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Prerequisites for Linguistic Human Rights: Intellectual Games versus Respect for Language Identities
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas
University of Roskilde, Denmark; Åbo Akademi University, Vasa, Finland
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
Monday, November 6
On Wisconsin Room, Red Gym
Download flyer for Colloquium on Linguistic Human Rights
Abstract:
“Enhanced voices that fail to change power imbalances are little more than a technologization of discourse practice (Fairclough 1992: 5) and should not be evaluated on purely theoretical grounds but should lead to a reappraisal of the theory”. This is how Tom Bartlett (2005: 362) finishes his article on Amerindian development in Guyana, analyzing legal documents. Bartlett uses Cameron et al. (1992) to describe four different approaches to development, with YES or NO answers to two questions: have the communities chosen the goals and are the communities themselves realizing the goals. In Paternalism, the community neither chooses nor realizes the goals, in Transformative empowerment they do both; in Advocacy they choose but do not realize the goals and in Co-optation the community realizes goals that somebody else has chosen for them. Bartlett then relates these various power relationships to participant roles of governments and Amerindians, as Initiators, Actors, Beneficiaries or Patients and analyses how these are construed in various legal texts. In his discussion of the place of texts in social analysis, he emphasizes “the role these representations play as situated moves within this wider [development] discourse […], their relation to situated practise and, ultimately, the material outcomes they foster” (ibid., 361).
Building further on Bartlett and others. I discuss, using concrete examples (from Pennycook, Blommaert, Canagarajah, May, etc), some recent criticism of the linguistic human rights (LHRs) “school” or “paradigm” or “movement”, especially in relation to concepts like “mother tongue” and “language”. My point in addressing these claims is that there might be other types of “paradigms” that need unmasking. They have to do with to what extent work in this area is becoming commodified so that some researchers who try to develop concepts and theories further, may instead end up playing intellectual games, presenting fast fleeting mutually reinforcing fads and fashions, which may further their academic careers, but which are either completely irrelevant from the point of view of those indigenous peoples and minorities who are participating in real-life struggles for their basic LHRs, or which can even harm them.
I do NOT claim that those who listen to and try to learn from, respect and validate indigenous and minority experience, in all its diversities, while likewise trying to develop concepts and theories further together with those whose LHRs are being violated (e.g. Magga et al. 2005), are (the only ones) “on the side of the angels”. But the implicit ideologies, goals and results of all researchers in this area have to be scrutinised more closely. Researchers have to “demonstrate adequately how such an approach can move beyond academic theorizing and affect societal attitudes” (Ricento 2005: 349) – and not only societal attitudes but people’s lives, “material outcomes” (Bartlett). “One day the apolitical intellectuals of my country will be interrogated by the simplest of our people” (G. R. Castillo, quoted in Skutnabb-Kangas 1988: 38-39).
This lecture is free and open to the public.
Sponsors:
University Lectures Committee, Deptartment of Curriculum and Instruction, Language Institute, Division of International Studies, Department of French and Italian; Department of English, Department of Educational Policy Studies, School of Education International Education Committee, Global Studies, Center for European Studies, School of Business and CIBER.
For more information, contact Professor Francois Tochon. |
