The Languaging of Higher Education in The Global South De-Colonizing The Language of Scholarship and Pedagogy

The Languaging of Higher Education in
the Global South
By foregrounding language practices in educational settings, this timely

volume offers a postcolonial critique of the languaging of higher educa-
tion and considers how Southern epistemologies can be used to further
the decolonization of post-secondary education in the Global South.
Offering a range of contributions from diverse and minoritized schol-
ars based in countries including South Africa, Rwanda, Sudan, Qatar,
Turkey, Portugal, Sweden, India, and Brazil, The Languaging of Higher
Education in the Global South problematizes the use of language in vari-
ous areas of higher education. Chapters demonstrate both subtle and
explicit ways in which the language of pedagogy, scholarship, policy, and
participation endorse and privilege Western constructs and knowledge
production, and utilize Southern theories and epistemologies to offer
an alternative way forward—practice and research which applies and
promotes Southern epistemologies and local knowledges. The volume
confronts issues including integrationism, epistemic solidarity, language
policy and ideology, multilingualism, and the increasing use of technol-
ogy in institutions of higher education.
This innovative book will be of interest to researchers, scholars, and
post-graduate students in the fields of higher education, applied linguis-
tics, and multicultural education. Those with an interest in the decolo-
nization of education and language will find the book of particular use.
Sinfree Makoni is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Pennsylvania

State University, US.
Cristine G. Severo is Associate Professor of Language Policy and

Linguistics at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil.
Ashraf Abdelhay is Associate Professor of Sociolinguistics at the Doha

Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar.
Anna Kaiper-Marquez is Associate Director and Assistant Teaching Professor

of the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy and the Goodling Institute for
Research in Family Literacy at Pennsylvania State University, US.
Routledge Research in Decolonizing Education
The Routledge Research in Decolonizing Education series aims to

enhance our understanding and facilitate ongoing debates, research and
theory relating to decolonization, decolonizing education and the cur-
riculum, and postcolonialism in education. The series is international in
scope and is aimed at upper-level and post-graduate students, research-
ers, and research students, as well as academics and scholars.
Books in the series include:
Decolonizing Transcultural Teacher Education through Participatory

Action Research
Dialogue, Culture, and Identity
Jean Kirshner and George Kamberelis
Global South Scholars in the Western Academy

Harnessing Unique Experiences, Knowledges, and Positionality in the
Third Space
Edited by Staci B. Martin and Deepra Dandekar
Interrogating the Relations between Migration and Education in the

South
Migrating Americas
Edited by Ligia (Licho) López López, Ivón Cepeda-Mayorga, and María
Emilia Tijoux
The Languaging of Higher Education in the Global South

Decolonizing the Language of Scholarship and Pedagogy
Edited by Sinfree Makoni, Cristine G. Severo, Ashraf Abdelhay, and Anna
Kaiper-Marquez
For more information about the series, please visit www.routledge.com/

Routledge-Research-in-Decolonizing-Education/book-series/RRDE
The Languaging of Higher
Education in the Global
South
De-Colonizing the Language of
Scholarship and Pedagogy
Edited by Sinfree Makoni,

Cristine G. Severo, Ashraf Abdelhay,
and Anna Kaiper-Marquez
First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Sinfree Makoni, Cristine G.
Severo, Ashraf Abdelhay, and Anna Kaiper-Marquez; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Sinfree Makoni, Cristine G. Severo, Ashraf Abdelhay,
and Anna Kaiper-Marquez to be identified as the authors of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
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including photocopying and recording, or in any information
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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ISBN: 978-0-367-68653-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-68654-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-13843-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433
Typeset in Sabon
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
Contents
List of Illustrations viii

List of Contributors ix
Introduction 1
SINFREE MAKONI, CRISTINE SEVERO, ASHRAF ABDELHAY, AND
ANNA KAIPER-MARQUEZ
PART 1
Confronting Epistemological Language Issues 11
1 Global North Technocratic Discourse in Arab

Higher Education: The Case of a North American
Technical College in an Arab State 13
SAMAH ABDULHAFID GAMAR
2 Reflections on the Global North and Global South

Engagement Initiative in Kinigi, Rwanda 28
BETTY SIBONGILE DLAMINI
3 Polycentric or Pluricentric? Epistemic Traps in

Sociolinguistic Approaches to Multilingual Portuguese 42
CLARA KEATING
4 RE-. Vocabularies we live by in the Language and

Educational Sciences 61
SANGEETA BAGGA-GUPTA
vi Contents
PART 2
Language Policy in Postcolonial Academic Contexts 85
5 Decolonizing Epistemology in Sudanese Linguistics:

Integrationist and Political Perspectives 87
MOHAMMAD ALKHAIR AND ABDEL RAHIM MUGADDAM
6 Multilingualism in South African Universities: A

Reflection from an Integrationist Perspective 116
DUMISILE N. MKHIZE
7 ‘Everyone was Happy When Talking’: Revisiting

the Use of Mother Tongues in Kenyan Universities 133
INVIOLATA VICKY KHASANDI-TELEWA
8 Existential Sociolinguistics: The Fundamentals of

the Political Legitimacy of Linguistic Minority Rights 147
DAVID M. BALOSA
PART 3
Languaging Pedagogy in Post-Secondary Contexts 163
9 Teaching Gender Awareness in Teacher Education

through a Curriculum Which De-Links from
Abyssal Thinking 165
LIESEL HIBBERT
10 Recontextualization of the Author’s and Reader’s

Positions in Simone De Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième
Sexe in the Turkish Cultural Environment Through
Translation 181
AYŞE NAZ CENGIZ
PART 4
Technology and Decolonial Practices 191
11 Languaging in Computer-Mediated
Communication: Heteroglossia and Stylization in
Online Education 193
SIBUSISO CLIFFORD NDLANGAMANDLA
Contents vii
12 (How) can Critical Posthumanism help to
Decolonize Tertiary Education in the South in the
Age of Cognitive Capitalism? 211
MARCELO EL KHOURI BUZATO
13 Concluding Commentary 228

FELIX BANDA
Index 233
List of Illustrations
Figures
4.1 On contemporary technological affordances 68
4.2 Languaging unambiguity 69
4.3 Board work 70
4.4 RE-presentational dilemmas 71
11.1 Web page showing the list of topics and numbers of posts 201
Tables
5.1 The epistemological structures of Sudanese language
and linguistics undergraduate programs 99
5.2 The epistemological structures of Sudanese
language and linguistics postgraduate programs 101
List of Contributors
Ashraf Abdelhay holds a PhD in the field of sociolinguistics from the

University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on the cultural poli-
tics of language in Sudan with specific emphasis on the intersec-
tion of discourse, ideology, and power relations. He worked for the
Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in the University of
Edinburgh and then joined the Department of Middle Eastern Studies
in University of Cambridge as an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow (2009–
2010); and Clare Hall College in the University of Cambridge as a
Research Associate (2019–2013). He currently works for the Doha
Institute for Graduate Studies (Qatar) as an associate professor in the
program of Linguistics and Arabic Lexicography.
Samah Abdulhafid Gamar is an educator and critical pedagogue who has

worked in the higher education and government sectors in Canada and
Catar for 20 years. She currently serves as the director of Teaching,
Learning and Assessment at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
Her academic research is driven by a commitment to the education
reform in the Srab region that works toward liberation and empower-
ment through transformative education policy and practice.
Mohammad Alkhair holds PhD in the field of applied linguistics from

Sudan University for Science and Technology. His research focuses on
the politics of language and linguistic ideologies in educational and
public spaces in Sudan. He currently works as assistant professor of
linguistics at Alzaiem Alazhari University, Sudan.
Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta holds the professor-chair in Education with

a multidisciplinary background at the School of Education and
Communication, Jönköping University, Sweden, and has been profes-
sor-chair since 2007 at the Departments of Education, Gender Studies
and Rehabilitation Center at Örebro University, Sweden. She has
been the scientific head of the research group CCD, Communication,
x List of Contributors
Culture and Diversity, which was awarded a 39 million SKR grant by
the Swedish Research Council in 2021 to lead the national research
school CuEEd-LL (Culturally Empowering Education through
Language and Literature).
David M. Balosa received his PhD in language, literacy, and culture in

2020 from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). He
has taught at Community College of Philadelphia, LaSalle University,
Penn State University at Abington, and Delaware State University. Dr.
Balosa now teaches French and English as a Second Language (ESL)
for the School District of Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania in the United
States where he is also the Junior Academy Teacher Leader and mem-
ber of the school Team for Equity and Diversity. His research interests
include sociolinguistics, political/critical discourse analysis; intercul-
tural communication studies; postcolonial studies; Lusophone studies;
and moral, social, legal, and political philosophy.
Felix Banda is professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University

of the Western Cape, where he teaches graduate and postgraduate
courses in multilingualism in society and education and technology-
mediated business communication and intercultural communication.
His research interests are located at the intersection of Hallidayan
social semiotics, language and multilingualism, semiotic landscapes,
language planning and policy, multimodal critical pedagogies and the
educational implications of the syntactic and morpho-phonological
similarities of Bantu languages for transnational/Pan African orthog-
raphy design and reform. He has published books and numerous book
chapters and articles in a wide range of peer reviewed journals in these
research areas.
Marcelo El Khouri Buzato is associate professor in the Department of

Applied Linguistics, University of Campinas (Unicamp). He holds an
MA and a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Unicamp. He is a member
of the Language & Technology workgroup of the Brazilian National
Association for Graduate Studies and Research in Languages,
Literature and Linguistics – ANPOLL. His research interests include
digital culture, digital and data literacies, and post-humanism.
Ayşenaz Cengiz is an assistant professor and teaches undergraduate and

graduate courses in the Department of Translation and Interpreting
Studies at Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. She completed her PhD at
Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona, Spain. She holds a BA and an
MA in Translation Studies from the Department of Translation Studies,
Boğaziçi University. Her research interests lie in the areas of feminist
translation theories, traveling theories, and paratexts and translation.
List of Contributors xi
Sibusiso Clifford Ndlangamandla’s research interests are in language and
communication. His current work is on exploring sociolinguistic con-
cepts such as language alternation, monolingualism, and multilingual-
ism in technology with the view to influence language teaching and
learning in online education and broadly, young people’s identities and
aspirations in the Global South.
Betty Sibongile Dlamini is an expert in theater arts. Her research interests

include Transformative Performing Arts and Empowerment, Women
and Gender, Comparative Cultures, and Diversity in Communities.
As a creative writer, she has published over 32 works including
the Macmillan Grand Prize winning Siswati novel, Umsamaliya
Lolungile (2008). She is a fellow of the Association of Commonwealth
Universities and an alumnus of the University of London, School of
Oriental and African Studies (PhD-2008); Sussex University (MA-
2002); University of South Africa (BA Honors-2001); and University
of Swaziland (BEd-1998). She has received the Indiana University
Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Teaching (2021) and the
Mumford Award for Extraordinary Excellence in Teaching (2021).
Liesel Hibbert is currently an adjunct professor of English Education in

the Faculty of Education at CPUT and a professor extraordinaire in the
Department of Curriculum Studies, Faculty of Education, University of
Stellenbosch in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. Her current
project is titled Delinking from the past – inclusivity in higher educa-
tion in South Africa. In addition, she has published in Educational
Research for Social Change, Journal of the Sociology of Language,
and Journal of Language, Culture and Curriculum among others. Her
monograph The linguistic landscape in post-apartheid South Africa
and her co-authored collection Multilingual Universities in South
Africa were both published by Multilingual Matters in Bristol.
Anna Kaiper-Marquez is the associate director and assistant teach-

ing professor of the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy and the
Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy at Pennsylvania
State University. She completed her dissertation in Comparative and
International Development Education at the University of Minnesota
that centered on the adult English language learning and literacy of
domestic workers in South Africa. From this research, she has pub-
lished several journals articles, book chapters, and book reviews on
adult basic education (ABE), English language learning, and qualita-
tive methodologies in national and international contexts.
Clara Keating is associate professor at the Anglo-American Section in

the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, School of
xii List of Contributors
Arts and Humanities, and Researcher of the Humanities, Migration
and Peace Studies Group (NHUMEP) at the Centre for Social Studies,
University of Coimbra. She develops critical sociolinguistics research
in complex multilingual and linguistically diverse contexts resulting
from mobilities and migrations. In her courses, she articulates a focus
on language, literacy, and discourse with social, feminist, cultural, and
anthropological studies, namely the relationship between language, lit-
eracy, ideology, and power.
Sinfree Makoni is professor of Applied Linguistics and African Studies at

Pennsylvania State University in the United States and interim director
of African Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He is an extraor-
dinary professor at the University of the North West South Africa and
he is also an Andrew Carnegie fellow at Laikipia University in Kenya
and an Advanced fellow of the Humanities at CODESRIA, Senegal.
His research is largely into colonial linguistics, language policy and
planning, Southern Epistemologies and philosophies of language.
Recent publications include Innovations and Challenges in Applied
Linguistics from the Global South, with Alastair Pennycook (Routledge
2019), Integrational Linguistics and Philosophy of Language from the
Global South, co-edited with A. Kaiper-Marquez and D. Vertiy (2020),
and Routledge Handbook on Language and the Global South (forth-
coming), co-edited with Kaiper-Marquez.
Dumisile N. Mkhize is a senior lecturer in the Department of English

Studies at the University of South Africa (Unisa). She teaches under-
graduate modules related to English in Teacher Education and super-
vises postgraduate students who conduct research in Applied Language
Studies. Her research interests include language and literacy practices
in bi/multilingual educational contexts, multilingual language plan-
ning and policy, language rights in education as well as social justice in
education. Some of her work has appeared in the International Journal
of Multilingualism, Journal of Higher Education and Southern African
Linguistics, and Applied Language Studies.
Abdel Rahim Mugaddam is a professor of sociolinguistics at University of

Khartoum (on secondment at Jouf University-Saudi Arabia). Professor
Mugaddam has published widely in local, regional, and international
reputable journals. As a distinguished scholar, professor Mugaddam
has been awarded a number of prizes and fellowships including the
prestigious Alexander Von Humboldt Award.
Cristine Severo currently works at the Federal University of Santa Catarina

(Brazil). She is researcher at the National Council for Scientific and
Technological Development (CNPq, Brazil), the leader of the Critical
List of Contributors xiii
Language Policy research group in Brazil, and the coordinator of the
Public Policy committee of the Brazilian Association of Linguistics. She
holds an MA and two PhDs in Linguistics and Interdisciplinary Studies
from the Federal University of Santa Catarina. Her recent publica-
tions include Language Planning and Policy: Ideologies, Ethnicities
and Semiotic Spaces of Power (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020),
co-edited with Ashraf Abdelhay and Sinfree Makoni; and Os Jesuítas
e as Linguas no contexto colonial Brasil-África (Pontes/Brazil, 2020).
Inviolata Vicky Khasandi-Telewa is an associate professor of Applied

Linguistics in Laikipia University, Kenya. She attained her PhD
in Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching, from the
University of Warwick, UK. She has been teaching in Laikipia
University since 1997 and is now the dean of the School of Humanities
and Development Studies and acting deputy vice chancellor of
Academics, Research and Student Affairs. Her research interests are
in doing Applied Linguistics in African contexts particularly Language
in Education policies, Discourses of Gender, Religion, Politics and
Governance, Refugees, and the Environment. Some of her publications
include The Samburu Traditional Communicative Ornamentation:
Identity and Female Genital Mutilation; ‘English is Must to Us’:
Languages and Education in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya.
Introduction
Sinfree Makoni, Cristine Severo, Ashraf Abdelhay,
and Anna Kaiper-Marquez
This book builds upon research on critical orientations to language in

higher education, drawing on: (i) integrational linguistics (Gregersen,
1998; Makoni, 2011; Taylor & Bayley, 2019); (ii) indigenous and
alternative knowledges (Smith, 1999; Quijano, 2007; Cusicanqui,
2012; Cusicanqui, Domingues, Escobar, & Leff, 2016; Leonard, 2017;
Shilliam, 2019); (iii) decolonial pedagogies (Santos, 2014; Walsh, 2017;
Kubota, 2019; Despagne, 2020); and (iv) Southern Theories and epis-
temologies of the South (Santos, 2016; Santos, 2018; Danewid, 2018;
Connell, 2007, 2009, 2018; Pennycook & Makoni, 2020; Makoni,
2013; Makoni & Severo, 2017; Comaroff & Comaroff, 2015; Severo
& Makoni, 2021; Makoni, Verity, & Kaiper-Marquez, 2021). It is an
expansion of Pennycook and Makoni’s (2020) book on applied lin-
guistics in the Global South and connects to Makoni, Kaiper-Marquez,
and Mokwena’s (2022) handbook on language in the Global South.
However, it focuses exclusively on higher education contexts in relation
to language and the Global South.
We construe work that draws on Southern perspectives as part
of broader epistemological, ethical, and political decolonial move-
ments (Quijano, 2005; Santos, 2014; Walsh, 2017) that challenge the
Eurocentric basis and hierarchized racial categories underpinning most
current institutions of higher education in both the Global South and
the Global North. We use the concept ‘Global South’ neither solely as a
geographical term nor a political term. Instead, we use it as a powerful
metaphor to challenge Eurocentrism and coloniality, and to confront the
nature of asymmetrical power relations in contemporary higher educa-
tion institutions across the Global North and South. Moreover, in our
conception of the Global South, we refer to people whose voices are
mediated or spoken for, rather than given the opportunities to speak for
themselves. Additionally, we suggest that the term ‘Global South’ become
pluralized as ‘Global Souths’ to pushback against possible suggestions of
heterogeneity in these varying contexts.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-1
2 Sinfree Makoni et al.
Drawing from this integrated concept, in this book we explore the roles
of language in the context of higher education by bringing together the
diverse experiences of scholars and students from around many regions
of the Global Souths. Our objective is to shift the “geography of reason”
(Gordon, 2021) by making the experiences of the Global Souths central
in theory formulation about language in higher education. We argue that
the notion of “struggle” (Santos, 2018) is an important idea in framing
how language practices in higher education are understood.
Within this book, we bring reflections that arose at the Annual
Conference of the International Association for the Integrational Study
of Language and Communication (Penn State University, USA, 2019)
and continued at Brazil’s Integrational Language Conference (2021).
The overall objective of these conferences was to explore the relation-
ship between language and higher education from the perspectives of
Southern theories and epistemologies, integrational linguistics, and deco-
lonial linguistics. The intersections of these concepts developed into this
current volume, in which, epistemologically, we seek to develop a “soli-
darity-based epistemology” (Connell, 2018), or ‘connected sociolinguis-
tics’ as constituting the theoretical predicates for the book.
Solidarity is a key concept for higher education decolonial projects
engaged with the problematization of hegemony, neoliberal capitalism,
patriarchalism, and racism inscribed in the modern process of knowledge
production and dissemination. With the concept of solidarity, we con-
sider the need for a multilingual, pluriversal, autonomous, and democratic
concept of the university engaged with decolonial, anti-oppressive praxis,
and critical thinking (Freire, 2000; Santos, 2011; Gaztambide-Fernández,
2012). This includes the commitment of the university—regarded as a pub-
lic domain—to increasing the access of different communities and people in
higher education. It also includes the creation and continuation of dialogue
and engagement with both local and transglobal communities and societies.
In the face of a neoliberal tendency to “commercialization of knowledge”
(Santos, 2011), we argue that the creation and development of multilingual
practices in the context of institutions of knowledge production and dis-
semination play an important role in the problematization of the hegemony
of English as an academic and economic lingua franca. This means that soli-
darity practices require the construction of plural, dialogical, translingual,
and intercultural spaces of learning, teaching, and sharing (Bakhtin, 1993;
Freire, 2000; García & Leiva, 2014). In this sense, any project engaged
with the decolonization of higher education should take seriously the ideas
of critical education “as a form of networking—a ‘community’ of knowl-
edge and knowledge formation” (Freire, 2000, p. 17). Further, as solidarity
has become a principle of 21st-century universities that are committed to
education oriented by human rights, responsible rationale, and sustainable
practices (Salvioli, 2009), we continue expanding on the nuances of this
principle within this body of work.
Introduction 3
Although our ultimate objectives are to fight ‘epistemic injustice’ while
realizing a form of ‘cognitive justice;’ we also argue that Southern epis-
temologies and decolonial linguistics are compatible with integrationist
linguistics (Makoni et al., 2021) because the latter is not a type of lin-
guistics—it is a type of ‘anti-linguistics.’ Furthermore, integrational lin-
guistics is more concerned with issues about communication than with
languages, and rejects the theoretical assumptions of orthodox linguistics
that Southern epistemologies and decolonial linguistics regard as oppres-
sive (Pennycook & Makoni, 2020). The focus in integrational linguis-
tics is on human activities that are contextually integrated by means of
signs of various kinds, and no absolute distinction between ‘linguistic’
and ‘nonlinguistic’ activities is accepted. From an integrational linguistics
perspective, there are no signs which exist independently of communi-
cational activities in the here and now. It is not feasible to argue for the
existence of a sign outside its communicational role in an activity.
Caveats
Some empirically inspired caveats are in order. Integrationism emerged
in the West as a critique of segregationism, which represented the main-
stream trend in Western linguistics. One implication here, which we
intend to challenge, is that segregationism is a uniform conceptual phe-
nomenon with a uniform manifestation and effect. The questions we pose
here are: Are there other forms of non-Western segregationism? Do, for
example, the Chinese and the Arabs have their own forms of segrega-
tionism? How different are they from Western segregationism? Studying
cross-culturally different modes of segregationism in different sociolin-
guistic traditions is one way of de-Westernizing the integrationist critique
itself. In other words, integrationism is exclusively seen as a critique of
Western philosophy of language (e.g., Saussure and Chomsky), and so
what is missing here is any cross-cultural comparison with other forms
of segregationism. For example, in the Arab world, we find one of the
most deeply entrenched segregationist ideologies because the dominant
scholarly and folk conceptions of language view Arabic as a God-given
or sacred tongue (see Suleiman, 2003).
What needs to be considered when reading these chapters is the plurality
and relations between different traditions of segregationism as a way of
enlarging the metalinguistic boundaries of ‘linguistics’ itself. For example,
in the Arab world, if we use the term ‘linguistics,’ what is almost always
meant is ‘Western linguistics,’ while other non-Western forms of linguistics
are called ‘Arabic tradition’ or ‘Arab(ic) grammatical tradition.’ The key
question here is that if ‘linguistics’ is understood as ‘Western linguistics,’
why is the qualifier ‘Western’ erased, and through which historical pro-
cesses? Why the generalization of the particular? The politics of naming ren-
dered the relationship between Western linguistics and Arabic linguistics a
language-dialect hierarchical relation. In this context, two related strategies
can be used to problematize this subordinating relation between Western
linguistics and other forms of linguistics; either to reject the generalized
label of ‘linguistics’ and to insist on particularizing it as ‘Western linguis-
tics’ on a par with other locally constituted traditions of linguistic thinking,
or to enlarge its conceptual apparatuses and practices in institutions of
higher education to include every human tradition of language.
Generally but without generalizing, the dearth of collaborative projects
and interdisciplinary courses on the structure of linguistic programs in
the Arab world has enrooted the structuralist conception of language
as a self-contained system in the discursive imagination of students (see
Chapter 5). In some of the universities, theses, or degrees in translation,
language teaching and discourse studies are systematically discredited as
part of ‘linguistics proper.’ They are viewed as belonging to the field of
‘applied linguistics,’ and thus the knowledge produced by these methodol-
ogies, and the researchers who use them, become devalued and excluded.
Needless to say, this taxonomy, which is still very much in action in some
universities, is informed by a relation of power and interest masquerad-
ing as ‘science.’
Recognizing these caveats, in this book we seek to infuse integrationism
and liberatory applied linguistics in decolonial contexts. By utilizing lay-
oriented perspectives of language, education, and decolonization, we are
able to draw upon the experiences of the people who are directly affected
by language in higher education, including teachers, students, and other
relevant stakeholders, rather than on professional linguists’ formal under-
standings of language only. Further, as integrationism adopts a holistic
approach to language, this framework renders it analytically feasible to
explore how language is embedded in the institutions of higher educa-
tion, while also exploring higher education institutions’ histories and
relationships with other formal and informal establishments.
Decolonizing the Language of Scholarship

The book brings together three frames of analysis: Southern theories and
epistemologies of the South; integrational linguistics; and decolonization
of language scholarship. In this section, we briefly outline the opportunities
and challenges that decolonization constitutes for language scholarship.
The notion of decolonization, like any other concept, has its merits and
limitations, an argument well articulated argument by Joseph (2017, p. 38)
when he writes:
Every concept, model and technique devised by theoretical or applied

linguistics has its limits in terms of applicability and shelf life. It is
futile to assess them simply as right or wrong: in the long run, to
paraphrase Keynes, they are all dead wrong. What needs to be asked
Introduction 5
is: right or wrong for what? What does the concept, model or tech-
nique make it possible to do, and at what cost? Could an alternative
one do it better, or at less cost?
Decolonization of education, according to Prah (2021), means:
[S]tripping the structure and content of the colonially received cul-

tural valuation in education curricula from what is offered, in a
purposively emancipating post-colonial context. It requires studi-
ous intellectual orientation and deconstruction of the processes of
knowledge production with pin-pointed reflexivity. We must be able
to stand outside ourselves and critically objectify ourselves as his-
torical and cultural products. In other words, we must use the basic
insights of the sociology of knowledge.
Decolonization of education in the Global South is necessary because

universities were introduced during the colonial era. The main objective
of the universities was to serve and promote the interests of the colonial
elites. They were modeled after universities in the Global North. The uni-
versities have not radically changed even after the end of the colonial era.
According to Prah (2021), decolonization requires addressing the lan-
guage question, which entails having to introduce and facilitate the use
of local languages because (drawing on examples from Asia) no nation
can develop based on foreign languages. Furthermore, according to
Prah, decolonization involves adopting a radically different orientation
towards notion of language. The common trope in African sociolinguis-
tics is preoccupied with the number of African languages. Prah adopts
a different orientation, in which he argues that there are not as many
languages as popularly believed if we imagine them in terms of clusters
or ‘core’ languages. If core languages are taught properly, it is possible to
use textbooks written for one ‘language’ for another language. In this vol-
ume, we adopt a more radical approach and reject the idea of language as
a fixed code even if it is framed as a core or cluster that makes meanings
available for us in specific contexts. Instead of thinking of language as
an autonomous system, we regard language as a product of communica-
tional activity. Communication and language use in this analytical frame-
work will be a creative process, with creativity not being understood in a
Chomskyan sense of generation of an infinite number of sentences. The
creativity that we are adopting in this framework “brings us and our
universes together, in fact making of worlds and all the relationships that
they require in order to bring times and spaces, people, desires, things,
memories and dreams into an active, conscious life” (Vicky Khasandi-
Telewa, personal communication, 2021).
Decolonization of universities is a difficult process, but it is feasible
to decolonize specific spaces as part of institutional changes. Spaces that
can be decolonized are those Monica Heller refers to as not locked down,
“the spaces of contradiction, and you put your finger on this huge con-
tradiction for states legitimized through ideologies of democracy, which
failed to deliver on the promise. So, where do these contradictions show
up in people’s lives?” (Heller, 2021).
Clearly, the notion of decolonization provides us with unique oppor-
tunities to fight for institutional change, but Zeleza (2017, p. 2) sounds a
note of caution when he writes:
The term decolonization is both illuminating and limiting, combining

as it does epistemic desires for decentering Eurocentric knowledges,
but in all its consuming deconstructive drive it often inadvertently
centers the latter in the archives of African knowledges. This is to
argue that just as colonialism is not the sum total of African history,
Eurocentrism should not be allowed to overwhelm African knowl-
edges of their capaciousness…I would like to argue that Africa has
different libraries of which the Eurocentric is only a part of one of
these libraries. A project that seeks to liberate African knowledges
must begin by understanding the variety, development, and intersec-
tions of Africa’s multiple libraries. It must go beyond Afrocentric
injunctions of proclaiming Africa’s eternal difference and recognize
the enduring and complex conversations of cultures and ideas within
Africa itself and between the continent’s societies and civilizations
and those of other continents beyond Europe.
Consequently, this book is made up of twelve chapters. These chapters

explore the relationships between knowledge production and transmis-
sion in language studies in higher education contexts worldwide. The
book is divided into the following four Parts:
(i) Concepts of language and pedagogical practices formed on the basis

of a dialogue between Southern perspectives and Paulo Freire’s peda-
gogical approach, the African concept of Ubuntu, Santos’ Southern
Theory, Audre Lorde’s African American poetry, and the Indian con-
cepts of Satyagraha and Ahimsa—all of which are discussed and
taught in higher education spaces.
(ii) Language policies in postcolonial academic contexts, such as in
South Africa and Kenya, explorations of the right to use the mother
tongue in multilingual contexts, and the role of semiotic landscape in
(de)colonial meaning-making processes.
(iii) The relationship between gender and Southern epistemologies on the
teaching of feminist literature.
(iv) The role played by technology and decolonial practices in promot-
ing access and facilitating creative knowledge production in higher
education.
Introduction 7
Summary of Chapters
Part 1 of this book centers on epistemological language issues within
higher education, and brings together four chapters from diverse geopo-
litical and higher education contexts. In Chapter 1, Samah Abdulhafid
Gamar problematizes the advocacy of technocratic discourse in higher
education in the Arab world through Global North educational insti-
tutions. Gamar critically analyzes the language of a competency-based
technical and vocational education and training (TVET) curriculum,
adopted and heavily influenced by the Global North and framed entirely
in English.
Betty Dlamini, in Chapter 2, examines the Rwandan English Teachers’
empowerment project that began as an extension of Indiana University’s
Books and Beyond student service-learning initiative. Based on the
African concept of Ubuntu and drawing from Paulo Freire’s critique of
banking methods of education, Dlamini reflects on the tendency of teach-
ers of the Global North to reinforce North–South asymmetrical hierar-
chical relationships.
In Chapter 3, Clara Keating follows the research of Santos by argu-
ing that Portuguese is a pluricentric and polycentric space. She illustrates
how knowledge about Portuguese is produced and distributed in aca-
demic institutions, and serves Portuguese political interests across the
Global South and the Global North.
By focusing upon the vocabularies we live by in LSS and the Educational
Sciences, Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta, in Chapter 4, seeks to make visible the
ways in which language and identity are conceptualized, arguing for the
need to go beyond the single academic stories that naturalize North-
centric hegemonies. She also calls attention to the continuing margin-
alization of studies where social practices are center-staged in these
scholarly domains.
Part 2 includes three chapters that focus more explicitly on language
policies and practices in postcolonial spaces of higher education. The
politics of knowledge production in Southern universities is strongly
affected by language policy and the right to use local languages as aca-
demic languages.
In Chapter 5, Alkhair and Mugaddam examine the knowledge struc-
ture of the linguistics programs in some of the Sudanese universities, with
a focus on how colonial epistemologies shaped these knowledge spaces.
The chapter also discusses how the colonial construction of Sudanese
languages contributed greatly to politicizing and inventing linguistic
diversity in Sudan. The authors problematize the reproduction of colo-
nial language ideologies, language myths, labels, and orthodox linguis-
tic views by Sudanese university linguistics research, and show how this
depoliticized and self-contained epistemology of Sudanese linguistics has
denied linguists the opportunities to discharge their social responsibilities.
Drawing from this contention, in Chapter 6, Khasandi-Telewa asserts
that the right to use one’s mother tongue is a legitimate issue in Southern
universities in the face of the imposition of Euro-American languages. She
argues that language policies in academic spaces must reflect this right.
In Chapter 7, Dumisile Mkhize examines the sociolinguistic implica-
tions of analyzing multilingualism from an integrationist perspective in a
South African context. Using integrational linguistics as a guide, she seeks
to rewrite the history and contemporary language policies of two South
African universities.
David Balosa, in Chapter 8, proposes an existential sociolinguistic
paradigm for language in higher education contexts. He introduces a
critical-radical humanistic approach to achieving the political legitimacy
of linguistic minority rights (PLLMR) in multilingual/multicultural soci-
eties, by arguing that language cannot be dissociated from human beings.
Part 3 of the book draws on the larger epistemological perspectives of
language in higher education discussed in Part 1, as well as the language
policies and practices explored in Part 2, to home in on key social com-
ponents of language in higher education contexts that are influenced by
these theoretical perspectives and policies. Part 3 centers on two chapters
that explore the nature of relationships between gender and Southern
perspectives in higher education.
In Chapter 9, Liesel Hibbert focuses her analysis on understandings of
gender issues in teacher education in contemporary South Africa. Using
a feminist paradigm, she articulates some of the many ways in which the
novel Purple Hibiscus may be positioned as a pedagogical tool to further
explore gender issues in teaching.
Ayşenaz Cengiz, in Chapter 10, problematizes the recontextualization
of Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe in the Turkish cultural envi-
ronment. She explores how texts produced in particular cultural and his-
torical circumstances are reread and reinterpreted in different cultures
and historical circumstances, leading to varying domestication of foreign
text.
Finally, Part 4 of this volume centers on the move toward technology
in higher education and the ways in which language practices are embed-
ded into this modality. Sibusiso Clifford Ndlangamandla, in Chapter
11, explores how efforts to increase access to education through the use
of technology are enabling language and multilingual practices at an
Open eLearning Distance university. These efforts, he argues, are rein-
forcing an integrationist perspective of language, languaging, and online
multilingualism.
Chapter 12, the final chapter of the volume, combines integrationism,
higher education, and Southern epistemologies with posthumanism. In
this chapter, Marcelo El Khouri Buzato discusses the impact of cogni-
tion and learning on nonhuman distributed cognition. He applies this
view to the notions of curriculum, evaluation, and development in higher
Introduction 9
education, and shows how such developments can facilitate a decolonial
and nondiscriminatory view of higher education. The volume concludes
with a commentary written by Felix Banda.
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Part 1
Confronting Epistemological
Language Issues
1 Global North Technocratic
Discourse in Arab Higher Education
The Case of a North American Technical
College in an Arab State
Samah Abdulhafid Gamar
Introduction
This chapter problematizes the propagation of technocratic discourse in
higher education in the Arab states through Global North educational
institutions operating as branch or satellite campuses. It analyzes the
language of a competency-based technical and vocational education and
training (TVET) curriculum, adopted from or heavily influenced by the
Global North, through a critical sociolinguistic lens to confront its per-
petuation of a mechanistic, technocratic, human-capital ideology which
maintains social control and power inequity within a region fraught by
decade-long uprisings and civil war. Recognizing the locus of language
in human societies (Graham & Rooney, 2001), and understanding that
language can erect, preserve, and reproduce relations of domination
(Janks, 2010), this analysis takes a deep look at micro-level curriculum
discourse in a North American college of technology operating in the
Arab region, investigating how the narrowly defined, highly prescriptive
technocratic discourse of program and course learning outcomes can
work to establish and sustain oppressive sociopolitical relations at the
macro level. This chapter illustrates how a TVET curriculum parachuted
into the Middle East from the North, where political and economic free-
doms have defined its development and stability, noticeably overlooks
the sociopolitical agency that can be activated in vocational education
learners. It contends that a critical sociolinguistic examination by educa-
tors and policymakers can lay bare the hegemonies perpetuated in techni-
cal education curricula, and argues for the need for critical pedagogical
approaches that can bring a transformative, emancipatory vocational
education to life for disempowered Arabs.
This exploration begins with the presentation of the infiltration of tech-
nocracy into higher education systems, explaining the underlying theo-
retical and conceptual frameworks that have shaped TVET in the Global
North. It subsequently delves into how technocratic discourse manifests
itself in curricula reflecting the prevailing ideology, then moves to articu-
lating the problem of the penetration of technocratic rationality in Arab
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-3
14 Samah Abdulhafid Gamar
education systems through the proliferation of branch and satellite cam-
puses. The chapter concretizes the problem of Global North technocratic
discourse embedded in transplanted curricula through the illustrative case
of a North American technical college in an Arab state. It concludes with
a discussion of the implications of borrowed technocratic logic in Arab
TVET systems, where opportunities for the development of sociopolitical
agency through critical pedagogical approaches offer an alternative mode
that champions the Arab individual’s role as citizen and social agent.
Technocracy in Global North Education Systems

Education systems in Global North democracies have largely operated
through technocratic rationality since the early 20th century, following
Taylorist and Fordist models of scientific management and social effi-
ciency (Callahan, 1962; Lyotard, 2010). Social efficiency carries multi-
ple meanings, including social control, social service, and social power
(Null, 2004). In the social control model (Snedden, 1914; Bobbitt, 1918;
Charters, 1923), the aim is to distinguish vocational education from lib-
eral education and prepare individuals for occupations through skills
training for predetermined social roles (Knoll, 2009). In the social service
model, put forward by Bagley (1914), O’Shea (1906), and Demiashkevich
(1933), education strives to educate students in terms of moral character
and virtue for the improvement of society. In the social power model,
advocated by Dewey (1916) and King (1913), social efficiency endeavors
to unify the individual and society, where human potential is released
for the collective good of the community whilst still accounting for indi-
vidual aims.
Popularized by Charles Prosser, the social efficiency–social control
model is one that is market driven (Daniels, 2018) and focused on sup-
plying industry with a continuous flow of labor or “‘industrial fodder’
in a society controlled by money interests” (Dewey, 1916, as quoted in
Kincheloe, 1999, p. 13). The primary aim of such a model is not holis-
tic in nurturing an individual who has a comprehensive set of skills for
success in life, but the narrow view of producing an efficient worker.
The social efficiency model postulates that the ultimate aim of education
is satisfying the needs of the labor market, not the fulfillment of per-
sonal or community gain (Halliday, 2007). By developing a high degree
of efficiency in trades and occupational education under the control of
government and business, industry and commerce can advance national
interests. “Training for life in the sense of securing this broad efficiency,
individual and social, must, it seems to me, become more and more a
public charge,” David Snedden (1914, p. 187) proclaimed. According to
this doctrine, social good is efficiency, and efficiency is achieved when
individuals are prepared to be part of a workforce in alignment with the
needs of the corporate and industrialized nation.
Global North Technocratic Discourse 15
Prosser’s market-driven theory drew significantly from Snedden, a
teacher, principal, superintendent, and, later, education commissioner,
who significantly impacted the development of vocational education the-
ory in North America. A sociologist by background, Snedden advocated
for a vocational education system that was profoundly different from lib-
eral education; one where schools were functional and practical, and where
students became “producers,” not “utilizers” (Snedden, 1914). Defining a
vision for vocational education, he contended that the aims, methods, and
learner attributes of vocational education were unlike liberal education,
with the focus entirely being on the economic and national prosperity of
the state. His views widened the gorge separating formal academic educa-
tion and TVET, limiting the latter to a narrow path in favor of an industri-
alized educational model.
These conceptions marked what is often referred to as the Social
Efficiency Movement, which evolved at the turn of the 20th century as
the challenges of immigration and the industrial revolution in America,
with its increased urbanization and demand for workers, came to the
fore (Knoll, 2009). The pressures of meeting the economic growth of
the country became a significant influencer in the shaping of educational
policy and curriculum. This resulted in a strong coalition of supporters,
comprising educators and politicians, who strove to mold the education
system to maximize industrial and economic aspirations.
This vision of a vocational curriculum conformed to a Fordist model,
which created a dichotomy between it and traditional academic education.
Vocational education was skills based, manual, occupationally directed,
practical, and concrete, whereas traditional education was knowledge
based, cognitive, academically focused, theoretical, and abstract (Sharp,
1996). The former was tied to “the logic of the marketplace” (McLaren,
2007, p. 189), which was increasingly becoming industrialized and con-
trolled through a sophisticated architecture, designed to increase effi-
ciency, predictability, and measurement (Nash, 1972). Essentially, this
created a division between mental capacity and manual occupation, and
was underpinned by a premise, a belief, that mental skill was superior to
manual skill (Ainley & Corbett, 1994), and that performing and concep-
tualizing are mutually exclusive. Within this construct, learners in tech-
nical and professionally oriented educational institutions were regarded
primarily for their function in securing the success and continued com-
petitiveness of the market (Lewis, 2007).
Though education systems in most Global North nations—including
liberal education institutions—were heavily influenced by behaviorist
organizational theories that sought to optimize performance through
‘objectivity’ it was undoubtedly most pronounced in the technical and
vocational education sector, where competency-based curricula assumed
a narrowly defined, highly prescriptive design that was aligned reverently
to labor market requirements.
A primary feature of technocracy then and to this day is the utilization
of a systems approach to addressing a set of challenges (Van der Vleuten,
Oldenziel, Davids, & Lintsen, 2017). These models markedly influenced
curriculum development and delivery, granting authority and oversight
to experts (McKinney & Garrison, 1993) tasked with defining an opti-
mal manifestation and level of skill performance, breaking down perfor-
mance tasks into minutiae, and ensuring those segments were specific,
observable, and measurable. “Economic functionalism easily becomes
educational functionalism, careerism in which the aim of education is
reduced to producing skilled technocratic administrators and technologi-
cal experts” state McKinney and Garrison (1993, p. 73).
As a result of Prosser’s and Snedden’s dichotomy, tracking was estab-
lished in the US education system to funnel students into vocational
streams, where curriculum focus was strictly on the practical and manual.
Such contexts fragmented skills and removed the production of mean-
ing (Brosio, 1994; Block, 1995). It erected Fordist and Taylorist training
models, which promoted the development of skills that responded only
to business and industry. On this, Kincheloe (1999, p. 191) states, “When
we fail to teach vocational teachers to contextualize their teaching, we
insult their intelligence. The same is true for workers.” Wildly overlooked
in this framework is the vocational education system’s potential to nur-
ture in students the ability to participate not just in the technological
and economic functions of the workplace, but also in its—and the larger
society’s—social, cultural, and political dimensions.
A manifestation of this technocratic framework of vocational educa-
tion is technocratic curriculum discourse—the language of teaching and
learning embedded in program documentation, course outlines, and syl-
labi, along with the activities and assessments that accompany such texts.
Educational practices such as the design, development, and delivery of
curriculum serve as a primary conduit for the prevailing ideology and
the transference of discursive practice (Fairclough, 1995), which—in
the Global North—has increasingly become technologized, employing
instrumental processes that envision curriculum and learning as trans-
missions that secure the marketplace with technically efficient workers
(Peters & Jandrić, 2018).
Within this construct, we conceptualize curriculum as discourse, in
that it is written text and spoken language that is socioculturally situated
(Fairclough, 1995; Pinar et al., 1995). Like discourse, curriculum carries
meaning and functions that evolve over time, context, and purpose. As
proposed by Pinar (2006), curriculum is a construction of language, a
form of historical text, that draws from its social and political context, and
in so doing, reveals a set of meta-concepts that relate to knowledge/power
relations. We can think of this as two levels of language in operation: one
that works at the micro level and is concerned with grammar and syntax;
the other that operates at the macro level and occupies a sociocultural
and political space (Van Dijk, 1988). Likewise, through a Foucauldian
framework, curriculum in its written and spoken form is language that
is organized, redistributed, consumed, and controlled, and within this an
implicit system of domination resides (Foucault, 1981, pp. 48–78).
As technocratic discourse seeps into curricular language, it delimits not
only the mechanism of teaching, but also the results of the teaching and
learning process. Technical and vocational education curriculum is pre-
dominantly formulated upon taxonomic learning frameworks, such as
Bloom et al.’s (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, which serve
as the foundation for most education curricula in the West. Within this
taxonomy, learning is classified within three domain types, stacked upon
differing levels of progression. The cognitive domain is constructed on six
domain levels, from least to most complex: knowledge, comprehension,
application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The second domain, psy-
chomotor, developed by Harrow (1972) and Simpson (1972), describes
learning as progression from perception—the use of senses and aware-
ness of stimulus, to origination—and the creation of new movement
patterns to respond to new or challenging situations (Gronlund, 2000).
The third domain involves beliefs, values, and attitudes, and is defined at
its highest level by the adoption of a value system that regulates behav-
ior and contributes to a particular way of being (Bloom et al., 1956).
Within vocational education, curriculum discourse places emphasis on
the psychomotor domain, favoring the demonstration of skills that align
to work-based tasks, and to a lesser extent on the cognitive domain, pri-
marily at the lower levels of cognitive complexity. However, competency-
based education leaves little to no room for student learning outcomes
that activate the affective domain.
As Lemke (1990, n.p.) states, “those who use technical language are
taught to see it only as a specialized tool for technical tasks, and to assume
that its features are shaped only by adaptation to those tasks and that the
only social consequences of its use are those of the tasks which it is put.”
In a sense, the use of highly prescribed curricular language within techni-
cal and vocational institutions imparts to both instructors and students
that language is inextricably tied to technical workplace tasks, and not,
for instance, for broader usage in the context of being and performing as
a citizen in society.
In the context of branch and satellite campuses contracted from
Western democracies to deliver academic programs in near verbatim
form in the Arab states, this transference must urge us to adopt a form
of “critical language awareness” (Clark, Fairclough, Ivanič, & Martin-
Jones, 1990, 1991; Fairclough, 1992) that enables us to question the
implicit meaning of technocratic curricular discourse that binds language
to capital and market gain. Fairclough states, “It is mainly in discourse
that consent is achieved, ideologies are transmitted, and practices, mean-
ings, values, and identities are taught and learnt [sic]” (1992, p. 219).
In this sense, the propagation of values and the entrenchment of ideol-
ogy takes place through curriculum, which shapes and calcifies particular
views and behaviors in society. This chapter holds that the transplanta-
tion of foreign curricula to the Arab region from countries such as the
United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada has not only
reproduced discourse that works against self- and social liberation, but
has also worked to legitimize this social inequity for those who most need
citizenship literacy and civic courage (Habermas, 1974; Giroux, 2001).
The Penetration of Technocratic Rationality in Universities in

Arab Higher Education
With the proliferation of satellite, branch, and offshore campuses in the
Arab region constituting over one-third of all transnational higher educa-
tion institutions worldwide—60% of which have been established in the
last 20 years alone (Miller-Idriss & Hanauer, 2011)—educational struc-
tures and programs have been transferred to the receiving Arab countries
in near replica form. Of the foreign affiliated countries owning or operat-
ing these institutions, 70% originate in Global Northern countries such
as the United States, Australia, and Canada. A significant focus of the
programs offered through these transnational educational institutions
lies in professional and technological fields such as business, engineering,
and information technology (Miller-Idriss & Hanauer, 2011)—brought
in as part of local educational reform measures to raise the quality of
education in developing or emerging economies.
Before delving into a case analysis of this phenomenon and what it
tells of the impact of technocratic discourse when adopted in the Arab
region, it is first important to make some assertions. When such institu-
tions become established in the region in the form of branch campuses,
curricular design processes are substantially borrowed with limited cul-
tural integration from the receiving country—significant cultural bor-
rowing takes place. This is especially concerning when it comes to the
application of curriculum, which for the most part takes place in the
foreign country completely removed from the Arab state in which it is
delivered. It is not unusual to have academic units, along with program
and curriculum development offices in the home campus, develop courses
and programs to be delivered in the overseas campus, with program advi-
sory council approval provided through the institution’s home academic
council. In Habermas’ (1972, 1974) discourse ethics, this centralization
of language form through curriculum is problematic, and does not allow
the interlocutor (i.e., the student) to engage in valuable dialog about the
world they live in.
A problem that has manifested in this technocratic penetration is a
loss of what Bell (1981, as quoted in Lewis, 2007, p. 87) calls “epistemic
integrity” along with ontological fidelity, whereby individuals come to
understand ways of knowing and learning about social reality, and con-
ceptualize their reason for existence, in situ—within their own cultural
context and reality. With this verbatim adoption of technical curricu-
lum discourse, it is falsely accepted that what transpires in vocational
education institutions is an instrumental, value-free act. Parachuted in
from Western democracies, which operate under entirely different socio-
political conditions, curriculum, as it is implemented in the Arab states,
assumes no transpiration of values and no purpose for the activation of
lived experiences in the creation of subjective meaning. Grumet (1976)
underscores this, arguing for the exchange of rich personal experiences
within the learner’s authentic context, through which they can achieve a
form of freedom (Harb, 2017).
Case Study: A North American Technical College in an Arab

State
The case study for this chapter focuses on a technical educational institu-
tion established through an agreement between a North American col-
lege system and the education ministry in an Arab state. In a contractual
agreement that spans two decades, starting from 2001, the foreign col-
lege, which operates multiple other campuses across one region in North
America, would deliver technical and vocational programs to post-sec-
ondary students residing in the Arab country. The College of Technology
of the Middle East (CTME) would retain the same program structure
and study plans, course learning outcomes, and topical coverage as sister
programs delivered at home, with only minor curricular modifications
to reflect systems or technologies present in the local Arab labor market.
Over 30 programs across the fields of engineering technology, informa-
tion technology, business management, and health sciences were selected
for offer on the branch campus, chosen to meet the ambitious national
capacity-building agenda of the host country.
My analysis was conducted on curricular documentation for three pro-
grams selected from the schools of Engineering Technology, Information
Technology, and Business Management at CTME. Program proposals and
course outlines containing the program and course descriptions, major
topics, student learning outcomes, and assessment schemes were reviewed,
with a focus on the language guiding the practice of curricular delivery.
Program proposals, which contained detailed program rationales,
records of stakeholder consultation, program structure and study plans,
and course learning outcomes, clearly articulated the program’s adher-
ence to academic policies and standards established in the home cam-
puses, along with its alignment to the needs of the labor market for skilled
technicians, technologists, specialists, analysts, and associated occupa-
tional roles. Program design and approval resided predominantly with
the home campus, and required close alignment to employability skills,
national occupational codes of practice, and accreditation and regulatory
bodies in the home country—not the Arab nation.
Despite this, noticeable in the documentation was the recurring men-
tion of the program’s design to meet the “human capital development
goals” of the Arab country, and its “expert design” based on labor market
and training needs analyses and consultation with technical subject-mat-
ter experts. Aside from such consultation with industry sectors, no other
evidence of engagement with members of civil society could be found in
the program and curricular documentation.
The documentation did reveal, however, with abundant clarity, how
student learning outcomes conformed to tangible, demonstrable actions,
primarily within the psychomotor, and to a lesser extent the cognitive
domain, in alignment with Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
(1956). Specificity and measurability of task was highlighted in course
syllabi, which projected intended outcomes into broken-down, segmented
missions. Within the engineering technology field, verbs used to iden-
tify anticipated behaviors were limited to technical tasks; for example,
‘select,’ ‘use,’ ‘calibrate,’ ‘assemble,’ ‘measure,’ and ‘create.’ In information
technology, the curricular discourse equally centered on performance
skills conducted in habitual and step-and-order format, such as ‘calcu-
late,’ ‘configure,’ ‘solve,’ and ‘conduct.’
Business management courses presented more learning tasks under
the cognitive domain, such as ‘describe,’ ‘explain,’ and ‘discuss;’ how-
ever, they remained limited to process-based competencies focused on
principles and practices within the field of business and restricted to
narrow instrumental job-related tasks. In one human resource manage-
ment course designed to be completed within a 14-week term, a syllabus
contained over 80 outcomes, each of which denoted a startling steril-
ity to the subject. Some such outcomes articulated that students were to
‘define organizational design,’ ‘draw an organizational chart,’ ‘explain the
importance of classifying jobs,’ ‘describe the purpose of conducting a job
evaluation,’ and ‘explain the types of information collected during a job
analysis.’ Under each topical coverage, whether it was human resources
law, job analysis and design, or recruitment and selection, a false pretense
of objectivity is imparted.
Strikingly absent from the curriculum documents analyzed for this
study are learning outcomes that focus on the affective domain, which
would reference student learning as it relates to the development of atti-
tudes, values, beliefs, and interests. Also unaccounted for in the curricular
discourse are the sociopolitical, cultural, and ethical dimensions that are
inherent across occupational fields, technical or otherwise, that are also
deeply entrenched within the world of work. True to its technocratic ide-
ology, packaged and imported from a Global North nation, curricular
focus here is fixated on the preparation of workers whose skills will serve
the efficient functioning of the corporation and labor sector.
This silence and these curricular omissions are deafening in the context
of an educational institution from an economically developed, democrat-
ically structured nation operating in an Arab state, where stark power
imbalances, high unemployment, wage disparity, and poor economic
development are endemic.
Discussion: Technocratic Discourse and the Arab

Sociopolitical Context
It is not possible to adequately capture the Arab struggle for social justice
in this chapter, nor can I feign ignorance of the reductionist potential of
the use of the term ‘the Arab region,’ which represents 22 predominantly
Arabic-speaking nations from Southwest Asia to the westernmost end
of North Africa. Though not entirely homogeneous, the region unites
under broadly shared sociopolitical and economic struggles that I briefly
touch on as I attempt to contextualize the problem of the adoption of
technocratic discourse through foreign branch and satellite campuses in
the Arab region.
This struggle is evidenced by the pulsating eruption of the Arab Spring
in 2011, which took the form of revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen,
Libya, and Syria, along with resistance movements in other neighbor-
ing Arab states. The uprisings brought the struggle of the Arab masses
against long-serving autocratic regimes to the fore, and made the depth
and breadth of systemic social, political, and economic oppression diffi-
cult to ignore. Increasing unemployment, high fuel and food prices, raised
taxes, media censorship, police and military brutality, fraudulent elec-
tions—all were symptoms of state-wide oppression that crippled social
welfare and social justice across many Arab nations. The suppression of
civil society and the erosion of political rights occurred in other, more
implicit ways, through public-sector corruption, through media control
and manipulation of ‘the narrative,’ and through the education system—
especially in the form of suppression of students on university campuses.
In countries like Egypt and Tunisia, labor strikes were on the rise in the
years leading up to the revolutions—and continue to this day—which is
indicative of deep fractures in the economic infrastructure that Achcar
(2013, n.p.) describes as a “a mix of patrimonialism, nepotism, and crony
capitalism, pillaging of public property, swollen bureaucracies, and gen-
eralized corruption, against a background of great sociopolitical insta-
bility and impotence or even nonexistence of the rule of law.” With this
backdrop, this chapter argues that education systems in the Arab states
can and should work towards changing the narrative. Educational sys-
tems, inclusive of TVET, need to respond to social, cultural, economic,
and political developments. In response to the Arab Spring of 2011, and
the continuation of civil unrest and the decade-long civil wars still plagu-
ing Libya and Syria, there needs to be a re-evaluation of the technocratic
cultural diffusion taking place in order to develop a pedagogy appropri-
ate to the increasing unrest and inequity in the region.
Herein lies an opportunity to reform technical and vocational educa-
tion, which often serves academically and socioeconomically marginal-
ized groups, as well as those who experience other types of barriers, to
align with an emancipatory, humanistic, critical pedagogical ideology that
works to raise critical consciousness and empower learners. The voca-
tional classroom, laboratory, or workshop which prepares young Arabs
for occupational roles within strictly defined matrices and hierarchies can
simultaneously cultivate habits of mind and practice, and facilitate what
Freire (1994) refers to as “conscientization”—a heightened awareness of
social reality in order to lay bare systemic inequity—ultimately to articu-
late ways to counter power imbalance and oppression in their various
forms. When Arab national strategies, policies, and standards are silent
about the role of workers in establishing a just society and their poten-
tial to thwart injustice, educators and administrators must find ways to
incorporate those very discussions into curricular frameworks. If ever
there was a time when the Arab people were in need of a more equitable
and socially just-oriented pedagogy to rally behind, or to benefit from, it
is now.
Understanding that education is a social construct that serves social
ends, vocational education can play a role in repelling social control and
reproduction theories that operate covertly through curricular discourse.
Democratic vocational educators and administrators can reject the abusive
narrative that positions TVET learners as mere “economic instruments”
(Kincheloe, 1999, p. 13) and shrouds their conceptualization of freedom.
A democratic vocational education sees that workers, who interact in
the workplace in social, cultural, political, and economic ways, must be
equipped with wisdom that enables them to conduct themselves through
democratic means. This necessitates that they be immersed in a process of
inquiry about concepts such as power relations, equitable representation,
environmental sustainability, and class exploitation. As Freire (1994, p.
85) states, “if people, as historical beings necessarily engaged with other
people in a movement of inquiry, did not control that movement, it would
be (and is) a violation of their humanity.” As such, a critical pedagogical
TVET curriculum can engage learners and future workers in inquiry that
establishes links between their contexts, and their role in promoting lib-
erty and justice within those contexts. Anything but this, and those human
beings are reduced to mere commodities (Freire, 1994).
As previously mentioned, Snedden’s social efficiency model did not go
unchallenged. The most prominent oppositional theory, advocated by
John Dewey, has as its key goals the empowerment of the individual and
the creation of social agency. Dewey (1916) criticized Snedden’s stance on
social efficiency as social control for its orientation towards the interests
of manufacturers (Kilpatrick, 1916). Rather than strive wholly to meet
the interests of businesses and the state, Dewey proposed a humanitarian,
pragmatic model of education, where all students received a vocational
education that also taught them to be critical, democratic citizens of
their world. Building on Dewey’s work, scholars and critical pedagogues
emerged to question the social efficiency model and put forward alter-
native views of TVET that were grounded in critical theories. Gramsci
(1971, pp. 26–43), Giroux (2001), Entwistle (1977), Apple (1979) and
McLaren, Martin, Farahmandpur, and Jaramillo (2004) are some of
these scholars. Joseph Kincheloe (1999) advocated for a vocational edu-
cation where learners are empowered through curriculum and practice to
understand their work environments and the conditions of their work cir-
cumstances, and to take action. He forwarded a progressive democratic
education for TVET where vocational education “confront[s] questions
of justice and oppression…[and] provides students with the knowledge,
skills, and abilities needed to both understand and participate in the
political dynamics of the changing workplace” (Kincheloe, 1999, p. 183).
From a progressive democratic education perspective, TVET has a role
to play in modeling and developing ethical and democratic behavior for
vocational students. Within this framework, students are encouraged to
question enduring and prevailing constructs whilst developing technical
skills. It is this view that underpins this chapter, which endeavors to situ-
ate technical and vocational education within a larger framework that
advocates for the individual’s role, the Arab individual’s role, as citizen
and social agent, as opposed to merely a laborer within an insatiable—
and competitive—economic structure.
The field of critical pedagogy is diverse, but a commonality unifying
its many constructs and conceptions is its grounding in society’s socio-
cultural, cognitive, economic, and political context (McLaren et al.,
2004; Breunig, 2005; Aragon & Brantmeier, 2009). It seeks to transform
society’s oppressive structures through radical, democratic, and activist
approaches (Braa & Callero, 2006). A major question posed by critical
pedagogy is how and why knowledge gets constructed the way it does,
and how and why some constructions of knowledge are legitimized while
others are discounted (McLaren, 2007). By focusing pedagogical praxis
on these questions, a dialectical relationship between subject and object
can emerge, yielding critical educational knowledge (Kincheloe, 2008).
Thus, Kincheloe (2008, p. 29) states, “an educated person in this context
begins to construct her own meaning-making structures, her own inter-
pretive strategies, her own criteria for producing and consuming knowl-
edge,” and ultimately fixed meanings with constructions that are certified
as universal, final truths are destabilized. The complexity in critical com-
plex epistemology, Kincheloe explains, is attributed to the intricate con-
textual dynamics at play in challenging dominant forms of knowledge,
and the complexity and multidimensionality of reality and ways of seeing
the world.
With technical and vocational education being transferred from
the Global North to the Arab region in its problematic technocratic
form, it has steered a critical process and site of social development
away from its potential to nurture liberatory, emancipatory practices.
Since the authors of the curriculum impart the discourse, and discourse
shapes values and actions, this transfer of foreign curriculum to Arab
states as is has caused what Brenner (1999) calls deterritorialization,
the “disembedding of social, economic and political relations from
their local territorial preconditions” that ultimately causes a form of
cultural borrowing and subsequent diffusion (as quoted in Miller-Idriss
& Hanauer, 2011, p. 431).
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have offered a general critique of technocratic logic
as it operates within higher education institutions in Western Global
Northern systems, including colleges and polytechnics specializing in
technical and vocational training. More specifically, I have argued that
the adoption of these technocratic systems in the Arab states, through
branch and satellite campuses, has worked to reduce the transformative
potential of curriculum and instruction to address deep sociopolitical
inequities.
I contended that a technocratic ideology to curriculum and instruc-
tion impairs the ability to erect democratic structures and processes
within the Arab region, through one of its most important conduits. If
we hope for individuals to establish and preserve democratic ways of
being as citizens within a collective and disrupt the cycle of oppression,
education systems must model what a democratic way of life looks like
(Dewey, 1916). Schooling across all levels, from primary to tertiary, has
an opportunity to structure educational environments that demonstrate
regard for the dignity and rights of others, create open channels through
which ideas can be shared, whether they align to social norms or chal-
lenge them, and model how individuals and groups can form coopera-
tives that work to analyze and offer resolutions to emerging problems
(Apple & Beane, 2007).
It would serve the Arab region well to examine the potential for
transformation through critical pedagogies, and an avenue to pursue
this would be through the technical and vocational education sector.
Specifically, TVET has the potential to instigate human agency and trans-
formation when deliberate efforts to adopt ideologies that empower and
mobilize are made. Working to integrate critical pedagogies within TVET
can result in greater appreciation for students’ worldviews, the legitimi-
zation of worker knowledge, the nurturing of critical inquiry, the empow-
erment of workers, and the development of socially, economically, and
politically active agents of change.
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2 Reflections on the Global North
and Global South Engagement
Initiative in Kinigi, Rwanda
Betty Sibongile Dlamini
I experienced so much joy to be part of the team that went to ‘Africa’

to bring enlightenment in the form of children’s books.
(Student X)
Seeing the excited eyes of the children holding their own books for
the first time, I realized that children in Rwanda had a ‘hunger’ for
books, and we were bringing a solution.
(Student Y)
The books we give to the children are very educational because their
stories are in both English and Kinyarwanda, and they are written by
children in Rwanda and the USA.
(Student Z)
Introduction
Hearing the above reflections by students who had been to Rwanda as
part of the annual Books and Beyond Program prompted me to engage in
a reflective examination of the Rwandan Teachers’ English Development
project, which takes place annually during the summer at Kabwende
Primary School, in the Kinigi area of Musanze, Rwanda. The teachers’
project was started as an extension of Indiana University’s Books and
Beyond Program, which is a student International Service Learning (ISL)
program that was initiated in 2008. As I reflected, I asked a series of ques-
tions, starting with what ISL programs are, and why universities in North
America initiate them for their students. What were the goals of the work
with the teachers in Rwanda, and why did I join the initiative? Have the
goals been attained and, if so, to what level? How could the program’s
success be measured? What are the complex areas? The keywords that
kept surfacing as I interrogated this program were ‘empowerment’ and
‘inequalities.’ In discussing the presence, absence, or coexistence of these
two forces, I bring in the Ubuntu African philosophy and integrationism
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-4
Global North and Global South Engagement 29
because I see them as benchmarks that I can use as I attempt to answer
the above questions.
Most universities in North America and other institutions of higher
education in Global North spaces enrich their degree programs by includ-
ing ISL as a requirement or option. What is ISL and why do universi-
ties give it such importance? Ravyn McKee (2016), who has undertaken
intensive research in this field, identifies four main goals of ISL: civic
engagement, transformative experience, critical reflection, and nonreflec-
tive modes of learning. These goals imply an element of willingness to
shift out of the Global North’s comfort zone, which is not a quality that
is common there. A transformative experience can occur when there is a
reciprocal interaction between the students and the communities within
which they immerse themselves. Awareness of this factor made me see the
relevance of integrationism because of its accommodating nature.
Theoretical Framework of Integrationism

