I no longer practice this judgemental, self-righteous denunciation, not only because it would be hypocritical but also because I recognize that this is what pays the bills and makes careers for our colleagues in Africa. More importantly I have no philosophical objection to their trying to play in the epistemologically dominant precincts of the North as insurgents on their own terms with the ultimate aim of critically changing the Western epistemic formation and globalizing African epistemologies.
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 31, 2020, at 2:13 PM, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com> wrote:
Oga Biko,You are engaging in what book people dey call vulgar linguistic determinism. The idea that societies develop only when their citizens are educated in their native languages is anchored on the unscientific notion that the human brain is inescapably wired to think transformative thoughts only in the language of its natal environment. Both the history and sociology of human civilization have shown this to be entirely false.Ethiopians (and Eritreans) weren't colonized like the rest of Africa (except for the brief Italian occupation of the region), have educated their people mostly in Amharic, which is native to the region but which isn't everyone's native language, but I won't call them "developed."You lived considerably in the Caribbean. Black people there speak English as a native language even though they are Africans. Would you regard them as speaking a "colonizer's" language? Many educated Africans think more clearly in the colonial languages with which they are educated than in their own native languages. Do you consider them handicapped--and, perhaps, worthless-- because their thoughts and scientific contributions aren't in their native languages?In other words, is the output less important than the language of the output? If education in native languages is the only guarantee of development, are you suggesting that for the world to develop we must have more than 6,000 education systems in the world since there are more than 6,000 living languages in the world?Or do you consider a language "native" just because it's native to a country even if non-native speakers in the country have to learn it like they learn a colonial language? If yes, why should an Ogoni woman learn Ijaw and deploy it as her language of instruction at school? What advantage would the Ijaw-educated Ogoni woman have over a Kanuri man who was educated in a colonizer's language?You singled out Singapore as an exception even though you had claimed definitively that no country on earth has ever developed using a foreign language. Well, Singapore isn't an exception. I also mentioned Ireland, but you seem to have ignored it.Western Europe, too, used Latin for education for a long time even though most West Europeans didn't speak Latin natively. I didn't hurt their development one bit. The Muslim world used Arabic for education for centuries even though only a fraction of Muslims speak Arabic natively. Most of the Muslim scholars who made enduring contributions to science, medicine, mathematics, etc. were educated in Arabic even though they were not Arabs and didn't speak Arabic natively.Language of education has no bearing on development.Here's a portion of the column you said you don't have the time to read:Nations that developed using foreign languagesIt's a well-worn cliché among dewy-eyed linguistic nationalists that indigenous language instruction is the only key to national development. There are several iterations of this sentiment.For instance, in a 2016 edited book titled Studies in Nigerian Linguistics, Philip Anagbogu and Gideon Omachonu contributed a chapter in which they claim that, "No nation has ever made appreciable progress in development as well as science and technology education relying on a foreign language(s)."One Professor Birgit Brock-Utne, a Norwegian who taught and lived in Tanzania for a long time, also claimed that, "No country has ever developed on the basis of a foreign language." But these essentialist claims have no basis in linguistic or historical evidence.Evidence from linguistic research (and, I might add, common sense) shows that no one is infrangibly wired to cogitate rarefied thoughts only in their native language. Societies don't develop because they use their primordial languages for education, nor do they stagnate because they deploy a foreign language for education. That's vulgar linguistic determinism. Development isn't solely a function of language of instruction at schools; it's a consequence of a multiplicity of factors.There are 6,909 living languages in the world. The linguistic deterministic thesis of development that holds that societies can only develop if they use their indigenous languages for instruction at schools would suggest that speakers of all the 6,909 living languages in the world should have their separate instructional policies based on their languages. What a babel that would be!History is littered with examples of countries that developed on the basis of a foreign language.Let's start with Europe. Scholarship in Latin, that is, Classical Latin, is the foundation of the development of Western Europe. Latin wasn't native to vast swathes of people in Europe. It was an exclusive elite language, a reason all other European languages at the time were called "vernacular languages." Latin was the language of education in Europe (including in North Africa where it was studied in schools until the Roman Empire waned) until about the second half of the 18th century.European development wasn't stalled because people learned and used Latin for scholarship; on the contrary, scholarship in Latin is the foundation for Western Europe's development. It isn't because there is something intrinsically superior or magical about Latin; it's simply because, for historical reasons, it was the vault of knowledge at the time—the way English is today.In the Muslim world, particularly from the 8th century to the 13th century, during the so-called Golden Age of Islam when science, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, economic development, etc. grew and flowered luxuriantly, the language of scholarship was Arabic, but several of the key personages associated with this golden age spoke Arabic as a second language.For example, Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Kwarizmi, the father of algorithm, spoke Farsi as his first language, but his language of education was Arabic. That didn't