Decolonizing (applied) linguistics in Pakistan

There is a growing tendency globally that suggests decolonizing the social sciences by disrupting colonial legacies. It is argued that the social sciences, including the field of linguistics, are heavily influenced by Eurocentric Enlightenment thinking.1 In the words of Ngugi wa Thiong’O, an African theorist, ”intellectuals of the European Enlightenment and their work came to occupy the center stage in a vast echo chamber. For one, they held powerful positions in their different academies and apart from mutual intertextuality, they would pass their unified perspective on to their students who would of course pass it on till it became a tradition – an inheritable truth’’2. In response, scholars in both the Global South and the Global North have engaged in decolonial epistemic struggles over the years to rethink the social sciences for ruptures within several disciplines of social sciences to reclaim local knowledge and intellectual traditions. As an example, Syed Hussain Alatas, a Malaysian intellectual, often considered among the pioneers of intellectual decolonization pointed to the fact how ‘the captive mind’ of Asian intellectuals as a feeble tendency from the South defers to Northern ideas, evaluations, and solutions, as if the South were still slaves to their colonial masters. Consequently, he sought to overcome this dependence on Northern paradigms and establish an Asian social science tradition that is genuine and autonomous 3.

Like other social sciences disciplines, Linguistics as a field, which is often defined as ‘the scientific study of language i’ is also influenced by colonial knowledge structures and language ontologies. In many Pakistani universities, theoretical and applied linguistics are often taught, learned, and researched within the confines of colonial linguistics. It is largely evident in HEC’s curriculum and policies that emphasize central concepts in the linguistics (both theoretical and applied) that have their origins in the Global North. The approved linguistics and applied linguistics courses are largely characterized by white linguistics and Eurocentric theorizations as illustrated in the topics, such as the British and American English development of modern linguistics, Saussure as the founder, Chomsky’s revolution in modern linguistics, and the consideration of linguistics as a discipline that has specific disciplinary boundaries etcetera. Arguably, the way we teach theoretical linguistics and/or applied linguistics as epistemic projects at Pakistani universities guides its practical applications and outcomes in the form of language teaching, curriculum development and policymaking. Some researchers in Pakistan have illustrated how national English curricula, national policy documents, and English proficiency assessment reports are characterized by deficit ideologies that emphasize a specific notion of English proficiency, which serves as a line of demarcation between proficient and deficient English teachers, as well as strengthening socioeconomic and linguistic hierarchy 4. These policies, curricula, and pedagogies reproduce and reinforce the Anglonormativity in Pakistani higher education as well as in secondary English curriculum and pedagogy while leaving little room for alternative voices and knowledge, thereby making it difficult for the ontological return of the damné – diverse communities of teachers, learners, parents, curriculum developers, policy makers and others 5.

Such orientation to linguistics as a field has been criticized by several scholars in the Global South as well as in the North for its inability to capture the view how alternative ways of studying language and linguistics can be thought in different parts of the world. For example, Asif Agha, professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, USA argues that such an extractionist impulse to linguistics as the study of a language-fraction (phonemes, morphemes, syntactic structures, meaning etc.) is just one thread of linguistics that emerged in the twentieth century, particularly in its dominant departmentalized forms led by the leading linguists of the period – Saussure, Bloomfield, Chomsky and their followers 6. Many scholars in the Global North also argue how folk linguistics was dismissed in favor of either a scientific or nationalist linguistics, which is often attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). As Nelson Flores contends, Saussure differentiates between langue – an abstract system and parole – practice where he places langue at the center of linguistics that needs to be studied as a neutral and objective structure 7. Such an orientation is argued to align with the codification of standardized languages that led to the nationalist projects in Europe by creating homogenous groups as national subjects based on language. This was well evident in the nationalist philosophy of Herder – a German philosopher. Norman Fairclough – a British critical applied linguist explains, ‘‘I am not suggesting that Saussure and other linguists set out to deliberately reproduce a politically motivated myth in their linguistic theory. But is it accidental that the emergence of the notion of langue occurred during a period when the myth of ‘national language’ was at its height – the turn of the twentieth century?’ 8. Scholars therefore call such linguistic theories as restrictive epistemic projects 9 which fail to account for nuanced understanding of language and doing linguistics. For Renan – a French intellectual, such preoccupations divide the humanity rather than unify it. As he notes,

Let us not abandon the fundamental principle that man is a reasonable and moral being, before he is cooped up in such and such a language, before he is a member of such and such a race, before he belongs to such and such a culture. Before French, German, or Italian culture, there is human culture 10.

