Language Learning and Power : A Theoretical Approach

1. Introduction

By language-learning I do not mean what the proponents of learner-centred, rather than teacher-centred, education call ‘learning’. They argue that the teacher is merely a facilitator and the learner is the active agent contrary to what used to be assumed earlier. For the purpose of this article, however, the term learning refers to the demand for learning a language. When people are willing to learn a language; they demand it. The process of teaching, then, is a response to this demand. The focus on teaching, on the other hand, looks at the supply side. In an open-market situation public demand will create and condition supply. In other situations, however, such an equation will not hold. One may force the teaching of a language by decree and offer no choice. In such cases one would be justified in concentrating only on teaching policies and not on learning because it would no longer be possible not to appear to learn a language which is being forcibly taught even if one resists it subjectively and manages to unlearn what little one might have been forced down one’s throat.

2. Aim

In this article both language-learning and teaching are studied with a view to understanding how they are related to power. The focus, therefore, is on power rather than the processes of learning or teaching languages.

3. Definitions of Terms

Let me now define some of the terms I will use in this article.

3.1 Rationality and Language-Learning. One may learn a language either for ‘rational’ or for ‘extra rational’ reasons. The rational reasons are also called pragmatic, instrumental and utilitarian at other places in this article. The extra-rational ones are sometimes called personal, hedonistic or emotional. In the context of this article the terms rational and extra-rational are not meant to be evaluative. Extra-rational is not meant to have any kind of negative connotations for which the term ‘irrational’ can be used. It only refers to those dimensions of our needs which cannot be measured in terms of computable or visible gains such as more money, better jobs, more prestige and so on. This does not mean that the extra-rational objectives are any less valuable – indeed they may be subjectively even more valuable and gratifying for a person than tangible gains – than rational ones. It also does not mean that the choice of investing energy, time and money on learning a language which does not bring material gains is in any sense an unintelligent or irrational choice. In the context of one’s emotional needs and subjective desires it may be eminently rational. The only reason it is being classified as extra- (not ir-) rational is to provide us with an analytical category by which to analyse the demand for learning a language. In the extra-rational category, then, fall the reading and writing of one’s mother tongue when it is not used in jobs nor considered prestigious. One only makes the effort for purely personal reasons – such as that the literature in that language gives one gratification, satisfies some deep desire or some such private reason.

3.2 Types of Language-Learning and Teaching

(a) Rational (Pragmatic, instrumental or utilitarian) language-learning – defined as the demand for learning a language in order to empower one’s self by acquiring the potential to acquire employment.

(b) Resistance (or ethnic) language-teaching – the teaching of one’s ethnic language in order to resist the domination of a language of power. The objectives of this are mostly rational but the element of the extra-rational, such as hatred of a dominant language, enters into the motivation pattern also.

(c) Ideological language-teaching – the transmission of ideas, values and perceptions of reality which create or influence one’s world view through language-teaching, especially language texts. The spread of one’s language abroad as well as the language-teaching policies of states for their own citizens come under this category. This too falls in the ‘rational’ category.

(d) Extra-rational language-learning – the learning of languages purely because they gratify one or for other emotional and private reasons. The learning of one’s mother tongue if it is not used in the domains of power falls in this category. While elements of the extra-rational appear in the forms of language acquisition mentioned earlier, most of this kind of language-learning is for pleasure. Hence the terms hedonistic or pleasure language-learning may be used for it.

These categories are tentative and not rigid or all-inclusive. The idea is to see whether most patterns of the acquisition of languages are explained with reference to them or not.

3.3 Power

As mentioned earlier, one purpose of this article is to see the pattern of demand; of learning a language. As we said earlier, language-learning and language-teaching are two sides of the same coin and one cannot look at one without looking at the other. And when one has looked at both sides one discovers that the value of the coin, what it buys in the market, is power – that it is generally the quest for power which enters into the equation whether people demand to learn a language or whether some powerful entity, such as the state, makes policies to teach it. The idea that individuals and groups learn a language for economic reasons while the ruling elites teach it for political ones is well known (Watson 1993: 28). What is less often appreciated is that both these motivations can be subsumed under the desire for power.