According to Makoni, “Integrationism provides us with opportunities
to view language planning, language maintenance, and indeed language
rights from different perspectives” (2012, pp. 680–688). This potential
to consider various perspective of language makes me regard integra-
tionism as a force that allows consideration of various phenomena that
may interplay at any given time, such as the interactions that take place
whenever students participate in ISL programs and then encounter unfa-
miliar communities. Whereas during colonial encounters, such interac-
tions were and still are lopsided, giving value to whatever originates from
the Global North and deeming inconsequential whatever is from the
Global South, a program that adheres to integrationism deviates from
that kind of myopic outlook. Just as Makoni and Pennycook observe that
“in Integrationism, language is inextricably embedded in contexts of use,
and meanings are achieved through continuous and dynamic negotia-
tions” (2007, p. 681), I argue that in integrationism, social interactions
between people, regardless of which social settings or parts of the world
they hail from, are indistinguishably embedded in reciprocal respect and
dignity. This same environment of mutual receptivity is what the Ubuntu
African philosophy is built upon, and that is why in this chapter I opera-
tionalize integrationism and Ubuntu in a transposable manner. During
communication, ungrammaticality is of no consequence because “break-
ing rules and making up new ones is what people really do when people
are interacting” (Walt Whitman cited in Johnstone, 1999, p. 313). After
all, language is integrated and cannot be separated from other semiotic
systems in which verbal and semiotic repertoires and life histories are
intimately tied together. I begin my reflection on the teachers’ program in
Rwanda by discussing ISL programs.
30 Betty Sibongile Dlamini
Integrationism and International Service Learning (ISL)
ISL is one of the areas where disparities between the Global North and
Global South manifest themselves. The role of ISL in academia is criti-
cal, and every success in attempts to narrow the disconnect between the
Global North and Global South in that area will have impact in due
course. Presently, in the USA, service learning, especially ISL, is an inte-
gral part of the overall education of university students (Miletich, 2014,
p. 254). Its intentions are positive and when done well, it can yield results
that can dismantle the predominant ideology, which gives precedence to
the Global North over the Global South. Some scholars have identified
its ideal intentions, claiming that it combines academic instruction and
community-based service. Its accolades go even higher when it is offered
in an international context. In that regard, one of its goals is to enrich the
participating students with global awareness and development of humane
values, and thus build intercultural understanding (Crabtree, 2008, p.
18). The kind of learning that ISL offers transcends theoretical learning
and allows students to experience the process of transformational learn-
ing (Kiely, 2005, pp. 5–22). ISL puts emphasis on development of the
university students, the supervising faculty that work with the students,
and the community partners that they work with (Karakos et al., 2016,
p. 169). ISL programs have a challenge in attaining and maintaining this
kind of recommended equal partnership with the Global South commu-
nities they target for their learning purposes, because everywhere else,
outside ISL, relationships between the Global North and Global South
are built on a foundation of inequality (Kacowicz, 2007, pp. 565–580).
The impact of ISL is undeniable, but it fluctuates and leaves much
to be done to attain the intended outcomes of transformative educa-
tion (Mezirow, 1991), which is important for humanity. This education
is often evidenced by learned graduates who are globally informed and
view the wider world with an attitude of dignity and respect (Letseka,
2012). There are common difficult issues that are often left unaddressed,
but which can yield opportunities for critical analysis and reflection
(Grusky, 2000). Grusky uncovers deep contradictions that underlie
the ISL programs, and states that when students go abroad, they have
many questions: “Why are so many people poor? Why is there so much
inequality or injustice? The answers are rarely simple, but these are teach-
able moments” (Grusky, 2000, p. 859). She articulates that the challenge
presented to educators is to create a relevant curriculum that can build on
and respond to the potential learning space opened by service learning.
She continues, “developing programs and facilitators with the ability to
creatively integrate the experiential component with study, reflection, and
analysis is a common problem” (Grusky, 2000, p. 860). Despite all the
challenges that ISL poses for educators who may not be fully prepared,
the program exposes students to social realities in other cultures which
may not be experienced in their daily lives. An educator or program
director who recognizes this reality can help overcome paternalism or
simplistic ideas of charity. Grusky (2000, p. 861) claims that the success
of ISL programs relies on their operating from a foundation of reciproc-
ity, by responding to concerns that the communities served identify, and
by concretely addressing inequities in resources and opportunities.
I acquiesce with Grusky (2000, p. 861) in that the real power and
potential of ISL is precisely at this juncture, where the experience meets
the study with critical analysis and reflection. Rebecca Carver observes
that the positive outcomes of ISL include increased self-knowledge, sup-
portive relationships among peers, and genuine respect and appreciation
for self and others (Carver, 1997, p. 143). Participating in an ISL program
empowers students by giving them the opportunity to reflect, and then
view their Global North and Global South communities in a way that is
different from their peers who have not participated in these programs.
The reason behind this dissimilarity is that before students leave the USA
to go to overseas countries, to places in which the cultures are different
from their own, they go through training. The training makes them aware
that as they go to serve people abroad, they will also be served not only
through the opportunity to serve, but also through learning new forms of
knowledge which they may previously have been oblivious to. The train-
ing can help some students approach ISL with humility, knowing that they
will learn while they serve. This attitude is a trait of the Ubuntu African
philosophy, which advocates for reciprocity and willingness to adapt
while influencing others. In concurrence with this, Ubuntu is “dynamic
and continually adapting” (Chitumba, 2013, p. 1269). ISL gives students
an environment that promotes shifting toward adaptability and willing-
ness to learn from other people outside their familiar environment, that
claims supremacy over others. I observe that ISL has potential to disrupt
the supremacy of Global North cultures by inspiring students to question
this hegemony and shift toward establishing common ground with world
cultures rather than focusing on the differences. ISL’s ability to disrupt
resembles the ability of integrationism to break rules and make up new
ones as people interact using different languages and dialects (Johnstone,
1999, pp. 313–321). Integrationism places importance on communica-
tion rather than on rigid language rules. This is like the fluid concept of
Ubuntu African philosophy, which places value on humanity rather than
on conforming to rigid rules.
Ubuntu African Philosophy as a Model of Fostering Integrationism

Ubuntu African philosophy is complex by nature. In African communi-
ties it is used during the socialization of children to educate them on
African knowledge, and the expectations and practices of how individu-
als, families, and communities must interact with each other. The intent
is to indigenize social work with children in Africa (Mugumbate &
Chereni, 2019). In this context, I use it as a mechanism, the goal of which
is the good of humanity. I regard it as an essential element to any form of
authentic relationship and communication. This is in alignment with the
recommendations of Pennycook and Makoni (2020, p.18) who state, “to
redress the deep-seated concerns, there is a need to open to a wider range
of possibilities.” The question remains: what is Ubuntu? Numerous phi-
losophers have defined this African concept in different and sometimes
fluid ways. Here, I have selected the few that are relevant to my asser-
tion that Ubuntu is fundamental to negotiating integrationism, because
it accords dignity and respect to humans, and does not discriminate as is
the tendency with attitudes from the Global North toward Global South
communities.
As a preamble to the definitions, I provide a foundation of the con-
cept and its role in greetings, the introduction to communication between
two parties. The concept comes from umuntu, which means a person
in the Nguni languages of southern Africa. The same concept is found
in different Bantu African languages, but for the purpose of this discus-
sion I use the Nguni languages. At its very foundation, Ubuntu manifests
itself in the recognition of another human being whom you encounter. In
the Nguni languages, exchanging greetings is more than an opening to
communication; it is the recognition of the person being greeted and the
greeter’s sense of belonging to larger communities than just themselves.
When you greet one person, you say sawubona/siyakubona, which means
‘we see you,’ and for many people it is sanibona/siyanibona, meaning
‘we see you all.’ The prefix ‘si’ (we) indicates that when someone greets
another person, the initiator of the greeting acts on behalf of many
people, without whom he or she does not exist. Instantly, in a greeting,
Ubuntu manifests itself in the recognition of people who are not physi-
cally there, but to whom both the greeter and the greeted are community
members. The proverbial expression umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu means
‘a human being is a human being because of other human beings,’ and
it emphasizes an individual’s sense of belonging to a bigger community
outside that individual himself or herself. At another level, the expression
means that a human being who does not respect humanity is good for
nothing. In a nutshell, Ubuntu dictates respecting and accepting other
human beings for who they are.
According to Johann Broodryk (2002, p. 26), “Ubuntu can be defined
as a comprehensive ancient African world view based on the values of
intense humanness, caring, sharing, respected compassion and associated
values, ensuring a happy and qualitative human community life in the
spirit of family.” Concurring with that, Ncube (2010) observes Ubuntu’s
numerous qualities, including recognizing the contribution of others, and
further empowering and nurturing others. The Global South communi-
ties who are targets of universities that seek ISL opportunities for their
students demonstrate Ubuntu by receiving the students, and therefore
embracing a spirit of caring, community, harmony, hospitality, respect,
and responsiveness. Ubuntu recognizes the genuine otherness of all peo-
ple; in other words, the diversity of people, languages, histories, and cul-
tures must be recognized and acknowledged (Louw, 2001; Ncube, 2010;
Mugumbate & Nyanguru, 2013). I have observed the qualities of Ubuntu
as having more to do with interpersonal relations. This includes empathy,
connectivity, openness, generosity, and humanness (Broodryk, 2005). It
was through these five qualities that the Books and Beyond Program was
established in 2008.
The Books and Beyond International Service Learning Program

It all started when Indiana University (IU) alumna Nancy Uslan, the
visionary of the program, traveled to Rwanda in fall 2005. In an interview,
Uslan stated that when it started, it was not about books, but about cre-
ating a relationship to help provide mentorship for 5th grade children in
an underprivileged school in New Jersey. She added that from those early
conversations, multiple connections were created, including: students
who were residents at the Indiana University’s Global Village Living-
Learning Center; children and teachers at Kabwende Primary School
in the Musanze Provence of Rwanda; children and teachers in three US
elementary schools; faculty at IU; and Rwandan people in Bloomington,
Indiana. In summer 2008, Ali Nagle went to Kabwende Primary School to
perform a needs assessment. In summer 2009, the Global Village Living-
Learning Center students raised over $20,000 to support travel and print-
ing of 2,000 copies of The World is Our Home, Volume I.
The Books and Beyond Program continues publishing books under the
series The World is Our Home. The stories in the collection are written
by Rwandan and American children, and they revolve around hopes and
dreams, exploring topics such as going to college, future careers, and
everyday life in Rwanda and the USA. The children write and illustrate
their own stories, benefiting personally and professionally from the cul-
tural exchange of literacy. Responding to a question about the impact of
the program, its co-founder faculty B. Samuelson stated that the Books
and Beyond Program continues to foster intercultural communication
and critical thinking skills as the students work together. Every summer,
a group of students from IU goes to distribute The World is Our Home
books to the children at Kabwende Primary School. They arrive when
the school is on break and volunteer to teach English to the 5th grade
children. It is from that session that they start working on stories for the
following year. In 2018, the Books and Beyond Program celebrated its
tenth anniversary at IU. Its visionary founder, Nancy Uslan, was present
and it was a time of celebration and reflection for the Books and Beyond
Program.
New Relationship with the Books and Beyond Program
The then director of the program, Vera Marinova, invited me to sing at the
celebration. I wanted to accept, but I also wanted to know more about the
program and how I could best support them with my music. We had a brief
telephone conversation during which I agreed to sing, and then I requested
a meeting so that we could have an in-depth talk, to help me find out more
about the program, and for Ms Marinova to know more about my compos-
ing and singing skills. She told me that they wanted me to sing a song to
entertain the audience. I informed her that I do not sing to simply entertain,
but if they wanted, I could compose and perform a song that was relevant
to the Books and Beyond Program’s tenth anniversary. After that meeting, I
promised to compose a song befitting the program and the ceremony. Now,
reflecting on that scenario, I view what happened as a demonstration of
Ubuntu. Being a proponent of Ubuntu, a product of the Global South, pro-
pelled me to respect and accord dignity to the Books and Beyond Program
by composing the song below:
We’re here to celebrate Books and Beyond [2×]

Ten years of giving—Ten years of reading
IU sending—Rwanda receiving
It is a relationship—It is reciprocal [2×]
Oh yeah
IU sending—Rwanda receiving
Rwanda sending—IU receiving [5×]
We’re here to celebrate Books and Beyond [2×]
Most of the speeches at the celebration emphasized how the Books and
Beyond Program had given help to the children in Rwanda. The emphasis
on Rwandan children being recipients of help from the Books and Beyond
Program perturbed me. It gave the program a charity characteristic, which
is not what service learning is about. According to Grusky, “service learn-
ing often means the community or agency is offering the student a service,
not vice versa” (2000, p. 861). Knowing the important role of the com-
munity in which students practice service learning—that is, the children
of the Kabwende Primary School in the case of Books and Beyond—I had
intentionally included the lyrics, “It is a relationship—It is reciprocal,” and
repeated numerous times the clauses, “IU sending—Rwanda receiving;
Rwanda sending—IU receiving.” When reflecting on the activities of the
event, I realized that the lyrics of my song had gone in a different direction
from the talks, and that bothered me and triggered questions about the
cause of the divergent viewpoints about the program. I concluded that the
differing outlooks toward the program were caused by the different points
of departure between me and the people who spoke that evening. Whereas
the program itself and the speakers were products of the Global North
approach, mine was a Global South approach that emphasizes reciproc-
ity. The differing expressions were not merely personal standpoints, but
pronouncements of the approaches of which we are products. The Global
North operates from a stance of superiority over Global South countries;
as a product of the Global South, I am conscious of the inequalities that
exist and I approach with an intent to extinguish such inequalities.
After my song rendition at the Books and Beyond tenth anniversary
celebration, we had a reflective dialog with the program’s director, in
which she divulged more about the ‘beyond’ part of Books and Beyond.
I learned about the work done by Michael Courtney, IU’s outreach and
engagement librarian, who served for two years as an advisory board
member for Books and Beyond, and then two years later in 2014, estab-
lished a library project that entailed training teachers for two days. Ms
Marinova asked me to tell her more about my background and scholar-
ship. I told her that among many things, my interests included women’s
empowerment, creative writing, and research. I also told her that as an
educator, I had over ten years of experience as a teacher of English as a
second language and English literature. She told me about the challenge
faced by Rwandan teachers due to the change of policy in the country
that shifted the language of instruction in schools from French to English.
Some of the teachers had only French as a second language following
Kinyarwanda and/or Swahili. Despite my current passion at the time
being the use of performing arts for women’s empowerment within rural
communities, the influence of Ubuntu compelled me to redirect my focus
and participate in an area where I could have impact.
With the support of IU’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and
International Studies, and the College of Arts and Sciences, I went to
Rwanda with the Books and Beyond team in summer 2018. Although I was
ready to engage and share what I knew as relevant to learning English as a
second language, I was aware that when working with adults we can make
a difference by changing our assumptions about learners (Fairchild, 2003, p.
16). I was also aware that learning a new foreign language in adulthood was
a challenge, and there was a need to use learning approaches that would
work for adult learners. As Bradley and Graham (2000) state that adult
learners have a complex knowledge from which to draw, and they focus on
skills and knowledge that are applicable to their life circumstances, I saw
my involvement with the program as timely. However, I was undertaking
a needs assessment with the teachers in Kabwende, which meant I had to
approach the situation with the attitude of a learner.
First Trip to Rwanda: Needs Assessment

When I went to Rwanda for the first visit in 2018, I had never been to any
African country outside the southern African region. I wanted to ask more
questions and get to know about the teachers I was going to work with.
Ms Marinova had already told me of the teachers’ challenge as they had
to shift to using English as a medium of instruction in schools, but I still
needed to hear directly from the teachers about what we could work on
together. On the first day, we had an informal self-introduction session, in
which I found that the teachers all had different levels of English. I distrib-
uted a survey, which helped me identify the teachers’ needs and expecta-
tions from the workshop. The majority wanted to get help with how to
learn and improve their English. I had come prepared for this need through
my experience as a high school English language and literature teacher
prior to teaching at university.
I decided to give the teachers the opportunity to brainstorm ideas
for learning English before giving them what I already had. At the end,
we got the following: (1) read and listen to news in English, such as
BBC Radio, CBC Radio and Breaking News; (2) learn English from
free English lessons on YouTube and other websites; (3) join or start a
club for people who want to learn English, and this could even be on
WhatsApp; (4) join the library group, in which you could read books
and meet regularly to talk about them; (5) watch free online English
videos or films, and talk about them in English to your peers; (6) go to
places where you find people who don’t know Kinyarwanda, with whom
you can connect only in English and start talking to them—these places
could include the Goico Plaza in Musanze and other tourist attractions;
and (7) volunteer to be a tour guide, where English speakers might be
sympathetic and help you.
For the remaining days of the workshop, we discussed creative ways
for teachers to compel the school children to speak and write in English.
The teachers identified communicating with a pen pal who lives outside
Rwanda, who wants to know more about Rwandan culture or anything
special that is found in the country, as one of the compelling situations,
because the person would need tell the pen friend about life in Rwanda.
As a final task, the teachers accepted a writing challenge in which they
had to regard me as their pen pal and then write to me about one aspect
of their culture. I promised a $100 prize for the best essay, with some
unnamed consolation prizes. The evaluations of the workshop showed
that the teachers had felt comfortable talking about things they already
knew. The teachers asked me to form a WhatsApp English group in which
to practice writing and speaking in English. They also asked me to come
again in summer 2019.
Upon my return to the USA, I applied for and received a New Frontiers
in the Arts and Humanities Exploratory Travel Fellowship to evaluate
the impact of using the communicative approach of teaching English to
elementary school teachers in Rwanda: a case study of Kabwende and
Nyabitsinze primary schools, Musanze region. Reading the essays that
the teachers sent inspired me to offer them a one-day workshop on non-
fiction writing.
When I returned to Rwanda in 2019, my experience was differ-
ent because I was now connected to the teachers. Being part of the
WhatsApp English group familiarized me with the culture and news,
and how Ubuntu makes communicators divulge more about themselves
each time they engage. According to Ncube, this kind of connectedness
is central to meaningful human engagement and understanding (2010,
p. 78). When I returned to Rwanda, the number of workshop par-
ticipants increased. All participants of the 2018 workshop, who were
teachers from Kabwende and Nyabitsinze primary schools, returned.
Ten more teachers from a local secondary school in the same area as the
two elementary schools applied to participate in the workshop. They
had heard about the workshop from the primary school teachers. The
2019 workshop was divided into two sections, comprising an intensive
one-day workshop on nonfiction writing and a four-day part on using
the communicative approach to teaching English.
As a facilitator, I demonstrated to the teachers how to create scenarios
in which a person who does not speak English, like someone in Rwanda,
would find himself or herself being compelled to speak the language. I did
not simply give the teachers the scenarios, but we brainstormed and created
them as a team. Doing that was a way of giving the teachers ownership of
the work as we progressed. This prevented the teachers from being what
Freire (1996) calls “empty vessels,” waiting to be “filled up” by the knowl-
edgeable teacher. This gesture gives recognition to the teachers, which is
another important quality of Ubuntu in communication. I asked the teach-
ers why a person who speaks French and Kinyarwanda would need to speak
in English in Rwanda. They identified several situations, including having
friends overseas; interacting with tourists who come to Rwanda; and small-
business owners who want to buy wares at the local markets to sell outside
Rwanda, to name but a few. From the examples we found after brainstorm-
ing, I led the class in creating a task for students in a classroom setting.
In the next step, I divided the teachers into small groups in which they
created more scenarios and looked at how teachers and students commu-
nicate within them during lessons. The tasks were to be divided to match
the level of English required from the learners. Together with the teach-
ers, we agreed that they could use the same model to create scenarios that
are at the school children’s level. The teachers concluded that in addition
to the scenarios, the requirement for students to pass English in order to
be admitted to college or university was enough motivation to communi-
cate in the language.
The next two days were more hands on, with creation of activities the
teachers could use in their classes, and discussing specific aspects of gram-
mar that the teachers requested during the workshop, in addition to what
they had requested at the end of the 2018 workshop. During that work-
shop, the teachers who had not attended the nonfiction writing workshop
earlier expressed a desire to learn what they had missed. Although the
workshop agenda had already been planned, ignoring this request would
have gone against the purpose of the workshop, which was to empower
the teachers. As part of the application of Ubuntu, therefore, the teachers’
needs were considered, and I adjusted the program.
By the end of the workshop, the teachers articulated that they wanted to
write their own stories about life in Rwanda and its special attractions in
a way that is like the book The World is Our Home, written by Rwandan
and American children in both Kinyarwanda and English. However, they
wanted their book project to be in English only. The teachers expressed that
they wanted that their voices to be heard outside Rwanda and they chose
topics to write about individually. The teachers listed their names and the
topics they wanted to write about. Instantly, I realized that when I returned
to the USA, I needed to apply for funding to support the teachers’ work.
The next plan was to work on that project in our next workshop, polishing
the teachers’ writing so that it was ready for publication, like the children’s
book.
After my return to the USA, communication between me and the teach-
ers continued. We maintained our WhatsApp group and added the new
members who had not attended in 2018. We agreed that we would use
that forum to help teachers practice using English by texting full sen-
tences and recording voice notes. They could also post questions and
share things that would help members improve their English. The teach-
ers were asked to formally communicate with me via email. They were
to send me their work in stages, from sending the topic area, a summary
paragraph of the intended work, and an outline of the work according
to each project’s nature, to the first and then the final drafts. We allo-
cated due dates to each step. Individual communication between me as
a facilitator and the teachers took place via emails, text messages, and
WhatsApp calls. General messages were conveyed through the head
teachers of the two elementary schools and direct messages to ten teach-
ers from the secondary school. Out of the 60 teachers who attended the
workshop, 50 signed up to write something about Rwanda, but only 36
fulfilled that promise and worked on their essays to the final stage. Others
reported that they had experienced challenges, including being unable
to find the time to write, and not having access to WhatsApp and email.
Observations, Questionnaires, and Interviews

The research I undertook in connection with the workshop included
observations, a questionnaire, and interviews with a sample of ten teach-
ers. I observed my own interactions with the teachers, and the teach-
ers’ interactions with me and each other, all of which helped inform my
conclusion about the use of the communicative approach to teaching.
This process of observation is part of applying Ubuntu because while you
engage with a person, you are attentive to their body language. Ubuntu
compels a participant in a communication process to be attentive while
paying respect to themselves and the other person they are communicat-
ing with. The research findings will be presented to a group of teachers
who focus on African languages and language policy in Africa.
Undertaking this study made me aware of the fact that, as an African in
the diaspora, I equally need to be attentive to latent attitudes and behavior
patterns that tend to happen when the Global North engages with the
Global South. According to Grusky (2000), these attitudes and behav-
iors include regarding communities that avail themselves of ISL to Global
North universities as recipients of charity, ignoring the fact that in partner-
ships like this every party gives and receives. It is a relationship of reciproc-
ity at all levels. As Zimmerman and Perkins (1995) state, it is important to
focus on the goal, aims, and strategies of implementing change.
As I reflect on my own experience with the teachers of English project
in Rwanda, I am aware that the inadequacies and challenges that arise
can be a learning curve for the betterment of the program and its affili-
ated projects. Adopting this openness instantly makes one realize that the
Ubuntu African philosophy is a force that can enable authentic, unbiased
critical analysis and reflection, because of its quality of respect and con-
sideration for others. This makes me aware that just as I have the strength
of multilingualism—with my four southern African ethnic languages and
English—so do the Rwandan teachers who, in addition to the numerous
African languages such as Kinyarwanda and Swahili, also have mastery
of the French language, which I do not have. The teachers’ languages
give them access to many African languages. As I reflect, I realize that the
Ubuntu African philosophy enables me to be humble and willing to learn
Kinyarwanda as I attempt to help the teachers learn English. In addition
to the language, I am also learning more about the cultures of the people
of Rwanda, including kwita izina (the gorilla-naming ceremony), umu-
ganda (the national cleaning day), and the International Peace Marathon,
to name but a few. It is important to reflect on the relevance of Ubuntu
in the Rwandan teachers’ English development program. My reflection
starts with a debrief of Ubuntu.
Conclusion
To espouse an authentic perspective on international development that
results in radical transformation capable of recompensing all engaged
parties, it is imperative to adopt the values of the Ubuntu African philos-
ophy. As demonstrated in the conversations in the course of delivering an
education that succeeds and benefits those engaged in the education busi-
ness, it is crucial to reject the notion of allotting supremacy to values that
stem from the Global North while showing condescension toward values
that originate from the Global South. This chapter has argued that the
notions of ISL and international development in their current form need
to be remodeled. There is a need to consider the fact that in any form
of relationship where the goal is to bring enlightenment and a desirable
change, reciprocity and genuine respect for all parties involved makes it
possible to achieve each goal at hand. In higher education, continuing to
ignore the voices from all forms of the Global South is an effective way
of regressing to the past, and undermines the progress and innovations
that education should value. Every step toward learning from the back-
grounds and cultures of all humanity engaged in the education process
promotes sustainable development of new knowledge. As people from
the Global South endeavor to learn languages from the Global North,
such knowledge gives them access to more avenues—the attitude that all
humanity interested in accessing new geographies can embrace and put
value in languages and cultures that are alien to their own. In conclusion,
integrationism is happening, one step at a time, and as the Global North
recognizes the fact that there is knowledge that needs tapping into from
the Global South, the latter needs to assert its voice and offer the episte-
mologies that have been neglected for many years by academia.
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3 Polycentric or Pluricentric?
Epistemic Traps in Sociolinguistic
Approaches to Multilingual Portuguese
Clara Keating
Introduction
As a southern European Portuguese researcher, I explore in this chapter
the underlying ontologies triggered by two distinct sociolinguistic terms
circulating in European Portuguese academic space: that of Portuguese
as pluricentric language and that of Portuguese happening in polycentric
spaces of multilingual behavior.
The emergence of recent public and academic discourses on linguistic
diversity motivates me to unpack these terms. They present European
Portuguese as a modern world language, and Portuguese society as cosmo-
politan, progressive, and linguistically diverse. Today we find ourselves at a
crucial historical moment to engage in a critique of what makes this a dom-
inant discourse in contemporary Portuguese society—as part of 21st-cen-
tury common sense and much along the lines of the discursive construction
of other world languages. This is an opportunity to understand the extent
to which this multilingual Portuguese discourse bewilders understandings
regarding the dynamics of language, and the corresponding spaces of citi-
zenship inhabited by speakers whose extremely complex multilingual rep-
ertoires are due to migrancy and dislocation (lived or inherited), and who
now live in Portuguese-speaking contexts in Portugal and elsewhere.
Reflexivity about sociolinguistic terminology in this southern European
academic context is also a way of engaging in the exercise of decolonizing
our mainstream modes of production and circulation of academic knowl-
edge. For this purpose, I revisit data from previous studies on language
and migration in Portuguese-speaking contexts where I have used these
terms, including language policy analyses, and progressive work with
migrants and refugees in my own medieval university town of Coimbra,
saturated by discourses of immaterial colonial heritage.
I assume a decolonial angle to understand (a) the actual scope provided
by the use of the terms pluricentricity and polycentricity to account for the
complex semiotic resources at play in the highly entangled negotiations
of language diversity, difference, and hierarchy in migrant contexts; and
(b) the extent to which both terms navigate across activities configured
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-5
Polycentric or Pluricentric? 43
by radically local constraints and are strategically (and pragmatically)
appropriated according to interests situated in the political economies of
different academic and public policy contexts. Both terms run the risk of
being domesticated in the process, and of reproducing already established
ways of doing and knowing, with limited impact on creating spaces of
voice and citizenship for the speakers involved. Assessing how underlying
understandings of language correspond to certain regimes of knowledge
production and circulation might help us identify how traces of epis-
temic blindness (Santos, 2001) circulate across lusophone institutional
spaces—from academia and scientific contexts to governmental and non-
governmental bodies involved in language policy. This is useful to clarify
the transformative scope of our work, our complex positionalities as lan-
guage researchers and academic activists situated in peripheral and semi-
peripheral contexts, and the hows, whys, and for whom.
Nodes of Coloniality: The Decolonial Exercise

Invited to discuss Silvia Cusicanqui’s insights on the practices and dis-
courses of decoloniality, I identified elsewhere some nodes that position
language research in a Portuguese-speaking southern European higher
education context such as my own (Cusicanqui, 2019; Keating, 2019a):
first, an academic habitus crossed by a central monolingual lusophone
heritage prestige, and by a peripheral anglophone contemporary and
global impact; and second, hegemonic ontologies of language as a nor-
mative system and practice that tend to be reproduced across scales of
time and space, no matter the progressive attempts to critique or resist
them. Despite the available tools that approach micro-political and mul-
tilingual attention to conversation, to language as heteroglossic practice
explicitly articulated to dynamics and dimensions of power and ideol-
ogy, intellectuals in general still seem to be positioned by internalized
and embodied linguistic hegemonies, either based on language as decon-
textualized form and internal processing, or on monolithic articulations
between language and identity. Cusicanqui points to the added risk of
the colonial appropriation of any kind of decolonial exercise, given the
“arboreal structure of internal-external colonialism with centers and sub-
centers, nodes and subnodes, connecting certain universities, disciplinary
trends, and academic fashions of the North with their counterparts in the
South” (2019, p. 109). Her warning forces us to unveil and explore the
intrinsically colonial conditions regarding the modes of production and
distribution of knowledge enacted by higher education institutions across
the world. This includes my own niche, situated in a specific southern
European context crossed by the tension between medieval and baroque
lusophone, and modern pragmatic anglophone discourses on what counts
as scientific knowledge and on what languages it should be conveyed in
(Bennett, 2007, 2014; Solovova, Santos, & Veríssimo, 2018).
44 Clara Keating
Decolonizing habitus, ontologies, and modes of production and dis-
tribution of knowledge about language, culture, and society is an ambi-
tious research agenda. I focus here on the constructs of pluricentricity
and polycentricity because the terms have been circulating, with a flare of
novelty and progress, across Portuguese-speaking higher education insti-
tutions and academic discourses on multilingual Portuguese.
We know for a fact that pluricentric approaches have been extensively
criticized from various quarters in anglophone academia, including those
that assume the need to let go of one-dimensional (or even bidimensional)
concentric understandings of world languages founded on linguistic vari-
ety only, and are calling for a multidimensional focus based on histori-
cally overlapped, radically local negotiations of languages, registers, and
speakers in actual contexts (Yano, 2001; Pennycook, 2009). This plu-
rilithic understanding runs much along the lines of the call for dynamic
discursive/pragmatic understandings of polycentric semiotic spaces
(Blommaert, Collins, & Slembrouck, 2005; Li & Juffermans, 2014).
Despite this long-term debate in the sociolinguistics field, dynamic plu-
rilithic or polycentric understandings of language have little impact in
mainstream lusophone academic and language policy contexts, especially
in Europe. They are absent from public discourses on linguistic diversity,
where pluri- and poly- conflate in the circulation of one hegemonical
discourse—that of pluricentric Portuguese, considered by institutional
actors as the only meaningful, progressive, and truly ‘linguistic’ (i.e., sci-
entific) understanding of language variation and diversity that matters
for Portuguese as a world language. It is this absence of sociolinguistic
debate in Portuguese-speaking institutions that compels me to explore
them in more depth here. By examining the impact of these terms in
public lusophone discourses, I am also making an attempt to move one
step beyond this duality. I aim to explore the extent to which both pluri-
centricity and polycentricity run the risk of acting upon the reproduction
of linguistic inequality, be it by highlighting Eurocentric understandings
of linguistic rationality, or by silencing multiple other possible semiotic
resources in the process. While the terms apparently present themselves
with some emancipatory potential, both seemed to trigger sociolinguistic
positionings with little in the way of transformative effects for the actual
speakers in our contexts. In the next section I describe how the need to
engage in this ontological work emerged out of our Portuguese-based
language and migration research.
Pluricentric Language and Polycentric Space in Portuguese-based

Migrant Contexts
Inspired by the academic environment of a research center that devel-
ops Southern decolonial thinking (and yet working in collateral and only
indirectly related sociolinguistic issues of language and migration), our
approach has been grounded in linguistic ethnographic work with multi-
lingual speakers, exploring their repertoires and practices in spaces where
Portuguese plays a role. In our studies, migration was considered both
the lived condition displayed by speakers and a metaphor (as movement
and mobility of semiotic resources across time and space) to understand
language, literacy, and semiotic activity in our sites of observation and
collaboration with migrants. We were reflexive researchers and took the
side of those considered more vulnerable, by aligning our research posi-
tions as speakers or learners of nondominant linguistic varieties in the
distinct language ecologies under scrutiny: Portuguese in the English-
dominant UK, and Slavic languages, as well as Cape Verdean Creole,
in Portuguese-dominant Portugal (Matias, 2016; Keating, Solovova, &
Barradas, 2018; Solovova, 2019).
The ethnographic and discursive analyses of language policies emerged
because of the needs displayed by participants regarding their own and
their families’ dynamics of integration and citizenship. We compared the
trajectories of the language and literacy discourses at play in the various
sites—where they came from and what they revealed about linguistic ideol-
ogy (Woolard, 2020). I went on to explore in more depth how European
Portuguese is placed at the center of an imagined symbolic imperial ter-
ritory, based on what Lourenço (2014) has called a colonial myth with
historical roots in Portuguese colonialism across the world. I felt the need
to create a historical map of the topoi regarding the value of Portuguese
in discourses produced by this European center, as well as their circulation
across policies produced by the Portuguese state, both inside national terri-
torial boundaries and across Portuguese-speaking diasporic communities. I
identified how an episteme of Portuguese as a modern and global language
circulated across various public policy sites, boosted by the emergence of
Brazil in the BRIC economy, permeated by neoliberal discourses of profit
entangled in discourses of pride (Duchêne & Heller, 2013; Keating, 2019b).
More recently, discourses of linguistic diversity balance between celebra-
tions of pluricentric Portuguese and, even though at a smaller scale, alter-
native approaches to Portuguese acting in multilingual spaces traversed by
distinct regimes of linguistic authority and power (polycentricity). I start by
exploring pluricentric Portuguese.
A Pluricentric Approach to Portuguese

A pluricentric language defines languages as bounded systems with sev-
eral codified standards, often corresponding to different nation-states.
A language is considered pluricentric when it meets criteria such as: (a)
being used as a national and/or official variety of more than one nation-
state; (b) displaying structural and pragmatic differentiated characteris-
tics; (c) having recognized official status as either a national/official or a
regional language; (d) being accepted by a language community as part of
46 Clara Keating
its social/national identity; and (e) being used deliberately or intentionally
in language policy and planning, be it by codification or language educa-
tion, among other ways of promotion and dissemination (Clyne, 1992).1
The term is rooted in principles of linguistic standardization, sociolinguis-
tic variation, and functional distributions of dominant and nondominant
linguistic varieties, whose predetermined status is firmly anchored on offi-
cial recognition of the multiple normative centers that regulate the linguis-
tic and social life of speakers (Muhr & Meisnitzer, 2018, pp. 40–42). This
normative ontology is based on socio-cognitive understandings of language
as decontextualized instances of verbal practice shared by a large commu-
nity of speakers. One starts by identifying those structural and pragmati-
cally differentiated features that are recurrently said to constitute already
established standard varieties, or are in the process of standardization; once
objectified, they are prone to qualitative inquiry or quantification—this
helps identify normative dynamics enacted by institutional actors situated
in differentiated geopolitical centers, at a large scale (da Silva, 2013). The
predetermined focus on linguistic varieties runs the risk of losing track of
the negotiations involved in linguistic recognition, by actual speakers with
situated repertoires in certain historically located contexts, usually perme-
ated by highly complex and messy factors.
This decontextualized understanding of language has been a power-
ful tool to substantiate certain, usually generalized and predictive, lan-
guage policy and planning purposes across different historically situated
geopolitical contexts, especially those involving transnational alliances
anchored on an idea of a linguistic knowledge across speakers with
shared colonial pasts (e.g., lusophone, anglophone, or francophone).
This is obvious for the consolidation of already established varieties of
Portuguese (Brazilian and European), but even more so if we follow the
potential of the term for the standardization of other varieties under the
national and transnational geopolitical projects of other nation-states
with Portuguese as an official language. Gilvan Müller de Oliveira (2016)
analyzes how the articulation of the demographic increase in African
nation-states and the emergence of official language policies in educa-
tion, amongst other regulatory tools, projects substantial changes in the
global political economy of Portuguese standard varieties for 2100. The
author predicts the emergence of plural national standards across the
Portuguese-speaking world and a shift from a bi-centered—Brazilian-
and European-based—map toward a truly multicentered normative sys-
tem incorporating African varieties. In Müller de Oliveira’s projection,
Brazilian, Angolan, and Mozambican varieties would prevail in a space
situated on a South Atlantic axis that clearly perceives the value of the
language in the global market of verbal exchanges.
We could infer from Müller de Oliveira’s insights on the southern
Atlantic geopolitical scenario that the European variety of Portuguese
could be in jeopardy. This offers an interesting angle to analyze present
Portuguese official policies. In the light of Portugal’s increasingly older
demographic curve, language policies build on the present and still exist-
ing symbolic capital of the centrality of European Portuguese to repro-
duce a postcolonial lusophone space prone to political, economic, and
cultural alliances. From a European Portuguese-speaking perspective, this
‘lusophone space’—beyond the confined physical territory of Portugal—
resonates yet another episteme regarding the multi-territorial idea of
colonial Portugal and the common sense that all speakers of Portuguese
are, somehow, Portuguese. The multi-territorial idea is thus reconfigured
into a multicentered understanding of the language, which again rein-
forces the idea of language as symbolic territory and hence ‘national’
(Lourenço, 2014; Moita-Lopes, 2018).
Traversed by traces of coloniality, the idea of lusophone space is
imbued with inescapable rationalizations of ‘language,’ with impact on
all projects of modernity of the nation-states involved, who find them-
selves with the ontological need to reclaim their own centers of linguistic
prestige, much along the lines of the history of modern languages else-
where (Grillo, 2009). This illustrates the foundational and generative role
of language for modernity/coloniality, as mentioned in the work of deco-
lonial thinkers (Quijano, 1992; Mignolo, 2000; Makoni & Pennycook,
2006; Stroud, 2007; Veronelli, 2015).
In the meantime, official language policies in Portugal celebrate the
pluricentric character of the use of Portuguese, and invest more than ever
on regulation and the development of standardization tools based on
a European variety produced and managed by European Portuguese-
speaking researchers. Research funding priorities and the promotion of
dissemination webtools for the teaching and learning of Portuguese as
a second, heritage, and foreign language by external policy governmen-
tal agencies, such as Instituto Camões (https://www.instituto-camoes.
pt/), illustrate this priority. An example of the production of such gov-
ernmental discourses in the media, authored by Portugal’s Minister of
Foreign Affairs and published in the opinion section of a major national
newspaper in 2016, publicizing the special commemorative Day of the
Portuguese Language (Dia da Língua Portuguesa), and celebrated across
all countries with Portuguese as an official language, can be seen in the
work of the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa.2 A brief
textual analysis identifies lexical choices related to the usual biological
metaphors regarding linguistic diversity, based on a romantic notion of
language as a living organism (floresça a Portuguesa língua [may lan-
guage in Portuguese bloom]); an analysis of lexical density highlights
the repeated use of terms like língua, Portuguesa, promoção, and CPLP
([Portuguese language, promotion]); and discursive legitimation mech-
anisms operate on the collocation, across the paragraphs, of symbolic
voices of authority, such as statistics, literary style, education, and busi-
ness-oriented arguments (see Van Leeuwen, 2007). Together, they build
48 Clara Keating
a celebratory tone based on the cosmopolitan character of the language
in the context of a transnational alliance of developed and developing
countries united by Portuguese. This kind of celebratory tone is usu-
ally played out on the June 10 Portuguese holiday, officially named as
the Dia de Camões, Portugal e das Comunidades Portuguesas ([Day of
Camões, Portugal and the Portuguese Communities]), where the liter-
ary figure of Camões, an icon of national identity, is placed besides a
symbolic national territory that spreads out to diasporic communities
across the globe. Even though the pluricentric stance legitimizes multiple
varieties corresponding to multiple centers, it highlights the central rel-
evance of the European-based Portuguese-speaking partner, as if calling
out for attention to its own long durational colonial temporality as a
source of value and authenticity in the new postcolonial era. The stylistic
choices remind readers of the existing symbolic capital of the European
variety across the globe. Given that the language is considered one of the
most important immaterial assets with market value (Esperança, 2009;
Reto, 2012), it now frames language and a nation in its own 21st-century
southern European geopolitical semi-peripheral position, with a pride
and profit agenda based in both the North and the South.
Pluricentric Portuguese is strategic for governance and governmental-
ity from various geopolitical positions, as it situates the language at the
crossroads of three forces in late modernity: (1) the historical, regarding
the strategic role of Portuguese in maintaining geopolitical status based on
nation-state projects in the global and multipolar system of international
governmentality; (2) the scientific, where linguistic knowledge is objectified
and legitimized by scientific discourses as reified systems devoid of speak-
ers, and hence prone to global quantification, assessment, and massive data
management; and (3) the social, political, and economic engineering of
codification, standardization, transmission, and dissemination as a public
good in the neoliberal market of linguistic exchanges. This has potential for
the promotion of lesser recognized varieties of Portuguese—such as African
varieties—in educational contexts, increasingly positioned by normative
discourses. It makes visible and reclaims, under a framework of modernity
and cosmopolitism, legitimate value for varieties with lesser prestige.
From a decolonial angle, however, this strategy is informed by those
normative ontologies on language and knowledge that constitute, in the
words of Veronelli (2015), the very foundations of modernity/coloniality.3
As it reproduces idealized notions of linguistic variation as deviations from
reified norms, as it foregrounds linguistic knowledge in terms of acquisi-
tion of decontextualized competences, as it enters the game of reclaim-
ing legitimacy within the dominant neoliberal framework based on global
governmentality and the (stronger or weaker, central or peripheral) role
of the modern nation-state in the process, it will continue to reproduce
monolithic common senses regarding the existence of separate linguistic
systems with real implications for pedagogical and language planning
contexts. In fact, it will keep running the risk of disregarding actual lan-
guage socialization in complex multilingual and translanguaging practice,
and thus maintaining and reproducing the ongoing regimes of linguistic
knowledge and differentiation, as well as the underlying Cartesian ratio-
nalities that support them (see Harris & Taylor, 2005; Harris, 2009).
Polycentricity in Portuguese-speaking Spaces

A polycentric understanding of linguistic diversity points at the socially
ordered dynamics of language as sets of resources and practices being
deployed and associated with two or more centralizing forces in a
given communicative situation or place (Li & Juffermans, 2014, p. 99).
Polycentricity calls attention to the normative discursive-pragmatic
dynamics as language varieties are negotiated, forged, and colluded in
activities where more than one interactional regime—i.e., a set of expec-
tations regarding language and communicative behavior—happen to
exist in the same here and now. It thus highlights the dynamics of agency,
power, and inequality at play in the use of language.
Polycentricity emerged out of the analysis of materialized semiotic
forms in urban neighborhoods, and how they created senses of place
mediated by multilingual practice traversed by differentiated percep-
tions of the language regimes at play in the same activity (Blommaert,
2010). This multifunctional understanding of language behavior—what
Woolard (1998) once called “bivalency” elsewhere, although from differ-
ently assumed principles—is what makes the idea of polycentricity better
suited for a decolonial agenda, as it points out the multiple regimes at
play, forged in time and space, acting side by side in the same here and
now. Urban language landscapes in neighborhoods crossed by human
migratory movements are particularly prone to such an analysis of poly-
centricity. Examples of this in Portuguese-speaking spaces include work
by da Silva (2012) and Garcez (2018) amongst Portuguese and Brazilian
speakers in Toronto, Canada, semiotic landscapes with Portuguese by
Gonçalves (2012) in a Portuguese neighborhood in Newark, New
Jersey in the US, and Torkington’s (2012) British lifestyle migrants in
the Golden Triangle of the Algarve in Portugal. Their work illustrates
differentiated roles and values of Portuguese in each place, with some-
what weaker or stronger centering forces, depending on the multilingual
political economy at stake—as a diasporic/heritage variety (Brazilian and
Portuguese) in Newark and Toronto, or as the dominant official state lan-
guage in the Algarve region of Portugal. The term was very useful in our
own comparative research on how Portuguese official language policies
in education intervened in two distinct complementary school contexts
across Europe, both as a language of ‘integration of migrants’ for east-
ern European migrants in Portugal, and of ‘diaspora’ and ‘heritage’ for
Portuguese migrant speakers in the UK (Keating et al., 2018).
50 Clara Keating
A longitudinal focus on contexts of diaspora has also allowed us to see
the same physical space across layers of time, speakers’ own life cycles,
and distinct migration regimes at play across generations. Again, a focus
on polycentricity opens up the possibility of exploring the multiple scales
of time and space as they work in the production of place in the same
territory, also configured by historical layers (Keating, 2009).
In an online search for images related to June 10 (Portugal Day) in
Toronto, Canada, in 2018, I came across two photos that emerged side by
side on the webpage, both depicting events from that day in the city. The
first, in black and white, depicted a march for the liberation of political
prisoners in Portugal in the late 1960s (see Fernandes, 20144);the second,
far more recent, depicted a green, red, and yellow carnival float driving
in the populated streets of Toronto, with a banner in the front of the
truck with the red-and-green-lettered words “Portuguese Brazilian Gay
Community” framed by the Portuguese and Brazilian flags.
What first called my attention to both images was how diasporic events
make political struggle and social movements visible across distinct gen-
erations. Whereas the first image illustrated how Portuguese communities
in the diaspora were politically active in the opposition to the totalitar-
ian regime of the Portuguese nation-state in the second half of the 20th
century, the second displayed a celebration of sexual rights mediated by
a common lusophone symbolic territory that transcended the boundaries
of national affinity in the new millennium. Situated in the same physical
ground and under the same emblematic celebration—Portugal Day on
the streets of Toronto, Canada—the angle of polycentricity opened up the
possibility of exploring how lusophone interactional regimes shifted over
time, and yet seemed to be sustained by the maintenance of linguistically
established—here, Portuguese-speaking—transnational migratory net-
works that created alternative spaces for linguistic agency and citizenship
over time (Stroud, 2018). This also illustrates how the ontological angle
of polycentricity triggers the analytical principle of space-time sociolin-
guistic complexity (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011).
The understanding of multiple centering forces also inspired me to tap
into the biopolitical dynamics of migrants becoming speakers with par-
ticipatory voices in our collaborative projects on migration with migrants
to Portugal (Lechner, 2015). Inspired by critical thinking on the ecologies
of knowledge as developed by Santos at the Centre for Social Studies, our
linguistic ethnographic work was based on action research with speakers
who consider themselves as living, or having lived, an experience of migra-
tion. Drawing on narrative work collaboratively produced by a woman
who shared a story of sexual discrimination as a Brazilian female migrant
in Portugal, I have followed the circulation of this narrative across texts
and events over the time of the project, and watched in detail the ways
in which this narrative was shared, translated, transported, negotiated,
reconfigured, and appropriated according to its multiple audiences and
emotionally handled by both speaker and participants. Acknowledging
multiple centering forces at play at each communicative event and activity
allowed me to tap into the biopolitical dimensions of this woman becom-
ing a speaker with an active voice in the framework of the collaborative
project. The resocialization process experienced by this participant was
framed by different varieties of Portuguese that were deployed as styles
in the process of her becoming a Brazilian female migrant speaker in
Portugal (Keating, 2019c).
Exercising Suspicion
In the previous sections I have demonstrated how the constructs of
pluricentricity and polycentricity convey distinct underlying assump-
tions of linguistic diversity: first, assuming a monocentric plurality of
linguistic variation, pluricentricity is anchored in an understanding of
language varieties as stable, self-contained systems that together con-
struct a language with discrete categorized boundaries; and second,
assuming a multiplicity of interactional regimes, polycentricity points
at socially ordered systems of resources and normative practices that
together make up a sense of ‘place’ in a given setting with histori-
cized speakers, strongly or weakly subject to one or more centralizing
sources of power (Li & Juffermans, 2014, p. 99).
The differences between the two terms reproduce the tension in the
language sciences between language as a decontextualized system and
alternative views based on contextualized practice. They have differenti-
ated impact on how academic knowledge about the language is being
produced and distributed in academic institutions and serving policy
interests across the Global South and the Global North. On the one hand,
objectifying varieties from a pluricentric angle creates material value in
the market of verbal exchanges, with possible transformative results in
language standardization processes, such as those happening in geopoliti-
cal contexts in the Global South. On the other hand, assuming polycentric
spaces prone to multiple centering forces loses transformative potential
if it is appropriated and positioned by public mainstream regulatory dis-
courses that celebrate diversity yet disregard highly complex and super-
diverse scenarios with unequal effects on speakers. This is the case in
Portugal, where official discourses celebrate both the pluricentric and
diasporic character of ‘the language,’ and yet implement highly norma-
tive policies when it comes to Portuguese as a heritage language and the
integration of speakers of other languages and varieties of Portuguese.5 In
this case, neither the impact of pluricentricity in liberal language policies
nor the impact of polycentric understandings on the progressive recogni-
tion of speakers and speaking spaces are contributing to make visible the
highly complex and agentive nature of multilingual repertoire in migrant
Portuguese-speaking contexts.
52 Clara Keating
I see two orders of reason for this being the case.
First, materiality. Both constructs still seem to conceive language on
the basis of normative symbolic immaterial regimes that operate in indi-
vidual and/or collective ‘minds.’ In an attempt to explore the status of
the material in theories of culture, Andreas Reckwitz (2002) looks at
how both structuralist and phenomenological-based theories of culture
“share a mentalist vocabulary that presupposes mental categories as the
‘inner’ source of social order” (p. 204). In his view, this highlights the
role of the subject in any process of knowledge and subsumes the mate-
rial aspects of culture as objects of knowledge, that is, products resulting
from interpretation or semiosis (pp. 203–204). The same seems to be
happening with the terms under investigation: both pluricentricity and
polycentricity describe linguistic diversity as being situated in immaterial
symbolic orders of difference and hierarchy (either as normative varieties,
or systems of social order and interactional regimes). These are shared
and/or negotiated in and across the minds of individual speakers, and
are being regulated by collective expectations of human language behav-
ior, based on a somewhat internalized understanding of order. In this
sense, both Portuguese as pluricentric language and Portuguese as one of
the many interactional regimes at play in polycentric space run the risk
of creating blind spots to actual meaning-making dynamics at play in
contexts traversed by diversity: one, as logocentric attention to language
activity is foregrounded, there is a high risk of silencing all other possible
resources (human and nonhuman) at play in ongoing local meaning-mak-
ing processes; two, as it assumes hierarchical distributions of resources,
it imagines language and semiosis acting in a vertical axis of ideology
and power, not as horizontal dynamics where language activity spreads
across networks, and is materialized in a nexus of historicized things,
speakers, discourses, and negotiations that constrain yet design certain
lines of flight (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Socio-material understand-
ings of language activity, such as those found in recent developments in
discourse and New Literacy studies, offer solutions to counter this verti-
cal understanding of language and semiotic activity (Scollon, 2001; Kell,
2015; Hamilton, 2016).
Second, coloniality. Given the intrinsic articulation between modernity,
coloniality, and linguistic rationalization (Makoni & Pennycook, 2006;
Veronelli, 2015), the risk of epistemic blindness is especially high in the
language sciences: as speakers with internalized linguistic habitus config-
ured by modern understandings of linguistic difference and hierarchy, we
all seem to be imbued with colonized regimes of rationality and visibility
that make us blind and deaf to multimodal, multilingual, and multiliter-
ate activity. The decolonial angle challenges us to go beyond the binary
understanding of a language system/practice to further explore how colo-
niality traverses our understanding, no matter how ‘progressive’ it might
seem.
For language academics and researchers born and bred in colonial
centers, assuming coloniality is to acknowledge, recognize, and counter
‘epistemic blindness’ in ongoing exercises of decolonial reflexivity, across
identities, ontological moves, and modes of production and distribution
of knowledge. It is to the ways in which I see this decolonial reflexive
exercise in my own working context that I now turn.
Overcoming Epistemic Blindness?

