Language, as we have seen, is the key to the Nationalism debate: often coalescing in an ideology of linguistic superiority.
The arguments for One National language are fallacious since they wrongly assume that privileging one language would guarantee
political harmony.
Importance of Language:
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Languages are the storehouses of human experience.
Identification with a language is central to human culture.
Language use and language attitudes are deeply personal.
Language rights are important because language correlates with power.
Nationalistic integration is carried out by means of language.
Laws, agreements and negotiation depend on linguistic precision.
Different concepts mean something different in different cultures and languages.
Most people are better at formulating their thoughts in their mother tongue.
Native speakers have clear advantages over non-native speakers.
Translation and interpretation are vital but can only be partially successful.
All forms of public discourse presuppose just and fair communication.
The idea that we need ONE language for communication is false.
The idea that English is a neutral language is false
Society needs to build on multilingual diversity.
Education systems inculcate preferred forms of written and spoken language.
Most 19th and 20th century states aimed at monolingualism.
Most people worldwide function in more than one language.
Linguistic Imperialism:
If the lives of the speakers of a language are dominated by another language to the point where they believe that they can and should
use only that foreign language, they are said to have experienced Linguistic imperialism.
According to Robert Phillipson (who developed this idea), it "takes place within an overarching structure of asymmetrical North/South
relations, where language interlocks with other dimensions, cultural..., economic and political".
He sees the promotion of English as a form of Western domination over developing countries: "the dominance of English is asserted and
maintained by the establishment and continuous reconstitution of structural and cultural inequalities between English and other
languages"
This he says is strengthened by two cultures:
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2.
Culture of Guilt: "colonies should never have happened".
Culture of Romantic Despair "we shouldn’t be doing what we are doing".
Explanation:
It is a misleading term if the language is supposed to be neutral and disconnected from culture. So if the language in question is a first
language for some people – or has been their primary language of learning – but for others a foreign language, it is asymmetrical
communication.
Mahatma Gandhi: ‘To give millions a knowledge of English is to enslave us. The foundation that Macaulay laid of education has enslaved
us’; ‘English has usurped the dearest place in our hearts and dethroned our mother tongues’.
On-Natives will never be able to speak as Natives and will always be marginalized.
Whether English has functioned as an imperialist language in any given context, in the colonial or postcolonial periods, and currently in
the neoliberal age of US-dominated corporate empire, is an empirical question: what is at issue is whether there is an inequitable
structural and ideological favoring of one language – in this case, English.
English as a Global Cultural Language today:
English began as a mere lingua franca in the globalized world. But today we see around us that:
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English is now the corporate language of many of the larger continental European companies, practically replacing other
languages.
Youth is consumerist, Coca-colonised, and more familiar with US products and norms than those of other countries.
70-80% of films on TV and are Hollywood products.
In the USA, foreign films represent only 1% of the market, which is indicative of the asymmetrical nature of cultural relations
worldwide.
English is the most widely learned ‘foreign’ language in the world.
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Research is increasingly published in English rather than national and international scholarly languages, which affects career
prospects for the individual and the role of the national language.
English then isn’t merely a ‘lingua franca’, an inter-lingual, ‘international’ communication. It also serves as:
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a lingua economica: the language of corporate neoliberalism and Americanisation
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a lingua emotiva: the language of Hollywood myth-making, of youth culture and pop music
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a lingua cultura, when English is taught as a subject in general education, linked to the study of national cultures and literatures
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a lingua bellica in wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the arms trade that the permanent members of the UN
Security Council profit from
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a lingua academica, when it serves as the dominant language of publications, international conferences, and increasingly as a
medium for content learning in secondary and higher education?
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a lingua divina, language is seen by some as God’s gift to humanity.
This is captured brilliantly by an Indian who was at the receiving end of injustice at the hands of elites who privilege proficient
users of English and stigmatize those less proficient:
It wasn’t until he was 18 that Kanchedia Chamaar realized that God spoke and understood English and nothing else. Because
unfamiliarity with the lingua divina was a matter of intense shame at Delhi School of Economics in the 1970s, he started
learning English on the sly, and continues to be consumed by the process to this day. Over a period of three years after his
master’s degree, no fewer than one hundred and eight Indian firms found him unfit for gainful employment. While doing his
PhD in the 1980s, he found that at Universities in the US, even those not fluent in English were treated as human beings, a
dignity that not everybody seemed willing to accord him in Delhi. He has been hiding in the US ever since.
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a lingua diabolica, the language is seen by others as a victims of genocide and linguicide
Some Other Synonymous Views:
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Louis-Jean Calvet’s lingua frankensteinia, talks about linguistic cannibalism to cover the way ‘big’ languages gobble up small ones.
John Swales sees English as a lingua tyrannosaura, when some languages of scholarship are on the way to extinction because of a
shift into English.
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas uses the term linguistic genocide in the international law sense, in order to determine when state policies
fail to respect linguistic human rights, and can be seen as constituting crimes against humanity.
In Short:
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The two major forces which spread English throughout the world are British colonialism from the 17 th to the 19th and American
capitalism in the 20th century.
Important criticism of linguistic imperialism centres on its assumption of power asymmetry.
An analysis of the linguistic situation in Pakistan shows that linguistic imperialism is too simplistic to account for the
country’s complex language ecology.
Mainstream linguists agree with Phillipson in his criticism of the tenets of monolingualism and the native speaker, which are,
despite this criticism, widely spread.
English has in some cases been appropriated by the elite.
The future development of English will be characterized by a contrast between local varieties of English and international
Englishes (standard used by globally acting professions like doctors or lawyers).
Because many native speakers regard non-native varieties with suspicion and because a knowledge of the British or American
English may be necessary for international power positions, there is a pressure to conform to an inner circle variety within many but not all - professions.
Regarding the status of a local variety of English the socio-economic context – and how it is perceived by the respective scholar –
is paramount.
Argument Against:
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What if the dominated...wanted to adopt English and continue to want to keep it? According to the original thesis of Linguistic
Imperialism they don’t, they can’t, they’ve been persuaded against their better interests.
The idea that the developing countries are not capable of independent decision in choosing to adopt or reject the new language.
Linguistic Imperialism framework is a built in assumption of power asymmetry: on the assumption / conviction that “to learn a
language is to become dominated by it”.