Before we get too excited about the results of the 2005 Language Attitude Survey, administered by students of the Department of Language Linguistics and Philosophy at UWI Mona - which revealed that a majority of Jamaicans favour patois as an official language of Jamaica and think parliamentarians should deliver their speeches in Gordon House in patois in order to communicate better with the public;

Tamara Scott-Williams

before we get jumpy and start envisioning our curricula, our books, our signs, our business forms in patois/patwa/'Jamaican' languange; before we start thinking about how to standardise patois/patwa/Jamaican, or worse: standardising individually the dialects of Port Royalians, Montegonians, St Elizabethans, downtown and uptown Kingstonians, St Thomanians and Negrilians ('cause we all sound and say things differently) we perhaps need to look at how language policies have been implemented elsewhere and the benefits and failures of same.

To that end I use this column to share excerpts of a paper presented by Thobeka V Mda and printed in the Journal of Negro Education in 1997, entitled "Issues in the making of South Africa's language in education policy".

He writes:
"In 1948, the policy of apartheid - an Afrikaans word for separatism or, literally, aparthood - became the law of the land in South Africa. The apartheid ideology called for the division of South Africa's people according to their racial/ethnic group affiliation and geographic residence.

Subsequently, tribalisation and the institution of a system of 'homelands' for the nation's African citizens - the South African equivalent of the Native American reservation system - became entrenched. As South Africans were increasingly and systematically separated from each other, the apartheid-based idea of nationalism based on language, or the "mother tongue principle", was also promoted.

"Of course, in the South African context, such actions were decidedly political, for a national government to encourage, or force minority language communities in a direction through the sole use of their mother tongue, is discriminatory and impels them towards a linguistic and cultural ghetto, with all the economic and political disadvantage that entails.

"There are many languages in South Africa, official and nonofficial. On one side are the nine local languages of the African majority that were granted official status: isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, and Xitsonga. On the other are English and Afrikaans, the two former official and privileged languages.

"By stressing language and cultural differences among the nation's Black population, which includes members of African ethnic groups, persons of mixed race and immigrants from India, and physically segregating them on the basis of race/ethnicity, the apartheid regime encouraged tribalism and factional conflicts.

"In an effort to counter this and other myths operative during the apartheid regime, the 1996 Constitution granted all of South Africa's citizens the right "to use the language and participate in the cultural life of one's choice", the right "of language choice in educational institutions", and the right "to establish educational institutions based on a common culture, religion or language."

Many of these ideals about language use were subsequently embodied in the 1997 Language in Education Policy.

"The development of the LiEP was entrusted to the Language Plan Task Group (LANGTAG), a national transitional task team organized to establish language principles for all spheres of South African society under the auspices of the nation's Department of Art, Culture, Science and Technology and the national Department of Education.

Many of the initial discussions on the LiEP took the form of territorial defenses and, in some instances, demonstrated the divisive impact of racial/ethnic chauvinism. Significantly, the committee discussions were carried out in English.

In 1992, the Department of Education and Training (DET), the government division then responsible for the education of South Africa's Black students, offered the nation's African parents three options:

(1) introducing English as the language of instruction from the very first grade

(2) introducing English as the language of instruction in the fifth year of schooling, after the first four years of instruction in an African language, or

(3) from the beginning of schooling using the home language, an African language as the language of instruction while simultaneously introducing English gradually as the language of instruction.

"Although the above proposals appeared to provide South Africa's African language-speaking parents and students with an element, albeit limited, of educational choice with regard to language instruction, they were offered in a context that virtually impelled them to select a mode of instruction that would ill-prepare them to move into the mainstream of national affairs.

Added to this, African language-speaking students attended schools that were underfunded, their teachers were underqualified, and their opportunities to learn proper English were lacking.

"Additionally, resistance to the official use of African languages as languages of instruction surfaced among South Africa's African majority, many of whom contend that their children should be exposed to and immersed in English, which is rapidly becoming the language of commerce and politics in South Africa, as early as possible.

"The fears and apprehensions of parents of the different South African racial/ ethnic groups pose an additional and very real threat to the redress and democratisation process.

On the one hand, South Africa's White (and sometimes Indian and Colored) parents have frequently articulated their concerns about the new language policy as fears of lowered academic standards or of the diminution of Western and Afrikaner language and culture. On the other hand, some African parents fear the polarisation that has resulted from the language policy debate.

They worry that the movement to boost the prominence of African languages in South African schools might mean that their children will have lessened access to the perceived economic and social benefits associated with speaking English and Afrikaans-the languages that still "matter" in South Africa.

"Furthermore, the two former official languages, English and Afrikaans, remain very powerful and continue to enjoy privilege as favored languages. Thus, there are few incentives for non-African language speakers to learn African languages or for African learners to exercise their rights pertaining to their languages.

As observed with regard to the establishment of language policies in Namibia and Zimbabwe: . . language in education policies designed to redress former racial inequality may unintentionally create new class stratifications.

Moreover, the proposed equal treatment of the indigenous African languages embodied in constitutional documents often means their decline in practice in the light of their impotency to compete with the popularity of and perceived advantages associated with English.

Finally, Mda offers that "language politics is intimately connected with economics and resource planning. Unless resources are so developed that sub-groups within a region or culture or groups within a culturally diverse nation get equal opportunity for their creative fulfillment, language is bound to be used for divisive purposes."
Nuff said..

Feeding the multitude

DANGEROUS PETS

Pepper Pot