Power is a notoriously difficult concept to use. It is generally used without an explanation by linguists. For instance, David Crystal tells us that a ‘language becomes an international language for one chief reason: the political power of its people – especially their military power’. Later, he tells us that while a militarily powerful nation establishes a language world wide ‘it takes an economically powerful one to maintain and expand it’ (Crystal 1997: 7-8). In short, power is something which includes both the coercive apparatus, the means for giving pain; and the means for buying things; the means for giving pleasure. In my book Language and Politics in Pakistan I said that if power is exercised it would ‘increase the tangible or intangible means of gratification of its possessor’ (Rahman 1996: 8). This is not a definitive definition. Indeed, introducing the work of some of the most eminent scholars of the present era on power, Steven Lukes writes:

It turns out that there are various answers, all deeply familiar, which respond to our interests in both the outcomes and the location of power. Perhaps this explains why, in our ordinary unreflective judgments and comparisons of power, we normally know what we mean and have little difficulty in understanding one another, yet every attempt at a single answer to the question has failed and seems likely to fail (Lukes 1986: 17).

This being the case, I will neither attempt a single answer nor insist on any particular definition. One would still have to point out a few crude indicators of the ‘outcomes’ and ‘location of power’. For ordinary people the outcomes would perhaps be the possession of the means for living a good life. However differently ‘the good life’ is defined in different historical periods and cultures, it cannot but have some basic requirements: food, housing, clothing, freedom from fear and the respect of ones’ fellow human beings. This last, subsumed under ‘recognition’ by Francis Fukuyama (1992: 146), may not appear to be as essential a requirement as the satisfaction of bodily wants but we are talking about the ‘good’ life and not merely subsistence. For life to have value, more than merely bodily wants must be satisfied and the desire for ‘recognition’ – leading as it does to war and heroism of all kinds and other extra rational deeds – is the foremost among them. An even better life would entail the possession of leisure and the capability of having one’s desires gratified.

Power, however, is a credible capability which need not always be displayed or used. Moreover, if it is to organize a society, it must be voluntarily obeyed and recognized i.e it should be ‘authority’ as defined by Hannah Arendt (1969: 45). This means that people must know the rules, the values, the norms of behaviour which recognize certain forms of power as legitimate. The knowledge which people are given, in families, religious institutions and schools, comprises these rules and values. Thus, as Foucault observes, ‘knowledge and power are integrated with one another’ (Foucault 1975: 52). Foucault explains this further by describing how discourses transform individual consciousness. He tells us why we obey power:

What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression (Foucault n.d: 119)

The production of discourses is especially important because they create and express the belief system, the world view, by which we judge everything. Thus the supreme exercise of power lies in shaping, ‘people’s world view upon which their values and actions are contingent. Indeed, social conditioning through schooling and the media is the most important way of changing world view whether undertaken by business organizations or the state (Galbraith 1984: 131-134).

This kind of power, that of constructing reality, is called ‘signitive’ power. We shall have more to say about it elsewhere. The other two kinds of linguistic power may be called ‘pragmatic’ and ‘symbolic’ power. Pragmatic power is based ‘on the communicative dimensions of language’ (DeKadt 1993: 160). Symbolic power refers to the association of a language with attributes which have a value, positive or negative, in the mind of the perceiver. For instance, English is associated with modernity, knowledge and education in Pakistan while Punjabi is not. Instead, Punjabi is associated with informality, warmth, solidarity, rusticity and lack of education (Mansoor 1993). Such symbolic weights are not the intrinsic part of a language as people assume; they are the products of the way a language is used. If it is used by powerful elites, especially in the domains of power, then it becomes associated with positive attributes of a formal kind. If not, it may have a negative symbolic load. In short, the symbolic load of a language is connected with power. The languages of powerful elites and those used in the domains of power have a positive symbolic value. Other languages have either a negative value or a value which is positive for informal and affective dimensions but not formal and instrumental ones.

The third kind of power, pragmatic power, is based on the communicative dimensions of language. This depends on the way a language is used in the domains of power, such as the machinery of the state or the corporation. Indeed, as we move to the modern state, power becomes more and more detached from individuals (such as the sovereign) and ‘becomes a machinery that no one owns’ (Foucault 1977: 156). Let us now turn to the organisational machinery through which power circulates in modern societies.

