thenewpoliticsoflanguageinthreeafricanstates（35页）.docVIP

The Colonial Image Reversed: A New Politics of Language in African States Ericka Albaugh, Duke University When we think of a child’s first exposure to formal education, most of us do not consider the language she will hear when taught. We assume it will be a language the child understands. Historically, however, governments have had no qualms about plunging children into an unfamiliar linguistic environment and expecting them to absorb a new language through immersion. This is the traditional European model, where a common language used in education was intended to bind disparate groups speaking numerous languages into a cohesive national unit. Today this model is being questioned by newer states. These governments are not necessarily giving up the idea of a shared language, but many are allowing the use of more local languages early in education and thus raising the possibility of perpetual multilingualism within their borders. This paper will examine a particular subset of new states – those in Africa – and put forward reasons for outcomes observed in their current language-in-education policies. It is customary to point out the differences in ruling practices between French and British colonialism in Africa: assimilationist versus indirect rule. This distinction has proven less clear than first believed, particularly in Muslim areas of conquest, where both the British and the French used intermediaries. But the divergence does hold true in the two countries’ approaches to education. The predominant form of British education in the colonies was to begin teaching in the medium of the vernacular and then switch to English-medium instruction in the later primary grades. In French colonies, the French language was used from the outset as the medium throughout school. One would expect, with the weight of historical precedent, that “anglophone” countries would continue their inherited custom of mother tongue education, while “francophone” countries would p