Man wearing shalwar kameez in Tooting

A friend of mine wanted me to accompany them to give my verdict about the Pakistani food in Tooting, London. They are non-Pakistani and they wanted an opinion from an insider of the culture to test whether the food was authentic or not. I accepted their invitation.

On the day of our meet-up, I first walked from Tooting underground station towards Tooting Broadway to get a sense of what was new. I was also looking for something that would catch my attention and that I might develop into a research project. When we met, we roamed some more given my obsession with linguistic practices “in the wild.” To work up our appetite, we proceeded to explore material aspects of social and cultural public life in Tooting, which has been made famous by the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, a well-known native of the area.

Saxons and Romans coming through

The origin of the word “Tooting” is Anglo-Saxon, even if the meaning is disputed. Inhabited since before Anglo-Saxon times, Tooting lies on Stane Street, a 91-km road originally created by the Romans from Londinium (London) to Noviomagus Reginorum (Chichester).

So, Tooting has been at the intersection of “foreign” and “local” for at least two millennia. It is obvious that in relation to places like Tooting the imagined homogenous, monolingual ideal has always been a myth.

Pakistanis moving in

Going back to the topic of our day out in Tooting and the spatial practices we were looking for, the first thing that caught my eye was a young man in a dark green modern-day Pakistani-style “kam” or shalwar kameez walking ahead of us. Is this foreign or is this a local practice now, I wondered. Should wearing a shalwar kameez be considered part of a Tooting identity? And what kind of language practices might the person in shalwar kameez have been involved in before the moment I saw him? Was he coming out of a mosque? It was too early for any mandatory prayer times nor was it a Friday. His clothes were slightly formal, fitting for a Pakistani-style party. Perhaps he was off to a wedding or a milad or something similar?

Anarkali shop front

While shalwar kameez, just as any other form of clothing, can exist outside the realm of practice, linguistic happenings are tied to the communicative spaces and geographies where it appears. I wondered whether his outfit would not invoke Pakophobia (see a biography of the word P*ki  here) by some parts of Tooting’s population? And how does the clothing of this man relate to his class, status, and education?

Indexing “Global Britain” locally

Moving forward, I found some words written on shops that caught my attention: “Anarkali,” the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) sign, Habib Bank, Nirala, and a couple of other familiar names originating from Pakistan and neighbouring countries. These naming practices are a form of action in a specific place and time within London. These names may not be indigenous to Britain, but they are embedded in this local neighbourhood.

The word Anarkali, for example, has a history bundled in this eight-letter word: the semantic meaning of the word “anarkali” is the bud of pomegranate. The word is also reminiscent of the legend of Anarkali, a courtesan in the Mughal court of Lahore who had a tragic love affair with the Mughal Prince, the famous bazaar in Lahore named after the courtesan, the Indian film Mughal-e-Azam, and last but not least, a popular Pakistani song from 2002 called Supreme Ishq Anarkali. All of these associations came to my mind.

The word Anarkali at the front of the shop was written in Roman rather than in Urdu, making it legible to descendants of South Asians migrants who might have only spoken competence of Urdu, the lingua franca of multilingual Pakistan.

Our delicious lunch at Spice Village, Tooting

We walked past Anarkali and stopped wherever we found something interesting to observe. There is rising gentrification in the neighbourhood, but the processes of relocalization of various intersecting practices are visible in multi-layered, multimodal language practices.

Food and restaurants were central to our conversation. Pointing to the restaurant Lahore Karahi, my friend said: “That’s one of the restaurants Sadiq Khan likes the most. I read heard it in an interview.”

Sharing a Tooting meal

Sadiq Khan also recommends the restaurants Daawat and Spice Village on the Visit London website.

With these endorsements, it was not surprising that Lahore Karahi and Daawat were full. We settled for savoury dishes in Spice Village for our lunch, followed by a very desi dessert in Daawat.

The question then is: how much of local Pakistani languaging practices are considered part of the fabric of the local ecology by the policy makers of modern-day “Global Britain“? And how much can we as educators and researchers make use of all languaging practices in our environment without labelling them under the binaries of minority/majority, local/foreign, indigenous/migrant?

Additionally, multilingual crisis communication has been the focus of the research projects conducted by Master of Applied Linguistics students at Macquarie University as part of their “Literacies” unit. We close the year by sharing some of their findings.

Here, Kinza Afraz Abbasi shows how mismatched language choices and mismatched communication channels render public health communication in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province ineffective.

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English-Only COVID-19 signage in a school in KPK (Image credit: Express Tribune)

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), one of the four provinces of Pakistan, it is widely believed that polio vaccination is a Western plot to make children infertile in their childhood with the aim to control Muslim population growth. As a result of this belief, health clinics have been torched and health care workers killed. Polio, almost eradicated elsewhere, remains a health threat in the province.

What happens in a situation such as this – where mistrust between the population and public health services is rampant – when a new public health disaster such as the COVID-19 pandemic strikes?

There is wide agreement that Pakistan’s response to the pandemic has not been effective and that the country is now in a lethal second wave.

In my research project, I set out to discover what the government has done to inform the public about the dangers of the virus and about measures to stop the spread of the virus.

The linguistic situation in KPK

KPK is located in the northwest of Pakistan and shares a border with Afghanistan. The largest ethnic group in the province are the Pashtuns, who are comprised of many tribes and clans. Tribes are independent to govern themselves and most of the population live in rural areas. In addition to Pashto, Hazara, Hindko, Kohistani, Torwali, Baluchi, Persian, and other languages are spoken in the province.

This linguistically and culturally diverse rural population of around 35 million people has a literacy rate of 50%. In some tribal areas the literacy rate is as low as 9%.

Those who are fortunate to have learned how to read and write will have done so in a language that is not native to the province, Urdu, the national language of Pakistan.

In addition to Urdu, English also enters the picture because it is a co-official language of Pakistan.

English dominates official COVID-19 communication

English has, in fact, been the preferred language of communicating official information about COVID-19. Pakistan’s official COVID-19 website is entirely in English.

The government of KPK has followed the lead of the national government and also communicated most official information in English.

I explored a number of official websites and social media feeds and determined the language of communication was almost always English, with some Urdu communications, mostly on social media. I could not discover any use at all of Pashto, or any of the other languages of KPK.

Few people follow official government information

Equally noteworthy as the mismatched language choice is the lack of attention that official government communications receive.

The official Twitter account of Pakistan’s Ministry of National Health Services, for instance, has 29,400 followers. In other words, out of a population of 212.2 million, a minuscule 0.013 percent follow official health information on Twitter.

With 1,771,291 followers, their Facebook page is slightly more popular but still under 1% of the population.

