OS
ESTADOS ETNONACIONALISTAS SEPARATISTAS PODEM CRIAR POLÍTICAS EDUCACIONAIS
MULTILÍNGUES INCLUSIVAS? EVIDÊNCIAS DO PLATÔ IRANIANO
¿PUEDEN LOS ESTADOS SEPARATISTAS ETNONACIONALISTAS CREAR POLÍTICAS
EDUCATIVAS MULTILINGÜES INTEGRADORAS? DATOS DE LA MESETA IRANÍ
Amir Kalan
McGill University
ABTSTRACT: Ethnonationalist
separatist movements’ visions for new states typically include protection of
their ethnic languages in smaller independent states. However, they may not be
successful in nurturing their territorial languages if they engage in
nation-building based on the European nation-state model because this model
itself is a major cause of linguistic discrimination. The author illustrates
that newly emerged ethnostates can oppress indigenous minority languages and
fall short of satisfactorily addressing the language issues of immigrants
because of their narrow definitions of nationhood and national identity. The
author shows these states can also undermine the very ethnic language that they
claim to promote. This happens by devaluating “non-standard” varieties of the
ethnic language and elevating the status of English over local languages as the
language of science and learning. The author concludes that investment in
nation-statism will not automatically lead to the creation of an
anti-discriminatory educational system that is committed to protecting
linguistic diversity. This takes the extra component of engagement with
anti-discriminatory governance.
KEYWORDS: Multilingual
education. Monoglossia. Separatist movements. Mother tongue. Ethnic identity. Anti-discriminatory
education
1 INTRODUCTION
Ethnically minoritized populations involved in separatist
movements often regard their languages, which are usually oppressed within
larger nation-states, as a cultural pillar of their imagined future ethnic
states. This tendency is understandable because, among other strategies, modern
and contemporary nation-states oppress minorities’ social and political
identities through a policy of monolingualism that undermines and ignores
minority languages. A significant lever in this linguistic oppression is monolingual
educational structures that by imposing a dominant national or official
language (and in some cases, such as Switzerland and Canada, more than one
official language), alienate, and over time eradicate minority languages and
hence minority cultures. In this article, I try to answer the following
question: Separatist, self-determination, and independence movements are often
aware of harms done by official monolingualism because minorities involved in
these movements have been themselves the victims of monolingual policies. In
case separatist movements succeed in establishing their own states, will they
be able to create inclusive educational systems that value multilingualism?
In response to this question, I argue historical evidence
shows that creating a new state constructed based on modern European
philosophies of nationhood can empower a single variety of the ethnic language
by the promotion of that variety as the national language. However, creating an
independent state by no means guarantees an inclusive mother tongue-based
multilingual education that, besides the national or official language, will
nurture other languages and protect different varieties of the same ethnic
language. Newly established states may or may not be able to create an
inclusive educational system depending on how much these states will be committed to
human rights, civil liberties, democracy, and social justice. These states’
interest in linguistic diversity will depend on their appreciation of the
multiplicity of languages and knowledges preserved by all the
communities that live in or migrate to their territories. Meaningful commitment
to protecting linguistic diversity will also require the recognition of the
fact that most of languages and cultures in their new states have lived longer
than, and most probably will outlive, official states and their current
borders.
Many self-determination and independence movements
manifest a desire for inclusivity because the people involved in them have been
the target of different forms of discrimination. Nevertheless, they may or may
not be conscious of the fact that one major source of their linguistic
oppression has been the modern European nation-state model and that
establishing a new state based on the same model, although smaller in size,
might lead to creating another apparatus of cultural discrimination. Creating
an independent state can help establish a national language and identity, can
ease suffering imposed by an unfriendly dominant culture, and may provide
economic control over territorial natural resources and local means of
production and labor. However, creating a state does not automatically lead to
inclusive education because the modern European state has historically
displayed aggressive behavior towards linguistic diversity. Building an
inclusive educational system requires an extra component: anti-discriminatory
consciousness.
In order to support this argument, I draw on examples of
social movements, discourses, policies, and historical events from the Iranian
plateau and its surrounding Silk Roads regions—territories that have been the focus of my
work in the sociology of language (Kalan, 2016, 2024). In the following
sections, first, I provide an introductory explanation of the uncomfortable
relationship between the European nation-state model and multilingual
education. Next, I list the ways in which modern states undermine organic
plurality and coexistence of cultures and languages. Describing these dynamics,
I will start from more common phenomena such as the oppression of minority
languages and move to recent local experiences in the Iranian plateau, Turkey,
the Caucasus, and Central Asia—experiences such as silencing culture workers
that can enrich languages and the growing influence of English in the region.
Finally, drawing on Fishman’s (1968) observations of postcolonial states’
language policies, I show that the European formulations of the nation-state
fail to preserve linguistic diversity,
particularly in non-European cultures, territories, and civilizations.
2 THE
MODERN STATE AS THE MAIN CAUSE OF TOXIC MONOGLOSSIA
In his introduction to
Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, Fishman (1999a) wrote, “The last
third of the twentieth century— often referred to as a time of “ethnic
revival”—has often been witness to a renewed stress on language in various
mobilizations of ethnicity throughout the world” (p. 4). The current
experiences in the Iranian plateau show that this trend has not ended yet and
has just recently found its way into Iran and its surrounding Silk Roads
regions, territories with notable multiethnic and multilingual density. For
instance, over the past decade in Iran, ethnic self-determination movements
have flourished in the country and attracted attention to the degree that
questions about separatist desires and the possibility of the disintegration of
the country take center stage in every political debate about the future of
Iran. The ethnicities with larger populations such as Turkish, Kurdish, Gilak,
Baloch, and Arab communities have successfully launched cultural campaigns that
demonstrate the systemic discrimination against ethnic minorities in the
country since the establishment of the European-style nation-state in Iran
about 100 years ago, a model of governance which has aggressively targeted
non-Persian minorities and their cultural identities. Some of these campaigns
are part of larger self-determination movements that, as well as Iran, have
impacted the surrounding regions. The Kurdish movement is stretched all over
the region in Turkey, Syria, and, of course, Iraq through the autonomous
Kurdistan Region. Other examples include the struggles of the Baloch in Iran
and Pakistan and the Tajiks in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.
