Bilingual inequality: Linguistic rights and disenfranchisement in late Belgian colonization

Meeuwis, Michael

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.10.009

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…For that matter, the fact that French was slowly becoming more popular in the colony need not only be attributed to the ambitions of the évolués, who were attempting to climb the social ladder using education (see, e.g., Meeuwis, 2011). It was only natural that as the colonial structures became increasingly complex, the demand for a single administrative language would grow.…”

Section: Indigenism As Educational Variant?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Colonial education in the Congo - a question of “uncritical” pedagogy until the bitter end?

Depaepe¹

2017

EOE

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Our approach is a historical, and not a theoretical or a philosophical one. But such an approach might be of help to understand the complexities and ambiguities of the pedagogical mentalities in the course of the twentieth century. As is usually the case in historical research the groundwork has to precede the formulation of hypotheses, let alone theories about the nature of pedagogical practices. Therefore, since the 1990s, “we” (as a team) have been busy studying the history of education in the former Belgian Congo. Of course since then we have not only closely monitored the theoretical and methodological developments in the field of colonial historiography, but have ourselves also contributed to that history. This article tries to give an overview of some of our analyses, concentrating on the question to what extend the Belgian offensive of colonial (i.e. mainly Catholic) missionary education, which was almost exclusively targeted at “paternalism”, contributed to the development of personal life, individual autonomy and/or emancipation of the natives. From the rear-view mirror of history we are, among other things, zooming in on the crucial 1950s, during which decade thoughts first turned to the education of a (very limited) “elite”. The thesis we are using in this respect is that the “mental space” of colonialism was not of a nature as to have a very great widening of consciousness among the local population as its effect.

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Section: Indigenism As Educational Variant?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Colonial education in the Congo - a question of “uncritical” pedagogy until the bitter end?

Depaepe¹

2017

EOE

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“…This excerpt starts with a discussion of language use in the Belgian Congo, which followed the interviewer's question about which languages the interviewee had to learn (lines 373-374). This discussion is related to the fact that Belgium has long been a French-dominated state and "the pace at which Dutch gained ground in Belgium […] was not paralleled by a similar rate of progress in the Congo", even though steps were undertaken towards the official equalization of Dutch to French in the Belgian Congo (Meeuwis 2011a(Meeuwis : 1281(Meeuwis -1282, see also Meeuwis 2011b). The interviewee sketches her own anti-French position in this situation and illustrates this with a story about a girl from a Flemish town (indicated here as N), as sketched in the orientation phase (line 380), who allegedly forgot her native language.…”

Section: Ir °Yes°mentioning

confidence: 99%

The discursive management of identity in interviews with female former colonials of the Belgian Congo

Mieroop¹,

Clifton²

2015

PRAG

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Whilst interviews are often regarded as an essential tool for social science, it has long been recognized that the interviewer has a formative role in the locally situated socio-communicative events that interviews are. Using transcripts of interviews elicited from female former colonials in the Belgian Congo, this article examines the way in which the interviewer, himself a former colonial, manages the construction of meaning and identity in relation to two intricately interwoven issues, namely the position of women and colonial society more generally. Findings demonstrate that the interviewer places the interviewees in a position of interactional subordination which also allows him, despite the threat to the interviewees’ face, to construct women as being superfluous both in 1950s-society in general and more specifically in the storyworld of the Belgian Congo, whilst at the same time he avoids any face threat to the colonial society more generally.

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“…This cannot simply be remedied by ensuring that no community is "overlooked" when drafting rights. In Meeuwis (2011a), it is explained how in later decades in the Congo, the Flemish linguistic claims threatened the social-economic emancipation of the Congolese, as the envisaged French-Dutch bilingualization of public service delivery would deny the latter, who had never been given access to Dutch, job opportunities in the colonial administration and local governments. In other words, discussions of linguistic human rights need to remain attentive to the fact that even when group rights are fashioned in parliament, as was done for the Colonial Charter, other groups may experience inherent, undemocratic effects of injustice from such a seemingly "democratic" process.…”

Section: Please Note That This Is a Prefinal Author's Version In Ordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language legislation in the Belgian Colonial Charter of 1908: a textual-historical analysis

Meeuwis

2014

Lang Policy

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When in 1908 the Belgian government took over the Congo from King Leopold II, a charter was drafted that would serve as a constitution-like statutory code for the new colony. Article 3 in this "Colonial Charter" dealt with language and linguistic rights. It epitomized the duality of language questions with which Belgium remained faced until Congolese independence in 1960, namely the tension between the French-Dutch language question (i.e., language choices for communication among the Belgian population in the colony) and the indigenous language question (i.e., choices for communication between colonizer and colonized). As such, article 3 was the expression of a microcosm of ideologies and political considerations that surrounded language and group relations at the time of its creation. Already hard to understand by laymen in its own time, the text defies a straightforward interpretation when read today in the absence of sufficient historical and contextual information. Presented in this paper are the following: an account of the article's genesis, a sentence-by-sentence exegesis and an examination of some of its consequences. These are followed by a discussion of the theoretical significance of a historical case study of this kind for better understanding the broader issue of linguistic human rights

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Bilingual inequality: Linguistic rights and disenfranchisement in late Belgian colonization

Cited by 9 publications

References 27 publications

Colonial education in the Congo - a question of “uncritical” pedagogy until the bitter end?

Colonial education in the Congo - a question of “uncritical” pedagogy until the bitter end?

The discursive management of identity in interviews with female former colonials of the Belgian Congo

Language legislation in the Belgian Colonial Charter of 1908: a textual-historical analysis

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