The English-Vernacular Divide: Postcolonial Language Politics and Practice

by Vaidehi Ramanathan

Overview

This book offers a critical exploration of the role of English in postcolonial communities such as India. Specifically, it focuses on some local ways in which the language falls along the lines of a class-based divide (with ancillary ones of gender and caste as well). The book argues that issues of inequality, subordination and unequal value seem to revolve directly around the general positioning of English in relation to vernacular languages.  The author was raised and schooled in the Indian educational system.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781853597695
Publisher:	Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Publication date:	02/18/2005
Series:	Bilingual Education & Bilingualism , #49
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Vaidehi Ramanathan is an Associate Professor in the Linguistics department at the University of California, Davis She was raised and schooled in the educational system she writes about and she has been involved in issues related vernacular and English language teaching for several years in a variety of contexts, including teacher-education. Her publications include: The Politics of TESOL education  (RoutledgeFalmer) and Alzheimer’s discourse: some sociolinguistic dimensions (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Situating the Vernacular in a Divisive Postcolonial Landscape

The stronger sense of 'postcolonial' emerges when we consider this seeming paradox: that it takes anticolonial struggles to produce neocolonial conditions. The postcolonial condition is the perspective one enters when one has resolved that paradox, relished that irony of history, and moved on. Postcoloniality in this sense is not confined to any particular kind of geopolitical space: it applies equally to the experience of diasporic and autochthonous communities, settler colonies no less than to territories of indirect rule, South African apartheid no less than to Indian democracy. Resisting any simple periodising correlations, the postcolonial condition is not one of power secured and centrally exercised in certain times and places. It is rather a dispersal, a moving field of possibilities which everywhere carry within them the mutually entailing, intimately cohabiting negative and positive charges of both power and resistance.

(Pechey, 1994: 153)

But the problem of voice is a problem of multiplicity as well as a problem of representation. How many voices are concealed beneath the generalizations of reported speech in much ethnography? And how many voices clamor beneath the enquiries and interests of the single ethnographer? How can we construct our voices so that they can represent the diversity of voices we hear in the field? How can we construct ... a dialogue that captures the encounter of our own many voices with the voices we hear and purport to represent? The problem of voice ('speaking for' and 'speaking to') intersects with the problem of place (speaking 'from' and speaking 'of'). (Appadurai, 1988: 17)

The landscape of the postcolonial encounter is dotted with revisionist histories that attempt to go 'beyond the mystifying amnesia of the colonial aftermath' (Gandhi, 1998: 16) and this book is an effort in this direction. In general, the task of postcolonial studies has been to revisit, remember and question the colonial past, while simultaneously acknowledging the complex reciprocal relationship of antagonism and desire between the colonizer and colonized. While several instruments of power were used in the colonizing process, several have stayed in the postcolonial aftermath, including the crucial instrument of language (Dua, 1994, 2001; Rajagopalan, 1999). Because postcolonial contexts harken back to colonial pasts (that relatively frozen stance of always looking over one's shoulder as one proceeds ahead), the idea of how much of the colonial is embedded in the postcolonial voice is fraught with tension and complexities. Where does one end and the other begin? At what point is the postcolonial voice a voice with its own legitimacy? Built into this murky notion of 'voice' are various shades of power and resistance, which together form a nexus that is constantly at play in postcolonial worlds, with particular contexts making this notion more palpable than the others. While this prism-like nexus – of voice, power and resistance – gets enacted in various forms in different contexts, the components of the nexus remain the same.

One realm where this nexus is apparent is in the domain of education and it is the ways in which this nexus gets played out in different schooling contexts that informs the heart of this book. Located specifically in the area of English and Vernacular language teaching and learning, the book offers a relatively multifaceted sketch of the dynamics between English and the Vernaculars and the ways in which these dynamics are complexly embedded in a range of macro-structures in India, and the forms this nexus takes in the larger language teaching enterprise. While the book does not, by any means, discount the role of the British Raj in the creation of the English–Vernacular divide (Guha, 1997; Naregal, 2001; Pennycook, 1998), it does seek to go beyond the Raj to address some current language-related issues. Several researchers (cf. Phillipson, 1992; Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, 1995) have called attention to the ways in which the global spread of English threatens local, Vernacular languages and the power differential built into English and regional languages in multilingual cultures. Certainly, much of what is presented in this book can be interpreted in this light. Powerful macro-structures – including institutional policies, larger state and nation-wide policies and pedagogical materials – do align with each other to shape, produce and perpetuate power/knowledge inequalities between those who have access to English and those who do not. (Indeed, researchers such as Bruthiaux [2002] argue that enhancing Vernacular education is a crucial step toward improving basic living standards in the developing world.) However, because realities on the postcolonial ground are more complex, it is equally important to understand how the English–Vernacular divide is resisted, specifically mitigated and bridged (Canagarajah, 1999). 'English and Vernacular knowledge' – their teaching and learning, and their general production and consumption – then, from this integrated perspective, needs to be understood as an embedded, multi-pronged enterprise whose general functioning include both a complex domination and an equally complex resistance. An intent throughout this interpretive project, then, is one that attempts to understand some local complexities involved in the general (tertiary-level) English–Vernacular enterprise with a view to discerning how students, teachers and institutions are located vis-à-vis each other in this larger endeavor. By closely documenting where and how college-going students get situated in the English–Vernacular canvas, the ways in which tertiary-level English disadvantages students educated in the Vernacular and the ways in which teachers and institutions work at integrating English and the Vernaculars, I am arguing that any understanding of English and Vernacular education has to begin first by locating them side by side (as opposed to arranging them in a hierarchy). Doing so is the first step not only in addressing language-related inequalities on the postcolonial ground but in recognizing ways in which English and the Vernaculars while simultaneously divided and dichotomous from some points of view are also simultaneously overlapping and conjoined.