These movements manifest a variety of different agendas
including self-governance, self-determination, independence, and separatism.
However, a key component of all these movements is a demand for mother
tongue-based education. Depending on their political agenda, minority activists
might offer different solutions to the language policy issues in Iran ranging
from teaching minority languages as core subjects to using ethnic languages as
the main language of instruction. Within these self-determination movements,
there are, also, groups that
advocate for creating new states where they can be immune to discrimination. Thus,
the activists in these movements proclaim membership in imagined ethnostates.
These imagined future states can help them define their identities as the
owners of a state rather than a racialized population within a state that
belongs to a different culture. These imagined ethnostates are often described
as territories free from the current oppression and thus a space that can
provide effective language education in their ethnic language. It seems to be
worthwhile to ask if creating new states will, in fact, nurture an inclusive
educational system with anti-discriminatory language policies.
In this region, in conversations about the connection
between language and ethnic identity, a semantic
confusion occurs that can seriously disrupt envisioning future inclusive and
anti-discriminatory educational policies for both the current states and
possible emergent states. In the debate for and against mother tongue-based
education, neither side creates a clear distinction between a
“national/official language” and the “language of education,” including
language of instruction and mother tongues as the subject of study. Based on a
recognition of this distinction, in this article, I propose that to understand
the dynamics of language planning in new states, we always need to ask two
separate questions: (1) Can creating a new state empower an oppressed language
by turning it into a national ethnic language? And (2) would creating a new
state automatically lead to the establishment of an inclusive
anti-discriminatory educational system that can protect all varieties of the
ethnic language and all other languages spoken in the country? The answer to
the first question is “yes,” and the answer to the second question is “no.”
Although it is possible to imagine that a new state can empower all dialects of
the ethnic language and all non-ethnic languages, there is little historical
evidence to show that this will happen simply because the modern European
state model is itself a major cause of linguistic discrimination. “Over 6,000
languages contained within some 200 states inevitably occasion tensions because
of the lack of congruence between the state, nation and linguistic community”
(Williams, 2012, p. 174).
The failure of modern states to provide an inclusive
language policy has long been observed and explained by influential scholars of
sociology of language. Phillipson (1999) held that “virtually all states
confront major challenges in the management of multilingualism” (p. 94). This
failure happens because of states’ unrealistic vision of creating a national
identity based on a common language: “The notion of a straight fit between a
monolingual ethnic identity and the language of the state is more of a myth
than a reality” (Phillipson, 1999, p. 96). Moreover, the experimental project
of the modern state has no historical precedence, and thus stands against previous
models by centering language in political and social governance: “The
requirement to speak a common language is unique to nation-states, and a
relatively recent historical phenomenon. It is unique because previous forms of
political organization did not require this degree of linguistic uniformity”
(May, 2012, p. 6). We should also note that the creation of nation-states is
“informed by the principle of self-determination of European communities”
(Safran, 1999, p. 78) with characteristics which may not match non-Western
contexts, experiences, and aspirations.
It is essentially wrong to see language issues, including
questions about the language of education, through the prism of nationhood
(Pennycook, 2010). If we tie theorizations about language education to forming
a nation-state and a national language, we typically create a toxic monoglossia
that actively prevents the development of inclusive multilingual education. I
use the term toxic monoglossia here
to mean an ideology institutionalized in a centralized government that attempts
to create a nation by imposing a dominant culture - best embodied in a national
language - on different cultural and linguistic groups. In other words, toxic
monoglossia, is a form of monoglossia supported by a state’s law and
institutions and aggressively reinforced at the cost of damage to other
languages, and hence, cultures and identities. In a nation-building project
with the centrality of a common language, the selected national language
devours available resources (media, the press, academia, …) to establish a
status of dominance (as the nation’s common language). At the same time, the
state often uses legal means to coerce the speakers of other languages to adopt
the national and official language. One significant factor in the coercive
relationship between the state and minorities and their languages is
monolingual educational institutions that exclude minority languages. Thus, the
objective of creating a common language is often achieved by undermining other
languages. This does not mean that it is impossible to create an educational
system that aims to protect and make use of both the official language and
minority languages. Nevertheless, such an approach needs awareness about the
inherent toxic relationship between the European nation-state model and
minority languages. In order to create equitable educational systems, we need to
consciously work against the state’s default position of undermining minority
languages and, ironically, different varieties of the official or national
language. The following sections illustrate some aspects of the animosity of
the European nation-state model against linguistic diversity in order to shed
light on the complexities that emerging states need to deal with if they seek
to create an inclusive and anti-discriminatory educational system.
3 MINORITY
LANGUAGES IN EMERGING ETHNIC STATES
There is no historical evidence to show that multilingual
education is the priority of modern nation-states, especially when the states
have been created based on the idea of a common ethnicity, race, or religion. A
vision of inclusive multilingualism is particularly tarnished when bringing an
ethnic group together in the form of a nation is prioritized over questions
about liberty, equity, justice, and human rights in the newly established
state. In the West, conversations about multiculturalism and multilingualism
are merely recent discourses developed to remedy the naivety of the idea of “one nation, one language.” Even with the growing
presence of more progressive discourses, plans for linguistic inclusion are
often treated at a theoretical and academic level and continue to fail
racialized and minoritized populations in practice. The academic discourse about
plurilingualism in Europe has been mainly
about European languages and hardly about the languages of non-European
populations who migrated to Europe, such as Arabic in France or Turkish in
Germany. Canadian bilingualism has
always been about two colonial languages: English and French. The recent trend
of the translanguaging movement in
North America is similarly rooted in projects that typically studied
interactions between Spanish and English, again languages of the colonizers of
the Americas. Despite these trends, current Western nation-states still have
not managed to provide an exemplary inclusive multilingual education model.
They have merely started an academic conversation about it, with little impact
on actual policy and practice.