The more this machinery becomes elaborate and impersonal with modernization, the more does language give one access to it. That is where the demand for learning the language of the visible machinery of power comes in. This visible machinery is associated for the most part with the state in Pakistan – government, bureaucracies, military, judiciary, education, research, media – but in other countries private domains of power, such as corporations, are very powerful (Saul 1995). The language of the domains of power is an empowering device. Those who know it, control it, manipulate it, have an obvious advantage over those who do not. However, while greater ability in language use does not by itself make one more powerful, the inability to use it at all (being illiterate), does disqualify one from the modern literacy-dependent, domains of power. Language, then, is an enabling factor for acquiring power in a modern society. While this function of language has increased tremendously as the manipulation of the written word gives access to power more than the possession of land or sheer strength nowadays, language was a marker of elitist identity even earlier. Thus, in ancient Greece, for instance, there was a movement called attikismos which made people imitate the style of classical Athenian authors at the end of the 1st century B.C. According to Simon Swain who has studied it in detail:

The aim of attikismos, stylistic and linguistic, was to differentiate the leaders of Greek letters and speech from the broad mass of Greek speakers in order to signal clearly that they had command of the best sort of Greek (Swain 1996: 21).

In the same way educated people have differentiated themselves from the masses either by speaking a different language -–Latin in Europe, Persian in India, European languages in ex-colonies – or using learned words from foreign languages in their own vernaculars. In South Asia, before the colonial impact, one function of language was to differentiate the educated elites from ordinary people (Washbrook 1991: 182). This function is served by English and Urdu, the languages of power, in Pakistan.

4. Empowerment Through Acceptance

The language of power is not the spoken language of everyday life and, therefore, has to be learned. This language has certain characteristics: it is a standardized variety of a language; it is a print language; it is highly valued; it is not spoken by the common people; it is an elitist possession. Not only is it a standardized language in the sense of possessing fixed spellings, written grammars, dictionaries and printing conventions but it is also used by the ruling elite in the domains of power. The use of a language in such domains by the modern state, or ‘language rationalization’ is a matter for the ruling elite to decide. In the case of English, for instance, it was standardized not because it was structurally or intrinsically any better than the non-standardized, region-bound varieties of the languages we stigmatize as dialects. It was standardized by complex processes in which powerful elites, clerks of the chancellery and the clergy had a hand as John Honey (1997: 84) tells us (also see Fisher 1986). Then the educated classes, state bureaucracies, clergymen, publishers and writers spent money on teaching it, printing dictionaries and books in it and using it in the domains of power. As these classes occupied positions of power in the state apparatus, they made the standard variety the language of the domains of power (‘rationalization’) at the expense of all the other varieties of English and their speakers. This made standard English empowering and functionally useful because it constantly enriched itself in vocabulary and other resources as it met the growing needs of a modern society. We often mistake this greater functional usefulness for ‘superiority’ but that is an evaluative term which one can do without as long as one remains at the purely theoretical level. However, as people live on the pragmatic level and not on the purely theoretical one, they cannot but help using evaluative terms for everything including languages. The non-standardized varieties of a language, or non-standardized languages, are generally given less prestige than standardized ones even by their own speakers. This is not because of the nature of the language but because of its use in the domains of power. The crucial factor is power not language. The crux of the issue is whether a language can empower one or not. Scotton, who concludes after mass surveys that Africans place language in a hierarchical order, gives support to what may be called the ‘expected-utility theory’ (1972). This is explained as follows by Laitin:

People make individual assessments of the benefits of speaking a language (multiplied by the probability of actually receiving them) and then subtract the cost of learning it (Laitin 1992: 32).

Laitin himself goes on to use the game theory to account for the learning of languages. His conclusion is that people are willing to learn languages other than their own ‘as instruments for the fulfillment of economic or social goals’ but this does not happen without their feeling ‘a sense of loss, of alienation from their roots, of betrayal’ (Laitin 1992: 52). This is a point which we will take up in what I call ‘Resistance LT’.