Setting the Stage

The area of postcolonial studies in the last decade seems to have burgeoned into a sub-discipline of its own, so much so that there appears to be little consensus regarding its scope and content. Some of the dissension seems to spill over into the realm of whether to hyphenate the term or not, with some critics believing that 'post-colonialism' with a hyphen indicates a clear temporal marker in history (signifying the end of colonial rule). Others believe that the 'postcolonial condition is inaugurated with the onset rather than the end of colonial occupation' (Gandhi, 1998: 3) and, thus, they maintain that the unbroken term postcolonialism comes closer to capturing a fuller range of colonial consequences.

Whatever the nuances of the controversy, the various viewpoints in postcolonial studies can be seen, I believe, to wrestle with issues of 'voice', including finding voices by which to speak back to colonial powers. (It is indeed no small irony that postcolonialists often have to speak back in the colonizer's tongue!) In their Introduction to the collection of essays, Past The Last Post: Theorizing Post-colonialism and Post-modernism, Ian Adam and Helen Tiffin (1991: vii) maintain that postcolonialism can be said to have two archives, one which constructs it as 'writing ... grounded in those societies whose subjectivity has been constituted in part by the subordinating power of European colonialism' and a second in which the postcolonial is conceived as a set of discursive practices involving 'resistance to colonialism, colonist ideologies, and their contemporary forms and subjectificatory legacies'. Highlighted in the first archive is a degree of subordination; highlighted in the second is a degree of resistance. While this bifurcation may be a useful starting point, it is crucial to recognize that there not only exists a whole range between subordination and resistance but that facets of subordination and resistance typically operate as two sides of the same coin, intertwined and wrapped as each is in the other. There are clearly isolatable facets in the socio-educational system of any culture – including the Indian educational landscape discussed in this book – that not only serve to highlight instances where each of these notions is at play but also arenas where prying them apart is not so easy. This complex contact zone – between colonialist and postcolonialist ideologies, domination and opposition, English-medium (EM) and Vernacular-medium (VM) – is where this book situates itself. From particular vantage points, this book highlights the English–Vernacular chasm by focusing on particular social stratifications on the ground – class, gender, caste – where individual efforts are not necessarily foregrounded. But from other vantage points, the book is also oriented toward capturing local resistances by calling attention to how particular teachers and institutions engage in critical practice by negotiating with the larger labyrinth to mitigate English's divisive role and to bridge the English–Vernacular gulf proactively. The book, then, in an attempt to be comprehensive strives to straddle both gulfs and bridges: by highlighting the gulf, we are able to see how English and its accompanying assumptions nexus (discussed in Chapter 2) sustain and deepen the English–Vernacular divide. Likewise foregrounding critical practice allows us to see how chasms are bridged and integration sought.

As mentioned in the Preface, the discursive act of writing about both social stratifications and transformations – where they each seem to be divided into different sections of a chapter – belies the fluidity and overlapping nature of dominations and resistances. Because both are part of each other, writing about them in separate sections – as I have been forced to do for clarity's sake – runs the risk of overlooking the conjoined nature between the two. In real life, dominations and resistance exist together, simultaneously informing each other, whether in classrooms, hallways, canteens or parking lots. As we will see in the following chapters, several parts of the socio-educational landscape place EM and VM students in oppositional relationships; several other parts provide room for active defiance including outright opposition to English, proactive gestures promoting the Vernacular, as well as attempts at integrating English Language Teaching and Learning (ELTL) with local Vernaculars. Throughout, the book attempts to underscore the idea that the English–Vernacular enterprise is a process that is contested (Bhattacharya, 1998). While there are traditions and 'discourses' (Gee, 1990) associated with each, and while we need to (for clarity's sake) address these separately – as this book will occasionally do – English and the Vernaculars in multilingual, postcolonial contexts such as India are completely intertwined.