The newly emerged states in the Silk Roads regions that
surround the Iranian plateau show the same tendency to oppress, or at best
ignore, minority languages. An early example is the well-discussed case of
Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947. The imposition of Urdu as a
national language of the newly established state created resistance in East
Pakistan (currently known as Bangladesh). The resistance turned into protests
that faced the violent reaction of the Pakistani police, leading to the murder
of Bangali-speaking mother-tongue
activists on 21 February, 1952. UNESCO adopted the date as
International Mother Language Day.
Another important example to turn to is the post-Soviet
independent states that used to constitute essential parts of the traditional
multicultural and multilingual Silk Roads region. For instance, Azerbaijan has
had a largely monolingual education policy that is often criticized because of
the situation of minority languages. In Azerbaijan “at all times status-building
was the main motive behind language policy programs, making them more
nationalistic than pluralistic” (Garibova & Asgarova, 2009, p. 193).
Decades after its independence, Azerbaijan has yet to come to terms with the
reality that an inclusive educational system in that country needs to actively
engage with minority languages such as Lezgian, Armenian, Talysh, Tati,
Ukrainian, Georgian, and Kurdish. It is reported that:
Aliev’s [former president, 1993-2003] approach to minority
issues was in essence a variant of the Soviet pattern of recognizing the
importance of ethnic (p. 18) identity, but suppressing political demands for
autonomy. ... The state practiced detention and prosecution of real or
alleged separatists, such as Talysh and Lezgi, who were given long jail
sentences for their “terrorist activities.” (Gerber, 2007, p. 18-19)
This political behavior has informed language policy in
the form of allowing some legal and social coexistence of the languages, and at
the same time reducing the presence of minority languages in bureaucratic and
educational structures, especially in primary schools where, most experts agree
(Skutnabb-Kangas, 2016), mother tongue-based education yields the best results.
According to different reports (Garibova & Asgarova, 2009; Isaxanli, 2006),
apart from Russian, the other languages do not enjoy a significant status in
Azerbaijan's educational system, which might mean that the country’s
“linguistic variety will diminish in the future” (Gerber, 2007, p. 24).
In a similar way, the status of the Persian language in
Uzbekistan, another post-Soviet independent state, has been a constant cause of
concern (Kurzman, 1999), especially in the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara,
which are home to large Persian-speaking
populations, and which are culturally significant for Persian speakers outside
the country such as the Iranians and the Afghans. “Long included among the
demands of Uzbekistan’s Tajiks is that their Persian-based language be placed
on equal footing with Uzbek as an official language; however, this would run
contrary to the official policy of Uzbekchiklik, or Uzbekification”
(Jarvik, 2005, p. 266).
More or less the same treatment of multilingual education
is happening in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan (Liddicoat, 2019).
These newly established states have faithfully copied the policies recommended
by the European nation-state model: promoting a national language - instead of
creating a robust multilingual education - at the cost of harming minority and
indigenous languages. It is understandable that the people involved in
self-determination movements would have a desire to protect and empower their
languages particularly if their languages have been oppressed by larger states.
Nevertheless, they should be aware that states by nature treat minority
languages aggressively. Ironically, as I will explain in the following
sections, states often also undermine the very national language that they
attempt to promote.
4
FABRICATION OF A STANDARD LANGUAGE
The oppression of minority languages usually goes hand in
hand with devaluing regional, rural, informal, and oral varieties of the
national or official language. “Language nationalism is a driving force in the
downgrading of minority languages and regional
dialects [emphasis added]” (Maher, 2017, p. 79). Nation-states by nature
elevate one variety of the
dominant population’s language, standardize it, and coercively impose it on
different social groups, including populations from the dominant ethnicity who
happen to use varieties of the national language that are deemed “non-standard.”
“National languages ... are “almost always semi-artificial constructs” built by
the state and its nationalist agenda” (Hobsbawm, 1990, p. 38). Languages do not
create states; states create national languages. “The state ... makes an idiom
respectable by politicizing it—by transforming a dialect into a language, as
happened in the case of Czech, Slovak, Moldavian, and Afrikaans” (Phillipson,
1999, p. 84). Because there is no such thing as a “standard language,”
nationalist states need to pick one variety of the dominant language as the
“correct language,” which results in lowering the status of other varieties of
the same language because they will be deemed as “non-standard dialects,”
“creoles,” “pidgins,” “colloquial language,” and so on.
The dynamic of elevating a language/dialect to dominate others
as a national language has been an integral part of European nation-states
since the construction of its main models such as modern France, Germany, and
Italy. Linguistic nationalism went hand in hand with the French Revolution.
Weber (1976) reported the Jacobins’ vision of the Republic’s relationship with
its languages as the following: “The unity of the Republic demands the unity of
speech...Speech must be one, like the Republic” (p. 72). In response to this
agenda, the Republic had to frame a dialect as the “French language” and present
it to the
public as the dominant linguistic model: “The emergence of the French language out of
Latin; the various dialectical forms it took; the ascendancy of the dialect of
Paris over the other dialects; [and] its standardization in the seventeenth
century … constitute the drama of the formation of France's linguistic identity”
(Gordon, 2015, p. 21).
Thus, what is known as the French language is a
politicized dialect that can hardly represent other varieties of French that
are grammatically, phonetically, lexically, and register-wise different
(Fishman, 1999b). German nationalism also regarded a common German language,
and its literary products, as the main commonality between the diverse peoples
who resided in an imagined Greater German Empire, although it meant that
minoritized cultures within that territory would either have to disappear or
assimilate (Jansen, 2011). This tendency over years caused the dominance of
Hochdeutsch (High German) as standard German. Italy also had to resort to the
same strategy. Here is Antonio Gramsci’s narrative about the fabrication of a
“unifying” Italian language:
Manzoni
[Italian writer and member of the Italian Senate] asked himself: now that
Italy is formed, how can the Italian language be created? He answered: all
Italians will have to speak Tuscan, and the Italian state will have to recruit
its elementary teachers in Tuscany. Tuscan will be substituted for the
numerous dialects spoken in the various regions and, with Italy formed, the
Italian language will be formed too. (Gramsci, 2014, p. 28)
In the Iranian plateau and its surrounding Silk Roads regions,
the same European approach to creating national languages was adopted by the
three states that have continually oppressed minority cultures in these regions
since the beginning of the establishment of European-like modern states:
Turkey, Iran, and Russia. These countries’ treatments of minority languages
have not been exactly the same with Turkey executing the most destructive and
close-minded approach, Russia (particularly in its Soviet period) displaying
more flexibility, and Iran somewhere in between. Nevertheless, modern
nation-building processes almost always dictate the same policy in terms of
“non-standard” dialects: elevating the status of one variety of the dominant
language as the official language and undermining the rest.
