English
Linguistic Imperialism
If we talk about imperialism, we
need to know first what Imperialism is. As we see in a real world, everything
has been becoming a part of imperialism, for example, we see there are so many
English words, written in one of the restaurant that is not located in London.
Then in Indonesia, people now are trying to reach west culture as their
culture, for example, people usually wear clothes which are designed with
English words, and people feel satisfied when they speak in English with
foreigner. From this kind of symptoms, we
can identify the definition of imperialism. As
I know that the definition of imperialism is one country rules others. From
those examples, we can notice that we are being imperialized by English.
After we know the meaning of
imperialism, in this paper I try to explain about linguistic imperialism that
English has been doing to other countries over the world. The meaning of
linguistic imperialism includes the process of culture colonized, politics,
economics, and language itself. Like people usually said as
Eurocentric, people over the world head to west to determine their life. Many Eurocentric
concepts conform the pattern of how racism is affirmed, in the Robert Phillipson’s book (P.
38) “Linguistic Imperialism”, means
of 1. Self-exaltation on the part of the dominant group which creates an
idealistic image, for example, White Americans who consider themselves as
dominant group between
black people. 2. The devaluation of the dominated group, and the suppression
and stagnation of its culture, institutions, life-styles, and ideas, for
example, English language as dominated language over the young people in Africa
which change and influence their cultural aspect also. 3. Systematic
rationalization of the relationships between both groups, always favorable to
the dominant group (Preiswerk, 1980).
In this case, it gives real fact to
the world that English is imperializing other countries to be as English
itself. It means that English must be spread to every country in the world,
cultures which are not suitable to English must be changed to English culture,
and their own language (Mother Tongue) must be English. I do not know whether
people in this sense of imperialism will agree with this era because every
country has their own language and culture, they also have their own linguistic
as their identity.
Actually I do not agree with English as soft
imperialism to the world. I will show some reasons that tell us English
Linguistic Imperialism threat the existence of indigenous language instead of
English.
We are as human beings live in the world categorized
by inequality of gender, nations and nationality, race, class, culture, and
language. We cannot separate all aspect of this life because we need them all.
The most need for us as identity is our language that distinguishes us from
other ethnics in the world. English linguistic imperialism is the dominance of
English is asserted and maintained by the establishment and continuous
reconstitution of structural and cultural inequalities between English and
other languages. For example, English have to teach in school, included the
materials of teaching must be English, and the teacher must speak in English. British
and America have developed the way they can make English become worldwide. They
make a structural system of teaching English in other countries, so that English
can be easily understood by people. This system is called English Language
Teaching (ELT). In Robert’s book,
he explained about ELT that refers
to seeing methods, techniques, and procedures to teach English. ELT makes the
language teaching become more useful and more efficient because the way of
teaching the language is arranged by the native English and based on English
system of teaching itself. ELT seems to be marketable worldwide after its
contribution to the English spreading.
An example tells us about the way
English is represented and practiced in other countries. Let see from
Indonesia. An example when
Indonesia shows an
English teaching series on television, people of Indonesia are more attractive
to that than Indonesia teaching series. Nowadays, English becomes so popular
over the societies in Indonesia even they life-styles imitate English
life-styles. I actually do not agree with that kind of behaviors because it can
cause fatal effects to their own life. If we see from in Indonesia, people
effort to change their life because they
think English (British and America) is more modern than Indonesia. we can see
from their way of naming something, for example, the name of a restaurant in
Jakarta “Betawi Special Food Court”, they use English words to represent their
perspective that if they use English words, the customers will be more
interested than if we use Indonesia words “Makanan Khas Betawi”, people or
customers will often come to this restaurant. From this example, we know that
even villagers such Betawi people are also getting imperialized by English.
There are so many English words used in Indonesia, not only in the way of
naming things, but also the style of daily life, for example, Tony is my
friend. He always wear clothe with English words written on it like Eminem song
lyrics clothes. Then he also always sings English songs. When I asked him why
do not you take a look at Indonesia clothes and song?
I enjoyed listening to Indonesian music as well, but
you always collect English song in your hand phone. I noticed that Tony have
been influenced by English imperialism. Another example can show us how importance English
in our daily life is the words written on the direction in traffic jam. Police
officers put the directional sign in English words like Stop, Turn Right, Turn
Left, Straight Forward, Back, Slippery Way, Be Careful, so on. We can see there
are no Indonesia words written on it such as Hati-Hati, Belok Kiri and Belok Kanan and so on. I do not think all
people in Indonesia can read the direction because maybe not all citizens
understand English words. We do not think about them. Why do not we use Indonesia
words instead of using English word for only a direction? Also if we use Indonesian
words, we also show that we have our own language and it is used in every
aspect of our life. Language is our identity and if it is changed by another
language (English), how can we save our language, our mother tongue if we
prefer to use English words to Indonesia words.