In his 2001 essay on the limits of the representation of knowledge by
modern science and Western philosophy, an essay that paves the way to
what he later calls a sociology of absences and emergences, this is what
Santos tells us about epistemic blindness:
The blindness of others, particularly of those in the past, is both

recurrent and easy to establish. But if that is the case, whatever we
say today about the blindness of others will probably be seen in the
future as evidence of our own blindness. The dilemma can thus be
formulated as: if we are blind, why is it so difficult to accept our
own blindness? And, if that is the case, what is the point of seeing
at all? My contention is that the consciousness of our own blind-
ness, which we are forced to exercise while unveiling the blindness of
others, should be at the core of a new epistemological stance which
calls for a plurality of knowledges and practices, since no knowledge
or practice in isolation provides reliable guidance; and for an edify-
ing, socially responsible, rather than technical, application of science,
since the consequences of scientific actions tend to be less scientific
than the actions themselves.
(Santos, 2001, p. 252)
The theoretical essay maps a detailed methodology to identify the situ-

ated nature of three broad ontological limits to modern scientific repre-
sentation: relevance, identification of objects of knowledge and analysis,
and interpretation and evaluation. This modern scientific limitation to
knowledge produced long-lasting systematic invisibility that resulted in
epistemic inequality, violence, erosion, and absence of alternative knowl-
edges. To counteract epistemic blindness, the author proposes an ecol-
ogy of knowledges. In recent work on entangled North–South discourses
and the orders of visibility in contexts of the Global South, Kerfoot and
Hyltenstam (2017) draw on Santos’ thinking to identify parallels on lan-
guage and linguistic theory. In their view, an understanding of an ecology
of knowledges is an attempt to overcome a historical, colonial, and com-
monsensical production of linguistic nonexistence, which could be based
on the following five modes or ‘logics’ of how language has been studied
and recognized:
54 Clara Keating
1 A monoculture of linguistic knowledge;
2 A universal global scale connected with an illusion of a homog-
enous ‘totality’ that invisibilizes the local and renders impossible
both linguistic and social transformation;
3 A logic of social classification that naturalizes ethnolinguistic
differences and sociolinguistic hierarchies;
4 A monoculture of linear time;
5 A capitalist and neoliberal logic of productivity that underpins
language policy today.
(Kerfoot & Hyltenstam, 2017 pp. 8–10)
Kerfoot & Hyltenstam’s collection emerges from contexts in the Global

South, but I argue that the kind of epistemic exercise mentioned above is
particularly urgent in academic contexts such as my own, at odds with
deeply internalized monolingual mindsets based on imagined centralities
traversed by colonialism, but also by capitalism and patriarchy (Santos,
2014, p. 2018).
Making epistemic blindness explicit in the knowledge arena is one
of the principles underlying collaborative and horizontal production of
knowledge—a first step toward designing spaces for multilingual and
multicultural research, with actual results for participants involved. This
means material, historical, and decolonial awareness of the ontological
aspects at stake in identifying research questions and problems (to whom
and for what purposes?); becoming aware of research positionalities as
academics or participants; and exploring the blind spots of research appa-
ratus, including the generation, distribution, and circulation of data and
results. Our interdisciplinary work with migrants was such an attempt:
we engaged in slow-paced, sustained collaborative reflexivity of the dis-
positions of the rounds of stories; language/discourse researchers drew
on critical sociolinguistic stances toward discursive practices, a focus
on objects and artifacts across distinct research events, and biopolitical
understandings of speakers and corresponding spaces of speakerhood
(Lechner, 2015; Solovova, 2015; Keating, 2019c). There was attention to
material dispositions, discursive representations, and linguistic practice
across activities. This slow-paced collaborative process allowed us to fol-
low the material traces of inscription, identify some of the subtleties of
linguistic coloniality, and assess their effect on speakers.
Tracing Epistemic Traps

Drawing on a decolonial agenda, I have tried to disentangle the concep-
tual foundations involved in two terms available to describe sociolin-
guistic diversity in migrant-based multilingual contexts with Portuguese.
As I explored the ways in which they triggered understanding of lan-
guage as a decontextualized system and/or a contextualized practice,
I have acknowledged that both terms showed potential to be used as
tools for linguistic recognition, legitimacy, and creative local agency, in
given language and literacy ecologies for somewhat distinct—more lib-
eral or progressive—purposes and across distinct scales of activity. More
importantly, though, and despite some transformative potential, both
terms leave traces of mental, internalized, and pretextual understandings
of language and social order framed by projects of modernity/coloniality
differently positioned by geopolitical interests—as imagined symbolic
territory, with immaterial discursive regimes being played out in multi-
lingual space.
A sustained focus on the materialities at play across activities and
events, as explored in recent discourse and literacy studies (see Budach,
Kell, & Patrick, 2015; Keating, 2019c), helps overcome this conundrum.
The material angle on reifications and objects in multilingual speaking
spaces allowed us to tap into alternative knowledges acting side by side
across the research projects. Both structural and agentive, radically local
nodes of power and ideology were enacted in the moment by moment
of actual collaborative research activity. Prioritizing the historicity of
people, material artifacts, language regimes, and situated communicative
events enabled us to move one step closer to exploring ways of unthink-
ing linguistic knowledge and practice. The pressing issues of internalized
coloniality in aspects of language practice and lived experience emerged,
otherwise overshadowed, with crucial material impact for the speakers
involved.
Besides unthinking language ontologies and modes of production of
knowledge, the decolonial angle questioned methodologies and identities
of linguists or sociolinguists as “rearguard intellectuals” (Santos, 2018).
To what extent did methods of linguistic inquiry based on extractivist
practices overshadow mutual recognition, co-construction, and collabor-
ative analysis of data in the academic and nonacademic dialog in migrant
spaces? Even when informed by critical progressive claims, to what
extent were our modes of production of linguistic knowledge saturated
by internalized linguistic coloniality and configured by neoliberal ratio-
nalities circulating across higher education domains, usually sustained by
academic world language varieties? Could participants—or activists of a
social and linguistic cause—become researchers of their own situation?
And finally, what is the actual scope of transformative action, for teachers
and researchers acting in complex multilingual spaces torn by academic
knowledge regimes that include both English-based and Portuguese-
based internationalization policies and discourses?
There is a pressing need to develop standing suspicion toward all aca-
demic discourses and practices, including decolonial ones. Given the
increasingly globalized distribution of knowledge across higher educa-
tion institutions, the risk of appropriation, mainstreaming, and ‘mono-
languaging’ is high and calls for ways of developing engagement with
56 Clara Keating
a difference, along the lines of Pennycook’s call for constant de-natu-
ralization of political and epistemic principles and practices in language
research (“restive problematization of the given”, see Dean, 1994, p. 4,
as cited in Pennycook, 2004, p. 799). For this reason, acknowledging the
impact of coexisting linguistic ontologies also implies the recognition of
alternative hegemonic versions of modernity, which includes drawing on
colonial knowledge. In the words of Harshana Rambukwella:
I believe that sociolinguistics and its all too ready embrace of the
vocabulary of postmodernism is losing sight of the ideological
and political uses of language, even as it purports to speak in the
name of these very categories. Cusicanqui argues that a process of
knowledge-based recolonization is taking place when first world cen-
ters of theoretical production begin to speak on behalf of non-first
world societies. I believe we can see this in language studies as well.
Translanguaging, for instance, can be considered a radical concep-
tual move in the challenge it poses to essentialist notions of language
but unless it is deployed with a rigorous understanding of the politics
of how language is institutionalized and used in specific local con-
texts, it depoliticizes and emasculates on the ground struggles for
equality and human dignity. As Cusicanqui reminds us, the legacies
of modernity are not things we can pick and choose. That privilege
may be available to those who have already mastered modernity and
can critique it while located securely within the privileges it bestows.
For the vast majority struggling to enter modernity, the only option
is to engage critically and dialogically with its legacies.
(Rambukwella, 2019, p. 129)
The insurmountable legacy of modernity/coloniality does need to be

tackled, if we aim to account for dignified recognition of linguistic diver-
sity experienced in any research context, wherever it may be placed. No
matter how well intended they might seem, the notions of pluricentric
Portuguese and spaces of polycentricity with Portuguese do leave traces
of colonial centrality running across research spaces with overlapping
language policy agendas. Given the global higher education dynamics
in our work, we need to counter the real risk of depoliticizing language
by finding ways of re-politicizing (and I would add re-materializing and
re-historicizing) constructs, methods, and modes of production of knowl-
edge. A possible solution for an alternative thinking of alternatives is
assuming coexisting linguistic thought playing side by side, as illustrated
by Cusicanqui’s (2019) Ch’ixinakax utxiwa or Santos’ (2018) proposal
of “intercultural translation.” By recognizing mutual epistemic blind-
ness, frailty, and incompleteness as foundational dynamics for any act
of production, circulation, and distribution of knowledge, we just might
manage to avoid the assimilation of at least some difference. It will be a
process of trial and mostly of error, but one that might matter for social
and linguistic justice in the increasingly darker, violent, unequal, and dys-
topic realities of the lives of many migrant speakers across the world.
Notes
1 See also http://www.pluricentriclanguages.org/pluricentricity/what-is-a-
pluricentric-language.
2 CPLP—Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa, a transnational orga-
nization that promotes political, commercial, and cultural alliances across
nation-states with Portuguese as an official language; see https://www.cplp.
org/.
3 For a bottom-up perspective that counters the pluricentric by focusing on the
colonial “luzitanization” of language policies in East Timor and Angola, see
Makoni & Severo, 2015.
4 Portuguese exiles demanding the release of political prisoners in Salazar’s
Portugal, picketing outside the Portuguese consulate on Bay St., October 1966.
Photo by Reed, York University Libraries, Clara Thomas Archives & Special
Collections, Toronto Telegram fonds, F0433, ASC08256. See Fernandes,
Gilberto (2014, April 24) https://livingtorontojournal.com/2014/04/24/por-
tuguese-politics-in-the-city/. Last retrieved May 14, 2021.
5 For work with higher education students from non-European countries with
Portuguese as an official language, see Pinto and Matias (2018).
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Appendix
4 RE-. Vocabularies we live by in the
Language and Educational Sciences
Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta
Introduction
The key issue raised in this chapter relates to making visible the natural-
ization of Northern or North-centric hegemonies in higher educational
(HE) settings broadly, including the scholarship curated there. This issue
is considered in two ways: first, I call for the need to RE-visit how lan-
guage is conceptualized in general and in HE; and second, I contribute
to RE-centering the mainstream stance that continues to marginalize
scholarly explorations where social practices are center-staged. While this
agenda strives toward a vision of solidarity for a future academy that
builds upon epistemic justice (Rodriguez, 2018; Connell, 2019), a caveat
here is our own academic trajectories in terms of the ontological and
epistemological stances we are dialoguing with, and what vocabularies
we have been nurtured to engage with in our academic trajectories.
RE-searching calls for going beyond the givens, the naturalizations,
the norms. Drawing attention to a ‘RE- stance,’ which I introduce here,
reminds us that working within given understandings is merely going
to RE-produce received knowledge regimes, that is, the epistemologies
we have been nurtured into. A RE-searching agenda that takes its task
regarding knowledge RE-creation seriously, thus, should by its very nature
be critical toward received wisdom and make concerted attempts to go
beyond searching within the comfort zone of a scholar’s nurtured-into
epistemologies or their socialization into bounded disciplinary domains
(Corces-Zimmerman & Guida, 2019).
Aligning with ongoing and emerging scholarship that raises critical
awareness regarding the role of this thing we call language in general,
and “vocabularies we live by”1 specifically, this chapter endeavors first
to unpack how language is broadly related to issues of social differen-
tiation and equity processes. It endeavors to make salient the need to
RE-articulate the vocabularies we live by, that is, words and formulations
that are taken for granted in the HE sector in and across different activ-
ity systems like Language Sciences/Studies (LSS) scholarship, language-
focused education, publishing regimes, and the ‘ways-with-words’ that
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-6
62 Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta
create understandings of what we call language. Second, it calls attention
to the paucity of scholarly efforts where social practices are center-staged,
that is, what people, including scholars, do in the course of mundane life.
The next section illuminates issues from and contributes conceptually
toward two theoretical orientations that attend to these aims. I argue
that these clusters benefit from coming into dialog. The following section
“On technological and ideological storying” focuses on how recent onto-
epistemological shifts in North-centric scholarship in LSS and research
more generally are storied. Noticings regarding language in HE contexts
across Global North/South spaces are dealt with in the penultimate sec-
tion. The chapter closes with a post-script that RE-enforces what I call a
RE- stance.
A South-Centric Mobile Gaze

Going beyond hegemonic dichotomized stances requires drawing atten-
tion to the need for a South-centric gaze that is mobile. I have variously
called this conceptual mobility a “third position” or an “earthrise per-
spective” (see Bagga-Gupta, 2018, 2017a, 2017b). Such vocabularies dis-
rupt the givens and call attention to an overarching framing—a second
wave of Southern perspectives (SWaSP).2 A RE- stance, a dimension of
a mobile gaze discussed here, constitutes an important contribution to
SWaSP. SWaSP troubles received dichotomized stances by both making
visible and going beyond binaries (represented, for instance, by taken-
for-granted “sunrise” and “moonrise” stances), pushing for the relevance
of the uncommon “earthrise” gaze (Bagga-Gupta, 2017a). Such a third-
position gaze calls for a movement that is always mobile: a move from
the sanctity of received vocabularies we live by to the (initial) discomfort
of vocabularies and spaces where a RE- stance is center-staged. This sec-
tion explicates two theoretical orientations by focusing, first, on inter-
twined issues related to the nature of things and the nature of knowledge,
and, second, on the nature of methodologies, methods, and data.
Aligned to the fact that South-centric epistemologies are increasingly
difficult to ignore entirely (for instance, in some mainstream LSS scholarly
areas; see Heller & McElhinny, 2017; Pennycook & Makoni, 2020), a
key dimension of a SWaSP stance marked by a South-centric mobile gaze
raises issues from theoretical perspectives that can be clustered into two
groups: first, those that go under labels like sociocultural perspectives,
activity theory, social theories of mind, integrationism, and sadharani-
karan; and second, framings that are called decolonial studies, postco-
lonialism, and Southern theories. My attempt here is to focus on the
overlaps across these clusters, rather than the more common scholarship
enterprise of focusing on differences between theories.3 Focusing only
on differences can prove counterproductive to the onto-epistemological
project in RE-search. It is the overall orientations regarding vocabularies
Vocabularies we live by 63
we live by—in the areas of language—that I am interested in here from
a SWaSP stance. My proposition is that in dialog the overlapping tenets
of these two orientations/clusters can make salient a key conceptually
framed shift in relation to ontology, epistemology, and methodology.
Having said this, it is important to recognize that as scholars, we are
never neutral in our explorations of social life.4 Using an integrationist-
flavored formulation that is aligned to other theories that I place in the
first cluster, the human languaging or communication enterprise is emer-
gent and context-bound, and constitutes a fundamental dimension of all
activity, including scholarly activity. With this as a rationale, I both draw
from, and attempt to bring into dialog, these two clusters in a SWaSP
framing.
The first cluster framings align toward a holistic understanding of
human meaning-making that includes the deployment of intellectual and
material tools. Here, what is labeled as language is understood as human
beings’ most important cultural tool. It is this capacity of humans to com-
municate (i.e., participate in meaning-making in (inter)action with one
another and with different types of non-animate tools), that allows the
establishment of human collectives (Cole, 1996; Wertsch, 1998; Linell,
2009; Säljö, 2010). Meaning-making is credited with being seamless,
and the emergence, context-bound, and chained human-tool continua as
being salient. This calls for unpacking what, where, how, why, and by
whom mythical creations of demarcated named languages and named
modalities (e.g., oral, written, signed) connected to essentialist identi-
ties continue to be RE-produced in, for instance, HE (see penultimate
section). The salient issue is recognizing moving conceptualizations (or
RE-conceptualizations) regarding ontologies, epistemologies, and meth-
odologies that the two theoretical clusters enable.
Sadharanikaran, glossed as the Indian theory of communication, pos-
tulates that “achieving commonness or mutual understanding” is the fun-
damental “goal of communication” (Adhikari & Shukla, 2013; Adhikari,
2015). This constitutes a key tenet of how communication is conceptu-
alized in sociocultural perspectives (Cole, 1996; Wertsch, 1998; Säljö,
2010), dialogical theory (Linell, 2009), integrationism (Hutton, 2011;
Hutton, Pablé, & Bade, 2011; Makoni, 2011). Disassociating dimen-
sions of meaning-making into units like oral, written or signed language,
drawings, gestures, material tools, interaction, etc. is seen as problematic
in one way or another in these framings. While integrationism explic-
itly questions the existence of this thing called language (Makoni, 2011;
Sabino, 2018), the tenets of the other framings call for radically broad-
ening (i.e., RE-conceptualizing) mainstream understandings of language.
Aligning toward action-oriented doings of communication as the site of
meaning-making, rather than endorsing a view of language as being dis-
associated from people and their performances, the framings of this first
cluster fundamentally question the nature of what we call language.
The ‘performative-ness’ of the glossed notion of language is related to an
ongoing paradigmatic shift in the human sciences that in various ways calls
attention to the doing of knowledge, and of being human itself (Ingold,
2015). A performative gaze enables shaking mainstream hegemonic under-
standings of the bounded, static, individual-based nature of what consti-
tutes language, where it exists, and how it is transferred and transformed.
Here, the doing of language is contingent upon alternative vocabularies we
can live by: meaning-makING and languagING, including knowledgING
and humanING. A performative stance center-stages the mundane nature
of everyday life where life gets performed. Such a gaze has radical con-
sequences and enables making visible the naturalizations of hegemonies,
including knowledge production and distribution processes; this means
that the outcomes of a RE-focusing on the tenets of mainstream meth-
odologies have consequences for RE-understanding what constitutes data,
including the units of analysis that scholars engage with.
A key tenet in the first cluster postulates that a unit of analysis can-
not be broken down into separate named languages, separate named
modalities, embodiments, artifacts, material tools, etc., or imagined
communities, or entire nation-states (McLuhan, 1962; Anderson, 1983),
but rather “people-in-interaction-with-one-another-and-with-tools” of
various kinds constitute salient units of analysis (Wertsch, 1998; Bagga-
Gupta, 2017c). Sociocultural scholars often hyphenate key word strings,
highlighting RE-connections illustrating that when languagers, named
languages, intellectual and material tools, etc. are separated from one
another their meaning-making communicative dimensions are radically
compromised. Sadharanikaran, Ubuntu philosophy,5 and philosophies
of the ‘rest of the world’ either implicitly or explicitly build on such
tenets. It suffices for my present purposes to point to these shared taken-
for-granted orientations regarding the primacy of communication and
assumptions wherein people, nature, and social practices are entwined.
This idea of people’s interdependence with their worlds parallels the ana-
lytical stance of social theories of mind and integrationism, wherein the
study of language taken outside communities of languagers is consid-
ered untenable. Here, assumptions embedded in traditional linguistics
are rejected. A SWaSP non-universalizing stance means that rather than
being part of a community of individuals separated from other living and
nonliving entities, people are understood as making up communities of
interacting beings and entities.
The second cluster framings, like the first, also have different individual
histories and trajectories. This cluster is hard to engage with without a note
on the shifts in vocabularies it has witnessed across time: anticolonialism,
postcolonialism, decolonialism, North, Northern, North-centric, Global
North, South, Southern, South-centric, Global South, East, Eastern, West,
Western, the Rest, etc. A SWaSP framing understands this vocabulary
smorgasbord in specific ways. A caveat here is the impossible task of
pinpointing places on our spherical planet in terms of ‘the’ North or ‘the’
South (or the vocabularies aligned to this pair; Bagga-Gupta & Rane,
forthcoming). This is impossible because North–South/Rest (or East/
.
Rest–West) positionalities on a planet that is ‘free-floating’ and mobile

in a multidimensional universe is a metaphorical stance rather than a sci-
entific fact.6 To borrow this vocabulary in a theoretical framing in terms
of physical places is contentious. North–South/Rest, East/Rest–West, and
other spatial vocabularies signify historicized metaphors related to the
marginalizing hegemonic colonial order of things. Furthermore, the issue
at hand is not about replacing North-centric hegemonies with South-
centric ones, but rather both recognizing (i.e., making visible) naturaliza-
tions that make claims to universal epistemic truths and thereafter going
beyond such binaries.
This includes paying heed to the plurality of spaces within and across
physical places on the planet. SWaSP thus engages with terms like the
Global North and Global South, in attempts to make visible Southern
spaces in the North and Northern spaces in the South. Furthermore, it
is the here and now,7 rather than archeological relics, that is significant.
SWaSP builds upon a multiversal, rather than a universal, stance, cau-
tioning against RE-producing binaries that call for replacing hegemonies
of the North with (static) Southern gazing. Thus, ‘the’ South is far from
a source of new truths or in opposition to the geographical North. It
is here that a mobile third position becomes key, potentially enabling
global-centric, rather than singular North-centric or South-centric, fram-
ings (Bagga-Gupta, 2019a; Bagga-Gupta & Rane, forthcoming).
A common denominator in the theoretical framings of the second cluster
is making visible marginalized onto-epistemologies (i.e., ways-of-being,
ways-of-becoming, ways-of-existing). This includes calling attention also
to the “single grand stories” that both RE-impose the givens, simultane-
ously erasing and silencing knowledge plurality co-created locally and
globally (Bagga-Gupta, 2018; Bock & Stroud, 2019). Single grand stories
RE-cycle and put center-stage North-centric ideas and norms as natural-
ized universal global yardsticks. North-centric vocabularies put the spot-
light on the given, rather than draw upon marginalized positionalities
and voices where alternative knowledges and knowledge pathways lurk.
The point is that alternative vocabularies that make explicit this diver-
sity—sunrise-moonrise-earthrise, first-second-third positions/perspec-
tives, single grand stories, SWaSP, RE-, etc.—enable contours of norms
themselves to become visible. Going beyond the mirroring or represen-
tational function of this thing we call language—that words stand for
something ‘out there’ and calling for a “turn-on-turn reflexivity” (Bagga-
Gupta, 2019b)—suggests that alternative viewings require a focus on the
invisible, taken-for-granted norm.
However, highlighting alternative knowledge regimes that exist in the
margins and that risk targeting as ‘the Other,’ ‘an-other,’ ‘the Different,’
is far from a simple and straightforward enterprise. This task requires
grappling within RE-search, scrutinizing, for instance, norms that exist in
methodologies and vocabularies pertaining to data. Troubling essential-
ized ways of understanding methodologies calls attention to the dominant
view of data as something ‘out there,’ something that can be collected
through well-formulated pathways (Bagga-Gupta & Messina Dahlberg,
2021). The central place of languaging in all human existence, includ-
ing scholarly existence, however, has important implications for doing
scholarly work (both within and outside HE). Given that scholars, like all
humans, live and work within language,8 making visible the vocabularies
we live by, has consequences for creating expansive and curtailing mean-
ings. Expansive vocabularies allow for viewings of data in terms of being
created in symbiosis between scholars, languagers, and settings that are
in focus and their “theoretical-analytical agendas that may or may not be
explicit for a scholar” (Bagga-Gupta & Messina Dahlberg, 2021; see also
Bagga-Gupta, Messina Dahlberg, & Gynne, 2019).
The significance accorded to people’s mundane doings in a SWaSP
framing thus aligns methodologies to social practices that constitute
everyday life, rather than to what people report (for instance, in pro-
grammatic methods like interviews and questionnaires). Such “naturalis-
tic” inquiring (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) highlights the central role of the
languaging languager in the RE-search endeavor. This means that SWaSP
tenets (in particular, its first cluster) call attention to the messy, ‘in the
wild,’ embodied actions, including tool engagement.9 Such a mobile gaze
has important consequences, for instance, for illuminating the nature
of recent experiences with multilingualism and super/hyperdiversity in
Global North spaces of the nation-state of Sweden (see penultimate sec-
tion below). The naturalization of neologisms, including older boundary-
marked and boundary-marking vocabularies, that essentialize and box
in both language and identity are “looped” and “make up people,” to
borrow Hackings’ (2006) vocabulary. This means that such concepts
RE-create webs of understandings regarding the marginalized other, not
least in mainstream HE settings.
So, what is the nature of data that can be interesting in terms of this
chapter’s agenda and in light of the intersection of these two conceptual
framings? How can one practically pay allegiance to the messiness or
complexities of mundane activities in and across settings? Aligning in
particular with the first cluster, I suggest that two data levels are prom-
ising for analytically gazing at the complexities of languaging. Level 1
data gazes at social practices across online–offline arenas, and also at
the inscriptions that humans leave in journals, directives, archives, mass
media, social media, etc. Level 2 data gazes ‘inwards’ at scholarship and
how, despite claimed shifts toward fluid, performative stances, a bound-
ary-marked/marking agenda is alive and thriving. A South-centric mobile
gaze that aligns with nonprogrammatic methodological stances at both
levels contributes by going beyond reporting from individual projects or
demarcated named language and named modality scholarly areas. The
next section illustrates the relevance of a SWaSP mobile gaze directed
toward Level 1 and Level 2 data through examples.
On Technological and Ideological Storying

A SWaSP framing is relevant for illuminating the performative dimensions
of people’s, including scholars, engagements in situ,10 (i.e., social prac-
tices across time, and across the geopolitical and digital/physical Global
North/South). This has relevance for the organization of language teach-
ing and learning in HE in timespaces that have witnessed an increase in
the nature and volume of vocabularies related to language, diversity, and
culture. Such vocabularies—often with prefixes like multi, pluri, trans,
inter, super, or hyper—are illustrative of the RE-cycling of knowledge
regimes in and across Global North/South spaces, including the vocabu-
laries we live by in LSS and the educational sciences scholarship.
Aligned to a performative position, and as Finnegan (2015) stresses,
language and identity are inevitably “storied.” They lie in the vocabular-
ies that individuals, institutions, the media, nation-states, and scholars
themselves live by; they are not a simple reflection of social practices but
are a way of constructing them: in Bruner’s words, “life as narrative”
(Bruner, 2004, p. 691), or as explicated by some South-centric philoso-
phies, communication as maya or the illusionary nature of world-making
(see also Hacking, 2006). This constitutes a creative enterprise wherein
meaning is RE-inforced or looped, and the SWaSP-aligned scholars’ task
involves making visible such world-making. What is being noticed and by
whom vis-à-vis languaging, including the ways in which languaging tech-
nologies enable disturbing or RE-producing bounded meaning-making,
is unpacked in in the next section, where Level 1 data is engaged with.
By engaging with Level 2 data, the following section focuses on how
words and formulations are consequential in ideological storying and
their entanglements with identity in HE activity systems.
Discovering and Noticing: On What and By Whom

How languaging technologies RE-produce the hegemonic bounded
ways in which named languages are conceptualized can be seen in how
our contemporary desktop publishing programs, like MS Word, mark
words that are not seen as a normal part of what was previously called
English, in the singular, and is today recognized as many different named
Englishes. For instance, the words ‘languaging,’ ‘Englishes,’ and maya
are marked as incorrect by my MS Word program, even though all are
legitimate lexical items in different named Englishes and scholarly genres.
Identifying incorrect spellings and grammar build upon constructing
bounded differences between named languages in and through such lan-
guaging technologies. This then constitutes a catch-22 situation, wherein
affordances are curtailed through boundary marking that keeps British
English separate from American English, etc.
Boundary marking, which is embedded in the naturalized counting of
named languages, as illustrated in Figure 4.1 through a 2019 query to and
response from Microsoft, is far from an innocent enterprise. Given that
humans language, that is , do language embedded in or as a dimension of
meaning-making practices, counting how many codes people engage with
in digital or physical spaces amounts to falling into the mainstream trap of
essentialist taken-for-granted hegemonies. Languaging technologies embed-
ded in our writing programs and our smartphones have inherited this North-
centric hegemonic stance, whereby they recognize one named language at a
time, rather than enable the meaning-making of many ways of using com-
municative resources. I, for instance, must switch between three keyboards
on my smartphone to write in the named languages and scripts associated
with Swedish, English, and Hindi. However, recording and sharing what can
be recognized as normal languaging through oral languaging audio-files or
signed languaging vlogs is enabled through supportive affordances of these
languaging technologies. Languaging technologies of our smartphones, how-
ever, do not (currently) support normal languaging where more than one
named language/script is engaged with during mundane meaning-making.
The meaning-making embedded in the NO PARKING sign (Figure 4.2)
in the named script, Devanagari, also illustrates this issue. It communi-
cates an important message, warning violators about having their vehicle
tires punctured if they park in the vicinity.
A North-centric gaze here (if we can read off the Devanagari script)
automatically draws our attention to the transliterated deployment
of three lexical items in one named language called English—“NO,”
“PARKING,” and “PUNCTURE”—and one item in another named lan-
guage called Hindi—वरना [English/Latin: otherwise]. A clear-cut message
is available in this sign for the languager experienced in Devanagari, situ-
ated in spaces like those of Mumbai. However, hegemonic naturalized
stances continue to frame such normal languaging in terms of the use
Figure 4.1 On contemporary technological affordances.

Figure 4.2 Languaging unambiguity.
of two named languages, or borrowing from one into another, or code-

switching between named languages. Such noticings build on the omni-
present North-centric premise of the normalcy of counting languages in
mainstream LSS, including contemporary educational sciences, HE, and
K-12 settings. Such counting in itself RE-creates the boundary-marked/
marking enterprise of the vocabularies we live by. A South-centric mobile
gaze, in contrast, recognizes the power of the message: your car tires will
be punctured if you park in this no-parking area. There is little ambiguity
in the meaning-making invitation the sign offers to languagers.
Level 1 slices of data discussed so far illustrate languaging from across
digital-physical spaces.11 Such illustrations of the meaning-making inher-
ent in languaging are also available in previous and ongoing studies from
the CCD research environment,12 where the messiness and complexities
of co-temporal signed/oral/written communication across digital/physi-
cal settings are unpacked.13 The fluidity of languaging, or the many ways
in which languagers engage with communicative resources in everyday
meaning-making, is illustrated in the example of board work from a
women’s empowerment workshop (Figure 4.3). The writing practices in
the Devanagari script of women, many of whom are school dropouts
and who make up one another’s socializing contexts, illustrate a complex
chaining of meaning-making resources in this example.14
Transliterating—from Devanagari to Latin—and non-boundary-
marked seamless languaging indicates these women’s experiences with
different named languages (see Bagga-Gupta, 2014; Bagga-Gupta &
Rane, forthcoming). A North-centric analysis, however, automatically
draws our attention to the established vocabularies we live by, that is, the
bilingualism or even trilingualism of this board work where lexical items
from three bounded named languages—Hindi, Marathi, and English—
become salient. In their meaning-making, these adults are not drawing
Figure 4.3 Board work.
upon separate codes but on the here-and-now task at hand: planning

an art and crafts workshop for migrant construction workers’ children.
The communication that the participants co-construct cannot be broken
down into different abstract codes without destroying the meaning-mak-
ing enterprise they are engaged in.
This means that making visible—even at mundane written (and utter-
ance) levels—what people do within the meaning-making of everyday
life displays not their conscious use of units from separate codes, but
a seamless chaining of resources where it is meaning-making itself that
is the fundamental unit. This basic issue is not a problem for people’s
meaning-making, but it is a headache for the analyst. And this is a major
stumbling block for scholars aligned with North-centric hegemonic webs
of understandings related to the vocabularies that we live by, and that
they have been socialized into and are imprisoned in.
Another headache for analysts is the representational mode in which
such meaning-making can be illustrated. For instance, what strategies
do we analysts have in order to illuminate such meaning-making with-
out RE-creating the given boundaries of named languages in scholarly
reporting? Figure 4.4 RE-presents the languaging available in the “NO
PARKING” sign (Figure 4.2)—a RE-presentation made possible by
online languaging technologies. While Line 1 RE-presents the languaging
of the sign (it is a copy), Lines 2 and 3 RE-present it by making visible the
two named languages that a North-centric gaze has normalized. In Line
2, both Latin and Devanagari named scripts are deployed, while Line 3
Figure 4.4 RE-presentational dilemmas.
irons out the two scripts associated with the two named languages of
English and Hindi. Line 4 further irons out the deployment of commu-
nicative resources from different named languages and is aligned to the
needs of the North-centric scholar’s consumption.15
Affording recognition to such RE-presentational tensions highlights
the hegemonies of scholarship wherein, in addition to boundary mak-
ing, scholars unwittingly subscribe to a language hierarchy where named
languages/scripts like English and the Latin alphabet are automatically
accorded primacy (Lines 3 and 4). Such naturalized transcriptional con-
ventions make (in)visible other salient resources people engage with dur-
ing meaning-making.16 In addition to making visible such naturalizations,
it is important to recognize that scholars are complicit in normalizing pro-
cesses wherein a North-centric gaze rules. My discussions here (and in
previous studies) indicate that while we can make visible the messiness of
people’s engagement with resources across settings with the aim of demys-
tifying the naturalizations of hegemonic stances in scholarship, there are
limits to how we can illustrate this key dimension with Level 1 data.
A central takeaway here is that chaining of communicative resources
constitutes a hallmark of all languaging—at the textual level, the micro-
interactional level, and also in terms of how human–nonhuman resources
are entangled in the meaning-making enterprise across longer time periods,
including across digital–physical spaces.17 The relevant point is that named
languages, named modalities, material tools, etc. are entwined in social activ-
ities; they may be teased apart for heuristic purposes but need to be under-
stood in terms of their meaning-making agendas in people’s lives. The caveat
is that scholars can only—as the RE-presentations in Figure 4.4 attest to—
point to some traces of the messiness of human languaging in their report-
ing. This needs to be recognized as a limitation of scholarship, rather than
proof of what people do in everyday life. A SWaSP framing draws attention
to both the seamless chaining of resources and the limitations of scholarly
RE-presentations (Bagga-Gupta & Carneiro, 2021). Such understandings
have key relevance for languaging on language, and RE-thinking the organi-
zational language teaching and learning in mainstream institutional settings.
Other Noticings: On Languaging on Language in HE

Shifting attention to HE more broadly, this penultimate section illustrates
the naturalized hegemonies of world-making in research and the compli-
cated, complicit, and entangled nature of boundary marking embedded
in conceptualizations of named language, including language learning.
I begin by unpacking a central concept of relevance to contemporary
research before focusing on how sudden shifts of imaginations can inform
problematic and fractured onto-epistemologies. My final two examples
highlight the continued storying of single grand envisionings in relation
to language and identity across Global North/South places/spaces.
Vignette 4.1 RE-presents a commentary on presentations by European
and North American journal editors on the crisis of publishing at a 2019
European18 conference panel.19 My invited reflections were framed by
Vignette 4.1 a & b Quality and equity in global/international aca-

demic publishing—for whom, by whom, and other sticky issues.
4.1(a) Democratic-equity and quality issues constitute dimensions

of knowledge circulations enabled through “International”
publications. There, thus, exists a critical need to “disturb nat-
uralizations” regarding publishing routines by making visible
the continuing paucity of global-North/South dialogues in the
educational and human sciences. For instance, it is important to
ask what epistemologies are being made (in)visible, what conti-
nents dominate the “international” publishing landscape—both
in terms of who and what is referenced but also in terms of who
gets published and where. Decolonial or Southern Perspectives
call attention to uncomfortable and revised analytical issues
that potentially destabilize “naturalized” North-centric episte-
mologies, ontologies and methodologies.
4.1(b) Contemporary hegemonies related to knowledge produc-
tion, including publication practices need to be interrogated.
Recognizing the dialogical functions of publishing, rather than
focusing scholars career pathways, is important. Another sig-
nificant way North-centric hegemonies can be challenged is by
addressing Anglo-Saxon publishing traditions of (i) the mono-
modal “written language bias” and (ii) a mono-lingual English
publishing bias. Opening for multimodal publishing (using digital
tools) and in multiple languages (e.g. abstracts and papers) needs
to be considered. Raising awareness regarding the skewed nature
of publication routines (in postgraduate studies, in-house educa-
tion of editorial teams) and re-vamping editorial boards too need
to be considered.
(Source: https://earli.org/node/133?fbclid=IwAR3JxXtwHsLXy
VKRIee3OapKbf9ww5G6fAv7AYWMJHB1zO-Vk8gF40tjOss,
accessed 3/30/2020)
the panel organizers in terms of a ‘postcolonial commentary.’ This space
allowed me to disturb some naturalizations of the Euro-American-centric
nature of what is assumed by the term ‘international’ and open uncon-
ventional ways for changing practices within mainstream academic pub-
lishing. Despite the panel organizers’ inclusive efforts, for my purposes
here it is important to highlight (i) the geopolitical context (a European
high-stakes biennial conference setting), and (ii) the European-American
members of the panel, in order to denaturalize the hegemonies involved
in a seemingly innocent term like ‘international.’
The named language in which the panel was conducted, i.e., English,
itself made invisible the linguistic diversity of not only its members but
also the rest of the conference participants. The conference website high-
lights that “60 different nationalities [were] represented among [the] con-
ference delegates”.20 Furthermore, English was the named language of the
journals represented at the panel and also the named language of the con-
ference. Given the recognized linguistic diversity of languagers on planet
Earth,21 posing the following questions helps this denaturalization. In HE:
- What constitutes ‘international,’ including in scholarship in contem-

porary times?
- What rules are called into play in defining what counts as
‘international’?22
- Who (including the scholarship produced and consumed therein) cre-
ates an understanding of what counts as ‘international’?
- What voices have been—and continue to be—debarred from par-
ticipating in what is understood as ‘international,’ including in
scholarship?
- What named languages could be—and need to be—included in con-
temporary publishing and peer-reviewing processes before a journal
or book series can be considered ‘international’?
- Which parts of planet Earth are peer-reviewers recruited from? i.e.,
what spaces do they pay a political and social allegiance to?
- What representations of authors and voices need to be included and iden-
tified in journals before the latter can be labeled ‘international’? Which
singular/multiple parts of planet Earth do such authors pay allegiance to?
These onto-epistemological dimensions of knowledge production and

distribution constitute delicate queries that can open up a hornet’s nest
or two. More importantly, and for present purposes, they call attention
to the invisible taken-for-grantedness of contemporary vocabularies we
live by within HE—here, illustrated by the term ‘international’—includ-
ing research processes within scholarship.
Engaging analytically with a multitude of turn positions that have
emerged since the linguistic turn in the middle of the last century23
highlights that issues of multiple alternative epistemologies vis-à-vis
‘language’ and their connections to ‘identity’ have a newness about them
for scholars aligned with North-centric stances. This can be noted when
the analytical gaze is oriented toward Level 2 data—the languaging in
scholarship and on languaging on language within HE institutions. As
noted earlier, prefixes like multi, pluri, hybrid, trans, and super mark a
shift in conceptualizations of the boundary-marked/marking nature of
what is called language and diversity. These prefixes are seen as marking
the fluid, flexible, and fuzzy sans-boundary nature of languaging24 and
intersectional identiting or enmeshed identities.25
Such shifts in perception notwithstanding, Kubota (2016), May (2014),
and others situated in the geographical North, with allegiances to multiple
spaces, highlight that it may be the noticing of such fluidity, flexibility, and
fuzziness vis-à-vis languaging and identiting or enmeshed identities that is
new. This noticing is, thus, not necessarily a marker connected to transna-
tional demographic mobility into Northern places or the increasing ubiq-
uity of digitalization, both of which are offered as arguments to explain the
changed natural order of things. This means that it is the learning to see,
hear or notice that is new—in particular, by North-centric aligned scholars
that needs acknowledgment. Recognizing the fluidity, flexibility, and fuzzi-
ness of normal languaging and enmeshed-identity positionings in all spaces
can RE-claim languaging from the aura of such newness by RE-drawing
attention to its meaning-making communicative agenda everywhere. Like
language, identity needs to be RE-claimed through vocabularies that cen-
ter-stage languagers’ fluid positionalities across timespaces, rather than
essentialist characteristics that continue to constitute the dominating norm
(Bagga-Gupta, Feilberg, & Hansen, 2017). Challenging hegemonies of the
dominating (stationary) gaze wherein language continues to be placed out-
side its users, boxed into dictionaries and neat typologies within HE and
scholarship is an important agenda of a RE- stance.
An overall pattern regarding this shift in mainstream perception fur-
thermore highlights the urgency and swiftness with which this shift has
taken, and is taking, place in LSS, educational sciences, and globaliza-
tion scholarship. Cautioning against such vocabulary turnover and
calling attention to the emergence of neologisms that function as ‘aca-
demic branding,’ Pavlenko (2018) illustrates how the proliferation of the
vocabulary and life of the term ‘superdiversity’ contrasts sharply with
the ways in which vocabularies emerge and evolve in science. Another
illustration of this issue can be seen in how the term ‘translanguaging’
has moved into the vocabularies of North-centric HE and scholarship
in recent years. Celebrated in these spaces as endorsing the use of mul-
tiple named languages, it has quickly taken over previously naturalized
terms like ‘bilingualism’ and ‘multilingualism’ in the nation-state spaces
of Sweden (Bagga-Gupta & Messina Dahlberg, 2018), while at the same
time implicitly continuing to RE-impose boundary-marking stratifying
patterns in the same spaces. Level 1 data here potentially offers a window
to illuminate if, and in what ways, such new vocabularies are aligned to
older and newer social practices.
Such shifting vocabularies can also be noted in the tensions related
to how English domination is perceived against the backdrop of con-
temporary North-centric recognition regarding the fluidity, flexibility,
and fuzziness of language. Highlighting a North-centric gaze related to a
concept like ‘plurilingualism,’ Kubota discusses a peer-review response to
her concerns regarding the hegemonies of English in non-English-dom-
inant nation-state settings: “the global domination of English is passé
and it has been replaced by multilingualism” (Kubota, 2016, p. 474).
The taken-for-grantedness of such sudden vocabulary shifts are symp-
tomatic of noticings vis-à-vis normal languaging and enmeshed identities
by scholars aligned to and scholarship that emerges from North-centric
spaces. At the same time, boundary-marked/marking terms like bilingual-
ism, despite their incongruency with normal-languaging Southern spaces,
are entering into institutional vocabularies of learning and instruction in
the latter. This constitutes a risk wherein newer and older vocabularies
continue to RE-cycle in unidirectional trajectories: from the geographical
North to the geographical South/Rest. It is recognizing this epistemologi-
cal hegemonic RE-cycling, together with going beyond geographically
marked binaries, that has relevance here.
Such RE-impositions can also be traced through the organization of
learning and instruction of named languages like ‘Swedish,’ ‘Swedish
as a second language,’ ‘Swedish as a second language for the deaf,’ and
‘Swedish for immigrants’ within HE (including adult education), and/
or in how scholarship pertaining to them is organized. The first three of
these named languages emerged in the nation-state of Sweden through
various processes in the 1990s, while the fourth has a longer trajectory.26
The establishment of the new subject areas of ‘Swedish as a second lan-
guage’ and ‘Swedish as a second language for the deaf’ in the 1990s con-
stitutes a process that itself gives rise to the named language of ‘Swedish
(as a first language).’ These newer named Swedishes lead to institutional-
ized looping and world-making processes:
- in school curricula;
- through the establishment of specialized HE departments, centers,
and courses;
- through the differentiated establishment of specialized teacher edu-
cation programs;
- through the organization of expertise in national authorities that
supports schools and in-service teacher education programs;
- through the diversification of literature for teachers who work in dif-
ferentiated areas of expertise; and
- through research programs that are established and that feed into
HE, and that in turn feeds into institutional K-12 schooling.
Relevant for present purposes is the symbiotic looped manner in which
these named Swedishes are connected to essentialist identity positionings
of children and adults:
- ‘Swedish as a second language’ becomes connected to the language to

be learned by immigrant children in school spaces, including children
and grandchildren of immigrants;
- ‘Swedish for immigrants’ is connected to the language to be learned
by immigrant adults;
- ‘Swedish as a second language for the deaf’ becomes connected to
the language to be learned by deaf children enrolled at one of the five
segregated special regional schools for the deaf; and
- ‘Swedish (as a first language)’ becomes the language studied by chil-
dren who are positioned as ethnic Swedes and who don’t manifest
any other ‘problems.’
Making visible the grey areas in how identity positioning and access to
these named Swedishes takes place highlights webs of understandings
complicit in these processes. Thus, for instance, children positioned as
ethnic Swedes and who display difficulties with the language ‘Swedish (as
a first language)’ are placed in remedial special educational settings; deaf
children enrolled in mainstream schools do not have access to the sub-
ject of ‘Swedish as a second language for the deaf’; while children born
in Sweden to parents/grandparents who have migrated to the country
may find themselves studying either ‘Swedish as a second language’ or
‘Swedish (as a first language).’ However, children who can make a bio-
logically framed claim to an official minority status based on Sweden’s
five ratified minority named languages27 do not automatically gain access
to ‘Swedish as a second language’ in schools. Processes by which named
modalities—oral/verbal, written, and signed named languages—are
RE-created follow similar trajectories. Such categorizations and linkages
illustrate how boundary marking plays out in the looping and world-
making enterprise of what becomes understood as language and identi-
ties connected to languages.
Understanding the establishment and RE-cycling of named languages,
including named modalities in institutional settings like HE, also illus-
trates hegemonies of a bounded North-centric gaze. Named-language
courses developed and offered, and research conducted by faculty in
named-language HE departments, RE-produce these named languages
and named modalities across Global North/South spaces. Thus, even
though contemporary North-centric scholarship recognizes the fluidity,
flexibility, and fuzziness of this thing we call language, the vocabularies
that HE lives by are framed by bounded, differentiated named languages,
including different named Swedishes. Glancing at and contrasting the
organization of language-focused courses and advertisements aimed at
future students in teacher education, including special education in the
geopolitical HE institutions of Sweden and India, is enlightening.
While teacher education, including special education courses offered in
Swedish HE institutions, is marked by differentiation into different named
Swedishes, no such streaming can be identified in the course offerings or
targeting of new students in Indian HE institutions. Another striking dis-
tinguishing feature lies in the language used in the advertisements: while a
single named language is used in the Swedish information for future stu-
dents through web portals where English is used only if the course is offered
in English, multiple named languages are used in the Indian information.
The nature of normal languaging empirically illustrated through Level 1
data in the previous section enables us to recognize the fallacy of the vocab-
ularies we live by in HE institutions. This invites sticky queries regarding
what sense we can make of the mainstream dichotomized nomenclature
that has become normalized in North-centric vocabularies, such as ‘first
language,’ ‘second language,’ ‘bilingual,’ ‘foreign language,’ or 21st-century
neologisms like ‘superdiversity’ and ‘translanguaging’ that have emerged in
European and North American settings. These are not neutral concepts that
circulate in LSS, or in HE and school institutions. A mobile gaze enables
noticings regarding languaging on language, wherein vocabularies endorse
single academic stories. Such vocabularies need troubling.
Postscript: RE-visiting and Revising Vocabularies We Live By

This chapter has drawn attention to the need for going beyond the giv-
ens, the naturalizations, the norms, that frame language scholarship of
relevance to HE broadly, with the aim to RE-visit and make visible and
contribute to a revision of the vocabularies we live by. A RE- stance,
as I have elaborated on in this chapter, reminds us that working within
given understandings is merely going to RE-produce received knowledge
regimes, that is, the epistemologies we have been nurtured into as schol-
ars. A performative stance is embedded in RE-understandings regarding
the fluidity of meaning-making in languaging and the doing of identity.
However, despite the emergence of neologisms in the 21st century, con-
ceptual framings from the 20th century permeate vocabularies of HE
and scholarship, retaining bounded flavors vis-à-vis this thing we call
language. It is therefore relevant to recognize the RE-cycled and complicit
ways in which norms enable the retention of hegemonic understandings.
By focusing upon the vocabularies we live by in LSS and the educa-
tional sciences, I have tried to make visible the ways in which language
and identity are conceptualized, arguing for the need to go beyond the
single academic stories that naturalize North-centric hegemonies. I have
also called attention to the continuing marginalization of studies where
social practices are center-staged in these scholarly domains. Thus, in addi-
tion to RE-creating spaces for epistemological dialogs, a RE-thinking and
RE-conceptualization of ontologies and methodologies becomes relevant.
The point being that single academic stories build upon specific ontologi-
cal, epistemological, and methodological stances (of relevance to language)
that are taken for granted within HE institutions. A revised RE- stance
enables us to pose innocuous questions to disturb this taken-for-granted
order of things. We need to ask why normal languaging and normal diver-
sity are being noticed as new? From what spaces and by whom are these
new noticings emerging? What theoretical lenses and methodological fram-
ings are informing the emergence and circulation of these scholarly stories?
Why is North-centric scholarship not RE-focusing attention toward the
normal languaging and normal diversities of Global South spaces in order
to illuminate what constitutes new noticings in Global North spaces?
These make up some questions that arise from taking on board alter-
native epistemologies that build upon a global-centric third position that
calls for a multiversal gaze that is always mobile. Furthermore, by focus-
ing upon people’s actions in concert with others and tools, a SWaSP fram-
ing potentially contributes to the position that communication IS learning
IS communication (Säljö, 2010). While this implies that meaning-making
and identity positionings arise within the matrix of languaging, such a
stance contrasts dramatically with mainstream positions where different
named languages and named identities exist in scholarly approaches that
empirically explore people’s being and becomings in and across settings.
The naturalization and circulation of discourses across nation-state bound-
aries highlight that sticky questions need to be asked everywhere regarding
what language and identity are, and where, when, why, and for whom they
are central in contemporary HE settings, including the scholarship that is pro-
duced and consumed there. This points to the one-way traffic of the flow of
scholarship from the geographies of the North/West to the South/East/Rest.
This very importantly also calls for, amongst other things, the need to accord
visibility to Southern spaces in the North and Northern spaces in the South.
The continuing silencing—visual, auditory, verbal, manual—of alterna-
tive storying regarding normal languaging/communication and normal
diversity/enmeshed identities, on the one hand, and the continuing hegemo-
nies of boundary-marked/marking onto-epistemologies, on the other, con-
stitute the tension grounds that emerge in analysis of mundane languaging
in analog and digital face-to-face and text-based spaces. This calls for the
need to make visible the naturalized taken-for-grantedness of single aca-
demic stories with regard to the nature of language and identity, including
the need for RE-engaging with alternative conceptual RE-framings across
disciplines. Such a line of thought makes up a RE-envisioning of hegemonic
subjugation norms. The power of RE-naming another, furthermore, consti-
tutes not just an act of hegemony, but it also defines the languagers doing
the naming (Ajagan-Lester, 2000). The significant issue here is that coining
and RE-using concepts itself needs to be made visible and RE-articulated in
order to illuminate the continuing hegemonies of single academic stories.
Notes
1 Compare Lakoff and Johnson (1980).
2 A second wave gives rise to a shift from what then can be seen as a first wave
(Bagga-Gupta & Kamei, 2022). A first wave can be attributed to the works
that raised important awareness regarding anti- and postcolonial stances—
for instance, through the works of Gandhi and Said-Bhabha-Spivak—and
includes important stances in decolonial scholarship (Mignolo & Walsh,
2018). In addition to making visible the continuing marginalizing hegemonic
colonial order of things (in contrast to the natural order of things) in societal
arenas and in scholarship, the first wave can, in broad terms, be understood as
emerging from philosophy, literature studies, critical studies, etc. Empirically
pushed scholarship (i.e., studies that are data driven) of the processes that
constitute marginalizing hegemonic colonial stances and an engagement with
mainstream scholarly domains are some of the hallmarks of SWaSP. SWaSP,
thus, acknowledges the political process of knowledge production and dis-
semination across time, highlighting the need to continue the work of creating
a solidarity-based HE built on epistemic justice.
3 Scholarship generally tends to focus upon differences between different fram-
ings, in terms of key founders and developers, historicity, and trajectories of
establishment. Thus, the focus often lies on differentiating between who is/
are given recognition as the frontline figures in a specific framing, differences
between the key tenets established in them, how specific framings diversify
over time into different framings, etc. This is not my ambition here.
4 It is also significant to recognize that different vocabularies in different con-
ceptual framings can signify the same issue, and similar terms in different
theoretical framings can potentially open up different meanings.
5 Cornell (2014) describes Ubuntu philosophy as a structuring way that builds
upon the interdependence of people and nature.
6 “The ‘North Pole’ has multiple meanings; it can indicate the spot where compasses
point or to the geographically northernmost point on Earth. And, most enchant-
ingly, it can refer to Santa’s headquarters. The North Pole has inspired human
imagination, scientific exploration and political conflict for decades” (Szalay, 2017).
7 While assumptions regarding what is implied by the here and now too are
historically shaped, I attend to these in this chapter in terms of: (i) the situ-
ated-distributed nature of communication that goes beyond dichotomies con-
stituted by human language or human-nonhuman (this relates to the call to
focus analytically on social practices, i.e., the everydayness of doings in the
analytical enterprise), (ii) the contemporary global colonial order of things,
which includes places like Sweden that are popularly not seen as having a
colonial history, and (iii) drawing attention to learning spaces outside HE.
8 You and I would not be engaging with my analytical mobile gaze here if you
were not involved in languaging with me, to put it straightforwardly.
9 Recent focus in LSS scholarship has seen discussions of ‘in the wild’ that is vari-
ously framed as the unregulated ways of living and being outside classroom
settings (Dubreil & Thorne, 2017), and the nature of interactions in digital/ana-
log settings, the assumption being that interactions within classrooms are struc-
tured/tame in contrast. Such assumptions are analytically problematic, since
analysis of life in classrooms has also, across timespaces, established the ‘wild’
complexities there (see, for instance, Jackson, 1990, Mehan & Cazden, 2015).
For my purposes here, ‘in the wild’ points to the complexities of human life and
communication everywhere. Such a stance also points to the need to interrogate
the artificial boundary marking of university spaces as constituting ‘the’ sites of
HE. HE learning encompasses spaces other than those connected to universities.
10 Rather than their accounts of these.
11 These have been taken from the Everyday Life (EL) project (www.ju.se/ccd/el).
12 www.ju.se/ccd.
13 See, for instance, Bagga-Gupta (2002, 2014, 2017c, 2017d, 2022), Gynne (2016),
Hansen (2005), Holmström (2013), Messina Dahlberg (2015), Tapio (2013).
14 This data from the Gender Talk Gender Spaces project (www.ju.se/ccd/gtgs)
has been discussed in further detail in Bagga-Gupta (2014).
15 Recent published CCD studies have drawn attention to such representational
dilemmas when mundane utterances in oral languaging are center-staged (see
Bagga-Gupta, 2018; Bagga-Gupta & Messina Dahlberg, 2018, 2021; Bagga-
Gupta et al., 2019).
16 See also Bagga-Gupta and St John (2017) for other ways in which transcrip-
tional conventions are naturalized.
17 See Bagga-Gupta (2022, 2017d, 2014, 2002) for relevant empirical examples.
18 European Association of Research on Learning and Instruction.
19 The panel was arranged by the special interest group on educational theory.
20 https://earli.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/EARLI2019-DASH_0.pdf,
accessed 3/30/2020.
21 For instance, the online resource Ethnologue lists 7,111 recognized named
languages that are in use across the planet at the end of 2019.
22 I completed the first draft of this chapter in April 2020, during strict lock-
down in the megacity Mumbai, experiencing firsthand through my situation
and that of my dispersed family members on the planet the absurdity and
reemergence of new types of belongingness and political boundaries. Efforts
by the Swedish Embassy in New Delhi to digitally bring together its nation-
state citizens living, working, or visiting the Indian nation-state—or what
on the ground consists of a conglomeration of 28 boundary-marked states
with their own administrations within the subcontinental unit called India—
and the Swedish Embassy’s collaborations with other European embassies
to repatriate its citizens also illuminates the relevance of what is meant by
nation, national and international.
23 For instance, boundary, mobility, modality, multilingual, multi/trans-turn, etc.
(see Kubota, 2016; Bagga-Gupta, 2019b).
24 This is often marked in scholarship in vocabularies that include plurilingual,
plurilanguaging, translingual, translanguaging, etc.
25 This is often marked in scholarship in vocabularies like superdiversity, hyper-
diversity, newspeakers, etc.
26 See Bagga-Gupta (2017c, 2012); Rosén (2013).
27 The named groups and named languages identified in the European ratifica-
tion process at the end of the 1990s include: Sami (Sami), Finns (Finnish),
Tornedalers (Meankeili), Roma (Romani), and Jews (Yiddish).
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Part 2
Language Policy in
Postcolonial Academic
Contexts
5 Decolonizing Epistemology in
Sudanese Linguistics
Integrationist and Political Perspectives
Mohammad Alkhair and Abdel Rahim
Mugaddam
Introduction
This chapter aims to examine the nature and structure of the knowledge
spaces of language and linguistic programs in a Sudanese university con-
text. We address this aim by explicating how these knowledge spaces
in Sudanese universities are ideologically structured. The chapter also
examines the extent to which colonial epistemologies shape and have
shaped these knowledge spaces. Furthermore, the chapter explores the
relevance and adequacy of integrationism and critical perspectives in the
process of demythologizing (and/or decolonizing) linguistic epistemology
in Sudanese higher education. We situate our analysis within the prism
of integrationism, and the wider framework of Southern epistemologies
and epistemological critique. Situating Sudanese university epistemology
within such a framework, we draw on quantitative and qualitative data
from a variety of language and linguistics programs.
The rationale for this chapter emerges from the paucity of research ana-
lyzing knowledge spaces of language and linguistic programs at Sudanese
universities. There is a major lack of any study on the structuring lin-
guistic ideologies of our knowledge spaces in Sudanese higher education.
There are also few integrationist analyses of African realities, languages,
and their linguistic epistemologies (see Makoni, 2011, 2013, 2014;
Makoni & Severo, 2017). Such paucity similarly holds true in the case of
the epistemological critique of knowledge spaces at Sudanese higher edu-
cational institutions. Several studies have addressed the development of
linguistic research in Sudan (Idris, 2003; Schadeberg & Blench, 2013, pp.
9–11; Simeone-Senelle, Smidt, Raine, Ronny, & Jakobi, 2019, pp. 97–81;
Bulakh et al., 2019, pp. 108–114), but none have engaged with the ideo-
logical context within which linguistic scholarship is produced. In this
respect, there is also a lack of any explanation of the nature of epistemol-
ogy and intellectual discourses within which Sudanese universities and
linguistic research in Sudan operate. There is also a lack of any serious
“epistemocriticism” (Camarero, 2011) for Sudanese university linguistic
epistemology, apart from a few studies that engage in ideological critique
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-8
88 Mohammad Alkhair and Abdel Rahim Mugaddam
of Sudanese linguistic epistemology outside university spaces (Mahmud,
1983; Abdelhay, 2015).
Linguistics, either during colonialism or in its aftermath, was an inte-
gral part of the colonial project in ruling Sudan, in exploiting its material
resources, and in rationalizing its linguistic diversity (Abdelhay, 2007;
Abdelhay, 2010; Abdelhay, Makoni, Makoni, & Mugaddam, 2011;
Abdelhay, Makoni, & Makoni, 2016). This tradition represents a part
of larger processes of linguistic and political invention in Africa (John
Benjamins Ranger, 1983; Mudimbe, 1988; Errington, 2001, 2008; Spear,
2003; Makoni & Pennycook, 2007). The impact of the colonial project of
linguistics in Sudan can not only be seen with regard to languages but is
also inherent in the postcolonial language epistemologies in Sudanese uni-
versity spaces. Informed by its apolitical and segregational perspectives,
postcolonial linguistic epistemology at Sudanese universities does not
adequately address the wider mythic consequences of colonialism. This is
also true regarding political and institutional rationalization of Sudanese
languages during postcolonialism. The Sudanese university epistemology,
as we envisage in the analysis, continues uncritically to reproduce lin-
guistic orthodoxies. Much of the linguistic thinking at Sudanese universi-
ties is based on orthodox linguistic views, colonial language ideologies,
language myths, labels, and categories (see Abdelhay, 2015). We argue
that this epistemology not only perpetuates mythic and invented statuses
of language categories, but it also makes their consequences of social
inequalities and dominance appear legitimate (see Mahmud, 1983).
This chapter provides an ideological critique of the mainstream Sudanese
university segregationist and apolitical epistemology of language, by
focusing on its structuring linguistic ideologies as instantiated in univer-
sity syllabi and course content. The chapter shows how such depoliticized,
segregational, and self-contained epistemologies constrained the agency
and intellectual responsibility of Sudanese university linguistic programs
toward the society (see Severo & Makoni, 2019). Furthermore, the chap-
ter analyzes the role of the alternative trends in professional research and
its value in decolonizing linguistic study at Sudanese university spaces,
and in relating it to its wider context and integrationism myth busting
(Cobley, 2011). This is done through interweaving perspectives from inte-
grationism and Southern epistemologies on language and communication.
We argue that such perspectives help us to problematize, decolonize, and
demythologize the scientism of Sudanese university linguistic programs.
In turn, this strengthens the opportunities for breaking from discrete, seg-
regationist, telementational, ahistorical, and decontextualized stances cast
down on the linguistic epistemology of higher education.
The chapter is structured into six sections. In the next one, we introduce
our conceptual framework. In the third section, we present the method-
ology and data treatment of the study. In the fourth section, we analyze
the epistemological features and orientations manifested in language and
Epistemology in Sudanese Linguistics 89
linguistics programs at Sudanese university undergraduate level. In the
fifth section, we discuss the structure and nature of language and linguis-
tics programs and research at Sudanese university postgraduate level. In
the last section, we provide concluding remarks together with the impli-
cations of integrationist linguistics for linguistic epistemology in Sudan.
Integrational and Political Perspectives on Linguistic Epistemology

