Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

132 Language Planning and Education
Such figures, and the testimony of observers (e.g. Ridge 2000), impel one to the
conclusion that, despite the constitution, the dominance of English in contemporary
South Africa is increasing rather than diminishing, a trend that gives weight to
Maclean and McCormick’s (1996: 329) suggestion that the official multilingualism
of the constitution has a primarily symbolic purpose, and to the suspicion voiced by
de Swaan (2001a: 140) that the current situation is not entirely displeasing to the
country’s leaders.
The wider lesson, however, is not that there is no problem: a greater public
role for indigenous African languages would clearly be beneficial, and English does
have an undue dominance in education. It is rather that solutions remain elusive.
As we have seen, official recognition and official promotion top-down cannot of
themselves improve a language’s status if its speakers prefer to learn and use some
other language to enhance their employment prospects. And calls for the revalorisation
of indigenous African languages, as exemplified by the sociolinguistically
flawed Asmara Declaration, may draw attention to an inequitable situation but do
not of themselves provide the resources nor create the political will necessary for their
implementation.
The South African situation also highlights, once again, the limited capacity
language status planning has of itself to alter the sociolinguistic balance of power.
To bring that about some more profound economic reconfiguration is needed that
makes the other languages of South Africa equally attractive to the population. As
Kamwangamalu (2003: 244) remarks, ‘the masses need to know what an education
in these languages [the nine indigenous official languages] would do for them in
terms of upward social mobility’. Ridge (2000: 166) makes a similar point when he
argues that:
the dominant position of English in South Africa is … the choice of a non-English
majority, who have real needs which they see as met through the language. …
They deserve to be taken seriously.
It needs spelling out, perhaps, that these South African applied linguists are not
arguing that the language provisions of the constitution8 are unnecessary or
misguided. Rather that – given the complex socio-economic and ideological forces
currently operating in favour of English – they are not sufficient to reduce English
to equality with the other official languages. Reconciling the popular demand for
education in English with action to elevate the status of indigenous African
languages is, thus, a more delicate and complex matter than some have supposed, not
just in South Africa but even more so in the weaker states to the north. We return to
this issue in a little more detail in Chapter 7, but for the present we move on to
consider the impact of English spread on cultural diversity.
5.2.2 English as threat to cultural diversity: assessing the claims
In critical writings, English is often implicated in globalising processes of cultural
homogenisation and Americanisation. One of the more ‘up-front’ assertions of this