Atatürk’s Turkish Language Reform (Doğançay-Aktuna, 1995;
Lewis, 1999; Tachau, 1964) sought to create a national identity of Turkishness
by elevating the rural Turkish spoken in countryside dialects as opposed to,
what came to be called, the “Ottoman language” used by the educated elite in
the large cities, especially in Istanbul. Besides ignoring 70 other languages
in the country including Kurdish, Greek, and Arminian, this program of
“Turkism,” would also launch an attack on varieties of Turkish that were deemed
undesirable. As a result of this reform, most notoriously, Atatürk’s academics
started to “purge” the national language of all traces of Persian and Arabic
influences, which for long had become part of everyday communication in that geography.
Similarly, in Iran, as a result of the Pahlavi era’s
modernization plans, the Persian dialect of the capital’s elite, Farsi, was
standardized and presented as the national language. This standardization
partly happened through presenting the literary style of Persian classics as a
model for writing purposes and the language of the state-run media for oral
communication. Also, this standard language became the language of instruction at
schools all over the country. This cultural regime, as well as the oppression of more than 70 other
languages in Iran, led to the downgrading of other varieties of Persian.
Similar to the French model, the use of the Persian spoken in the capital, Tehran,
turned into a performance that became a symbol of modernity, and to the degree
that other Persian varieties were ridiculed by the public and the media as the
accents of the regions, or in Farsi: “lahje-ye
shahrestani.”
Today’s national Russian, similarly, has been the
outcome of a programmatic plan in response to the creation of modern states:
By the eighteenth
century, in particular, through the modernisation and secularisation
efforts of Peter the Great, need was felt for a written language
that would be closer to the educated spoken norm. The brilliant polymath M.V.
Lomonosov, in his Russian Grammar (1755), set out a theory of three styles.
According to this theory, there should be a high style, i.e. Church Slavonic,
which would be used (in addition to religious purposes) for high poetic
genres; a low style, almost purely East Slavonic (except for fully
assimilated Church Slavonic features), to be used for personal correspondence
and low comedy; and a middle style, to be used for lyric poetry, literary prose, and scientific
treatises. This middle style, which combined features of both East Slavonic
and Church Slavonic, is the style which soon came to form
the basis of the modern standard language. (Comrie, 2018, p. 283)
The same language engineering, language nannying, and
language policing approaches have informed much of the national language
agendas of newly established states and independence movements in this region.
Similar to intellectuals and policymakers
involved in the Turkish Language Reform, who called the pre-modern Istanbul
Turkish “the Ottoman language” and undermined it to create a new Turkish
identity, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan refer to their Turkishes as Azerbaijani and
Uzbek to create national distinctions between their Turkic populations. At the
same time, minoritized Turks in Iran speak of their language as Turkish—as
opposed to “Azari,” which is what Persian nationalists would like to call it—to
connect with the larger Turkic culture outside Iran. In all these cases,
political processes determine the status of a dialect in relation to nationhood
more than linguistic features. Furthermore, these national language campaigns
often involve manipulation of the selected ethnic dialect to live up to an
imagined linguistic ideal which is perceived to be able to
best represent the nation. For instance, some Iranian Turks involved in
separatist movements speak about their plans to “purify” their Turkish by
“cleansing” it of Farsi when they gain independence. As it is usually the case with modern states, the
political elite first politicizes a
certain dialect and present it as a national language; next, they artificially
manipulate and transform the national language, which can disrupt the organic
trajectory of the language.
One other example of these drastic changes in the Turkic
cultural sphere, besides “purification,” is the abrupt changes of the
Alphabet. In Turkey, for instance, the Arabic script was replaced by the Latin
alphabet in 1928 and all official Turkish, almost overnight, was written in
Latin letters. Not surprisingly, such a move severed the literary heritage of
the country from current language use and communication. This phenomenon forced
the Turks to specify resources for the intralingual
translation of their own literature from one alphabet to another (Albachten
Özlem, 2013; Mignon, 2010). Azerbaijan, also, in the course of joining the
Soviet Union and in the later period of independence, has experienced
politically driven alphabet reforms from the Arabic alphabet to, Latin,
Cyrillic, and back to the current Latin form (Altstadt, 2016; Ergun, 2010;
Landau, 2010). In most of the debates about replacing the Arabic alphabet in
the post-Soviet Turkic countries “the Arabic script [was discussed] as a symbol
of backwardness and underdevelopment” (Ergun, 2010, p. 33). This attitude
towards the written trajectory of an ethnic language is rather puzzling because
it degrades the history of the very language that the state tries to promote.
As these cases show, language policies based on the
European nation-state model not only oppress minority languages, but they also
undermine many varieties of the ethnic language as a result of the manipulative fabrication of
a national language. It is reasonable that minorized populations involved in
self-determination movements feel that when their languages are existentially
threatened by a dominant culture, forming an independent state can create space
for the protection and growth of their ethnic languages. Nevertheless, policymakers involved in such movements
should be aware of the tendency of the European nation-state model to undermine
the very ethnic language’s dialects and diverse literary traditions. Bakhtin
(1981), who, as a Soviet-period scholar, had closely observed the language
varieties of the contexts discussed in this section, critiqued the politicized
European understanding of language and warned against ignoring the importance
of the natural function of language varieties within the same language:
Linguistics, stylistics and the
philosophy of language—as forces in the service of the great centralizing
tendencies of European verbal-ideological life—have sought first and foremost for unity in diversity. …
Real ideologically saturated “language consciousness,” one that participants
in actual heteroglossia and muti-languagedness, has remained outside its
field of vision. It is precisely this orientation toward unity that has
compelled scholars to ignore all the verbal genres (quotidian, rhetorical,
artistic-prose) that were the carriers of the decentralizing tendencies in
the life of a language, or that were in any case too fundamentally implicated
in heteroglossia. (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 274)
Language activists involved in self-determination,
independence, and separatist movements should realize that the genuine
protection of an ethnic language (in all its varieties) hardly happens by
state-sponsored standardization of a dialect. Nurturing a language should
organically occur within a social culture that recognizes heteroglossia or the
necessity of the co-existence of dialects and linguistic varieties within the
same language. In this sense, culture creators such as writers, artists,
journalists, and academics who create texts in a variety of languages and
dialects might be in a better position than the state to protect an ethnic
language with its organic heteroglossia. Independent states may or may not be
committed to protecting the freedom of culture workers to perform this
function. As I explain in the next section, the evidence from the Iranian
plateau and its surrounding regions shows that some newly established states
seriously hinder the linguistic performances of culture workers.