Linguistic epistemology in its Western orthodoxy conceptualizes language
as a fixed code, a rule-governed system, and a free-standing autonomous
object of inquiry. In accordance with these conceptions, linguistic profes-
sionals strive to regulate, fix, and systematize language experience (see
Davis, 2003). In so doing, they reduce the language elements and experi-
ences to second-order categories and labels (Davis, 2003; Hutton, 2011;
Makoni, 2011, 2013). Recently, such modernist notions of autonomy, and
code-based and telementational models have been severely denounced.
Scholars from an array of formalist and political approaches from critical
sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology have poured fresh criticism
on the epistemological canons of modern Western linguistics (for sum-
maries of such critiques, see Makoni & Pennycook, 2007, pp. 18–21;
Makoni & Pennycook, 2012, pp. 441–442).
The Oxford linguist Roy Harris (1931–2015) is a trenchant critic of
the telementational and code-based theories that predominated in 20th-
century mainstream linguistic thinking and theorizing. Referring to such
theorizing as “orthodox” or “segregationist” linguistics, Harris chal-
lenges its epistemological bases and intellectual discourses (Harris, 1980,
1981, 1987, 1996, 1998). Harris alternatively proposes an integrational
approach to communication. Camarero (2011) refers to Harris’ scholarly
revisions of Saussurean linguistics as forms of “epistemocriticism” (on
integrationism’s history, see Harris, 1997, pp. 233–234; Toolan, 1999,
pp. 97–103; on its intellectual discourses, see Hutton, 2016a; on its criti-
cism, see Wolf & Love, 1997).
Integrationism views mainstream linguistic epistemology informed by
telementation, discreteness, and code-based conceptualizations as basi-
cally being founded on a “language myth” (Harris, 1981, 1987). This
mythologized linguistic theorizing, as Harris (2002, p. 24) claims, “per-
vades the whole of Western culture.” In contrast, integrationism rejects
“any theory that posits such a code and a fixed relationship between
the codes and the thoughts or objects for which it is held to stand, ‘sur-
rogationally’” (Hutton, 2011, p. 503). Integrationism, as Pablé (2020)
suggests, is committed to rejecting the view that a “sign is something that
‘stands for’ (or, is ‘a surrogate’ of) something other than itself.”
Harris devotes a considerable amount of time of his scholarly life to
critiquing and rejecting the mythical character of language, linguistic epis-
temology, and the linguistic discipline in general. Simply, “myths are […]
powerful but mistaken ideas” (Hutton, 2011, p. 504). To Harris (2002,
p. 1), a myth represents “a cultural fossil, a sedimented form of thinking
that has gone unchallenged for so long that it has hardened into a kind
of intellectual concrete.” A myth becomes fossilized in the sense that “any
challenge to it is regarded as an affront to common sense” (Harris, 2002,
p. 3). The challenge of breaking from myths not only emerges from their
nature as being mistaken ideas, but also because they are permeated and
became deeply rooted in modern linguistic epistemology. ‘Scriptism’ is
among these fossilized writing myths. Under its umbrella, Harris (2009)
critiques the different sub-myths of scriptism, including the distinction
between speech and writing.
The double helix nature of language as a means of communication and
a subject matter of linguistic enquiry is a crux that challenges orthodox
linguistics (Davis, 2003; Harris, 2009). Thus, “in its endeavour to make
language a scientific object of enquiry” orthodox linguistics “segregates
first- and second-order abilities and posits an idealized system, a ‘fixed
code’—in order to explicate how language makes communication pos-
sible” (Davis, 2003, p. 8). First-order elements are context-sensitive, spa-
tiotemporal, communicational processes, whereas second-order elements
are macrosocial labels and categorizations used in talking about commu-
nication. For language, such categorizations are termed “metalinguistic”
(Hutton, Pablé, & Bade, 2011, p. 477).
Between the terrain of first- and second-order elements, much epistemic
violence (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007) is practiced (for discussion, see
Hutton, 2016b). Another area upon which orthodox linguistic practiced
its violence is reocentric surrogationalism (Harris, 2010). The violence is
done through naming languages and reducing their speakers numerically
(cf. higher-order metamyth, Harris, 2009, p. 43). Such violence assumes
a fixed relation between the languages as named entities and the number
of language speakers (Makoni, 2011, p. 683).
Ethnologue is one of the databases aligning to surrogational and enu-
merative representations of languages. Such representations are tren-
chantly attacked from political perspectives. Assuming language stability,
orthodox canons not only represent languages numerically but also reduce
them to lexical and grammatical structures in a form of nameable units
such as ‘English,’ ‘Arabic,’ and ‘French’ (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007;
Blommaert, 2010). Such professional representations of language operate
within “artefactual ideology of language” (Blommaert, 2008, 2010).
Such artefactual ideology has influenced language as an object of study
in modern linguistics. This is clearly visible in the enumerative accounts
of languages, their dialects, and their speakers. More importantly, these
counts are taken for granted as indicators of the status of languages, their
endangerment, maintenance, shift, and so on (Makoni & Pennycook,
2007; Moore, Pietikäinen, & Blommaert, 2010). The enumerability “is
an invention and acts as a measure to contain and control” (Garcia,
2007, p. xiii). The enumeration process is part of the colonial invention
discourse of African languages that Makoni & Pennycook (2007, p. 65)
refer to as “census ideology.” Such ideology works through exploiting
reductionist reocentric surrogational practices of naming languages. It
reduces the linguistic experiences to macrosocial categories and labels to
render them countable. The critique of nameability and enumerability is
a meeting point between integrationism and critical politicized perspec-
tives. Thus, the critical position of invention as a postcolonial construct is
in conformity to a Harrisian critique of mythologies and segregationism
(see Makoni, 2013, p. 90).
The “metadiscursive regimes” (Bauman & Briggs, 2003, p. 299) that
are used to reduce these languages into nameable, separable, and enu-
merable codes are forms of “epistemic violence” (Makoni & Pennycook,
2007, p. 21; see Pinto, 2017) practiced on the language users. This epis-
temic violence is performed through professional linguistic work using
various genres of textualization and text production practices (Makoni
& Pennycook, 2007; Blommaert, 2008). These genres and textual pro-
ductions include scholarly representations of surrogating and externally
naming, standardizing, and codifying language—a process essentially
run by outsiders. Local languages are analyzed and studied through
Eurocentric perspectives with European languages as analytic grids
(Makoni, 2011, p. 681). The whole process of epistemic violence works
in complicity with an “Othering” discourse (Makoni, 2011, p. 683; see
Said, 1978). This is because names, analytic apparatuses, and categories
are imposed by outsiders using a global design for local languages and
realities (Mignolo, 2000).
Therefore, the epistemic violence and othering practices done in the
name of linguistic scientism need to be deconstructed and decolonized.
Therefore, we need to free our linguistic epistemology from both loaded
colonial conceptions of languages and segregationist tendencies. This
position emerges because these epistemological stances and conceptions
have largely curtailed our understanding of how communication really
works.
The motivations and perspectives that the various scholarly tradi-
tions exploit in critiquing the epistemology of linguistic orthodoxy vary
considerably. Their motivations range from rejecting orthodoxy to com-
pletely replacing it. At one level, the integrationists reject the mythic ide-
alization of mainstream segregationist linguistic thinking. However, they
do not stop at rejecting language mythologies but also transcend and
replace them with alternative integrationist linguistic epistemologies (a
demythologized linguistics version) (on integrationism’s efforts on myth
busting, see Harris, 2002; Cobley, 2011). On the other hand, the critical
and politicized perspectives to language framed within colonial linguis-
tics, linguistic anthropology, and critical sociolinguistics, equally call for
rethinking languages, and deconstructing, reconstituting, and disinventing
them (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007, p. 3). Interweaving such theoretical
insights from integrationism and critical political perspectives enables
us to better engage the geopolitics of knowledge and Northern linguis-
tic epistemologies (Mignolo, 2000; Grosfoguel, 2011; Kumaravadivelu,
2012; Santos, 2014; Severo & Makoni, 2019; Pennycook & Makoni,
2020) in an effort to decolonize Sudanese linguistics.
Methodology and Data

This chapter engages with the nature and structure of language and lin-
guistics programs in a Sudanese higher education context. We inspect the
epistemological nature and the structuring ideologies of linguistic knowl-
edge at Sudanese university spaces. This is done through performing quan-
titative and qualitative content analyses of Sudanese university syllabi and
course content description. Quantitative and qualitative analyses represent
the main data resource for the chapter, supplemented with secondary data,
including references to observations from postgraduate theses, disserta-
tions, published works, exam artefacts, and autoethnographic materials.
Our sample includes a variety of language and linguistics programs.
We build a corpus of Sudanese university syllabi amounting to 22 pro-
grams of language and linguistics. This comprises 10 undergraduate and
12 graduate programs located in 13 Sudanese universities. Such a cor-
pus represents data drawn equally from graduate and undergraduate
levels, from governmental and non-governmental universities, and from
Sudanese universities in central and peripheral areas. The programs ana-
lyzed are distributed across various colleges, including colleges of arts,
education, and languages.
The relevance of university syllabi hinges on the fact that such syllabi
include details on the nature of the course content, course description,
aims, key readings, and references. Such information is a potential carrier
of epistemological features and the structuring linguistic ideologies of
universities. Besides, theses and dissertations reflect the epistemological
orientations of Sudanese universities. The reason for including exam arte-
facts in our data is that final exams in the various Sudanese universities
represent 70% of the entire course evaluation, with the remaining 30%
allocated to assignments and continuous assessment. The value of exams
hinges on their role in providing proof of what has been taught. It also
helps in comparing the course content stipulated in the course descrip-
tions and the content included in the exams.
In the process of data treatment, we develop various categories for ana-
lyzing the features of university syllabi. These categories mainly emerge
from the data itself; we do not try to impose our own categories on the
data. We also look at the data and interpret it from an emic position. We
ourselves received our first degrees and pursued postgraduate study at
Sudanese university departments of language, and have been engaged in
language teaching and research since graduation. In the data coding, we
excluded university and college requirements in order to focus on special-
ized language content.
Epistemological Structures of Sudanese Language and Linguistics

Undergraduate Programs
This section engages with the epistemological features and orientations
manifested in language and linguistics programs at Sudanese university
undergraduate level. Based on quantitative and qualitative observations,
the analysis examines the course content of Sudanese university syllabi
from various language departments.
In the various language programs, the inclusion of skill-based content
varies from 3% to 48% of the total program content. Compared to the
various content categories, the skill-based course content represents the
highest quota in 9 programs out of 10 (90%). For instance, the Open
University of Sudan (OUS), which is dedicated to qualifying in-service
schoolteachers of English, allocates 45% of its syllabus content to the
teaching of skill-based content. The OUS program devotes 92% of this
content exclusively to the teaching of writing and reading. The case of
the OUS is applicable to the various undergraduate language programs
at different Sudanese universities. These programs devote a consider-
able amount of space and time to developing the linguistic competence
and proficiency of its students. The qualitative content analysis shows
that the skill-based content in most of the Sudanese university syllabi is
sub-divided into the four English skills (listening, speaking, reading, and
writing). Speaking and writing are perceived as distinct modes that are
independent of each other. Written language is also predominant.
The emphasis on skill-based content in language and linguistics pro-
grams reflects several issues. One of these is the tendency of these pro-
grams to emphasize linguistic competence over pragmatic, sociolinguistic,
and symbolic competencies. This predominance of linguistic competence
conforms to the general trend of qualitative contents analysis revealing
that language programs overrepresent the linguistic mode over other
semiotic modes in their course descriptions. The tendency to exclusively
employ linguistic data in teaching and researching Sudanese languages
reflects the segregationist features of linguistics programs at Sudanese
universities. In this respect, linguistics programs overemphasize a linguis-
tic mode at the expense of other semiotic ones. This is clearly visible
in the paucity of research employing semiotic, visual, and multimodal
analyses. For instance, there has been no separate study on the visual,
material, and semiotic spaces of Sudan.
The overemphasis on skill-based content can also be attributed to the
low standards of English attained by Sudanese university entrants. New
university entrants lack basic language proficiency in English—a reality
that we observe in our everyday teaching of English at Sudanese universi-
ties. Whether such dominance of skill-based content is due to students’
low standards of English, or is a manifestation of a certain linguistic ide-
ology, it is mostly at the expense of representing various aspects of lan-
guage and linguistics.
As the quantitative and qualitative content analyses show, all the pro-
grams under scrutiny are structured into segregated units of phonology,
phonetics, morphology, syntax, lexicology, pragmatics, and semantics. In
the various programs, the phonetic content ranges from 4% to 13%;
the morphological content from 3% to 14%; and the syntactic content
from 4% to 22% of all the linguistic knowledge space. These programs
are moving away from a modernist structural view of language as a sys-
tem. Indeed, some university programs refer to such structural courses
as ‘language system.’ The language programs under analysis “rely on a
presumption that language is best studied by being broken down into a
hierarchy of levels and units of analysis” (Hutton et al., 2011, p. 476).
Sudanese university language syllabi are developed primarily based on
this orthodoxy. Thus, most of the phonetic, phonological, morphological,
and syntactic content is designed and taught along structural, acritical,
ahistorical, and apolitical lines (for reflections on the orthodox and apo-
litical nature of language syllabus in a Gulf university context, see Said,
1994, pp. 391–93).
The syntactic content in the different undergraduate language programs
occupies more space than the phonetic, morphological, and semantic
content. One significant observation emerging from the content analy-
ses is that syntactic course content is mostly dominated by Chomskyan
generativist ideologies of language. This can be seen in the various gram-
matical categories, concepts, and theories. As the quantitative content
analysis proves, the generative ideologies are played out through over-
emphasis on linguistic competence and skill-based content in almost all
undergraduate syllabi. In the knowledge spaces of language programs,
Chomsky is instantiated in the syllabi in the form of concepts, terms, key
readings, and references. For instance, universal grammar, surface struc-
ture, deep structure, and other generative grammatical categories are the
dominant metalanguage manifested in the descriptions of the various
courses (see Ali, 2016). Such dominance is also compatible with observa-
tions obtained from inspecting exam artefacts. Many exams stress such
generativist metalanguage and concepts. This prevalence of generative
thought is similarly reflected in the content of courses entitled ‘schools
of linguistics.’ In such courses, generativist content remained the most
dominant and occupied the largest space, compared to other schools of
linguistic thought.
All the programs we analyzed, without exception, take the native-
speaker question for granted. Of course, such a position reflects the dom-
inance of Chomskyan thought in the linguistic knowledge of the various
programs, some of which perceive a native speaker as the main authority
in term of grammatical correctness and authenticity. Such a perception
directly influences the programs’ selection of materials and texts to be
studied by their students. As a result, there is little or no knowledge space
for non-native texts of English. Outside universities, such valuation of
the native speaker is also visible. In private English schools in Khartoum,
the native speaker of English is perceived as an ideal teacher (Phillipson,
1992). Sudanese nonnative teachers of English language are marginalized
in terms of salary, compared with their native-speaker counterparts.
In terms of content covering semantic and pragmatic aspects of lan-
guage, less space is allocated to it than to syntactic content. In the different
programs, the semantic and pragmatic quota of the linguistic knowledge
allocated space is only 1–6%. The various programs include semantic
knowledge in the form of one course in most cases, or it is simply implied
it in the content of other courses of linguistics. Within this content, the
university syllabi pay scant attention to the pragmatic aspect of meaning.
The applied linguistics content included in the undergraduate programs
is 5%–26% for language teaching and 3%–5% for language learning
aspects. As the analysis reveals, language programs located at colleges
of education give more space to language learning and teaching content
than programs in faculties of arts and languages. The qualitative content
analysis shows that applied linguistics knowledge is exclusively drawn
from Northern epistemologies. The vast majority of terms, concepts,
and theories covered by the applied linguistic content are American and
Eurocentric ones. Metaterms such as ‘mother tongue,’ ‘foreign language,’
‘second language,’ and ‘native speaker’ are taken for granted.
Looking at the epistemological grounds upon which language teaching
content in general and the content of teacher training in particular are
based gives some clues to the epistemological nature of language pro-
grams. These programs have a strong tendency to conceptualize teacher
professionalism, teacher knowledge, and teacher learning based on techni-
cist and competency-based models. This conceptualization of profession-
alism reduces language teaching to a list of competencies and techniques
to be acquired by the teachers. This is at the expense of developing reflec-
tion-based competencies in the students or trainees. Such epistemologi-
cal lines are not new in the context of Sudan. They have a long history
dating back to the Gordon Memorial College teacher training program
and the Bakht er Ruda teacher training institute during colonialism. The
knowledge orientation of pedagogical competency development evident
in these colonial programs continues in postcolonial teacher training and
education programs. The vast majority of postcolonial teacher training
programs (including the programs under analysis) uncritically inherited
the colonial order of the development of teacher professionalism, taking
it as the natural order. This is particularly true in the case of the Bakht er
Ruda teacher training institute.
The sociolinguistic content exists at universities in the form of courses
entitled ‘Sociolinguistics,’ ‘Style and usage,’ ‘Varieties of language use,’
‘Language and society,’ and sometimes ‘Discourse analysis.’ The sociolin-
guistic knowledge content represents 2%–12% of the various undergrad-
uate programs. Although sociolinguistic knowledge is about a language
in a social context, the Sudanese context is largely invisible. This is clearly
seen in the qualitative content analysis of the sociolinguistics course
content, description, and exams. Almost all the sociolinguistic content
at Sudanese universities is exclusively dedicated to theories, cases, and
examples from European and American contexts. The rich local socio-
linguistic context of Sudan is mostly rendered invisible. There is also a
predominance of variationist sociolinguistic models and a lack of any dis-
cursive content. Another example from the qualitative content analysis is
a course entitled ‘English as an international language,’ taught as a BA
English language program. Though this course is dedicated to varieties
of World Englishes as stipulated in the course description, an inspection
of its exam indicates the exclusive presence of American and Eurocentric
sociolinguistic knowledge of English. Despite the fact that this course
is being taught to Sudanese students living and studying in a Sudanese
context, there is no reference in the course to English variety in Sudan.
The invisibility of the local context of Sudan reflects the absence of critical
language content in the various syllabi. Sudanese university syllabi de-link
the linguistic knowledge from the social, cultural, political, and ideological
context of Sudan. In our sample, eight out of ten programs do not recognize
the local context in their syllabi. Even where programs do include the local
Sudanese context, they only allocate an extremely small space to it. The
inclusion of Sudanese knowledge content reached a maximum of 3%.
The invisibility of critical language orientation also dominates in the
knowledge spaces of linguistic scholarship in Sudan. In this respect,
Mahmud (1983, p. 2) criticizes the divorce of Sudanese linguistic schol-
arship from its wider socioeconomic, historical, and political contexts. As
a result, Mahmud indicates that these “international and indigenous pro-
fessionals acting as linguistic specialists will get nowhere as long as they
continue to avoid the real issues of political power distribution and social
inequalities.” Mahmud is critical of the prevalent professional intellectual
discourses of Sudanese linguistics. However, critical research engaging
with historical, social, political, and ideological issues has become more
visible in the last few decades (Abdelhay, 2007, 2010, 2015; Berair, 2007;
Sharkey, 2008a, 2008b, 2012; Abdelhay et al., 2011; Abdelhay et al.,
2016). This research has started to address the deeply rooted bases of
inequalities and conflicts. It marks a significant move from apolitical lin-
guistic analyses to a more politicized research, resulting in an epistemo-
logical critique of 20th-century orthodox linguistics.
Such a move is also taking place in some Sudanese knowledge spaces.
For instance, the linguistics program at the University of Khartoum
recently specified addressing the local context of Sudan in two of its
32 courses. The emergence of this content can be attributed to a new
generation of staff in the department dedicated to research in Sudanese
languages. In this case, the two courses are ‘Field method and data
analysis’ and ‘Language situation in Sudan.’ The former course aims at
documenting endangered Sudanese languages and conducting linguistic
field work; the latter addresses the linguistic situation of languages and
policies in Sudan. It is very clear that both courses are based on enu-
merating ideologies of Sudanese languages. These courses tread in the
footsteps of Western documentary linguistics, and depend on its tools
and metalanguage. Thus, the critical language content of these linguistic
programs relies on modern Eurocentric and Southern knowledge bases
of linguistics.
The research component of Sudanese university undergraduate pro-
grams mostly takes the form of conceptual and practical research knowl-
edge. As the quantitative content analysis indicates, the research content
in programs constituting our sample is 4%–12% of the total course con-
tent, in the form of one or two courses of conceptual research knowledge,
followed by a practical dissertation or writing a research paper. One
observation emerging from the data is that either the conceptual or prac-
tical research content is mostly undertaken during the final year. Thus,
the different programs do not provide a research development plan for
the students. The research content in Sudanese universities conceptualizes
research work as a product emerging at the end of the study, rather than
a process that students go through in their BA journey. Most Sudanese
universities dedicate 30% of their course evaluation to ongoing assess-
ments in the form of assignments, tasks, midterm tests, etc. However, the
qualitative content analysis does not detect any intention of exploiting
these assessments to boost students’ research capability. As a part of our
professional duties at universities, we supervise final-year research proj-
ects, which in most cases is an uphill struggle due to the students’ poor
standard of writing and their lack of research skills. We also observe that
most students are not motivated to write a dissertation and have dif-
ficulty understanding the ethical considerations in dissertation writing.
This point coincides with our qualitative content analysis observations
that the undergraduate programs contain little or no course content on
the ethics of research. For instance, none of these programs, as evident in
their syllabi, instruct the students on how to avoid plagiarism.
The different undergraduate language programs include various
amounts of literature, representing between 2% and 30% of the over-
all syllabus. Though the literature content varies from one university to
another, the general trend revealed in the quantitative content analysis
shows more space allocated to linguistic content than to the literary
component. The literature content includes several courses divided into
fiction, poetry, and drama, with the content in most cases distributed
between the British and American literary traditions and covering dif-
ferent historical eras and literary schools. The African literature content
remains very low.
A qualitative analysis of literature course content, description, and exam
artefacts shows that in the undergraduate literature component, literary
study is divorced from the social context. In most cases, literature courses
of Sudanese university syllabi exclusively focus on linguistic, structural,
stylistic, rhetorical, and literary features of literary texts. Such asocial,
apolitical, ahistorical, and decontextualized treatment of literature is the
norm, according to our qualitative content analysis. The literature courses
that were qualitatively analyzed are dominated by Eurocentric and native-
speaker perspectives. The overemphasis on literary works from European
contexts, as well as favoring native-speaking authors of English language,
is mostly at the expense of local author representation. The local knowl-
edge produced by these local authors appears less legitimate in this intel-
lectual discourse than the knowledge represented by Eurocentric and
native-speaker authors. The Sudanese literature content is marginalized
even within the context of African literature. This marginalization is not
only epistemological but also political, since many universities in the pre-
revolution context banned The Season of Migration to the North, a novel
by the Sudanese author Altaib Salih, for political reasons.
Epistemological Structures of Sudanese Language and

Linguistics Postgraduate Programs and Research
This section analyzes data pertinent to the postgraduate language and
linguistics programs at Sudanese universities. The course content and
description elicited from the language syllabi of postgraduate diploma
and master’s programs are quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed, with
the data supplemented by observations drawn from a list of theses and
dissertations compiled from different Sudanese universities.
Unlike the undergraduate language programs (see Table 5.1), postgrad-
uate programs (see Table 5.2) allocated less space to skill-based content.
In 90% of the programs, skill-based content accounts for 0%–13% of the
whole course. The exception to this pattern is the postgraduate diploma
in English proficiency and communication at the Afhad University for
Women, where the skill-based content represents 67% of the knowledge
space. This is the only program of its kind at Sudanese universities, where
most of the programs are dedicated to linguistics or language teaching.
In line with undergraduate language programs, the skill-based content is
dominated by more emphasis on reading and writing skills. For instance,
the English proficiency and communication program dedicates 78% of
its content to written language. The spoken language content represents
only 22% of the program. Thus, even in a skill-oriented program, there is
a bias against the spoken language component.
Table 5.1 The epistemological structures of Sudanese language and linguistics undergraduate programs
Skill- Phonetics Semantics Applied Applied Critical
Language based & Syntax & & Linguistics Linguistics language Research
No Program Hours content Phonology Morphology Grammar Pragmatics (teaching) (learning) Sociolinguistics content Literature content Total
1. AlNeelain 74 33% 13% 8% 7% 6% 5% 3% 2% 0% 15% 8% 100%

University,
BA in English.
Language
2. University of 96 3% 15% 14% 22% 6% 11% 5% 12% 3% 3% 6% 100%
Khartoum,
Linguistics
3. University of 79 36% 5% 3% 9% 3% 12% 4% 7% 0% 15% 6% 100%
Khartoum,
B.Ed in
English
4. Alzaiem 105 29% 6% 5% 12% 2% 12% 3% 6% 0% 19% 6% 100%
Alazhari
U,
BA (Ed &
Arts
English)
5. Alzaiem 86 29% 4% 5% 12% 1% 26% 3% 2% 0% 12% 6% 100%
Alazhari
U,
BA (English
& litera-
ture) Basic
level
Continued
Table 5.1 (Continued)
Skill- Phonetics Semantics Applied Applied Critical
Language based & Syntax & & Linguistics Linguistics language Research
No Program Hours content Phonology Morphology Grammar Pragmatics (teaching) (learning) Sociolinguistics content Literature content Total
6. Imam Hadi 86 24% 7% 4% 4% 4% 7% 3% 12% 0% 26% 9% 100%

College,
BA in English
7. Open 82 48% 4% 7% 12 % 2% 18% 3% 0% 0% 2% 4% 100%
University
of Sudan,
BA in
English
8. University of 70 26% 10% 5% 9% 2% 5% 3% 4% 0% 30% 6% 100%
Dongla,
BA in English
9. University of 102 20% 6% 3% 13% 3% 15% 4% 6% 1% 17% 12% 100%
Zalingei,
BA in English
10. University of 121 33% 6% 3% 10% 2% 18% 3% 5% 0% 16% 4% 100%
Gezira,
B.Ed in
English
Table 5.2 The epistemological structures of Sudanese language and linguistics postgraduate programs
Language Hours Skill- Phonetics & Morphology Syntax & Semantics & Applied Applied Sociolinguistics Critical Literature Research Total
Program based Phonology Grammar Pragmatics Linguistics Linguistics language content
No. content (teaching) (learning) content
1. AAU, PG 29 21% 8% 3% 10% 3% 35% 10% 0% 0% 10% 0% 100%

Diploma
in English
Language
2. AAU, MA 36 0% 5% 3% 12% 2% 54% 8% 0% 0% 8% 8% 100%
in English
Language
3. SUST, MA 36 0% 8% 1% 1% 8% 27% 5% 16% 0% 8% 26% 100%
English
(linguistics)
4. Nile Valley 36 8% 8% 3% 11% 10% 31% 8% 0% 0% 4% 17% 100%
University,
MA in applied
linguistics
5. University of 36 0% 8% 3% 11% 2% 50% 0% 8% 0% 8% 10% 100%
Gezira,
PGD in (ELT)
6. University of 50 12 % 6% 5% 9% 2% 32% 6% 6% 0% 6% 16% 100%
Gezira,
A PD (TEFL)
7. University of 30 11% 5% 6% 6% 4% 22% 0% 13% 0% 0% 33% 100%
Khartoum,
MA in
TESOL
8. University of 30 0% 5% 5% 5% 5% 49% 5% 4% 0% 15% 7% 100%
Khartoum,
MA in ELT
Continued
Table 5.2 (Continued)
Language Hours Skill- Phonetics & Morphology Syntax & Semantics & Applied Applied Sociolinguistics Critical Literature Research Total
Program based Phonology Grammar Pragmatics Linguistics Linguistics language content
No. content (teaching) (learning) content
9. Sudan 36 0% 4% 4% 2% 12% 54% 4% 3% 0% 7% 7% 100%

University
for
Science &
Technology,
MA in TEL
10. Open 42 10% 11% 5% 22% 12% 16% 7% 7% 0% 10% 0% 100%
University
of Sudan,
English
language &
literature
11. University 55 5% 18% 7% 9% 12% 13% 3% 10% 0% 16% 5% 100%
of Eman
ElMahdi
12. Ahfad 27 67% 0% 22% 11% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 100%
University
for Women,
PGD in
English
proficiency
& commu-
nication
The segregation of skills is also evident in the MA and PhD theses
and dissertations, where the four English skills are mostly segregated.
Speaking and writing are perceived as distinct modes independent of each
other. Research mostly focuses on problems faced during the teaching
and learning of the four skills at different levels of instruction. The supe-
riority of written language is an old story.
In line with undergraduate programs (cf. Table 5.1), 90% of the post-
graduate programs (cf. Table 5.2) in our sample are structured into seg-
regated units of phonology, phonetics, morphology, syntax, lexicology,
pragmatics, and semantics. In the postgraduate language programs, the
phonetic content is 0%–18%, the morphological content is 0%–22%, and
the syntactic content is 1%–22% of the all the linguistic knowledge space,
presented either in the general linguistics course(s) or in courses specific
to each structural level. In these courses, the linguistic knowledge draws
exclusively on American and modern Eurocentric epistemologies of lan-
guage. The evidence from MA exams used to evaluate the phonetic, mor-
phological, and syntactic content suggests that such courses tend to operate
within Southern-based conceptions and linguistic ideologies of language.
As concretely instantiated in the corpus, many MA and PhD titles
divide language into segregated units. This is reflected in studies of the
phonetic, morphological, and syntactic difficulties or problems encoun-
tered by learners of English. Similarly, postgraduate research approaches
these phonetic, morphological, and syntactic difficulties from a teacher’s
perspective. Several studies in our corpus examine the challenges lan-
guage teachers face in teaching these structural units, including structural
problems arising in the areas of language testing, textbook evaluation,
and material development.
With regard to semantic and pragmatic content, the postgraduate
programs allocated varying space to the aspect of meaning in their syl-
labi. The meaning content in the language programs is 0%–12% of the
whole syllabus, and is mainly focused on semantic aspects of word mean-
ings and sense relations. The dominant semantic content marginalizes
the pragmatic aspects of meaning. One significant observation emerging
from the qualitative content analysis is that the vast majority of semantic
course content is based on telementation and code-based models of com-
munication. The semantic component conceptualizes meaning as a code-
based message transmitted from a sender to a receiver, and is decoded in a
predictable and stable manner. Most of the semantic courses focus on the
meaning and interpretation of smaller chunks of language (morphemes
and words), while downgrading larger chunks of language (sentences and
texts).
As the inspection of linguistics and meaning-related exams reveals, the
examiners assume fixed relations between linguistic signs and their ref-
erents. There is also a lack of research addressing the pragmatic aspects
of meaning. Even in courses entitled ‘Discourse analysis,’ the pragmatic
aspect of meaning is silenced in favor of such code-based and telementa-
tion perspectives. These language ideologies are equally visible in almost
all linguistics courses. For example, the phonetic courses teach sounds
through three levels of production, transmission, and perception cor-
responding to three branches—articulatory, acoustic, and auditory—of
phonetic study. The same emphasis on sender–receiver categorization is
equally evident in the description of psycholinguistic courses in many
MA programs.
The quantitative and qualitative content analysis shows that post-
graduate programs privilege the applied linguistics component of lan-
guage teaching in their syllabi. In 83% of the programs under analysis,
the language teaching topics occupy more than 25% of each program.
In some, the language teaching quotient reaches almost half the syllabus.
One reason for the prevalence of language teaching is that most of these
postgraduate programs specialize in applied linguistics and languages
teaching. This is clearly visible in the aims, courses, and names of differ-
ent MA programs. They have titles such as English Language Teaching,
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, Teaching English
as a Foreign Language, and Teaching English Language and Applied
Linguistics. Another reason for the prevalence of language teaching is the
political economy of graduate degrees in the employment market inside
Sudan and in the Gulf countries, where hundreds of such graduates are
recruited annually by universities. In addition, the international private
schools in Sudan aspire to appoint graduates of these programs.
Privileging language teaching and educational spaces in the linguistic
epistemologies of Sudan has a long history. For instance, in the postcolo-
nial landscape, all language survey projects were exclusively focused on
educational spaces. Linguistic professionals conducting language surveys
drew on linguistic data from schoolteachers and students (Jernudd, 1975,
1979; Bell, 1976; Miller, 2007, 2018). This reflects how linguistic scholar-
ship and programs in the Sudanese context conceptualize and reduce lan-
guage to a mere ‘school language.’ The reduction was historically visible
in colonial and postcolonial literacy projects that ultimately aimed to pro-
duce educational artefacts, namely ‘school textbooks,’ on local languages,
a history that corresponds to the results of qualitative analysis of post-
graduate syllabi and theses titles. In these postgraduate knowledge spaces,
there is a marked absence of language analysis outside educational spaces.
The language teaching and learning components not only draw on uni-
versalist Northern-based theories, categories, and terminologies to address
local non-Western knowledge spaces, but it also renders them invisible. As
the analysis of university syllabi and postgraduate research shows, the
local context of Sudan is not only silenced but equally viewed through
an Othering discourse. A good example of such epistemic violence is
instantiated in contrastive linguistics courses. The contrastive linguistics
component in postgraduate spaces technically and theoretically compares
and contrasts the features of the learners’ source language and the target
language, and its purpose—as reflected in the aims, course content, key
readings, and exams—is to predict difficult areas and expected negative
transfers in learning English. The way these contrastive analysis courses
are conceptualized shows interesting cases of segregationism and Othering
discourses. All contrastive analysis courses at Sudanese universities are
based on monoglotic orientations that regard Arabic as an exclusive L1/
mother tongue of all Sudanese learners of English. Consequently, contras-
tive analysis courses silence the linguistic diversity of Sudanese learners of
English. These courses practice an epistemic violence of Othering by eras-
ing Sudanese learners’ linguistic diversity and restricting the contrastive
analysis to English and Arabic. These courses also practice epistemic vio-
lence on a much larger proportion of the linguistically diverse Sudanese
learners whose errors are conceptualized and predicated based on an
assumed L1 (Arabic language) which is not theirs. Along the same lines,
the postgraduate studies that take a contrastive linguistics perspective
operate within the same monoglotic conceptions that make any speaker
of a Sudanese language other than Arabic totally invisible.
This epistemic violence is practiced just as much in pre-tertiary cur-
ricula and textbooks. The English-language Sudan Modern Integrated
Learning of English (SMILE) curriculum is a good example. SMILE con-
ceptualizes Arabic as the L1/mother tongue of all learners (see Alkhair,
2020). This means that the SMILE curriculum perceives the Sudanese
people as a community of homogeneous speech with one ‘mother tongue.’
The result of this perception is that the textbook defines the Arabic lan-
guage as the L1 of all its pupils nationwide. This pedagogical perception
reduces the linguistic diversity of the pupils in the different regional areas
of Sudan. This sort of reduction is a part of an ideology that singular-
izes plurality (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007; Makoni, 2011). For instance,
singularizing plurality is evident in many colonial categories of Sudanese
spaces, such as ‘the South’ and ‘the North.’ These spatial categories are
based on indeterminacy and the colonial imagination of homogeneity.
Postcolonial Sudanese linguistics inherited a variety of colonial concep-
tions, categories, and constructs. Any colonially inherited categories are
to be interpreted with great caution (Abdelhay et al., 2016).
Another robust example of epistemological dependence on Western
knowledge is the conceptualization of the classroom and students’ seat-
ing that is evident in the postgraduate programs. These programs theo-
rize the language learning classroom through a Western imagination of
the ‘schoolscape.’ By this, we mean it is based on a Eurocentric architec-
tural image of the classroom, with specific furniture and fixed physical
organization of students. The programs include a considerable amount
of classroom management content, as well as student–teacher interac-
tion, and students’ seating (U- and V-shaped) in the classroom. This is
not reflected in the reality of under-resourced schools and classrooms
both in the Sudanese peripheries and even in some areas of the Sudanese
capital, where students lack basic seating. They are seated on the ground
with neither desks nor textbooks, and in some areas, the classroom itself
is just a gathering under the shade of a tree. This is particularly true in
the nomadic areas of Western Sudan. As Daoud & Izerig (2017, p. 85)
indicate, teachers in such nomadic spaces “have mobile black boards and
two chairs. The moment nomads settle, […they] hang the board on a
tree and start a class.” In such non-Western Sudanese knowledge spaces,
the Eurocentric concepts and constructs of classroom management, stu-
dent–teacher interaction, and seating-based activities do not really work.
These various postgraduate language programs thus need to decolonize
their knowledge, and take into consideration the local teaching context.
Global designs do not fit smoothly into local contexts.
The sociolinguistics content in the different postgraduate language
programs amounts to between 0% and 13% of the whole syllabus. Most
language teaching programs draw on English sociolinguistics, with the
context of Sudan invisible. The one exception is the master’s program
in African and Sudanese languages (University of Khartoum), the main
focus of which is the description, classification, and documentation of
Sudanese language. The program and its postgraduate research have com-
promised with orthodox and segregational linguistic thinking in a num-
ber of its scholarly representations. One of these is its tendency to view
languages as bounded, nameable, and enumerable entities. Postgraduate
research and language survey projects performed under the umbrella of
the institute tend to name, enumerate, and attribute speakers’ numbers
to the languages under survey (cf. Miller, 2016). Starting from the early
1970s, these language surveys adopted questionnaire tools and enu-
merative analyses to explain “language status,” “multilingualism,” and
“endangerment” (see Bell, 1976; Jernudd, 1975, 1979; for a detailed cri-
tique, see Abdelhay, 2015; Miller, 2018). Although these language survey
projects advanced our knowledge of Sudanese languages, their outcomes
have proved limited and they did not really fulfill their main goals (see
Miller, 2018). The scholarly representations of naming and enumerat-
ing languages are part of a “reocentric surrogationism” (Harris, 1981;
Makoni, 2011). This reflects that such a program of Sudanese linguistics
operates within a “census ideology” (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007) of
languages. Another segregational feature of Sudanese linguistics research
is its historical and extensive dependence on national census data. It priv-
ileges the analyses of demographic categorizations of speakers (Miller,
2018). In response, linguistic research uncritically continues to reproduce
loaded ethnolinguistic categorizations, such as ‘ethnic affiliation,’ ‘tribe,’
‘language,’ ‘dialect,’ ‘mother tongue,’ and ‘first language.’
Another example of focusing on the local sociolinguistic context of
Sudan comes from the postgraduate research submitted to the Centre
of Yusif Alkhalifa Abu Bakr for writing languages in the Quranic Script.
Postgraduate research in this center focuses exclusively on writing
Sudanese and African languages in an Arabic script. Inaugurated by Yusif
Alkhalifa Abu Bakr, the direction of this sociolinguistic work and research
is to devise an Arabic orthography for local Sudanese languages. This sort
of literacy project is an example of postcolonial literacy expertise to coun-
ter the colonial project of writing Sudanese languages in Latin script.
This professional practice takes a linguistic view of literacy that regards
languages as codes and educational content carriers. This is informed by
a Eurocentric myth of “scriptism” (Harris, 2009), which views writing as
a reducible form of speech. One of the outcomes of the Rejaf Language
Conference (RLC), held in 1928, was the choice of Latin script in which
to write Southern languages for pedagogical ends. Orthography in the
RLC’s case did not merely play a technical role, but also represented
political and symbolic ones. Choosing Latin script for writing Southern
languages was a site of contestation between colonial and postcolonial
linguistic epistemologies and literacy projects. These Latin-script colo-
nial literacy projects triggered the postcolonial counter-literacy project of
writing languages in Arabic script in an attempt to reverse the effects of
the RLC and the metadiscursive effects of colonialism (Sharkey, 2008a,
2012; see Abu Bakr, 1975, 1978). Commenting on these two conflicting
orthographies and anti-orthographies, Makoni (2013) suggests that the
two projects are both driven by a segregationist assumption that concep-
tualizes script as a reflection of speech (see Harris, 2009).
As part of this colonial project of governance, the colonial government
of Sudan employed several discursive strategies and genres of textualiza-
tion in the production of textual artefacts (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007;
Blommaert, 2008; Makoni, Severo, & Abdelhay, 2020). In response,
the professional discourse of linguistic epistemology is surrogationally
naming, classifying, language grouping, codifying, writing grammars,
and undertaking lexicographic work for these languages (Makoni et al.,
2020, pp. 214–218). In the Sudanese colonial context, the RLC is an
example of these discursive strategies.
The RLC was an important moment in the colonial project of lin-
guistics and the metadiscursive and metapragmatic practices of linguis-
tic epistemology in Sudan. Missionaries and professional linguists were
invited from different countries. The conference recommended, among
other things: (i) the adoption of six Southern ‘tribal languages’ (Dinka,
Nuer, Shilluk, Bari, Latuko, and Zande) for the production of school text-
books at lower grades; (ii) the use of English as the language of instruc-
tion at the higher grades; and (iii) the adoption of Latin script to write
these languages (for detailed analyses on the RLC, seeMakoni, 2015;
Abdelhay et al., 2016).
The RLC had lasting consequences for local language speakers and
groups (see Makoni, 2015). One of these was the use of colonial inter-
vention policies to influence the situation of the Arabic language and
its varieties in the South (see Mahmud, 1983; Nyombe, 1997). Another
point is that the RLC invented (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007) “technical
versions” of “local tribal languages” with the purpose of producing tex-
tual artefacts, namely “school textbooks.” This was achieved in various
ways, including attempts to unify the orthographic system for writing
local languages (Abdelhay et al., 2016; Makoni, 2015), which was part
of an ideology that singularizes plurality (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007;
Makoni, 2011). The RLC devised a list of dialects and languages, invent-
ing boundaries between a language and dialect (Sharkey, 2012; Abdelhay,
2015; Abdelhay et al., 2016).
From an integrationist position, the RLC’s professional practices oper-
ated within Eurocentric discourses of enumerability and nameability.
This kind of academic discourse “conceptualizes local languages in a plu-
ral form, as the sum of a number of distinct languages, […]. In a plural-
ization of singularity languages are enumerable, separable and nameable
entities” (Makoni, 2011, p. 683). The RLC engaged in naming, counting
languages, and assigning language groups (for the RLC’s enumerative
orientations, see Miller, 2018). The RLC’s ultimate goal was the produc-
tion of textual artefacts and educational textbooks in ‘tribal languages’ to
be written in Latin script. This shows the RLC’s artefactual language ide-
ology (Blommaert, 2008). The RLC’s text artefactualization, as Abdelhay,
Makoni, & Makoni (2016, p. 12) put it, was “a necessary metapragmatic
activity to circulate and stabilise the constructed categories of languages
and language groups.” Along these lines, the RLC invented various cat-
egories and labels such as ‘tribal language,’ ‘dialect,’ ‘vernacular,’ ‘African
lingua franca,’ and ‘language group’ (see Abdelhay, Makoni, & Makoni,
2016, p. 12) that did not exist in precolonial times. More importantly, the
colonial Western linguistic epistemology constructed this metalanguage
along hierarchical, categorical, racialized, villagized, and orientalist lines.
It represents what Abdelhay, Makoni, & Makoni (2016, p. 12) refer to
as a “stratifying set of abstract categories of interaction.” The metalan-
guage emerged as the result, not of a natural order of things, but rather
of a colonial order of things (Abdelhay et al., 2016; Makoni et al., 2020).
Integrationally, colonialism in Sudan has constructed language concep-
tions, categories, and labels that are incompatible with the pre-existing
language realities in the country.
One robust example of ideological and epistemological critique
(Grosfoguel, 2011) of Sudanese linguistic epistemology comes from
Abdelhay (2015). Drawing on orthodox literature on the professional
representations of multilingualism and the enumerability of Sudanese
languages, Abdelhay heavily criticizes the descriptive and analytic
adequacy and power of Sudanese linguistic epistemology. Mainstream
research claims that the linguistic situation in Sudan is very complex,
with a high level of multilingualism. The research also acknowledges the
failure of language surveys and linguistic research to provide an exact
number of languages and dialects. Furthermore, such Sudanese research
admits its inability to differentiate between language and dialect bound-
aries. Despite these blind spots, mainstream research insists on the mul-
tilingual nature of Sudan and takes it for granted. In response, Abdelhay
interrupts the conceptualizations of languages as bounded, separable,
enumerable, and fixed entities. Critiquing the dependency of Sudanese
linguistics on such conceptions, Abdelhay (2015) refers to its scholarly
practices as being informed by “a master ideological narrative” of lin-
guistic epistemology and methodology.
The ideological critiques of epistemology that Abdelhay (2015) pro-
vides explain the epistemological traps into which normative Sudanese
linguistics falls. The traps that challenge Sudanese applied linguistics
are part of wider epistemological challenges facing the Global South
(Pennycook & Makoni, 2020). Abdelhay’s critique shows how the
explanatory power of the normative Sudanese linguistics is constrained
following the North’s compartmentalized, essentialized, and depoliticized
language epistemologies. Starting from narratives informed by enumera-
tive and Eurocentric conceptions, Sudanese linguistics continues to mask
the political and ideological bases of social inequalities (Mahmud, 1983;
Abdelhay et al., 2016; Miller, 2018). Abdelhay’s (2015) article is anath-
ema to decolonizing Sudanese linguistic epistemology from the positivis-
tic, objectified stances of enumeration.
Another dominant orthodoxy that has constrained Sudanese linguistics
has to do with representing Sudanese languages as named entities (Harris,
2009; Makoni, 2011). From an anti-surrogational stance, Mugaddam
and Abdelhay (2014a, 2014b) critically engage with the metadiscursive
and Othering discourses in naming Sudanese languages. Such an anti-
surrogational position is also visible in Abdelhay, Makoni, & Makoni,
(2016, p. 7), who highlight how the variability in the names of languages
hides politics. In this respect, Mugaddam & Abdelhay (2014a, p. 313)
explain that:
The historical name of what populations do with language was

Dumurik: Dumurik simply meant ‘speech’ …. In the local cultural
system, the metaphor Dumurik was neither tied to specific part of the
community nor its use had any specific ideological values in the way
the use of terms such as ‘language’ or ‘rutana’ could index in other
hegemonic cultural orders.
In this way, the authors are aware of their sociopolitical locus of enun-
ciation in critiquing Eurocentric surrogational practices from the subal-
ternized and silenced knowledge (Mignolo, 2000) of local Tima people.
In response, the research interestingly breaks from the Western discourse
of nameability. It provides avenues for decolonizing the linguistics
epistemology.
The “professional linguists’ monopoly of knowledge about language”
(Makoni, 2013, p. 88) is another segregational feature that is strongly vis-
ible in Sudanese linguistics. Sudanese linguistics leaves little or no room
for layperson linguistics, and linguistic professionals’ overemphasis on a
code-based Sudanese linguistics comes at the expense of speaker-oriented
and lay linguistics frameworks. The universal and Northern bases of
linguistic knowledge suppress any other knowledge(s). Mugaddam and
Abdelhay (2014b) engage with metalinguistic potentials of lay linguistic
activism, as represented in the Tima Language Committee. Mugaddam &
Abdelhay (2014b, p. 197) explain that:
[S]ome members of the Tima community have access to metalinguis-

tic categories which could enable them to get involved in mutual
engagement with professional linguists. They can even go as far as to
interrogate the constructs developed by expert knowledge.
In this example, Mugaddam & Abdelhay indicate the relevance of local

lay linguistic activism in not only being engaged in producing linguistic
knowledge but also interrupting and contesting some of its constructs as
a professional expertise.
The ideological critique of Eurocentric/Northern epistemologies in lin-
guistics involves interrogating the ways of knowing and being emergent
in colonialism and coloniality (Mignolo, 2000, 2018). This includes ques-
tioning the metalinguistic packages produced by such epistemologies.
However, the linguistic epistemologies that have informed the linguistics
proper in Sudan do not really challenge such colonial categories of lan-
guage and ethnicity (Miller, 2018).
Resolving the conceptual and epistemological problems arising from
the loaded nature of categories, labels, and constructs represents an
emerging area in Sudanese linguistics. The emerging research, armed
with Harris’ (1984) “non-compartmentalization principle,” attempts to
avoid reproducing mythologized language conceptions such as ‘tribal
language,’ ‘mother tongue,’ ‘indigenous language,’ and ‘vernacular,’ to
name but a few (see Abdelhay, Juffermans, & Asfahan, 2014; Abdelhay
et al., 2016; Abdelhay, Makoni, & Severo, 2020; Makoni et al., 2020).
Thus, decolonizing linguistic epistemology challenges not only the meta-
linguistic package but also the methodologies that produce it (Severo &
Makoni, 2019, p. 90). In this respect, the geopolitics of the researchers
and their locus of enunciation (Mignolo, 2000) are crucial in breaking
from the epistemological racism and epistemicide, as well as in decoloniz-
ing and demythologizing linguistic knowledge.
The literature content in the various graduate programs is a quick rehash
of content covered in the undergraduate programs and is mostly separated
into units of fiction, poetry, and drama. Decontextualized, with no ref-
erence to the Sudanese context, these literature components correspond
with the observation of the orientalist scholar Edward Said on Middle
Eastern programs of language. Said (1994) reports that he was invited
to reflect on the English language syllabus (with literature and linguistics
components) in the curriculum of several languages at Gulf universities.
Said indicates that the literature component of these universities lacks any
critical views. The teaching of literature de-links it from its social and
political contexts. This is typical of linguistics and English departments in
Sudanese departments of literature, and the kinds of courses they teach.
In terms of research course content, postgraduate programs follow the
very same structure that is evident in the undergraduate programs. Similarly,
research knowledge exists in the forms of research methodology course(s)
and a dissertation. We detect more space allocated to practicing research.
Conclusion
This chapter has provided epistemological and ideological analysis, and a cri-
tique of language and linguistics programs at Sudanese universities. We have
conducted quantitative and qualitative content analysis of language pro-
grams, interweaving various perspectives from integrationism and Southern
epistemologies. Situating our chapter within this conceptual framework, we
have explored how adequately it demythologizes and decolonizes Sudanese
linguistic epistemology. The boundary of integrationism needs to be broad-
ened beyond Eurocentric contexts. We have analyzed the segregational and
apolitical epistemology of language programs within higher education in
Sudan. The analysis revealed that these depoliticized, segregational, self-
contained, and Eurocentric epistemologies in Sudanese university programs
constrained their agency and responsibility toward Sudanese society.
We also explored the role of alternative research in decolonizing
Sudanese linguistics and related it to wider contexts linking it to the
integrational efforts of myth busting. We conclude that integrational,
Southern, and critical political perspectives are crucial in problematizing
the scientism of Sudanese linguistic spaces of knowledge. In turn, such
epistemological and ideological critique of linguistic epistemology is effec-
tive in overcoming its discrete, segregationist, telementational, ahistori-
cal, and decontextualized stances. The impacts of colonialism have been
reflected in the postcolonial language epistemologies. Epistemologically,
colonialism in Sudan has greatly contributed to shaping its aftermath.
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6 Multilingualism in South African
Universities
A Reflection from an Integrationist
Perspective
Dumisile N. Mkhize
Introduction
As a complex historical, political, cultural, and sociolinguistic phe-
nomenon, multilingualism has been receiving, and continues to receive,
attention from sociolinguists and applied language scholars from within
Southern and Northern contexts (Makoni, 2003; Garcia, 2009; Heugh,
2015, 2016; Makalela, 2015, 2017; Wei, 2018). In Southern settings, this
has led to the reframing of the term ‘multilingualism’ to become ‘multi-
lingualisms,’ which is the acknowledgment that the latter in these con-
texts is shaped by a complex set of sociolinguistic and historical-political
realities that differ across contexts (Heugh & Stroud, 2019; Pennycook
& Makoni, 2020). In these contexts, furthermore, the word ‘Southern’
is increasingly becoming linked to epistemologies; hence, “epistemolo-
gies of the south” (Santos, 2012), which suggests that language issues are
inextricably intertwined with the epistemological perspectives and onto-
logical realities of the speakers. In this respect, any talk about Southern
people with regard to language issues that omits their ways of knowing
and ways of being is incomplete. Despite this, educational approaches
in most educational institutions in Southern settings ignore the complex
epistemological perspectives, ontological realities, and multilingual dis-
cursive practices of the people in these institutions. Notwithstanding this
complexity, the focus of this chapter is on the multilingual discursive
practices of students in selected South African universities.
As in most educational institutions in Southern settings, universities
in South Africa, as well as primary and secondary schools, borrowed
from the North the notion of language as a discrete entity, which is based
on monolingual nation-state ideology (Ricento, 2000; Makalela, 2017).
While several studies on multilingualism in South African universities has
critiqued this monolingual view from different perspectives, such as the
translanguaging (Madiba, 2014; Makalela, 2015, 2016) and social justice
perspectives (Mwaniki, 2012; Mkhize, 2018), to the best of my knowl-
edge it has not received attention from an integrationist perspective.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-9
Multilingualism in South African Universities 117
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a critical reflection on mul-
tilingual language policies at selected South African universities, namely
the University of the Witwatersrand (henceforth Wits) and the University
of Cape Town (henceforth UCT), through an integrationist approach.
Drawing on Madiba’s (2014) and Makalela’s (2014, 2015) studies, a re-
analysis of the classroom linguistic discursive practices of students from
the two universities is also conducted and reinterpreted from an integra-
tionist perspective. Using this approach, the chapter addresses the follow-
ing research questions:
(i) What is the pertinence of an integrationist approach to multilingual

language policies at the selected multilingual South African universi-
ties and, by extension, in other similar universities?
(ii) What is the relevance of integrationism to the linguistic discursive
practices in the selected classrooms at these universities and, by
extension, in other similar classrooms?
(iii) What are the implications of integrationism for the multilingual lan-
guage policies and the classroom linguistic discursive practices at
these institutions and similar institutions?
The first part of the chapter seeks to put into perspective multilingualism
in the South African context in general, by providing a brief discussion
of the historical, political, cultural, and sociolinguistic dynamics of this
phenomenon. In the second section, the focus is on a brief overview of the
historical and political background of language policies in South African
universities. The discussion stretches from as far back as the colonial
language policies and up to the current language policies in democratic
South Africa. There follows a synopsis of key theoretical underpinnings
of an integrationist approach. This discussion is followed by a critique of
the language policies of the selected universities from the integrationist
perspective. In the next section, this critique is taken further and deals
with the linguistic discursive practices in the selected classrooms in these
universities, through the re-analysis and reinterpretation of the studies by
Madiba (2014) and Makalela (2014, 2015). The chapter concludes with
a brief discussion about the implications of the integrationist approach
for the multilingual language policies and linguistic discursive practices
in South African universities in general.
Multilingualism in the South African Context—A Bird’s-Eye View

