World
Englishes, 18/2, 1999,
107-121.
Theory versus practice in language planning
and in the discourse of language planning
Robert de
Beaugrande
abstract: In our ‘modern’ societies, language planning confronts a situation
wherein human rights have become inclusive in theory but remained exclusive in
practice, often deploying languages or language varieties as pretexts for
exclusion. Language planning should promote a dialectic between inclusive
theories and inclusive practices within its own projects and within its own
discourse, and should deconstruct exclusive ones. This precept is demonstrated
with discourse samples, including ones concerning ‘International English’
and ‘World Englishes’.
A. THEORY AND PRACTICE: INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION
Social change can be said to occur when new
groups gain the right to determine the theory of the society and its relation to
practice. But social progress can be
said to occur only when theory and practice converge to grant freedom and
equality to a more inclusive range of the total population. So far, the
evolution of ‘modern societies’ shows the official inclusive theory of
‘democracy’ providing for ‘freedom’ or ‘equality’ but being
contradicted by exclusive practices. Evidently, ‘modernisation’ need not
achieve social progress in the sense proposed here through the trends routinely
touted as ‘progress’: urbanisation, industrialisation, technology, and now
the globalisation of the ‘free market’. In theory, all these benefit the
whole population; in practice, they merely render the division between the
theory of ‘democracy’ and the practices of ‘unfreedom’ and
‘inequality’ more international and more irresistible.
These trends have recently ushered in
a global economy wherein ‘communication’ and ‘information’ are now
commodities. Like any commodity, they derive a high value from limiting access,
and high technology offers the most conspicuous means — personal computers,
modems, internet subscriptions, encoders and decoders, and so on. Less
conspicuous but vastly more efficient limits can be maintained upon access to an
instrumental language or language variety. ‘Modernisation’ generates novel
domains of discourse whose specialised terms include and empower the insiders
whilst excluding and disempowering the outsiders.
Yet a language or language variety
remains a highly exceptional commodity. Unlike cash, precious gems or metals,
and other tangible assets, it cannot be locked up and hoarded for yourself, nor
taken away from others who have it; and giving it to others does not incur any
loss for you. Indeed, zealously restricting access to a language would risk
destroying its commodity value by constricting the user groups with whom you can
use it to interact.
So the restrictions in ‘modern’
practice are always partial and never total; and instead of language just
getting locked up, it gets idealised
it. Within the total population who can speak the language, incisive
distinctions are erected between the higher-valued variety of an elite (e.g. RP
English) and one or more lower-valued varieties of the rest (e.g. Barbadian
English). The major advantage is plain: the elite can communicate and interact
with the rest, but always from a position of superior power.
A secondary advantage is that popular
attitudes about language are both highly irrational and deeply entrenched. Years
or even centuries of linguistic discrimination — what Phillipson (1992:47) has
called ‘linguicism’ — have convinced most speakers of the lower-valued
varieties that their own speech is irredeemably inferior and thus improper for
participating in socially or professionally significant discourse. Trying to
instil in them a new respect for their own speech may seem both unreasonably
difficult and vulnerable to accusations from the elite of ‘lowering the
standards’.
We can thus appreciate the recent
trends whereby linguicism is steadily assuming the functions of more conspicuous
and discredited modes of discrimination, such as racism and ethnocentrism.
Precisely when access to privileged language varieties such as ‘Standard
English’ is closely implicated with the globalisation of an information
economy, we witness a resurgence of traditional attitudes even in high academic
circles, who are gratified at being able ‘once again to call something “bad
English”’ (Pennycook, 1994:132, citing Randolph Quirk). Speaking ‘bad
English’ becomes the handiest pretext for the long-standing campaign to blame
the disadvantaged for their own plight, and the poor for their own poverty (cf.
Harris, 1980). The exploding global population living in abject poverty can be
dismissed for being ‘ignorant’ of ‘world languages’ or at least of the
‘standard varieties’ of world languages.
B. THEORY AND PRACTICE IN MODERN
EDUCATION
‘Modern education’ also rests
upon an official inclusive theory of ‘democracy’ and ‘equality’ which is
contradicted by entrenched practices of exclusion. Again, languages and language
varieties are the key: this time the limited access to the discourse of
schooling, which is supposed to be conducted in ‘educated English’. The
underlying logic is circular, since ‘educated English’ could be at best the
result of education and not its precondition. But the practical outcome is
expedient: language supplies a pretext to discriminate in favour of learners
whose home varieties are already close to the presumably ‘educated’ one, and
against the other learners.
A similar process operates inside
language education. When English is a school subject for native speakers,
discrimination against learners with home varieties remote from presumably
‘educated English’ is a routine operation to ‘uphold standards’ and
establish ‘correctness’. For non-natives, the situation is complicated by a
range of learner Englishes and sometimes also by local Englishes, all of whose
relation to the target variety called ‘Standard English’ is insufficiently
accounted for.
The outcome has been succinctly
described by Robert L. Cooper (1989:135):
the model [of] language […] favoured by elites is typically adopted by
schools. […] Those who accept the model or ideal but are unable to use it
serve to legitimise their own subordination. By promoting the ideal without
imparting to all the ability to use it, the schools help to reproduce the social
structure in each generation.
I am not suggesting some conspiracy among schools,
administrators, teachers, or textbook authors, to limit access to ‘Standard
English’. The limits are the natural outcome of a global process wherein the
standards remain inaccessible whilst the size and diversity of the world-wide
population of prospective learners of English are rapidly increasing.
C. THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE PLANNING
In the foregoing sections, I
have outlined some factors which counsel us to assess theory and practice in
language planning. There also, contradictions can be diagnosed, but in a special
context. By definition, a ‘plan’ is a theory expressly intended for
implementation in practice. Yet ‘language planning’ confronts unique
difficulties as long as the steps needed to put a ‘language plan’ into
practice are unexplained and unresolved. We inherit all the pending problems of
theory versus practice in society, education, and language education, along with
linguistics (for discussion, see Beaugrande, 1997a, b). In effect, our
‘plans’ are intended to promote goals like ‘social progress’ and
‘individual freedom’ when the fundamental conditions for these goals are not
in place and their very meaning is widely contested over whether they will
benefit only the elites, who can buy expensive new technology, and run the
‘free market’ solely for their own enrichment; or whether they will benefit
the total population who seek a meaningful life and career.
Language planning naturally gets
entrained in similar contests. The elites, who typically dominate the academic
and institutional setting where language planning is done, are indifferent,
unsupportive, or even hostile to plans which favour the interests of the total
population, and consider them at best naive and at worst subversive. So language
planning faces multiple dangers. We must guard against being so
‘theoretical’ that the planning process remain trapped inside the domain of
theory whilst the practices of social change keep moving in the opposite
direction, and gap between the elites and the population keep getting wider. Yet
we must also guard against being so ‘practical’ that we are confined to
theorising, after the fact, the ‘linguistic realities’ of the setting,
and to placing an institutional seal of approval upon trends which do not
count as the social progress defined here. In the next section, I shall trace
these dangers in the actual discourse of language planning.
D. THE DISCOURSES OF LANGUAGE PLANNING
The discourse of language
planning might be expected to address issues like these:
(a) how language planning can
be implemented in the practices of discourse in society;
(b) how language planning can
be constructed and negotiated as theories within and through our own practices
of discourse;
(c) how our own discourse
might itself be steered by explicit and conscious planning.
In the past, the discourse language planning has
centred on (a), although aimed more at ‘language’ than at ‘discourse
practices’, after the models of linguistics and sociolinguistics (cf.
Beaugrande, 1999). I would submit that language planning is not likely to be
effective unless carried out in an ongoing
dialectic with discourse planning, for which I can see only a little
evidence so far.
The principal evidence I do see is
the ‘Plain English Movement’, whose chief architects were not officially in
language planning but in programmes of English, composition, rhetoric, and
English for Professional Purposes (cf. Redish, 1985). One applied linguist, H.G.
Widdowson (1988:342-46), has oddly classified this movement together with that
of ‘self-appointed custodians of language correctness’: both aim at
‘language limitation’ and ‘prescription of appropriate use’; ‘both
attempt to intervene in the process of language spread by appealing to notions
of what is appropriate and in defence of social values’ and by ‘referring to
some absolute criterion of correctness’. What Widdowson overlooked was the
diametrical opposition between the ‘social values’: the ‘plain language’
movements favour social progress and promote inclusion, whereas ‘custodians of
language correctness’ oppose progress and promote exclusion.
Such oversights may be due to the
hallowed stance of an ‘objectivity’ toward language that does not
‘limit’, ‘prescribe’, or ‘intervene’. But in language planning,
‘objectivity’ must have a different meaning. We must be objective in
recognising not just the diversity of languages and language varieties but also
the deployment of that diversity to legitimise inequality and exclusion despite
official theories of equality and inclusion. And we must also be objective in
assessing the conditions needed if social progress is to put those theories into
practice, as the ‘plain language movements’ have been doing. We cannot
abstain from taking sides wherever controversies are already well under way, and
where, in absence of language planning, they will inescapably lead to vehement
social conflicts.
A case
study: the discourse of language planning among ‘power’ struggles
My case study will probe how
discourse of language planning situates its concerns in respect to the
organisation and evolution of a presumably typical society. My data source will
be the volume with the programmatic title Language
Planning and Social Change, authored by Robert L. Cooper, a sometime
associate of Joshua Fishman’s. Cooper ‘wanted to present a general overview
of language planning, relate it to other fields, outline its scope, and relate
language-planning goals, procedures, and outcomes to one another’; he also
‘hoped to relate language planning to public policy more generally and to
social change’ (1989: vii). The back-cover blurb acclaims it to be ‘the
first book to define the field of language planning and relate it to other
aspects of social planning’.
The book episodically reflects on the
ratio between theory and practice, but arrives at a stand-off. A ‘theory’ is
said to be a ‘scheme’ whose few ‘propositions’ ‘explain’ many
instances of ‘human behaviour’ [1]. The timing in sample [2] seems to be:
first you ‘formulate descriptive classifications’, next you ‘discover
behavioural regularities’ and finally you
‘construct a theory’. But [3] adds a step: you ‘observe consistencies’
among ‘individual cases’ in order to ‘build up generalisations’ which
you then ‘organise into theories designed to explain all cases’; the
‘theory’ is now ready to be ‘tested against new data’.
[1] A
theory is a conceptual scheme which organises a relatively small number of
propositions which, taken together, explain a relatively wide range of human
behaviour. (56f).1
[2] the
initial construction of a theory follows
the discovery of behavioural regularities, which in turn depends upon the
formulation of descriptive classifications (57, his italics)
[3] Generalisations can be
built up from individual cases by observing consistencies in the relationships
among descriptive classifications. Such generalisations can be organised into
theories designed to explain […] all
individual cases represented by the phenomenon of interest. The validity of the
theory can then be tested against new data (57, his italics)
This outlook nicely fits the standard idealisation of
science up into the 1950s, with no provision made for the observer also being a
participant, in this case, a speaker of a language which has massive
‘descriptive classifications’ built into it (Halliday, 1997).