The follower numbers of the official Facebook page of the KPK government are equally dismal: 11,544 followers out of a population of 35 million, or 0.03% of the population.

Given the dismal state of telecommunications in the province and the low literacy rates, these figures are not surprising.

Private TV channels broadcasting in local languages

The COVID-19 messages of the Pashto-language TV channel AVT Khyber are in English

TV is popular in KPK and many private channels broadcast in Pashto, Saraiki, Hindko, and other languages.

Unfortunately, the information related to COVID-19 broadcast on these channels seems to be in English, too, as I discovered when researching COVID-19 messages on the Pashto-language channel AVT Khyber.

Their COVID-19 messages are directly copied from the English language messages of the World Health Organization without any adaptation or localization.

Mismatched communication costs lives

In my research I identified three key communication mismatches:

• Information is made available through the medium of English and, to a lesser degree, Urdu to a population who largely lacks proficiency in either of these languages.
• Information is made available through the written medium to a population who has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world.
• Information is made available online in a context where telecommunications infrastructure is widely lacking.

Given these mismatches, is it surprising that people in KPK do not believe that COVID-19 is real? And that it is yet another plot – by the government, by the West – to oppress and exploit them?

Akhlaq Ahmad at work on the mural in Shahdara for the ‘Delhi, I Love You’ project. (Image Credit: Delhi, I Love You)

On July 8, 2020, The Wire published an anonymous article by a young Indian Muslim. In it, the writer shares his painful experience of how, in the anti-Muslim Hindutva climate created by the right-wing BJP government, his identity has been reduced to his Muslim name. Despite the fact that he observes no Islamic practices and champions liberal views, his Hindu colleagues look at him with suspicion. On social media, he is often called a jihadi, an ISIS-sympathizer, and mulla, a slur, for speaking up for the rights of minorities, especially Muslims.

Fearing for his life, he has stopped saying in public salamwaleikum, the Muslim greeting in Urdu. He also instructed his kids not to call him abba, an Urdu word for ‘dad’. He even started tweaking his name, so that it does not sound Muslim.

While violence, including mob-lynching of Muslims and the anti-Muslim pogrom in Delhi in February 2020, has been discussed, the symbolic violence against the Urdu language—a proxy for and target of hate and discrimination against Muslims—hasn’t. I use the term Urdu in a broader sense to encompass the language as well as names.

Consider Urdu personal names and cases of hatred and discrimination that revolve around the identities they reveal. It is worth noting that the  BJP government in the last few years has renamed many places containing Urdu/Muslim names with names that evoke Hindu history and culture.

Personal names are not simply a system of identification by which people differentiate one person from another; they are also carriers of cultural information, including the social identities of the bearers of the names. A study conducted in the USA found that white-sounding names such as Emily and Greg were more likely to get callbacks from employers than Black-sounding names Lakisha and Jamal. While some names in the US clearly indicate racial identity, others such as John and Michelle are non-discernable. By contrast, in India, most Muslim names are discernable as they draw largely upon Persian and Arabic sources as against Hindu names which are derived, among other sources, from Hindu traditions. Since Urdu names are signposts of the Muslim identity, they easily become instruments of hate and discrimination against Muslims.

In May 2015, a Muslim young man, Zeeshan, holding an MBA degree was denied a job by Hare Krishna Exports, a diamond company based in Mumbai, because of his religion. Less than fifteen minutes after he submitted his application online, Zeeshan received a shocking reply from the company: “We regret to inform you that we hire only non-Muslim candidates”. Clearly, the decision to reject his application was based on the candidate’s Urdu/Muslim name.

Other cases of discrimination based on Muslim names have surfaced recently in companies that deliver goods to people on their doors. On 24 April, 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown, Barkat Patel, a Muslim employee of Grofers, an online grocery store, went to deliver grocery to Ms. Chaturvedi at Jaya Park in Mumbai. But her father stopped her from taking the delivery. According to the report filed at the police station,  the father wanted to know the  name of the delivery guy first. Once he found out from the name that Barkat was Muslim, he refused to take it. Barkat recorded the whole exchange on his mobile phone and submitted it to the police.

Similar cases of discrimination were reported from Zomato and Swiggy, popular food delivery companies. On October 25, 2019, Swiggy lodged a complaint with a police station in Hyderabad stating that a customer refused to receive their food order because the delivery man was Muslim. Another case of discrimination was reported on August 1, 2019 in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. In this case, a customer Amit Shukla cancelled his Zomato delivery when he found out from the name Faiyaz that his delivery man was Muslim. What makes it even more reprehensible is that Shukla argued that this was part of his freedom of expression and religion guaranteed by the constitution.

However, names don’t always correspond with social-religious identities. Some Hindu names of Persian or Arabic origin bear similarities with Urdu/Muslim name. In absence of other visual cues e.g. outfit or facial looks, such names could miscommunicate the identities of the bearers of the names. This is exactly what happened when a 23-old young Hindu man named Sahil was lynched by some Hindus in Maujpur in Delhi. Although the police denies the claim, Sahil’s parents, Sunil and Suneeta, both believe that their son was killed because he was mistaken for a Muslim who had entered a Hindu neighborhood. Suneeta expressed her regret at naming him Sahil, “I wouldn’t have named him Sahil had I known that it would turn out to be the cause of his death”. The incident that led to Sahil’s killing is worth mentioning. Sahil was at home when he found out that some of his friends had a brawl in Gali Number 5 in Maujpur, Delhi. When he rushed to the spot to resolve the issue the residents of the neighborhood asked his name. On knowing that his name was Sahil, the crowd turned to him and thrashed him severely. He died on his way to the hospital.

In another case, a Muslim man’s nickname, which did not sound Muslim, actually saved him. On May 19, 2016, as part of beautification of Delhi, Akhlaq Ahmad, an Indian artist who holds a degree in fine arts, and Swen Simon, a French artist, were writing an Urdu couplet on a wall in Shahdara, Delhi. Some members of the right-wing RSS gathered there and asked them to stop writing the couplet in Urdu and threatened them with dire consequences if they didn’t. They said, “ …they could bear anything, but not the Urdu script” They snatched the artists’ paintbrushes and smudged the Urdu writing on the wall. In an interview, the Muslim artist, said, “…I said my name is Shabbu [his nick name] and they assumed I was Shambhu, a Hindu. So, they turned their ire towards my French colleague, Swen Simon, asking him to pay me my wages and go back to Lahore”.

This exception only proves the rule. The cases of Sahil and Akhlaq/Sabbu are both of some kind of miscommunication based on Muslim names. The action that led to the loss of Sahil’s life and saved Akhlaq’s is based on the ideology of hate and discrimination against Muslims as manifested from their names.