5
DISRUPTION OF CULTURE WORKERS’ ORGANIC ROLE IN THE PROTECTION OF LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS
As we discussed, modern states tend to police and
standardize languages, and, in the process, damage society's organic linguistic
diversity. This does not mean that nation-states never specify resources to
protect minority languages. Fortunately, over the past decades, we have
witnessed the growth of a language revitalization movement, often supported by
public funding, which aims to promote endangered, and sometimes minoritized,
languages (Grenoble & Whaley, 2005). Nevertheless, nation-states almost
always specify more resources to national languages, and the revitalization
movement is not a product of a nation-state model, but a remedy for the ills
that it has created. Some revitalization plans, also, are done without proper
co-ordination with Indigenous communities. An alternative to state-based
protection of languages could be an attention to the role of culture workers.
Traditionally, people who organically protect languages
(and dialects, accents, oral traditions, …) and language diversity are culture
workers who actively use language in their oral and textual products. Culture
workers include people such as academics, writers, journalists, songwriters, singers, storytellers, preachers, elders, and so
on. Culture workers can be regarded as organic language activists (Makoni &
Criss, 2017). They capture languages and dialects, with all their nuanced
differences, in their work. They develop their products within communities of
practice that require locally agreed features, qualities, and standards for
textual performances. When culture workers’ texts, or
other linguistic performances, receive attention and appreciation, their
communities will treat these products as textual models that can inspire future
linguistic practices. The role of these cultural circles is particularly
important in the Iranian plateau and its surrounding Silk Roads regions with
their long and rich literary and artistic traditions in different languages,
which have coexisted in complex intercultural connections for a long time.
Communities of culture workers flourish when they have
(a) the liberty to perform and (b) resources that allow them to record and
disseminate their linguistic products. One might assume that nation-states
would welcome this cultural potential to promote the nation’s languages or, at
least, the national language. Nevertheless, evidence from this region shows
that modern states often actively, and sometimes violently, restrict civil
liberties and undermine culture workers, even those who write and create in the
national language. The reason for this paradoxical behavior is the fact that
nation-states almost always regard language as a tool at the service of nation-building and rarely display a
genuine concern for languages, including the official or national
language.
In the modern states that grew out of the traditional
Silk Roads regions, which used to enjoy a robust intellectual life as a major
center of learning (Benjamin, 2015), there has been a regular pattern of
detaining, torturing, and banishing writers, intellectuals, academics, language
teachers, and similar culture workers and text creators. Almost immediately
after the partition of India (1947), Saadat Hasan Manto (1912 - 1955) was
publicly tried multiple times in Pakistan for producing “obscene” literature,
indicating the emergence of a censorship regime that has continued so far. In
another example, in Iran, the Iranian Writers' Association (IWA), since its
foundation in 1968, has always been targeted as a national security threat and
for the most part has functioned as an illegal underground organization. The
systematic state-funded
aggression against IWA has had catastrophic peaks such as the 1998 serial
murders of dissident intellectuals who were associated with IWA. Turkey has
also at times seriously undermined the activities of culture workers (Özatalay,
2020). “[T]ens of thousands of public dissidents and government critics have
been subjected to dismissals and revocation of civic rights via emergency
decrees. The victims call this process ‘civil death’” (Sertdemir Özdemir &
Özyürek, 2019, p. 699).
Similar to these larger and older modern states, newly
emerged states in this region, display antagonistic behavior towards writers,
journalists, academics, and other culture workers whose role is crucial in
preserving cultures and languages (Foroughi, 2012; Knaus, 2015; Podoprigora et
al., 2019). Here are a few examples from post-Soviet independent states. In
Belarus, in 2021, as reported by Amnesty International (2021), 466 university
students were detained for peaceful protests. In Azerbaijan, Akram Aylisli was
stripped of his People's Writer title and his presidential pension in 2013
because his novel, Stone Dreams,
portrayed Armenians in a sympathetic light. Protests were organized in his
hometown in western Azerbaijan and the protestors burned his books, “calling
him “a traitor of the Azerbaijani nation”” (Amnesty International, 2013, par
1). In 2017, Pen America reported that it was “extremely concerned about the
well-being of Uzbek journalist Bobomurod Abdullaev, who was detained by the
National Security Services in Tashkent … solely on the basis of his
journalistic work” (Pen America, 2017, par. 1 & 2). These and other
examples show that in newly established states in this region, there is a noticeable
pattern of restricting freedom of the press and tribune and of punishing
writers, academics, and journalists, including those who write in the official
language of the state.
For a well-rounded analysis of the relationship between
the state and its languages, and its consequent impact on educational policy,
it is important to pay attention to the communities which organically foster
languages. These communities include artistic, literary, academic, and
intellectual circles that use different languages and dialects in their own
contexts and at the same time modify them to best fulfill their communicative
needs. If states are not committed to human rights, they can seriously hinder
the organic function of culture workers, who are involved in collecting,
capturing, framing, and curating diverse linguistic performances. Culture
workers showcase languages, dialects, and accents, and maximize their
performative and expressive potentials. Culture workers’ linguistic products
can often be preserved and used as cultural heritage and thus as a linguistic foundation for future
generations of language users. Totalitarian states aggressively harm this
potential heritage.