Whether such an outlook could be put
into investigative practice remains a moot question when the field is said to be
‘still at the stage’ of ‘discovering behaviour’ [4] and performing
‘ad-hoc studies’ ‘as a preliminary step in the formation of theories’
[5]. Indeed, a ‘theory’ is pronounced ‘unattainable at our present level
of competence’ [6].
[4] In
language planning we are still at the stage of discovering behavioural
regularities (57)
[5] Without a theory of
language planning, we have no principled means of determining what variables
should be included in descriptive, predictive, or explanatory studies of given
cases. Each investigator must make that determination on a more or less ad-hoc
basis. But ad-hoc studies serve as a preliminary step in the formulation of
theories. (56)
[6] A theory of language
planning would enable us to explain language-planning initiatives, the means
chosen to effect the goals, and the outcomes of the implementation. We would
understand […] the motivation for setting particular status, corpus, and
acquisition goals and for choosing particular means, and the reasons that the
means do or do not effect the goals within a give social context. Such a theory
[…] is unattainable, at least at our present level of competence, not only
because language planning is such a complex activity, influenced by numerous
factors — economic, ideological political, etc. — and not only because it is
directed toward so many status, corpus, and acquisition goals, but more
fundamentally because it is a tool in the service of so many different latent
goals such as economic modernisation, national integration, national liberation,
imperial hegemony, racial, sexual, and economic equality, the maintenance of
elites, and their replacement by new elites. (182)
The ‘theory’ is supposed to provide nothing less
than the means for ‘explaining’ and ‘understanding’ every aspect of
‘language planning’ whilst keeping clear of conflicts among ‘latent
goals’, such as ‘hegemony’ versus ‘equality’. Yet such a theory cannot
be built by ‘discovering behavioural regularities’, because our ‘goals’
and ‘outcomes’ just aren’t there to be discovered, which is why we need
planning. What we require, I submit, is theory which leads away from the widely
observable ‘hegemony’, which we’ll see Cooper’s own implicit theory
endorsing, and toward ‘equality’.
Having rendered a theory
‘unattainable’ by making such strenuous demands, Cooper does not
‘construct’ one but ends his book with a list of ‘generalisations’
(183), perhaps like those foreseen in sample [2] except that they don’t get
‘tested against new data’. Still, some of them do provide clues about his
implicit theory (183ff):
[7] Increasing differentiation
of social institutions promotes the differentiation of linguistic function and
linguistic form.
[8] Language standardisation
is more likely to be successful with respect to attitude than with respect to
behaviour.
[9] Language planning is not
necessarily initiated by persons for whom language is a principal focus, [e.g.]
by writers, poets, linguists, language teachers, lexicographers, and
translators, but also by missionaries, soldiers, legislators, and
administrators.
[10] Language planning
contributes to change by promoting new functional allocations of language
varieties, structural changes in those varieties, and acquisition of those
varieties by new populations. Language planning contributes to stability because
it is constrained by the target language’s structural requirements and by the
values which the language variety represents to its speakers.
[11] Language planning rarely
conforms to a rational paradigm of decision-making or problem-solving.
[7] singles out ‘differences’ in ‘social
institutions’, whereas our real problem is exclusions, e.g., when those
institutions decline to use plain language. [8] seems to say people will admire
standards in theory more readily than put them into practice. [9] suggests that
‘language planning’ is often ‘initiated’ by people without credentials
or expertise — without theory, but with power. [10] displays an uneasy
imbalance between two ‘contributions’: one to ‘change’ by
‘promoting’ (doing), and one to ‘stability’ by ‘being constrained’
(not doing); yet what is ‘standardisation’ but
promoting stability? Finally, [11] seems to affirm a general lack of
‘rationality’ in ‘language planning’ and in ‘making decisions’ or
‘solving problems’; Cooper (1989:155) elsewhere warns that ‘uncompromising
rationality’ cannot provide ‘workable solutions to corpus-planning
problems’.
This lack might be understood by
inferring Cooper’s implicit theory of social organisation from passages like
[12-14].
[12] Elites attempt to
maintain and extend their influence […] over the distribution of scarce
resources or values; […] the mass, to the extent that it is mobilised, seeks a
more equitable process; and counter-elites, speaking in the name of the mass or
in the name of a new ideology, seek to displace the elite and to seize control
of the process (119)
[13] Status planning can, in
principle [i.e. in theory], focus upon any communicative function. In practice,
it tends to aim at those functions which enable elites to maintain or extend
their power, or which give counter-elites an opportunity to seize power (120)
[14] Language planning […]
is unlikely to succeed unless it is embraced and promoted by elites or by
counter-elites [...] If language planning serves elites or counter-elites, it
may also serve the mass, particularly insofar as it strengthens the
individual’s sense of dignity, self-worth, social connectedness, and ultimate
meaning as a member of a group. (183f)
This grimly deterministic scenario of
society follows Harold D. Lasswell (1936), a strangely dated source for a 1989
survey, and one published back when fascism had openly ‘seized power’ in
several important nations. The scenario has just three classes of participants.