The fear of uttering Urdu names, greetings, or words in public is increasing among Muslims in north India. In response to the anonymous article with which I opened this piece, Rana Safvi, a Muslim writer tweeted that she also avoids saying salaam, Muslim greeting, in public.

Although Akhlaq had a sigh of relief because his non-Muslim-sounding name saved him, the stories of Zeeshan, Barkat, Sahil, and Faiyaz, clearly show how ideologies of hate and discrimination can be routed through personal names, labels over which we as bearers of the names have little control.

Discrimination based on names are just be a tip of the iceberg of a larger systemic process of exclusion and marginalization of Muslims in India. A democracy worthy of its name cannot allow names to be the ground of discrimination against its own citizens in whose very name it rules.

Related content

• Stereotyped names as a barrier to workplace entry
• What’s in a name?
• Behind a name
• Names on the move: Ghanaian names in the diaspora

(Image credit: Farooqi & Aftab, 2018)

Editor’s note: As Confucius Institutes are closing in western countries, as Jeffrey Gil analysed recently, Chinese language learning continues to expand across the global South. As an example, Kashif Raza reflects on the linguistic implications of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) here.

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The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a multimillion dollar project between Pakistan and China through which both countries aim to develop bilateral economic, cultural, social and military ties. However, none of the 68+ Pakistani languages are being used for information creation and dissemination in the operationalization of the project. In its current form, the project only enables participation by speakers of two languages, English and Mandarin Chinese, which have been adopted as official languages for the project. This is a missed opportunity for both countries to benefit their multilingual populations. With proper language policy development and implementation, this project could become an ideal multilingual economic model of South-South cooperation, where a multilingual workforce is engaged, recognized and benefits.

CPEC and Language Use

CPEC has many benefits for both Pakistan and China. However, the project has also posed a serious question for both countries: What languages are people going to use to communicate with each other? In correspondence with an official of the CPEC, I was told that there are three types of scenarios happening at the CPEC:

1. Chinese officials and stakeholders communicating with Chinese workers through Mandarin or other Chinese languages
2. Chinese officials, stakeholders and workers communicating with Pakistani worker through English, Urdu, or through interpreters
3. Pakistani officials, stakeholders and workers communicating with each other using English, Urdu, or any of the other local languages

Although Mandarin is used by the Chinese, and Urdu and other Pakistani languages by Pakistanis, English dominates the operationalization of the CPEC project for policy development and implementation with Mandarin taking the second place. Evidence of this comes from the use of English and, to a lesser degree, Mandarin in the production and dissemination of the information related to the CPEC. The Long Term Plan for China-Pakistan Economic Corridor 2017-2030 states:

This Agreement is copied in duplicate, each of which is written in Chinese and English, and both versions have the same meaning and will have the equal effect. 

Urdu learning in China

Both China and Pakistan are trying to promote each other’s languages at different levels. These language exchange initiatives, some of which started long before the inauguration of the CPEC, are led by governmental agencies (e.g., embassies) and private institutes.

Considering the importance of relations between Pakistan and China, different initiatives have been taken by the Chinese authorities to promote Urdu at multiple levels in China. One of these endeavors is the promotion of Urdu in education through major and minor courses that are mostly taught by Urdu-speaking Pakistani faculty and are offered by multiple universities in China. In an attempt to increase the number of Urdu speakers in China, several works have been translated from Urdu to Mandarin and Urdu language courses are being delivered at different institutions.

Peking University, in particular, has undertaken considerable work in this regard where efforts are being made to increase resources for Mandarin and Urdu language learners. After establishing the first Urdu Department in 1950 to offer basic Urdu language courses and translating multiple works from Urdu to Mandarin, the institute developed the first ever Mandarin-Urdu dictionary in the 1980s.  Similarly, Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) has been teaching Urdu language courses since 2007. In order to provide an interactive Urdu language acquisition atmosphere, BFSU has been organizing various competitions in calligraphy and speech to familiarize Chinese students with Pakistani culture and history. Recently, Urdu Departments were established at Xi’an International Studies University and Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. We also see a lot of videos circulating on social media like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc. where Chinese speakers of Urdu share their views in Urdu on contemporary topics like COVID-19, Pakistani culture and cuisine, tourism in Pakistan, and the Sino-Pak friendship in general.

Tea ceremony at Confucius Institute Islamabad (Image Credit: Xinhuanet)

The two main reasons for the popularity of Urdu in China since the CPEC inauguration are economic and cultural benefits. In terms of economy, many Urdu learners see either employment opportunities or chances of starting their own businesses. Since Chinese companies doing businesses with Pakistani counterparts need people that can help in communication between the two parties, learning Urdu can provide job opportunities for many as translators, Urdu language teachers, bilingual contract writers, and managers. Similarly, knowing Urdu can also help run businesses like import/export, manufacturing, and educational institutions (similar considerations with regard to Arabic in China are discussed here). On the other hand, attraction towards Pakistani culture, its tourist and religious destinations, food, and people are other reasons for the popularity of Urdu in China.

Chinese learning in Pakistan

As Chinese are learning Urdu, Mandarin Chinese is becoming popular among Pakistanis. We see governmental institutes as well as private entities involved in the promotion of Mandarin in Pakistan. A few examples of governmental support are the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, Confucius Institutes, Pakistan Television, Sindh government memorandum of understanding with Chinese Education Department, Pakistan Senate Resolution in favor of teaching Mandarin in Pakistan and scholarships for Pakistani students and teachers who wish to develop Mandarin learning and teaching skills. Private institutes are also playing pivotal roles in promoting Mandarin.

As far as the benefits for Pakistanis learning Mandarin are concerned, the biggest incentive is the economic opportunities. Since CPEC is attracting a lot of Chinese businessmen and workers, Pakistani students of Mandarin find it as an opportunity to secure work as bilingual translators, interpreters, lawyers as well as supervisors. Similarly, there are educational, political and social factors that are encouraging Pakistanis to master Mandarin as a foreign language.

Economic Approach to Language Development for CPEC

As CPEC is a long-term economic project and has multiple advantages for both Pakistan and China, its success requires a deeper understanding and cooperation between Pakistan and China at social, cultural, educational, defense, economic as well as linguistic levels. A pragmatic approach that can guarantee the achievement of the objectives of this project is decision making through discussion and dialogue on all of the issues that both countries face. Language as a medium of communication is one of these issues that needs to be discussed and negotiated from both sides. This is not only important for increased communication between the two sides but also mandatory for strengthening other areas of cooperation.