Fluid and flexible multilingualism in southern Africa can be traced to
the precolonial era during the civilization of the old African kingdoms
of Monomotapa, Malawi, Lozi, and Mapungubwe, among others, where
mobility between the various ethnic groups supported the creation of a
language continuum (Makalela, 2016, 2017). This language continuum
118 Dumisile N. Mkhize
not only allowed the different language groups to conduct trade among
themselves and others beyond Africa, as in the case of Mapungubwe, but
it also promoted harmonious interdependence and coexistence among
the groups (Ibid.). This is reflected in the African value system of Ubuntu
or botho, as found in the expression “Unguntu ngumuntu ngabantu” or
“Motho ke motho kabatho,” which means “I am because you are; you
are because we are.” Beyond the mutual interdependence between the
languages and communication practices of African people were the liter-
acy practices that show a complex encoding of messages in forms similar
to pictographs and ideographs (Raum, 1993, cited in Makalela, 2017),
which disputes the often-held view that precolonial Africa was illiterate.
The partition of Africa after the Berlin Convention of 1884 margin-
alized these complex language, communication, and literacy practices
through the adoption of monolingual ideologies and practices, which were
an extension of the “one-ness” ideology of the European Enlightenment
period (Ricento, 2000). The missionary linguists who were affiliated to
different missionary stations played a role in this, as they colluded with the
colonial governments. Through the orthographies they developed, mainly
for evangelical and educational purposes, they “misinvented” (Makoni,
2003) different language varieties that were mutually inter-comprehensi-
ble, categorizing them into different languages, in part owing to the incon-
sistencies and discrepancies that were a result of the influence of their own
languages as well as the missionary institutions to which they belonged.
This linguistic divergence was later promoted through standardiza-
tion, which involved selecting and codifying one variety within the same
group, with school grammars and dictionaries playing a critical role in
this language engineering. In this respect, mutually intelligible varieties
were put into clearly marked linguistic entities. For example, isiZulu and
isiXhosa, which were later joined by isiNdebele and siSwati, were cat-
egorized as different languages even though they all belong to the same
Nguni language cluster. Similarly, Sepedi, Setswana, and Sesotho were
classified as different languages despite belonging to the same Sotho lan-
guage cluster. Regrettably, the separation of the languages in this way
fueled division among their speakers. The languages, however, continued
to leak into one another, especially in urban settings, encouraging some
African scholars to view language as action through which division could
be counteracted (Nhlapo, 1944).
Arguing from a sociopolitical perspective, Nhlapo (1944) called for a
linguistic convergence of the Nguni and Sotho languages through ortho-
graphic harmonization. This process would imply that, on the one hand,
isiZulu and isiXhosa, the two main Nguni languages at the time, would
form one Nguni language, and on the other hand, Sepedi, Setswana, and
Sesotho would be one Sotho language. Nhlapo further argued that this
would eventually lead to the Nguni and Sotho languages forming one
language for African language-speaking people. The ascension of the
National Party to power in 1948, with its apartheid or separate develop-
ment policy, spelt the end of this proposal, as the apartheid government
followed an aggressive ethnolinguistic policy that promoted the “bal-
kanisation”1 of African languages according to the Bantustans (Msimang,
1992, cited in Heugh, 2016), where people who spoke the same language
were categorized into one group. Notably, not even this sociopolitical lin-
guistic engineering could stop people from using their languages flexibly,
in part owing to intermarriages and traveling across the boundaries, and
thus defying the apartheid restrictions.
In the 1980s, as the banned African National Congress (ANC) was
preparing to take over power from the apartheid government, Alexander2
(Alexander, 1992) revisited Nhlapo’s proposal regarding the harmoniza-
tion of the languages within the Nguni and Sotho clusters. However, the
language context at the time worked against the resuscitation of this pro-
posal, as both the ANC and the apartheid government opted for a lan-
guage as a right ideological orientation (Heugh, 2013). On the one hand,
the ANC based its argument on the principle of the Freedom Charter that
states, “All people shall have a right to use their own languages and to
develop their own folk culture and custom” (ANC, 1955, cited in Heugh,
2016, p. 249). On the other hand, the apartheid government saw this
approach as a means to justify the status quo that promoted the separa-
tion of the languages (Heugh, 2013).
As the discussions about the South African languages continued in the
early 1990s, the debates about possible language approaches intensified,
with three ideological orientations being presented, namely the segrega-
tionist, assimilationist, and integrationist perspectives (Heugh, 2013). The
segregationist perspective leaned towards a language as a right orientation.
In contrast, the assimilationist perspective advocated the use of English as
a ‘unifying language’ to avoid ethnic conflicts and as a tool for access to
the global world. Taking what could be viewed as a middle approach, the
integrationist perspective supported the practical and functional use of all
the languages to foster communication within and across all languages.
Evidently, at a constitutional level, the segregationist orientation
won, as the Constitution declares nine of the indigenous African lan-
guages, alongside English and Afrikaans, to be the official languages of
the country (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996). This
perspective, however, received intense criticism in some circles, as it was
perceived to be supporting the strict separation of languages, which not
only imitated the segregationist approach of the apartheid government
but also supported the view of the languages as being separate entities,
promoting multiple forms of monolingualisms (Makoni, 2003; Heugh,
2013). By contrast, the continued flexible use of the languages by people
on the ground for practical and functional purposes favors the inte-
grationist orientation (Makalela, 2015, 2017; Madiba, 2014; Hurst &
Mona, 2017).
In sum, the foregoing discussion has provided a snippet from the his-
torical, political, and sociolinguistic background against which multilin-
gualism in South Africa in general, and in the universities in particular,
should be understood. In the next section, I present a brief discussion of
the historical context of language policies at South African universities.
Historical Context of Language Policies at South African

Universities
As in most parts of the world, universities in South Africa are products of
political formations (Purser, 2000, cited in Du, 2006, pp. 452–453). The
establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, which was a political
compromise between the English and the Dutch (and later on, Afrikaans-
speaking people), resulted in a mandatory bilingual Afrikaans–English
language policy at the white South African universities at the time. This
bilingual policy adopted a dual-medium approach, where some of the
subjects were offered in English and others in Afrikaans. This was a
departure from the monolingual English policy of the University of the
Cape of Good Hope, established in 1873 as the first white South African
university (Du, 2006). This monolingual policy was later followed by
Fort Hare, founded in 1916, as the first black university.
From the beginning of 1918, however, the universities that had a majority
of Afrikaans-speaking students began evolving into Afrikaans-medium uni-
versities against the National Department of Education directive. This move
was further fueled by the rise of Afrikaner nationalism in the mid-1930s,
culminating in the founding of the National Party (NP) which became the
governing party in 1948. With the support of the government’s apartheid
policy, language policies at white universities evolved into either fully-fledged
monolingual Afrikaans or monolingual English, depending on the student
population (Du, 2006). The University of South Africa (UNISA) was the only
exception, in that it continued being an Afrikaans–English university.
Interestingly, when the NP government established black universities in
the early 1970s, this race-based approach to language policy was not sus-
tained. The University of the North, which catered for Sesotho, Setswana,
Sepedi, Tshivenda, and Xitsonga speakers, adopted an English-medium
policy. The University of Zululand, which accommodated speakers of
isiZulu, siSwati, and isiNdebele, adopted the same policy. Likewise, the
University of Durban-Westville and the University of the Western Cape,
which were designated for Indians and coloreds respectively, also imple-
mented this monolingual English-medium policy. While the monolingual
English-medium policy in these institutions remained in place in the early
1990s—the advent of democracy—and beyond, the change in the insti-
tutional landscape in the Afrikaans universities forced them to adopt a
parallel-medium policy, where English and Afrikaans were used as the
official languages.
Unwittingly, the Language Policy for Higher Education (Ministry of
Education, 2002) supported this policy through the proclamation that
universities had to use “a range of strategies, including the adoption of
parallel and dual language medium options” (par. 15.4.4). The prefer-
ence for English by non-Afrikaans speakers, however, whose numbers
in the historically Afrikaans universities continued to grow, posed a
threat to Afrikaans and it still does, causing some Afrikaans individu-
als and civil organizations to take the institutions to court (Du, 2016).
With the exception of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, which adopted
a bilingual English-isiZulu language policy in 2014, the English-only or
English-mainly policy seems to be the trend in most universities, includ-
ing UNISA which had been implementing a bilingual Afrikaans–English-
medium policy since its establishment in the 19th century until the new
policy came into effect in 2016.
While most of the language policy debates and contestations in higher
education have been around English and Afrikaans, debates around
indigenous African languages have not been as pronounced. This is
despite several reports and discussions, including the revised Language
Policy for Higher Education (Department of Higher Education, 2017),
where the role of indigenous African languages in the intellectualization
of higher education is highlighted. In fact, in most universities, African
languages have been accommodated through territorial language policies
on the basis of practicality and as part of functional multilingualism,
which is described as “the choice of a particular language(s) in a particu-
lar situation, determined by the context in which the language is used,
i.e. the function, the audience and the message for which it is employed”
(Department of Arts and Culture, 2003, p. 19). Interestingly, this territo-
rial designation of languages in university policies is also found at uni-
versities with a highly diverse multilingual university population that has
complex linguistic repertoires (Makalela, 2015; Hurst & Mona, 2017).
Overall, the above brief discussion of the colonial, apartheid, and
democratic language policies at South African universities shows that the
policies have been, and continue to be, based on strict parallel monolin-
gualisms or multiple forms of monolingualism (Makoni, 2003; Heugh,
2015). These monolingualisms reduce speakers’ linguistic discursive prac-
tices and repertoires to clearly marked fixed “linguistic boxes” (Makalela,
2015) or enumerable languages (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007). As the
following parts of the chapter show, this runs contrary to the realities of
the majority of South African people. What follows now is a synopsis of
the key theoretical underpinnings of an integrationist approach.
A Synopsis of Key Tenets of the Integrationist Approach

Integrationism was founded on the criticism of the “language myth”
(Harris, 2002), which is a view that language is a fixed code that has
invariant forms and meanings shared and known by all the members
of a speech community. From this perspective, “Knowing the forms of
sentences enables those who know the language to express appropri-
ately the thoughts they intend to convey. Knowing the meanings of sen-
tences enables those who know the language to identify the thought thus
expressed” (Harris, 2002, p. 2). Harris’ critique of this view was a radical
departure from ‘orthodox’ linguistics, which is influenced by the assump-
tion of language in the Western tradition. Closely related to this view is
telementation, whose supposition is that communication is about trans-
ferring thoughts of one person to another irrespective of the context in
which communication takes place (Harris, 1996). As Lund (2012, p. 8)
puts it, the whole communication process becomes “more or less like a
fax machine.”
In addition to the critique of the “fixed code” and the “thought trans-
ference of language and communication” views, Harris (2006) identified
three parameters that are central to integrationism, namely (i) the bio-
mechanical, (ii) the macrosocial, and (iii) the circumstantial. On the one
hand, the biomechanical parameter has to do with the mind and physical
capacities of individuals to communicate and the interpretation of signs.
On the other hand, the macrosocial parameter relates to certain practices
and the semiological function of signs of a speech community or some
members of the community. The circumstantial parameter deals with real-
life conditions in which participants deploy linguistic signs for commu-
nicative purposes. These parameters suggest that, from the integrationist
perspective, the making of signs and meaning involves the interaction
between the mind of an individual, production and interpretation of the
signs by community members, and the conditions in which participants
use the linguistic signs to communicate with others.
To further elucidate the differences between the integrationist and
‘orthodox linguistic’ views of language and communication, Harris
(2002, 2006) argued that the latter perspective can be explained through
segregationist approaches, which are influenced by the Western tradition.
Similar to the ‘fixed code’ and telementation views, segregationists ignore
the social context in which the linguistic sign and its meaning exists. By
contrast, integrationists argue that the linguistic sign and the meaning
thereof are determined by the social context in which they take place; the
two are not predetermined prior to communication (Harris, 1996).
Furthermore, according to the integrationist approach, linguistic signs
and their meanings are in constant flux, and they change as people create
and recreate signs and meanings (Harris, 1996; Orman & Pable, 2016).
In this lay-linguistic-oriented or ‘first-order communication’ approach,
“The linguistic facts are facts which the participants have to establish to
their own satisfaction…If a linguist wishes to have access to these facts,
there is no option but to try and recover them from the participants”
(Harris, 1998, cited in Lund, 2012, p. 29). In this respect, the form of the
linguistic sign and its meaning is indeterminate. Makoni (2013), how-
ever, warns against this indeterminacy. He concedes that a certain degree
of telementation must be accepted because if linguistic signs can be
“described in completely unlimited ways, then communication becomes
much messier than it already is” (p. 93).
It should be noted that Makoni’s (2013) concession does not support
the segregationist approach that treats language structure and use as
being independent of each other, which is a view that has been challenged
by several contemporary applied linguists and sociolinguists from dif-
ferent but somewhat related philosophical standpoints (Makalela, 2015,
2017; Canagarajah, 2018). Integrationists treat the linguistic code as the
integrational sign that incorporates non-linguistic signs, both of which
are central to human communication activities (Orman & Pable, 2016).
Borrowing from the notion of “distributed cognition” by Hutchins
(1995), the linguistic sign and, by extension, non-linguistic signs are
viewed as being distributed across people, linking them to their social
and cultural trajectories and traditions (Cowley, 2012, p. 2). To sum this
up, from the integrationist perspective, there is a need to adopt a broader
view of communicative events and discursive practices, where these are
not determinate but are connected to larger contextual possibilities.
Language Policies at Wits University and the University of Cape

Town: An Integrationist Critique
The language policies at both Wits and UCT aim to develop multilin-
gual awareness and proficiency in the different languages used at the uni-
versities. In both cases, English remains the main or primary language.
Specifically, the Wits policy (2003) stipulates that the languages of the
university are English, isiZulu, Sesotho, and South African Sign Language
(SASL). Throughout the proposed implementation phases of the policy,
texts are to be either translated or interpreted from English into isiZulu
and Sesotho. For example, in phase one, the focus is on changing the lin-
guistic landscape and branding by including isiZulu and Sesotho in the
signage, and translating the university brands from English into isiZulu
and Sesotho. For phase two, it is stipulated that teaching and learning
materials will be developed in isiZulu, Sesotho, and SASL. In phase three,
isiZulu and Sesotho will be offered to professional students as part of
their training. In phase four, isiZulu and Sesotho will be used as lan-
guages of learning and teaching (LOLT).
The UCT language policy (2013) follows a similar path, with English
being the primary language and isiXhosa and Afrikaans being recognized
as official languages. English, however, remains the primary language
for teaching and examinations at all academic levels, except where a
language other than English is used, such as in language and literature
courses. The policy further stipulates that:
All academic programme convenors and teachers are expected to
explore and implement ways in which the objective of the promo-
tion of multilingual awareness and proficiency can be achieved; and
to contribute towards realising the national goals of developing all
South African languages and their use, and to promoting scholarship
in all our languages.
Supposedly, this is where isiXhosa and Afrikaans are accommodated in

the policy.
In both language policies, there is a clear enumeration of the differ-
ent languages. This counting of the languages treats multilingualism as
parallel monolingualisms or multiple forms of monolingualism (Makoni,
2003; Heugh, 2015), with each language belonging to a “linguistic box”
(Makalela, 2015). Clearly, the labeling of the languages as primary and
official is consistent with the segregationist perspective, where languages
are viewed as discrete entities that can be tied to different categories.
This perspective echoes the colonial ideology of separating languages of
African people into clearly marked compartments, irrespective of how
people use their languages. From the integrationist perspective, strict sep-
aration of the languages in the policies of these universities reflects a view
of language as a fixed code that has invariant forms and meanings, which
are known to all the members of the speech community. Integrationists
argue that the linguistic sign and its meaning lie within the context in
which they occur; they are not necessarily predetermined.
Closely related to the enumeration of languages is the link between
language and ethnicity, on which the two language policies seem to
be premised. Seemingly, the languages in the two policies were chosen
because of the evidence showing that the dominant ethnic groups in the
areas where the universities are situated consist primarily of isiZulu-
speaking people and Sesotho-speaking people in the case of Wits, which
is in Johannesburg, Gauteng, and isiXhosa-speaking people in the case of
UCT, which is in the Western Cape. What is missing in this argument is
that the evidence—the 2011 census and the Wits language policy survey
(University of Witwatersrand, 2014), for example—is based on the seg-
regationist perspective of language that ties language to ethnicity, and by
implication promotes ethnolinguistic identity. This link has been rejected
in the past and continues to be rejected (Nhlapo, 1944; Alexander, 1992;
Makalela, 2016, 2017).
Similar to language as a fixed code, ethnolinguistic identity is a sociopo-
litical construct that may mask political motivations (Makoni, 2013). In
the South African context, nowhere is this more evident than during the
apartheid era, when the NP government linked ethnicity to language, to
allocate South African people to different residential areas; a policy that
extended to universities, as has been discussed elsewhere in this chapter.
Integrationists would argue that tying language to ethnicity ignores the
real social context(s) in which people use their languages. In other words,
ethnolinguistic identity is consistent with the view of language as a myth,
where languages are predetermined and, in this case, according to the
speakers’ ethnicity. This does not hold in multilingual settings, including
multilingual universities, as will be shown in the next section.
On the question of developing isiZulu and Sesotho at Wits, and isiX-
hosa at UCT as LOLT, as proposed in the respective language policies,
integrationists would argue that this “grammar book plus dictionary”
(Love, 2007, cited in Orman & Pable, 2016, p. 593) downplays the versa-
tility of linguistic signs and their meanings. People are constantly creating
and recreating signs and meanings in real-life contexts. Integrationists
would further contend that the prescriptive and descriptive approaches
that are proposed by the policies are segregationist. These approaches
exclude the ordinary, everyday use of the languages in favor of “the second
order abstractions” (Orman & Pable, 2016, p. 594), which, in the African
context, tends to support elitism which runs contrary to the African value
system of Ubuntu—a philosophical orientation that acknowledges inter-
dependence between African people and their value systems.
The next section focuses on the re-analysis and reinterpretation of
the linguistic discursive practices in two selected classrooms—one at
Wits and one at UCT—where translanguaging was used as a pedagogi-
cal strategy (Madiba, 2014; Makalela, 2014, 2015). In the case of Wits,
all the students were in a teacher preparation program and were tak-
ing Sepedi (a language that belongs to the Sotho language group) as an
additional language module in the Division of Languages, Literacies, and
Literature in the School of Education. The purpose of the module was
to provide basic communication skills to home language speakers of the
Nguni languages (isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, and siSwati—all mutu-
ally intelligible languages). While the module was mandatory, participa-
tion in the study was voluntary. On the other hand, the tutorial class at
UCT consisted of bilingual Tshivenda-English students who were in their
first year and registered in Economics. The tutorials were part of the UCT
Concept Literacy Project, the aim of which was to support students, espe-
cially those from historically black schools, in the development of con-
cepts through multilingual glossaries in statistics, economics, and law. As
in the case of the Wits students, the students in the tutorials participated
in the study voluntarily and they were also allowed to use any of their
languages to make sense of the concepts.
The translingual practices in the two classrooms allow for the cri-
tique of the mythical language view and segregationist practices through
an integrationist lens. It is, however, important to note that there is an
increasing body of research showing that translingual practices cannot
be fully understood outside other semiotic resources; hence, the use of
the term “semiotic repertoires” (Kusters, Spotti, Swanwick, & Tapio,
2017). Pennycook (2017) proposes semiotic assemblages, arguing that
translingual resources and other semiotic forms should be understood
in terms of how people’s trajectories and other semiotic objects interact
with space and moments to make meaning of communication practices.
Despite these arguments, the focus in the following section is on translan-
guaged utterances in relation to the integrationist perspective.
A Critique of Classroom Linguistic Discursive Practices from an

Integrationist Perspective
The reviewed studies about the students’ reflections on their learning of
Sepedi (Makalela, 2014, 2015), and use of both English and Tshivenda
during economics tutorials (Madiba, 2014), suggest that the students
regarded heteroglossic language practices as being part of their social
reality; words were not simply tied to specific linguistic systems in an
impersonal way, but they attached personal meanings to the words. As
shown in the comment below, this lay-linguistic view allows for the rec-
reation of linguistic signs:
I call myself MoTswaPedi. My father is Pedi, his father ke mo [is a]

Pedi and his mother ke mo Sotho and he was born in Johannesburg,
so basically ke moPedi wa [from] Gauteng and he grew up in the black
township Soweto…The queen of my heart, my mother ke Mo Tswana
wa Kimberley. That is where she grew up and she became fluent in
Setswana, Afrikaans and a little bit of English. I grew up surrounded
by many languages and in Soweto we came up with our own lingo.
(Makalela, 2014, p. 675)
Reflecting on her multilingual identity in the above excerpt, the student

coined the word MoTswaPedi, where Mo is a prefix from Sesotho, Tswa
is part of Setswana, and Pedi is the stem from Sepedi. Evidently, this
recreation runs contrary to the mythical view of languages as discrete
linguistic systems, as segregationists would argue. From an integrationist
viewpoint, the student has given this linguistic sign the first-order semio-
logical function (Harris, 1996). This is not just a nonsensical ‘language-
less’ form that has no meaning, which, in the Saussurean structuralism
approach, might be the case. In this instance, the linguistic sign and its
meaning transcend the Saussurean langue and parole distinction, with its
two-dimensional determinism, which is often favored in some language
learning classrooms where “grammar-as-text” and “grammar-in-text”
(Blommaert, 2008, cited in Makoni, 2013, p. 93) approaches are adopted.
It could further be argued that the student’s coinage of the word
MoTswaPedi suggests that language embodies the historical trajecto-
ries of users, where “language is far from being a synchronic ‘system’”
(Cowley, 2012, p. 2); rather, it is a “system” that links “people with each
other, external resources and cultural traditions” (Cowley, 2012, p. 2). In
this case, MoTswaPedi connected the student to her heritage and ances-
try. A similar argument could be extended to the following observation
made by another student:
The class discussion took me by surprise. I realize that the Nguni and
Sotho languages have more cultural practices than I had thought…
one thing I recall very well was when we found out that when an
unmarried man dies, his coffin does not go out through the door, but
it is carried through a veranda wall. How can this be in my language
and in the Sepedi language?
(Makalela, 2015, p. 211)
Evidently, both cases challenge the view of language as a fixed code

whose main purpose is to transfer the thoughts of one person to another
with little or no regard to the context in which the communication takes
place—the main criticism of the segregationist approach (Harris, 1996).
Rather, the two cases demonstrate that identities and ontological realities
of multilinguals are complex and “cannot be straightforwardly associ-
ated with a particular (national, ethnic, and sub-cultural group)…their
meaning-making processes cannot be assumed to ‘belong’ to particular
(sub)cultures through specific languages” (Kusters et al., 2017, p. 221).
The fluid use of English and Tshivenda in economics tutorials (Madiba,
2014) also dispels the mythical view of languages as strictly separate enti-
ties. In the excerpt below, which is based on the discussion of the words
‘deficit’ and ‘loss’ in economics and accounting during the economics tuto-
rial, the student used “CONTRIBU-tha” [contribute] and “PRODU-sa”
[produce] to engage meaningfully with the content, as she came up with
what could be considered the contractual use of the words and how they
relate to one other (Harris, 1980, cited in Orman & Pable, 2016, p. 594):
…arali ri tshi khou ri CAPITAL i ne ra khou ita yone zwino, CAPITAL

i do vha uri ri khou ri OWNER o CONTRIBu-tha CAPITAL uri a
kone u PRODU-sa kana u rana BUSINESS, zwino kha ECONOMICS
i do da ya ri mini? OWNER u-CONTRIBU-tha CAPITAL IN THE
FORM OF mitshini uri a kone u PRODU-sa dzi –GOODS.
[…if we are talking about the capital, we mean that the producer
or a business person has contributed capital to produce or run the
business, but in economics, what will capital be? In economics, the
owner may contribute capital in the form of machines in order to
produce goods.]
(Madiba, 2014, p. 83)
The heteroglossic word formations and language use during the econom-
ics tutorial also defy the segregationist perspective, where language is
treated as a separate domain that is independent of other academic disci-
plines, such as law, accounting, and so forth. In this respect, rather than
being objects of study by professional linguists, with few or no potential
benefits for users (Makoni, 2013), languages are integrational signs for
meaning-making and not an end in themselves (Harris, 1996). This view
is reflected in the following excerpt where the student reflected on her
Sepedi learning journey:
I thought that I was going to learn more grammar in the language

and talk Sepedi, but every time I came to class, I saw that we always
talked about issues beyond the language…Using my home language
and other languages I know made me think about languages and
beyond the list of words and phrases.
(Makalela, 2015, p. 211)
The student’s comment that “every time I came to class, I saw that we
always talked about issues beyond the language” illustrates that, for her,
learning Sepedi was no longer about learning “words and phrases.” In
other words, the “grammar book plus dictionary” (Love, 2007, cited in
Orman & Pable, 2016, p. 593) approach, or “the second order abstrac-
tions” (Orman & Pable, 2016, p. 594) to language use and knowledge,
were challenged. This experience was also shared by another student in
the next excerpt:
When we were talking and listening in different languages…Bapedi

have totems and use these in their surnames. In my culture too we
have animals, we don’t eat their meat and they are part of our long
heritage. I now feel that I am so close to Bapedi people even though
I had initially thought they are different from us.
(Makalela, 2015, p. 210)
The comment made by this student appears to call into question the
ethnolinguistic identity construction that was used by the colonial and
apartheid governments to link language to ethnicity in strict, inflexible
ways, mainly as part of a divide-and-rule policy. As discussed earlier,
mutual interdependence between communication and cultural practices
among African people stretches as far back as precolonial Africa because
of common ancestry (Makalela, 2016, 2017) and it even continues to the
present day. In this respect, attempts to compartmentalize languages and
cultural practices that segregationists would favor are not likely to be
successful, which is what the comments by the students illustrate.
To sum up, from the integrationist perspective, languages, communica-
tion practices, and other semiotic resources and processes, which in this
case include the cultural practices in the students’ languages and Sepedi,
are part of the social reality of the users (Harris, 1996, 2006). It is the
languages used by ordinary people in real-life contexts and not in pre-
defined contexts that determine language and communication practices,
and by extension cultural practices. This points to the multidimensional
and multilayered complexity of the linguistic sign and other semiotic
tools and processes, which segregationists try to reduce to simple and
unilingual contexts. Clearly, such a reduction does not hold in most mul-
tilingual African classroom contexts, as the discussion of the students’
reflections shows in the reviewed studies.
Conclusion
This chapter concludes by looking at the implications of the integration-
ist approach for multilingual language policies and linguistic discursive
practices in classrooms in multilingual South African universities. As
discussed above, the ordering of languages into clearly marked entities
amounts to territorial language policies that fail to capture the complex-
ity of the linguistic contexts in these institutions. To address this from
the integrationist perspective, universities will have to consider language
policies that are based on the heteroglossic practices of their speech com-
munities. I concede, however, that this will be a messy exercise, given the
tension that often exists between policy and practice, in part owing to the
failure of universities to create spaces that support multilingual practices
(Antia & van der Merwe, 2019).
Regarding linguistic discursive practices, the reviewed studies show
that grammar-oriented approaches to language learning are inadequate.
Students prefer to learn ‘beyond the language(s)’—this suggests that
the segregationist tendency of separating language from other semiotic
resources and processes, including other disciplines, is challenged. In this
respect, there is a need to view languages and other semiotic resources
as semiotic repertoires on which users draw to make meaning of their
worlds, with little or no regard to the boundaries that may possibly exist
between languages and other meaning-making resources (Kusters et al.,
2017; Pennycook, 2017). Integrationists would argue that this shows the
extent to which the linguistic sign, and other communication practices
and processes, are integrated and also embedded in the contractual as
well as idiosyncratic practices of the users, rather than in abstract and
unilingual contexts.
Notes
1 Although politically this term is often associated with the division of a larger
region into smaller regions, in this context it is used to refer to the division
of South Africa into smaller regions according to language and ethnic affili-
ation. That is, people who belonged to the same ethnic group and spoke the
same language were confined to the same area. These areas were known as
homelands.
2 Dr Neville Alexander was a well-known South African political activist and
academic. His political activism led to him being imprisoned at Robben Island
alongside Nelson Mandela. While in prison, he became interested in promot-
ing multilingualism. Hence, in the early 1990s—the dawn of democracy—
he participated in various language policy and planning activities, including
chairing the National Plan Task Group, which was formed to advise the
government on language policy and planning issues for a democratic South
Africa. Alexander died in 2012.
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7 ‘Everyone was Happy When
Talking’
Revisiting the Use of Mother Tongues in
Kenyan Universities
Inviolata Vicky Khasandi-Telewa
Introduction
Many Kenyan university students and staff tend to speak their mother
tongues with their colleagues who understand it. However, those who
speak in their mother tongues attract suspicious looks from those who do
not understand them. Some universities, such as Laikipia University (LU)
in Kenya, have overtly barred the speaking of mother tongues on offi-
cial premises within the university. Article 44 (1–2) of the Constitution
of Kenya (COK) stipulates that every person has the right to use the
language, and to participate in the cultural life, of the person’s choice
(Government of Kenya, 2010). This chapter is extracted from a larger
study conducted at LU to establish the use of mother tongues among
staff and students of the universities in Kenya, as it seemed the policy
was not being adhered to closely. Most studies have tended to look at
students but have neglected the perspectives of staff. Fifty questionnaires
were distributed randomly to staff and students to establish their prac-
tices and attitudes toward mother tongues in the university. This was
triangulated with observations and a focus group discussion as a follow-
up from the issues raised in the questionnaires. Integrationist theory was
used to interpret the responses. This chapter argues that everyone has a
language right to speak in their mother tongue, irrespective of whom it
offends. Nevertheless, the very concepts of language rights and mother
tongue as discrete countable entities with clear boundaries have lately
been questioned. The findings of the study have implications for language
planners and applied linguists.
Language policy is an important aspect of higher education all over the
world. In some universities in South Africa, for example, it is quite explicit
(Antia & van der Merwe, 2018). Policy on the use of mother tongues in
Kenyan universities is almost silent. Instead, it has to be inferred from the
Kenyan national language policy, which states that mother tongue should
be used for the early years from kindergarten to primary class three, when
English takes over as the medium of instruction. Swahili, the national lan-
guage, is allowed as an alternative to mother tongues in metropolitan areas
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-10
134 Inviolata Vicky Khasandi-Telewa
that are linguistically diverse and also for Swahili subject classes. In practice,
however, my observation is that many over-zealous schools impose English
right from the early years and forbid mother-tongue use even outside classes.
LU’s anti-tribalism policy is clearer on the issue of mother tongues: it
outrightly prohibits the use of mother tongues in the university, ostensibly
to fight tribalism and enhance national cohesion. The policy was estab-
lished in 2013, yet the COK 2010 was already in place. It did not occur
to the promulgators of the anti-tribalism policy that the Constitution
is supreme and all laws are subordinate to it. So it is clear that the LU
policy is in direct contravention of the COK. When decrying the implicit
discursive power in language policy texts in the otherwise clearly articu-
lated language policy of the University of Western Cape (UWC) in South
Africa, Antia and van der Merwe (2018) clearly demonstrate that UWC
is a huge step ahead of LU. In spite its weaknesses, the UWC policy is not
“enacted in ways that are perhaps reminiscent of Franco’s suppression
of other languages in favor of Spanish in Spain (Miller & Miller, 1996)
or Abbé Grégoire’s 1794 programmatic language report for post-revo-
lutionary France, infamously titled ‘Report on the necessity and means
of suppressing local dialects and of generalizing the use of the French
Language in France’” (Antia & Brann, 1991). LU is obviously still at this
historically brutal level with English language hegemony where “tradi-
tional modes of exercise of discursive power…lead to language policy
texts that were largely monovocal and undialogized” (Ibid.).
Is There a Mother Tongue?

First, we need to interrogate the concept of mother tongue. Every year
the International Mother Tongue Day is celebrated the world over. Many
express highly charged sentimental attachment to their mother tongues, and
decry their apparently imminent wasting by hegemonic English and other
powerful languages (Thiong’o, 1986; Khasandi-Telewa, 2010; Mose &
Kaschula, 2019). In Kenya, events took a tragic turn when a school prefect
was bludgeoned to death by two brothers for trying to punish a mother-
tongue speaker who broke the school rules prohibiting use of mother
tongues (Nderitu, 2019). Yet the term ‘mother tongue’ hangs precariously
in linguistic theorization. It is touted as merely a myth and an ideology since
children do not necessarily learn languages at home and many acquire as L1
the dominant language in their milieu (Calvet, 2006). Reagan (2005) and
Zhang, Zheng, Yan, and Li (2009) are among those who argue that many
children do in fact speak ‘father tongues.’ Additionally, some have suggested
that we quietly drop the term altogether (Ferguson, 1982; Rampton, 1990).
This study uses the disruptive integrationist theoretical framework
(Meyer & Land, 2006) to analyze the use of mother tongues at the LU
in Kenya. The acceptance of integrationism by mainstream linguistics has
been resisted because it questions the very foundations of the discipline by
ostensibly casting aspersions on the very existence of what is traditionally
‘Everyone was Happy When Talking’ 135
known as ‘language.’ Harris (1981) refers to language as a myth, which
seemingly leaves linguists with nothing to describe and speakers with
what to love, identify with, or despise. Makoni and Pennycook (2007)
further question assumptions about the nature of language and how lan-
guage is conceptualized as static, having clearly delineated boundaries
between languages which can be preserved to prevent their loss. They
allege that these named languages are in fact sociopolitically constructed
and those in colonial Africa were invented by colonialists for their pur-
poses of control (Makoni, 2012). There is a concerted effort (Jørgensen,
2008; Canagarajah, 2011, 2013; García & Wei, 2014) to persuade
linguists and speakers that “language is not an entity used in different
contexts but rather is an emergent property of various social practices”
(Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010, p. 245).
Critics such as Bhatt and Bolonyai (2019), and MacSwan (2017) have
also questioned the daring basic thesis of integrationism which alleges
that that a great deal of impressively authoritative modern theorizing
about language is founded upon a myth. Yet the orthodox conception of
language as an abstract object has continued to cause discontent among
diverse scholars who consider it a socially constructed and constituted
myth, and named languages as invented, sociopolitical, and arbitrary
(Becker, 1991). These imaginations have all emerged in an effort to com-
bat the commonly assumed idea of language as a discrete countable item.
Bhatt & Bolonyai (2019, p. 2) call attention to the reality that
“The center-piece of the object of linguistic inquiry, LANGUAGE,

and its associated terms such as dialect, variety, code, seem to have
fallen out of favor in this shifting theoretical landscape, giving way
to a new term, LANGUAGING, which refers to the users’ use of
their repertoire resources to meet communicative goals” [emphasis
in original].
With the threatened demise of ‘languages’ as separate, countable and

autonomous objects, familiar terms such as mother tongue, indigenous
language, and native speaker have also been interrogated. In the search
for a term that will capture the more nuanced communication that
includes elements of the whole environment such as styles and features,
myriad scholars have come up with alternative terms to shift attention
from the fixed category toward the practice of languaging with agency
on those conversing. In short, the concepts of ‘native language’ and
‘mother tongue,’ like that of ‘language,’ are reflections of what is basi-
cally a positivistic view of the world in general, and of language and
language behavior in particular (Reagan, 2005).One such attempt is the
concept of polylingualism proposed by Jørgensen (2008) and heralded
by Otsuji and Pennycook (2010) for shifting the focus away from lan-
guages to linguistic features and a linguistic norm. Therefore, this makes
their studies more inclusive as they accommodate even those not fluent or
competent in a language they might choose to pick a feature from (Otsuji
& Pennycook, 2010, p. 247). The latter propose the term ‘metrolingual-
ism’; however, we do not pursue it in this chapter. It is therefore impor-
tant to continue exercising the minds of linguists as we try to de-link
our minds from fixed enumerable linguistic concepts toward the more
fluid context-dependent languaging that transcends history and cultural
boundaries. This will enable our analysis of contested concepts such as
mother tongue too.
Object of Analysis
For many years we have been used to the idea of language as a discrete
concept that we must now try to dispense with. Yet we still need an object
of analysis to capture the interactions in languaging. Harris draws our
attention to this quandary: “Since language use varies greatly depend-
ing on each context the dilemma becomes how to disengage from the
incessant variability of language any clearly defined object of analysis”
(Harris, 1981, p. 31). In an effort to extract this object of analysis, Harris
claims that modern linguistics uses “segregationalism,” while integra-
tionism uses the lay experience of communicators. Using the tools of
their trade, both professional linguists and lay speakers agree that there
is a distinction among different languages, which integrationism uses
to discuss languaging. Makoni (2012, p. 6) hints at this lay-speaker’s
knowledge by recognizing that “Before the ‘textualization’ of African lan-
guages, Africans obviously communicated but not through language as
the concept is now understood. This is partly because African languages
as we currently understand them are a direct construction of colonial
thinking.” Indeed, Africans communicated fluidly and translanguaged at
ethnolinguistic borders in what is referred to as neighborhood bilingual-
ism, which in essence was blending linguistic practices in the multimodal
barter-trading exchanges.
MacSwan (2017) offers an acceptable middle way and cautions against
‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater.’ He suggests that we unpack
the ambiguity in the term ‘language’ and in this way recognize the inher-
ent sociopolitical nature of named languages, or E-languages, while still
recognizing the linguistic reality of language diversity in the form of indi-
vidual languages, or I-languages (Ibid., p. 176). Doing this enables us
to retain critically important areas of inquiry such as mother tongue,
language rights, and code-switching, which help in the “empirical defense
of a view of bilingualism as a rich resource reflective of linguistic talent,
not confusion or semilingualism” (Ibid., p. 190). However, though very
insightful, the E-language and I-language debate will not be further pur-
sued in this chapter, where we focus more on Southern epistemologies.
Working with the concept of (trans)languaging, which Ofelia
García defines as the practice whereby bilingual speakers access
different linguistic features or various modes of what are described as
autonomous languages in order to maximize communicative potential
(García, 2009, p. 140), we shall now proceed to discuss the use of
mother tongues in a Kenyan university. We shall continue to regard
language as a social practice, and in fact we refer to the action of
languaging and “making language, not using it” (Pessoa, Borelli, &
Silvestre, 2018, p. 1). Thus, this study analyzes the use of mother
tongues in a Kenyan university and sets out to achieve the following
objectives:
1. to examine the use of mother tongues by staff and students at LU in

Kenya;
2. to reflect upon the validity of the legal framework of language policy
that influences the language practices in the face of integrationism;
3. to report on the implications for theory and practice in university
education and how best literacy practices from elsewhere may impact
on epistemic access.
For this study, data were obtained from three sources: questionnaires,
interviews, and documentary evidence. A total of 50 students and staff at
the Kenyan university were given a questionnaire enquiring about their
use of mother tongues. Information on who they speak mother tongues
with, in which context, and for what purpose, and an overall assess-
ment of the importance of mother tongues to their learning experience
was sought. In addition, a focus group discussion of eight members of
staff and students was conducted. Finally, documentary evidence of the
linguistic landscape was obtained from noticeboards (billboards) and
other communication sites. A subset of the data was analyzed in order to
answer the three research questions.
Use of Language by Staff and Students

Following the integrationists’ use of the lay-person’s experience of the
communicative situation in the environment, we report the following
responses from our respondents.
To answer the first question, “In the experience of staff and students,
what is the prevalence of mother tongue use at LU and who talks with
whom, for what reason, and with what semiotic resource?” we revert to
Joshua Fishman’s (1965) reflections on language choice. First, respon-
dents were asked if they used mother tongues in the university, or if they
have heard the use of what they consider mother tongues. Among the
staff, 83% reported using their own language, and having heard someone
use a language other than English or Swahili in the university. Among
students, this figure was 88%. As for the reasons for use, some of their
responses are captured below:
So that those who were near could not understand what we were
talking about.
(Staff 4, Luhya mother tongue)
I love speaking in my mother tongue more so when am with my

tribesmate.
(Stu 2, Dholuo mother tongue)
I like it and my Kimeru native speakers like it too.

(Staff 2, Kimeru mother tongue)
Responding to a question directly asked in mother tongue.

(Staff 5, Kalenjin mother tongue)
To identify with the group.

(Staff 3, Kikuyu mother tongue)
I was greeted by a guard in the language so I returned in it.

(Stu 1, Kikuyu mother tongue)
Gives me a sense of home and community.

(Stu 6, Ekegusii mother tongue)
Other responses included: “For the love of the language” (Stu 19,
Kikuyu); “It’s my first language and am proud of it” (Stu 14, Kikuyu);
“for identity; I love my language” (Stu 12, Dholuo); “Because we were
two of us in the office” (Staff 7, Dholuo); “I found it better to com-
municate with my friends who understands [sic] the language” (Staff
8, Kikamba); and “because it defines our identities” (Stu 14, Ekegusii).
We also asked a university student about mother-tongue use on her social

media. She reported that use of mother tongues is common on informal
electronic media, especially on WhatsApp, but not on the official groups
such as class discussion groups. But among friends who understand the
mother tongue, it was common to joke in the language, or to comment
on shocking events in the country or internationally. An observation of
WhatsApp groups showed the use of mother tongues, even on mixed lan-
guage groups with pleas of “please translate” often following such posts.
When asked about where they spoke or heard mother tongues being
spoken, virtually all areas of the university were mentioned by staff and
students. The majority (73%) said it was in the dormitories and student
hostels where they stay, as well as out in the field. But others acknowl-
edged in the cafeteria (33%), during lectures (13%), in offices (8%), and
other places (12%). (We note that the same students would use mother
tongues in diverse places, so the total figure does not add up to 100%.)
As far as the linguistic landscape is concerned, observations have clari-
fied that there was no single notice on any of the noticeboards (billboards
or bulletin boards) at the university that was written in a mother tongue.
This was in contrast to pre-2013 noticeboards, which were awash with
notices calling for students to meet in their various village associations
for a variety of activities. These activities encouraged identity formation,
especially among newcomers to the universities. When freshers arrived,
noticeboards would be full of invitations to join the associations prin-
cipally based on ethnic origin. These notices utilized elements of the
students’ mother tongues, and blends of English and Swahili. A student
admitted that she learnt her mother tongue from these so-called tribal
associations. Their meetings would be conducted in Lunyala, which is
a dialect of the Luhya language. She was ‘born city’ (from Nairobi) so
her linguistic repertoire did not contain Lunyala. She just translanguaged
utilizing features from Swahili, English, and Sheng, which is the com-
mon language practice performed by urbanites, especially slum dwellers.
Associating with members of her own ethnic community helped her a
great deal, as she was challenged into learning the mother tongue because
she really felt the need for identity; as the Swahili proverb goes, ‘mwa-
cha mila ni mtumwa’ [s/he who leaves his/her tradition is an alien/slave].
Apparently, this interaction and learning of the mother tongue proved
useful for her because when she went to receive her Kenyan identity card,
she was subjected to an interview in her mother tongue. She succeeded
in this and was granted the ID, but her siblings, none of who had had
the privilege of learning the mother tongue, were unwilling to try to get
ID in a similar manner. This is because of the fear that they would be
accused of being Ugandans, since the division of the political borders
split the linguistic community into two and some Lunyala speakers are
located across the national border. However, on T-shirts, ‘skinscapes’ (see
Blommaert, 2016), and other items of the linguistic landscape, there was
no evidence of mother-tongue languaging in the university.
The responses by staff and students of LU demonstrate understand-
ings of language that integrationism queries. As far as Makoni and
Pennycook (2007) are concerned, the named languages (Ekegusii,
Luhya, Kalenjin, Dholuo, Kikuyu, Kamba, and others) are simply
inventions and mythological entities. Could it be true that the division
of the language practices of Africans into discrete languages was just an
additional way of imagining, controlling, and mistreating the Africans?
Makoni (2012, p. 6) decries the invention of “missionary languages”
(chibaba), which came to be referred to as “indigenous languages”
when, in an ironic sense, the very suppression of local speech forms
led to their enhanced status, particularly in educational contexts. These
missionary varieties and other related ones were touted as standard
languages, which, ironically, had to be learned by the original ‘native
speakers’ as their language. Thus, African languages were haphazardly
compartmentalized to fit into this straightjacket, often with ridiculous
consequences. For example, on the Kenya–Uganda border around Mt.
Elgon, what should practically be regarded as one language was divided
into two, such that we have Lugisu in Uganda and Lubukusu in Kenya.
In fact, this is one single language—Lumasaaba—with little to distin-
guish the dialects (Mutonyi, 1986).
Using orthodox linguistics segregation, this would have more easily
been seen as two dialects of the same language, but again ‘the concept
of language’ is driven by much more than language practices. Too many
ideologies determine what a language is and what a dialect is. This has
often been pointed out, even in orthodox sociolinguistics; for example,
Wardhaugh (2006) points out that Norwegian and Danish are so similar
that they should just be one language. But, due to political reasons, the
few differences in language practices are emphasized to render them as
two languages. Similarly, Mandarin and Cantonese speakers are virtually
mutually unintelligible orally, but they can understand each other in writ-
ing and thus are categorized as a single Chinese language.
To the question of “What do you feel about speaking mother tongues
in the university?” the responses were mixed: 60% agreed that mother
tongues should be use,d while 40% said the opposite. Some reasons for
these views are given below:
No, because it will encourage tribalism.

(Stu 16)
When spoken in private I have no problem with that but when spo-
ken in the office it can be offensive.
(Staff 10)
Everyone was happy when speaking.

(Stu 16)
Things are best understood in mother tongue at an early age.

(Staff 16)
Mother tongue encourage tribalism and discrimination, (Staff 13) /

because everyone learn mother tongue at home.
(Stu 15)
Gossiping…sense of belonging.
(Stu 2)
To empower African languages, (Staff 1) / Everyone is proud of his/

her culture.
(Stu 8)
No, every one of us knows his/her tribe language.
(Staff 5)
No curriculum to fit.
(Staff 3)
To encourage diverse cultures, (Stu 23) / to encourage cohesiveness.

(Stu 18)
Cool. Awesome.
(Stu 10)
Others answers included: “Mother tongue use should not be encouraged

at the university. Encourage use of national languages at the university”
(Stu 20); “Yes: the foundation on which other languages (second) are
built upon” (Stu 17); “Absolutely YES! For integration, cohesion and
appreciation of different cultures” (Stu 11); and “For better expression”.
(Stu 12)
This shows some of the ambivalences of the staff and students when it
comes to mother-tongue use. Even some of those who reported speaking
in their mother tongues had reservations when it came to officially recom-
mending mother-tongue use in universities. Unfortunately, my experience
is that in Kenya mother-tongue use is usually associated with tribalism,
with its ills of nepotism and other related aspects. Thus, it is assumed
that if we all spoke one language, then we would not have ‘tribal clashes’
(which, in essence, are politically instigated clashes). Tribal clashes and
other effects of negative ethnicity must not be condoned anywhere, least
of all in a university. Nonetheless, people should be able to converse in
any communicative mode of their choice without fear of offending any-
one or being negatively perceived.
Language Attitudes and Practices and the Validity of Laikipia

University’s Language Policy
Another objective was to reflect upon the validity of the legal framework
of language policy that influences language practices in the face of inte-
grationism. As discussed above, the policy on use of mother tongues at
university has to be inferred from the national language policy. We now
interrogate how successful the LU language policy is. It seems people vote
with their lips by contravening the policy and seemingly adhering to the
COK even though they may not even be aware of it. It is hard to resist
the temptation to accommodate to the mother tongue when one comes
into contact with someone who speaks one’s home language even though
the context may be prohibited. This explains the unfortunate incident
whereby a prefect was bludgeoned to death for implementing the oppres-
sive language practice, which forbade mother tongues in his school.
But in fact, many of the students do not feel comfortable speaking their
mother tongues because they feel awkward as they cannot speak it ‘prop-
erly.’ For many of them, especially those from urban areas, they exercise
languaging using features of Sheng as their mother tongue. Perhaps we
should adopt Kaviti’s (2014) argument that Sheng (which is practically
translanguaging) be considered a mother tongue.
Apart from academic linguistic practitioners, many Kenyans feel
ashamed of being identified with their linguistic community for fear of
being labeled ‘tribalists.’ However, in practice when they meet someone
from their linguistic community, they find themselves translanguaging
with resources from their mother tongue. They reflect the attitudes and
ideologies that have been forced upon them for so long. Dyers & Abongdia
(2010, p. 17) differentiate ideologies and attitudes; they indicate that
“attitudes are held by individuals while ideologies find expression in soci-
eties as the overarching framework within which more personal attitudes
are formed.” Ideologies are therefore social constructions, but attitudes
are made visible in the construction of people’s individual and even group
identities (cited in Antia & van der Merwe, 2018, p. 529).
Our final objective was to report on the implications for policy and
practice in university education, and examine how best literacy practices
from elsewhere may inform LU policy. At UWC, it was evident that stu-
dents used translanguaging in siding in lectures for various purposes,
such as trying to understand better. This means that it is futile to try to
forbid students from using the language they are comfortable with in
their learning experience. In its vision of “A university for transforma-
tion of society,” LU necessarily commits to using language to help in
transforming society. But how can it achieve this if its own prime custom-
ers, the students, are forbidden from accessing education in the language
practices they are most comfortable with? There is a need to shift our
thinking away from traditional concepts that affect the education of our
children and contribute toward delayed learning and people dropping
out. We must be ready to embrace unsettling transformative concepts
that are “associated with ‘troublesome’ knowledge, because they disrupt
previously held views…not for the sake of disruption, but because in such
disrupted spaces interesting and important forms of learning can take
place” (Antia, 2017, pp. 119–120; see also Meyer & Land, 2006).
The linguistic landscape at LU, as presented now, seems to struggle
to adhere to the legal frameworks, such as the anti-tribalism policy of
the university which directly prohibits use of mother tongues. Before the
policy came into place, there was much evidence of strong mother-tongue
use in the linguistic landscape. Now, in 2021, there is not a single notice
on the boards written in a mother tongue. Indeed, the monster of tribal-
ism has negatively impacted Kenyan lives and must be confronted. It is
the enemy of language rights. As linguists, we must strive to separate lan-
guage and cultural rights from this negative reality, and strike a balance
where one can communicate freely and still be sensitive to other people
with different communication practices.
The suppression of mother tongues is ironic in that an English lan-
guage hegemony is present in the very country of the renowned writer
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who fights for decolonizing the mind by promoting
mother tongues (Thiong’o, 1986). Indeed, it is more likely that you might
find a Kenyan language being taught in African Studies’ centers in the
North and West than to find it being taught in Kenya. What you find is
that it is still being banned, nearly 30 years since Thiong’o’s cry went out,
as the suspicion of mother tongues because of the myth that they lead to
tribalism has resulted in a negative reception of them in universities.
Attitudes toward variation in communication modes should also be tol-
erant. Some students reported not using their mother tongue because they
felt they were not fluent or competent enough in it. This brings in the ideol-
ogy of puritanism in languages. It goes against the grain in multilingualism
and calls to mind the argument of Pennycook (2007, p. 592) about a stan-
dard fixed norm of language. In fact, this is a major impediment to children
mainly brought up in urban areas who fear speaking their mother tongue
in case they are considered to be speaking ‘the wrong language’ or not pro-
nouncing words in the standard way. These struggles of translanguaging
urban students are also experienced by creative metrolingualism, which has
to confront its static nemesis in institutional contexts. Linking this to the
survey at LU, we realize that policies should be reviewed to reflect the actual
needs and preferences of staff and students so long as negative issues like
tribalism are completely prohibited. Measures should even be put in place
to teach these mother tongues, to help people who are willing to learn them
better but whose backgrounds did not afford them sufficient opportunity.
Conclusion
Integrational linguistics sees language as “a process of making communi-
cational sense of verbal behavior,” in which the point of departure is “the
individual linguistic act in its communicational setting” (Davis, 2003, p.
14) in the real-time here and now. Integrationists, Hutton (2011) contends,
oppose the orthodox conceptualization of language as fixed entities, as it
stifles human creativity and has negative effects both socioculturally and
ideologically, which prevent the realization of “the full gamut of human
and humane values” (Harris, 2009, p. 172). Antia (2017) agrees with this
as she points out that linguistic and literacy hegemonies can contribute to
a potential negative impact on a diverse student body. Indeed, this has con-
tinued through language planning, such that ‘nationism’ (Ferguson, 2006)
is justified as a necessary ideology to help with language planning in newly
decolonized states. The argument that there were too many languages each
competing for leadership led to further use of colonial languages in official
domains in many nations of postcolonial Africa. This official status has
led to challenges in the education and social progress of many Africans.
It is a further challenge since teachers and learners are expected to use
the former colonialists’ languages and yet they are accused of not being
competent enough in them. For instance, Heugh (2011) reports that in
Ethiopia, where in 2010 the fluent-speaker base for English was estimated
at 0.3%, English serves as the language for the examinations at the end
of high school. The consequence, according to Johannes (2019, p. 191), is
that English is more appropriately described as a “medium of obstruction,”
rather than of instruction, in the experience of both teachers and students.
Integrationism seeks to redeem ‘language’ and the whole discipline of
linguistics from its historical zombie-like existence in the context of 20th-
century intellectual life, where it was “a static entity, whose nature is
fixed by biology or the demands of social order” (Harris, 2000, p. 242, as
cited in Hutton, 2011, pp. 509–510). Kenyans also face the challenge of
what they have traditionally fought for as ‘language rights’ and ‘language
education policies’ which we must now question. Besides, as Antia (2017)
observes, there is a sizeable difference between languaging on the ground,
which includes a lot of translanguaging, and the official languages taught
to children in schools. The official Spanish language taught in bilingual
classes, for instance, might be substantially different from, and in com-
petition with, the features of Spanish translanguaged in homes (Makoni
& Pennycook, 2007, p. 7); however, support initiatives are not provided.
So, should we continue fighting for or quietly drop the notion of
mother tongue from professional linguistics, and save ourselves from the
difficult and seemingly hopeless fight for revitalization of dying mother
tongues? Are they part of an ideal utopian existence that is obviously
being swallowed up by the reality on the ground? It is clear that the
majority of the youth are shifting to urban vernaculars that are actually
considered hybrid by segregational linguistics. In fact, we are advised to
instead focus on the rights of the language user, and grant agency and
voice to actors and practices (Hornberger, 2000, p. 365).
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8 Existential Sociolinguistics
The Fundamentals of the Political
Legitimacy of Linguistic Minority Rights
David M. Balosa
Introduction
Man as a being of relationships—man as a being in the world and
with the world, as a creative and recreative being who, through work,
constantly alters reality.
Freire (1974/2005), Education for Critical Consciousness, p. 57
Language is more than a form of symbolism; it is immediate reality,

so much so, that things become symbols when confronted with the
reality of language. It is through language that man has developed,
and it is this that gives words their reality. Language is more real
than the reality by which it is confronted, since man came into being
through language.
Picard (1963/2012), Man and Language, pp. 43–44
The role which language plays in the very existence of culture and of
structured human relationships is absolutely essential. Language is
the most important means by which what one man learns is transmit-
ted to another, including transmission from generation to generation,
so that culture is cumulative wisdom and experience.
Fisher (1972), Public Diplomacy and the Behavioral Sciences, p. 96
Sociolinguistics, integrational linguistics, intercultural communication