The ‘elites’ hold ‘power’ and ‘influence’ in practice — in
Lasswell’s (1936:3) own sinister terms, they ‘get the most of what there is
to get’ (80) —
whilst the ‘counter-elites’ ceaselessly connive to ‘seize power’
[13]. The rest of the society constitutes the ‘mass’ (Lasswell again),
presumably getting the least, even when power is ‘seized in their name’
[14]. Their interests may, as if by accident, be ‘served’ whilst the
‘elites’ and ‘counter-elites’ are busily struggling. But in this grim
scheme, the mass’s ‘sense of dignity, self-worth’, and ‘social
connectedness’ is an patent illusion. So is their hope for a ‘more
equitable’ society if the ‘aim’ and ‘success’ of language planning
requires ‘promotion’ by the ‘elites holding power’ or ‘counter-elites
seizing power’ [13-14], both groups being ruthlessly bent on grabbing
‘scarce resources or values’ [12].
The official theory for this same
society, again following Lasswell (1936:29f), is an ‘ideology’ constituted
by ‘symbols’ and conveyed through ‘sanctioned words and gestures’ [15].
Here, overtones of fascism are hard to ignore:
[15] counter-elites assert and
elites defend their legitimacy ‘in the name of the symbols of the common
destiny’; […] ‘such symbols are the “ideology” of the established
order, the “utopia” of counter-elites. By the use of sanctioned words and
gestures, the elite elicits blood, work, taxes, applause from the masses. When
the political order works smoothly, the masses venerate the symbols; the elite,
self-righteous and unafraid, suffers no withering sense of immorality. […] A
well-established ideology perpetuates itself with little planned propaganda by
those whom it benefits most’. […] Language, of course […] can be
manipulated to help create the perception
of a common destiny. Counter-elites seize or create whatever symbols are
available to them to mobilise mass movements (86, his italics)
Curiously, hegemony not merely wins
out here over equality but creates a seemingly useful stability: a ‘smoothly
working political order’ and a ‘well-established ideology’.
Such discourse implicates language
planning in producing exclusive theories to fit exclusive practices. Cooper
doubtless had no such intention, but he was liable to drift that way once he had
declared that a ‘theory’ is rendered ‘unattainable’ by such goals as
‘hegemony’ and the ‘maintenance of elites’ (sample [6]). There is little
room in his vision of social change to plan for what I have called social progress by theorising against
the ‘hegemony’ of the ‘elites’ and in
favour of the mass’s ‘sense of dignity, self-worth’, and ‘social
connectedness’ which would be neither accidents nor illusions, but which do
not currently show up among ‘behavioural regularities’ (cf. sample [4]). Yet
that is just what I submit we must do lest we incur the danger of merely
theorising, after-the-fact, the inevitability of the exclusive practices
sustained whilst the real or prospective ‘elites’ do battle for ‘the most
of what there is to get’.
To explore this danger, I shall
examine the first of the ‘four examples in search of a definition’ of
language planning at start of the Cooper’s book (3-28), namely ‘founding the
Académie Française’ (3-11). To
summarise the social and historical context, he cites another dated source
published not just during the rise of fascism but inside Nazi Germany itself:
[16] French integrity was
threatened […] by peasant riots and revolts. Crushed by taxation and rising
wheat and cereal prices, reduced to misery, peasants would arm themselves, march
to the nearest town, and attack the government tax officers. Scarcely a year
went by without an agrarian revolt which had to be forcibly repressed. […]
‘Complete anarchy, confusion, and exhaustion prevailed everywhere’
(Burckhardt, 1940 [German original 1935]:9f). (4)
By imposing an absolutist monarchy, Cardinal Richelieu
can figure as the ‘architect’ of ‘the modern French state’ who rescued
its ‘integrity’ from ‘dissension’ [16] and ‘dismemberment’ [17].
‘Order’ can figure as ‘a superior moral end’ on the side of ‘God’
[18] and thus sanctified to ‘exercise power relentlessly and ruthlessly’,
‘pursue dissidents pitilessly’, and ‘condemn innocents’ [19]. And these
were not just ‘a few’, as we easily see from the frequent
‘revolts’ of ‘peasants’ reduced to ‘misery’ by ‘taxation’, who,
instead of being relieved, ‘had to be
forcibly repressed’ [16].
[17] Had there not been a brilliant and strong minister to guide him [Louis XIII], France might have been dismembered. […] France became the arbiter of Europe, with Richelieu the architect of her greatness. He created the modern French state. (4)
The Cardinal devised a splendid theory for his
high-handed practices of imposing ‘order’:
[20] He shared with
contemporary philosophers the belief in humanity’s ability to apprehend what
is consistent with natural reason, [and] the contemporary pessimism about
humanity’s ability to act according to this knowledge. Thus people must be
ruled so that they might not act in defiance of reason or contrary to God, the
author of reason. (5)
At least he certainly ‘believed’ in his
own ‘ability to apprehend’ ‘natural reason’, though he could not
recognise that precisely the ‘natural reason’ of starving peasants might
lead them to ‘revolt’.
In Cooper’s further narrative of
Richelieu’s ‘modern French state’, the ‘peasants’ completely
disappear, and no connection is remotely drawn between their agonising poverty
and the taxation-sponsored cost of Richelieu’s ‘lavish patronage of
artists’ and his ‘taste for personal magnificence’ [21-22]. Here too, His
Eminence devised a splendid theory, one that would have been adored by the
Lasswellian ‘elites’ manipulating the ‘symbols of the common destiny’
[15]. Every benefit for himself was automatically for ‘the state of France’:
[21] Just as Richelieu valued
order in government, he valued order in art. […] art, like everything else,
must be controlled, directed, and regulated by the state. […] While his lavish
patronage of artists contributed to his own glory, he was convinced that his own
glory was inseparable from that of the state. The beauty, dignity, and
magnificence of art could contribute to the might and grandeur of France. […]
His collections, his commissions, as well as his own artistic productions reveal
a highly sophisticated taste. (5f)
By now, ‘order’ has been purged of all
‘ruthlessness’ and decked out in ‘beauty, dignity, and magnificence’. In
parallel, the ‘pitiless pursuer of dissidents’ and ‘condemner of
innocents’ now shines as a ‘genuine enthusiast’ with ‘a highly
sophisticated taste’.