Since Sino-Pak relations have a long history, both countries have been trying to promote each other’s languages through different means to strengthen multi-layered relationships between the two governments as well as its people. Nevertheless, language exchange has never been as critical as it is now. This calls for a proper language policy development that can resolve the medium of communication issue between the two neighbors and can pave the way for smooth people-to-people relationship development.

There are a lot of debates and discussions on the economic and military benefits of the CPEC project for both Pakistan and China. Although a few voices are also heard discussing the language issue related to CPEC, most of these articles portray the imposition of Chinese languages and the suppression of Urdu. None of the work done in this area looks at language issues through the lens of economic benefits for both countries in terms of increasing employment, enhancing people-to-people relations, developing cultural exchanges and promoting each other’s languages.

It is time to rethink multilingual language policies beyond established truths.

A locutorio shop front in Barcelona (Source: El Periodico)

There is now a well-established body of work exploring the language work provided by service workers in call centres and tourist businesses. By contrast, the multilingual language work provided by migrants for migrants in multiethnic service enterprises has rarely been the focus of sociolinguistic attention. A recent book by Maria Sabaté i Dalmau, Migrant Communication Enterprises published by Multilingual Matters, fills this gap with an ethnographic inquiry into the language practices in a locutorio, a call shop, in Barcelona. A locutorio offers all kinds of telecommunication services such as billed calls in booths, the sale of top-ups for mobiles, fax services, internet access and international money transfers.

The locutorio the research is based on also served as meeting point for working class Spaniards and migrants, both documented and undocumented, from a variety of countries of origin. Beyond the sale of telecommunication services, the locutorio thus provided access to information, a place to hang out and it even served as the ‘public’ toilet for homeless people in the neighbourhood, mostly undocumented men from West Africa.

The locutorio was part of a chain of similar call shops owned by a Pakistani venture capitalist whose aim was to make a profit rather than provide social services for Barcelona’s marginalized. It was his employee Naeem, who was in charge of running the locutorio, who ended up caught between more than one rock and more than one hard place. Naeem was a fellow Pakistani hired by the owner in Pakistan two years before the fieldwork began. Naeem’s position was legal as a temporary resident but in order to achieve permanent residency in Spain he needed another two years of proven work, which left him vulnerable to exploitation by the owner. He worked twelve hours per day, seven days a week, for a meagre salary of less than Euro 800 per month. Naeem’s job consisted of opening the locutorio in the morning and closing it at night. He would start with booting up the computers and getting all the equipment to run. During the day, his duties consisted of assisting and charging customers, and making various phone calls (to his boss; to call card distributors; to the money transfer agency etc.). Additionally, he was in charge of maintaining the premises, including sweeping the floors, removing garbage and cleaning the toilets.

Much of this work is obviously language work and Naeem had to operate in a complex sociolinguistic environment. In addition to a range of varieties of Spanish – from Standard Peninsular Spanish via various Latin American varieties to a range of second language varieties – this included Catalan, English, Urdu, Punjabi, and Moroccan Arabic in various spoken and written constellations and used by clients with variable levels of proficiencies, including proficiencies in the use of telecommunication services. In this highly diverse environment, communication was rigidly regimented by the meters on the machine where communication was paid for by the minute.

Unsurprisingly, misunderstandings and communication break-downs were common. On top of all that, Naeem had to deal with customers who tried to cheat him (the balance of each financial irregularity was deducted from his meagre salary) and who abused and insulted him. Working in a highly constrained yet super-diverse environment left little room for personal autonomy and, only in his late twenties, Naeem was suffering from eating disorders, compulsive smoking, chronic fatigue and anxiety attacks.

The researcher concludes that locutorio language workers constitute “a voiceless army of multilingual mediators” (p. 170) whose multilingualism is not only a site of language work but also a site of linguistic exploitation.

Migrant Communication Enterprises offers a rich migrant-centred ethnographic account of a prototypical enterprise of the 21^st century. If this blog post has piqued your interest and this is your area of research expertise, you might want to review the book for Multilingua. If so, please get in touch with a short description of your expertise.

Maria Sabaté i Dalmau (2014). Migrant Communication Enterprises: Regimentation and Resistance Multilingual Matters

Auburn parking ticket (left: quadrilingual on back; right: city logo on front)

In Australia with its persistent monolingual mindset coming across any kind of official institutional multilingual communication always feels like a minor triumph. And that’s how I felt when I recently went to park my car at a Sydney parking garage and the machine at the gate spit out this multilingual parking ticket. In German, English, Italian and French, the ticket says:

Please do not leave the ticket in the car. Please take care not to fold or bring ticket in contact with direct heat. Please note that the parking conditions in operation are displayed within the car park.

European readers will be familiar with this kind of parking ticket. It is produced by Designa, a parking management company headquartered in Germany and I think I received identical parking tickets during visits to Europe. I cannot be sure because I never pay much attention to the text on parking tickets. Receiving a multilingual parking ticket in Australia, however, immediately caught my attention because I had never ever encountered a parking ticket with anything other than text in English only.

Is this quadrilingual parking ticket a sign that the ideology of official English monolingualism that blithely ignores Australian multilingual realities is starting to crack? I don’t think so.

Let me tell you about the context of the parking garage where I received the ticket.

The parking garage is located in the Sydney suburb of Auburn and is operated by the Auburn City Council. Throughout Sydney, Auburn is known as an immigrant suburb with a highly diverse, predominantly Muslim, population of Middle Eastern origin. Consequently, Auburn’s city motto is “Many Cultures, One Community.”

The iconic status of Auburn as a migrant and Muslim suburb is best evidenced by the fact that the acclaimed TV police series East West 101 is set there. The series plays on the global conflict between East and West as well as the local opposition between Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs and its poorer western suburbs with their migrant populations.

Consequently, linguistically, Auburn is a fascinating place, too. According to Australian Census data from 2011, only 13.5% of Auburn households are monolingual in English (for all of Sydney that figure is 72.5% and for all of Australia it is 76.8%). Conversely, at 84.8% the number of bi- and multilingual households in Auburn is exceptionally high in comparison to the rest of Sydney (24.5%) and Australia (20.4%).

In fact, more people in Auburn speak Arabic at home than English. The table shows the top languages other than English.

Table 1: Auburn’s Main Languages (Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2011 Census)

The fact that many of Auburn’s residents come from the Middle East is easily legible in the streetscape: Auburn is home to Australia’s largest mosque; many women wear some form of hijab; restaurants feature predominantly Afghan, Lebanese, Persian or Turkish cuisine; and commercial signage in Arabic, Persian and Turkish abounds.

So, how does the German-English-Italian-French parking ticket fit into the linguistic landscape of Auburn?

