Should ‘helping with English’ be part of the brief of humanitarian aid workers? (Source: helpage.org)

Over a few years of involvement in the aid sector in Asia, I became aware that aid workers turn their noses up at ‘English work’. Managers for my Australian government volunteering program encouraged us not to be sucked in to being human dictionaries while on NGO postings. In China, where I was, there was a bristling critique because USA’s Peace Corps volunteers were “only” sent to teach English: ‘How linguistically imperialist!’, we thought.

However, our local colleagues at NGOs and so called ‘development-sector’ government agencies often made requests of us native English speakers: to talk English with them, proofread and draft reports, apply for grants, translate the organisation’s website, help with overseas university applications and tutor their friends’ children. This sparked complaints like ‘I feel like I’m here mostly to translate’ and ‘I’m doing proofreading and admin tasks which I don’t see as capacity building’.

It sure is frustrating to move overseas and find you are expected to provide little but ‘white face time’ in your job. But is English language aid underrated?

Discounting ‘English work’ doesn’t happen because aid workers are haughty. These people have professional training in fields like environmental science or public health and believe they were hired to contribute in those areas. Moreover, many native English speakers recognize that they have no professional language teaching experience. Most aid workers are conscientious global citizens, wary of being language imperialists. But these ‘good reasons’ are misconceived, I argue.

Wrong Skills

Without teacher training, you are a less-than-ideal candidate to teach, no question. But in the regions I’m talking about, learners seldom get to select from a smorgasbord of English-speaking trained teachers and native English-speaking non-teachers. Even the Peace Corps receive some teacher training and teach in impoverished areas where TESOL staff-members are otherwise in short supply. Moreover, when learning a new language, important learning is done beyond the classroom and after childhood: for instance, between aid workers and their adult colleagues. Psychologist Vygotsky showed peer group learning with ‘more knowledgeable others’ was a productive part of language acquisition, with no teacher needed. Modelling grammatical and pragmatically-appropriate language provides useful input for learners. In short, helping colleagues with their English tasks or even just conversing can be valuable for their language learning and is within any English speaker’s ability. 

Imperialism?

In many countries, people see access to a native English speaker as a boon. Why not give communities what they think would assist their upward mobility? The contribution to informal, out-of-classroom English learning these native speakers provide is something their colleagues and communities may find even more valuable than the specific aid project, especially as the expense, scarcity and systemic preference given to children’s classes make formal language learning inaccessible to many adolescents and adults who want it.

As Kamwangamalu (2013, p. 328) notes of Africa – and I’ve found this in China, too – ‘stakeholders reject their own indigenous languages […] because they consider them insignificant and of no practical value in the linguistic marketplace.’ In this, local stakeholders are not wrong; English is indisputably of greatest value in many markets. Many (including me) would say this is evidence of linguistic hegemony and non-native English speakers are complicit in their own linguistic domination by prioritising English, embracing the coloniser’s model of the world. Even so, is it an incoming English speaker’s place to decide to attack hegemony by refusing to help people proofread?

Often, English is the language of power and funding, particularly for international aid, and non-elites may well perceive English as a resource monopolized by elites to preserve their status. For instance, Ghanaians ‘expressed the view that using the vernacular as an instructional medium was a subtle strategy employed by the elite to perpetuate communities’ marginalization from mainstream society’ (Mfum-Mensah 2005, p. 80).

Whether or not we oppose English’s dominance ideologically, it is beneficial to proofread co-workers’ donor reports, make templates for the office and attend events to speak for the organisation or those it assists, in English. The more co-worker inclusion in these activities, the better. That oft-encountered request to help a friend-of-a-friend with a personal English task should likewise be accepted, because language competencies can function as collective resources. Indeed, many linguists now advocate studying ‘actual linguistic, communicative, semiotic resources’ rather than ‘languages’ (Blommaert, 2010, p. 102). English resources can benefit networks rather than merely individuals. In expanding the networks around English resources, inequality and elitism is reduced.   

Both national politics and international development are ‘Fields’ (Bourdieu 1991). English is both economically and symbolically valuable in these Fields. Native English speakers – especially professionals doing aid volunteering – have an ability to use professional-register English at less expense (a Bourdieuian ‘Habitus’).  So it’s efficient for them to do tasks requiring professional English. Importantly, this is not short term efficiency at the expense of long term efficiency; helping out with English tasks now doesn’t preclude co-workers’ language acquisition in the longer term. Rather, it can play a part in their improvement so the ‘cost’ of professional English for colleagues will decrease over time. English-speaking aid workers, in doing ‘English work’, can improve their hosts’ access to material support and their ability to be heard in international forums.