'Voicing', English and ELTL in India

As will become evident, I will frequently use the term '(de) voicing' to refer to ways in which Vernacular languages are relegated to subordinate positions and to ways in which English is seen to open social doors. While this section does not, by any means, attempt to trace the history of the term 'voice', I briefly address some general ways and contexts in which it has recently been used.

One area where this term has a home has been in the realms of first- and second-language writing. Recent debates on 'voice' have raised concerns regarding how locally embedded the notion is, with several facets of the term being highlighted in different ways: in terms of cross-cultural problems in the English as a Second Language (ESL) writing classroom (Ramanathan & Atkinson, 1999; Ramanathan, 2002a), its counterpart in other cultures (Matsuda 2001), its relation to the identities of graduate-level students (Hirvela & Belcher, 2001) and its inherently personal and social nature (Prior, 2001). These papers, among others, wrestle with voice in the context of second language (L2) writing. Borrowing the notion from this realm, this book highlights the more political nuances of the term by attempting to understand it in postcolonial contexts: 'being empowered to speak/read/write', in other words, being 'en-voiced'. Drawing primarily from my current, long-term project regarding English in India, details of which follow, I will argue that concerns regarding postcolonial voice(s) have necessarily to consider the following questions: Who is given the opportunity to speak and how? Who is simultaneously rendered 'voice-less'? Who assumes the power to speak back? What (divisive) role does English literacy – writing/reading/speaking – play in this general (dis)empowering process? Chimerical and multifaceted, if voice is indeed a locally embedded and relative term, as previous research has pointed out, then relevant questions that need to be asked – at least in postcolonial contexts where English is often the language of power – have necessarily to begin with those listed here.

From certain angles, one could argue that 'voicing' in India seems to be distinctly related to the medium of instruction in which students are educated, with the system privileging one set of students over others. All K–12 (kindergarten to 12th grade) students in India have the option of being educated in either one of India's 15 nationally recognized languages or in English (Gupta et al., 1995; Pattanayak, 1981). Those students opting to be educated in the Vernacular are introduced to English from the fifth grade on (in Gujarat), just as EM students are introduced to the Vernacular at the same grade level. While theoretically this makes for a relatively egalitarian approach at the K–12 scene – where a lot of children have the option of being educated in their mother tongues or a closely allied language and learning a foreign language – the picture at college level, as the ensuing chapters detail, becomes much murkier. All 'prestigious', science-based disciplines at the tertiary level such as computer science, engineering, the hard sciences, pharmacy and medicine seem to be available only in English. This means that if the English proficiency of students educated in the Vernacular is deemed insufficient at the end of the 12th grade, which by and large is the case, they are denied access to these 'prestigious' disciplines. Furthermore, in instances when VM students are admitted to EM colleges, they face the uphill task of not only taking classes with their EM counterparts but of having to take the same set of state-mandated examinations in English. In many cases, this proves to be insurmountable for many low-income VM students and many of them drop out of the educational system during and after college. Students schooled in the EM, in contrast, do not face this language barrier at the college level: not only do they have a relatively easier time accessing the various 'prestigious' disciplines, they also have a comparatively easier time getting through the required examinations. As we will see in the following chapters, it is no accident that the differences between EM and VM students seem to fall along class lines.

The accessibility that the Indian middle class has to English literacy is integrally tied to (what I call) the 'assumptions nexus' (Chapter 2), a collective syndrome of values, aspirations, perspectives, motivations, behaviors and world views that the middle class has by the sheer virtue of just being so, a nexus that seems to remain out of reach for low-income VM students (Singh, 1998). Nation- and state-wide educational policies, institutional practices, curricular and pedagogical materials among other factors are aligned in specific ways so as simultaneously to engage in combined relations of power to empower the upper and middle classes in particular social ways that directly yield certain social goods. Engaging in an exercise wherein we try to disassemble the various and connected parts of this socio-educational system helps our understanding of English and Vernacular knowledge production and consumption.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "The English-Vernacular Divide"
by .
Copyright © 2005 Vaidehi Ramanathan.
Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Preface
1 Introduction: Situating the Vernacular in a Divisive Postcolonial Landscape
2 Divisive Postcolonial Ideologies, Language Policies and Social Practices
3 Divisive and Divergent Pedagogical Tools for Vernacular and English-medium Students
4 The Divisive Politics of Divergent Pedagogical Practices
5 The Divisive Politics of Tracking
6 Gulfs and Bridges Revisited: Hybridization, Nativization and Other Loose Ends
Afterword
Appendices
References
Index