6 REPLACING
A LOCAL COLONIAL LANGUAGE WITH A GLOBAL COLONIAL LANGUAGE
Language policy trends in the Iranian plateau and its
surrounding regions illustrate that newly established states can, ironically,
undermine the very ethnic language that they deem the foundation of their
nationhood by disproportionate incorporation of European languages into their
educational and academic structures. For instance, the newly emerged states in
this region, often create English-based multilingual educational structures
that, consciously or unconsciously, prioritize English as the language of
science over the national or official language. As it is usually the case, educational materials,
resources, and institutional structures needed to foster the newly determined
national language can by no means match the structures which have been internationally
promoting English, as a major colonial language, for a long time (Makoni et
al., 2022). As such, the national
languages of new states - just liberated from the oppression of a regional
colonial language, which might have had organic linguistic connections with the
ethnic language because of geographic proximity - are overshadowed by global
colonial languages such as English.
The phenomenon of degrading the region’s languages in
encounters with European colonialism dates to the earlier nation-building
experiences in the region. For instance, after the formation of Iran as a
modern state, first French (and to a lesser degree German) and then English
were promoted in the country as the language of modernity and progress.
Paradoxically, the creators of Iran as a modern nationalist state felt their
project would not be complete without the presence of European languages in the
intellectual sphere. The modernity project which had brought nationalism from
Europe would also bring European languages with it, even if it was at the cost
of devaluing the “national” language. This intellectual fascination with
European languages elevated the role of the translators of these languages to
dominant public intellectuals as if the Persian language and the thinkers who
used the language were not able to produce knowledge worthy of serious
attention. Among these translator-intellectuals are Manouchehr Bozorgmehr
(translator of Bertrand Russell), Shams Adib Soltani (translator of Immanuel
Kant), Bagher Parham (translator of Friedrich Hegel), Khashayar Deyhimi
(translator of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus), Reza Seyed-Hosseini
(translator of French literature), Babak Ahmadi (translator of continental
philosophy), and Morad Farhadpour (translator of European critical theory).
Another popular member of this translator-intellectual class is Daryoush
Ashouri, the translator of Nietzsche. In his book Open Language: An Inquiry into Language and Modernity (2008),
Ashouri goes as far as asserting that the Persian language is a “closed” and
“inflexible” language that does not have the lexical and syntactic potential to
express modern thought. Ironically, Ashouri for decades served in the state-run
Academy of Persian Language and Literature, which has had the mission of regulating,
promoting, and protecting the official language, Persian.
Obviously, this paradoxical behavior, with a belief in
creating a national identity and, at the same time, undermining and demeaning
the nation’s languages by elevating the status of global colonial languages,
has damaged minority languages in Iran more than the official language because
in this linguistic hierarchy,
minority languages are at the very bottom. Nevertheless, surprisingly, minority
activists, both during the process of independence-seeking and
after establishing new states, display the same attitude towards the role of
European languages. For instance, in Iran, there is a popular discourse among
the activists involved in Kurdish and Turkish self-determination movements that
advocates for replacing Persian, as the country’s official language, with
English. These activists believe that by imposing a European language on all
ethnicities, a fairer system could be created. With disregard for the dangers
of the current Western academic and intellectual colonialism, they basically
argue that by oppressing all languages, including Persian, and by putting all
ethnicities at a disadvantage, minority populations can socially and
academically progress. Ironically, these minority activists regard liberation
as replacing one oppressor with another.
Fortunately, unlike post-colonial language policies in
Africa and India, the newly emerged nation-states in this region have not
adopted European languages as their official languages. What is alarming,
however, is the common interpretation of the meaning of “multilingual
education” among policymakers in
these states. Dominant discourses about multilingual education in Western
academia seek to establish a socially just educational system in which
speakers of minority languages do not experience discrimination (Gagne et al.,
2022; García & Kleyn, 2016; Kalan, 2016, 2021; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2009).
Multilingual education policies in the newly established states in this
region, however, often envision multilingual education as almost devoid of
concerns for minority languages and non-dominant varieties of the national
language. Instead, multilingual education is often used to mean the elevation
of the status of English in the educational system in parallel with the
national language. For instance, Mammadov and Mammadova (2022) express this
fascination with the role of English in the future of Azerbaijan, framing what
has been long called “linguistic imperialism” (Phillipson, 1992, 2008) as
“multilingualism” and “plurilingualism”:
Post-imperial
societies, such as Azerbaijan, tend to have a more open attitude to the
realities of a global language since they feel more secure in their cultural
identities. Therefore, the spread of global English creates an excellent
opportunity for building multilingualism and plurilingualism in post-imperial
societies. (Mammadov & Mammadova, 2022, p. 92)
The view that the English language must play a crucial
role in the educational system is popular among the Azerbaijani elite, although
there is awareness that this special status is bestowed on English at the
expense of undermining the territory’s indigenous languages. Gerber (2007)
reported that in an interview, the director of a pedagogical college in
Azerbaijan urged that Talysh students needed to learn English rather than their
mother tongue: “Now we focus on English language. We need English to integrate
into the world. What can we do with Talysh language?” (p. 45).
In a similar manner, elsewhere in the region, the
government of the independent Kurdistan Region of Iraq has reformed the
educational system to incorporate English as a main foundation of the literacy
curriculum (Kakabra, 2015), a move which can undermine Kurdish languages in the
long run (Saeed & Jukil, 2018). The government launched this initiative,
reflected in a document called “Sunrise,” in 2007. This plan has elevated the
status of English in the region’s educational structures to a level almost
equal to the dominant Kurdish language. Since the project was launched,
empirical research projects have yielded findings indicative of serious issues
with granting this disproportionate privilege to English. Kakabra (2015)
reported prevalent anxiety among students about learning English. With the sudden heavy presence of
English in the classroom,
“students face problems while trying to understand texts in English” (Ahmed et
al., 2015, p. 377). More recently, Ali Ahmed et al. (2021) reported that
“[…] students have negative attitudes towards learning English in terms of
emotional, behavioural and
cognitive aspects” (p. 72). This anxiety and negative attitude can be better
understood when we read other reports from Kurdistan that warn that a
test-oriented approach to teaching English, which is supposed to help quantify
Kurdistan’s “progress,” has created negative washback among the students (Omar,
2020). With this status of English in the educational system, it is not
surprising that Saeed (2021) warns that “the third generation in many families
may lose their heritage language, i.e., Kurdish, because these families don’t
positively sustain their heritage languages while they promote
[English-Official Kurdish] bilingualism” (p. 231).