It bears mentioning here that early formulations gave rise to several linguistic myths, such as standardization, native speakerism, superiority of white linguistics, language as bounded entities with ‘real’ linguistic boundaries, viewing language as an identity marker etcetera. Thus, this requires a serious attention in contemporary Pakistan to align theoretical and applied linguistics with the decolonial and southern scholarship globally to disrupt colonial knowledge structures in Pakistani academia to not only retain local intellectual traditions but also bring them in dialogue with the scholars in the Global North. As Suresh Canagarajah, a leading applied linguist in the Global North with Southern roots also notes this in his recent interviewii:

The academic mainstream seems to have moved from things we like in the East – error analysis, interference hypothesis, English-only, grammatical norms, native speakerism etcetera. They are not the big things here in the west. Scholars in the west are talking about diversity, multilingualism, translingualism, and decolonization. It is ironic that they are talking about decolonization in the west than in the east, right? The irony is that we who know these colonizing experiences are not talking about them. We are going after the western knowledge—which is like fifty years old. The people who are talking more about colonizing experiences and indigenous epistemologies in the west, they are doing this as an academic fashion because this is not indigenous to their practices. So, it is a very sad situation. I guess it is eventually an ideological problem. It is not about our intelligence or knowledge. It is about what our people want, and what they value. And I guess a lot of Global South countries are still part of the thinking that development in terms of the west is what all the countries have to move towards – that is, technological development, economic development, modernist progress. It is assumed that everyone should speak the same language and works towards the same progress. That ideology is still informing curriculum practice and pedagogies all over the world 13.

Alternatively, we see a growing scholarship influenced by critical and social turns under a plethora of theoretical perspectivesiii, such as critical theory, poststructuralism, decoloniality, southern scholarship, posthumanism, socio-materialism, complex dynamic system theory (CDST) and others that have led the academic scholarship in (applied) linguistics to re-conceptualize and retheorize the field and its basic concepts. Similar to this, a range of debates and conceptual innovations prevail in contemporary critical scholarship in language studies and other interdisciplinary fields that need a careful attention in Pakistani academia while developing curricula, pedagogies and policies for teaching linguistics as a field. For example, Pennycook’s epistemic turns in applied linguistics suggest how various shifts in critical scholarship in language studies can be taken into account in contemporary thought. As he notes, we need to look at different turns – material, discursive, translingual, raciolinguistic, queer, practice, multilingual and decolonial, for example, and read against each other critically to shape our contemporary academic commitments in the field 18. These new formulations and new thinkings have implications for how think about language, linguistics, English language teaching (ELT), curricula, pedagogies and policy discourses.

Amidst such growing academic literature globally, the questions, however, arise where do we stand as Pakistani applied linguists, policy makers, curriculum developers and pedagogues? Are we ready for the disruption of hierarchization that we witness in knowledge production and structures in (applied linguistics) as a field of inquiry? Are we ready to bring alternative voices in the form of local intellectual traditions in our academia while studying linguistics? Are these voices, if retained, brought systematically in dialogue with what people in the Global North engage with having similar commitments – critical scholarship, decolonial and southern epistemologies? These like many other questions are call of the hour to rethink and reshape ‘knowledge’ in social sciences including language studies in Pakistani academia. Since I remember as a teacher and a student at Pakistani universities, the classes were replete with ‘white linguistics’ that needs dismantling on intellectual fronts. This, however, should not imply a total delinking from the Western thinking. In words of Pennycook and Makoni, the greatest challenge to applied linguistics for the South is to bring diversity in (applied) linguistic thought rather than just total de-linking 19. This requires scholars from Pakistan to overcome colonial influences in the field in the first place to counter the hierarchy of knowledge that gives birth to several linguistic myths, knowledge inequalities and exclusion of the ‘local’ from the academia. Some scholars like Ahmar Mahboob – a Pakistani applied linguist has proposed ‘Subaltern Linguistics’ defined as:

Subaltern linguistics is a linguistics carried out by and for a community’s self-empowerment, well-being, and prosperity. Subaltern linguistics can be carried out by anyone. And it can be done in any language – it does not need to use or rely on English or on technical jargon. The goal of subaltern linguistics, or, more broadly, subaltern practice, is to create economies, practices, projects, and resources that can be made and used by community members and leaders to develop and promote community beneficial socio-semiotic processes in their own language (or a language of their choice). Socio-semiotics can be broadly understood as ways in which various meaning-making resources (including, but not limited to, images, texts, colors, symbols, gestures, movement, sounds, smells, tastes, touch) relate to the lives of people 20.

Aligning with subaltern linguistics, I consider Thiong’O’s ‘globalectics’ as a promising vision suggesting ‘a mutual containment of hereness and thereness in time and space where time and space are in each other’ 21. Such a vision enables disruption of the hierarchies – the western scholarship at the top followed by other diverse epistemologies. It views knowledge, languages, literatures, cultures as interrelated as a rhizome – a network where different people can learn from each other. The scholarship in the South can inform the Global North and vice versa. Therefore, (applied) linguistic epistemic projects need to take into account diverse epistemologies – Asian, African, European, North and Latin American and several others both in terms of geography and epistemology while developing subject-matter of social sciences disciplines and also paying closer attention to how English as a language intervenes in this whole epistemological network. Given the hegemonic position of English in knowledge production, critical scholarship in language studies calls for translingual and transepistemic education, where communication is seen not only in terms of monolingual norms (English-only) but in diverse linguistic and semiotic repertoire. Whereas transepistemic (language) education looks at the learning, teaching, knowing and being which enables respectful and non-hierarchical knowledge co-creation in order to engage with languages, peoples, cultures and lands 22. These are some of the epistemic commitments that Pakistani academia has to reconsider in order to crumble the colonial wall that has been built historically and is evident in our ways of being, doing and knowing.

About the Author

Waqar Ali Shah

Waqar Ali Shah is currently a doctoral researcher at the Center for Applied Language Studies (CALS), University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His research interests center around critical scholarship in language studies, more particularly textbook studies, critical/cultural discourse studies, decoloniality, southern epistemologies, critical language pedagogy and academic writing and publishing practices. His research is mainly situated within the inter- and transdisciplinary frameworks connecting language studies to other fields of social sciences and humanities. As a young researcher, he has successfully published his both empirical and theoretical research in top tier international peer-reviewed journals. In addition, Waqar Ali Shah has also written articles for national and international magazines and newspapers, such as Voices (IATEFL, UK), World Times (Pakistan), Dawn (Pakistan). He has also written for local newspapers and magazines in Sindhi language. He is a university lecturer with the interest in teaching Applied Linguistics, critical discourse studies (CDS), and academic writing for research and publication. In addition, he has been a visiting research scholar at Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, Braunschweig, Germany, University of Valencia (UV), Spain through Erasmus+ FORTHEM Alliance program and Penn State University, USA under the supervision of Suresh Canagarajah – a leading applied linguist globally.

This critical essay discusses how the field of linguistics – theoretical and applied – are heavily influenced by colonial knowledge structures and ideologies in Pakistani academia. These colonial ideologies are evident in the policies and curricula recommended by HEC for university degrees in (applied) linguistics and further reinforced through pedagogy and research practices. Thus, this essay argues that amidst the decolonial and southern epistemologies and struggles currently taking place in many colonized parts of the world, there is a pressing need for disrupting colonial discourses in linguistics in Pakistan so that alternative local intellectual traditions can flourish and critical scholarship from the Global North can engage with local theory and knowledge in a critical dialogue.