studies, and existential philosophy share a common goal in terms of lan-
guage use in societies: the interest in human and cultural diversity rela-
tions for empathy, equity, hope, peace, communication, and human dignity
(Coulmas, 2013). Unfortunately, the politico-economic, sociocultural,
moral, technological, and environmental influences on people’s existence
have led most governments and policy makers to adopt policies that pre-
vent minority languages from being used in political and public spaces as
national and universal resources. Minority languages and minority people
across the world cannot expect to see their life conditions improved if the
decision makers of the world and institutions of higher education in their
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-11
148 David M. Balosa
areas do not recognize and appreciate their rights, values, and existence.
The treatment of these languages has a serious impact on the participa-
tion and success of the minority language speakers in higher education
and in “the survival” of these languages or these cultures (Skinner, 1971,
p.134). For example, the fact that minority languages are not used equita-
bly in relation to English or other dominant languages creates not only a
sociopolitico-linguistic injustice (Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee, 2019, p.167),
but also a sabotage of these languages and their speakers’ existence.
The grave consequences of this sabotage are dehumanizing poverty,
diseases, terrorism, illiteracy, unwanted pregnancy for teenage women,
a nondemocratic mentality, and many other degrading human behaviors
that may lead to an overarching insecurity for the entire world. For this
reason, this chapter appeals for the awareness of the inseparability of the
treatment of languages from the treatment of human beings. It urges gov-
ernments, policy makers, and common citizens to spread this awareness
to transform the discriminatory treatment against minority languages
and minority people into a treatment of equity and diversity for linguis-
tic and cultural diversity and human dignity. In addition, this awareness
adds to the understanding of the true meaning of a language and com-
munication, as mentioned in this chapter’s epigraphs—“man, as a being
of relationships—as a being in the world and with the world, as a cre-
ative and recreative being who, through work, constantly alters reality”
(Freire, 1974/2005, p. 57) and “Language is more real than the reality by
which it is confronted” (Picard, 1963/2012, p. 44)—and should motivate
governments and policy makers to create a path toward the notion of the
political legitimacy of linguistic minority rights (PLLMR).
This chapter defines the proposed approach that I call existential socio-
linguistics, and explains the ways in which one of the principles of this
approach or paradigm, the PLLMR, provides a mechanism to encourage
governments, policy makers, and common citizens to engage in putting
in place equitable and more humane language policies that respect and
dignify all languages and all people (Skinner, 1971; Moreno Cabrera,
2000/2016). It proposes that the guarantee of the PLLMR should become
evidence of the recognition and appreciation of the existence and useful-
ness of all languages in all domains of society in general and in higher
education in the Global North/South in particular.
This chapter poses the following overarching question: How can the
existential sociolinguistics paradigm, through its PLLMR principle, fos-
ter the equitable management and treatment of linguistic diversity, and
encourage more humane language policies in all domains of society in
general and in higher education in the Global North/South in particu-
lar? It draws insight from the theoretical framework of integrational
linguistics, general sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, existen-
tial philosophy, human dignity, and other related fields (Marcel, 1963,
1995; Harris, 1998). For its research methodology, this chapter employs
philosophical reflection methods (Marcel, 1952/2008). It questions the
Existential Sociolinguistics 149
entrenched political discourse that perpetuates the supremacy of world-
dominant languages over minority languages and the speakers of these
minority languages, and the moral responsibility of the proponents of this
discourse vis-à-vis the existential sociolinguistics identity of these minor-
ity languages and the participation of the minority languages’ speakers in
national democratic processes.
In conclusion, the PLLMR entails exemplary transformational inter-
cultural political leadership; that is, a political leadership motivated
by equity and empathy in the management and treatment of linguistic
and cultural diversity issues. This leadership is transformational in that
it radically changes the entrenched discriminatory treatment and poli-
cies, and engages in concrete actions that discourage the forces of anti-
intercultural policies but boost the flourishing of minority languages and
the motivation for their use in the politico-economic, public, and higher
education spaces. The importance of this paradigm lies in securing equal
citizenship and human dignity as a need that is inseparable from the need
for an equitable treatment of all languages and all people. In a globalized
and globalizing world, discriminatory policies are increasingly danger-
ous, not only for minority people and their communities but also for the
entire global society. In so arguing, this chapter contributes to a politi-
cal argument and a moral responsibility that impel human solidarity in
integrating forces, not merely in decolonizing the language of scholarship
and pedagogy but also in defending human dignity and providing a better
existence for all (Skinner, 1971; Moreno Cabrera, 2000/2016).
On Human Dignity
Human dignity in all its varieties of interpretation provides a philosophi-
cal orientation to existential sociolinguistics, which adds to general socio-
linguistics an emphasis on philosophical reflections as methods of analysis
of humiliating or oppressive treatments against minority languages. As a
political argument against governments and language policy makers, and
an appeal to moral responsibility for better management of linguistic and
cultural diversity in multilingual and multicultural settings, human dignity
is used as a matrix to this philosophical reflection method in relation to
the political discourse, attitudes, and actions toward minority languages.
Human dignity is also used as a measurement in determining the respon-
sibility of the political leadership; that is, being exemplary and inclusive in
fostering more humane language policies. It is through these policies that
an equitable recognition and appreciation of the usefulness of linguistic
and cultural diversity may guarantee the PLLMR for a better existence,
integration, and development of the speakers of these languages, their
communities, and balanced global intercultural relations (Edwards, 2012;
Coulmas, 2013; Piller, 2016). But what is human dignity? In existential
sociolinguistics, how does it provide a theoretical framework in its politi-
cal and moral responsibility argument against governments and language
150 David M. Balosa
policy makers who discriminate against and oppress minority languages?
While this chapter’s main purpose is not to elaborate on the concept of
human dignity, it briefly uses this notion to provide a philosophical orien-
tation or theoretical framework to existential sociolinguistics.
Sensen (2011) interprets Kant’s notion of value as a concept that sup-
ports human dignity. He argues that Kant conceived of dignity as a value
all human beings possess. Hence, human dignity is not supposed to be
just any value, but “a very special kind of value: a value that not only jus-
tifies the requirement to respect human beings, but also one that trumps
other considerations, and one that a person cannot forfeit” (p. 4). From
Kant’s definition of human dignity above, governments, policy makers,
and common citizens who treat languages separably from the treatment
due to human beings but use the linguistic matrix to mistreat speakers
of minority languages or less prestigious varieties of any language should
learn a lesson. That is, if we treat a human being in a way that cannot
forfeit their worth or inner human value, then, independently of their lan-
guage or variety of language, they should be protected from any discrimi-
nation, oppression, and disparaging treatment since these treatments
degrade human value (Marcel, 1952/2008; Skinner, 1971; Piller, 2016).
Another argument in favor of human dignity that inspires existen-
tial sociolinguistics comes from the political philosopher George Kateb.
Kateb (2011, p. xiii) defines human dignity as “the dignity that rests on
human uniqueness, which is not only praiseworthy, but manifests a break
with nature.” He also points out those anti-human- dignity thinkers who
find the idea of human dignity unacceptable and who reject the idea that
human beings should be judged on the basis of “the worth or dignity of
the human race” (p. vii). Kateb explains that these thinkers act in this
way because they “ridicule the supposition that humanity is so special or
important as to justify an assertion of its dignity” (Ibid.). He urges that
these anti-human-dignity thinkers, and the individual human and societal
achievements that create inequality of treatment among human beings
and that “do come at a terrible cost to human dignity,” should not intimi-
date the majority of the human race who think and see positive values in
defending human worth (pp. 187–188).
How do these insights provide an existential sociolinguistics paradigm
with a significant theoretical framework for making its political and
moral argument in favor of linguistic and cultural diversity? The answer
to this question involves the matrix around which governments and pol-
icy makers derive their social and public policies. If their policies derive
from a human-dignity mindset, they would probably be aware of the
inseparability of the treatment of languages from the treatment of human
beings, and they would demonstrate respect and dignity for all languages
and all human beings in their policies. But if their policies are derived
from an anti-human-dignity mindset, and hence from an anti-intercul-
tural mindset, it is clear that they will reflect that mindset as well. This
is a mindset of segregation, domination, oppression, arrogance, political
injustice, supremacist attitudes and actions, and acritical recognition and
appreciation of linguistic and cultural diversity (Piller, 2016). However,
an intercultural mindset, or an understanding of human worth as a force
that sustains our symbolic universal brotherhood and public diplomacy
(Fanon, 1952/2008; Fisher, 1972) implies a political and moral responsi-
bility, which, with equity and the love of diversity, will sustain attitudes
and actions for the benefit of all (Sartre, 1947/2007; Marcel, 1963).
Integrational Linguistics
Integrational linguistics bring the insight of “communication as inte-
gration” (Harris, 1998, pp. 28—30) to existential sociolinguistics. It is
important for the human existence to be understood and analyzed as
an integrated entity. To do so, communication analysis should put the
human being at the center of this analysis. This is because human beings
express their experiences and participate in the dialog with their “human
subjectivity and the environment” (Sartre, 1947/2007, p. 18). For this rea-
son, existential sociolinguistics— as a philosophical sociolinguistics with
emphasis on the understanding and analysis of language issues through
human dignity, and human and cultural/linguistic relations—learns from
integrational linguistics appropriate perspectives toward the analysis of
human communication issues. One of these perspectives is “communica-
tion as integration” (Harris, 1998, p. 28).
Harris (1998) argues that the communication theory of “the sender-
receiver” in all its multiple versions proposes a chain of events that leads
to defining communication by “what happens at either end of the chain”
(p. 28). From this model, “the initial and the terminal states of the pro-
cess must correspond in some way—what happens in between is merely
incidental, and of interest only insofar as it speeds ‘the message’ on its
way without loss or interference” (Ibid.). Compared with this model, inte-
grational linguistics proposes a very different notion of communication;
that is, “the process itself—not what happens at either end, that matters”
(Ibid.). Harris adds that “managing the process is a matter of survival”
(Ibid.). This helps one understand the criticality of language and com-
munication to human life. Existential sociolinguistics sees language in the
same way. It agrees with integrational linguistics that, for this survival
to occur, it requires the politics of language to integrate its activities and
understand that communication also involves the noninteractive forms of
behavior that play a vital role in “sustaining integration” (Ibid.), including
those “forms of self-communication like thinking” (Harris, 1998, p. 29;
Skinner, 1957/2015, pp. 432–452).
Harris explains that there is no more “basic program in human existence—
this integration of activities is something human beings have to participate
because it is a necessary condition of life—If we manage the integrational
152 David M. Balosa
task successfully, we live. If not, we die” (Ibid.). As with integrational linguis-
tics, existential sociolinguistics extends the question of successful manage-
ment of the integrational task and its relations to life or death of the global
society; that is, its relations to factors that are biomechanical (related to the
physical and mental capacities of the human being), macrosocial (related
to practices established in the community or some group within the com-
munity), or circumstantial (related to the specifics of particular situations).
How does this integrational linguistics model of “communication as
integration” involve intercultural communication and public diplomacy
as subjects that are also related to existential sociolinguistics? Harris
(1998) reminds us that “a society in which communication starts to
break down is a society whose days are numbered and a society in which
communication has become impossible is a society already dead: it has
dis-integrated” (p. 29). He adds,
a relationship between two people for whom communication has

broken down is likewise in a state of dis-integration and a person
who can no longer integrate today’s experiences with yesterday’s, or
plan for tomorrow, is a person for whom even self-communication
has broken down; and any such dis-integration of the self destroys
the only basis on which language is possible.
(Ibid.)
These statements embody the significance of intercultural communica-

tion in contemporary life, and all the implications regarding individuals’
and communities’ existence and prosperity. To be sustainable, intercul-
tural relations have to be integrated. This is another important area
where the inseparability of the treatment of language or communication
from human beings interpellates governments, policymakers, and com-
mon citizens to reflect on their attitudes and actions toward languages,
communication, people, and communities. This reflection is required if
we are to build intercultural relations of increased hope, peace, unity
within diversity, and prosperity for all.
Sociolinguistics
Research in sociolinguistics has provided significant insight regarding lan-
guage issues and language use in society, but not much has been argued
about the way in which the treatment of minority languages affects a bet-
ter existence for all human beings or enhanced human dignity (Moreno
Cabrera, 2000/2016; Fishman, 2006; Hornberger, 2011). For example,
Fishman (2006) argues that “language planning is ultimately judged not by
its small coterie of specialized language planners but, most crucially, by its
intended consumers” (p. x). He appeals for more extended attention to this
field of sociolinguistics, which he considers to be “the largely underplayed
corpus planning aspect of language planning” (Ibid.). Fishman (2006)
urges “the human mind” to discover the inevitable in that there is still
more unexplored variance in this topic (Ibid.). For this reason, existential
sociolinguistics intends to respond to this invitation by articulating human
dignity as a matrix for the analysis of language issues, and language policy
and planning assessment in multicultural/multilingual societies.
Sociolinguistics as the study of “the structure and use of language in its
social and cultural contexts” (Wodak, Johnstone, & Kerswill, 2011, p. 1),
should also address the way in which this structure and use affect the sus-
tainability of the existence (not only the life but also the engaging and par-
ticipative life for the common good) of all human beings, languages, and
cultures. For example, Wodak et al. (2011, pp. 3–4) suggest that the new
challenges such as new media, new technologies of communication, and
new social issues (the impact of globalization, the fluidity of borders and
mobility as well as migration) “demand more interdisciplinary research in
sociolinguistics and the development of new methodologies and new tools
for language analysis.” In my opinion, existential sociolinguistics agrees
with this observation, which approaches social life through linguistics
within an overarching management of human beings’ existence. Existential
sociolinguistics draws from sociolinguistics, intercultural communication,
and the notions of community, equity, or treatment of fairness and human
dignity (Kateb, 2011).
In the age of globalization, the research interests of sociolinguistics on
the awareness of intercultural relations, and equitable treatment of all
human beings, languages, and cultures as being vital for the entire human
race, should help construct an intercultural force and a voice against anti-
human dignity. In this regard, Piller (2016) reminds us that “social justice
is rarely achieved without fight and language is a key terrain where all
social struggle plays out” (pp. 215–216). Here again, one can notice the
significance of the awareness of the inseparability of the treatment of
languages from human beings. That is, the existence of human beings,
and its link to linguistics and communication, is an integrated phenom-
enon. For example, Harris (1998) clearly supports this argument when
he writes: “We are born into a world that requires us to communicate, to
integrate one kind of activity with another and with the corresponding
activities of other people. If we manage the integrational task success-
fully, we live. If not, we die” (p. 29; see also Harris, 1988, p. 97). Here
again, language is, as Martin Heidegger called it, “the house of being”
(Heidegger, 1959/1982, p. 5). Gabriel Marcel also accepts Heidegger’s
description of language: “language is the domicile of being” (Marcel,
1927/1952, pp. ix–x). This analogy implies that if one can recognize and
respect the difference of each human being’s dwelling space or house,
then one must respect and recognize each human language’s uniqueness
or its “dignity” by equitably treating all languages (Moreno Cabrera,
2000/2016, pp. 295–297).
154 David M. Balosa
Existential Philosophy
This section briefly comments on the contribution of existential phi-
losophy and its related disciplines, such as existential sociology,
existential anthropology, and existential politics, to existential socio-
linguistics (Douglas & Johnson, 1977; Hayim, 1980, 1996; Whiteside,
1988; Jackson, 2005/2008). All these fields of research related to exis-
tential philosophy choose humanity as their subject of inquiry. This is
instead of basing their investigation on technical analysis—“A style of
analysis which favors the description of the world of things over that
of human beings or human actors” (Hayim, 1980, p. xi). For example,
arguing about “the existential sociology” of Jean-Paul Sartre, Hayim
(1980) explains how Sartre thought that the priority of the world on
technical analysis over human life was the dismissal of human reality.
He found making the world the center of analysis over humanity to be
humiliating and perplexing. Hayim states that, contrary to what is con-
ventionally believed, the existential motif of Sartre is not a limitation of
perspective—it does not concentrate on irrational aspects of human life.
Rather, Sartre defines a theory of existence as “simultaneously a theory of
action—social action in which the individual actor, his social group, and
the field of his practical action are interconnected” (p. xii).
Sartre himself confirms this fact in his book Existentialism Is a
Humanism when he explains: “The first effect of existentialism is to make
everyman conscious of what he is, and to make him solely responsible for
his own existence” (Sartre, 1947/2007, p. 23). He explains:
when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean

that he is responsible only for himself, we do not mean that he is
responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible
for all men.
(Ibid.)
Indeed, it is only through an awareness of being responsible for all men

that one may think about and see the interconnectivity of, or the impera-
tive for, being interculturally and sociolinguistically competent in today’s
intercultural world (Edwards, 2012; Coulmas, 2013).
In Metaphysical Journal (1927/1952), Gabriel Marcel defines existence
as “a concrete reality in relation to an actual consciousness, that is, as the
link in the heart of an experience to an actual content of consciousness”
(p. 14). Morris (1966) argues that existentialism is “a theory of individual
meaning. It takes each person to ponder the reason for his existing” (p. 1).
To ponder the reason for an individual’s existence implies reflection on
the way we live, feel, and think about the complexity of human existence.
It seems reasonable to argue that equitable management of multilingual-
ism requires similar reflections. An existential sociolinguistics analysis of
language issues should use these reflections as its strategy to deconstruct
discriminatory language policies.
Existential Sociolinguistics
I define existential sociolinguistics as a subfield of general sociolinguis-
tics, which advocates an explicit emphasis on the dimension of the exis-
tential recognition of the physical presence of all languages as inseparable
from human beings and communities. Existential sociolinguistics is sus-
tained by five foundations: human dignity, global intercultural citizen-
ship, transformational interculturality, the PLLMR, and the discourse of
mutual intercultural awareness for existential literacy. All these founda-
tions constitute a continuum that supports the idea of language as “the
house of being” (Heidegger, 1959/1982, p. 5). This chapter only discusses
the PLLMR and its fundamentals. Hence, this paradigm advocates for
all languages to enjoy the right to be used in political, public, and edu-
cational spaces as integrated national and universal cultural resources
without discriminatory policies; that is, policies that “strengthen some
dialects or languages and weaken others” (Edwards, 2013, p. 47).
As an interdisciplinary subfield of general sociolinguistics, existential
sociolinguistics derives its insights from major fields of research within
social sciences and humanities. It derives its direct influence and insight
from human dignity (Kateb, 2011), integrational linguistics (Harris, 1998),
existential philosophy (Marcel, 1995) and its related subfields such as
existential sociology (Douglas & Johnson, 1977), existential anthropol-
ogy (Jackson, 2005/2008), and existential politics (Whiteside, 1988). The
major question that existential sociolinguistics focuses on to provide ade-
quate responses to language issues is: What strategies can be articulated
to counteract the visible and symbolic forms of violence against minor-
ity languages and their speakers? Existential sociolinguistics—through the
PLLMR, one of its five principles or foundations— attempts to voice its
politico-moral argument for a radical transformation of entrenched dehu-
manizing treatment of minority languages and their speakers. It contrib-
utes to general sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, and related
fields of research that articulate human dignity for a better common future.
The Political Legitimacy of Linguistic Minority Rights

(PLLMR) and its Fundamentals
In this section, I define the PLLMR and explain its fundamentals. I argue
that as one of the foundations of existential sociolinguistics, the PLLMR
and its fundamentals constitute a strategic counteracting voice of support
for deconstructing the dehumanizing techniques employed against minor-
ity languages and their speakers (Marcel, 1952/2008; Phillipson, 2009).
For example, Marcel (1952/2008) defines these techniques as “policies by
156 David M. Balosa
dominant powers to humiliate the vulnerable people and to force them
to reject or feel ashamed of their home cultures and languages and to
adopt the dominant ones” (pp. 28–29). Phillipson (2009) discusses the
major challenges in the management of multilingualism faced by virtually
all states. Phillipson explains that political decisions contribute toward
the failure of language policy. He adds that “language has been a salient
issue in several of the major political crises of recent decades; there is
definitely a need for language policy formation to counteract this” (p. 94).
This clearly demonstrates the importance of scrutinizing the PLLMR as
a solution-oriented strategy to radically transform the dehumanization
techniques and the problem of political management of multilingualism
in multilingual and multicultural societies.
The PLLMR is one of the principles of existential sociolinguistics,
which uses a politico-moral argument within a philosophical sociolin-
guistic framework to overcome oppressive and discriminatory politics of
language as techniques used by dominant powers against intercultural
relations and the privilege of human beings as “speaking beings” (Hyde
& Kopp, 2019). But what can it accomplish when applied in multilingual
and multicultural societies? Knight and Schwartzberg (2019) define polit-
ical legitimacy as “a political state’s moral right to issue laws and poli-
cies, and to coercively enforce these laws” (p. 2). O’Neil (2013) defines
politics as “the struggle in any group for power that will give one or
more persons the ability to make decisions for the larger group” (pp. 69,
76, A-20). He also defines legitimacy as “a value whereby something or
someone is recognized and accepted by the public as right and proper,
thus giving it authority and power” (p. 40).
From these definitions we can deduce that political legitimacy is the
struggle in any group for power that will give one or more persons, insti-
tutions, or languages the recognized and accepted authority to make
decisions for, and to be used by, the larger group. How does political
legitimacy help the management of multilingualism? O’Neil (2013) helps
answer this question when he argues that “legitimacy creates power that
relies not on coercion but on consent and that without legitimacy, a state
would have to use the continuous threat of force to maintain order or
impose many of its rules and policies” (p. 41). It makes sense to agree that
the lack of the PLLMR has allowed, and is still allowing, many states and
their policies to impose the rejection or disregard of the use of minority
languages in public and political spaces. Phillipson (2009) shares anec-
dotal evidence from several countries (Denmark, Greece, Serbia) that
“individual scholars who have used English successfully for decades
experience a feeling of liberation when they shift to writing in the mother
tongue” (P. 94). This example is eloquent evidence of the symbolic vio-
lence that minority language speakers suffer when operating under domi-
nant language policy. Their existential feeling is imprisoned. So, what are
the fundamentals of the PLLMR?
The first fundamental of the PLLMR is sociolinguistic justice. Bucholtz
et al. (2019) define sociolinguistic justice as “self-determination for linguis-
tically subordinated individuals and groups in sociopolitical struggles over
language” (p. 167). In today’s multilingual global world, sociolinguistic justice
is a critical step toward fostering the PLLMR. It demonstrates the political
recognition and appreciation of the existence of every single language of a
given speech community (Phillipson, 2009; Edwards, 2013). For example, in
the United States of America, sociolinguistic injustice has led to the sabotage
of certain significant minority languages such as Spanish, French, German,
and Italian, both in the classroom, and in public and political spaces. Bucholtz
et al. (2019) share experiences of how Latinx students in California have
become agents of sociolinguistic justice by resisting language policy that pro-
hibits the use of their language, Spanish, in the classroom (pp. 168–169).
The United States is an example of where manipulative language politics
occurs. These politics recognize the minority languages to be learned and
used as foreign languages in public school and higher education but not as
authentic national linguistic/cultural resources at the same level as English.
Across the world, the marginalization of minority languages in higher edu-
cation is a sociolinguistic injustice that should be addressed if justice in this
respect in the Global South is to become a reality. In this regard, the politi-
cal philosopher Michael Sandel writes that “the political community exists
to promote the good life, to honor and reward civic virtue and to ensure
that fostering public recognition to those who display civic excellence to
serve as the educative role of the good city” (Sandel, 2009, pp. 134–135). In
multilingual societies, national languages as national resources should also
be used in political and public spaces to serve as the educative role for good
society. Higher education space must set the tone. Language, as “the house
of being” (Heidegger, 1959/1982, p. 5), should be treated accordingly. When
citizens’ attention is directed toward their true national sociolinguistic
identity and sociolinguistic justice is assured, minority languages and their
speakers are then given the opportunity to enjoy their existence and their
active participation in the process of the decision making of their nation.
The second fundamental of the PLLMR is the language policy and
planning for equity and diversity. Richards and Schmidt (2013) define
language policy as
decisions made about languages and their uses in society or what

governments do through laws, regulations, court decisions, or other
means to encourage or discourage the use of particular languages or
to establish the rights of individuals or groups to use and maintain
languages.
(p. 320)
They also define language planning as a mechanism through which

“national and official language policy is established and/or implemented”
158 David M. Balosa
(Ibid.). It includes support for minority and community languages, ways
of spreading the use of one or more languages, spelling reforms, the
addition of new words to the language, and resolving other language
problems. Hornberger (2015) argues that “language policy and planning
issues arise every day and everywhere—in the media and in day-to-day
human encounters, concerns recurringly surface around literacy levels in
the workplace and in education” (p. 9). It is important to pay critical
attention to language policy and planning in multilingual society if we
are to decolonize language management and foster equity and diversity
of all languages in the management of multilingualism.
How can language policy and planning for equity and diversity be used
in a decolonizing way within the education system in general and within
higher education in particular? In both contexts, language policy and
planning that are equitable and diverse respond to the rule of political
legitimacy and human dignity. For example, Fisher (1972) argues that
“the role which language plays in the very existence of culture and of
structured human relationships is absolutely essential” (p. 96). He adds
that language is the most important means by which what one human
being learns is transmitted to another, including transmission from gener-
ation to generation, so that culture is cumulative wisdom and experience.
Described as a human being’s mechanism for cooperation and division
of labor, for accomplishing things which one man could not do alone,
language is the essential attribute of human existence. It separates human
beings from the lesser animals. It helps “human beings adapt to their
environment” (Ibid.). In a multilingual society, for example, equitable
wisdom or experience handed on from generation to generation should
be valued. This value should be demonstrated by also teaching and using
minority languages in higher education. When any language policy and
planning discourage minority languages in educational settings in favor
of privileged languages, it prevents nations from enabling all their citizens
to become active and productive agents of sustainable development. For
this reason, higher education has the critical responsibility of implement-
ing language policy and planning that reflect a politico-moral engage-
ment in fostering national language policy and planning that support the
flourishing of all languages and all citizens.
The third fundamental of the PLLMR is language and nationalism.
This principle holds that it is the people’s natural right to organize them-
selves in peace and justice for the common good. That is, there is noth-
ing to reproach in terms of constructive and dignified local, regional, or
national linguistic pride when it denotes self-esteem and self-confidence.
For example, Richards and Schmidt (2013) define national language as “a
language that has a connection with a country, states, or other territory,
typically the language that is most widely used throughout that territory,
has the most speakers, and is closely associated with national identity” (p.
385). Unfortunately, in many multilingual societies, national languages
are not implemented by consensus. They exist as colonial heritage or as
an imposition of political regimes. For example, in many African nations,
national languages are symbolically implemented by the governments
rather than by the common people. In this regard, Mazrui and Mazrui
(1998) argue that “African languages do demand and deserve a much
fairer deal on the African continent than they have so far received” (p. 8).
In higher education, the languages used by most of the people are not
those of higher education, because most of these languages are not offi-
cial. One may wonder how, if higher education is to train citizens who are
going to manage the nations tomorrow and participate in global political
affairs, these citizens are going to represent their nations, their culture,
and their uniqueness to the world while their home or national languages
are discriminated against or oppressed in the higher education context?
This policy seems to be maintained to perpetuate domination and control
over the Global South. The PLLMR would be a demonstration of a polit-
ico-moral shift in the mindset of the political elite and their allies, and a
better option to legally protect all languages and educate the different
ethnic groups to adjust to the language policy in place (Edwards, 2013).
For example, in discussing the politics of language, Kymlicka and Patten
(2003) argue that language rights refer to whether public services should
be offered in some language X. This often implies the analysis of another
question: “about whether X-speakers should have a legal right to receive
public services in their own language” (Kymlicka & Patten, 2003, p. 26).
Richards and Schmidt (2013) define a minority language as “a language
spoken by a group of people who form a minority within a country such
as Italian and Spanish in the United States” (p. 351). They add that lin-
guistic minority rights refer to whether public services should be offered
in these languages, and/or these languages should have the legal rights to
be used in political, educational, and public spaces. Through the PLLMR,
this question would be automatically resolved. Instead of minority lan-
guage groups being limited in their language use to specific domains, usu-
ally solely private and/or low status, and being left with the choice of
renouncing their sociopolitical ambitions, assimilating, or resisting to gain
greater access to public spaces, they will enjoy all the human privileges of
“speaking beings” without a feeling of shame or degraded existence but
rather a feeling of what Heidegger calls “authentic human existence—
revealing oneself to various ways of life in the world” (Hyde & Kopp,
2019, p.533). In doing so, language and nationalism, as principles of the
PLLMR, motivate policy makers and ordinary citizens alike to appreciate
all languages in their sociolinguistic landscape, and to implement policy
that reinforces peace and unity by treating linguistic and cultural diversity
as a national and universal cultural resource.
So, how does all this information respond to this chapter’s question
regarding how existential sociolinguistics, through the PLLMR, can
help manage human, cultural, and linguistic diversity in multilingual/
160 David M. Balosa
multicultural society? The answer is: by conducting analysis on lan-
guage issues within sociolinguistic justice, by promoting language pol-
icy and planning for equity and diversity, and by encouraging language
and nationalism perspectives. That is, the awareness of each language’s
uniqueness and the agreement to use them in public and political spaces
as national resources without discrimination, consolidate sociolinguistic
justice, mutual respect, and human dignity.
This chapter has employed the philosophical reflection method (Marcel,
1952/2008). This involves reflecting on the meaning of the entrenched
sociopolitical injustice that minority languages have suffered since the
colonial epoch and continue to suffer today in the age of globalization.
For example, one may think of the consequences of discriminatory lan-
guage policy and planning for national unity and equitable education
and employment of citizens. Marcel (1952/2008) describes the treat-
ment of less powerful or less privileged people by those in governments
and in politico-economic and sociocultural institutions as “contempo-
rary techniques of human degradation” (p. 24). In the same vein, Fanon
(1952/2008) explains how colonization’s language policies affected not
only the politico-economic and sociocultural identities or statuses of citi-
zens but also the consciousness of their uniqueness, worth, or human
dignity. Hence, colonized people felt that to justify their humanity, they
had to speak not their home languages but the languages of their coloniz-
ers. This oppressive and dehumanizing sociopolitical strategy still exists
today, since thousands of minority languages are not used in basic edu-
cation nor in higher education of minority/indigenous people across the
world. Using a philosophical reflection helps us to articulate the political
and moral argument for seeking the guarantee of the PLLMR.
Conclusion
This chapter has defined and explained existential sociolinguistics, and the
relationship between it and the PLLMR. The chapter has also explained the
relationship between integrational linguistics, sociolinguistics, and existential
philosophy. In response to this chapter’s overarching question, it has pro-
posed three fundamentals of the PLLMR: sociolinguistic justice, language
policy and planning for equity and diversity, and language and nationalism.
It has also argued that these fundamentals should help government, policy
makers, and ordinary citizens to become agents of this transformation. They
should constructively engage in their sociolinguistic landscape, and use lan-
guages in this landscape as national and universal cultural resources for the
common good and enjoyment of the human privilege as “speaking beings”
(Hyde & Kopp, 2019). In doing so, multilingual society will increase its
chance of deconstructing “contemporary techniques of human degradation
and promote unity with diversity and decolonized language in higher educa-
tion and all other domains of sociopolitical life” (Marcel, 1952/2008, p. 30).
Language policy and planning increasingly weaken minority languages and
their speakers in terms of defending their self-respect, dignity, and the prosper-
ity of their families and communities. This degrading treatment of human dig-
nity perpetuates social injustices, poverty, and an overarching self-destruction
of humanity. The rights of minority/indigenous languages, if implemented,
should contribute toward sustainable development, not only for the minority
people across the Global North/South but also for all people and communi-
ties across the world.
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Part 3
Languaging Pedagogy in Post-

Secondary Contexts
9 Teaching Gender Awareness in
Teacher Education through a
Curriculum Which De-Links from
Abbysal Thinking
Liesel Hibbert
Introduction
The work described here forms part of a project that aims to raise aware-
ness of social justice education among pre-service middle and high school
English teachers in South Africa. The question the project answers is how
the novel Purple Hibiscus (2009) by Chimamanda Ngozi.
Adichie can be used to teach gender awareness. Purple Hibiscus is not
mere memory or personal experiences or resistance to gender inequality
recontextualized in ‘new world’ discourses. It serves as a direct call to
de-link from coloniality. Addressing the notions of voice/silence, autobio-
graphical writing, and reflection on a diversity of experiences are part of
Africa speaking for itself, in a multitude of voices. In this novel, Adichie
disrupts the stereotypical notion of African women as obedient hand-
maidens to men, by creating a range of female characters with nuanced
differences. Kambili, the main female protagonist, is subtly adumbrated
to disrupt the disempowering role of many African women. This careful
and patient fragmentation of women’s male-regulated attitudes endorses
the dictum of Adichie (2014) herself and that of several critics, such as
Brooks (2018, p. 21) who warns against “the danger of a single story”
regarding African women’s experience.
The pedagogical initiative suggested here comprises part of “creating
an authentic African context in the classroom” (Nabudere, 2011). Purple
Hibiscus acts as a pedagogical corrective to those texts that ignore dis-
courses of disempowered female experience. Adichie has created African
female characters caught between two belief systems and a protago-
nist whose identity is eroded by a fusion of both. Despite the brave and
independent choices and decisions the female characters in this novel
have made, they remain, as depicted by Adichie, mostly disadvantaged,
in terms of voice and agency. Through the unfolding of the narrative,
Adichie shows how Kambili gains insight into “the second language of
life”: ways in which male prerogatives have surreptitiously molded a
matrix over female experiences and exorcized the power of female family
members. This ethical enlightenment is a typical aspect of the traditional
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-13
166 Liesel Hibbert
Bildungsroman. Exposing students, both male and female, to this kind of
pedagogical correlative has opened up a space for discussion, which man-
ifests multiple and conflicting views regarding gender issues. This debate
is currently particularly pertinent in South Africa, where the President
has declared gender-based violence a socioeconomic crisis, due to the
ever-escalating rates of rape, abuse, femicide, and oppression of women
as second-class employees.
Coloniality and Gender and Religious Situatedness in Africa:

Some Background
The conversion of many Africans to Christianity in colonial times resulted
in the adoption of Western culture, including its gender and social roles.
What is often regarded as traditional African culture, particularly when
it comes to gender roles, is frequently no more than an adaptation of
outdated Western cultural norms. This positioning is still prevalent and
lingers on through generations. Also, alienation from the root culture
and language through colonialization has brought about recontextual-
ized hybrid beliefs, which have moved societies in the inevitable direction
of entrenched patriarchy.
In post-apartheid South Africa, for instance, churches can be classified
into three groups: (i) already established churches, such as the Methodist
and Anglican churches, (ii) evangelical churches, such as the Baptist Church,
and (iii) African Independent/Indigenous Churches (AICs). AICs are the
fastest-growing churches, yet there are no records of ordained women, or
women in leadership positions such as deacons and bishops, within these
churches (Makoro, 2007). Admittedly, this recalcitrance may have changed
in more recent years, yet the portrayal of African women as helpless victims
of their cultures by African gender researchers, as well as by 20th-century
African male writers, propagates the cycle of patriarchy found in Southern
African society and does little to reverse it. Some examples here are Achebe
(1958) and Ngugi (1965).
Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus is set in postcolonial Nigeria. It is largely
shaped by a preoccupation with Christian discourses and is framed
within the political context of the 1983 military coup in Nigeria. This
coup brings violence and pandemonium, but the young woman, Kambili,
the main character, lives a controlled and sheltered life, and is for the
most part unaffected by the coup. Kambili’s father, Eugene, gives clues to
the historical context when he talks about “the bloody coups of the six-
ties” (Adichie, 2009, p. 24).
Christianity, and Roman Catholicism specifically, is conceived of by
Kambili’s father as superior to African religion. He believes this because it
is the religion of the ‘white people.’ To be regarded by him as civilized, one
had to behave like a ‘white person’ or at least gain approval from white
people. He states: “I didn’t have a father who sent me to the best schools.
Teaching Gender Awareness 167
My father spent his time worshipping gods of wood and stone. I would
be nothing today, but for the priests and sisters at the mission” (Adichie,
2009, p. 47), by which he infers that his own children owe him gratitude
and loyalty, and without question this also includes his infantilized wife.
This point warrants some contextualization of the role of Christianity
and gender relations in Africa, with specific reference to Nigeria in the
1980s. In colonial times, the church tended to favor men above women.
African males who resided in rural areas were sent to school, yet it was
rare for African females to be educated. African women were regarded
as only requiring basic education. Their purpose in life was to be good
wives and to bear children (Chitando & Chitando, 2005). The gender
identities associated with Christianity during colonialism are present in
postcolonial discourse and are regarded as traditionally African (Arnfred,
2004, p. 14). In precolonial times, women had economic rights: this was
because wealth was defined through the number of cattle a homestead
had, the size of the land, and by how fertile and skilled the women were.
Women worked on the land in order to feed and sustain the homestead
(Guy, 2012, p. 1).
Scholars and researchers acknowledge the corrosive effect of Western
religion foisted upon women in African societies (Ampofo, Beoku-Betts,
Njambi, & Osirim, 2004, p. 705). Christianity has established particular
gender relations and influenced the way people see themselves (Arnfred,
2004, p. 14). Arnfred (2004, p. 17) argues that Christianity and coloniza-
tion determined the social conduct of male and female citizens. According
to Kanyaro (1999, pp. 20–21), African people are passionately religious
by nature. It could be argued that this is since the advent of Christianity
during the colonial years: the characters in Things Fall Apart (1958), a
novel by Chinua Achebe, are enchanted by Christianity and the Bible, as
a way of escaping more stringent, traditional fundamental gender roles.
Also, women, who once had economic power through working the land
and supporting the precolonial homestead, became relegated after white
settlement to subservient positions in relation to men.
The feminist movement in Africa is said to have stemmed from the
struggles for national independence from colonial powers and gained
traction only in the 1970s and 1980s (Ampofo et al., 2004, p. 686). The
silencing of the voices of the female characters in the novel depicts the
trend of rendering women invisible. Kambili does not find a voice as such,
but the novel traces how she comes to certain insights, which de-link her
from the chain of oppression in a limited way and take her forward dif-
ferently. The analysis modeled in this chapter shows how, by tracing her
feelings, experiences, and insights, the reader of the novel is prompted
to take up a social justice framework of thinking about the position of
women then and now, and prompts students, in turn, to think from a
feminist perspective, though the definition of feminism is, of course, con-
stantly under construction, as explained below.
168 Liesel Hibbert
Amos & Parmar (1984, p. 18) have already pointed out that for black
women, feminism is not purely a race issue, though the term ‘intersection-
ality’ had not been coined at the time: “Only a synthesis of class, race, gen-
der and sexuality can lead us forward, as these form the matrix of Black
Women’s lives.” In 2004, Brah & Phoenix (p. 76) wrote: “we regard the
concept of intersectionality as signifying the complex, irreducible, varied,
and variable effects which ensue when multiple axes of differentiation—
economic, political, cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential—inter-
sect in historically specific contexts.” The emphasis here is on a nexus of
multitudinous variables impacting on powerlessness. Embodied intersec-
tionality (Puar, 2007) valorizes situated experience, which is at the heart
of black feminist epistemology. Getting closer to the present time, Ahmed
(2014) urges that intersectionality in Western and Eurocentric feminist
academic discourse should be constantly confronted, to challenge taken-
for-granted post-race white disposition. Intersectionality, indicating “the
space in between white supremacy and the marginal below” (Mirza,
2015, p. 6), seems to be the current definition, also fitting the analysis of
Adichie’s protagonist, Kambili, in Purple Hibiscus.
Most recently, young African women writers have been using features
of the ‘chick-lit’ genre to reinvent new ways of following any foregone
blueprints, albeit drawing on recontextualized traditional genres, to cre-
ate entertaining and touching pastiches/bricolage designed to create “new
feminine subjectivities” (Spencer, 2019, p. 1). The next section outlines
the theory underpinning the philosophical and pedagogical orientation
applied in this project with student teachers.
De-linking from Abyssal Thinking Through Defamiliarization

The philosopher Rancière makes a clear distinction between what he
calls “the pedagogy of explication” (or explanation)—which presupposes
that the student is unequal to the teacher as far as knowledge goes—and
what he calls the pedagogy of equality or ignorance, where instead of
explication, there is self-driven discovery and learning (Olivier, 2017).
Rancière (2010, pp. 2–3) reminds us that students are merely activating
a “capacity” that they already possess. The aim in this project is to break
down the prevalent hierarchical pedagogical explanation model, and get
the facilitator/researcher to act as a guide, keeping the enquiry going in
the direction of de-linking from abyssal thinking. It is our obligation
as educators to disrupt what is called abyssal thinking (Santos, 2007),
which is modern Western thinking that distinguishes between two radical
sides of social reality in terms of two realms. Santos refers to these realms
as “this side of the line,” by which he means colonialist ideologies, and
“the other side of the line,” referring to sociopolitical marginalized posi-
tions. Santos uses the abyssal thinking term to illustrate polarized think-
ing so that everything on the other side of the line becomes excluded,
nonexistent, and invisible to the mind. Pashby et al. (2020, p. 48) empha-
size that the process is a recentering through critique and not a rejec-
tion of Eurocentrism. They warn that rather than ignoring it, modernism
needs to be made visible so as not to repeat patterns of reproduction of
the linearity of Western thinking. Often, what parades as critique and
de-linking in education is mere theory (Pashby et al., 2020, p. 49), and is
known to be very difficult to put into practical action to address macro-
contextual entrenched neoliberalism, which militates against conflict—
with conflict being what is in fact needed for the process to set in.
The prompts provided to students in this project were designed to
help them de-link (Shlovskij, 1965) from abyssal thinking and thereby
separate themselves from automated, fossilized, uncritical thinking about
African women’s experiences of patriarchy. Through this, students were
exposed to pluriversal thinking (Pashby et al., 2020, pp. 46–47) and
questions around power and difference (Andreotti, 2014). Students were
prompted to become aware of, reflect on, and de-link from their previ-
ously held beliefs, from an African perspective. This experience, in turn,
may prompt teachers in the making to carry these alternative perspectives
into their own classrooms, to broaden the habit of employing nuanced
perspectives, understandings, and behaviors by their learners. Therefore,
through a process of defamiliarization, that is, of viewing issues from
unaccustomed points of view, each issue is viewed from a more subjec-
tive, contextualized, geopolitical perspective (Nichols, 2017, p. 188).
According to Fairclough’s (2003) model, language is employed as a
tool to create power/disempowerment and inequality in historical, social,
and political contexts. The model connects the exercise of power and
language use and ways in which dominant forces construct particular
realities and beliefs. In turn, these realities and beliefs reaffirm and influ-
ence sociocultural contexts and discourse practices (KhosraviNik, 2012,
p. 61). This confluence of imperatives then helps the analyst understand
how society is being molded and conditioned unobtrusively toward cer-
tain beliefs and views (McGregor, 2003, p. 3). Fairclough’s model of tex-
tual analysis consists of three dimensions: the actual text, the discourse
practices, and the sociocultural context and practice (2003). “Critical
Discourse Analysis, thus, employs interdisciplinary techniques of text
analysis to look at how texts construct representations of the world,
social formations, and social relationships” (Ngozi, 2019, p. 98).
Besides the sociocultural context of the Purple Hibiscus novel, the lin-
guistic technique of stylistics was used to focus on particular phonological
or syntactical patterns emergent in the text (Tarrayo, 2014, p. 104). This
activity in itself is an interpretive act (Ibid.). The interpretive act followed
here takes place in terms of lexical choices that create syntactical patterns,
and the thought and speech representations of Kambili, which are verbal
simulacra of the ideological stance of the author. Through the thought and
speech representation, and the lexical choices, which create insecurity in her
170 Liesel Hibbert
mind and that of the reader, Adichie appeals to the reader to comprehend
how the disempowering traditional African beliefs blended with Christianity
have created external unfreedoms, which stifle the voices of women.
Based on their study in Mexico, Block & Corona (2014, p. 39) point out
the importance of reflection on complexity, in order to see beyond “card-
board cut-out identities ascribed to students in schools on romantic and
essentialised notions of race, ethnicity, nationality and language affiliation.”
Feminist icon and supreme court judge in the US, Ruth Bader Ginsberg,
who died in September 2020, became famous for her forceful and relentless
counteraction against essentialist thinking about women, which changed US
legislation from the 1950s to the 1970s. Students’ reflection on the ethos
surrounding their own gender situatedness, however, is only the first step
and does not necessarily lead to reflexivity (Pashby et al., 2020, p. 57). The
process that was undertaken is described in the next section.
The Teaching Strategy

Adichie’s novel was taught as part of an eight-week cycle, over two 2-hour
contact sessions per week. The theme was, à la Adichie, entitled ‘Should
we all be feminists?’ The novel was taught alongside recent women’s
writing from within South Africa, employing the narrative strategies as
comparable experiences of contemporary African students. In addition,
academic articles on recent younger-generation African women’s writ-
ing, and recently published South African short stories and news reports
focusing on gender-based abuse and femicide, were prescribed. The stu-
dents started by transposing Beyoncé’s popular song “If I were a boy”
into “If I were a girl,” to show how gender biases work both ways.
The class tasks in critical analysis were designed to bring out a cri-
tique of the author’s technique, and to prompt students to understand
how choice of vocabulary creates a dark and ominous atmosphere, which
lightens up dramatically in the final two chapters of the novel, after the
father, Eugene, is poisoned to death by his wife. First, the lexical choices
invoke negative auditory, olfactory, and tactile sensations. Second, they
create congruity with the feelings of fear within the protagonist. In the
narrative reports of actions and thoughts, the narrator totally dominates
the interpretation and allows the reader to see events from her enlight-
ened perspective.
The analysis performed as joint classroom activity showed how this
novel can be used to create awareness, marking how deeply gender
inequality is embedded in discourses, past and present. Two aspects of
stylistic techniques are addressed with students, one being carefully cho-
sen lexemes which form clusters of imagery, and the other being speech
and thought representations. In addition, the novel was used to correlate
students’ own experiences of gender inequality with those fictionally sus-
tained in the novel.
Attention to Recurring Symbolic Lexical Clusters
Despite the actions and events in the novel representing the status quo in
Nigeria during the 1980s, much of the experience of the protagonist is
recognizable as current and continuous over decades. The religious and
gender discourses in the novel are connected to Eugene’s espoused belief
systems. Adichie evokes reader responses to these through the use of sen-
sory prompts: visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and emotional. Adichie
describes the influence of Eugene on Kambili’s psyche. For instance, when
her father speaks, Kambili experiences pain and fear. Her suppressed
internal fear is projected as feigned submission.
It is noted by the authorial voice that she always “says the right thing.”
When her father goes away for a week, she cries, presumably from relief
rather than sadness, although it is presented as grief. In terms of tactile
representations of her feelings, she explains how she thinks that the hot
liquid she drinks “burnt Papa’s love into” her. From her experiences, she
learns a warped notion of love inextricably linked to pain. Reference
is made to her having “crawled” and of her making “nervous move-
ments”; both testifying to a wounded psyche, intimidation, and insecu-
rity. Kambili is depicted as growing up in an abusive, fear-driven, and
unpredictably violent household. Eugene is a wealthy businessman and
a devout, patriarchal Catholic. He physically abuses his wife, and is con-
trolling over Kambili and her brother, Jaja; he is revered by the church
and admired within the community. Kambili’s mother, Beatrice, is gentle
and quiet. She endeavors, seldom successfully, to keep the peace within
the household: “She spoke the way a bird eats, in small amounts,” is how
Kambili describes her mother, whose behavior she is emulating.
Eugene is a dominant and abusive force. He dominates Kambili’s life,
as well as the life of her mother, through intimidation and familial tyr-
anny. He is so powerful that Kambili sees the world through his eyes, for
fear of falling short of his rules. She always looks at her father before
saying or doing something, to make sure that he approves. Even when her
father is not around, she still seeks his approval in her mind. The father’s
version of Catholicism becomes so potent that she believes she should
aspire to follow it.
In this way, her father is accepted by Kambili as a role model. The
authorial voice reports: “I want to make Papa proud.” There is, however,
ambivalence in her position. Fear is externalized as respect and submission
toward the patriarch, whereas she expresses thoughts such as: “I don’t
know how to play.” The authorial voice describes her as “silent,” with
“feelings of longing.” She feels out of touch with herself: “I am not sure
what my laughter sounded like.” Her passivity is alluded to repetitively.
In visual terms, color and flowers are used to create symbolic patterning
in the text. For example, the color red is associated with atonement and
danger, and also denotes blood. When something bad is about to happen
172 Liesel Hibbert
to Kambili or to her family, the color red is routinely invoked. Adichie
writes that Kambili’s textbook, when she tries to study, is a “red blur;”
again referring to the color of blood. Red, however, also being the color
of love links the theme of pain and physical suffering with experiences
of love. Recurrences of the word ‘blood’ create undertones of suffering.
In contrast, the color white is associated with sacredness and superiority:
for example, Eugene insists that the family call the wafer, which is white
and eaten at communion, a “host” in order to capture its sacredness as
the word “wafer” is too secular. In contrast to the use of the color red in
this novel, clear water has connotations of healing and fruitfulness: for
example, “She quickly gulped water down as if it could wash away the
thought.” It needs to be noted that the colors have symbolic meaning in
the church, which carries over to Eugene’s family, and in particular to
Kambili through her experience.
Kambili describes herself as “stained by failure.” Water does not stain,
so blood is again implied. Adichie describes Kambili as a purple plant,
denoting mourning and wounds, which is perhaps an intertextual ref-
erence to Alice Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple. Kambili’s sym-
bol, a purple flower, is described by her as the “sickly sweet hibiscus,”
perhaps inferring the unwholesomeness she experiences as a cultural
hybrid, crushed between two religious ideologies. In another instance,
she is referred to as “purple coloured avocado”: rich, soft, ripening, but
vulnerable. In auditory terms, Adichie alludes to “silent silence,” indi-
cating that Kambili “felt suffocated.” References to Kambili’s mother as
“the quiet aunt” who doesn’t speak indicate how Kambili’s voice “lacked
enthusiasm” and how she cannot “get herself to chant Njemanze.” All
these references to auditory imaging complement the visual imagery, with
reference to Kambili’s internal world.
The emerging themes are fear and admiration for male figures. Kambili’s
life is one of fear of the unpredictability of the patriarch’s behavior. The
chaotic and unpredictable life of Kambili reflects the sociocultural context
of the book: that is, the 1983 Nigerian military coup that is alluded to.
Although Kambili feigns admiration for her father, she is terrified of him:
“Fear. I was familiar with fear.Yet each time I felt it was never the same
as the other times. As though it came in different flavours and colours.”
Fear itself becomes terrifying and unpredictable. Since Kambili associ-
ates Christianity (i.e., Roman Catholicism) with her father, Christianity
becomes intimidating.
The following passage is telling:
He was nodding slowly, admiringly, and I felt myself go warm all

over with pride with a desire to be associated with Papa. I wanted to
say something to remind this handsome priest that Papa wasn’t just
Aunty Ifeoma’s brother or the Standard’s publisher, that he was my
father.
In this excerpt, “he” refers to Father Amadi, a young priest. He is talk-
ing to Aunty Ifeoma, Kambili’s aunt. Kambili beams with pride because
Father Amadi expresses admiration for her father. She expresses her hap-
piness through her father. Her father is extraordinary in her eyes and she
wants to sing his praises.
Attention to Speech and Thought Representations

In terms of speech and thought representations, the role of women and
girls is presented as one of helplessness and powerlessness in the face
of overwhelming structural unfreedoms. The narrator comments on
Kambili’s feigned submission to her father, in contrast to her disdain for,
and fear of, his behavior. Kambili’s psyche is exposed by means of nar-
rated reports of thought acts. This exposure points to the fact that she has
not been assigned a voice in the overridingly male-dominated discourse,
other than for the purposes of obeying orders, and showing admiration
and respect for her father. Yet she remarks on his unauthentic role-play-
ing: “He changes his accent when he speaks to whites, in order to sound
British.” She describes him as “a coconut,” which implies being white on
the inside and black on the outside—a sign, in her eyes, that he is not to
be trusted, not reliably himself. He shows no emotion: for example, she
notes that even in dire situations, “His face did not change.”
Eugene does not allow his children go to what he calls a “heathen festi-
val” and refers to his own father as a “heathen grandfather,” denouncing
his beliefs as “devilish folklore.” Kambili picks up her father’s disrespect
toward his own heritage and his rejection of his own father as “Papa’s
violence,” which she tries hard to justify. This rejection of traditional cul-
ture constitutes an echo of Things Fall Apart (1958), in which the char-
acters who converted to Christianity speak disparagingly about African
cultures and traditions. In a visit to Kambili’s “heathen grandfather,”
Eugene is cruel toward his own father and chases him off his property.
Through Kambili’s eyes, we view Beatrice, her mother, in relation to her
Aunt Ifeoma. No real mutually supportive adult relationships exist between
the women characters. They are silenced, so cannot help each other. Each
of them responds differently to the role of oppression assigned to them.
Kambili’s response, which is silence and submission, emulates her mother’s.
This brief analysis makes manifest the disempowerment, and presents
recurring clusters of symbolism, and speech and thought representation.
Kambili’s close observation of her mother and aunt trigger within her an
acute gender awareness. Her mother’s conduct is automated submission,
as evidenced in the careful attention to the following conversation opener
by Beatrice, in conversation with Kambili’s aunt: “A woman with no chil-
dren and no husband, what is that?”
Beatrice believes that “A husband crowns a woman’s life”; that is, a
woman must get married. Kambili’s aunt, on the other hand, believes that
174 Liesel Hibbert
a woman should be independent and should not have to financially rely
on a man, as she has had to do since her husband passed away. Although
both of these sisters are Catholic, they have radically different views on
women’s roles. Because of this conversation, Kambili is exposed to differ-
ent perspectives on what being a woman is all about. This conversation
does not prompt immediate action in her but provides her with exposure
to an alternative, unfamiliar perspective, which increases tension within
her due to the fact that she can read into her mother’s feigned/forced
submission as well as her aunt’s overstated bravery and outspokenness.
Aunt Ifeoma, besides having “modernised” views on the role of women,
becomes a role model for an alternative version of womanhood. Kambili
observes how she “walks fast,” as opposed to the men who walk slowly,
and that she is “playful,” which her mother is not.
Kambili realizes that Aunt Ifeoma patronizes Kambili’s mother: Ifeoma
dusts off her sister’s blouse. For Kambili’s benefit, she explains a clear
distinction between a pagan and a traditionalist. She disputes the state-
ment of “women don’t count.” Aunt Ifeoma criticizes Kambili’s father and
yanks Kambili’s ear. Beatrice is trapped in submission to her “coconut,” as
Kambili calls her father, who aspires to be white in all but skin pigment.
Kambili thinks to herself: “Mama never used plastic cutlery, no matter
how big the group was.” Beatrice wears a ‘God is love’ T-shirt, perhaps to
safeguard herself against her violent husband. Kambili observes how her
mother “sits on the edge (emphasis mine) of the chair.” She is literally ‘on
edge’ and at the edge or liminal point of society. She does not feel confi-
dent enough to fill up a space at the table, and perhaps lives in fear of an
imminent crisis at all times, such as a physical attack from her husband.
Examples of Student Responses: De-linking from Abyssal

Thinking
The first question put to the students was: “To what extent do you feel
that the last seven weeks (with the overriding theme of gender and femi-
nism) have benefited you in any way, in terms of perhaps having changed
your ideas, feelings, attitudes or beliefs?” The first cluster of quotations
shown below represent the range of ways in which students expressed
clear de-linking from their previously held beliefs and ideas. These quota-
tions have largely been left unedited for authenticity (the italic highlight-
ing is my emphasis).
Over the past seven weeks, I discovered that we as men are not actu-
ally doing a good enough job in protecting our women. This upsets
me because I feel as a man very useless when it comes to this. It is so
sad to see that by reading Purple Hibiscus I discovered that the ill-
treatment and inequality has been coming on for a very long time, in
actual fact for years and years.
Similarly:
Basically I have learnt that women have a difficult life. It actually

evoked fear within myself as a woman but also learnt that men are
there to be protectors.
Furthermore:
The past seven weeks have been interesting and informative. I learnt
about gender and feminism. I have learnt that feminism does not only
involve females. Women are often regarded as less than men in soci-
ety, but that has to change, therefore feminism and unity is the right
approach. I have also realized that it is unfair to stereotype people
according to their gender, race, or social background.
I’ve come to learn that perpetrators are being protected more than the
victims which increases the rate of gender-based violence.
I came from a family where my mom was abused by my dad and she
would hide it. I resented her for leaving me with him and not taking me
with her, but I came to realize that she had to leave for her own safety.
Moving Toward Reflexivity

This section presents responses regarding the impact of the novel, first, on
students’ conceptions of feminism and gender-based violence, and second,
on the likelihood of students to ‘taking action’ to be more activist orien-
tated regarding gender in society and especially in schools, and to teach
gender awareness in their own future classrooms. The cluster of responses
below show first, that most students experienced de-linking from previous
ideas to such an extent that their ideas can be called ‘informed opinions.’
Second, they are likely, and ready, to take action and to be more verbal
about discrimination, due to a significant shift in consciousness.
In the past seven weeks I have learnt a lot about gender-based vio-
lence and now I am more eyes opened.
It is imperative to associate yourself with [perhaps meaning ‘to

inform yourself about’] the laws and religions and other aspects that
affect your life or which govern your life.
I feel that the current issue of gender-based violence is an ongoing

issue that has previously been overlooked. With the recent outburst
of femicide over the media, I think rape concerning women and chil-
dren has finally been recognized for the seriousness that it is.
176 Liesel Hibbert
The past couple of weeks were truly interesting. My knowledge about
gender-based violence has grown so much. I was single-minded when
I came to the topic of rape or gender-based violence, such as abuse
towards women and children. Reading the novel opened the conversa-
tion not only within the class, but among my peers who read the novel
too.
The seven weeks I’ve had to listen to people in class present about
feminism and gender-based violence, have opened me up to realizing
things that have changed and how women before me paved a way
for me to be able to study and to realise opportunities for my future,
without even having kno12wn me.
I just feel that women are treated unfairly based on their sex. They
are being undermined in the eyes of men. But this is tough on me,
how to stand up for myself and I should feel proud to be a woman.
These past seven weeks have changed our mindsets. We were given
the opportunity to voice our opinions about gender-based violence
and feminism. Everyone deserves a safe, open environment to dis-
cuss, and we were given the opportunity. It is comforting to hear that
there is hope for our society and country. As the new generation, it
is clear that we are more open-minded. I think that it is important to
teach a novel like this, because learners can relate to the characters,
and also relate as a class and discuss this diverse topic. In a way these
seven weeks have brought us closer as a class, and we all understand
each other and where we come from.
I have learnt through the different plays in class that women should
also have a voice and they need to be heard, in every area of life.
I feel that these seven weeks have been very empowering. It opened
my eyes because I wasn’t aware of how much discrimination exists
towards women. Things were brought up which made me emotional.
I found many things to be normal, but I found out that they are actu-
ally discriminating.
The seven weeks have had a major impact on me, touching on femi-
nism both intellectually and emotionally, especially because the cur-
riculum on feminism fell in a very horrendous time period here in
South Africa.
After the presentations I feel that discrimination against both genders

should stop, because at the end of the day we are all human and we
should be treated equally.
The following student response clearly attests to reflexivity:
I believe and feel that these articles should definitely be taught in

schools. This will shape society from the foundation level. It will
awaken their thoughts and perceptions of the issues of society, so
that maybe the leaders will address the issues. Not only will their
mindset change but the behavioral attitude will be shifted into where
we as society and a nation should be #Womandla #Feminists.
With reference to the two critical discourse analysis (CDA) categories

applied to the teaching of the novel, namely recurring lexemes, and the
rhetoric of thought and speech representation used by the student samples
cited here, two observations were made. First, there was repeated use of
the words ‘eyes’ (e.g., eyes opened, in the eyes of, opened my eyes), ‘open-
ing’ (e.g., opened up the conversation, opened me up, open environment,
more open-minded), and ‘previously overlooked’ (referring to generational
change in perceptions of what transformation means). Second, there was
repeated use of ‘awaken,’ ‘shape,’ and ‘shifted,’ and reference to ‘attitudes,’
showing that students took on an extended identity as educators, which
recognizes transformative pedagogy as being central to their task.
Observations and Recommendations