The promotion of English in the region is also readily
visible in higher education. Welcoming large numbers of universities with
American and British accreditation and a growing sector of private universities
which use English as the main
language of instruction has practically changed the language of instruction
into English in many universities. This phenomenon has been observed in
Azerbaijan (Shafiyeva & Kennedy, 2010), Georgia and Armenia (Dobbins &
Khachatryan, 2015), and Kurdistan (Rahman, 2020). This process, in the long
run, will undermine the academic status of the national language, which, in a
self-determining state, is expected to be the main medium of knowledge
generation. As a result of these dynamics, instead of training experts who can
discuss local issues in a language understandable for everyone in the community,
the universities will create an academic elite who generate knowledge for
English journals. This process will only contribute to the current academic
colonialism in which scholars from the South are in an “underprivileged
position in the global academic world as “case” or “data” producers for
northern theory” (Ergin & Alkan, 2019, p. 260).
7
RIGID NATIONAL IDENTITIES AND IMMIGRANTS’ LANGUAGES
Since the establishment of modern states in the Iranian
plateau and its surrounding Silk Roads regions, the countries that emerged in
these territories have experienced volatility, instability, and political
uncertainty. The list of crises in the region is long. Here are some examples:
the Iranian Revolution (1978 – 1979), Iran–Iraq War (1980 – 1988), the Gulf
War (1990 – 17 January 1991), the Tajikistani Civil War (1992 – 1997), the War
in Afghanistan (2001 – 2021), the Iraq War (2003 – 2011), the Russo-Georgian
War (2008), the Armenia- Azerbaijan conflict (2020), the Syrian Civil War
(2011 – present), and the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022). These
events, and other similar developments in the region, have created significant
waves of migration. Although some people escaping from these crises might have
ended up in the West, the majority of the asylum seekers have moved to other
countries in the region. This pattern requires the development of a strong
multilingual education approach that recognizes the languages that immigrants
bring with them into their host countries.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
(2022) reports that based on the current year’s calculations, 89.3 million
people have been forcibly displaced worldwide “as a result of persecution,
conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing
public order” (par. 1). This figure is considerably larger than the population
of many of the newly emerged, or potentially emerging, states in the Iranian
plateau and its surrounding Silk Roads regions. In case any of these states
receive migration waves of this global move, which is predicted to intensify as
a result of environmental damage and climate change (Khanna, 2021), they will
find that their commitment to a national identity based on an ethnic language
will not help them to address the realities involved in educating immigrant
populations.
The historically
volatile circumstances of the region show sizable migration moves are quite
likely to happen. The UNHCR report (July 18, 2022) shows that two countries in
this region are among the countries that have generated the largest number of
asylum seekers in the world (Syria with 6.8 million and Afghanistan with 2.7
million displaced people) and two are among the top host countries (Turkey
hosting 3.8 million and Pakistan, 1.5 million). Iran, also, is currently
hosting 800,000 registered refugees. In addition, it is estimated that more
than two million undocumented Afghans and about 600,000 Afghan passport holders live in Iran. This
population flow happens while many Iranians are leaving the country. There is
little reliable data about the number of Iranian expatriates, but there are
informal estimates that more than 5 million people might have left the country
since the Revolution (1978 – 1979). Many Iranians have recently relocated to the surrounding countries such as Turkey,
Armenia, and Georgia.
These immigration patterns can sooner or later hit the
states that independence-seeking and/or separatist movements desire to create.
Welcoming these immigrants, first and foremost, requires a robust mother
tongue-based multilingual education. We cannot predict the behavior of possible
future states; however, there is already evidence that nationalist states fall short
of satisfactorily addressing the language issues of immigrants because of their
narrow and inflexible definitions of nationhood and national identity. The
United Arab Emirates exemplifies the reality that the immigration patterns in
this region can entirely change the make-up of the dominant population. “[W]ith
an estimated population of about 10 million, the number of expatriate residents
far outweighs the number of UAE nationals who constitute only about 11% of the
population. … Thus, Emiratis are a minority in their own country” (Esseili,
2020, p. 81). This demographic status can seriously challenge definitions of
nationhood which are based on a single culture, language, race, or religion.
Independent states should face the reality of the necessity of theorizing their
identities based on an acceptance of multiple identities.
A question of language will constantly emerge when states
interact with immigrant populations. We, for instance, know that the “majority
of new non-Slavic refugees find it hard to overcome the language barrier and
start a new life in Ukraine” (Ivaschenko-Stadnik, 2013, p. 5). Belarus has
similarly had its share of asylum seekers, recently receiving applications from
up to 40 countries (Shakhotska & Bobrova, 2013). “Among problems that
acknowledged refugees face most often one can primarily mention issues
associated with employment, housing and language learning” (Shakhotska &
Bobrova, 2013, p. 4). A similar case is Israel and its treatment of Ethiopian
refugees who, next to receiving discriminatory treatment because of skin color,
would have to undergo traumatic experiences because of language difference. It
is reported that, once in Israel, these refugees “[…] faced language
difficulties, unemployment, religious and social discrimination” (Finklestein
& Solomon, 2009, p. 40).
The same challenges also arise when refugees and
immigrants have the same ethnic background but speak a different language or
even another variety of the same language. An example of the former is Armenia
and the latter, Iraqi Kurdistan. “Around 360,000 refugees arrived in Armenia
beginning in 1988 soon after the anti-Armenian pogroms in Sumgait and outbreaks
of mass violence in other towns in Azerbaijan” (Baghdasaryan, 2009, p. 7).
