingual transfer model (discussed in Chapter 8) were undertaken in the 1980s. In my earlier writings, particularly in my 1994 book Bilingualism in a Multilingual Society, I discussed the theoretical and empirical support to plead for MT-based bilingual/multilingual education for tribal children in India. Apart from the advocacy for MT education by many linguists and education professionals, there was a substantial body of groundwork justifying MLE, specifically in and for India. Unfortunat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction: Languaging Without Borders and Binaries
• 2 The Multilingual World: Conceptual Issues
• 3 Multilingualism: A Resource or Burden?
• 4 Language, Power and Hierarchy: The Double Divide
• 5 Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Societies: From Marginalisation/Assimilation to Assertive Maintenance
• 6 Language Disadvantage, Capability Deprivation and Poverty
• 7 Multilingualism and Language Policy in Education
• 8 Educational Models in Multilingual Societies: Rethinking Multilingual Education
• 9 English in Multilingual Societies: The Dynamics of Dominance
• References
• Index of Languages
• General Index