The ‘founding of the Académie Française’
can fittingly figure as yet another move for securing ‘discipline and order’
and repressing ‘anarchy’ [22] (which, we are supposed to forget, was caused
by peasants yearning for bread —
let them eat ‘art’!). The final step into language planning invokes ‘high
culture’ and the ‘purification’ of language [23], along with ‘polish,
clarity, refinement, and discrimination’ [24].
[22] the yearning for peace
and the role of law and order, which had grown during the anarchy of the
sixteenth century, made the clarity, restraint, discipline, and order of
classical models appealing (7)
[23] The purification movement
also reflected an effort to establish […] the narrow aristocratic society
[…] as the supreme arbiter of language. […] Good usage became defined as
that of the elite, and bad usage as that of the mass of the people. […] Thus
the elite from which France’s rulers were drawn was able to invest its
language with the aura of high culture and to clothe its authority in this
language. (8)
[24] The purification movement
encouraged an excision of the coarse, the vulgar, and the plebeian from polite
speech and from serious literature, and elevated polish, clarity, refinement,
and discrimination as literary and linguistic ideals. (9)
At this point, the discourse of language planning has
indeed become implicated in producing exclusive theories to fit exclusive
practices, and in theorising, after-the-fact, a justification for a frankly
elitist state, wherein the ‘mass’ (or the ‘peasants’), sternly condemned
for ‘bad usage’ were not even granted a Lasswellian illusion of ‘dignity,
self-worth’, and ‘social connectedness’ (cf. [14]).
The Discourse of ‘International English’
The discourse of International
English (IE) (or English as an
International Language, EIL) is inclusive in theory: it projects a single
‘English’ which is being offered equally to all ‘nations’ and which
manifests one uniform set of standards in pronunciation, grammar, and
vocabulary. Yet the term is exclusive in practice by mystifying several factors:
(1) the wide diversity among real varieties of English both in their home
countries (e.g. the UK and the US) and in many other regions; (2) the prominent
inequalities of access to English in most of those regions; (3) the sharply
unequal status of the respective ‘nations’; and (4) the deployment of the
standards and the distribution of English for reproducing and sustaining all
these inequalities (cf. Phillipson, 1991; Pennycook, 1994).
The historical roots of the discourse
of IE can be found in the discourse
of linguistic imperialism linking English to empire-building as ‘the great
medium of civilisation’ [25] and of the ‘thought’ of all ‘mankind’
[26].2
[25] English is rapidly
becoming the great medium of civilisation; […] of all living languages, the
one […] bearing most directly of the happiness of mankind. (Guest, 1838:703).
[26] This heritage of the
English-speaking people is something of stupendous importance to the world [...]
it is more important that mankind should
learn to think Englishly than that it should learn merely to speak English
(West, 1934:172)
Yet sometimes the discourse of imperialism warned
against ‘teaching English indiscriminately’ lest the ‘population’
(Lasswell’s ‘mass’) grow ‘discontented’ with the ‘manual labour’
exacted by the Empire:
[27] the one danger to be
guarded against is an attempt to teach English indiscriminately […] I do not
think it is at all advisable to attempt to give to the children of an
agricultural population an indifferent knowledge of a language that to all but
the very few would only unfit them for the duties of life and make them
discontented with anything like manual labour (Frank Swettenham in the Perak
Annual Report for 1890)2
A balance was duly struck between
inclusion and exclusion. Most English teaching in the ‘Empire’ intended to
produce only the low fluency for assisting the exploitation of labour through a
hierarchy of language mediators; high fluency was reserved for top-level
mediators — Macaulay’s ‘class who may be interpreters between us and the
millions we govern’, since he deemed it ‘impossible’ ‘to educate the
body of the people’ (1835, cited in Pennycook, 1994:78).
In post-colonial settings, the
discourses of language spread and language planning have undergone more complex
mystifications. In theory, local languages are to be cultivated in such areas as
education and administration, much like Lasswell’s ‘symbols of the common
destiny’ back in [15]; the elites can support local languages as a means of
seeking consensus (along with ‘eliciting blood, work, taxes, applause’ in
[15]) for their continuing hegemony in an officially independent and democratic
society. In practice, power is concentrated among precisely those elites whose
English is the closest to the British ‘standard’, whilst well-meaning
policies for education and administration in local languages are not given the
economic and institutional support to make them practicable (Bamgbose, 1991).
The linguistic imperialism of
colonialism yields to the linguicism
of post-colonialism and neo-colonialism (Phillipson, 1991), and the inequalities
based on language supply a seemingly neutral rationale for maintaining
inequalities based on race, gender, and ethnic or religious allegiances.
In
much of the discourses of IE, the use and dominance of English figure as
purely practical matters of keeping up with commerce, technology, science, and
so on. The implicit theory postulates that English is available for all nations,
and that the choice of English or another language is made by a society of free
individual agents. This theory persists despite heaps of contrary evidence
because it is so close to established Western theories of society, science, and
education: free availability to all, and free choice to succeed or fail
(Beaugrande, 1997a).
