Abstract

This document was written in the early years of this century, about 15 years ago. It emerged out of more than a decade’s engagement in matters of multilingualism, language, politics and education in Mozambique specifically, and Southern Africa more generally, that we had been involved in through the Centre for Research on Bilingualism at Stockholm University. The document itself was written at the request of SIDA, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and its research wing, SAREC, that had funded the majority of projects in language and education up until that point. The idea was to craft the outlines in a working document of a more comprehensive and sustained policy, or action plan, on issues of language in developing contexts. This was at a time of a growing awareness in the organization that its key funding areas – democracy, poverty, education, youth – involved language in much more complex ways than hitherto envisaged, and that a specialist document written for the layman might enlighten and provide direction.

Highlights

  • The majority of the world’s nations are multilingual, many of the languages spoken have little or no official recognition in the conduct of everyday affairs of State, nor do they figure in any major way in development discourses

  • We will suggest that more attention be paid to the various ways in which development can benefit from the use of local multilingualisms

  • Our focus will be on the role that language and multilingualism play at the level of formal politics and organization, as well on the informal arenas where the everyday realities of poverty and its ramifications are linguistically managed

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Summary

University of the Western Cape and Stockholm University

A note on the background to this paper This document was written in the early years of this century, about 15 years ago. Kenneth Hyltenstam and I had earlier argued that questions of educational delivery needed to look beyond bricks and mortar, text books and desks in order to focus on subtleties and complexities of workings of language that could not be dealt with in unit and audit terms. The notion of linguistic citizenship emerged out of the felt need for a perspective that situated linguistic practices and representations of speakers firmly within their everyday sociopolitical strivings for agency and transformation It built on Nancy Fraser’s (1995) notion of bivalent collectivity that refers to groups where neither socio-economic maldistribution or cultural misrecognition are an indirect effect of the other, but where both are primary and co-original. Not much has happened in one important respect, and that is in developing a more adequate understanding of the potential in a rethought idea of language for managing vulnerability

INTRODUCTION
At the nexus of vulnerability
MULTILINGUALISM AND
MULTILINGUALISM IN HEALTH
MULTILINGUALISM IN
Findings
SUMMARY
Full Text
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