After settling in Armenia, “they certainly were partly excluded from the labor
market (mainly due to the economic crisis and restructuring and partly because
of language incompetence)” (Baghdasaryan, 2009, p. 8). The author in this
article explains what was perceived as “language incompetence” was failing to
display linguistic performances required to create a “national identity” although
the immigrants were also ethnically Armenian:
One of
the major problems was that a significant number of refugees were
Russian-speaking, while many locals at that time perceived using Armenian
language for communication as a marker of national identity. Therefore, often
Russian-speaking refugees were rebuked and requested to speak Armenian by
certain layers of the local population. (Baghdasaryan, 2009, p. 8)
The Iraqi Kurdistan “[…] hosts nearly 260,000 Syrian
refugees, the vast majority of whom are based in the Kurdistan Region.” (UN
News, 2022, par. 2). “Most Syrian refugees [who are Syrian Kurds] in these
camps tend to speak the Kurdish language, but have different dialects from the
Iraqi Kurdish” (Izaddin et al., 2015, p. 3). This communication context,
understandably, requires accommodation of all Kurdish languages in asylum-seeking
and immigration
processes.
These examples show that states that develop identity narratives
portraying linguistically homogeneous populations as their point of reference
should realize that not only do these national identities, as discussed
previously, often fail to capture organic diversities that already exists
within their societies, but also they are not able to provide a vision that can
help this region address inevitable waves of immigration in a dignified way.
8
INVESTING IN NATION-STATISM OR ORGANIZED ANTI-DISCRIMINATION
MOVEMENTS?
The themes that I have discussed so far show the inherent
aggressive behavior of the modern European state model towards linguistic
diversity. I tried to show that it is unrealistic to believe that the creation
of a new state will automatically solve challenges involved in language policy
and planning, although a new state can promote a dialect or variety of a
previously minoritized language. In a nutshell, nation-statism is not capable
of tackling language issues because by nature it creates them. The alternative
is to create anti-discriminatory movements that demand the removal of
linguistic hierarchies that reinforce oppressive socio-political hegemonies.
Organizing anti-discriminatory movements can create more space for linguistic
diversity both in current larger states and, in the case of independence, in
newly established states.
A plan for sustaining and promoting linguistic
diversity, on the basis of human rights and social justice, is a feasible
vision for the communities which live in the Iranian plateau because of their
successful historical experiences with multiethnic social relations,
multiculturalism, and multilingualism. “Western concepts of language and
ethnicity fail to capture the reality of complex, fluid, and plural cultural
and linguistic identities in many postcolonial contexts, both in Asia and
Africa” (May, 2012, p. 95-96). This potential has long been recognized by
Western linguistic sociologists. Fishman (1968) wrote that “Western,
post-Versailles intellectual heritage” has caused Western sociologists and
political scientists to be “puzzled” (p. 44) when analyzing the language
policy practices of post-colonial states. He explains the cause of this lack
of understanding as follows:
In
non-European settings ... diglossia is extremely widespread and therefore
language statistics or nation-and-language typologies that slight this fact are
somewhat to very misleading. On occasion, it is a traditional diglossia in
which two or more languages have long-established, functionally separate roots
in the same society. (Fishman, 1968, p. 45)
Many non-European territories have long been
multicultural and multilingual societies which have organically promoted
local cosmopolitanisms tolerant of linguistic and ethnic differences. This history is a
reliable foundation for organizing anti-discriminatory campaigns that can help
facilitate respect for the linguistic
rights of minoritized populations. These campaigns should be led and sustained
both in current larger states and, in the case of separation, in the newly
established states because, as I illustrated, creating states cannot
automatically solve language policy and planning issues.
Regarding a demand for multiglossia as a component of a
larger anti-discrimination movement, as opposed to using language as a tool for
nation-building, will also help us see that a question of linguistic rights is
in direct connection with other human rights and that a demand for one can
strength the other. Especially in terms of education, the same
anti-discriminatory spirit that aims to sustain linguistic diversity in educational settings will also help protect
the educational rights of financially disadvantaged students, girls, LGBTQ+
students, neurodiverse learners, and so on. There is no guarantee that a
language education based on nation-statism will enjoy such affinity with other
anti-discriminatory forms of education.
9
CONCLUDING REMARKS
In this article, I do not argue against or for
establishing new states. The main argument is that both larger multi-ethnic
states and newly emerged or emerging states need to have mother tongue-based
multilingual education policies if they want to protect their territorial
linguistic repertoires, including both minority languages and “non-standard” varieties
of the national or official language(s). I have also highlighted that an agenda
of respecting linguistic human rights should be imagined within a larger vision
of an anti-discriminatory education that not only recognizes linguistic rights
but also is committed to the human rights of all marginalized populations.
Creating new states based on the European nation-state model will not
automatically translate into inclusive language policies. New states can
protect language diversity only if there is an active reinforcement of an
anti-discriminatory vision. Otherwise, newly established independent states
will only harm the trajectories of languages used within their territories and
their organic connections with one another.
I have tried to show that nation-states not only oppress
minority languages, but they undermine the very ethnic language that they claim
to promote. This happens by elevating the status of one variety of the ethnic
language and devaluating the other dialects and accents. Also, if the newly
established state is an authoritarian state, it will aggressively restrict the
text production activities of culture workers who do not follow the state’s
political vision. Undermining the linguistic performance of culture workers will
undermine the ethnic language because in the long run, it is culture workers who maintain
communities’ linguistic trajectories and not the states. Moreover,
nationalistic visions for a newly established
state, and a
preoccupation with creating a new national identity, might direct our attention
away from the rapid and widespread migration patterns that will challenge rigid
ethnic identities once states receive waves of immigrants and refugees. Thus,
investment in nation-statism may not, after all, protect language rights. What
is required instead is organizing anti-discrimination movements, not only in
education but in political structures as well.
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Received on December 17/, 2022. Accepted on
March 3, 2023
Assistant
Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE) at McGill
University. His work aims to create a sociology of language and literacy
education that provides insights into cultural, political, and power-relational
dimensions of linguistic practices. He is particularly interested in learning
about the experiences of minoritized and racialized students in multicultural
and multilingual contexts. He is the author of the book Who’s Afraid of
Multilingual Education? (2016), which offers critiques of monolingual
educational systems. E-mail:
amir.kalan@mcgill.ca.
