The English question

The book cogently examines the politics over language in a global context

Can a country sideline her native language to encourage teaching in a non-native/ “foreign” language because the latter helps develop her “international” image? Why are nations where English is not the first language increasingly offering or teaching courses in English? Should one ignore their mother tongue for better employment opportunities? Or, if one must get back to the basics, is language related to a nation’s identity? Should it be related, or become its defining characteristic? What happens to those countries that are inherently multilingual such as India, where the current government’s agenda is to impose Hindi as a national language?

These are complex but necessary questions. Though the discourse on language hegemony is not new, in The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of Language, Rosemary Salomone comprehensively addresses these issues, contextualising the language debate in a post-colonial and Covid-19 pandemic world. What’s more laudable about this work is that though it has a razor-sharp focus on the issue at hand, it nowhere misses tangential aspects that deserve to be considered in dealing with a sensitive subject like language.

Divided into three parts — “Multilingual Europe”, “Shadows of Colonialism”, and “Defying the Monolingual Mindset” — this book is a result of nine-year-long research. The author was involved in writing commentaries on “legal disputes in Italy and France over the use of English to teach university courses” when she realised that “unpacking those debates meant delving into the impact of globalisation, international education, and the knowledge economy as shaped by neoliberalism and the force of English as the dominant lingua franca.” Perhaps because the author was privy to the “world of language learners” as a young adult, she is in a position to address the socioeconomic, cultural, and nationalistic as well as technical, legal, and political aspects on the rise of English worldwide.

Salomone pries open an array of interesting findings that are not only linked to the colonial past and histories but are also indicative of the present and imagined futures. For example, in the first part, she discusses the “Mother Tongue Plus Two” initiative of the European Union (EU) — an attempt to “encourage language learning” besides one’s mother tongue. Over the years, and specifically after Brexit, the EU has observed no matter what steps it takes or strategies it formulates to promote “plurilingualism”, there appears to be a “sameness” in the way countries are faced with the English conundrum. On one hand, each member-country harbours nationalistic pride to speak, celebrate, and promote its mother tongue. On the other, the temptation of economic prosperity that English offers in a globalised world — in terms of “access”, “job mobility”, and enhanced visibility — is far too enormous to ignore.

The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of Language

Author: Rosemary Salomone

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Price: $35

Pages: 453

In the chapter titled “A High-Stakes Movement”, Salomone notes: “As English gains economic and intellectual capital, universities face the reality that English is no longer the wave of the future but an imperative of the present.” The author presents a list of internal and external demands to explain the increased worldwide reliance on English.

The former (internal) includes budgets, national directives, and funding incentives. And the latter (external) is “tied to globalisation, including EU resolutions, university ranking systems, and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) global assessments.” The metrics and ranking systems are critical here, for no country wants its universities to not be recognised or left out in the “internationalisation” game. Therefore, to secure this socio-political competitive advantage, which also doubles up as “soft power”, non-Anglophonic countries tweak their educational policies, even at the cost of inviting unrest in their countries.

In the chapter “Shakespeare in the Crossfire”, Salomone takes two countries — France and Italy — as cases in point to showcase how the mother tongue-versus-English battle is playing out in their distinct linguist atmospheres arising out of different constitutional motivations. In “Headwinds from the North” she cites the Netherlands as an example of how the country has embraced English to an extent that it’s no longer a “foreign” but “second” language. It’s fitting at this point to turn to India, where the language debate is hot.

In “Confronting the Raj”, Salomone uses two Bollywood hits — English Vinglish and Hindi Medium — to set the stage for understanding how deeply ingrained English is in Indian society and its association with progress, class, and capital. What is really admirable about Salomone’s treatment of this subject in an Indian context is that it contextualised diverse viewpoints while presenting the conflict. Most importantly, she doesn’t miss a crucial aspect that most Indians or Indian-origin scholars conveniently do: Caste. She notes how the “privileged world of English speakers” is a result of the caste-based divide, and why many Dalits, such as the writer Chandra Bhan Prasad, prefer English over Indian languages because the latter reek of the “legacy of caste”. But she does fall prey to the notion of understanding caste through the varna system, which doesn’t accommodate the multitudinous and diverse dimensions of caste in India.

Despite that Salomone deftly charts out the language war (what else is it?) in the country. While the Hindu-nationalistic government wants Hindi to be imposed everywhere, southern states vehemently, and rightly, resist this move. One wonders what it’d take political opportunists to realise that there’s more value in cultural exchange and dialogue than homogeneity. Sadly, they fail to do so, which is why no one from the government has acknowledged Geetanjali Shree’s novel, Ret Samadhi’s English translation, Tomb of Sand, by Daisy Rockwell winning the International Booker Prize. Shree is the first-ever South Asian author to win the prize. While it’s good to respect boundaries, one should be fluid in imagining them as Shree does in her prose, and what Salomone seems to be proposing by referring to an article (“The Empire Writes Back with a Vengeance”) by Salman Rushdie. She submits that we have to move beyond locating languages at the “centre or the periphery” and celebrate “transnational space inhabited by people traveling across linguistic and cultural boundaries.”

The reviewer is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. Instagram/Twitter: @writerly_life