As we have already remarked, in most countries the standardized variety is an elitist possession. This means that it ‘sells’ best in the linguistic market. The notion of a ‘market’ comes from Pierre Bourdieu, the French sociologist, who argues that linguistic exchange ‘is also an economic exchange which is established within particular symbolic relation of power between a producer, endowed with a certain linguistic capital, and a consumer (or a market), and which is capable of procuring a certain material or symbolic profit' (Bourdieu 1991: 66). In other words, languages do not communicate only meaning in any neutral sense; they also communicate power. Thus words are valued according to who speaks them; which class they are associated with and what image they have in a society. Speech codes associated with powerful groups in a society, such as European languages in ex-colonies or the standard language anywhere, do not convey meaning alone but also the power of their history and contemporary associations. In this context it should be mentioned that Bernstein pointed out in a series of articles, that working class children use a ‘restricted code’ while middle class ones use the ‘elaborated’ one which is what the schools use. The former is dependent on the context and leaves out connecting and explanatory words. The latter is detached from the context and uses glosses, fillers and logical connectives. These are matters of verbal strategy, of style rather than language but their effect is that of restricting the entry of working class children into the world of education and extended power. Thus, although the teaching of the standard language ‘may well be felt as persecutory’ (Bernstein in Hymes 1964: 257), not teaching it altogether, as arguments about the structural equality of all languages appear to imply, would be ghettoizing. In Arab countries, there is a diglossic situation which Ferguson pointed out in his now classic article on diglossia (1959). Demotic Arabic is used in the family and all the informal domains of interaction. Classical Arabic, which is nobody’s mother tongue, is taught in schools. Those who cannot, or do not, go to school are automatically shut out of the formal, modern, domains of power. At present, in Pakistan, English occupies the top position. Next comes Urdu and right below them all the mother tongues (Rahman 1996: 228-248). And not only in Pakistan but in all ex-colonial countries, the local languages are devalued vis-à-vis the language of the former masters. In Nigeria (Oladejo 1993); India (Agnihotri & Khanna 1997) and Tanzania (Mekacha 1993) English continues to be the language in which the elite is educated and through which one climbs into positions of power, affluence and cultural significance. In India, even in Varanasi which is the heart of the Hindi movement (the movement to promote the use of Sanskritized Hindi which is a symbol of the Hindu identity and part of Hindu nationalism), the citizens ‘vote for Hindi education, yet send their own children to English-medium schools’ (Laitin 1992: 69). In Pakistan the mushrooming of schools advertising themselves as being ‘English-medium’ tells the same story. In Tunisia, they talk of Arabization while teaching their children in private French schools (Laitin 1992: 113). In all these countries the major focus of language-teaching is the acquisition and retention of power. Westernized elites know that they will acquire positions in the higher bureaucracy, commissions in the officer corps of the armed forces and increasingly in NGOs, international organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations if they have command over English. Thus they spend enormous amounts on teaching good English to their children. Languages of power, then, are an ‘investment item’ as Laitin said about European languages in Africa (1992: 80). They are invested into because they have the potential of making one powerful.

5. Empowerment Through Resistance

So far we have talked only about the acceptance, and hence the demand, for learning a language. However, another reaction to the high valuation of a language could be resistance to it. I have dealt with the resistance to Urdu and English in Language and Politics in Pakistan (1996) earlier. But language movements, which that book mostly deals with, are expressions of dissatisfaction with the Centre. Language is a symbol of identity which gives a focal point for mobilization to a group which, both for rational and extra-rational reasons, wants a greater share in power and goods and services than it is given. The role of language in language movements, or ethnic assertions, is symbolic or iconic – that is, language is not just a means of communication but stands for a way of life or a symbol of identity.

Thus languages are taught and learned by ethnic activists in order to strengthen – and in fact very often create – perceptions of identity. The activists of these movements are aware of the nexus between language and identity though they often believe that they are resurrecting their linguistic and cultural heritage. They resist the dominant language rhetorically and by investing in learning their own languages which are not empowering at least in the beginning. Whereas pragmatic language-learning, that is to say the learning of the language of power, is immediately empowering, those who learn ethnic languages opt for creating a new power base or at least repudiate the old one. In language-learning, which is the consequence of accepting a language for whatever reason, individuals, or groups, take their share in power by accepting the basic premises upon which the power networks of the system are based. Language movements, on the other hand, confront the system to change its realities using language as a symbol of unity. In short, while pragmatic language learning acquiesces in the system, at least temporarily, using language as a tool or device to enter the system and use it for one's advantage, language-resistance, or teaching ethnic languages to resist the dominant powerful language, rebels against the system using language to create an alternative system of networks of power.