Well, it does not. According to the 2011 census, 19 Auburn residents claimed to speak French at home; 15 German; and 245 Italian. So, the choice of languages on the parking tickets is obviously not locally motivated; if it were, I would have marvelled at an Arabic-English-Turkish-Chinese quadrilingual parking ticket.

The language on a parking ticket may seem banal, mundane, not worthy of further attention. However, language choice on such mundane texts is important because it is not only an expression of what is “normal” – conforms to the norm – but also shapes our expectations of normalcy. The usual monolingual English parking tickets contribute to normalizing Australia as a monolingual English space. A German-English-Italian-French parking ticket sets up the dominant languages of Europe as the norm. In each case, there is a mismatch between the norm and actual multilingual realities. In each case, the effect is to devalue the actual languages of Australia and make them seem “foreign” and “strange.”

Multilingual Hyderabad (Source: Wikimedia)

It is by now widely known that bilingualism delays the onset of dementia. What is less widely known is the fact that this knowledge is almost exclusively derived from Canadian research conducted by Ellen Bialystok and her team (e.g., Bialystock et al., 2007). The data for these studies come from comparing monolingual English-speaking native-born Canadian dementia sufferers with their bilingual counterparts. The bilinguals are all migrants to Canada who had learned English during adolescence or young adulthood and come from a variety of first-language backgrounds with Central and Eastern Europeans predominating.

This data base raises an obvious problem: is it bilingualism that delays the onset of dementia or is it the fact of migration or other confounding variables?

Research published in Neurology last week addresses exactly this bias in a study of the relationship between bilingualism and onset of dementia in a non-migrant population in India. The researchers, Alladi et al., investigated age at onset of dementia in a group of more than 600 dementia sufferers in Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh. Hyderabad constitutes a highly diverse linguistic environment: the official languages of Andhra Pradesh are Telugu and Urdu; English and Hindi are widely spoken due to their official status on the national level; other languages with significant numbers of speakers include Tamil, Marathi and Kannada.

Bi- and multilingualism are indigenous to Hyderabad – as they are to most of India – and bi- and multilinguals do not systematically differ from monolinguals on migration status or other variables.

In this cohort, the researchers found that the onset of dementia in the bilingual population was delayed by 4.5 years (a finding very similar to the 4.3 years found by Bialystok et al. in Canada).

A variable that often correlates with bilingualism in these studies is education and here Alladi et al. are also breaking new ground by including an illiterate cohort. Among illiterates (defined as people without any formal education), the protective effect of bilingualism was even greater: the onset of dementia in bilingual illiterates was 6 years later than in their monolingual counterparts.

Why does speaking more than one language have these protective effects? Having to switch between languages on a regular basis enhances “executive control:” making frequent linguistic choices – activating one language and suppressing another – is a form of practicing cognitive multitasking. Like other forms of cognitive practice – participating in continuing education, undertaking stimulating intellectual activities, engaging in physical exercise – bilingualism thus contributes to an individual’s “cognitive reserve” and wards off the effects of aging a bit longer.

Confirmation that bilingualism delays the onset of dementia in a different bilingual population than the one studied to date is good news for bilinguals.

Even more importantly, the study by Alladi et al. makes a significant contribution to bilingualism research by extending the evidence base to a population with a very different sociolinguistic profile from the one that predominates in the literature. Even so, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic approaches to bilingualism still have a long way to go before they will truly meet.

The gap between the psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics of bilingualism is nicely illustrated by another of Alladi et al.’s findings: in the Hyderabad sample, the protective effect of bilingualism does not increase with speaking more than two languages, i.e. from the perspective of the delayed onset of dementia, trilingualism or quadrilingualism do not offer any more benefits than bilingualism. This finding is in contrast to another Canadian study (Chertkow et al., 2010). Those researchers found – similarly to Bialystok et al. – that the onset of dementia was delayed in bilingual immigrants to Canada and in French-speaking Canadians. However, they did not find that bilingualism was similarly beneficial for English-speaking Canadians. In fact, in that study the onset of dementia was later in monolingual English-speaking Canadians than in bilingual English-speaking Canadians. For language learning and use to have a protective effect for English-speaking Canadians, they needed to be at least trilingual. Chertkow et al. concluded that bilingualism was sometimes beneficial in delaying the onset of dementia but multilingualism was always beneficial.

Alladi et al. draw on sociolinguistics, specifically language ideologies, to explain their differential findings:

In places in which an official dominant language coexists with a number of minority languages, it can be reasonably assumed that the amount of language switching between languages is proportional to the number of languages spoken: the more languages people know, the more occasion they will have to switch between them. In the strongly trilingual environment of Hyderabad with Telugu, [Urdu] and English being used extensively and interchangeably in both formal and informal environments, with high levels of code switching and mixing, it could be speculated that those speaking 2 languages have already reached a maximum level of switching and the knowledge of additional languages will not be able to increase it. Such an interpretation would be supported by the view that neural mechanisms underlying cognitive control demands in bilingual communities with high levels of code switching are different from bilingual communities with practice in avoiding language switching or mixing. (Alladi et al., 213, pp. 4f.)

One of the frustrating aspects of much psycholinguistic research addressing the cognitive advantages – or otherwise – of bi- and multilingualism lies in the fact that the findings of different researchers frequently conflict. As long as bi- and multilingualism are taken as unitary phenomena inherent in the individual, this will always be the case. Not only do we need to extend the evidence base to include different linguistic, cultural and national contexts, we also need to bring psycho- and sociolinguistic research together to get a better understanding of what “bilingualism” might actually mean in a particular context. Alladi et al. have taken a most welcome step in the right direction.

References

Alladi S, Bak TH, Duggirala V, Surampudi B, Shailaja M, Shukla AK, Chaudhuri JR, & Kaul S (2013). Bilingualism delays age at onset of dementia, independent of education and immigration status. Neurology PMID: 24198291
Bialystok E, Craik FI, & Freedman M (2007). Bilingualism as a protection against the onset of symptoms of dementia. Neuropsychologia, 45 (2), 459-64 PMID: 17125807
Chertkow H, Whitehead V, Phillips N, Wolfson C, Atherton J, & Bergman H (2010). Multilingualism (but not always bilingualism) delays the onset of Alzheimer disease: evidence from a bilingual community. Alzheimer disease and associated disorders, 24 (2), 118-25 PMID: 20505429

Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development presents global research seminar about language-in-education policy in Pakistan

The Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development presents a global research seminar:

Topic: Social Meanings of language policy and practices: A critical linguistic ethnographic study of four schools in Pakistan

Presenter: Muhammad Ali Khan

Date: Friday, March 22, 2013
Time: 2:00 pm, West Asia Time (Islamabad, GMT+05:00)

Abstract: I investigate the language-in-education policy and practices of Pakistan in four schools, using an interdisciplinary approach combining methods and perspectives from post-structuralist theory, critical ethnographic sociolinguistics and sociolinguistics. My study theorizes the ways in which everyday language practices in schools contribute to the reproduction or contestation of linguistic ideologies, language hierarchies and social relations. Data was gathered using a number of different methods, mainly observation, audio-recording, note-taking, interviews, photography and administering a questionnaire.

