Dialectic difference ain’t wrong

Embracing Linguistic Diversity: A Path to Equity

3-minute read time
Gogo Isolezwe (they/ them)

Language transcends space and time and how we define things colourfully gives meaning to our way of life. Integral to culture, it informs our terms of engagement and endearment how we relate to each other and see each other's ways of being as valid. It's the bounce in my step, the suave in my bow, and the pride in the click of my tongue. How are multiple literacies, not a superpower?

Language is profoundly historical and a guiding force from once we came. In the continual Anglophonification of the world, the development of how we relate to each other creates room for belonging. It crafts reality, now what of this reality when I ‘ain’t’ catered for, when ‘ithini kanene’ jerks my educators' into a fit of racism ‘this is not a township school’ rather than a linguistic celebration! In this way, language becomes yet another measure of policing and behavioural conditioning.  

Standard colonial English as a core language has significance in so far as language is the instrument through which knowledge is shared and largely produced. Coloniality taints countries with historical nuance, making the inquiry into the historical content that is published and by whom this knowledge is produced vital. It’s interesting to observe colonial voices and perspectives break through liberal democracy to still dictate teaching and learning processes.

It is important to note that the problem does not simply lie with knowledge production but it is with knowledge dissemination and facilitation. Standard colonial English, paired with a polished accent and causal roll of the tongue becomes the gatekeeping measure of intelligence and the superior language in the process of imparting knowledge. It continues to give impetus to cultural erasure, racism and colonialism.

However, it is insufficient to simply change the language of dissemination and call it decoloniality, it is the one-sided and single-voiced epistemologies that need to be unlearnt, re-thought and re-learnt. Simply translating current epistemologies from English into an African language or African American Vernacular English, although it may be a step toward decolonial thinking, is not enough to remove the underlying dimensions of power and eliminate coloniality. 

We should be encouraging learners to be active participants making them cognisant of the power that lies in their margins as the majority. For education to be decolonised, systems of knowledge production need to move students from being the subject and be allowed to become the knower. In so saying, it is essential to note the significance of what is taught in schools and how its taught, in the foundational phases, as the curriculum shapes the mind and informs what the learner is to take and deem important.  It is crucial to have the language to frame Black existence as a knowledge well and students as equity solution architects

In the now developing countries, dialectal difference creates a unique pattern of imposed inferiority reproducing hierarchical societies. Language is tied to history and culture and is a powerful symbol of social identity. My language is my safety.