Читать книгу Language Policy and Identity in Mauritania - El Hacen Moulaye Ahmed - Страница 9

Introduction

Language and identity have been twin souls alongside history or even before history. “This is why Rousseau leaves unresolved the problem of ‘which was the more necessary, society already formed to invent languages or languages already invented to form society?’” Thus, the social nature of the human being is intimately tied up with human linguistic ability (Fiala, 2002, p. 38). The inseparable relationship between language and identity led some linguists to neglect the other components of identity (e.g., culture, age, and religion) and declare that “the entire phenomenon of identity can be understood as a linguistic one” (Joseph, 2004, p. 12). Such intertwined relationship is characterized by fulfilled promises, mutual interests, and common needs. On the one hand, a human being has social interests and needs; accordingly, the identity of the individual as well as the state is formed and maintained through language. This is because language is “man’s way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals” (Crystal & Crystal, 2000, p. 3). On the other hand, Abley (2003) argued that language is nurtured and kept alive by verbal practices besides written transcripts (pp. 38–39).

In the context of the intertwined relation between language and identity, the coexistence between multilingual communities and their agreements over the language policy have created many problems for many countries that have multicultural diversity, for a state has to decide which language(s) should be selected and adopted as the official language(s), and some groups tend to refuse such policy and thus stage their protests. Indeed, Bretton (1976) argued “[i]t is clear why blood is drawn over language in certain situations: language is the key, or the set of keys, needed to unlock the gates of access to survival kits – employment, advancement, social security, physical security” (p. 444). In this regard, Weinstein (1983) stated that “[d]isagreement over the official language of a country and the medium of instruction in schools (which can be a disagreement about who shall participate in power, wealth, and prestige) is a source of conflict between ethnic groups [and] regions” (p. 15). Realistically speaking, loyalty to the state does not always override all other competing loyalties. For instance, Emerson (1959) stated that “[f]amily, tribe, locality, religion, conscience, economic interest, and a host of other appeals may at any given time and place prevail over national allegiance for particular individuals or groups” (p. 97).

Likewise, Thomason, among several other researchers, took for granted that “conflict is inherent in all multilingual settings” (2001, p. 34). One can remark that Thomason’s statement might be inadequate and adequate. In other words, while he might be right to underscore the persistence of conflicts over language policy in multilingual states, Thomason’s argument overlooks the fact that not all multilingual settings are the same. Indeed, even though France, among many other European countries, hosts many multilingual communities, the state was able to assimilate fully non-French speakers and thus had French language as a cornerstone of French identity. Other multilingual and multicultural countries, however, such as Algeria, if not all African countries, have been unable to fuse their population linguistically and thus tensions over language policy remained bubbling under the surface. Several reasons were given to the pervasiveness of the confrontations. According to Bngbose, African countries have failed to solve the problem of language conflict, and this is because of “avoidance, vagueness, arbitrariness, fluctuation and declaration without implementation” (Bngbose cited in Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 1995, p. 335).

Indeed, in modern-day Mauritania, officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, tensions over the language policy and identity are a case in point. Before zeroing in on such tension, it is imperative to mention that Mauritania represents a fascinating historical and contemporary multilingual and multicultural setting. It is composed of two main ethnic communities, Arab and African, that speak five languages, Arabic, Hassaniya, Pulaar, Wolof, and Soninke. The Arab community is labeled in Mauritania as the Bedan and speaks Arabic and Hassaniya. The term is defined in due time, and it is used throughout the study. Pulaar, Wolof, and Soninke are mother tongues of the African community, which is also called Kwr. The term does not have negative connotation as its definition later shows. As such, it is used throughout the present study instead of the derogatory phrase “Black” African. On related note, it should be emphasized also that the term “Berber” is not used in the study because it might have a pejorative meaning. Alternatively, the terms “Imazighen” (sg. Amazigh) and Tamazight are used to refer respectively to people and language. Tensions between the two ethnic groups have been frying ever since the inception of independence. The ethnic groups coexisted peacefully before the coming of the French colonizer in political systems known as emirates and tribes. As such, language was not an issue. The French assembled the two ethnic groups in one political territory in the sense of nation-state system and introduced their language to the people. The Kwr welcomed the French language and culture, whereas the Bedan rebuffed them.