In some cases people learn languages precisely because they have symbolic significance. The symbols and meanings of moribund or obscure languages are kept alive by ‘half-forgotten poets and lonely philologists’ as Laitin says (1998: 293). In certain political conditions they come to life and take on a new significance. As a general rule, Laitin argues that such ethnic projects succeed only if there are sufficient people believing that they will succeed. To explain this he introduces the analytic concept of ‘tipping’. A certain social group ‘tips’ from one kind of behaviour to another. This ‘tipping’ or ‘cascading’ occurs ‘because people’s choices about their actions are based on what they think others are going to do’ (Laitin 1998: 21). When this is applied to the learning of an ethnic language, it means that people will tip towards learning it to the extent that they believe that other people are doing so. Laitin uses this model in his analysis of the behaviour of Russians living in the newly independent republics of the former Soviet Union. Among the 'rational' payoffs he enumerates for reaching the tipping point are: ‘expected economic returns, in-group status, and out-group status’ (Ibid, 29). In short, both tangible and intangible gratifications, which in terms of the analytical model in this article can be called empowerment, lead to 'tipping'’ Thus, tipping towards learning an ethnic language occurs when a community or some influential activists among it feel that it would empower the group. As the element of the extra-rational is involved, it is difficult to predict when the tipping point would be reached. However, pragmatic aspects of it – such as the possibility of getting jobs – can be calculated. But even when the language is of no pragmatic value in the strictly utilitarian sense (i.e it cannot get one jobs etc), it may be useful as a symbol of resistance; a marker of a proposed alternative to established power. During the Irish struggle against English domination Irish Gaelic, for instance, had this kind of significance and people did try to learn it though it was not of value as far as jobs and getting on in the world were concerned (Hindley 1990: 37-39). This phenomenon, which has been called resistance (or ethnic) LT, serves a political purpose – that of consolidating, and hence empowering, a dominated group. It is categorized as language-teaching here because it is sustained more by the efforts of the language-teaching policies of ethnic activists rather than the actual demand of the learners. Indeed, while the learners may learn their ethnic languages for symbolic or political reasons, they may actually demand to learn the prevalent language of power to get on with their lives till the system of distribution of power does not actually change. The site of the struggle includes the cultural. Language, clothes, lifestyle, religion – indeed all markers of difference – are used to emphasize differences not similarities. A consciousness of difference gives strength to the claim of separate identity, separate nationality and, therefore, more regional autonomy or even a separate country for a sub-national group. Some of the better known cases of resistance LT are the teaching of Welsh in Wales to prevent it from dying out (Khlief 1976; 1986); the teaching of Catalan in Catalonia, Spain, where Franco’s policy of suppressing that language had created tremendous popular resentment (Mar-Molinero 1989; Grant and Docherty 1992); the teaching of Dutch to the Flemish population in Belgium (Swing 1982) and the teaching of French in Quebec after 1982 (Martel 1996; Fortier 1994) and the teaching of Hebrew in Israel (King 1997: 31). In Algeria, under French rule, while most schools were French-medium ones, there was an underground movement led by Arabic-medium institutions against French control (Kelly 1982). Such movements may or may not be successful. Success depends on many factors including initial motivation and resources. In the case of Welsh both are not enough to reverse the trend but, since the English are dominant, the resistance is just enough to keep the movement going. In Ireland, when the English left, resistance became a thing of the past and pragmatism took over. People, therefore, learn English not Irish to succeed in life though lip service is paid to the latter. In Catalonia the brutal Franco years having produced a high degree of antagonism, and local jobs being available in Catalan, make the pro-Catalan language policy sustainable. In the case of Belgium the Flemish minority has turned into an active pressure group and uses language as an identity symbol. In Canada the intensity of French resistance, based on cultural pride and the possibility of getting on in French, makes LT policies successful. In Israel the success is greater than all other countries because a dead language, which was nobody’s mother tongue, has come alive. As it is the only language which unites Jews from all over the world (Rabin 1973: 69) and, as King points out, the holocaust had created such a strong emotional resistance to other languages (as icons) (King 1997: 31), Israel resuscitated Hebrew through the most successful experiment in resistance LT ever. This experiment was conducted largely in the schools. Indeed, ‘what led to the use of Hebrew at home was its prior promotion as the language of instruction at school’ (Cooper 1989: 13).

But Israel is an inordinately highly motivated and powerful country. Less powerful countries, and especially less powerful communities surrounded by powerful people, do not succeed in learning their languages which become ghettoizing stigmata for them. The major reason for this lack of success is that there are no economic benefits following the learning of powerless languages. Precisely because there are neither economic benefits for learning Hawaiian nor much active resistance to English-speaking Americans from the mainland the LT programme to save Hawaiian from extinction is not a success (Kawamoto 1993). Similarly, the forces of utilitarianism contribute to the failure of Quechua LT. It has been dominated for four centuries by Spanish in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. Recently schools have begun to teach it in order to keep it alive. However, urbanization (bringing more people in the domain of utilitarian motivation) continues to foster Hispanization so that there is little hope of a reversal of roles between Spanish and Quechua (Gleich 1994). Indeed, it was rejected after three years of experimental teaching in Peruvian schools in the nineteen seventies precisely because Quechua speakers did not want to spend time and effort to learn it (Hornberger 1989).

