Back

The Politics of
Language

An exploration of our relationship with language

Next

Gender And Sexuality Education Philosophy with Children Reflections on Pedagogy

14-15y+ Age Group

RHEA KUTHOORE

Oct 10, 2021 · 7 min read

“Every time I say something the way I say it,
she correct me until I say it some other way.
Pretty soon it feel like I can’t think”

- The colour purple

If you are an educator from India, or from another nation that was colonised, it is extremely crucial to not only think about your community’s history with the English language, but to also consider the ways in which the language is ‘taught’ to children and how it makes them feel. Furthermore, it is of relevance to share with children the various reasons for why a language is imbued with power. Below, I share some important parts of Ambedhkar’s, Thiong’ o's and Fannon’s work. The essence of these quotes can be shared with children in different ways too.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

The real aim of colonialism was to control the people's wealth: what they produced, how they produced it, and how it was distributed; to control, in other words, the entire realm of the language of real life. Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship-to the world. Economic and political control can never be complete or effective without mental control. To control a people's culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relation to others.

For colonialism this involved two aspects of the same process: the destruction or the deliberate undervaluing of a people's culture, their art, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature and literature, and the conscious elevation of the language of the coloniser. The domination of a people's language by the languages of the colonising nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonised.

Frantz Fanon

To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.

Every colonized people—in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality—finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards. He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, his jungle.

B. R. Ambedkar

It is also the language of emancipation, the language in which privilege has been eloquently denounced. Annihilation of Caste by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the most widely read, widely translated, and devastating denunciation of the Hindu caste system, was written in English. It revolutionized the debate on perhaps the most brutal system of institutionalized injustice that any society has ever dreamed up. How different things would have been had the privileged castes managed to contain Ambedkar’s writing in a language that only his own caste and community could read.

Inspired by him, many Dalit activists today see the denial of a quality English education to the underprivileged (in the name of nationalism or anticolonialism) as a continuation of the Brahmin tradition of denying education and literacy—or, for that matter, simply the right to pursue knowledge and accumulate wealth—to people they consider “shudras” and “outcastes.” To make this point, in 2011 the Dalit scholar Chandra Bhan Prasad built a village temple to the Dalit Goddess of English. “She is the symbol of Dalit Renaissance,” he said. “We will use English to rise up the ladder and become free forever.”

Class Activity

We began class with the following question: What phrases capture your feelings about English, as a language? Specifically, what experiences and incidents stand out when you think about your experience of learning and speaking the language? What has the process of learning the language been like? (The focus need not be on encapsulating everything that one feels about the language)

Responses: imposed but used to it by now, brought depth, simple, (pleasure, ambition, inquiry), helped me be creative, (to communicate, understand and enjoy), imposed, (mind opening and alienating), (limited and exploring), (started with handwriting, an advantage and game-changer)

Based on these responses, we noted down the following points of inquiry:

Why does learning English feel imposed and alienating and why do some people find it more imposing than others?

For those who found English to be simple and pleasurable, bringing depth, creativity and understanding, furthering ambition, inquiry and exploration, is there a flip-side to all these benefits?

Are there other perspectives that people have when it comes to their relationship with the English language?

We read two poems in order to further our inquiry.
The first was a section of ‘Dreaming in Gujarati’, by Shailja Patel (Kenyan Indian poet) and the second poem was, ‘Learn English’ by Savitribai Phule (Indian poet).

Dreaming in Gujrati

Shailja Patel

Listen:
my father speaks Urdu
language of dancing peacocks
rosewater fountains
even its curses are beautiful.

He speaks Hindi
suave and melodic
earthy Punjabi
salty rich as saag paneer
coastal Kiswahili
laced with Arabic,
he speaks Gujarati
solid ancestral pride.

Five languages
five different worlds
yet English
shrinks
him
down
before white men
who think their flat cold spiky words
make the only reality.

Words that don't exist in English:
Najjar
Garba
Arati.

If we cannot name it
does it exist?
When we lose language
does culture die? What happens
to a tongue of milk-heavy
cows, earthen pots
jingling anklets, temple bells,
when its children
grow up in Silicon Valley
to become
programmers?

Learn English

Savitribai Phule

Make self-reliance your occupation,
Exert yourself to gather the wealth of knowledge,
Without knowledge animals remained dumb,
Don’t rest! Strive to educate yourself.
The opportunity is here,
For the Shudras and Ati Shudras,
To learn English
To dispel all woes.
Throw away the authority
Of the Brahmin and his teachings,
Break the shackles of caste,
By learning English.

The poems gave us insights into the ways in which the English language is loaded with power politics — it can ‘shrink’ one person while ‘dispelling all woes’ for another. We spoke of how English feels less imposed for those who come from English speaking households as they may be less aware of how self-worth is determined by English eloquence. We also discussed how a language is ‘a carrier of culture’ and how the pedestalization of the English language causes the degradation of cultural diversity.

As an educator who speaks to children in English, I have learnt to pay more attention to how children, who speak English differently and to different extents, behave with one another as a consequence of this difference and make sure to discuss the politics of language as and when I observe it playing out in classes. I have also emphasized the ways in which there are multiple English’s by sharing novels such as ‘The Color Purple’ and by citing examples of language evolution. I have unlearned the ways in which mistakes and pronunciation are constantly corrected while ‘teaching’ a language. I believe that a child who is learning a language can learn to self-correct if given the time and context to do so.

RHEA KUTHOORE is an educator who is passionate about facilitating philosophical and feminist thinking amongst young people.

Thinking Rhizomatically

Heading

Heading

Heading

Heading

Heading

Heading

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content. The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content. The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content. The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content. The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

This is an h2 heading inside rich text

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

Static and dynamic content editing

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

Static and dynamic content editing

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

Static and dynamic content editing

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

Static and dynamic content editing

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

How to customize formatting for each rich text

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.