Institutional Identity and Multilingualism at University of Limpopo

Abstract

South Africa has generally been lauded for having a progressive language policy framework valorising diversity and multilingualism. Despite this, current governmental and institutional efforts made to support and empower historically marginalized (indigenous) languages have yielded poor or unimpressive results. This form of marginalization reflects larger problems of policy implementation not only by higher education but in the entire country. Since the new socio-political dispensation that began more than two decades ago, there has been very few studies that documented institutional reforms with regard to language planning and policy There has been a predominant focus in the literature on the implementation and the measurement of the policy outcomes, which predominantly identifies the lack of resources and political will as the cause of this problem. However, this focus mutes criticisms of institutional structures of higher education and elides questions about institutional cultures and unequal relations of power, which are crucial for understanding institutional identities and ideologies that undermine efforts for the promotion of African languages. In this chapter we review debates on language policy and institutional identities are framed within and by social and cultural structures. Locating the South African higher education as a structure, we show that through practices and policy, universities have not only embraced historical practices manifesting through the hegemony of English, they have also normalized a peculiar monolingual identity. On the other hand, we show sample redefining institutional identity through curriculum repackaging of the Bachelor of Arts in Contemporary English and Multilingual Studies BA (CEMS). Through the voices of selected practitioners as agents of change and insider, we demonstrate how the university may be a good candidate for bringing about the higher education structural reforms for wider institutional changes in the post-Apartheid era. In the end we offer suggestions for transformed institutional identity and areas of both practice and future research.KeywordsInstitutional identityMonolingual identityLanguage policyPost-apartheidEnglish hegemonyAfrican languages