Why Language Justice?
Artwork by Asanda Ncawdi
Introduction
Communities flourish when everyone can communicate with others in the language they feel the most comfortable. Language is intertwined with identity, and while we can make meaning and understanding between languages, each language is unique. When we excude languages—explicitly or implicitly— we exclude knowledge systems, experiences, and people. Building language justice in our spaces honors dignity and power, and is a key component of social justice.
South Asia is a hotspot of linguistic diversity. However, efforts to be linguistically-inclusive have at most been efforts to accommodate bilingualism or multilingualism. These still treat dominant languages as the ‘hub’ and non-dominant languages as ‘spokes.’ The tools of bilingualism and multilingualism value linguistic diversity but do not dismantle language dominance; these tools continue to operate in a space where certain languages assume a more powerful or hegemonic role. “Mainstream” languages imposed by colonial systems, capitalist job markets and education, and caste/ethnic privileges continue to dictate our public gatherings and interactions. For example, in schools, the mother tongue is used as a “bridging tool” to move towards mainstream languages in higher education.
What does it look like when dominant languages are equal with non-dominant languages? We can learn about this from social movements themselves, where activists make multilingual spaces accessible by employing whatever resources they have on hand to ensure that everyone can communicate. We can also learn about this from informal interpreting happening in schools, courts, hospitals, and daily life. In these spaces, family and friends support each other to ensure communication (think of all the children who interpret for their parents!) More formally, there are interpreting collectives and individual professional interpreters who work in solidarity with movements. All of this work is language justice work.
Every time we speak or sign in our particular accents and dialects, syntax and rhythms, cadences and inflections, we identify ourselves and bring social history and personal experience with us. When we come together to dialogue, it is important that we are able to express ourselves in the language that most fully conveys the depth and nuance of our hopes and ideas, our frustrations and questions - How to Build Language Justice, Antena Collective
Singing our Songs
Imagine that we are all born as birds flying around in the winds of our very vast language contexts.
If and when we enter school or come into contact with centralized authority in any way, we begin to be caged according to the dominant language of our state or region.
As we are birds, we do not stop longing to glide in our home winds again, we continue to sing yet our voices get softer, and we are trapped in the cages of the mainstream. As we grow up, we are encouraged to visit each other’s cages, interact and share some worms, however always with the caged mainstream being our limit.
Language justice for us is dismantling the cage, and flying face to face with our land, waters, winds, trees, animals and fellow humans. In language justice, we try to place all languages on the same footing, allowing participants to speak in the language of their experiences. In the words of Maya Angelou, we know “why the caged bird sings, for the caged bird sings a song of freedom.”
Our Linguistic Context
Language in South Asia is a landscape of infinite opportunity and controversy. On the one hand, South Asia is one of the world’s most linguistically vast and diverse regions; on the other hand, there has been a constant tussle of language and power.
Internal colonization and language hegemony existed in the subcontinent before colonial rule. With the European colonialist strategy came linguistic study and surveys. In the process, a vast spectrum of linguistic varieties were codified and divided into official “languages” and “dialects,” and these flawed classifications were inherited by the governments of independent nations in South Asia. According to the Ethnologue language database, South Asia is home to speakers of hundreds of languages and dialects from five major language families, in addition to colonial languages.
After 1947, linguistic data produced by the colonial government was mobilized by the newly-independent government of India in its creation of individual states based on common linguistic identity. Language movements sprang up across South Asia, in which linguistic identity became the foundation for claims to national identity, as was the case with the Bengali movement that catalysed the independence movement in contemporary Bangladesh. Linguistic difference has also been at the heart of several conflicts across South Asia, from longstanding debates over the division of Hindi-Urdu to the Tamil nationalist movement’s basis in an identity of Tamilian linguistic purity in India and Sri Lanka. Even recently, we have seen movements for the creation of new states on the basis of common linguistic identity – most recently with the carving out of the Telugu-speaking region of Andhra Pradesh into the state of Telangana in 2014.
Movements for the recognition of minority languages across India have been especially powerful in the context of marginalized groups, including Adivasi communities. The Santals who have mobilized political claims for independent statehood in Jharkhand based on their distinctive cultural and linguistic identities. The Dalit movement in India has taken English to be an important language to destroy caste superiority. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar who compared English to the milk of the lioness, saying that those who drink more of this milk will be stronger to annihilate caste.
For more analysis, read our blog post on Linguistic Diversity in South Asia.
Language Justice for All
For people who have not existed in dominant social categories, being Dalit, Adivasi, small-scale farmer, landless, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, women, trans, queer, or informal worker, language justice is an everyday struggle. The importance of language justice is not just clear communication. It is also the possibility of speaking from one’s own experiences, articulating realities that are always silenced, pushing for decisions and laws that take into account the historicity of oppression. In other words, language justice means destroying the current social hierarchy, and building spaces from the perspective of the least privileged.
Finally, language justice also emphasizes orality, giving power to the spoken word. Language politics have dealt with the written word with much care, while the spoken word has not received such importance. This is especially evident in the classification of languages versus dialects. Oral dialogue and interpreting counter this by valuing the nature of the spoken language, the truth of the speaker as well as the necessity for making this accessible to a larger public.
Conclusion
Language justice does not just happen. Organizers, leaders, movements, and collectives must be intentional about it at every step. As leadership and membership, the connection between language and identity, territory, worldview and revolution should always be held consciously at the core of all levels of organization.
Learn more about organizing multilingual events, technology, or build your skills as an interpreter.