So, if there is little demand for learning minor ethnic languages, why do modern states spend time and resources on teaching them ? One answer is that there are liberal humanists who do not want languages, which are repositories of distinct human cultures, to disappear for ever. But such people, however vocal, can only be very few. When the decision-makers allocate resources for the teaching of these language they respond to the demands of such people, and members of the language community in question, out of political considerations. In democratic countries the decision-makers consolidate and expand their power base, their vote bank, and get a good reputation for their liberal and fair policies. Thus France, which had actively suppressed all languages, except standardized Parisian French in the past, now gives some measure of protection to Basque, Breton, Catalan and Corsican languages (Laroussi and Marcellesi 1993). In Newzealand, after the marginalization of the aboriginal language, Maori, the Ministry of Education declared some support for it in 1982 (Paulston and McLaughlin 1994: 60-61). In Canada, despite some opposition, the languages of immigrants – ‘heritage languages’ – are supported in some schools (ibid 62) and in Europe too some minor languages are being revitalized (ibid 66). But these efforts are symbolic moves in the power game. Their success depends not only on state efforts and resources but also, and much more so, on the degree of motivation which the speakers of the language in question manifest for learning it.

This motivation, as mentioned before, depends on the pleasure or psychological gratification the learner derives from learning to read and write the language; his or her resistance to the dominant language and, even more so, on whether there are chances of any change in the way it will be used in the domains of power both nationally and internationally. Even people who resist the domination of a language, or its speakers, might nevertheless continue to learn it because they feel that it will continue to empower them individually as long as good jobs are available through it and people treat it as a symbol of social prestige. The classical case of this kind which comes to the mind is that of the South African black population under the apartheid system. They resisted being taught their own mother tongues because they were ghettoizing. The black leaders assumed that social prestige, good jobs, goods and services – all that power brings – would only come through English. They knew that depriving them of English meant depriving them of access to power. Hence, they, while opposing white domination, nevertheless also opposed mother tongue education (Reagan 1987; Janks 1990). Even in the case of English Honey cites cases of marginal or working class groups in Britain who want to acquire standard English precisely because it is empowering (1997: 202). And in South Asia just the number of schools which promise to teach English, or use English as a medium of instruction, is large enough to indicate how people are keen to learn English so as to empower themselves. Indeed, it is the elite which keeps the supply side of English limited, probably more because of its exorbitant cost than anything else, to a number of quality schools – a situation which can well be compared to a ‘linguistic apartheid’.

6. Disempowerment Through Elite Closure

This particular aspect of linguistic apartheid – locking people out of power by not teaching them the language used in its domains – is an extreme form of ‘elite closure’ defined as the limiting of the ‘access of non elite groups to political position and socioeconomic advancement’ (Scotton 1993: 149). Aristocratic regimes practiced elite closure openly. One had to be a gentleman to buy a commission in the British army till the nineteenth century. Similarly, one had to be white for political office in the United States till even after the Civil War. Modern, democratic regimes are committed to equality, non-discrimination between citizens, justice and fairplay – at least in theory. Thus they cannot close the ranks of the elite in the name of blue blood, sex, race or language. There is only one ground for discrimination which is practically valid even in a liberal democracy. This is cognitive ability which manifests itself in the form of skills. Linguistic skills – the ability to speak, write and read the language of the domains of power – are absolutely necessary for most jobs, even menial ones, in a modern democratic state. Hence elite closure is not so much closure as ‘restriction’ and it works through the education system.

A state may not teach all its citizens. In that case the illiterate are locked out of the upper echelons of the power apparatus though they remain part of it in some capacity or the other. Another state may teach one language to its common citizens but use another one in the upper echelons of the domains of power. In this case those who are taught the elitist language will have much easier access to power than those who are not. The latter category of people will demand it and hanker for it. A third case may be the teaching of the language of the domains of power indifferently to ordinary people while the rich have access to high quality instruction. Laitin gives examples of ‘elite closure’ from Africa. The gist of his findings is that the elite uses European languages in the domains of power and African ones for informal domains thus excluding the common people from power by establishing ‘a system of stratification that is inherently inegalitarian in that it puts up extra barriers to social mobility’ (Laitin 1992: 57-58). That is why the Nigerian academic, O.O. Oyelaran, calls this phenomenon ‘exclusion’ (1990: 24). In Pakistan this happens by teaching only a very small number of children in expensive English-medium schools while allowing the rest to remain either illiterate or acquire some competence in Urdu (or Sindhi in parts of Sindh) and some knowledge of English in government schools or, alternatively, a little Arabic, Persian and Urdu in the Islamic seminaries (called madrassas).