The discourse of IE serenely takes
the global spread of English to be an objective fact that will inevitably lead
to an all-inclusive world-wide communication transcending national divisions or
boundaries. Along the way, the problems currently stemming from multiculturalism
and multilingualism will be automatically resolved because everyone who so
chooses can communicate in a culturally neutral English.
The neutrality of English can thus be
made a subtle theme in the discourse of language planning, e.g. in Fishman’s
(1977) assertion that English is not ‘ideologically encumbered’. Yet this
same discourse acknowledges that English is chiefly used in many regions by the
elites (cf. Pennycook, 1994). The ideology here would be that English is
inclusive and neutral in theory, whilst exclusion arises through mere accidents
of practice and through the failings of isolated individuals — just like the
prevailing ideology of ‘modern democracy’.
In this context, we ought to consider
how far the discourse of IE explicitly
describing the global spread of English implicitly
supports and celebrates it, rather
like a Lasswellian ‘well-established ideology perpetuating itself with little
planned propaganda by those it benefits most’ [15]. The discourse can imply,
without announcing it, the vacuous neo-colonialist theory, summarised by
Pennycook (1994:120), that ‘the world as described by English is the world as
it really is and thus to learn English is essential if anyone wants to
understand the modern world’.
In the discourse of IE, language
planning is animated to theorise, after-the-fact, the inevitability of
geopolitical and historical facts, much as we saw in Cooper’s adulatory
discourse about the Académie Française. A palpable instance is Fishman’s
(1992 [original 1978]:21-24) ‘no-nonsense view of English’ in terms of a
‘balance of power resting solidly’ on ‘realities’: there, English
‘reigns supreme’ ‘in the cruel real world’, ‘where econo-technical
superiority is what really counts’, viz.:
[28]
the lesson of History is quite clear […] the real ‘powerhouse’ is
still English. It doesn’t have to worry about being loved because, loved or
not, it works. It makes the world go round, and few indeed can afford to
‘knock it’. […] English gets along without love, without tears, and almost
without affect of any kind;[…] crying takes time, and as all the world has
learned from American English, ‘time is money’. (Fishman, 1992:24f)
So: ‘regardless of what may have happened to the
British Empire, the sun never sets on the English language’, whose speakers
Fishman illustrates with ‘the highest circles’, ‘indigenous elites
(“native foreigners”)’, tourists ‘(“foreign foreigners”)’, and
‘Third World recipients of Western largesse’ (1992:20). Hardly by
coincidence, English is also called ‘a major medium’ ‘of the metaphor of
mastery’ and of ‘technological modernity and power’ (1992:19f).
Such discourse implies either that
language planning can get along without theory because the social and economic
realities are deciding the practices in any case (Cooper seemed to say so in
[6]); or else that we only need theories ‘resting solidly’ on the
‘realities’ of practice such as the ‘balance of power’ (though the
reality is a staggering imbalance!). Problems relating to less tangible issues
such as values and loyalties get placed in a patronising sentimental association
with ‘affects’ like ‘love’ and ‘tears’, which a language like
English can ‘do without’ and has no ‘time’ and ‘money’ for anyway;
‘the market for poetry is down’, whilst ‘computer programming manuals tell
us whether or not a language will be taken seriously’ (Fishman, 1992:24). What
then of the real tears of the masses living in poverty, who have no access to
English and receive no ‘Western largesse’?
The collocation ‘Western
largesse’ itself cynically mystifies the real colonial and neo-colonial
exploitation that has ‘underdeveloped’ the ‘Third World’ (Frank 1979;
Rodney 1981) and has thereby made colonialist languages like English somewhat
‘unloved’. And the collocation ‘veritable
army of English-speaking econo-technical specialists, advisors, and
representatives’ (1992:20) makes the practical
exclusion of ordinary people who don’t speak English but only the
‘little languages’ (Fishman again) disappear behind a practical
inclusion — the term
‘army’ being exquisitely ironic in view of the close alliance between the
‘specialists’ and the military regimes held in place by English-speaking
elites.
In such passages, the discourse of IE
lends a highly practical and rational cast to a forced merger of theory with
practice that is actually impractical and irrational for the majority of the
population in many parts of the world. I can see nothing genuinely practical in
having language planning pre-empted by ‘econo-technocrats’ like the authors
and publishers of ‘computer programming manuals’, nor in patronising the
policies enacted to support endangered languages like Irish and Yiddish as
‘panegyrics’ about ‘intimacy and authenticity’, ‘suffused with
love‘, which is just ‘a sign of weakness’ in the ‘real world’
(Fishman, 1992:24). Apparently, language planning should remain ‘strong’
(like Richelieu’s ‘state’ in [19]) and give its stamp of approval when a
language gets extinguished by the spread of English, as could happen to Irish.
Fishman plays the role of specialist
insider by inserting ponderous technical terms (e.g. ‘relinguification and
re-ethnification goals’) among his value-laden terms, mostly pejorative (e.g.
‘little languages’) and even fairy-tale terms (English is the ‘Ugly
Duckling’, whilst local languages are ‘Prince Charmings in overalls’,
1992:23f), such that a technical aura can enhance the scientific authority of
large and disputable claims, e.g.:
[29] The shallowness of
association with ‘Mother English’ is in turn related to Anglophonie’s
permissiveness toward non-native Englishes all over the world, each of which
likewise has little affect associated with it (1992:24).
