ISFDyT 33 – Profesorado de Inglés.

1er año 25/04/2018

Subject: INTERCULTURAL STUDIES Teacher: Inés Cabral Mecía
Student: Carolina Heredia

TASK N°1: “BILINGUALISM HAS BECOME A POLITICAL

ISSUE.”

In “A little book of English”, the author declares that bilingualism has, as many other cultural issues,
political intentions. I do agree with David Cristal’s point of view, as there’s no much place for discrepancy
when some historical examples are considered.

In chapter 13, the author refers to Franco’s dictatorship in Spain and its cultural politic in matter of
languages. Spain had been a multilingual country since its origin, deeply rooted in various nationalities
as Catalans, Basques, Galicians, Aragoneses, Andalusians, amongst others. As many other authoritarian
rulers in History, Franco banned the languages related to those subgroups because of their symbolic
meaning. Language is always related to identity. And people conscious of their identity is more difficult
to subdue.

Moreover, political powers all over the world and ages had tried to erase the languages of conquered
nations in order to force the acceptance of a new hegemonic culture. Greeks symptomatically called
barbarians to other people because of the “strange sound” of their languages; Romans imposed Latin all
over European, African and Asian areas; Spanish conquered America and they devastated hundreds of
languages and cultures on their way.

To realize about the effects of bilingualism as a political issue we should consider the topic in our own
country. When non-religious, public an obligatory primary school was a law in 1884, only Castilian
Spanish was allowed by the government. This policy of one hegemonic language who silent many native
others lasted for more than 130 years. It was not until 2006 that Argentina recognised the right to learn
and teach in native languages, as Guaraní and Mapuche, in schools. This is the clearest example of
bilingualism as a political and power issue.