7. Language Spread for Power Payoffs

In short, although states may not appear to impose languages - indeed they may appear to ration them and give them only as a rare privilege - it is their policy which increases or decreases the demand for them. Generally people learn the powerful language for instrumental, rational reasons because it is the only key to power which personal effort can give them. However, they also learn this language because of emotional, extra-rational reasons. In such cases it is not only because of ethnic resistance or consciousness of identity for which some people learn even their ghettoizing mother tongues. Sometimes the emotion involved is the desire for ‘recognition’; for being like the powerful; for the snobbish value of the powerful language. This is understandable with reference to Paulo Freire’s view of cultural imperialism. It does not presuppose only an outside power as invader. The ‘invasion’ is real enough but the invader is not only the outsider but also his insider ally. The values internalized by this ally lead to what Freire calls ‘the cultural inauthenticity of those who are invaded’. The process is best described in his own words:

For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority. Since everything has its opposite, if those who are invaded consider themselves inferior, they must necessarily recognize the superiority of the invaders. The more the invasion is accentuated and those invaded are alienated from the spirit of their own culture and from themselves, the more the latter want to be like the invaders : to walk like them, dress like them, talk like them (Freire 1989: 151).

The powerful language, then, gives prestige and a positive self image and not just jobs. It is the key to the world of power – it provides gratifications both tangible and intangible; both goods and services as well as ego-boosting. The language-learning market, then, is an open rather than a closed market. It can be penetrated or used by the powerless to gain power but ultimately it is largely controlled, manipulated and under the influence of the powerful and helps to keep them in power. This is so because, as already indicated, the decision as to which language will be used in the domains of power is very much a political decision. This is the gist of various studies on language policy such as that of Heath (1972) on Mexico in the 1970s; Watson’s (1983) on Malaysia in the 1970s and so on. In all these cases the policies are, as Watson points out, ‘political in so far as policy makers seek to use language policy to strengthen their own position’ (Watson 1993: 28).

But why do ruling elites use their own languages, or languages which they consider prestigious, in the domains of power in the first place?¹ Why do they want to increase the number of the users of their own or adopted language – a policy which may be called ‘acquisition planning’ following Cooper (1989: 157-163), and of which teaching is a major component? One obvious answer is that it is administratively more convenient for these elites. A second one is that it is psychologically gratifying for them. After all, those who learn the languages will never speak – the one activity everybody indulges in most of the time – it as well as the native speakers or those who have near-native competence in them. This eventuality might not have been cynically planned but it is a consequence of adopting policies which privilege a language by making it the language of power. Yet another answer, and one which relates to what we have called the signitive power of language, might be that language gives access to the world view of the powerful and the acceptance of this world view by the less powerful consolidates the system of the distribution of power in the first place. That, in other words, language is a means of propagating ideologies. An excellent analysis of the relationship between power and ideology is given by James Tollefson (1991). He refers to the fact that certain assumptions, such as those relating to superiority or virtue, appear commonsensical but only because they are based on certain ideological assumptions. Thus, in his own words, ‘ideology is connected to power, because the assumptions that come to be accepted as common sense depend upon the structure of power in a society’ (Tollefson 1991: 11). The contribution of schooling to the preservation of social rank and privilege – that is to say power – has been analysed by Khlief and language-teaching has a key role in it because, among other reasons, it ‘determines the conceptual categories by which we experience the world’ (Khlief 1986: 223). In this context the work of Michael W. Apple is especially relevant (1979; 1982 and 1993). Apple argues that the curriculum in schools – he takes examples of American schools but the concept is universally relevant – is meant to create and maintain the hegemony of the powerful elites of the society.

8. Ideological Language Teaching

Although historical and humanities textbooks used in schools also have an ideological content, our focus here is on language-teaching, so we shall only consider the language-teaching textbooks. What kind of ideology is presented in them?

Language does not give us a transparent code for expressing reality but allows us to give shape and coherence to innumerable sensations, masses of jumbled data, countless shapes of undifferentiated tangibles. It gives us the very taxonomies which allow us to perceive things. It gives us binary and other forms of oppositions. It reduces the complexity of the world thus making it expressible. Thus, our agreement to use words at all mean that we accept a certain view of reality, a certain construction of normalcy, which is power-laden in the sense that it is not in everybody’s interest.

But, apart from such ideological subtleties of language use, Pakistani textbooks and official media use deliberately ideology-laden and emotive words. Among these, those in the first cluster revolve around the concept of martyrdom (shahadat) in a holy war (jihad). Since the first war over Kashmir with India in 1948, the Pakistani state has been using the vocabulary of jihad for all its wars.