This example is one of the real situations
of ELT’s effect to Indonesia education system in school. In my hometown,
Bengkulu, there is an International School that uses English as their dominance
language in school. The first thing we can pay attention is the students. The
students of that school are required to be able to speak English in
conversation with friends in school area, if any of the students do not speak English,
they will got punishment. The second thing is that the materials of teaching
process also follow English system. The third thing is the teacher of that
school must be able to speak English fluently because they must speak in
English while they are teaching the students and not only English subject the
teacher must speak English, but they also speak in English in every subject,
such as Biology subject in English, the teachers teach Math in English. How can
this happen to people of Indonesia? Everyone is trying to be Englishman. They
forget about their original identity, they forget to preserve their culture and
their own language, they forget about their mother tongue, they forget about
everything because the big imperialism era of English. From this kind of
example, we find how big the influences of English linguistic imperialism in Indonesia.
What about in other countries? We will see the efforts of ELT and English
linguistic imperialism in other countries such as Africa then. I cannot imagine
what will happen in the next years if people all over the world are ruled by
English. I think, Indonesian itself will be part of English, and English become
second language among people of Indonesia. It will happen if people of Indonesia
do not realize about it and of course, we will lose our language and our
nationality. There is no patriotism in linguistic aspect to keep save our
language.
The first thing I can notice that English linguistic
imperialism will not be worldwide anymore because of several reasons. It makes
me feel more comfortable about the mother tongue of a country. There is a
political disconnection of ELT in its general educational context, language
learning and teaching. At first ELT think that it can improve the teaching
systems such as transformation of teaching methodologies and materials for
school, but it seems failed because they are too confident to suit English in
other languages. This confident feeling sometimes causes some failures. The
clear example of the failures is that ELT in Indonesia. ELT teachers should
stress on the familiarity with local culture and teaching context which
actually is crucial. They suffered to teach ELT in Indonesia because they did
not appreciate the local condition in Indonesia. As a result, they did not
reach their target to teach English in Indonesia. There is another example of
the failure of ELT that is the methods of teaching. The teachers nowadays
teach, using English language for other subjects unless English subject such as
math, biology, history, physics, and of course English subject itself.
An example to make it clear is that
the problems in Africa. ELT tried to teach English in Africa without paying
attention to the local culture and language. As we know that before English
imperialism come to Africa, they already have their own language and culture
that unite them, and they use their own language to talk each other. Then
during the imperialism era in Africa, English becomes the dominance language
among the younger, not the elderly. They slowly lose their language and their
culture. For
example, in school, the younger generations who go to school will be taught
English and talk to friend with English. Then it seemed like they will feel
lose because their younger generations start to imitate Western life-styles
instead of their own life-styles as before. Such this condition is called as
language loss, in my opinion.
In brief,
English Linguistic Imperialism brings bad effects to the indigenous language
and original culture of other countries except British and America. As I said
before that I do not agree to this statement that says “English is a soft
imperialism to the world”. I do not think that English can change our world. We
know that British and America become superior countries among others and
because of this symbol, people over the world head to them. English imperialism
causes so many problems such as:
a. Language
loses. It means that the indigenous language of a country is no longer used by
their people, for example in Africa.
b. Lose
identity
c. We
lose our original culture and characteristic of our country
d. There
is no patriotism to keep saving our language
I do not know about the issues that English will
become the second language of other countries and become the dominance language
also. It is the fact that English is the International Language right now. Other
countries use English words in their life, such as in Indonesia, China, Japan,
Korea, and others. It is the real evidence that English Linguistic Imperialism
is mostly successful. However, during the time of imperialism era, English also
got several failures when they made new educational system, called as ELT. In
some cases, the failures of ELT are:
1. British
and America ignorance of the local educational and linguistic context that are inappropriateness
to the western development models of educational and linguistic context.
2. They
lacked detailed knowledge of post-colonial education systems. they ignored the
Indigenous Language altogether
3. they
also just a narrow focus rather than general educational one
4. ELT can be a suspect of Language Loss
Biography
Phillipson,
Robert. Linguistic Imperialism. 1992. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 2008. Cambridge
University Press.
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