As so often in the discourse of IE, the neutrality of
English is asserted in absolute terms, in this case allowing the freedom from
‘affect’ to straightforwardly carry over into its ‘non-native’
varieties, which, in my own experiences in such regions as Singapore, Egypt,
Nigeria, Jamaica, and South Africa, have intense ‘affect associated with
them’. Putting some value-laden terms in quotes (as Fishman sporadically does)
is no substitute for a critical analysis of how collocations like
‘powerhouse’, ‘time is money’, and ‘Mother English’ privilege
exclusion over inclusion and therefore merit no place in the discourse of
accredited language planners. Still less does ‘Western largesse’.
In Lasswellian terms, the role of the
‘elite’ goes to the ‘international’ set of speakers of ‘standard
English’, and the only mildly plausible candidates for a ‘counter-elite’
would be speakers of ‘standard French’ plus a gallery of local elites
speaking a standard version of a language that still retains a ‘sense of
dignity’ and ‘self-worth’, such as Classical Arabic and Mandarin Chinese.
The role of the excluded ‘mass’ would go partly to speakers of local
varieties of English, and partly to speakers of local languages who have no
knowledge of any English. Which of these two groups will get ‘the least of
what there is’ remains a question that the discourse of IE is unlikely to
raise, since its own favourite protagonists are the elites and their ‘army’
of worshipful hangers-on.
The Discourse of ‘World Englishes’
In contrast to ‘International
English’, the term ‘World Englishes’
(WE) foregrounds the plurality and diversity among varieties while asserting
their equality as versions of ‘English’. Instead of the ‘international’
scene with its connotations of wealth and power (as in ‘international
diplomacy’, ‘international tourism’, ‘international currency
exchanges’), we have a ‘world’ scene that connotes inclusion and the need
to share what Lasswell would call ‘scarce resources’ (as in ‘world
population’, ‘world resources’, ‘world hunger’).
Predictably, the discourse of WE
highlights the enormous geographical and cultural range of these varieties, as
in Kachru’s (1992:356) well-known scheme of ‘Inner Circle’, ‘Outer
Circle’, and ‘Expanding Circle’, where the serendipitous term ‘circle’
inclusively projects items equidistant from a centre and located on the same
plane. Kachru (1986:8) sees English ‘having acquired a neutrality’ in
contexts where local languages may have ‘acquired undesirable connotations’.
However, his view is by no means to be equated with Fishman seeing English as
not ‘ideologically encumbered’ and not associated with ‘affect’ (quoted
above). In the discourse of IE, the neutrality is assigned to a single stable
‘International’ variety which ‘works’ and ‘makes the world go round’
(Fishman in [28]), and which, in theory, can be shared by all speakers
everywhere, but is prevented in practice by mysterious accidents and individual
failures — inclusive theory and exclusive practice. In WE, in contrast, the
neutrality is certified by assigning equal status to all those varieties which
support world-wide communication: inclusive theory and inclusive practice. And
whereas the discourse of IE trades on the implicit theory of English having one
uniform set of standards, the discourse of WE thematically opens and reopens
issues and questions relating to variable standards. For IE, the consensus is
somehow already achieved on formal grounds, thanks to cultivation by an elite of
specialists in the ‘First World’ at the ‘Centre’; for WE, consensus is
an ongoing inclusive project to be negotiated on functional grounds among broad,
diverse groups of users in their respective regions, whether in the ‘First
World Centre’ or the ‘Third World Periphery’. Ultimately, WE could make a
vital contribution to the wider geopolitical negotiation for a ‘polycentric’
world, wherein Centre and Periphery no longer confront each other in the crass
divisions we behold today (cf. Amin, 1990).
In this context, the discourse of WE
is primarily an inclusionary counter-discourse
against a long series of discursive and ideological exclusions extending all
across society, science, and education, and even into the discourse of language
planning, as we have seen. Similarly, the theory of WE is a counter-theory
which seeks to deconstruct so many past theories that have idealised language
and especially ‘Standard English’.
Such a discourse faces great challenges whose direction might be
traced in a sampling from the WE discourse of Braj Kachru. Against the brisk
‘no-nonsense view of English’ as the key to ‘econo-technical
superiority’ (Fishman quoted above), Kachru (1986:101) diagnoses ‘an
unrealistic and unpragmatic attitude toward the non-native varieties of
English’ and cites as a ‘main reason’ a critical lack of adequate
inclusive theorising:
[30] as yet, the role of
English in the socio-linguistic context of each English-using Third World
country is not properly understood or is conveniently ignored. […] Third World
countries are slowly realising that, given the present attitude of TESL
specialists, it is difficult to expect [...] any theoretical insights and
professional leadership in this field which would be contextually,
attitudinally, and pragmatically useful (101).3
To illustrate this diagnosis, Kachru presents an
explicit counter-discourse ‘responding to a paper of Clifford H. Prator, a
distinguished and active scholar in the area of Teaching English as a Foreign
Language’, which ‘provides a good example of linguistic purism and
linguistic intolerance’ (100f).
Interestingly, Prator’s paper
itself purported as a counter-discourse aimed against what he called ‘the
British Heresy in TESL’. This ‘heresy’ consisted of being too tolerant and
not purist enough in believing that
[31] it is best, in a country
where English is spoken natively but is widely used as the medium of
instruction, to set up the local variety of English as the ultimate model, to be
imitated by those learning the language (459) (101)3
With seasoned irony, Kachru’s
counter-discourse retains the moralising and theological metaphor of
‘heresy’ by exposing ‘seven attitudinal sins’. These constitute ‘a set
of fallacies to mark as separate those members of the English speech community
who (he [Prator] would like to believe) do not have language attitudes identical
to his, namely the British’ (102).