Another cluster of words concerns politics. Secularism has been translated as la-diniyat (literally speaking ‘not having a religion’ or ‘lack of faith’) in Pakistan. This makes the readers of Urdu feel that those who support secular politics are atheists or, at least, not good Muslims. The term ‘democracy’ has been used by everyone but it has meant different things. Ayub Khan’s ‘basic democracy’ was control over electoral colleges while Zia ul Haq’s Islamic democracy was a camouflage for his own rule.

Other clusters of words refer to social and cultural aspect of life. Literary and language-teaching texts use these clusters in varying degrees. Thus, in the vocabulary itself they reinforce a world view contingent upon male-dominating, sexuality-denying and aggression-validating values in the social sphere; religious and nationalistic values in the political sphere and a definite bias towards the sacralization of war and the military in the sphere of foreign policy. These values are also reinforced in English medium schools but, since pupils of Urdu medium schools are less exposed to liberal-humanist values in English fiction, foreign T.V programmes and at home, they are more exposed to them than their English-medium counterparts.

In any multilingual society, if some language is privileged then it becomes ‘imperialistic’ in the sense that it prescribes its ‘reality’ to speakers of other languages (De Kadt 1993: 160). If there were no other competing ‘realities’ – and there always are, of course – the act of making other people forget their own language and speak the language of the dominant group would be the most extreme example of colonization. And, indeed, despite other ‘realities’ getting into the way, it is. In short, to spread one’s language is to spread one’s world view; to empower one’s culture; one’s apprehension of reality; one’s definition of what is valuable and what is not. This is so not only because world view is inherent in the words themselves or even in the way they are used. It is also because texts, discourses and messages in that language become available to people of another culture. That is why, as Pennycook reminds us, the teaching of English as a second or foreign language is a political project whether the teachers and the learners know it or not (Pennycook 1989). Hence language spread policies are good investment. Language-spread policies are part of the foreign policy of most countries which can afford them. This, however, is a subject which requires separate treatment and will not be dealt with here.

9. Conclusion

In short, the learning and teaching of languages is connected with power in many ways. Pragmatic language-learning empowers a person to join the salaried professional middle class which has the ability to gratify itself through the manipulation of the printed (and now the electronically produced) word. Language-teaching policies enable groups to dominate, close ranks through restricting entry to jobs etc and to assert their identities. By the same token, however, resistance LT allows the dominated groups to resist this cultural hegemony. Ideological LT allows foreign powers and the state to privilege their ideology and, hence, to project their power and indoctrinate people to support them or and accept this power. All these forms of language learning are rational. Because their outcomes are visible, they are easy to explain. They should be taken into account in any study of language learning so as to avoid what Tollefson calls the neoclassical approach. The neo-classical researcher assumes that people have a free choice and decide, presumably by a cost-benefit analysis, as to which language they will study. This article agrees that cost-benefit analysis does go into the decision to learn a language but it does not treat the learner as a free agent. It follows what Tollefson calls the ‘historical-structural approach’ which views language-teaching policies as ‘one mechanism by which the interests of dominant sociopolitical groups are maintained and the seeds of transformation are developed' (1991: 32). But language learning is not only a matter of rational calculation, it is too complex to be just that.

The extra-rational forms of language learning are more difficult to explain. We said that elements of the extra-rational enter into what we have classified as rational language learning. For instance, one may learn a dominant language because one is impressed by its speakers or resist it because one hates them. But exactly how much emotion enters into any language learning enterprise is difficult to determine. Similarly, while it is obvious that some people learn languages without expecting any determinable benefits, it is difficult to say whether they do it out of love, interest, intellectual curiosity or other psychological factors. This is the only form of language learning which I have not been able to connect with power. To understand it fully, one would need to be a social psychologist. A study of the patterns of the learning or teaching of language provides valuable insights into questions of how power is distributed; what world view is privileged and in whose interest it is.

NOTE

1. Not all ruling elites use their languages in the domains of power. The Turkish speaking Mughals used the highly valorized Persian in India. In recent years Bhasa Indonesia rather than Javanese, the language of the ruling elite of Indonesia, has been chosen by the ruling elite of Indonesia to be the national language. In ex-colonial states, indeed, the ruling elite generally chooses to use the ex-colonial language which the bureaucracy is trained in at the highest level rather than its own mother tongue even if it is linguistically homogeneous which it is generally not (for a historical survey of the languages used by empire builders see Toynbee Vol 2: 57-62).

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