This chapter demonstrates gender awareness in action, and how it can be
incorporated into the South African language and literature curriculum in
teacher education, at the same time as expanding the definition of critical
reading as a dialectic process. The novel conveys the double disempowered-
ness of the main protagonist: having to straddle traditional African beliefs
and Christianity. Adichie demonstrates to the reader that neither African
nor Christian/Western-based religion, in their traditional or recontextual-
ized formats, have helped emancipate women in their personal or social
capacity, but have in fact acted as a double enfranchisement. This further
forces students to confront and construct their own beliefs. Far from creat-
ing “one story” (Adichie, 2014; Brooks, 2018) of African women’s experi-
ences, students have encountered diverse experiences in their reading, which
has helped them to de-link to a large extent from automotive, uncritical
thinking about African women’s experiences of patriarchy. The learning
process may also have highlighted double standards that the students them-
selves have experienced. This correlates well with the findings of another
South African study undertaken by Pillay &Wassermann (2017, p. 40):
Knowing the ‘right’ answer in relation to a literary text needed to

be placed alongside their enacted answers and self-evaluated. Only
then was an awareness of the discrepancy created, from which could
emerge possible change.
178 Liesel Hibbert
The female students in the study by Pillay & Wassermann revealed
sexist attitudes without realizing it: for instance, they proudly men-
tioned that they would only marry wealthy men with smart cars.
(p. 39)
The analysis modeled shows how, by tracing their feelings, experiences, and
insights, the novel may prompt the reader to take up a social justice frame-
work of thinking about the position of women then and now, and perhaps
to change to a more feminist perspective. Student responses have shown that
they reflected on their own situatedness regarding gender relations and that
they resolved to undertake changes in their own classrooms. The prompts
they were given to reflect on their own experiences and attitudes correlate
with the novel’s agenda, which was successfully achieved. However, reflec-
tion without reflexivity—that is, examining the disjuncture between what
they say and what they actually enact/perform in practice—was unfortu-
nately not within the ambit of this project. Also, it was not possible to follow
students into their own classrooms in order to observe whether they were
putting their resolutions into practice. It is thought that reasing students”
awareness does not necessarilty transfer into changed practice. The recom-
mendation is that further awareness raising through ongoing reflective jour-
naling, monitored by a mentor, may help to deepen teacher practicesthat
could be termed transformative for learners. For example, learners as well
as teachers could provide ongoing commentary on the inherited, fossilized,
and unquestioned gender roles they experience in schools. They could also
be taught sophisticated ways of questioning these roles, via, for instance,
generating debates, writing clubs, and school community forums, where
these issues (discourse as well as behavioral) are confronted and fine-combed
for strategic transformation. The kind of pedagogy described in this chap-
ter serves to integrate female and male perceptions of coloniality by plac-
ing them dialectically in relation to each other. In this way, the path toward
inclusivity and mutual respect as the norm may become well-trodden.
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10 Recontextualization of the Author’s
and Reader’s Positions in Simone
De Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe in
the Turkish Cultural Environment
Through Translation
Ayşenaz Cengiz
Introduction
This chapter attempts to problematize the recontextualization of Simone
de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe in the Turkish cultural environment
through translation, with a special focus on the author’s and reader’s
positions in both the original and translated texts. More specifically, the
aim of this study is to make some generalized predictions about possible
readings—since its publication in the 1970s—of the Turkish translation
of Le Deuxième Sexe in the Turkish cultural field, with an emphasis on
the author–reader relationship.
This study starts from the premise that the translation process inevita-
bly involves some kind of domestication of the foreign text. As a result,
texts that are produced in particular cultural and historical circumstances
are then re-read and reinterpreted in different cultures and historical cir-
cumstances. Thus, as Levine indicates,
you don’t translate texts, but rather you attempt to re-create contexts
… And then there’s the tantalizing question, Where does the context
end and the text begin? But then again, the supposedly sacred bound-
aries between languages are not absolute, there are secret bonds
among all languages.
(1991, p. 8)
In a similar vein, Wolf, referring to Homi Bhabha’s concept of Third

Space, notes that translation stands in a mediation space “in between”
which is an area of transitions based on the principle of negotiation
(2007, p. 113). This kind of view allows us to approach translation as
a cultural and social phenomenon characterized by ongoing processes
of mediation, negotiation (Wolf, 2015, p. xiv), and ‘integration’ between
cultures and texts.
From this vantage point, the production process of the Turkish trans-
lation of Le Deuxième Sexe is shaped by the conditions and constraints
prevailing in both the source and target literary fields of the time, that is,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-14
182 Ayşenaz Cengiz
by some sort of negotiation and integration between these two fields. For
this reason, some contextual and textual properties of both the source
and target texts are dealt with in this chapter.
The starting point of the analysis is an overview of the reception of
the work in its original context in France, observing the shifts the text
underwent in the target context on the reception level. The next point is
an overview of the author’s and reader’s positions in Le Deuxième Sexe.
The third and final step of the analysis reassesses these two sets of infor-
mation in the Turkish context to anticipate possible readings of the work
in the Turkish cultural milieu in the 1970s.
Le Deuxième Sexe in France

Le Deuxième Sexe is an important philosophical treatise in which
Beauvoir analyzes the condition of women in Western society from differ-
ent perspectives. The first volume of the book considers the woman as an
object in a male-constructed world, but in the second volume, women, as
subjects, describe this world from their own perspective (Sandford, 2007,
p. 53). Analyzing the development of women’s oppression throughout
human history, Beauvoir concludes that the woman has ended up being
the ‘Other’ second sex, since the man has been accepted as the norm.
The book was first published in 1949 in a conservative, pronatalist
France, not ready at all for a woman to talk freely about sexuality, sexual
pleasure, lesbianism, abortion, and contraception, while at the same time
attacking marriage and family institutions (Rodgers, 1998, p. 15; Card,
2003, p. 8). Actually, Beauvoir had broken “a triple taboo”: she was talk-
ing about sexuality, she was doing it without limiting herself, and she was
doing it as a woman (Lecarme-Tabone, 2008, p. 199). The publication of
the book in France was considered scandalous and provoked heated debate.
It is important to note that Beauvoir was the first writer on the subject of
women who analyzed patriarchal myths of femininity through the philo-
sophical methodology of existentialism (Bair, 1986, p. 153). What was new
in this book was the perception of women as the Other; Beauvoir’s central
thesis is that women are patriarchally made to be passive objects and their
freedom as subjects is denied (Pilardi, 1995, p. 30). Thus, the intention of
Beauvoir in writing Le Deuxième Sexe was not to begin a struggle, but to
elucidate a situation (Le Dœuff and Michèle, 2004, p. 28).
Indeed, in spite of public outrage from the moment of its first pub-
lication, the testimonies of women published in the press at Beauvoir’s
death demonstrate that many of them read Le Deuxième Sexe individu-
ally (Rodgers, 2013, p. 61). Many stated that Le Deuxième Sexe was
“the turning-point of their awareness of women’s oppression and their
own questioning of their lives” (Duchen, 1994/2013, p. 188) and that it
“opened a door” for them (Rodgers, 2013, p. 61). Furthermore, most of
the French women writers who read the book with enthusiasm expressed
Recontextualization in Le Deuxième Sexe 183
their gratitude and debt to Beauvoir (Duchen, 1983, p. 37). On the other
hand, there were also many women who disapproved of her book.
Le Deuxième Sexe also attracted much interest at the international
level after its first publication. It has been translated into many languages
and published all over the world. The book is Beauvoir’s most popular
work in Turkey, as the number of reprints and retranslations indicates;
it is also an important work with respect to its contribution to feminist
theory and to the journey of feminism into Turkey as well as all over the
world. Le Deuxième Sexe is the first work of Beauvoir selected for trans-
lation by Turkish cultural mediators. In the 1960s, four partial transla-
tions were produced, and in 1970, a supposedly complete translation
was made available in Turkish in three volumes by Payel Publishing. This
version was the only valid translation of the text in print until October
2019, when a complete translation of the work in Turkish by Gülnur
Savran was produced in two volumes by Koç University Publishing. In
this study, only the first supposedly complete translation of the work will
be referred to, with the aim of discovering possible readings of the trans-
lation from 1970s Turkey.
Author’s and Reader’s Positions in Le Deuxième Sexe

The feminist model of the text proposed by Sara Mills in her book
Feminist Stylistics (1998) is adopted in this study to analyze the author’s
and reader’s positions in Le Deuxième Sexe. There are two facets to this
model: factors on the side of production of the text, and those on the side
of its reception. The production factors may include general language/
discourse constraints, socio-historical factors, literary conventions, cur-
rent literary trends, affiliations, publishing practices, author’s position,
and so on; those on the reception side may include the intended audience,
actual audience, implied reader, socio-historical factors, and so on (Ibid.,
pp. 31–33). On the reception side of the model, the first factor to be dealt
with is the intended audience—the group of readers to whom the book is
to be marketed (Ibid., p. 33). This factor, however, finds its place on the
production side as well. As Mills states, the implied reader represents the
position to which the text is oriented, and this intended reader determines
the shape and style of the text itself. On the other hand, the actual audi-
ence may not overlap with the intended audience in some cases. Socio-
historical factors on the reception side also influence the way a text is
received or read (Ibid.). One of the advantages of Mills’ model is that the
meaning in the text is seen as a negotiation between the assumed knowl-
edge of the reader as posited by the author and the actual interpretations
of the text by the reader (Ibid., pp. 34–35).
As Mills points out, each text is presumed to be in dialog with “an ide-
alized figure,” that is, an implied reader (Suleiman et al., in Mills, 1998,
p. 67); however, this interpellation may appear in the text in the form of
direct or indirect address. The text addresses the reader as a member of a
group, and the reader negotiates this process of address to choose which
position to adopt (Mills, 1998, p. 69). It is worth mentioning that, in this
process, although the reader is an active agent in relation to the text, they
can take up only the positions determined by the text and not choose
whatever reading(s) they want from it (Ibid., p. 69).
Beauvoir’s aim in writing Le Deuxième Sexe is to elucidate the situa-
tion of women, and thus to help women become aware of their condi-
tion (Duchen, 1994/2013, p. 188). For this reason, and with a view to
addressing a larger audience and conveying her thoughts and ideas to
them, Beauvoir uses explicit language and presents her arguments in the
form of an essay. Although she bases her arguments on facts, her prose
has a poetic quality, and her literary prose is visible in sentences like
“On a vu qu’au lieu d’intégrer à sa vie individuelle les forces spécifiques
la femelle est en proie à l’espèce dont les intérêts sont dissociés de ses
fins singulières” [It has been seen that, instead of integrating the specific
forces into her individual life, the female is the prey of the species, the
interests of which are dissociated from her own ends] (Beauvoir, 1949,
p. 131), and “jour après jour, un polype né de sa chair et étranger à sa
chair va s’engraisser en elle” [day after day, a polyp born of her flesh and
foreign to her flesh is going to fatten in her] (Beauvoir, 1949, p. 310).
Beauvoir speaks in her text as a “woman,”—a member of “le deux-
ième sexe”—who has succeeded in the patriarchal system, and is thus in
a powerful position to produce knowledge (Foucault, in Mills, 1998, p.
22); therefore, her female voice can be heard in her writing. Nonetheless,
she does not speak in the first person, which may further add some objec-
tivity to what she conveys. As has been already noted, the presumed read-
ers of Beauvoir are women; she writes about her experience as a woman,
and she also accounts for other women’s experiences. However, Beauvoir
enacts a particular relationship to her female readers. She accounts for
the object which is a woman and which overlaps with her identity; there-
fore, she is identical to her object. Nevertheless, she does not address
the reader or tell her story directly, but she depicts it in an indirect way,
through the story of her object; this, in turn, renders her an observer-
narrator. As a result, the text refers to “une femme” [a woman] (1949,
p. 114), “l’érotisme de la femme” [woman’s eroticism] (Ibid., p. 395),
“la complexité de la situation feminine” [the complexity of her situa-
tion] (Ibid.), “la femelle” [the female], “elle” [she] (Ibid.), and “la femme”
[woman] (Ibid.). In the same vein, the lesbian and the mother are referred
to as “la femme” and “elle” (Ibid., pp. 309–310). Beauvoir maintains the
same distance from her object in Turkish as well, as observed in “kadının
cinsel yaşamı” [woman’s sexual life] (Beauvoir, 1970a, p. 410), “dişinin
içinde bulunduğu durumun karmaşıklığı” [the complexity of the situa-
tion of the female] (Ibid.), “dişi” [the female] (Ibid.), the use of the third-
person singular form for woman, and the reference to the mother as
“kadın” [woman] (Beauvoir, 1970b, p. 130)—these all give clues about
the translator’s concern to use a style of address conforming with that of
Beauvoir in the source text.
Moreover, indirect address to the reader may be established by the
use of a range of statements claiming to be information that “every-
one knows”; such statements can be preceded by phrases like “we all
know that” or “it is evident that” (Mills, 1998, p. 70). Thus, readers
choose which position to adopt; they may consider that they are being
addressed, they may ignore or resist the address (Ibid., p. 68). To put it
another way, each text carries an ideological message, and the reader
is supposed to accept or reject this message, which they find obvious,
that is, self-evidently true within that culture (Ibid., p. 69). If the reader
agrees with this information indirectly, they assume the role of a per-
son to whom the information would appear to be obvious (Barthes,
in Mills, 1998, p. 70). This self-evident information is related to what
Norman Fairclough terms “members’ resources,” which is background
knowledge that the reader is assumed to have (Mills, 1998, p. 70). This
knowledge is, however, different from the obvious information and
belongs only to certain readers; the text, in this sense, delimits its audi-
ence (Ibid., pp. 70–71).
As already mentioned, Le Deuxième Sexe is a severe criticism of the
patriarchal society and the construction of women according to its
values; the book thus communicates a new perspective and treats the
patriarchal system as responsible, and even culpable, for the situation of
women. This criticism is evident in phrases like “la femelle est en proie à
l’espèce dont les intérêts sont dissociés de ses fins singulières” [the female
is prey to the species, whose interests are dissociated from her own ends]
(Beauvoir, 1949, p. 131), and “elle est la proie de l’espèce qui lui impose
ses mystérieuses lois” [she is the prey of the species that imposes its mys-
terious laws on her] (Beauvoir, 1949, p. 310). It is in the presentation of
this information that the text maps out a position for its readers, which
is open to negotiation, of course, because there will be many women who
will not feel that their set of expectations maps onto the information that
addresses them in this text, as was the case during the reception of Le
Deuxième Sexe in France, as noted earlier: many women disapproved
of Beauvoir’s book, whereas it helped many others to become aware of
their situation. However, the fact that the female reader does not agree
with certain information does not mean that she is not drawn to the text,
because it may contain other information with which she agrees or finds
interesting (Rivkin, in Mills, 1998, p. 76), as was the case again in France:
Le Deuxième Sexe attracted the attention of the masses, but it was also
severely criticized. This further demonstrates that although gender is an
important element in the construction of the reader’s position, it cannot
be considered the only factor in this, nor in the reader’s response to it
(Ibid., p. 79).
Possible Readings of Le Deuxième Sexe in the Turkish Context
and Concluding Remarks
Having explored how Le Deuxième Sexe addresses its readers and how
they might be positioned in an interactive framework by the text, the aim
of the analysis in this section is to link those findings to a larger discursive
context (Mills, 1998, p. 159), that is, to some observable aspects such as
socio-historical factors, literary conventions, affiliations, publishing prac-
tices, author’s position, and the reading public in the Turkish context, and
thus to anticipate possible readings of the book.
Among the factors affecting the production and reception of texts, the
first to be dealt with are socio-historical. The period when Beauvoir was
first introduced into the Turkish cultural space was the 1960s. During this
decade, after a despotic ten-year government by a single right-wing party
(1950–1960), Turkey witnessed a lively intellectual climate (Zürcher,
1993, p. 267). Thus, there was a steady increase in the publication of
books on the social sciences in Turkey in the 1960s (Landau, 1974, p. 21),
and this paved the way for the introduction of Sartre and then of Beauvoir
into the Turkish cultural field as representatives of existentialism. Sartre’s
texts, carrying a political significance and related to his political stance as
a committed writer, attracted Turkish leftist intellectuals who were trying
to catch up with the contemporary critical and philosophical literature of
the West at that time (Koş, 2010, p. 76).
This leads to another aspect of Mills’ model, that of affiliations (Mills,
1998, p. 32). This affiliation factor played a crucial role in the transla-
tional journey of Beauvoir into Turkish through Sartre. Because of her ties
to existentialism and Sartre, Beauvoir was also introduced to the Turkish
cultural space by the cultural mediators of the time who affiliated with
Sartre’s political ideas; thus, Sartre served as a ‘pass’ for her in her journey
into the Turkish cultural space (Postalcıoğlu, 2016, p. 166). For this reason,
especially until the 1980s, she was promoted as a colleague of Sartre and
most probably read as an existentialist writer; ultimately, her feminist side
was, to a large extent, ignored or rejected in texts commenting on her and/
or her work that were originally written in Turkish and published in vari-
ous Turkish periodicals (Ibid., p. 83). Thus, it can be argued that a reader
who identifies themselves as being close to existentialism is likely to read
the text of Beauvoir in a different way―for instance, ignoring her feminist
message―from another reader who identifies themselves as being close to
feminism. Furthermore, the most prominent publisher of Beauvoir’s work
in Turkish is Payel, which is also a prominent publisher of Sartre’s work.
The owner of the publishing house, Ahmet Öztürk, was one of the leftist
Turkish intellectuals of the 1960s, just like the translator of Le Deuxième
Sexe into Turkish, Bertan Onaran, also a prolific translator of Sartre.
Paradoxically, the commercial marketing of Beauvoir’s work in Turkish
rendered the gender of the author salient by the use of photographs of
attractive women alongside that of Beauvoir on the books’ covers, although
this strategy seems to be at variance with the symbolic capital that Beauvoir
is said to represent for the publisher (Öztürk, 2007). One could argue that
these photographs also strongly contradict the leftist position of the publisher.
Furthermore, the blurbs of Beauvoir’s works in Turkish and the texts com-
menting on her (Postalcıoğlu, 2016, p. 167) lay special emphasis on Beauvoir’s
“unconventional” relationship with Sartre. Therefore, the way these transla-
tions were packaged probably led to different readings of Beauvoir’s works
in the receiving culture, trivializing the work and discouraging those potential
readers for whom Beauvoir and her work were unknown from discovering its
feminist content. If the popular interest in texts on female sexuality in Turkey
in the 1970s and the front covers of the books carrying photographs of sexu-
ally inviting women are taken into consideration, it can be argued that one
possible reading of the work was to treat this philosophical treatise as offering
information on female sexuality in the Turkish context.
Another socio-historical factor of the 1970s in the Turkish context was
that, against a highly politicized background, an anti-feminist socialist
ideology prevented the development of a distinctive feminist discourse in
Turkey. For this reason, the question of women’s emancipation was not
treated as an important issue before the 1980s. It is also worth noting
that it was only in the 1980s that the patriarchal system was first criti-
cized by Turkish feminists. In the 1970s, it was only through left-wing
movements in Turkey that women could take an active role in politi-
cal mobilization (Sirman, 1989, p. 16); even then, these merely offered
women, as comrades and asexual beings with their repressed sexuality
and individuality, a place in the fight against class exploitation but not
against their oppression (Göle, 1996, p. 81). Thus, when the translation
of Le Deuxième Sexe was first published in 1970, there was no distinct
feminist discourse in Turkey, so it can be argued that it was an early work
for the Turkish cultural space. Furthermore, women’s texts were scarce
in the canon, especially in the 1960s and 1970s in Turkey; it is only after
1970 that the increasing number of women authors in Turkish litera-
ture introduced new concepts such as “women’s literature” and “women
authors” in Turkish contemporary literature studies (Sezer, 1993, p. 148).
However, as mentioned by the publisher of the Turkish translation,
Turkish women readers showed much interest in the book, and some
famous Turkish women even referred to it as “the book that changed
my life” (Öztürk, 2007). As a matter of fact, the gender of the author
was already reinforced and rendered salient on the book cover and in
the short texts commenting on Beauvoir and her work in the Turkish
context. Thus, the reader was made aware that a woman author was
talking to them about women. On the other hand, the fact that women
are not addressed directly and the first person singular is not used by the
author in source and target texts paves the way for male readers possibly
also relating to the text; thus, the male reader who suffers from the same
constraints of the patriarchal system may read this text as a voyeur and
agree, or not, with its content.
Mills describes “dominant reading” as a position or positions that a
certain text offers to its readers at a particular socio-historical moment;
this dominant reading is likely to be realized as a result of “the range
of ideological positions available which make that text understandable”
(Mills, 1998, p. 73). This recalls Bourdieu’s statement about texts circu-
lating without their contexts when they move from one linguistic culture
to another (Bourdieu, 1999, p. 221). Thus, within the cultural context of
the time, the feminist discourse or the feminist message of this text was
likely to be received only partially or with difficulty. However, the num-
ber of reprints of the book in the 1970s indicates that there was much
interest in it. Therefore, it may be assumed that some Turkish women
considered that they were being addressed by the discourse of Beauvoir
through shared lived experience and through the restrictions imposed on
them by Turkish patriarchal society. In the same vein, as argued by Paker,
in the women’s short stories and novels of the 1960s and 1970s in Turkey,
there is a tendency to explore female experience, consciousness, and indi-
vidual/social identity, which may cause the emancipation of women in
Turkish society to be questioned (1991, p. 294). Therefore, the 1970s can
be regarded as a decade in which a consciousness-raising process among
some Turkish women started to develop, which may have paved the way
for feminist readings of the Turkish version of Le Deuxième Sexe, even
before the development of a Turkish feminist discourse in the 1980s.
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Part 4
Technology and Decolonial

Practices
11 Languaging in Computer-Mediated
Communication
Heteroglossia and Stylization in Online
Education
Sibusiso Clifford Ndlangamandla
Introduction
Multilingualism is a popular subject in higher education in the Global
South. The research on which this chapter draws is situated in the
growing field of multilingualism and computer-mediated communica-
tion (CMC) (Androutsopoulos, 2007; Deumert, 2018; Ndlangamandla,
2020). Unlike other areas of scholarship, this research is confined to
higher education and online learning. South African universities have all
formulated language policies that are based on the country’s constitution,
which recognizes 11 official languages (Constitution of the Republic of
South Africa, 1996). The language policy for higher education in South
Africa promotes multilingualism, defined in the policy as the use and
promotion of multiple languages. Specifically, concerning scholarship,
teaching, and learning, the policy articulates that in addition to English,
all official languages must be eligible to be institutional language poli-
cies (Department of Higher Education and Training, 2017). The language
policy of the University of South Africa (Unisa), where this study is based,
states that the language(s) of learning and teaching in all undergradu-
ate courses will be English with “scaffolding” in other official languages
(Unisa, 2016). There is no direct definition of the word “scaffolding” but
when read in the context of the policy, it appears to be referring to some
degree of support conducted in the other official languages.
However, the multilingual policies have not been adequately imple-
mented. One of the reasons for this lack of implementation is that the
language policies do not reflect heteroglossic language practices in both
basic education (cf. McKinney, Carrim, Marshall, & Layton, 2015) and
higher education in South Africa (cf. Stroud & Kerfoot, 2013). Some of the
critical arguments come from translanguaging (Nkadimeng & Malekela,
2015; Bagwasi, 2017). In addition, the policies fail to reflect social prac-
tices associated with online and offline multilingual youth digital lan-
guage practices, especially in online teaching and CMC. Furthermore,
they do not take into account language change, Internet registers, genres,
and styles, especially in CMC (Androutsopoulos, 2007, 2011a).
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-16
194 Sibusiso Clifford Ndlangamandla
Unisa has an English for Academic Purposes module offered online
to diverse qualifications from several colleges; for example, human sci-
ences, economic management, and science and engineering. The main
teaching and learning method at Unisa is online. This chapter is based
on an online English for Academic Purposes course offered by the
Department of English Studies at Unisa. The module is one of the larg-
est in the university. In the first semester of 2018, the enrolment figure
was 22,140, according to online student registration records. A majority
of the students are multilingual. Information from student registration
reveals that there are over 20 home languages (first languages of the
learners); about seven of these languages have high enrolment numbers
(see Appendix).
The growing demand for online teaching and learning reflects a desire
to widen participation and offer tuition to many students in one of the
largest Open Distance Learning institutions in South Africa. An increase
in access enhances mass higher education in a developmental state seek-
ing to redress past injustices of apartheid. It also enhances social justice, a
key agenda of the post-apartheid democratic government. Both technol-
ogy and the Internet are central to Open Distance eLearning (ODeL) at
Unisa. Unisa (2018, p. 2) defines eLearning as learning mediated through
a range of current and emerging digital technologies and Open Distance
Learning as a:
Multi-dimensional concept aimed at bridging the time, geographical,

economic, social, educational and communication distance between
student and institution, student and academics, student and course-
ware, and student and peers.
Some of the characteristics of ODeL are the removal of barriers to learn-

ing, flexibility, student-centeredness, and student support. Unisa uses a
range of technologies and online digital methods to deliver tuition, such
as email, short message service (SMS), a web-based learning manage-
ment system (LMS), and online discussion forums (ODFs). This chapter
is based on ODFs.
Online Discussion Forums in the Context of Unisa

ODFs “group together topically related threads” (Androutsopoulos,
2007, p. 7) and provide a ‘permanent’ record of both teaching and
learning. Unlike face-to-face conversations, they are easily available for
research.
The team of lecturers who oversee the course, develop the material,
monitor tutoring, and so on did not interfere, participate in, or mod-
erate the ODF website discussed here. In my view, by giving students
“unregulated spaces” (Saxena, 2011) to express themselves, the forum
Computer-Mediated Communication 195
becomes a rich site for language practices, discursive identity construc-
tion, and language ideology. Saxena (2011, p. 277) describes how young
Bruneians “articulated both local and globalized identities through their
digital and multilingual literacy practices in ‘unregulated spaces’, such
as on the internet or SMS messaging with members of their peer group.”
Participants in the Unisa ODFs are preselected by the ICT/LMS adminis-
trators when they meet particular criteria—perhaps contrary to the idea
of ‘regulated/unregulated spaces’ (Saxena, 2011). I, therefore, describe
the Unisa ODF context as ‘semi-regulated.’
The ODFs are asynchronous, the posts vary in length, and replies to
previous posts may include the quotation of the original post or cross-
reference to the initiator. Since these are not live or occurring in real time
like online chatrooms (i.e., synchronously), students can post messages
responding to new or old topics over several days, weeks, and months
during a semester of about 28 weeks.
The module under study is taught through a monolingual mindset and
only in English. Slaughter and Cross (2020) argue that a monolingual
mindset may be seen in policies that inform curriculum, pedagogy, and
assessment practices predicated on English-only, and ignoring the lan-
guage and literacy resources that are brought by English as Additional
Language learners. Monolingualism also attaches certain ideological
beliefs to plural monolingualism (Pennycook & Makoni, 2020, p. 53).
Plural monolingualism is behind the creation of standards, norms, and
language rights.
In a module that seeks to develop academic skills and proficiency in
English, monolingualism enjoys a privilege at the expense of “heterog-
enous language practices” (Leglise, 2017) and other approaches to lan-
guage education. Neither the monolingualism nor the multilingualism
of face-to-face/traditional offline approaches helps students to develop
language and literacies as shown in the ‘everyday’ experiences of students
from the Global South at Unisa in the 21st century. Some academics decry
the failure to recognize the “rich multilingual repertoires/resources” that
students bring to higher education (Mkhize, 2018; Makhanya & Zibane,
2020; Paradowski, 2020). Also, language ideology is behind any efforts
to defend standard languages and proper English, as seen in the studies
by Saxena (2011) and Svelch (2015). As a result, there is a lack of both
understanding of the sociolinguistic practices of CMC and conceptual-
ization of sound academic language programs.
The purpose of this research is to describe the heteroglossic and online
languaging styles of students who are learning English at an ODeL uni-
versity, and to explore language usage through technologies. In this
chapter, I explore how CMC is enabling ‘languaging’ at one of the larg-
est distance education institutions in the world. I argue that these social
and digital practices challenge norms, such as monolingual policies and
pedagogies.
Main Research Questions
ODeL has embraced technology as a method of delivering higher educa-
tion. ‘Emerging technologies’ and ‘mobile learning’ are some of the cur-
rent buzzwords. During this shift, little research has been conducted on
the intersection between language and CMC in the Global South. For
instance, ODFs have been implemented as a teaching strategy, but little
research has been done on student–student, student–tutor, or student–lec-
turer interactions.
The main research questions for this chapter are:
• How do the discussants alternate between codes and styles in English,

and for what functions?
• How do online communities draw upon their linguistic resources to
fulfill their communicative goals, including the educational goals of
the course?
• What language ideologies and norms influence the two questions
above—in other words, what language ideologies and norms influ-
ence languaging in CMC?
Below, I draw on both heteroglossia in online multilingualism and lan-

guaging in CMC to explicate the failure of language policies and concep-
tualizing CMC in online teaching and learning.
Heteroglossia in Online Multilingualism

In this chapter, heteroglossia is used in contradistinction to merely lan-
guage alternation, code-switching, and related sociolinguistic concepts.
There are several studies that have used a sociolinguistic lens for investi-
gating language alternation and blogs (Verschik & Kask, 2019), language
alternation and ODFs (Ndlangamandla, 2020), code-switching and
ODFs (van Gass, 2008), digital code plays in ODFs (Jaworska, 2014),
and text messages and code-switching (Taiwo, 2008). For instance, van
Gass (2008, p. 439) investigates the characteristics of Afrikaans–English
code-switching and its functions in CMC. Code-switching on internet
relay chat (IRC) functions as a discourse strategy, signaling semantic con-
trast, topic shift, quotation, emphasis, and addressivity, and illustrates the
features of spoken language in a written medium. Taiwo (2008) examines
the linguistic forms and sociolinguistic functions of SMS text messaging,
and its implications for the teaching and learning of English, and the
development of Nigerian languages.
In this chapter, I want to depart from the general tendencies of stud-
ies on language alternation. For example, language alternation refers to
switches, insertions, mixing, and various styles in language use (Verschik
& Kask, 2019). Verschik and Kask (2019) investigate Estonian–English
code alternation in fashion blogs. They describe a prototypical code alter-
nation as a stretch in a different language that is more or less syntacti-
cally independent (a sentence, a clause, a longer stretch), as opposed to
one-word other-language items or insertions (Muysken, 1995, as cited in
Verschik & Kask, 2019, p. 2).
Heteroglossia appears to be more relevant in online multilingualism
than, for example, code-switching and other sociolinguistic concepts
that reify language, for example, heteroglossia on the web (Leppanen,
2012) and style online (Androutsopoulos, 2007, pp. 284–285). Bakhtin’s
(1981, p. 291) formulation of heteroglossia refers to a discourse that
combines and mixes forms and contexts that represent “the co-existence
of socio-ideological contradictions between the present and the past,
between differing epochs of the past, between different socio-ideological
groups in the present, between tendencies, schools, circles and so forth.”
Heteroglossia can signal how language use indexes ideological points of
view and engages with larger social, historical, and ideological processes
(Leppanen, 2012, p. 260).
Besides the ever-increasing interest in translanguaging, few studies
seek to depart from the language alternation mentioned above. For
example, Deumert (2014) describes mobility and creativity in digi-
tal media and webpages, using language variation, linguistic multi-
lingualism, and diversity, among other things. Recently, however, she
and her co-authors have raised a concern that there are no written
norms and standards for multilingualism online in African languages,
(Deumert, Panovic, Agyepong, & Barasa, 2020). The research on lan-
guage norms and registers has traditionally focused on norm-giving
countries, like the United Kingdom and the United States of America,
who set the standard varieties of English. These norms were based on
colonial assumptions, at times perpetuating the language ideology of
the West to influence language teaching and policies. Sabino (2018,
p. 111) argues that “the maintenance of linguistic systems that differ
markedly from situated use provides profit for those producing dic-
tionaries, grammars, and rhetorics as well as employment for those
who work for them.”
Various considerations of heteroglossia have been advanced from
both the Global North and Global South. Leppanen (2012) inves-
tigates heteroglossia in web-based fan fiction among young Finnish
writers, and how heteroglossia indexes specific interactional roles
and identities associated with the communities of practice (Leppanen,
2012, pp. 249–251). Heteroglossia should not be taken as a mere
instance of the sociolinguistic process of language alternation. Unlike
this view of language alternation, in this chapter, insertions, single
words, emojis, or other-language items are also considered, and there-
fore there is a need to broaden the investigation by using the concept
of heteroglossia.
Heteroglossia and style are more compatible with CMC (cf. Tagg,
2016). Tagg (2016, p. 62) argues that heteroglossia “may be use-
ful for understanding interactions in digitally mediated spaces where
informality, rebelliousness, and playfulness are performed through
manipulating standard writing conventions.” Androutsopoulos (2007,
p. 284) observes that “within the visual mode, style involves the selec-
tion and composition of resources in typography, image, and color.”
Androutsopoulos (2011b) points out the major weaknesses of language
variation approaches to language online and outlines a preference for
heteroglossia. These are criticism of aspects and methods from socio-
linguistics. They come as a result of the fixation with a bounded code
and predetermined social variables, among other things. He draws
extensively on Bakhtin (1981) and Bailey (2007). Bailey argues that
heteroglossia is more inclusive than variation because it addresses
both monolingualism and multilingualism. Androutsopoulos’ (2011b)
analysis is based on a Web 2.0 mySpace social networking site. His
analysis has a combination of speech styles related to discourse activi-
ties, language choice, interpersonal relations, ideological positions,
and identity claims. Indeed, his subsequent research on sociolinguis-
tics combines genre, register, and style (Bailey, 2007). An analysis of
style and heteroglossia is closer to ideological constructs such as norms
than a pure focus on language alternation. Bailey (2007) defines style
as “distinction,” while Androutsopoulos (2007) describes it as a dis-
course-pragmatic function involving semiotics on the web or the field
of computer-mediated discourse.
I will, therefore, attempt to juxtapose aspects of heteroglossia in
instances of languaging in specific contexts of use when answering the
main research questions.
Online Languaging in Computer-Mediated Communication

The mainstream views of languages as ‘fixed’ codes have not yielded
the desired objectives of multilingualism and transformation in post-
apartheid South Africa after years of Afrikaans and English domination,
which was supposed to end after the first democratic elections in 1994.
Therefore, alternatives that challenge the mainstream approaches, such
as languaging in CMC, are necessary. The concept of languaging has been
defined from various angles, including psycholinguistics and sociolinguis-
tics (Makoni, 2020). Makoni (2011, p. 681) asserts that language is inex-
tricably embedded in contexts of use, and meanings are achieved through
continuous and dynamic negotiations.
Universities have been largely influenced by dominant views that lan-
guages can be counted and that they are bounded. I argue that this is
the reason for the failure of policies and the ‘misconceptions’ of online
social practices. According to Pennycook and Makoni (2020), we need
to “broaden the epistemological repertoire” (p. 41) by engaging with a
diverse understanding of language and ideas. Makoni and Pennycook
(2007) describe languages and codes as ideological constructs; in other
words, as inventions.
A view of language as ‘languaging’ informs my analysis of style and
heteroglossia in ODFs. Madsen & Norreby (2019, p. 4) observe that
“languaging as a verb (rather than language as a noun) signals that
language itself is a practice and that exact meaning is not inscribed or
encoded a priori in language, but created in its situated use.” Jorgensen
(2008, p. 169) notes that “language users employ whatever linguistic
features are at their disposal intending to achieve their communica-
tive aims.” This entails that the language users may use any features,
and the fact that some of the features are perceived by some speakers
as not belonging together (Jorgensen, Karrebaek, Madsen, & Moller,
2011, p. 34).
These languaging practices can be divided into abstract and concrete
language features (Pennycook & Makoni, 2020). Pennycook & Makoni
(2020, p. 44) make a distinction between “first-order” and “second-
order” activities, with “the first referring to real communicative activity,
and the second to the kind of abstraction that leads to the naming and
claiming of languages.” Such first-order activities include “a whole range
of bodily resources that are assembled and coordinated in languaging
events together with external (extrabodily) aspects of situations, environ-
mental affordances, artifacts, technologies, and so on” (Thibault, 2011,
as cited in Pennycook & Makoni, 2020, p. 44). Their main argument
is that “the problem comes when we get this sequence the wrong way
round and assume that language use is a second-order instantiation of the
first-order things called languages, rather than understanding languages
as second-order abstractions of communicative activity” (Pennycook &
Makoni, 2020 pp. 44–45). Integrational linguistics rejects the “structur-
alist Saussurean sign as a biplanar pairing of a determinate form (the
signifier) and the determinate meaning (the signified)” (Orman & Pable,
2016, p. 593).
The views on languaging and integrational linguistics around signs and
the study of meanings are in solidarity with epistemologies of the South,
especially quests to decolonize knowledge and Southern theory (Connell,
2018). This is in the sense that the data is based on CMC, and the theory
for interpretation also recognizes mosaic epistemology and various ecol-
ogies of knowledge.
Ideological positions that are informed by language policies in higher
education are at odds with languaging in CMC, as the data below reveal.
Data available on CMC are replete with ‘languaging’ in higher education.
The readily accessible data on the Internet and orientation to ‘languag-
ing’ can reveal the misconceptualization of language policy, monolin-
gualism, language teaching, and language as a bounded system. Dorleijn
(2016, p. 7) observes that perhaps CMC data, because of its quantity,
can offer new insights into horizontal dissemination from one adult to
another. Research on African languages, multilingualism, and English in
CMC is still growing in popularity. For example, Maa and Burns (2020)
explore ideology, discourse, and identity in advanced Japanese learners’
computer-mediated interactions with native speakers.
Researching Online Multilingualism

In this chapter, I analyze ODF discussion threads using computer-medi-
ated discourse analysis (CMDA) and interactional analysis. CMDA
is described by Herring (2004, p. 2) as an approach for researching
online interactive behavior by analyzing “logs of verbal interaction
(characters, words, utterances, messages, exchanges, threads, archives,
etc.).” For example, Jaworska (2014) adopts a qualitative CMDA
approach when exploring the linguistic practice of digital code plays
in an ODF used by the community of English-speaking Germans liv-
ing in Britain.
Herring (2004, pp. 4–5) describes the CMDA approach as language-
focused content analysis. The five stages of the CMDA research process
are: (1) articulate research questions; (2) select computer-mediated data
sample; (3) operationalize key concept(s) in terms of discourse features;
(4) select and apply method(s) of analysis; and (5) interpret results.
One discourse analysis approach relevant to this paper is “interactional
sociolinguistics” (Gumperz, 1982, as cited in Herring, 2004, p. 17). This
research combines CMDA with elements from interactional sociolin-
guistics (Rampton, 2019, p. 393). According to Rampton (2019), the
analysis consists of a range of levels of organization, from the phonetic
to the institutional, by attending to, for example: (a) the activity and
genre that an act of crossing emerged in; (b) the linguistic forms within
the act itself; (c) the indexical orders of the social world; (d) ideolo-
gies of language and social life; and (e) not losing sight of indetermi-
nacy of meaning. I, therefore, combine CMDA, interactional analysis,
and heteroglossia in the data analysis. When analyzing heteroglossic
boundaries among bilinguals, Bailey (2007) advances both intertextual-
ity and indexicality. Both concepts are useful when analyzing language
use in CMC.
Data collection consisted of examining ODF threads posted between
February 2018 and August 2018, during the first semester. The course
website becomes available to students from the beginning of February and
students can create their own topics on the platform. The proportion of stu-
dents who participated in the ODFs was less than 30% of the total registra-
tion. The module ENN103F includes two assignments contributing 30%
of the formative assessment in the final semester mark. The formative and
Figure 11.1 Web page showing the list of topics and numbers of posts.
summative assessments of the module invariably influence the topics found

on the ODFs. The topics and posts on the ODFs are shown in Figure 11.1.1
Extract 11.1 illustrates heteroglossia when indexing cultural solidarity
among online community members, by a student named Bonke.
Extract 11.1 Heteroglossia when indexing cultural solidar-

ity among online community members
ODF thread topic: [General Subject Related Discussions:

Assignment 2]
OP Bhatia: Hi my name is Bhatia. I wanted to know

if we must show our planning and First draft in
assignment 2. (2018-02-09 12:27:16)
(1) Zakhe: Will my assignment be marked if I didn’t attach a

declaration form? (2018-04-04 21:06:20)
(2) Bonke: Hy guiz ngicel usizo ngencwad o nge essay 4 assess-
ment plc bafe2 nansi email yam xxx@gmail.com (2018-04-
05 14:30:14) [Hi guys I am asking for help with a textbook
or with an essay for assignment please brothers here is my
email address]
(3) Bakhe: I mean 4 assessment 2 (2018-04-05 14:31:20)
(4) Mandla: Hi, I a bit confused about assignment 2 on how I’m
suppose to write it. Because it says, I must find 5 articles.
Then am I suppose to write an essay about the or use the top-
ics that are given Below? (2018-04-05 16:34:43)
(5) Menzi: Hi my name is Ben Menzi and did not receive marks
for assignment 1 and 2 please assist. (2018-04-07 08:19:52)
(6) (…)
(7) Jonah: hi. my name is Jonah I just want to know when can we
get the assignment 2 RESULTS? (2018-05-18 10:09:48)
(8) Muzi: m also waiting for my assignment 2 marks (2018-
05-21 10:30:02)
In the discussion thread above, Bhatia asks a question to initiate the

discussion as an opening post (OP) on the forum. This is followed by
a question from another student, Zakhe, who wants to know if his
assignment will be marked even though he did not attach a declara-
tion form. This develops into a sequence of questions. It is akin to a
‘question–question’ in terms of initiation and response. The theme of
this exchange does not focus on one topic but has multiple topics. The
question has to do with ‘attaching a declaration form’ as part of the
requirements for acknowledging ownership and citation rules for writ-
ing essays.
A third student, Bonke, posts a request in a mixed style based on isi-
Zulu (one of the official African languages in South Africa). What is inter-
esting is that she not only alternates with another language but also uses
a multilingual version of English, isiZulu, alphanumerically representing
words in both English and Zulu. Bonke’s personal request is translated
below:
(2) Bonke: Hy guiz ngicel usizo ngencwad o nge essay 4 assess-

ment plc bafe2 nansi email yam xxx@gmail.com (2018-04-05
14:30:14) [Hi guys I am asking for help with a textbook or with
an essay for assignment please brothers here is my email address]
This is an instance of a mixed communicative repertoire using isiZulu

and netspeak to ask for help from other students. This student appears
not to have the prescribed book and thus asks fellow students to contact
her privately to share the textbook for the module. Moreover, her request
is transgressing the rules of prescribed books and perhaps also individual
assignment work; students are expected to buy the books from booksellers
sanctioned by the university. Her posting indicates that this is a request for
the prescribed textbook and help with assignment two, though she mis-
takenly calls it “assessment” two. In terms of the goals of the English as an
Academic Language module, this student uses a hybrid style to appeal to
those who can understand isiZulu. The request is made in a multilingual
repertoire, signaling cultural identity and solidarity among multilingual
online student affinity groups. In fact, it is also used to create friendship
connections on email, outside the ODFs; in other words, to create ‘out-
groups.’ It is a creative use of isiZulu as an African Language. Therefore,
in this ODF, the norms of the forum, individual work, and textbooks are
being flouted to enhance one student’s academic purpose.
The rest of the discussion, from (3) to (6), occurs in a style indicative
of Internet languaging. Features of the style are: the use of numbers,
formal words, and informal words such as “Hi”; the genre or struc-
ture of the interaction is questions and requests; and there is disre-
gard of spelling and grammar (post number (4) is ungrammatical).
Some of the words that are spelled incorrectly are:
Hy: Hi
4: for
Plc: please
hi: Hi
m: am
guiz: guys
These various spellings are not just aberrations but also index features of
youth language and multilingual identities that are unique to the genre of
ODFs. Stylized English is associated with youth language, as mentioned
in Su (2007).
In post (8), an emoji is used, representing a frown: . Emojis are
used with a combination of informal styles, youth languages, and African
languages. Emojis can be paralinguistic (Svelch, 2015, p. 151). This is con-
trary to monolingualism and to strict adherence to the rules of the LMS.
In Extract 11.2, students exchange information in various codes and
styles while requesting to be added to WhatsApp groups. However, one
student, Ted, reprimands the group by asserting regulations from the
LMS administration for the ODFs.
Extract 11.2 Stylization and ODF norms
(1) Gugu: EY GUYS AM NOSIZWE LOOKING FOR STUDY

MATES AROUND PRETORIA SUNNYSIDE CAMPUS, MA
TEENS ARE2 (…) (2018-02-21 14:12: 10)
(2) Linda: WhatsApp group link: https://chat.WhatsApp.com/

leTT2RYVazjHcRBL9uutUy (2018-02-21 15:33:26)
(3) Lunga: Add me please (…) Thanks (2018-02-22 08:54:46)
(4) Ted: THIS IS SO IRRITATING Every topic you go into
thinking maybe you’ll find help on the same question asked
instead is FILLED with phone numbers to ‘ADD ME’. Please
guys can this be done on one page. (2018-02-22 09:06:24)
(5) Onke: hi, am EUNICE, KINDLY ADD ME TO THIS GROUP
(…) THANKS (2018-02-22 20:33:39)
(6) Gumbi: Please add me on WhatsApp group (…) (2018-02-24
19:04:54)
The conversation is initiated by Gugu, who makes an ‘announcement’
looking for students in the neighborhood of Sunnyside around Pretoria,
the capital city of South Africa. She starts with an interjection word, fol-
lowed by a colloquial word: “Ey guys.” The expression “Ey guys” may have
originally belonged to English but is frequently used by speakers of most
of the African languages found in South Africa. Sunnyside Campus is one
of Unisa’s regional centers, where students can register to attend voluntary
classes and use the library. The appeal for a physical location for them to
meet ‘offline’ is another indication that students use the ODFs as a transi-
tion or gateway to other social networking spaces (SNSs) and for sometimes
arranging offline encounters. This is revealed through the practice of ‘shar-
ing’ personal details, emails, cell phone numbers, and location. Sharing is a
significant language practice of SNS and online language practices. There is
a common habit of sharing, retweeting, reposting and so on, in SNS. Tagg
& Hu (2017, p. 6) state that sharing has resulted in a new adjacency pair
common in digital conversations, that of share–show appreciation.
Linda responds by posting a link to a website for joining a WhatsApp
group. This copying and pasting is part of the digital repertoires drawing
on languaging. Languaging is therefore an element of online multilingual
communities. The same request is made by other students also wishing to
be added to the group, numbers (3), (5), and (6). Instead of using the link
or http, they opt to post their personal numbers in the hope that Linda
will add them to the WhatsApp group. Ted is irritated by this. He does
not want to join the WhatsApp group but wishes the students would
dedicate the forum to the purpose of the module, and follow the admin-
istrator’s guidelines on the LMS for ODFs. He expresses this in anger—
“THIS IS SO IRRITATING”— using capital letters for emphasis and a
red emoticon to underline the illocutionary force of the utterance: .
Vandergriff (2014) observes that very little research has been done at
the discourse level to describe how emoticons are used in context. He
explains that emoticons can enhance or complement the verbal message
by expressing the sender’s emotions and/or attitudes; they can mod-
ify the verbal message but not change its valence; and they are gener-
ally affiliative. Emojis perform these socio-pragmatic functions in the
sense that they are used in conjunction with the semi-regulations of the
ODFs. In this case, Ted is merely trying to create ‘bottom-up’ strategies
to regulate the forum and perhaps achieve what he thinks is its intended
purpose. The red emoji stands for rage, if one considers the meaning of
the juxtaposed sentences. Capital letters are used for highlighting and
emphasis.
ODF norms are left to the students because neither the tutor nor lec-
turer is a moderator of this group. This is an effective bottom-up strategy
for managing online groups (Svelch, 2015). As a leader of the module, I
have been reluctant to monitor or regulate how students run the forums,
in order to allow an “unregulated space” (Saxena, 2011, p. 277) for stu-
dent interaction. I, therefore, argue that online-situated language use
reveals some misconceptions about language policy and consequently the
pitfalls of the current design of ODFs.
The idea of language as a bounded, structured system continues to
dominate even though it is fictitious, which maintains a mismatch
between policy and practice. Sabino (2018, p. 111) argues that language
ideologies are unavoidable but “they can be negotiated and transformed
even as they are ritually reenacted.”
Conclusion
The ODFs reveal how students manipulate both monolingualism and
multilingualism. This language practice is contrary to the discourses of
the language policies created by university management and govern-
ment institutions, such as the Department of Higher Education. Jaspers
and Madsen (2016) observe that there is a tendency for governments
to express love for both monolingualism and multilingualism, depend-
ing on how far they want to push the ideology behind the nation-state.
Nevertheless, it is important to reflect on the terminology used in socio-
linguistics and its implications (p. 254). This does not negate the fact that
both monolingualism and multilingualism can find ways of expression in
heteroglossia (Bailey, 2007).
In this chapter, heterogeneous styles of CMC language practices are
displayed. These practices can be characterized as heteroglossic in the
sense that this notion encompasses both socio-ideological and socio-
historical language practices, and does not preclude the existence of
sociolinguistic ‘codes.’ Madsen & Norreby (2019, p. 7) argue that “all
language use—more or less explicitly—meta-linguistically and meta-
pragmatically constructs language.” CMC avails both communicative
and digital repertoire, as shown in the excerpts above. Furthermore,
online multilingualism depicts heterogeneous transmodal languaging
methods of communication.
In researching the heteroglossia and style among this group of stu-
dents, it is evident that multilingual CMC practices are diverse, and that
there is unpredictability in the use of signs and in educational purposes.
Students’ offline and online communicative repertoires intersect and
result in opportunistic and indeterminate directions that can be under-
stood through contextualization into ODeL. I concur with the integra-
tionist view that “signs do not pre-exist their creation by individual
sign-makers” (Orman & Pable, 2016, p. 600). The integrationist position
is that signs are irreducible time- and context-bound responses to unre-
peatable situations.
Presently, there is institutional compartmentalization of policies, against
teaching and learning. Although the language is supposed to be central in
teaching and learning, students’ digital and communicative repertoires are
ignored by lecturers and tutors, and assumptions about monolingualism
and English prevail. Technological designs are divorced from languaging
and dialogical CMC. Students draw on a variety of linguistic resources
that are associated with Twitter, SMS, WhatsApp, email, and offline mul-
tilingualism to index multilingual positioning, norms, and stylization.
There has to be change in both language policies and language peda-
gogies. All language teaching is an instantiation of covert ideologies and
policies of languages and literacies. The digital practices found in ODFs
reveal emerging norms, styles, spellings, and registers of a large and
diverse higher education institution. This could mean democratization
of language and technology in the context of ODeL, in the sense that
the students’ discourse practices and digital literacies should inform the
modes, varieties, languages, and codes that are used in the learning of
English.
Notes
1 Ethical clearance for this study was granted by Unisa. The real names of the
students are not shown in the discussion; pseudonyms are used to ensure
anonymity.
2 The actual cell phone number of the student has been omitted for anonymity.
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Appendix: Home languages of students on the online English for

Academic Purposes course
HOME LANGUAGE NO.

AFR/ENG 309
AFRIKAANS 740
ENGLISH 2,658
FRENCH 29
GERMAN 2
ISINDEBELE 484
ISIXHOSA 2,329
ISIZULU 5,730
NDONGA 6
NORTHERN SOTHO 3,070
OTHER AFRICAN LANGUAGES 128
OTHER FOREIGN LANGUAGES 12
PORTUGUESE 17
SESOTHO 1,634
SETSWANA 1,877
HOME LANGUAGE NO.