The findings suggest that languages on display in schools are an important resource for investigating the language policy, linguistic ideologies, hierarchies and power relations at micro, meso and macro levels. They constitute a sociolinguistic order in which standard varieties of English and Urdu dominate the public space. The orthographic aspects of languages on display reconstitute the socio-political and economic struggles embedded in the history of asymmetrical power relations. At the policy level, they show a clear contradiction between the spoken language practices observed in schools and the clearly defined boundaries between languages shown in the display. At the policy level, they misrepresent the multilingual makeup of Pakistani society by only displaying the officially-mandated languages.

In sum, this seminar engages with the field of language policy and bilingual education by showing how the study of languages on display can be used to investigate policy, and also the socio-political relations across time and space. It also contributes to bilingual education by illustrating the complexity involved at the implementation site of bilingual education, showing the agency of the actors in appropriating, negotiating, resisting or rejecting policy at micro levels.

Presenter: Muhammad Ali Khan is a doctoral researcher at Lancaster University and senior instructor in the Center of English Language at Aga Khan University.

How to join online:

Date: Friday, March 22, 2013
Time: 2:00 pm, West Asia Time (Islamabad, GMT+05:00)
Meeting Number: 627 529 273
Meeting Password: 12345

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Pompei Restaurant, Karachi (Source: fcpakistan.com)

A few days ago I had an Alice-in-Wonderland experience. Having lived all my life in Karachi, I had until then never heard of the Pompei Restaurant. I was invited there by a visiting British academic, who declined my invitation to have dinner at our house and wanted to meet me at the Pompei instead. He seemed very surprised that I had never heard of the Pompei, which he seemed to know well.

Armed with the Google map directions, I still managed to lose my way but arrived a few minutes before my host.  Stepping into the restaurant was like going down the rabbit hole: I left Karachi behind and entered Europe.

The furniture, the wall hangings, the light music, and the candle lit tables all made me feel as if I had been transported to Italy. I was greeted very politely by the valet and the gentleman at the reception and was taken to the table my host had booked for us. I sat down and looked around. The bar with impressive brass levers to pour beer caught my attention. I asked the waiter for a glass of wine in Urdu but my eagerness was met with a thin smile and the English response: ‘Sir, wine is not served here.’

At that moment, my host arrived. Before sitting down, he handed a bag to the waiter. The waiter took the bag and returned with two menu cards. The menu card was in English only but, despite the fact that English is the main language I use in my professional life, I did not recognize the name of single dish on the menu except for pizza.

My host graciously helped me with the selection of starters and the main course when he realized my ignorance of Italian cuisine. Before the starters were served, my host’s bag was brought back to him and a bottle of wine emerged. The waiter apologized to my host and said he wasn’t allowed to pour the wine for him. My host smiled back in the manner of a man of the world who understands cross-cultural differences and filled our glasses himself.

While savouring the novelty of eating Italian food and drinking alcohol, I did not omit to look around me and take note of the people who had by now filled the place. The majority were foreigners but there were also a fair number of locals. Nearly everyone was drinking alcohol and smoking. English was the only language I heard.

Feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the novelty of it all, it was good my host kept the conversation going by telling me about his interactions with Pakistani scholars, who he had been visiting as a UN ambassador in the previous weeks. His role was to provide consultancy on improving academic standards. ‘You guys don’t know how to write,’ he observed casually. In my mind, I was busy adding all the other things I had discovered in the last hour only that we didn’t know.

When we finished the meal, I of course tried to pay my share. However, I have to admit I was grateful to my host that he wouldn’t allow me. I also have to admit that I tried my best not to stare when he put his hand in his pocket and pulled it back out with a fist full of currency notes. The bunch of currency notes was so thick that he had a bit of a problem picking out 7,000 Pakistani rupee notes out of this thick wad of US dollars. He gave those 7,000 rupees (ca. 70 Australian dollars) in the same manner as if they were worth 70 rupees. We had just spent around 7% of the average annual per capita income in Pakistan on a meal!

I thanked my host for his generosity and we parted ways.

Walking back to my car, I kept on thinking about my experience: I had just stepped out of Pakistan for a few hours without ever leaving Karachi. The material difference between the Pompei Restaurant and its surroundings was spinning in my head. I also thought about the role of language in this world of mirrors. Pompei exists in Karachi because of the development industry and the foreigners who come here as part of international institutions, which are supposed to help our poor economy. But are they really helping by creating islands of opulence that are unrecognizable to the average citizen? For me Pompei seems like a new sovereign state maintained by international money that has come to us from the World Bank, the IMF and other international bodies – ostensibly to reduce the deep and pervasive poverty in Pakistan but practically to be enjoyed by whom?

I was also musing on the intercultural nature of this encounter: a British and a Pakistani academic meeting in an Italy-themed space in globalized Karachi sounds very cool and postmodern and like a coming together in some global, hyprid, even ‘metrolingual’ space. But is that what had happened? To me, the encounter felt as one that accentuated difference and increased distance between people of different cultures. Had this encounter not turned me into someone utterly deficient: an academic who doesn’t know how to write? A customer who doesn’t know how to order? A local who doesn’t belong?

My last thought was about resistance: who is going to resist this new economy and its language? How can we truly achieve meaning in intercultural communication in a grossly unequal world?