stop him from making profound contributions to knowledge and to development. Note that Farsi (Persian) and Arabic are not only mutually unintelligible languages, they also belong to two different language families. Persian is an Indo-European language (in common with English!) while Arabic is an Afro-Asiatic language (in common with Hausa!)Ibn Sina, through whose efforts the West recovered Aristotle and whose work in medical science is foundational, was also a Persian who learned and wrote in Arabic. Arabic was a second language to him. I can go on, but the point I want to make is that several of the central figures in Islam's golden age weren't native Arabic speakers. In fact, most people in the Muslim Ummah at the time weren't Arabs. But Arabic was the language of education. It was the epistemic storehouse of the time, and the fact of Arabic's foreignness didn't cause it to halt the development of the societies in which it was used.For modern examples of countries that developed using a foreign language, Singapore is one. Although most Singaporeans are ethnically Chinese, they use English as the language of instruction at all levels of education in their country. Singapore, not long ago, transitioned from "third world to first," to borrow from the title of late Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's book. Use of English as the language of education hasn't stalled Singapore's development.Ireland is another example. For long, it was Europe's fastest growing economy because of its advances in information and communication technology. Ireland's language of instruction at all levels of education is English even though English isn't "native" to the country. The country's "native" tongue is Gaelic, which is mutually unintelligible with English. Like Nigeria and Singapore, Ireland was colonized by England.In addition, several universities in Asia and Europe are now switching to English as their language of instruction. They aren't stupid.On the other hand, North Koreans, Vietnamese, Pakistanis, Mongolians, etc., use their native languages as their countries' official languages and as the languages of instruction at all levels of education. That hasn't guaranteed their development. So it is simplistic to assert that simply being educated in a native language is all that is needed to be developed, and that use of a foreign language forecloses development.As I pointed out earlier, although evidence suggests that mother-tongue instruction enhances learning, no human being is intrinsically and inexorably wired to conceptualize high-minded thoughts in just one language, or only in the language of the culture they grew up in. Nigeria isn't stuck in prolonged infancy because English is its official language; it is because it has had no purposeful, forward-looking, transaction-oriented leadership since independence.Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State UniversityKennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogiNigeria's Digital Diaspora: Citizen Media, Democracy, and Participation
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will--On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 11:30 AM 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:--Bro Farooq,I go read your dogo nturenchi later but I agree with you that every rule has exceptions. Singapore has a dual language policy that emphasizes English in addition to one other national language as a requirement for every student. India only started implementing indigenous languages of instruction this year perhaps to catch up with China. Afghans are often more fluent in Urdu than in Pashwa as a result of large-scale refugee problems. On the exceptional case of Pakistan which remains a poor country toying with nuclear weapons, here is an author who has studied it in detail in indirect support of my lice theory: Pakistan ruined by language mythOn Saturday, 31 October 2020, 04:33:10 GMT-4, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com> wrote:"No country has ever industrialized by relying on a language imposed by colonizers. Name ne. That may be part of the reasons why Africa struggles with industrialization."--Biko AgozinoThat's demonstrably inaccurate. I confronted this misconception in many previous columns such as my April 9, 2017 column titled, "English, Indigenous Language Instruction and National Development" and my April 23, 2017 column titled "English in Nigeria: India Not an Exemplary Model."Singapore, Ireland, etc. have developed with a colonial language and Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. are still developing even though they deploy indigenous languages for instructions at all levels of education. India's development isn't powered by Hindi; it is powered by English. Read the articles.Farooq
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State UniversityKennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogiNigeria's Digital Diaspora: Citizen Media, Democracy, and Participation
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will--On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 10:27 PM 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:--'Which is why I have no sympathy for the pseudo-Afrocentric nonsense that English (or other European languages) is not our mother tongue so proficiency, fluency, and mastery are not important.'Only a pseudo-Afrocentric scholar would say that rigorous theorizing in English is not important. Almost all Afrocentric writers develop their thoughts in English, French, Portuguese or Espanol. There is no existing Afrocenrtic theorist who is rejected by Eurocentric scholars because he/she writes bad English. Name one.By coincidence, I also Zoomed with the UNN Faculty of Social Science during their Virtual International Conference on Crucial Issues in African Development and the Sustainable Development Goals on Wednesday 10/28/20. My guest lecture on Linguistic Industrial Complex Economy (LICE) offered a head-scratching theory of industrialization based on the empirical observation that almost all countries that have industrialized did so by relying on their indigenous languages. No country has ever industrialized by relying on a language imposed by colonizers. Name ne. That may be part of the reasons why Africa struggles with industrialization.Moses may be right that English is the dominant language in world commerce today and the top universities in the world rankings are English language universities. Yet, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, NorwaY, China, and