Since the departure of the colonizer, language policy has been considered as the main reason behind the ethnic tensions in the state and thus the postponement of the establishment of, to use Simpson’s words, “an over-arching sense of belonging and loyalty to a collective ‘national’ whole” (2008, p. 2). When Mauritania became an “ex-colonial power” in 1960, the government followed the Moroccan steps in its attempts to move the state beyond its French colonial legacy through implementing Arabization policy, yet the Kwr ardently opposed such move, for they regarded Arabic implementation as a peril to their identities. They called instead for the use of French language, which they see as the solo guarantee of their identities. The Bedan, however, insisted that since they represented the overwhelming majority of the population, their language, Arabic, should be implemented in education as well as administration. As a result, protests, deadly clashes and heated debates over language policy characterized the postindependence period in Mauritania. We, thereby, seek to investigate the issue of language policy and identity in Mauritania. As such, we traced the past and witnessed the present Mauritanian’s identities and language policies, which the people of the state have been exposed to. An attempt also was made in order to unearth the Mauritanians’ language policy preference and the relationship, if any, between their identities and their language policy preference.

The rationale of selecting the topic of the study is neither an arbitrary effort nor an intellectual luxury. In contrast, it is a response to several interrelated factors. Generally speaking, language policy and identity is one of the most commonly discussed topics across disciplines because many problems in the modern-day world are caused directly or indirectly by them as mentioned earlier. Furthermore, to the best of this researcher’s knowledge, there is not even one single piece of work that has addressed the issue of language policy and identity in Mauritania. There is one short article, Pettigrew’s “Colonizing the Mahadra: Language, Identity, and Power in Mauritania under French Control” (2007), which as the title shows discusses the French attempt to colonize mahadra (traditional school) and thus introduces French language to Mauritanians in the colonial era. The other very few works were composed in Arabic and French and were devoted either to language policy (e.g., Queffélec & Ould Zein’s Actualités Linguistiques Francophones: Le Français en Mauritanie, 1997) or the history of the Mauritanian people (Mohamed Mahmud’s Conflict of Values in Mauritania, 2013). As such, the present study seeks to build the first body of literature on the issue of language policy and identity in Mauritania and thus fills a crucial gap. Such a gap may be due to the fact that the topic is considered as a very sensitive one in Mauritania. In fact, anyone who tries to explore language and identity in Mauritania might bring on himself or herself a social misfortune.

Moreover, the reason the present study has chosen Mauritania as a case study was not hit or miss. First, the history and the present of Mauritania and its people are shrouded behind a thick veil, for they do merely exist in the corpus of English literature. To the best of this researcher’s knowledge, there are only few works that were devoted primarily to charting out the culture, religion, and politics of Mauritania. Two works (Pazzanita’s Historical Dictionary of Mauritania, 3rd edition, 2008; Handlof et al. Mauritania: A Country Study, 1990) were composed in the form of dictionaries. Such form implies that the information provided in the books might be superficial since dictionaries are meant to cover all knowledge about a particular state or field. The other works include Ould-Mey’s Global Restructuring and Peripheral States: The Carrot and the Stick in Mauritania (1996), Blauer and Lauré’s Cultures of the World: Mauritania (2009) and very few others. As the titles of the article and books reveal, limited branches of knowledge are exposed to the readers. The absence of Mauritania from the corpus of English literature was also remarked by Yassin-Kassab and Sardar. They stated that “[d]espite the majority of their efforts often being overshadowed by Western media narratives, which tend to focus on isolated and often sensationalist topics, such as slavery, terror threats, or the practice of force feeding known as gavage” (2014, para. 6). As such, the study is the first to mirror a clear and full picture of language policy and identity in Mauritania.

Several factors can be listed as the main reasons behind the inattention in Anglo-American academia. To begin with, Mauritania is demographically, geographically, and economically irrelevant. The population of Mauritania is estimated to be only about 4 million. Such number makes it the smallest country in the North African region. It is also located at the extreme western edge of the Arab world. The remoteness from the Middle East contributed to its obscurity. Another important factor that might be behind the neglect of Mauritania in the Anglo-American scholarship is the perception that it falls within the sphere of French influence; therefore, it is irrelevant to English researchers and scholars. Moreover, high English is a rare commodity in Mauritania. The country does not have enough researchers who may represent it in the corpus of English literature. Besides, Mauritania is a poor if not the poorest country in the Arab world. Furthermore, unlike its neighbors in North Africa, Mauritania is only fifty-seven years old. Before the coming of the French colonizer, modern-day Mauritania was known by different names, and it was not a political territory in the sense of nation-state system. Rather, people were organized in emirates and tribal presidencies. Moreover, the fact that Mauritania is almost absent from the corpus of English literature might be due to the fact that it is religiously homogeneous. All Mauritanians are Muslims. The world might have given it more importance if it has a religious minority, say Christian or Jewish.