Pakistan Swat Valley 2009

Ingrid briefly mentioned Zubeida Mustafa’s new book Tyranny of Language in Education: The Problem and its solution recently. Since then, we’ve had numerous enquiries about the book here on Language-on-the-Move, and I’m pleased to offer a review and more information about language education in Pakistan today. Zubeida Mustafa is well-known in Pakistan as a veteran English language journalist and Tyranny of Language in Education is her first book. It has multiple focuses around language and power, bilingualism, language learning, equity in education, globalization, and, of course, language-in-education policy. Here, the readers of this review need to understand that the author has written this book not for academics but for the general public and policy makers of Pakistan. The book’s central argument is as follows:

The child begins life with an advantage in a certain language, namely his mother tongue or his first language, which he uses to communicate and when learning is imposed on him in another language, he is robbed of this natural advantage … . He is additionally burdened with the handicap of a linguistic barrier that he has to surmount when he goes to school. (p. 6)

It’s hard to argue with this point in Pakistan where the national language Urdu could be said to have been imposed on a hugely multilingual society. Parents and pupils are not usually given a choice to have formal education made available in local languages. Furthermore, the author points out the unsound and unjust language education policies and practices in Pakistan, which she argues have been developed and are being sustained by a small elite class:

Polices should be made for the greatest good of the greatest number and not for a small elite class which formulates state policies and thus ensures that its privileged position is not undermined. (p. 6)

By way of background to Zubeida’s work, let me provide you with further information about languages, education and poverty in Pakistan. Ethnologue lists 72 languages for Pakistan. Out of these, 14 languages have more than 1 million first language speakers. The number of speakers and their percentage of the population differs significantly: Western Punjabi, for instance, has 60.6 million speakers and is spoken by 38.3% of the population but there are also languages which have only a few hundred speakers such as Aer, Bhaya or Domaaki. Overall, 85% of the population speak 14 languages and the remaining 58 languages are spoken by 15% of the population. The key point is that Pakistan’s population is a highly multilingual one.

This multilingual population, however, is not served by an equally multilingual language-in-education policy. As a matter of fact, Pakistan’s language-in-education policy is not explicitly stated. While the policy maintains that comprehensive school language policies should be developed in consultation with provincial and area governments, it does not seem to realize the importance of community, school management and teachers and pupils in the development, sustenance and implementation of a policy. Like all other previous language policies the approach adopted seems to be top-down. The current language-in-education policy of the country maintains that Urdu is the medium of instruction in government schools and English is introduced from Class 1 onwards. Most private schools in the country have English as medium of instruction.

Whether as a result of the policy or other factors, education outcomes are dismal: the literacy rate is 57.7%. For males it is 69.5% and for females 45.2%, and urban populations with 73.2% are more literate than rural populations with 49.2%. Furthermore, most people only receive elementary education. Only 18% of girls and 24% of boys are in secondary schools and only 5% of the population of tertiary age are in tertiary education.

While monolingual language-in-education policies for a multilingual population are certainly one aspect of the failure of education in Pakistan, the linguistic facts only go so far by way of explanation, as I’ve argued before. In my view, the material conditions of deep, widespread and entrenched poverty in Pakistan probably go a much longer way to explain the failure of education in Pakistan. For instance, let me tell you about the actual buildings and spaces of schooling in this country: 32.7% of elementary schools are without boundary walls; 36.6% without drinking water; 35.4% without toilet facilities; and 60% without electricity. These statistics help us understand at a surface level why only 10% children out of roughly 70% enrolled in schools manage to finish their secondary education.

Some more statistics: 23% of Pakistan’s population live below the poverty line of USD1.25 per day. The 2010 Human Development Index has Pakistan in 125th position – out of a total of 169 countries. Shocking inequalities manifest in every sphere of life, the poorest 10% of the population have access to 3.9% of the total national income while the richest 10% access 26.5%. The state of the country can also be measured by the fact that perhaps the cheapest thing in Pakistan is human life. People are killed on an everyday basis. Since 2006, 35,000 civilians and 3,500 security personnel have been killed in a “war on terror” that terrorizes our people.

Coming back to Zubeida’s book, I would say that the author at some places in her work makes attempts to connect language-in-education policy with societal power relations, inequalities and the material conditions in the country, such as chapter 7 titled “Ground Realities,” where the accounts are based on her personal visits to a less-privileged area of Karachi. In these account, the reader can easily hear the fresh voice of the author, which in other chapters sometimes gets lost in the scholarly sources tracing the development and explaining language policy in pre- and post-colonial Pakistan. To me, the key achievement of the book then is that it stimulates debate and puts educational disadvantage in Pakistan back on the table of public debate. However, with much of the work the author draws on, the book also shares particular weaknesses in positing particular interpretations of colonial language policy. These often give inadequate empirical evidence and tend to make straightforward links between past and present. It would not be incorrect to maintain that scholarship produced in this country has largely been overly deterministic in such matters without engaging with the material base of education in Pakistan and exploring what actually goes on in schools in Pakistan. Unfortunately, to date the country does not have one single study that could describe and explain the everyday language practices in specific institutions and explore the interlinked micro and macro levels of language in education in Pakistan. My ongoing PhD work is designed to partly fill that lacuna.

In Pakistan, as elsewhere, scholars all too often take refuge in political constructs and partial historical narratives without attending to empirical grounding and depth. If education in Pakistan is embedded in the power structures of the society, giving rise to inequalities and polarization, we would like to know how such dominance, inequalities and polarization is developed, maintained and implemented.

Private school in Machar, Karachi

Last year the British Council initiated a dialogue about language policy and particularly language-in-education policy in Pakistan, and their report was recently published. The introduction includes the following two statements:

The report […] is the result of two visits made by Hywel [=British education consultant Hywel Coleman] to Pakistan in March and July 2010 taking him to Sindh, Punjab and Azad Kashmir, as well as over six months of desk-based research. (p. 4)

This document is a report on a consultancy visit to Pakistan between 4^th and 17^th March 2010. (p. 3)

While these quotes from the report are inconclusive as to whether the consultant was in Pakistan once or twice, he comes to some sweeping and far-reaching conclusions. The report argues that Pakistan has a language crisis in its schools and calls particularly for the promotion of indigenous languages through making them a medium of instruction in Pakistan.

In principle the idea of promoting students’ home languages is appealing. It certainly touches the heart; less so the intellect, considering the practical, social and political constraints prevalent in the country. The report argues that in contemporary Pakistan, Urdu and English are being imposed on speakers of other languages. This may or may not be the case. The fact is that Pakistanis of all stripes and colors want to learn both Urdu and English from as early as possible because they understand the social and financial implications, and teaching through indigenous languages is a very low priority.

In order to understand language policy and education in Pakistan, and the global South more generally, I think people must experience what it means to live in Pakistan in the present circumstances. In Pakistan the central issue is not the language crisis but poverty. Pakistan is a country where 23% of the population live below the poverty line of USD1.25 per day. The 2010 Human Development Index has Pakistan in 125^th position – out of a total of 169 countries. Pakistan is a country where water is more precious than human lives. People are killed every day, no one bothers. The media report loss of human lives in numbers only. “So and so many people have been killed in this bomb blast, and so and so many people in that suicide attack.” Humanity has simply been numbered in this part of the world: 30 killed, 40 killed etc.

The salary of a private sector university lecturer in Karachi is less than GBP1,200 per year; even so, this is considered a very good salary by local standards. At the same time, it is not enough to put the fees of a good school for their children within the reach even of university lecturers, not to mention the vast majority of the population.

