Going to the bush: language, power and the conserved environment in southern Africa

Abstract

English, in the words of Bill Bryson, ‘is one of the world's great growth industries’. Like some kind of metalanguage with its own Europe‐based meaning systems, it has constructed its own discourses in relation to Africa's conserved natural environment, nature documentaries, tourism and environmental education – at the expense of indigenous knowledge systems, cultural practices and languages. This paper examines the potency of English when it comes to notions such as that of the animal, the ‘wilderness experience’, hunting practices and ‘the African bush’ and how these meaning systems have percolated through to environmental education in relation to conserved areas in eastern and southern Africa. Drawing on critical language awareness theories and informal interviews and discussions with staff and students (representing a multitude of languages) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, the predominance and hegemony of English as the exclusive language of learning and teaching in environmental education is questioned.