Kachru chooses not to expend his own
discourse on ‘demonstrating that the linguistic tolerance attributed to my
former colonial masters is undeserved’, although ‘it would be easy’. His
concern is with the ideologies of tolerance and intolerance in general. So his
roster of ‘sins’ frankly deconstructs the misinformation entailed when
exclusive masquerades as inclusive, as in:
[32] The sin of ethnocentrism. Prator has adopted (rather perversely) an intellectually and
empirically unjustified view concerning the homogeneity and speech uniformity of
American society, e.g., in saying that ‘social dialects show relatively little
systematic variation’ (471) (102)
Kachru cites ‘empirical evidence’
of ‘language differences’ provided by a series of authorities on American
English (McDavid, Marckwardt, Labov, Fasold etc.). But such evidence would have
little effect on purists who, like Prator, are determined to misrepresent
differences as deviations from acceptable usage, as shall witness in sample
[36].
Whereas the first ‘sin’
predicated an unjustified inclusion to fabricate a mythical consensus about
native (American) English, the second ‘sin’ predicates an unjustified
exclusion by fabricating ‘distrust’ and even welcoming exclusiveness as
‘pleasant’ and ‘reassuring’:
[33] The sin of wrong perception of language attitudes. […] The British
attitude is presented as one of ‘deep-seated mistrust of the African who
presumes to speak English too well’; ‘if an Englishman is himself a proud
speaker of RP, he may find each encounter with a person who obviously does not
speak his language well a pleasantly reassuring reminder of the exclusiveness of
his own social group’ (Prator, 471) (133)
Such discourse signals that purists may not really
favour getting everyone’s English to be the ‘standard’, but are just
seeking to ensure that their own ‘standard English’ continues to lend them
exclusive privilege.
Further ‘sins’ Kachru finds in
Prator’s discourse (again like that of purists in general) arise from ignoring
the factors of ‘intelligibility’, ‘communication’, and
‘acculturation’:
[34] The sin of overlooking the ‘cline’ of Englishness in language
intelligibility, [which] has yet be related to the concepts of
appropriateness and effectiveness in a speech situation. (105)
[35] The sin of not recognising the non-native varieties of English
as culture-bound codes of communication . […] Prator ignores the
inevitable process of acculturation which the English language has undergone in
Third World countries [and assumes that] English is […] taught as a vehicle to
introduce British or American culture, [whereas in fact] English is used to
teach and maintain the indigenous patterns of life and culture, to provide a
link in culturally and linguistically pluralist societies and to maintain a
continuity and uniformity in educational, administrative, and legal systems.
(103)
The inclusiveness of WE discourse is
prominently signalled here in such terms as ‘link’, ‘pluralist’, and
‘continuity’.
Moreover, once again like purists in
general, Prator cannot see other varieties as language systems but only as an
adventitious chaos of deviations:
[36] The sin of ignoring the systemicness of non-native varieties of English:
‘very few speakers limit their aberrancies to the widely shared features; each
individual typically adds in his own speech a large and idiosyncratic collection
of features’ (Prator , 464) (104)
This wilful blindness blots out the
very existence, let alone the value, of other Englishes.
The contrast between the ‘heresy’
denounced by Prator and the ‘sins’ deconstructed by Kachru within Prator’s
discourse nicely illustrates my own contrast between exclusion and inclusion in
language policies. Praetor’s IE discourse is impelled to construct both a
totally unsupported theory of uniformity in native-English regions like the US,
and an equally unsupported theory of ‘aberrant’ and ‘idiosyncratic’
diversity in all non-native-English
regions. Kachru’s WE discourse programmatically does just the reverse:
foregrounding the diversity in all native-English regions and the
‘systemicness’ and communicative functionality in all non-native-English
regions where ‘the English language is used to integrate culturally and
linguistically pluralistic societies’ (107).
He urges us all to ‘see the function of these varieties with reference
to the country in which English is used’, and ‘its roles in the
sociocultural network’ (111). For its ‘users’, each ‘variety’ is
‘formally distinct because it performs functions which are different from the
other varieties’, and ‘performs those roles which are relevant and
appropriate to the social, educational, and administrative network’ (111).
E. CONCLUSION
I have
attempted to show how language planning, and in particular the discourses of
language planning, are continually involved in explicit or (more often) implicit
choices between inclusion and exclusion. In the past, language planning has
at times been either inclusive in theory and exclusive in practice, or
else exclusive in both theory and practice in conformity with presumed
‘realities’. Today, these trends seem profoundly disturbing as we brace for
an uncertain new millennium, whilst globalisation is proliferating exclusion on
an unprecedented world-wide scale and making the lives of the excluded
horrendously inhumane.
At such a
time, our priorities for language planning should be firmly committed to
inclusion in both theory and practice. Fortunately, a language is by nature
inclusive, although it has often been turned to exclusive purposes, notably by
withdrawing into ostentatiously technical language, such as ‘relinguification
and re-ethnification goals’ (Fishman). In the new millennium, World Englishes
are probably the only group of language varieties that could decisively turn the
tide toward inclusion, provided we can mount a consistent initiative based upon
a clear and steadfast consensus among those responsible for language education,
language pedagogy, language policies, and, as I hope to have demonstrated here,
language planning.
NOTES
1. To conserve space, I give
just the page numbers for the samples from Cooper (1989).
2. I am indebted to Pennycook
(1994:99, 131, 86) for these early sources.
3. Again to conserve space, I
give just the page numbers for the samples from Kachru (1986). For dual page
numbers, the first is for Prator (1968) and the second for Kachru (1986).
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