Korea remain competitive because they realized that language is a neglected factor of production as important as land, labor, and capital. Correct grammar is important even when we write in indigenous languages but to abandon our mother tongues would be to abandon a vital source of creativity in the arts but also in the sciences. Ngugi is right.Fea Kuti broke through when he abandoned Oyibo grammatical songs and embraced Naija pidgin. Ebenezer Obey, King Sunnu Ade, Osita Osadebe, Oriental Brothers, Oliver de Coque, Mike Ejeagha, Rex Lawson, Bob Marley, Makeba, Bright Chimezie, Mighty Sparrow, gospel singers, Hip Hop and Calypso artists, to mention but a few, all developed new musical genres by abandoning Queen's English. Those of us who were trained to be signifying monkeys mimicking Englishness have managed to develop or innovate zero musical styles and very few theories for some reason.The question is, what are the new musical theories developed by African universities that Europeans have failed to accept? African scholars are versed in the descriptive tradition of empiricism but fail in advancing original theories in most cases. That was why I answered a question from the audience during my Zoom by encouraging thescholars to take up the challenge of developing their own original theories in order to be noticed internationally because the leading lights in every discipline are theorists. I encouraged them to establish a journal of Nigerian Languages where original research in any discipline written in indigenous languages would be published and I asked them to endow a prize for the best dissertation in any discipline written entirely in indigenous languages. This is something that we can do without waiting for the government.The idea that Africans do not write well is a racist idea that goes back to Hegel in his Philosophy of History. He did not say that others do not write, he only claimed that Europeans write better history. Derrida pointed this out in Of Grammatology by stating that even according to Hegel, every culture writes, in the general sense of grammatology as the use of signs to represent speech. To claim that Africans do not write well when we write in our indigenous languages while discussing musical theory about work that is written predominantly in African indigenous languages is an attempt at conceptual colonization or epistemicide. Africans practically invented writing. Na lie?Even if your grammar spills verbs the way that Amos Tutuola and Chief Zebrudaya did, even if your subjects did not agree with your verbs, Martin Luther King Jr said that you can still serve your community. Mazrui was dead wrong when he identified himself and his children as Afro Saxons and said that a bad idea expressed in good English was better than a good idea expressed in bad English. Na lie o.BikoOn Friday, 30 October 2020, 18:35:29 GMT-4, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:Moses:
Do they really say that "so proficiency, fluency, and mastery are not important?"
Or
That we should use our mother tongues at the primary level, at the very list, and promote African languages? Ngugi recently won the prize in Swahili, and his recent novel is written in English.
Which is why I have no sympathy for the pseudo-Afrocentric nonsense that English (or other European languages) is not our mother tongue so proficiency, fluency, and mastery are not important.
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday, October 30, 2020 at 5:28 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Note on Theoretical Marginalization and Language
One of the questions put to me during the session is how the marginalized theoretical and scholarly perspectives of Nigeria/Africa can receive serious reception and respect in a global (read Western-dominated) academic culture that devalues Global South thinkers and thinking by default and values Euro-American ones also by default.
There are several strategies, some of which I shared with the group, but one aspect of the answer that I didn't get to cover adequately is that of language. In my experience the cheapest, easiest excuse that the Western academy uses to exclude and disenfranchise African scholars and their perspectives is to say that their writing is poor—that they can't write.
There are of course all kinds of racist and othering underpinnings to this tactic, but sometimes the excuse is based on an actually existing writing deficit. And I would argue, following our late friend, Pius Adesanmi, that to be taken seriously and be reckoned with in the Western academy, we have to write back to Western theorists as insurgents bypassing and crashing the gates and gatekeepers but we have to do so in a language that is intelligible to the gatekeepers, in their own academic lexicon. That way, you take that go-to alibi off the table and compel them to examine and engage with your work on its merit.
You can have, as Africa-based scholars often do, radical, iconoclastic, novel, and revisionist perspectives, theories, and approaches, but if you do not deprive your Western interlocutors of the poor writing excuse, they'll always use it to exclude you.
That is why I emphasize linguistic mastery and writing excellence, and lament the decline of writing in Nigerian universities. If the writing is bad no one is going to grasp or have the patience to comprehend the radically new theory and argument you're advancing. And this contention applies to all disciplines, including the hard sciences.
Which is why I have no sympathy for the pseudo-Afrocentric nonsense that English (or other European languages) is not our mother tongue so proficiency, fluency, and mastery are not important. Whether we like it or not, English is the scholarly Lingua Franca of the world we live in and your access to global scholarly conversations and intellectual capital is directly proportional to your written and oral fluency in it. Ask the South Asian scholars of the subaltern collective how they broke through and forced their theories on the Western academy after going through a similar complaining phase as us.
More importantly, if we're asking for a hearing at the theoretical table, it is not compromise or self-betrayal to adopt the prevailing paradigmatic linguistic medium. After all, we're the ones seeking to alter the global epistemological dynamic, force a reckoning with African and Africa-derived theories, and teach Western scholars our ways of knowing and seeing the world.
--
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