Power cuts for four hours a day are routine in city areas and in villages they exceeds eight hours every day. Imagine living without electricity every day for eight hours! Who gives a thought that the severed heads of the suicide bombers are often the young ones of their family? What makes them go to this extent? Do they have anything in their lives to live for or to look forward to?

Anyone talking about the promotion of indigenous languages among the poverty-stricken multitudes of Pakistan cannot be but alien to the realities of our lives. Why should we care about maintaining indigenous languages in the face of such bitter life experiences? Common ordinary Pakistanis want to have access to socio-economically powerful languages. They know very well that multilingualism is strength and they want to teach their children local, national and global languages at the same time.

Language death, language preservation, language revitalization and mother tongue education are for those who haven’t walked in our shoes. The way I see it they are nothing but distracters from the real issues of grinding poverty, suicide bombings and the energy crisis.

Reza’s family, too, got caught up in the turmoil. When he was four, Reza witnessed his uncle being killed for being a Bihari – in the eyes of many Bangladeshis, an exponent of Pakistani domination. However, unlike other Biharis, who have come to be known as “stranded Pakistanis,” Reza’s family managed to flee to Pakistan in 1971.

In Bangladesh, Urdu-speakers such as the Biharis were living symbols of Pakistani domination. In Pakistan, their Bihari-accented Urdu marked them as unwelcome refugees from the East. One of Reza’s earliest memories is of his family being outsiders because they were Urdu speakers in East-Pakistan. However, his outsider status did not change after their move to West-Pakistan.When he started school in Karachi, his peers would often make fun of him and his Bihari accent. To be called a “Bihari” became a daily insult. To this day, Reza remembers running home crying after being teased as “Bihari.” This linguistic bullying had a devastating effect on Reza. He began to avoid socializing and internalized the belief that he and his family were inferior while the speakers of “good” or “unaccented” Urdu were superior. As a Bihari it seemed there was no place to be – unwelcome and abused both in the East and the West.

Soon, Reza transformed himself into a speaker of “unaccented” Urdu, who spoke the same as everyone else in Karachi. As a matter of fact, this dominant accent of Urdu is a mix of the accents of Punjabi, Pashto, Balochi and Sindhi. It was a different story with Reza’s parents. They never quite managed to acquire this new accent, which was far removed from the Urdu spoken in India, where they had grown up. In order to hide his Bihari identity, Reza avoided introducing his parents to others and started to keep a distance from his family.

Reza soon learnt that an even more effective way to gain respect was to transform himself not only into a Karachi-accented speaker of Urdu but an English speaker. He went to an English-medium school and Reza idolized his teachers, who seemed to speak English fluently. Reza, like everyone else, thought those English speakers were educated, enlightened and modern. They were real human beings, and those who could not speak English somehow seemed less than human. Eventually, Reza completed a Bachelor’s degree in English followed by a Master’s degree in English Literature and English Linguistics. By now he had thoroughly escaped his Bihari identity and was “making it” in the world. He pretended to be so in love with English that he spoke it all the time, and he finally got the respect that he had been denied in his childhood.

Even so, and despite all his qualifications, achievements and upward social mobility, he is haunted by the fear that a trace of that Bihari accent might suddenly surface in his speech and expose him as a fraud. He never tells anyone that he was born in East-Pakistan and he makes every effort to keep his children away from the Bihari community. He has deliberately left many good people behind only because of the fact that his association with them would expose him as a Bihari. Above all, he cannot afford to lose any more family members by becoming a member of minority speakers in Pakistan. Despite the massive bloodshed stemming initially from the partition of India and later the creation of Bangladesh, the state of Pakistan still promotes monolingualism in multilingual Pakistan.

Reza’s linguistic trajectory is deeply enmeshed with the upheavals of the 20^th century. A question that bothers him most often is this: Can people do nothing more than strive to escape the prison of their language or is there a way to tear down the prison walls?

Our two plenary speakers

It’s easy to have a good time at a conference on the spectacular campus of the American University of Sharjah and with such a great group of delegates.

Nancy Hornberger, today’s plenary speaker, started her lecture with a reminder of the fact that multilingualism is normal and monolingualism is a cultural limitation. Way to go!

Nancy’s lecture illustrated “ten certainties” of multilingual education with case studies from Latin America and New Zealand. Nancy is certain about the following:

1)     National multilingual language education policy opens up ideological and implementational spaces for multilingual education

2)     Local actors may open up — or close down — agentive spaces for multilingual education as they implement, interpret, and perhaps resist policy initiatives

3)     Ecological language policies take into account the power relations among languages and promote multilingual uses in all societal domains

4)     Models of multilingual education instantiate linguistic and sociocultural histories and goals in each context

5)     Language status planning and language corpus planning go hand in hand

6)     Communicative modalities encompass more than spoken and written language

7)     Classroom practices can foster transfer of language and literacy skills along receptive-productive, oral-written, L1-L2 dimensions and across modalities

8)     Multilingual education activates voices for reclaiming the local

9)     Multilingual education affords choices for reaffirming our own

10) Multilingual education opens spaces for revitalizing the Indigenous

I’ve got a bit of a Socratic bent (“ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα; “I know that I don’t know”) and so I’ve amused myself during some of the less exciting presentations by trying to think up exceptions and counter-examples to these certainties. Certainty #6 seems kind of hard to disagree with …

My personal award for best paper of the day (with the same disclaimer as yesterday …) goes to Muhammad Ali Khan, who is undertaking an ethnography of an English-medium high school in Karachi, Pakistan, in order to understand the lived experience of language policy. In many ways the story he presented was all too familiar: the teachers and the students in that high school were in unison that a person who doesn’t speak English, doesn’t get any respect in contemporary Karachi, no matter how multilingual they might otherwise be (students didn’t even bother to count languages other than English and Urdu when asked how many languages they spoke …). Knowing English isn’t a magic bullet, either, as English with a Pakistani accent doesn’t get much respect, either, and one of the teachers kept encouraging their students to watch CNN and BBC to learn “good English.” Instilling a linguistic inferiority complex in young people is actually a quick-and-dirty way to naturalize existing inequalities: the rich send their children to private schools, where they can learn “good English;” the middle class send their children to less expensive private schools, where they learn Pakistani English; and the poor have no choice other than the public schools with Urdu as the medium of instruction.

The paper reminded me very much of John Taylor Gatto’s classic Dumbing Us Down: the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling. The question of who has a vested interested in a particular arrangement of language education and a particular set of linguistic ideologies is a powerful one, not only in Karachi!