In addition, the importance of the study stems from the fact that it is not only a thorough introduction to an unfamiliar territory, Mauritania, but also a complementary contribution to knowledge about the “Arab” Maghreb in the Anglo-American academia. This is because studies on the Maghreb are relatively few in the corpus of English literature. Indeed, according to White and Zoubir (2016), the Arab Maghreb countries are relatively neglected in the Anglo-American scholarly works. White and Zoubir added that there are two reasons to this longstanding inattention. The Maghreb “is somehow part of the European especially France spheres of influence, and therefore not of particular relevance or interest to North American scholars.” Furthermore, “the Levant and the Golf region—the Arab-Israeli conflict, the instability of Lebanon and Syria, petropolitics, and the Gulf wars—have long attracted greater attention because of their geostrategic importance” (2016, p. xi). It seems that the geostrategic importance of the Levant and the Golf region made it a recurrent theme and thus eclipsing other themes about the Maghreb. Since Mauritania is part and parcel of the Maghreb, taking it as a case study is definitely a significant contribution that fills the gap in the corpus of English literature about the Maghreb.

In order to investigate thoroughly the language policy and identity in Mauritania, two main complementary methodologies are adopted. The first one involves a descriptive and analytical synthesis of primary and secondary sources. Primary sources include but not limited to accounts of the founding fathers and governmental documents (e.g. memories and census data). Concerning secondary sources, the study draws on innumerable books, articles, PhD dissertations, monographs, videos, to name but some (see bibliography). The first methodology is adopted in the first four chapters of the present study. The second methodology deployed in the study is empirical. It is used in the fifth chapter. In this respect, the study hypothesizes that

a. ethnic identity is stronger than any other identity, and

b. language policy is ethnically oriented.

To meet the overall aim of the study the following questions are raised:

a. How do the Mauritanians identify themselves?

b. Which language policy do they prefer?

c. Is there any relationship between their choice of language policy and their identity?

In order to answer and test the research questions and hypotheses about language policy and identity in Mauritania, two techniques, namely, questionnaire and interview, are used to collect data. The questionnaire, which was printed and administered on 506 students (254 Kwr students and 252 Bedan students) of the Modern University of Nouakchott, included seventeen mixed closed-ended and open-ended questions in order to elicit a clear and comprehensive data which helps in understanding the participants’ manifest and latent ideologies. The participants were selected based on nonprobability quota sampling in order to give all the ethnic groups equal rights to voice their perceptions of themselves and of their co-nationals as well as their attitudes toward the language policy of the state. By the same token, list of nine open-ended items were posed to two party chair-persons in one-to-one interview. The two parties, the Call of the Motherland and Alliance for Justice and Democracy/Movement for Renewal, were chosen on the basis of their ethnic orientations. Whereas the former represents itself as the champion of the Arab nationalism, the latter’s discourse is establishing the Kwr’s interests. As such, both of them are considered a representative sample of the parties as well as the people in Mauritania. Content analysis is used in approaching the elicited data. It is worth noting that the quantitative data elicited from the closed-ended questions in the questionnaire are treated by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (henceforth SPSS).

The study comprises five chapters. The first two chapters are intended to provide a conceptual aerial map, covering key concepts and theoretical debates over language policy and identity. The first chapter is devoted to defining key concepts, language, language policy, and identity. Types of language policy and identity are also charted out in the chapter. Besides, factors that affect language policy and markers of identity are discussed. The second chapter examines the interplay between language policy and identity. It discusses the role of language policy in nation-building and identity formation. It also investigates the role of identity in devising a particular language policy. Other issues discussed in the chapter are multilingualism and multiculturalism. Definitions and types of each one of them are outlined.

The third and fourth chapters constitute the bridge between the literature-review in the first two chapters and the fifth empirical chapter by situating the study and discussing themes and related themes of language policy and identity in Mauritania. The third chapter surveys the historical names through which Mauritania was known along the history. It also situates Mauritania geographically. After introducing the state, an investigation of themes pertaining to the people of the state is carried out. The tribal composition and religion are discussed. The fourth chapter, as aforementioned, is the first of its kind to anatomize here and there ethnic and national identities in Mauritania. Innovatively, the chapter also surveys the linguistic landscape of Mauritania. It endeavors to capture the languages spoken and used in Mauritania. Besides, the language policies, which modern-day Mauritania has adopted ever since the eleventh century, are investigated. In other words, precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial language policies are examined. The choice of the eleventh century as the starting point of analyzing language policy was due to the fact that the linguistic situation in modern-day Mauritania started to take its present shape ever since that period. This is because Arabic was introduced to Mauritanians with the Islamization process, which was led by the Almoravids in 1039.

The fifth, and final, chapter is devoted to discussing the obtained results. The elicited information is presented, and the hypotheses are tested and discussed. The study ends with representing the findings and suggesting some recommendations, which might solve the issue of language policy and identity in Mauritania.