SHONA 198
SISWATI 565
TSHIVENDA 937
Unknown 16
XITSONGA 1,399
Total 22,140
12 (How) can Critical Posthumanism
help to Decolonize Tertiary
Education in the South in the Age
of Cognitive Capitalism?
Marcelo El Khouri Buzato
Introduction
In this chapter I develop the argument that certain strands of posthuman-
ism offer powerful views about technology and the human subject, which
can support critical tertiary education in the context of cognitive capital-
ism (Moulier Boutang & Emery, 2011). More specifically, I do so from the
perspective of Rosi Braidotti’s (2019a) ideas on a posthumanist university
and the posthumanist humanities, which, in turn, I contrast with human-
ist and transhumanist thought. I will illustrate the argument, whenever
possible, with my knowledge and experience as a tertiary education prac-
titioner and researcher in Brazil, hoping this limited point of view finds
resonance in the realities of tertiary educators in other parts of the South.1
Throughout the chapter, I will point out conceptual and practical intersec-
tions between technology, colonialism/decolonial thinking, and education.
First, I will sketch a relationship among colonialism, humanism, and
technology through Heidegger’s (1977) conceptualization of technology
as Gestell. Next, I will present a brief summary of posthumanism in order
to connect the previous step with a comparison between transhuman-
ism (which I align with colonialism and cognitive capitalism) and criti-
cal posthumanism (which I align with critical education and decolonial
thought). After briefly contrasting the ideas of Brazilian critical peda-
gogue Paulo Freire (1970; Freire & Macedo, 2005) and German philoso-
pher Peter Sloterdijk (2016) about technology and humanity, I will finally
summarize Braidotti’s (2013a, 2013b, 2019a, 2019b) proposals for the
critical posthumanist university, trying to reflect on them from the point
of view of my experience and practice of tertiary education in Brazil. In
the final remarks, I suggest this program requires more research about
language, which is an element of education that critical posthumanism
does not emphasize as much as it could.
Finally, since this book focuses on the South, of which Brazil is a part,
it is important to point out that the South is not the remains of a pre-
capitalist world, but a set of spaces of colonial and postcolonial predica-
ment actively produced by the historical experience of exploitation and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-17
212 Marcelo El Khouri Buzato
othering which go on through a matrix of thought that still conditions
the way (tertiary) education is conceptualized and practiced. The matrix
includes not only the subalternization of local languages, knowledge, and
ways of teaching and learning, but also the imposition of ontological and
technological divides which are currently under scrutiny by posthuman-
ism (Hayles, 1999; Braidotti, 2013a).
Technologies are a crucial part of the Western apparatus/dispositif
(Foucault, 1980) of subjectivation/objectivation, because they draw atten-
tion to themselves as hard material things while naturalizing ‘softer’
(discursive, conceptual) technologies of othering. In Brazil, for instance,
where racialization produced a white/black dichotomy that sanctioned the
enslaving of Africans, the technology of eugenics was disguised as toler-
ance of miscegenation (Skidmore, 1993)—not a form of racial democracy,
but a technology for Brazilian postcolonial society to ‘whiten’ itself. At the
same time, an expanded classification system (negro retinto: dark black;
negro: black; mulato escuro: dark mixed race; mulato claro: light mixed
race; seis-e-meia: almost not black) replaced the white/black dichotomy
with a skin color gradient that forced blacks to classify themselves in the
same terms, and thus facilitated disidentification and racism among them.
It is particularly interesting to look at these and many other colonial
practices/strategies as othering technologies through Martin Heidegger’s
(1977) conceptualization of technology, not as artifacts or technique, but
as Gestell (literally (en)framing)—a mode of seeing/interpreting nature
that objectifies it as a standing reserve of resources to be managed.
Through (en)framing, humans reveal nature by forcing meaning into it
and, hence, by forcing it into being (something). Humanism, particularly
liberal humanism, from the Heideggerian point of view on technology,
can be seen as a technology superordinate to all technologies of othering
used in colonialism. It was (liberal) humanism, after all, that allowed the
(en)framing of local peoples as reserves of virgin or primeval humanness
to be managed or as empty signifiers—the Rousseauian ‘good savage’—
that needed to be forced to be ‘pre-human,’ and was thus in need of tam-
ing, catechizing, literacy, and rape2 to jump the bar to humanhood.
By relating colonialism, technology, and humanism in this way, I mean
to situate the general issue to be addressed in this chapter: If human-
ism is arguably a (meta)technology of othering that underpins (tertiary)
education, (how) can posthumanist views of humans, technologies, and
education inform a project for a critical, decolonizing3 (Mignolo, 2010),
non-anthropocentric tertiary education in the South?
Humanism and Posthumanism

Humanism is not easy to contain in a definition but, for our purposes, it
will suffice to say it is an ideology, and the implications of this ideology,
that naturalizes the view that the human being
(How) can Critical Posthumanism Help 213
“naturally stands at the centre of things; is entirely distinct from ani-
mals, machines, and other nonhuman entities; is absolutely known
and knowable to ‘himself’ [sic]; is the origin of meaning and history;
and shares with all other human beings a universal essence.”
(Badmington, 2004, p. 1345)
In this account, ‘human nature’ is unique, first and above all because,
unlike animals and machines, humans have languages, and use tools to
amplify their intelligence and to transform the environment. Also, it is
because they have a natural sense of ethics, derived from their unique
ability to understand themselves as part of a common species with other
humans (Habermas, 2002). Like colonialism, therefore, humanism hinges
on a series of dichotomies that produce othering; in this case: nature/
culture, subject/object, self/other, mind/body, and so on.
It is clear that essentialist humanism is dissonant with certain (supposedly)
rational human behaviors and was unable to stop the devaluation of human
dignity, and thus of humanist ethics, broadly witnessed in the 20th century,
as Sloterdijk (2016) points out. Besides, with the advances of cybernetics,
biotechnology, and neuroscience, and the concept of an Anthropocene,
exceptionalist explanations of human aims, capacities, and behaviors based
on free will and rational deliberation posed by John Locke, Immanuel Kant,
and other philosophers of liberal humanism have become a lot less credible.
Posthumanism stems from these contradictions and idealizations, and
seeks to explore the ambiguous, creative, agonistic space that opens itself
when the human/nonhuman duality is suspended. Hayles (1999) defined
it as the crumbling of a definition of human that only matched “that frac-
tion of humanity who had the wealth, power, and leisure to conceptualize
themselves as autonomous beings exercising their will through individual
agency and choice” (p. 286).
Posthumanism is not a uniform field, though. It is made of many
strands geared toward different, sometimes contradictory, objectives.
For instance: (i) building a comprehensive critique of liberal humanism
that goes beyond poststructuralism, postmodernism, and performance/
constructivist feminism; (ii) understanding cognitive, agentive, textual,
and ethical consequences of actions, meanings, cognitions, and identities
that ‘run’ across networked human–machine couplings; and (iii) attempt-
ing to take charge of the evolution of the human species through tech-
nological innovations. Underpinning all these motivations and aims is
what Hayles (1999) describes as the posthuman condition and Braidotti
(2013a, 2019b) depicts as the posthuman predicament.
The posthuman condition implies that “information is in some sense
more essential, more important, and more fundamental than mate-
riality” (Hayles, 1999, p. 18). From this condition derives part of the
posthuman predicament, namely, the rise of informational essential-
ism (Thacker, 2003), which supports a series of interrelated modes of
appropriation, manipulation, and commodification of life and living
experience (Braidotti, 2019b). The predicament is also about the ethi-
cal consequences of a post-anthropocentric view of the world, and the
political consequences of the unprecedented degrees of intimacy and
hierarchical evenness between humans, machines, and living nonhumans
supported by cybernetics (Hayles, 1999).
With the predicament comes the urge and the opportunity to pur-
sue alternative schemes of thought, knowledge, and self-representation
across previous divides, such as nature/culture, human/nonhuman, body/
information, and so on (Braidotti, 2019a); by the same token, new forms
of inhuman(e) (Ibid.) conduct have become possible, which are difficult
to classify and regulate ethically in humanistic terms—for instance, drone
attacks on non-Western territories (Hayles, 2012; Braidotti, 2013a). As
organic/cybernetic/material/virtual bodies become posthuman soldiers,
doctors, financial agents, teachers, and students everywhere, humans in
the South, still trying to find their way out of the colonial matrix, get
massively co-opted as crowd-sourced proletarians that fuel cognitive
capitalism with immaterial unpaid labor (Metcalf & Crawford, 2016)
and/or dirt-cheap hand labor in forgotten sites of the supply chains4 for
sophisticated gadgets they cannot afford, let alone design.
As I proposed in the Introduction, it is important to understand how
the ‘soft’ technology of humanism and ‘hard’ technoscientific technolo-
gies, such as digital computing, help each other install and develop the
neocolonial enterprise of cognitive capitalism, which, I argue, could be
framed through concepts and proposals found in critical posthumanism.
The aim of such education in the South cannot be to simply suit the needs
of cognitive capitalism for both material and immaterial labor: it should
probably be to respond, through decolonial thinking and education, to
the posthuman predicament. I believe critical posthumanist views on uni-
versities (Braidotti, 2019a) resonate strongly with such a program.
Transhumanist Posthumanism and Critical Posthumanism

For transhumanists, the posthuman is neither a current predicament, nor a
philosophical construct, but a turning point in a trajectory of self-managed,
technologically induced human evolution that includes stages of technol-
ogy-based human enhancement and augmentation. The posthuman, in
this view, is a stable, manageable synthesis of human biology, nanotech-
nology, robotics, gene therapy, cryonics, virtual reality, and artificial intel-
ligence that inhabits cultural/fictional/scientific/entrepreneurial5 narratives
of human bodies achieving immortality, and autonomous artificial intelli-
gence becoming the almighty caretaker of humanity and human businesses.
Transhumanist thinkers and practitioners are philosophers, science
and technology experts, and writers and patent holders connected to
universities and/or companies.6 In principle, this contrasts sharply with the
metaphysical and near-religious nature of their ideals (Tirosh-Samuelson,
2012). Bendle (2002, p. 61) asserts, however, that transhumanism is
an interpellation from a different kind of God: “the supreme super-
intelligence of the computer-empowered global market.” “Intelligence
physicist” Max Tegmark (2017) confirms the neoliberal parable of trans-
humanism in the introduction to his book Life 3.0,7 where a team of a
private corporation managers create a piece of artificial intelligence that
fixes the whole world, unnoticed, running on the principles of tax cuts,
government social service cuts, and free trade (Tegmark, 2017, p. 25).
Bendle (2002) considers transhumanist discourses about the power of
science, reason, and the market to improve humanity independently of
political concerns just as naïve as the transhumanists’ belief that they
speak on behalf of the “universal human family.” Consider Bostrom’s
(2005, p. 1, emphasis added) claim that “we have always sought to
expand the boundaries of our existence, be it socially, geographically, or
mentally.” The othering in this new version of the universal ‘us,’ of course,
comes from technology. This is clear in Kurzweil’s (1999) claim that by
the middle of the 21st century, “the number of software-based humans
vastly exceeds those using native neuron-cell-based computation,” so
that humans who do not have neural implant technology “are unable to
meaningfully participate in dialogues with those who do” (p. 280).
It has been noted, many times, that transhumanism echoes Nietzsche’s
(2006) attack on Christian morality represented by the Übermensch,
which transhumanists neither confirm nor deny (Bostrom, 2005). Yet,
transhumanism is neither politically transgressive, since its discourses
seem to be firmly rooted in utilitarian, hegemonic, universalistic, classist,
techno-deterministic liberal humanism, nor post-anthropocentric, for, in
spite of its emphasis on technologies, humans will always be superior to
other forms of biological life. It actually makes more sense to consider
them ultra-humanists (Onishi, 2011) seeking to take the liberal view of
the human subject to the next level.
As opposed to transhumanism, critical posthumanism (henceforth CP)
is a post-anthropocentric, nonessentialist philosophical approach to the
question of what it means to be human today—an approach that com-
bines the antihumanist critiques put forward by poststructuralism, post-
colonialism, postmodernism, and feminism, among other traditions in the
humanities, with a new consciousness about the entanglements of humans,
machines, animals, matter, and discourse. For Nayar (2014), CP “unravels
the discursive, institutional and material structures and processes that have
presented the human as unique and bounded even when situated among
all other life forms” (p. 29), while it seeks to “move beyond the traditional
humanist ways of thinking about the autonomous, self-willed individual
agent in order to treat the human itself as an assemblage, co-evolving with
other forms of life, enmeshed with the environment and technology” (p. 4).
The critical components of CP extend the impulse and research methods
of feminism, black studies, decolonial analysis, gay and lesbian studies,
literary critique, and others. Concurrently, they integrate newer elabora-
tions of poststructuralist, postcolonial, and postmodern thought that rec-
ognize the agency of matter and machines, and place the human subject
in a radically nonhierarchical human–things–environment relationality.
The goal is to understand and act on the human predicament by carrying
out “embedded and embodied, relational and affective cartographies of
the new power relations that are emerging from the current geopolitical
and post-anthropocentric world order” (Braidotti, 2013a, pp. 23–24).
Technologies are obviously part of what produces the space addressed
by the cartographies of the new power relations that CP describes. But to
understand subjectivity in that space, and hence tertiary education students,
lecturers, and other participants, one must take seriously the horizontal
human–things–environment relationality implied. One way to describe
this subjectivity is through the cyborg (Haraway, 1991; Hayles, 1999)—a
manner not particularly cherished by critical posthumanist thinkers, but
very useful when we focus on the information essentialism and human–
machine intimacy that characterize the posthuman predicament.
Posthumanism and Education: The Cyborg Goes to School

The term “cyborg,” a clip-and-blend of “cybernetic” and “organism,” was
coined by Clynes and Kline (1960) to designate a hybrid human–machine
system designed so an astronaut could be transported to a distant inhos-
pitable planet and adapt to that environment instead of trying to change
the environment in order to function as a human being there. The idea
was to let the robot-like activity of the human body be taken care of by
the machine, “leaving man [sic] free to explore, to create, to think, and
to feel” (Clynes & Kline, 1960, p. 31). This is, of course, the precursor to
the transhumanist cyborg that abounds in popular culture, where, usu-
ally, the human part of the duo fights to regain its humanity and rule
over the nonhuman half. Coherently enough with transhumanism, the
idea emerged in the context of the Western desire for space exploration/
colonization, which are again in vogue with transhumanist technology
tycoons such as Elon Musk.
Feminist biologist Donna Haraway (re)defined the cyborg during the
Reagan era in the US, an important landmark time of neoliberalism and
digitalization, as “a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as
an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings” (1991,
p. 292). These are realities in which “people are not afraid of their joint
kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial
identities and contradictory standpoints” (p. 295). But the cyborg is also
a source of posthuman predicament, as “a cyborg world is about the final
imposition of a grid of control on the planet …” (p. 295).
Haraway points out the political value of dissolving (humanist) dichot-
omies that underpinned exploitation and othering: “self/other, mind/body,
culture/nature, male/female, civilized/primitive, reality/appearance, whole/
part, agent/resource, maker/made, active/passive, right/wrong, truth/illusion,
total/partial, God/man [sic]” (Ibid.). The imposition of the grid of control,
however, was to have far-reaching consequences for education, among which
she predicted “coupling of high-tech capital needs and public education at
all levels” and “growing industrial direction of education (especially higher
education) by science-based multinationals (particularly in electronics- and
biotechnology-dependent companies)” (Haraway, 1991, pp. 309–310).
Universities in the South, ranked globally according to their ability to
generate employability for high-tech globalized markets and their ability
to ‘transfer knowledge’ to science-based businesses, seem to be struggling
to fulfill some of Haraway’s predictions in the previous quotation, which
have long been fulfilled in mainstream Western tertiary education. Much
of this effort, in Brazil and elsewhere, has been made at the expense of
the humanities (Stover, 2018). In addition, cybernetic methods and epis-
temologies are taking strides to reveal humanity in ways that could sub-
alternize even regular data science sponsored by Silicon Valley. Consider
Anderson’s (2008, para. 7) notorious statement on Wired—a publication,
Bendle (2002, p. 61) reminds us, once edited by transhumanist ideologue
Kevin Kelly.
[…] out with every theory of human behaviour, from linguistics to

sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows
why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can
track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data,
the numbers speak for themselves.
If not properly fought back against, this new kind of colonial episte-
mological matrix could lead not only to more and more information
essentialism, but also to a tragic attack of radical reductionism on the
curricula and teaching–learning practices that are currently grounded on
the recognition of the diversity and complexity of human-situated living
experience. This is even more so on modes of knowledge from the South
that are still struggling to escape the previous colonial matrix. Liberal
humanism can hardly fight back appropriately because, in essence, it is
not about defending human dignity; it is about an ontological war that
cannot be won with humanist ontologies.
Humanist Emancipation vs. Transhumanist Domestication

Before I proceed to CP’s ideas for tertiary education, it is important to
briefly consider the relations among ‘critical,’ ‘technology,’ and ‘post-
human’ in critical humanist education, by reference to Freire’s (1970)
“pedagogy of the oppressed,” and the philosophical underpinning that
Peter Sloterdijk’s (2016) “rules for the human zoo” provides for transhu-
manist thought on education.
Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1970) makes the transcen-
dental8 argument that education sustains humans’ “ontological voca-
tion,” which is to “be more” (ser mais), to learn to be more humanely
human. He put forward this view in opposition to what he called “bank-
ing education”—a pedagogy by which colonial/colonizing ideas are
“deposited” on the students, generating self-alienation and impotence
which diminish the learners’ (sense of) humanity.
For Freire (1970), good education is critical education that starts from
local circumstances and local knowledge, and raises the students’ aware-
ness and readiness to act in the world. To fulfill their ontological voca-
tion, in the Freirean view, it is necessary for people to learn to read the
word and the world (oppressive ideologies and power structures in which
they are caught) simultaneously, and thus denounce and fight against
dehumanizing structures.
As humanist and anthropocentric as Freire’s ideas were, he did not see
technologies as means of oppression because he did not believe in their
agency (as opposed to critical posthumanists). Freire claimed “a seri-
ous humanism does not contradict science or technological advance”9
(Freire & Guimarães, 1984, p. 58, my translation), if for no other rea-
son, because media and technologies are “our creatures, inventions of the
human beings through scientific progress”10 (Ibid.); “the risk implied,”
the reflection continues, “would be for media and technologies to be pro-
moted to creators of us humans”11 (Ibid.).
Apart from the obvious opposition between Freire’s transcendentalism
and CP’s belief in immanence, Freirean pedagogy has been criticized for
allegedly contradicting CP’s take on “socially just pedagogies” (Bozalek,
2018), notably: for overemphasizing class struggle to the detriment of the
oppression of minorities (Brady, 2002); for using sexist language (Hooks,
1993); and for idealizing the “human person” while disregarding gen-
der, body, emotions, and historical period (Elias & Merriam, 1980). To
make matters worse, Freire’s “ontological vocation” is, at least to a cer-
tain degree, compatible with transhumanists’ belief in the role of humans
in making themselves more than human. Only, as transhumanist leader
Bostrom (2001) explains, transhumanists are not “limited to traditional
humanistic methods, such as education”; they can also “use technological
means that will eventually enable us to move beyond what some would
think of as ‘human’.”
Whereas Freire and CP agree on the need to criticize unjust structures
and decolonize education, but disagree on the human–technology divide,
both are at odds with transhumanist views of making humans by means
beyond education; views which find inspiration in German philoso-
pher Peter Sloterdijk’s12 concept of anthropotechnics. Sloterdijk (2016)
presents the concept in his highly controversial lecture entitled “Rules
for the Human Park” or, in an earlier translation, “Rules for the Human
Zoo.” The essay was written as a response to Heidegger’s (1998) “Letter
on ‘Humanism’,” written more than 50 years earlier and based on the
immanence-based claim that only what already is (human, in this case)
can really be accomplished (fully human).
Sloterdijk’s lecture hits Heidegger twice: first, he argued that it is up to
humans to make the best of themselves that they possibly can, whether
fully or not; and second, he claimed that media (technologies) have been
a way for humans to become fully human since Rome. The argument
is based on humanitas (literally, ‘what is human’)—a concept developed
by Cicero (2001) and some of his contemporaries to denote what we
now call education and training in the liberal arts. Before Cicero gave
it a technical meaning, humanitas could also refer to the Greek concept
of a friendly spirit and good-feeling toward all men without distinction
(Ahn, 2009). Through humanitas—that is, under the influence of books
and a literary canon—the Roman citizen could overcome the ‘natural
bestiality’ in the homo inhumanus that was, in turn, favored by media/
technologies such as the Roman amphitheater, with its violent, gory kind
of entertainment.
In the 21st century, Sloterdijk argues, things are not as simple, because
too broad a variety of media is available, mostly exerting a disinhibiting
influence that the literary canon cannot match: ‘domesticating’ humans
would, consequently, require a new kind of anthropotechnics that per-
mitted choice or selection of human traits before birth, through genetic
engineering and other biotechnologies, and, in time, the making of fully
human humans. To date, it is still not clear whether Sloterdijk was pro-
posing a new eugenics or just opening a debate about bioethics in German
society, but he did write clearly that “whether a future anthropotechnol-
ogy will advance to an explicit planning of traits” was an inescapable
question (Sloterdijk, 2016, p. 211).
The convergence of this quote with Bostrom’s (2001) quote about edu-
cation raises questions about our current use of media in educational
practice. Reflecting on Sloterdijk’s ideas, Long (2007) highlights that
access to information technologies in schools and universities obeys a
dual logic of increased freedom in learning, and increased assessment
and evaluations, which thus fits a neoliberal performance-directed sys-
tem that seems to assume students are wild humans in need of taming.
In addition, she notes, technical “enhancement”—as exemplified by the
use of Ritalin by students seeking to outperform themselves in tests and
competitive courses—shows we need not wait for germline experimenta-
tion to talk seriously about transhumanist education.
More explicitly, transhumanists are currently working on certain prin-
ciples and ‘best practices’ for a transhumanist education, as traced by Lee
(2019). He writes, for instance, that students should learn by teaching
machines to be smarter and more human-like, by creating big data on
prosocial human behaviors to teach machines about kindness, or by devis-
ing machine-learning projects to solve consumer problems. Ultimately,
students should learn by teaching artificial intelligence software that will
evolve to be a superintelligence capable of teaching humankind back, not
only in science, but also on spiritual and moral principles (Lee, 2019).
There is nothing in those guidelines about direct technological interven-
tions in the human body, but a lot about technologies and humans as
partners in advanced cognitive capitalism.
Critical Posthumanism and Tertiary Education

Thus far, I have tried to argue for some sort of decolonial thinking on
how (essentialist, exceptionalist, anthropocentric) humanism relates to
technologies of othering and exploitation in the age of cognitive capital-
ism and the Anthropocene. I have done so by sketching the main lines of
thought on the posthumanist deconstruction of the liberal humanist sub-
ject and the reconceptualization of this subject as a cyborg—the locus of
radical human–technology–matter–environment relationality that opens
new ontological and political possibilities. By comparing humanist criti-
cal and transhumanist education, I made the point that transhumanism is
a kind of ultra-humanism that renders critical pedagogies based on tran-
scendence and anthropocentrism sterile at this point in history. In this
section, I will attempt to summarize some principles and propositions
of CP which, I believe, can fill the gap of humanist critique for a tertiary
education geared toward decolonial thinking.
Critical posthumanists believe that in view of the Anthropocene, the
digital revolution, cognitive capitalism, biotechnology, and rising politi-
cal extremism and xenophobia in the world, universities have to be re-
grounded “as a hub of both localized knowledge production and global
transmission of cognitive data” (Braidotti, 2013a, p. 179). This entails
coping with the posthuman predicament by both criticizing technological
colonialism plus inhuman technological structures, and seeking a concep-
tualization of the education subject that can support anti-denialism, anti-
post-truth, anti-xenophobia, anti-fascism, and anti-racism (Braidotti,
2019a, 2019b). We could contrast these views with more humanist takes
on the problem. Tirosh-Samuelson (2018, p. 3), for instance, believes the
digital humanities (one of the pillars of the posthumanities for Braidotti,
2019a, p. 117) can help protect human dignity by turning tertiary class-
rooms into laboratories where “solutions to concrete problems are pro-
posed through interdisciplinary hands-on learning.” She remarks, though,
that “human interiority, personhood, and identity are not quantifiable
and cannot be calculated by a machine” (Ibid.). Therefore, here we find
an update of the Freirean ideas about technology and education men-
tioned previously.
Even though (traditional) humanism blinds even posthumanities authors
to the kind of reform of tertiary education that is needed, one would
expect the epistemological and praxiological reform Braidotti (2013a,
2013b, 2019a, 2019b) talks about to begin in the humanities themselves.
Braidotti (2019b, p. 112) remarks that the humanities will live on because
“even cognitive capitalism is going to need generalists, dreamers” who
can teach and research on “how to reflect critically upon our own his-
torical achievements and shortcomings,” people who remain “a pillar of
democracy through civic academic criticism” (Braidotti, 2019a, p. 149).
The “dreaming” Braidotti refers to, as I see it, cannot be confused with
alienation from the ways that information essentialism is seeking to reveal
social lives and the social subject, or to force what we used to understand
as life and nature to be seen as a stock of information bits to be managed.
The new configuration of knowledge dominated by technology, engi-
neering, and natural and life sciences, Braidotti (2013a, p. 145) argues,
does not mean the humanities cannot “enlist the resources of biogene-
tic codes, as well as telecommunication, new media and information
technologies, to the task of renewing the humanities.” In order to do
that, besides more training in “advanced digital methods,” the humani-
ties must bet on “heteronomy and multifaceted relationality” (Braidotti,
2019a, p. 149). In this manner, the object of the posthumanist humanities
is easily defined as the posthuman condition itself.
Because the object and its ontology are transversal, there need to be
ethical and epistemological readjustments among the practitioners of
posthumanities. Interdisciplinarity will not suffice, Braidotti (2019a)
explains; what is required is postdisciplinarity, which demands the acqui-
sition of certain skills by humanities scholars—for instance, gaining
some “‘bio-literacy’ and cyber-nautical skills” (Braidotti, 2013a, p. 157).
Perhaps more challengingly, also needed is a culture of mutual respect
and reflexivity: “cultural and social studies of science need to address
their resistance to theories of the subject, while philosophies of the sub-
ject, on the other hand, would be advised to confront their mistrust and
mis-cognition of bio-sciences”13 (Braidotti, 2013a, p. 12). A university
fragmented into tightly sealed departments and disciplinary codes is,
therefore, out of the picture.
When achieved, postdisciplinarity can “destabilize, deconstruct and dis-
rupt the hegemony of distinct disciplines and the classic academic divides
between human, social, technical, medical and natural sciences”(Lykke,
2018, p. 333). Postdisciplinarity thus implies “disidentificatory relations
to the disciplining forces….” Disciplinary disidentification, I understand,
is a means of decolonizing thought, which is, in turn, equivalent to “de-
familiarizing our habits of thought to the edge of a qualitative shift”
(Braidotti, 2019b, p. 128) in tertiary teaching and research.
The qualitative shift in tertiary education Braidotti (2013b) refers to
entails changes not only in the polity and in politics, but also in ethics.
The central concept here is what Braidotti (2013a, 2019a) calls “Zoe,”
the transversal entity “Life,” borrowed from Greek philosophy, that
extends across species and vibrant things, from microbial life to rain-
forests and planet Earth. For Braidotti (2019a), the core of posthuman
educational practice is a Zoe-centered egalitarianism that inspires us to
resist the commodification of life and “relocates both students and educa-
tors into the very world they are trying to learn about” (p. 146). Part of
that relocation is, of course, to open the gates of universities in the South
for communities whose knowledge has been subalternized by human-
ism, even more so now as the Anthropocene has shown that premodern
ontologies that did not split culture from nature are actually right (Inoue
& Moreira, 2016)!
In sum, tertiary education, from a critical posthumanist perspective,
requires organized academic communities that can empower a vision of the
collective, transversal posthuman subject of knowledge, through postdis-
ciplinary collective work around the autopoietic living/thinking/vibrating
that cognitive capitalism is constantly harnessing and commodifying. This
requires a new conceptualization of the subject of education as a posthu-
man collective: from a liberal “I” to a human-plus-nonhuman “We-Are-
(All)-In-This-Together-But-We-Are-Not-One-And-The-Same” (Braidotti,
2019a, p. 57). It also requires a new conceptualization of teaching–learning
that counterbalances the expectations and needs of cognitive capitalism,
and the need to theorize and act on the posthuman predicament.
Final Remarks
In this chapter, I have pointed out that humanist critical education cannot
decolonize tertiary education in the South in the age of cognitive capitalism,
nor can the ultra-humanist subject of transhumanist education be the ethical
and epistemological subject of a tertiary education that promotes decolonial
thinking and protects all forms of life from colonization and (en)framing.
As my final remark, I would like to highlight a specific point in CP, as
noted by Braidotti (2013a, 2013b, 2019a), that could provide interest-
ing research questions for those, like me, who are involved in language
and literacy education. Among the many topics covered in CP’s litera-
ture, there is less attention to language (its role, its potentialities, its need
for conceptual revision, and other issues) than applied linguists, like me,
would expect. One wonders, from Braidotti’s ideas, how to (dis)organize
language policies and language learning in a posthumanist university at
a time when artificial intelligence for translation is making strides into
academic genres in the South, and the pressure to teach even local stu-
dents in global languages is ever stronger. If the collective postdisciplinary
subject of posthuman knowledge is really to be constituted, then conflicts
between translanguaging (perhaps ‘postlanguaging’) and machine trans-
lation, or language appropriation and appropriation of heterogeneous
language uses through dataism, could emerge among academic com-
munities. It probably already is emerging in contexts such as immigra-
tion gates between the South and the North; for example, in educational
spaces of the South, such as high-tech private bilingual schools.
These conflicts—along with the new forms of framing and reveal-
ing human language through human–machine–animal communication,
big-data text mining, natural language processing, artificial intelligence,
and so on—provide language studies, especially applied language stud-
ies (Pennycook, 2018), with a whole new research agenda. Through this
agenda, a new vision should emerge of how, on the one hand, the transver-
sal collective subject of CP makes meaning and, on the other, ways of join-
ing what Braidotti (2019a, p. 168) refers to as a political assemblage aimed
at decolonizing the university should abound for those in language studies.
To keep abiding by liberal humanist views of human subjectivity,
knowledge, and education in the face of the posthuman predicament is
not only naïve but also dangerous: such views cannot cope with the rise,
supported by certain technologies, of white supremacism, xenophobia,
and scientific denialism in the world; nor can they uphold critical enquiry
and learning about how algorithms, databases, biometrics, and intimacy
with gadgets bundle up with racism, xenophobia, and commodification
through the power-control grid predicted by Haraway (1991). Just as
the liberal humanist ethics permitted disengaging the ethical principle for
slaves who had not “graduated into humanhood” (Spivak, 1991, p. 227),
cognitive capitalism and transhumanist education left unproblematized
could suggest the bar of humanhood must be raised, and education is to
deal with it, or else data science will. Universities in the South must find
new ways to make the point that there simply has never been such a bar.
Notes
1 For the purposes of this chapter, the (Global) South refers to the geographic,
political, and economic spaces that have been historically impacted by the
externalities of capitalism. These spaces do not necessarily coincide with
national borders, nor do they have to be physically located south of the
Equator. As a matter of fact, most such spaces are around the borders of
wealthier, exclusive/excluding spaces, or are confined within borders imposed
upon them inside these wealthier spaces. Spaces, of course, need not be geo-
graphical; they can be constituted by relations of many kinds that sometimes
produce inclusion/exclusion within the same territory.
2 In Brazil, rape of indigenous or African slave women by white upper-class
men was part of the ‘whitening’ technology in the sense that it provided a
stock of whiter, mixed-race black men whom black women were powerfully
socially conditioned to marry (Skidmore, 1993). One of the externalities of
such ‘technology’ in contemporary Brazil is, allegedly, a rape culture where, in
2018, 180 rapes were officially reported, with possibly ten times more going
unreported (FBSP, 2018).
3 By referring to Mignolo’s (2010) concept of “decolonial thinking,” I bor-
row his proposal for a kind of thinking that intellectuals of the South should
cultivate—a thought that problematizes colonial conditions for epistemology
seeking emancipation from such conditioning by articulating culture, politics,
and economy interdisciplinarily, privileging local knowledge.
4 I refer to sites such as e-waste landfills in Ghana and other African countries
that depend on revenues from this business that environmental legislation
would not allow in the North (Grant & Oteng-Ababio, 2012).
5 Consider Kurzweil’s theory of biological transcendence and general artifi-
cial intelligence singularity (Kurzweil, 2005) in relation to Transcendence,
the science fiction thriller film (Pfister, 2014), mediated by Transcendent
man (Ptolemy et al., 2011)—a documentary that illustrates how the ideas
and theories in Kurzweil’s book are illustrated by sci-fi classics such as The
Terminator, Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Matrix, and others.
6 Max More, the leading figure of the Extropians, is also President Emeritus of
Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the leading cryonics company worldwide,
where Marvin Minsk, one of the fathers of artificial intelligence, is part of the
advisory board. Nick Bostrom, founder of the World Transhumanist Association,
currently known as Humanity+, is an Oxford scholar who specializes in human
enhancement and the far future of humanity. He is the head of Oxford University’s
Future of Humanity Institute. Finally, Raymond Kurzweil, an enthusiastic public
advocate for transhumanist movements, is Science Director at Google.
7 In Tegmark’s (2017) account, natural life is Life 1.0 and human life is Life
2.0, because, through language, writing, and computers, we can improve our
(mind) ‘software.’ To become Life 3.0, the supreme form of life that can con-
quer the universe, we must be able to custom-make our (body) ‘hardware,’
which is something only artificial intelligence coupled with robotics can do.
8 By qualifying Freire’s pedagogy as transcendent, I am trying to emphasize the
difference between his views and the immanent views of CP, even though both
sets of ideas share the notion of critical awareness and ethical relationality
towards all others as an educational ideal. Transcendence refers to the belief
that there is an ultimate instance that is separated, ontologically, from what
it brings into being. Immanence, the opposite concept, holds that the founda-
tional origin of things is not separated from them, but present or contained in
them.
9 “um humanismo sério não contradiz a ciência nem o avanço da tecnologia.”
10 “são criaturas nossas, são invenções do ser humano, através do progresso
científico, da história da ciência.”
11 “O risco aí seria o de promovê-los, então, a quase fazedores de nós mesmos.”
12 It is not clear that Sloterdijk’s ideas and the philosopher himself can be con-
sidered transhumanist, although it is easy to see references to his name as
part of a so-called German transhumanism. Apparently, in spite of his posi-
tions about postwar eugenics being compatible with the transhumanists, he
was ‘accused’ of transhumanism by Jurgen Habermas, with whom Sloterdijk
polemized ferociously, directly and indirectly, about the lecture on which the
essay was based and about biotechnology in the 2000s (Sorgner, 2017).
13 Braidotti’s proposal resonates with Latour's (2013) appeal to an “ontologi-
cal diplomacy” based on a mutual understanding among the sciences of the
“modes of existence” that characterize the beings in each other.
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13 Concluding Commentary
Felix Banda
Over the last decade or so, there has been increased interest in the effects
of coloniality on academia in general and on the so-called Global South
in particular. The contributions in this volume add new and dynamic
perspectives to the scholarship associated with this interest. There is also
concern over the trickle-down relationship between the Global North
and the Global South, especially regarding language-related theories.
The notion of Southern Theories can be said to be a consequence of the
people of the South asserting their identity and that they are capable of
setting their own agenda theories without prompting from the Global
North. The contributions in this volume cover these issues among others,
and are arranged in three Parts or themes.
Part One deals with epistemology as related to language issues and
coloniality in the Global South. Coloniality/decoloniality and the Global
South theories have become a dominant feature in the scholarship on ped-
agogic and didactic research in reaction to the domination by European
and North American theoretical and epistemological frameworks. The
domination, according to Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1986), extends to coloni-
zation of the mind. One consequence of coloniality and the Western civi-
lization on which it is anchored is to change the minds and actions of the
local and colonized people to become like those of Western people such as
the English, in thought and action. Western civilization and education are
equated with higher and more complex systems of knowledge and disci-
plinary practices, while knowledge systems and ways of being of Africans
and Indians, for example, are only good for cultural identities and exotic
or mythical altruisms. As Banda and Mwanza (2020) note, education
and knowledge systems are the main tools used to cultivate Western and
European influences and coloniality traits, and these are also the strategic
capital for the export of Western cultural identities and ‘civilizing’ prac-
tices, packaged as ‘modernity,’ to the colonized and the rest of the world.
In this regard, Samah Abdulhafid Gamar’s chapter looks at the unequal
relationship between institutions of higher learning in the Global North
and their satellite campuses in the Global South, such as those in the Arab
DOI: 10.4324/9781003138433-18
Concluding Commentary 229
states. The chapter illustrates how the language of competency and the
technocratic discourse created in the Global North educational institu-
tions come to be reproduced and consumed in higher education satellite
campuses. Such discourses function to maintain dominance and propa-
gate unequal power relations between North American colleges and their
satellite colleges.
Both Clara Keating’s and Betty Sibongile Dlamini’s chapters suggest
that there should be reflexivity in the handling of terminology drawn
from Western scholarship and restraint in interactions between the
Global North and the Global South, if local ways of speaking and know-
ing are not to be destabilized. Terminology such as pluricentric systems
and polycentric spaces may function as tools of social stratification in
which language and linguistic normativity are made subservient to ‘cen-
ters’ outside the locus of local practices. There is a need to be reflexive in
the use of the terminology by the language disciplines to ensure that it is
localized and reflects local ways of doing and knowing. Dlamini suggests
a much more integrated and two-way process of interaction, and that
there is a need to draw on the Ubuntu African philosophy, in which all
human beings are considered equal. On the other hand, Sangeeta Bagga-
Gupta calls for epistemic justice in scholarship, which should also be
a concern for academics in the Global South. They need to interrogate
the vocabularies that have nurtured their academic profiles, as a way to
help to denaturalize the Western or North-centric hegemonies currently
obtaining in higher educational settings in the Global South.
Part Two focuses on issues related to language policy and colonial-
ity in higher education. First, I want to point out that language educa-
tion policy often determines which language or languages are to be used
for teaching and learning. Following the inherited Western doctrine in
multilingual Africa, for example, this often means the (former) colonial
language is chosen as the main language of education and one African
language is used for initial literacy development (the first three or four
years of education). This creates a hierarchy and feeds into the language
ideologies that put colonial languages at the top and indigenous lan-
guages at the bottom. The language education policy can be said to be
mitigated by prevailing language ideologies. Woolard (2021, p. 1) defines
language ideologies as “morally and politically loaded representations of
the nature, structure, and use of languages in a social world.” Banda and
Mwanza (2020) argue that language practitioners and ordinary people
alike are affected by language ideologies, which are reflected in the lan-
guages they speak at home and the medium of instruction they prefer
their children to be taught in. Banda and Mwanza (2020) also note that
language ideologies mediate between language, forms of speech, and
social structures that are used to describe speakers of particular forms
of speech. Language ideologies can thus be linked to unequal distribu-
tion of power and value judgments, and differences based on languages
230 Felix Banda
and language use (Banda & Mwanza, 2020). It can thus be argued that
language ideologies represent ideas, conceptions, and discourses; they
are also “mental constructs and verbalizations…captured in embodied
practices, dispositions in material phenomenon such as visual representa-
tions” (Woolard, 2021, p. 2).
In education scholarship, pedagogy, and languaging practices, the cur-
riculum and syllabus provisions and content, as well as institutionalized
activities and schedules, are filtered through language ideologies (Banda
& Mwanza, 2020). In Africa, the education systems and language educa-
tion policies and practice have not changed much, and they still reflect a
colonial heritage.
In addition to the issues outlined above, Part Two deals with unequal
power and minoritization of local/indigenous languages, and epistemic
forms and modes of knowing. The decolonial turn, according to Banda
and Mwanza (2020), requires cognizance of the fact that coloniality
has a penchant to dominate through minoritization or erasure of local
knowledge systems, ways of knowing, and local social practices. Mignolo
(2007) reminds us that decoloniality requires that we de-link from and
reconstitute current epistemic systems by reclaiming the knowledge sys-
tems, languages, and ways of speaking, knowing, life, being, and doing
that modernity erased (Banda & Mwanza, 2020). This involves disavow-
ing domination by questioning and uncovering both the schemes of epis-
temic Eurocentrism and the fundamentals of imperial/colonial knowledge
production (Mignolo, 2007).
In this regard, Mohammad Alkhair’s chapter exposes the epistemic vio-
lence and othering practices in Sudanese linguistics. Alkhair particularly
criticizes the segregationist and apolitical epistemology of language and
communication in the Sudan, and calls for the disruption of the segre-
gationist, telementational, ahistorical, and decontextualized perspectives
that have dominated the Sudanese linguistic epistemology. He recom-
mends integrationist and critical politicized perspectives on language
and communication in the Sudan. Similarly, Dumisile N. Mkhize in his
chapter exposes multilingualism in higher education in South Africa as
misconceived from a monolingual nation-state perspective. The curricula
and syllabi at such institutions champion a one-standard-language ideol-
ogy and thus displace the complex multilingual discursive practices that
students bring to the school as illegitimate for education. Mkhize sug-
gests that institutions of higher learning need to adopt an integrationist
perspective and translanguaging to capture the lived multilingual realities
of students.
ln what is called existential sociolinguistics, David M. Balosa explores
how democratization and the participation of linguistic minorities in
society’s affairs can be achieved. Balosa suggests that when languages are
perceived as independent of human beings, it leads to the oppression and
marginalization of the minority and indigenous languages. The chapter
Concluding Commentary 231
calls for the development of a sustainable existential intercultural mind-
set across public and social policies in societies to counter othering and
marginalization of linguistic minority groups and their languages. Vicky
Khasandi-Telewa explores the use of mother tongues among staff and
students at a university in Kenya. The responses of the participants were
mixed, with some supporting the use of mother tongues and others saying
they promote tribalism. It is interesting to note that the idea that using
African languages leads to tribalism appeared in colonial times when com-
partmentalization of Africans into autonomous ‘tribes,’ each with its own
chief or headman, was legislated. These Africans who had lived side by side
for centuries, and who spoke the same or related languages (such as the
Bantu language group), were thought to speak unintelligible tongues. Thus,
they needed to use colonial language to communicate effectively or with-
out resorting to ‘tribal’ conflict. The indirect rule practiced by the British
in some of the African colonies was through the chiefs. Ironically, English,
the colonial language, was then touted as the language capable of fostering
cross-‘tribal’ interactions. The idea of English as the language for inter-
ethnic or ‘tribal’ interaction was reproduced and adopted by the emergent
African leaders after independence, which perpetuated coloniality and is
still being reinforced, as Khasandi-Telewa’s study in Kenya shows.
The first two chapters in Part Three use literary texts to drive their
arguments. Liesel Hibbert uses the novel by Chimamande Ngozi Adichie
titled Purple Hibiscus (2009) to argue that feminist gender issues and
social justice can be taught using the text. In particular, Hibbert argues
that juxtaposing the author’s feminist views with the students’ own expe-
riences of gender inequality in South Africa makes it possible for the
latter to de-link from their own historically entrenched views, which nat-
uralized the disempowerment of women, and thus the students confront
their own coloniality.
Ayşenaz Cengiz’s chapter problematizes the translation and the recon-
textualization of Simone de Beauvoir’s (1949) Le Deuxième Sexe in the
Turkish cultural context. Cengiz argues that successful translation of the
text necessarily involves recontextualization into the Turkish sociocul-
tural environment through the mediation of a third space. This means
that there needs to be negotiation and integration of contextual and tex-
tual properties from both the source and target text environments.
Marcelo El Khouri Buzato’s chapter confronts colonialism, technology,
and humanism by addressing how othering sustains oppression and injus-
tice, on the one hand; and how posthumanist perspectives of humans,
technologies, and education can enlighten a project for higher education
in the Global South. Sibusiso Clifford Ndlangamandla takes an integra-
tionist perspective to argue that heterogeneous multilingual online prac-
tices of students who are learning English at an Open Distance eLearning
university are indicative of the need to democratize language, teaching,
learning, and the spaces in which they occur. Technological devices have
232 Felix Banda
enabled researchers to access rich data that demonstrate the fluidity and
unboundedness of named languages. It also gives us an indication as to
how current language policies in the Global South, in particular, are at
odds with languaging practices.
In conclusion, the chapters in this volume will provide useful reading
and reference material for postgraduate students and academics alike,
and all those interested in Southern Theories and notions of coloniality/
decoloniality in society and education. It is apparent from the chapters
that the coloniality/decoloniality lens is relevant to interrogate the hier-
archies arising from sociolinguistics of scale and globalization in which
the world is conceived as made of centers—with one high and providing
the norms, and the other lower and receiving the norms. The hierarchies
also arise from the terminology from the North that appears to validate
inequalities. Some chapters show how the colonial enterprise can be dis-
rupted, such as by defying the monolingual habitus with heteroglossic or
translanguaging practices. I want to contend that the ‘marginalized’ do
not necessarily accept the imposed position of subservience to the dic-
tates of Northern Theories. Thus, it becomes critical to explore how they
break down hierarchies of difference and ‘entanglement’ constructed in
and by the coloniality of power structures often reinforced in particular
sociolinguistics and applied linguistics terminology. Therefore, following
Banda and Mwanza (2020), I want to argue that sociolinguistics from a
Southern Theories perspective needs to identify the various ways in which
people of the South “challenge and question social structures of inequal-
ity” (p. 10). This means illustrating how the marginalized or victims of
unequal treatment rise against oppressive social structures that tyrannize
them. This entails recovering and rearticulating socio- and applied lin-
guistics from current languaging practices, including those retrieved from
the Internet and new media platforms.
References
Adichie, C. N. (2009). Purple hibiscus. London: HarperCollins.
Banda, F., & Mwanza, S. D. (Eds.). (2020). Introduction: Special issue: Coloniality,
language ideologies, policy and classroom practice in Southern Africa: Malawi,
Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Multilingual Margins, 7(3): 3–13.
Beauvoir, Simone de (1949). Le deuxième sexe II. L’Expérience vécue. Paris:
Gallimard.
Mignolo, W. D. (2007). De-linking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of colo-
niality and the grammar of decoloniality. Cultural Studies, 21/2(3): 449–513.
Wa Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in
African literature. London: J. Currey.
Woolard, K. A. (2021). Language ideologies. International encyclope-
dia of linguistic anthropology. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons. DOI:
10.1002/9781118786093.
Index
Note: Pages in italics refer figures and pages in bold refer tables and pages
followed by ‘n’ refer notes.
Abdelhay, A. 108–110 Bakhtin, M. M. 197–198

Abongdia, J. A. 142 Balosa, David M. 8
Abu Bakr, Y. 107 Banda, F. 9, 228–230, 232
academic habitus 43 Beauvoir, Simone de 183, 187, 231
academic knowledge regimes 56 Bell, G. H. 18
Achcar, G. 21 Bendle, M. F. 215, 217
Achebe, C. 166–167 Bhabha Homi 181
Adichie, C. N. 165, 168, 171 Bhatt, R. M. 135
African National Congress (ANC) Block, D. 170
119 Bloom, B. S. 17, 20
African sociolinguistics 5 Bolonyai, A. 135
Africans to Christianity 166–168 the Books and Beyond Program 33–35
Afrikaans–English university 120 Bostrom, N. 215, 218–219
Ahmed, S. 168 Bradley, J. 35
Alkhair, Mohammad 7, 230 Brah, A. 168
Amos, V. 168 Braidotti, R. 211, 213, 220–221
ANC see African National Congress Brenner, N. 24
Anderson, B. 217 Broodryk, J. 32
Androutsopoulos, J. 198 Brooks, R. 171
Antia, B. E. 134, 143–144 Bucholtz, M. 157
Apple, M. W. 23 Burns, K. 200
applied linguistics 95 Buzato, Marcelo El Khouri 8, 231
Arab higher education: North
American Technical College Camarero, J. 89
19–21; sociopolitical and economic Carver, R. 31
struggles 21–24; technocratic Casillas, D. I. 157
penetration 18–19 Cengiz, Ayşenaz 8
Arabic tradition/Arab(ic) grammatical census ideology 91
tradition 3 Christianity in Africa 166–168
Arab Spring in 2011 21 Cicero, M. T. 219
Arnfred, S. 167 Clynes, M. E. 216
“artefactual ideology of language,” 90 CMC see computer-mediated
communication
Bagga-Gupta, Sangeeta 7 CMDA see computer-mediated
Bagley, W. C. 14 discourse analysis
Bailey, B. 198, 200 Cobley, P. 91
234 Index
cognitive justice 3 existential sociolinguistics 148;
COK see Constitution of Kenya human dignity 149–151;
College of Technology of the Middle integrational linguistics 151–
East (CTME) 19 152; philosophy 154–155;
coloniality 1, 43–44, 52–53; and PLLMR 155–160; sociolinguistics
gender and religious situatedness in 152–153
Africa 166–168
colonial knowledge 56 Fairclough, N. 169
computer-mediated communication Farahmandpur, R. 23
(CMC) 193; language and 196; Finnegan, R. 67
online languaging in 198–200 Fisher, G. H. 158
computer-mediated discourse analysis Fishman, J. A. 137, 152–153
(CMDA) 200 fixed code 122–123
“conscientization,” 22 Freire, P. 22, 37, 147, 211, 217–218
Constitution of Kenya (COK) 133 Furst, E. J. 17, 20
Corona, V. 170
Courtney, Michael 35 Gamar, Samah Abdulhafid 7, 228
creativity 5 Garcez, P. de M. 49
critical language awareness 17 Garrison, J. 16
critical posthumanism 214–216; and Ginsberg, Ruth Bader 170
tertiary education 220–222 Giroux, H. A. 23
Cross, R. 195 Global North: technocratic discourse
curricular documentation 19–21 in Arab region 13–24; TVET in see
Cusicanqui, S. R. 43, 56 TVET curriculum
“cyborg,” 216 Global North education systems:
technocracy 14–18
da Costa, M. 169 Global South: communities 32;
Daoud, M. 106 conception of 1
da Silva, E. 49 ‘Global Souths,’ 1
de Beauvoir, Simone 8 Gonçalves, K. 49
decolonization: of education 5; Graham S. 35
language 5; notion of 4, 6; spaces of Gramsci, A. 23
contradiction 5–6 Grégoire, Abbé 134
Demiashkevich, M. J. 14 Grumet, M. R. 19
denaturalization 73 Grusky, S. 30–31, 34, 39
Deumert, A. 197
Devanagari script 68–69 Habermas, J. 18
Dewey, J. 14, 22–23 Hacking, I. 66
Dlamini, Betty Sibongile 7, 229 Haraway, D. 217, 223
Dorleijn, M. 199 Harris, R. 89–91, 110, 122, 135,
Dyers, C. 142 151–153
Harrow, A. J. 17
Englehart, M. D. 17, 20 Hayim, G. J. 154
English into isiZulu and Sesotho 123 Hayles, K. 213
English-isiZulu language policy 121 Heidegger, M. 153, 211–212, 219
Entwistle, H. 23 Heller, M. 6
epistemic blindness 53–54 Herring, S. C. 200
epistemic injustice 3 Hibbert, Liesel 8, 231
epistemic violence 91 Hill, W. H. 17, 20
“epistemocriticism,” 87 Hornberger, N. H. 158
ethnologue 90 human dignity 149–151
Eurocentrism 1 humanism 212–213; and
existential philosophy 154–155 posthumanism 213–214
Index 235
humanist emancipation vs. knowledge-based recolonization 56
transhumanist domestication knowledge production and
217–220 dissemination 2, 6
Hu, R. 204 Krathwohl, D. 17, 20
Hutchins, E. 123 Kubota, R. 74–75
Hutton, C. 89, 143 Kurzweil, R. 215
Hyltenstam, K. 53–54 Kymlicka, W. 159
Indiana University (IU) 33–35 Laikipia University (LU) in Kenya

integrational linguistics 3, 151–152 133; anti-tribalism policy 134;
integrationism 3–4; and International language policy 141–143; mother
Service Learning 30–31; “language tongue use 137–141
myth,” 121–123; theoretical language: Chomskyan generativist
Framework of 29; Ubuntu African ideologies of 94; and
philosophy 31–33 communication 122–123; myth 89,
International Mother Tongue Day 134 121; reality 147; representations
International Service Learning of 90
(ISL) 28; the Books and Beyond language in higher education: critical
Program 33–35; goals of 29; and orientations to 1; “geography of
integrationism 30–31 reason,” 2
isiXhosa at UCT 123–125 language policies: at South African
isiZulu and Sesotho at Wits 123–125 universities 120–121; at Wits
IU see Indiana University University and University of Cape
Izerig, H. 106 Town 123–126
Language Sciences/Studies (LSS)
Jaramillo, N. 23 scholarship 61–62
Jaspers, J. 205 languages of learning and teaching
Jaworska, S. 200 (LOLT) 123, 125
Johannes, W. 144 Languaging on Language in HE
Johnstone, B. 153 71–77
Jørgensen, J. N. 135, 199 languaging technologies 67–68
Joseph, J. 4 Le Deuxième Sexe 8; author’s and
reader’s positions in 183–185; in
Kabwende primary school 33–34, 37 France 182–183; in Turkish context
Kaiper-Marquez, A. 1 186–188; Turkish translation of
Kant, Immanuel 213 181–182
Kanyaro, M. 167 Lee, J.S. 157
Kateb, G. 150 Lee, N. 219
Kaviti, L. 142 Lemke, J. L. 17
Keating, Clara 229 Leppanen, S. 197
Kenyan national language policy 133 Levine, Suzanne Jill 181
Kenyan University: language use by liberatory applied linguistics 4
staff and students 137–141; LU’s Li, J. 134
language policy 141–143; mother lingua franca 2
tongue in 134–137 linguistic discursive practices 126–129
Kerfoot, C. 53–54 linguistic diversity 42; polycentricity
Kerswill, P. 153 49
Khasandi-Telewa, Vicky 8, 231 linguistic epistemology 89–92
Kincheloe, J. L. 16, 23 linguistic knowledge 55; ideologies
King, I. 14 of 92
Kinyarwanda and English 38 Locke, John 213
Kline, N. S. 216 LOLT see languages of learning and
Knight, J. 156 teaching
236 Index
Long, F. 219 Nguni and Sotho languages 118, 127
Lourenço, E. 45 Nhlapo, J. 118–119
Love, N. 89 Nietzsche, F. W 215
LU see Laikipia University (LU) in “NO PARKING” sign 69, 70
Kenya Norreby, T. R. 199, 205
‘lusophone space,’ 47 North-centric gaze 68–71
North-centric hegemonies 72
Maa, J. 200 North-centric vocabularies 77
Macedo, D. 211 Northern or North-centric
MacSwan, J. 135–136 hegemonies 61
Madiba, M. 117 Nyabitsinze primary school 37
Madsen, L. M. 199, 205
Mahmud, U. 96 ODeL see Open Distance eLearning
Makalela, L. 117 O’Neil, P. H. 156
Makoni, B. 108–109 online discussion forums (ODFs):
Makoni, S. 1, 32, 91, 107–109, 135, context of Unisa 194–195;
139, 199 formative and summative
Makoni, S. B. 123, 136, 139 assessments of 200–201, 201;
Marcel, G. 153–155, 160 stylization and norms 203
Marinova, Vera 34–36 online multilingualism: heteroglossia
Martin, G. 23 in 196–198; researching 200–205,
materialities 55 201
May, S. 74 Open Distance eLearning (ODeL) 194
Mazrui, A. A. 159 orthodox linguistics 90
Mazrui, A. M. 159 orthodox/segregationist linguistics 89
McKee, R. 29 O’Shea, M. V. 14
McKinney, J. 16 Otsuji, E. 135
McLaren, P. 23 Öztürk, Ahmet 186
meaning-making 68, 71; board work.
69, 70 Pablé, A. 89
Mills, Sara 183, 187 Parmar, P. 168
minority languages and minority Pashby, K. 169
people 147–148 Patten, A. 159
Mkhize, Dumisile N. 8, 230 Pavlenko, A. 74
modernity 48, 56 Pennycook, A. 1, 32, 56, 91, 125, 135,
Mokwena, L. 1 139, 143, 199
Morris, V. C. 154 Perkins, D. 39
Mugaddam, A. 7, 109–110 Phillipson, R. 156
Müller de Oliveira, G. 46 philosophical and pedagogical
multilingualism in Southern Africa orientation: abyssal thinking
117–120 through defamiliarization 168–170;
Mwanza, S. D. 228–230, 232 observations and recommendations
myth 89–90 177–178; speech and thought
representations 173–175; symbolic
named languages: Hindi, Marathi, and lexical clusters 171–173; teaching
English 67–71; RE-cycling of 76; of strategy 170; toward reflexivity
‘Swedish 75–76 175–177
National Party (NP) 120 Phoenix. A. 168
Nayar, P. K. 215 Pillay, A. 177–178
Ncube, L. 32, 37 Piller, I. 153
Ndlangamandla, Sibusiso Clifford 8 Pinar, W. F. 16
Ngozi, Chimamanda 165 pluricentricity 42, 44, 49–52
Ngugi wa thiong’o 166 pluricentric language 42, 45
Index 237
pluricentric Portuguese 44–49 sociolinguistic content 96
political legitimacy of linguistic sociolinguistics 56, 152–153; diversity
minority rights (PLLMR) 8, 54; existential 155
148–149, 155–160 solidarity 2–3
polycentricity 42, 44–45, 49–52, 56 South Africa: language policies at
Portuguese: colonialism 45; European university of see language policies;
45; as heritage language 51; multilingualism 117–120
migration 45; pluricentric 45–49; South-centric mobile gaze: cluster
polycentricity 49–51; society 42 framings in SWaSP 63–67;
Portuguese-speaking spaces 49–51 RE-stance 62; SWaSP stance
posthumanism 213; and education 62–63
216–217; transhumanist and critical Southern epistemologies and
214–216 decolonial linguistics 3
Prah, K. 5 Southern perspectives (SWaSP) 62,
Prosser, Charles 14, 16 79n2; framing see SWaSP framing
Purple Hibiscus (2009) 165 Sudanese higher education: knowledge
spaces at 87; linguistic epistemology
Rambukwella, H. 56 89–92
Rampton, B. 200 Sudanese language and linguistics:
Reagan, T. 134 in Latin script 107; postgraduate
Reckwitz, A. 52 programs 98, 101–102, 103–111;
RE-impositions 75 undergraduate programs 93–98,
Rejaf Language Conference (RLC) 99–100
107–108 Sudanese university 88–89; language
RE-presentations 70; dilemmas 71 and linguistics programs at see
RE-. vocabularies 61–77 Sudanese language and linguistics;
Richards, J. C. 157–159 research content in 97
RLC see Rejaf Language Conference Sudanese university syllabi 92, 96
Rwanda: 2018 and 2019 workshops Su, H. 203
37–38; scenarios creation 37; Sund, L. 169
teachers’ needs and expectations 36; Svelch, J. 195
WhatsApp English group 36–37 SWaSP framing 63–67
Rwandan Teachers’ English Swedish as a second language 73
Development project 28, 35–38 symbolic lexical clusters 171–173
Sabino, R. 197, 205 Tagg, C. 198, 204

Sadharanikaran 63–64 Taiwo, R. 196
Said, E. 111 teachers of English project in Rwanda
Samuelson, B. 33 35–38
Sandel, M. J. 157 technical and vocational education
Santos, B. de S. 53 and training (TVET) curriculum
Saxena, M. 195 13–18; vocational education
Schmidt, R. 157–159 22–24
Schwartzberg, M. 156 technology 211
scriptism 90, 107 Tegmark, M. 215
segregationism 3 Thiong’o, N. W. 143
Sensen, O. 150 Tirosh-Samuelson, H. 220
Simpson, E. J. 17 Toolan, M. 89
Slaughter, Y. 195 Torkington, K. 49
Sloterdijk, P. 211, 213, 218–219 transhumanist posthumanism
Snedden, D. 14–16 214–216
social efficiency–social control TVET curriculum see technical and
model 14 vocational education and training
238 Index
Ubuntu: fundamental to negotiating “vocabularies we live by,” 61
integrationism 32; greeter’s sense vocational education 13–18, 22–24
32; qualities of 33
Ubuntu African philosophy 31–33, 39 Walker, A. 172
UCT language policy 123–126 Wardhaugh, R. 140
umuntu 32 Wassermann, J. 177–178
umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu 32 Wa Thiong’o, N. 228
UNISA see University of South Africa Western linguistics 3; and Arabic
Unisa: online discussion forums in linguistics 3–4
194–195; Open Distance eLearning Western orthodoxy 89
at 194 Wits language policy 123–126
University of KwaZulu-Natal 121 Wodak, R. 153
University of South Africa (UNISA) Wolf, G. 89
120–121 Woolard, K. A. 49, 229
University of Western Cape (UWC) The World is Our Home 38
134
Uslan, Nancy 33 Yan, S. 134
UWC see University of Western Cape
Zeleza, P. T. 6
Vandergriff, I. 204 Zhang, M. 134
van der Merwe, C. 134 Zheng, H. 134
Veronelli, G. A. 48 Zimmerman, M. 39

The Languaging of Higher Education in The Global South De-Colonizing The Language of Scholarship and Pedagogy

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The Languaging of Higher Education in The Global South De-Colonizing The Language of Scholarship and Pedagogy

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The Languaging of Higher Education in

the Global South

By foregrounding language practices in educational settings, this timely

Sinfree Makoni is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Pennsylvania

Cristine G. Severo is Associate Professor of Language Policy and

Ashraf Abdelhay is Associate Professor of Sociolinguistics at the Doha

Anna Kaiper-Marquez is Associate Director and Assistant Teaching Professor

The Routledge Research in Decolonizing Education series aims to

Books in the series include:

Decolonizing Transcultural Teacher Education through Participatory

Global South Scholars in the Western Academy

Interrogating the Relations between Migration and Education in the

The Languaging of Higher Education in the Global South

For more information about the series, please visit www.routledge.com/

Edited by Sinfree Makoni,

List of Illustrations viii

1 Global North Technocratic Discourse in Arab

2 Reflections on the Global North and Global South

3 Polycentric or Pluricentric? Epistemic Traps in

4 RE-. Vocabularies we live by in the Language and

5 Decolonizing Epistemology in Sudanese Linguistics:

6 Multilingualism in South African Universities: A

7 ‘Everyone was Happy When Talking’: Revisiting

8 Existential Sociolinguistics: The Fundamentals of

9 Teaching Gender Awareness in Teacher Education

10 Recontextualization of the Author’s and Reader’s

13 Concluding Commentary 228

Ashraf Abdelhay holds a PhD in the field of sociolinguistics from the

Samah Abdulhafid Gamar is an educator and critical pedagogue who has

Mohammad Alkhair holds PhD in the field of applied linguistics from

Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta holds the professor-chair in Education with

David M. Balosa received his PhD in language, literacy, and culture in

Felix Banda is professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University

Marcelo El Khouri Buzato is associate professor in the Department of

Ayşenaz Cengiz is an assistant professor and teaches undergraduate and

Betty Sibongile Dlamini is an expert in theater arts. Her research interests

Liesel Hibbert is currently an adjunct professor of English Education in

Anna Kaiper-Marquez is the associate director and assistant teach-

Clara Keating is associate professor at the Anglo-American Section in

Sinfree Makoni is professor of Applied Linguistics and African Studies at

Dumisile N. Mkhize is a senior lecturer in the Department of English

Abdel Rahim Mugaddam is a professor of sociolinguistics at University of

Cristine Severo currently works at the Federal University of Santa Catarina

Inviolata Vicky Khasandi-Telewa is an associate professor of Applied

This book builds upon research on critical orientations to language in

Decolonizing the Language of Scholarship

Every concept, model and technique devised by theoretical or applied

Decolonization of education, according to Prah (2021), means:

[S]tripping the structure and content of the colonially received cul-

Decolonization of education in the Global South is necessary because

The term decolonization is both illuminating and limiting, combining

Consequently, this book is made up of twelve chapters. These chapters

(i) Concepts of language and pedagogical practices formed on the basis

Technocracy in Global North Education Systems

The Penetration of Technocratic Rationality in Universities in

Case Study: A North American Technical College in an Arab

Discussion: Technocratic Discourse and the Arab

I experienced so much joy to be part of the team that went to ‘Africa’

Theoretical Framework of Integrationism

Ubuntu African Philosophy as a Model of Fostering Integrationism

The Books and Beyond International Service Learning Program

We’re here to celebrate Books and Beyond [2×]

First Trip to Rwanda: Needs Assessment