The benefit of mobility of individuals, of organisations and across community networks is hard to weigh against the detriment of linguistic imperialism, but this weighing up should not be shirked, and nor should the ‘English work’ involved.

References

Blommaert, J. (2010). The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, Polity.

Kamwangamalu, N. M. (2013). Effects of policy on English-medium instruction in Africa. World Englishes, 32 (3), 325-337 DOI: 10.1111/weng.12034

Mfum-Mensah, O. (2005). The impact of colonial and postcolonial Ghanian language policies on vernacular use in two northern Ghanaian communities. Comparative Education 41 (1), 71-85.

A Canadian couple of Ghanaian origin was visiting Australia in November 2001. Their first stop was Brisbane. Having escaped the chill of the northern hemisphere, they enjoyed every bit of their week’s stay there and were looking forward to an even better time in Sydney. Their dream turned nightmarish when accommodation booked online fell way short of the standard shown in the brochure, and the area surrounding the hotel boasted iron bars in windows and a sea of graffiti greeted them as they made their way in the rental car. Feeling unsafe and unable to sleep that night, they decided to look up listings in the White Pages for Ghanaian names. They found Tetteh. And that is how I came to receive a telephone call late that night almost nine years ago.

They introduced themselves with their first (Anglo) names. The woman’s name turned out to be the same as my mother’s, Comfort. Intrigued, I asked her “ofai nε mεni dji ogbεi diεntsε?” [“Please what is your real/clan name?”] She hesitated and said “moko moko biko mi nεkε sane dan. Atso mi Komle, aankpa Komle.” [“Nobody has ever asked me this before. My name is Komle.”] The same clan name as that of my late sister-in-law!

The reason I had asked her for her clan name can be traced back to my first migration experience when I was eight years old. My family moved from Accra to Koforidua because of my father’s work. In our socialization in this new setting and other regions in Ghana that dad worked in, I got to observe my parents trace the family backgrounds of Ga people introduced to them through clan names, surnames and siblings’ names: “Mεni shia mli odjε?” [“Which house do you come from?”] “Mεni dji ogbεi diεntsε?” [“What is your real/clan name?”] “Mεni dji onyεmi mεi agbεi?” [“What are the names of your siblings?”] I learnt that through a person’s family name and/or their clan name their heritage and their history is preserved. This means also that families like ours living outside their hometown are able to link their kin who have settled in similar parts of the country. Many were the families and communities we forged out of these links as migrants!

As an adult on that night in Sydney many years later, we traced the family’s roots of our surprise callers to the same roots as my husband’s. We welcomed them into our home and hosted them for the remainder of their stay in Sydney. To both of them we became mi nyεmi yoo, mi nyεmi nuu kε wo bii [my sister, my brother and our children]. And to us and our children they became “auntie” and “uncle”. I don’t know why of all the Ghanaian names listed in the Sydney White Pages, it had to be ours that they found and why auntie bears the name of two very important people in my family’s history. What I do know is that on that fateful day a transnational family was born with links that go back in time and space and that criss-cross four continents – North America, Africa, Australia and even Europe – I had stayed with my sister-in-law and her husband in Italy during my migrant application process to Australia in 1992. Last month, I finally got to visit auntie and uncle in their home in Canada – as a sidetrip after attending AAAL in Atlanta!

What does this story tell us about language in transnational contexts? Is a name simply what people call you and what you respond to or is there something more to a name? The age-old question of “what’s in a name?” with a twist: names on the move and how they provide links in a world characterized by global (people) flows!

For Ga people, the clan name together with the person’s surname is usually traceable to a particular tsεmεi awe [fathers’ home] thus linking people to their roots. This is useful particularly for future generations born in Diasporas who go back to trace their lineage and unite with kin. As well as helping to forge family and community links, this system of naming also ensures that by checking on family backgrounds, relatives on the move do not end up marrying each other.

Thus, for Ghanaians in the Diaspora and for Ga people who seek to enjoy links with their community of origin, names provide one way of identifying and forging such links. There is an interconnectedness of lives that is embedded in names, which provide for a redefinition of family and which is worth exploring to understand community formation in lesser known linguistic and immigrant groups.