The Ten Year Master Plan for a Trilingual Sri Lanka

The Ten Year Master Plan for a Trilingual Sri Lanka
(Previously published in The Island/3rd December 2010)

The 10 year National Master Plan for a Trilingual Sri Lanka (2011-2020) to be launched as a presidential initiative is going to be a massive implementation-oriented language management exercise, probably the most ambitious ever of its kind. A survey carried out by an independent research organization for the Public Survey and Research Unit of the Presidential Secretariat has revealed a clear perception among Sri Lanka’s major ethnic communities of the desirability of a three language system for strengthening national harmony. This is a good trend that should be encouraged and exploited, for the success of any language planning enterprise will ultimately depend on its acceptance by the people.
The Coordinator of the programme, Senior Presidential Advisor Mr Sunimal Fernando, describes the language dimension of the ethnic issue as a chronic wound that has been left untouched in the wishful hope that it would heal by itself in the course of time, for fear of causing pain to the afflicted by probing in it in an attempt to effect a permanent cure. From that perspective, the current undertaking is a bold attempt to bring about a change in the status quo in Sri Lanka’s language planning arena, which, it is hoped, will eventually enhance the prospects of peaceful coexistence among its diverse communities, while opening new vistas of national development. As Professor Rajiva Wijesinghe MP stated in Parliament during the Budget debate recently, “…. multilingualism … is the part of the human resources development that this government alone had the courage to embark on…” (His speech was featured in The Island/28th Monday, November 2010).
Language Planning is a professional activity which is subsumed under Applied Linguistics. It basically involves the participation of three kinds of “language professionals”: politicians, lawyers, and language specialists. These three categories of persons are language professionals in the sense that they use language, in their careers, in a distinctive way, as a weapon, a medium, or an object of study respectively. Language planning is concerned with decision-making about the status, content, teaching and use of languages, especially in volatile contexts where they come into contact, or even to into conflict, involving different groups of people, and where policies and laws must be formulated and implemented. Language planning, therefore, comprises a gamut of activities, which can be broadly grouped into three types: status planning, corpus planning, and acquisition planning.
Status planning is about the determination of the status or standing of a language in relation to other languages in a multilingual society. So it refers to language planning at the macro-sociolinguistic level. Status planning involves decisions about the selection, and the functional allocation or reallocation of a language or language variety (that is, deciding which language/variety should be used for which function, purpose, etc.). In our situation, status planning assumes a conspicuous inter-language character as it involves three distinct languages, in addition to its nature as an intra-language activity when applied to dialects/varieties of a single language. Decisions about which language or language variety should be made a national or official language, or a medium of education, or a link language etc., come within the purview of status planning. Deliberate governmental participation in policy making in this activity is often the case.
Corpus planning is not essentially connected with a corpus (i.e. a computerized collection of language data in the form of written texts and transcripts of recorded speech) though it may use corpora as tools in the process. This is language planning at the micro-sociolinguistic level. It involves selecting and codifying norms in a language, as when it writes grammars, or standardizes spelling, etc.
Acquisition planning is the type of language planning in which a government intervenes in order to influence the status, literacy, distribution, etc. of a language through education. Though nongovernmental organizations may sometimes carry out acquisition planning, government involvement in the process is more common. It is this type of language planning which we are most concerned with on the ten year trilingual master plan.
There are usually five stages to language planning. Accordingly, the proposed trilingual project will involve 1) selection (choosing the standard forms of the three languages), 2) codification (compiling the basic grammars, dictionaries, and textbooks to establish the standard varieties), 3) elaboration (developing these varieties for use in different domains of community life, and encouraging the production of literature written in the standard forms), 4) implementation (the government encouraging the use of the languages), and 5) acceptance (the majority of the population agreeing to use all the three languages in appropriate situations, and to recognize them as a normal part of their social and national identity).
Serious study of language planning as an academic concept started in the 1960’s. Harvard University professor Einar Haugen (1906-1994) is regarded as the pioneer of modern language planning. His 1966 book “Language Conflict and Language Planning, the Case of Modern Norwegian” is still a source of reference for language planners. Our involvement with language planning (though probably it was not described as such at the time) predated the advent of the linguistics of language planning by at least two decades. The change of the medium of education (from English to native tongues) along with the introduction of free education in the mid-1940’s may perhaps be described as a case of acquisition planning because of its connection with education. 1956 marked a watershed in language management. The various amendments brought to the Official Languages Policy under the present Presidential Constitution (1978) since its inception to date represent phases of status planning which have constitutionally guaranteed parity of status to Sinhala and Tamil as national and official languages, while English is recognized as the link language. According to the Official Languages Policy, a person is entitled to be educated through the medium of either of the National Languages; recently, English has rejoined Sinhala and Tamil languages as a medium of education; both Sinhala and Tamil are the languages of administration throughout Sri Lanka; the maintenance of public records and the transaction of business in public institutions are done in Sinhala in all the provinces of Sri Lanka other than the Northern and Eastern Provinces where Tamil shall be used; however, the Sinhala or Tamil linguistic minorities of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, or of all the other Provinces respectively are enabled to have their business attended to through the medium of their own native language, or another language of their choice; the language of legislation and that of the courts, too, are both Sinhala and Tamil; all laws and subordinate legislation are enacted or made and published in Sinhala and Tamil, together with a translation in English. When citizens feel that their language-related rights are being violated, there is provision for legal redress.
If constitutionally and legally there is no room for any citizen to suffer discrimination on the basis of language or ethnicity, then why is that there appears to be a persistent (though usually unexpressed) impression that ethnic harmony is going to remain as much a chimera as ever into the foreseeable future?
From my point of view, a number of answers can be suggested to explain such a pessimistic view. But here I will only write about what I consider the most immediate one among the different causes of the apparent malaise: our failure to implement fully the Official Languages Policy at the grassroots administrative level, where ordinary citizens transact business with the state/government. This failure has a simple cause, and that is the fact that a considerable number of government servants lack acceptable proficiency in more than one language. However, this is a situation that successive governments have been trying to remedy through language training programmes.
The trilingual initiative of the government is a timely one in this context. The idea is to turn Sri Lanka into a trilingual nation within the next ten years. The current peaceful atmosphere, and the growing popular awareness of the usefulness of the scheme would encourage the architects of the plan to hold out hope that it will succeed if properly implemented.
The successful completion of the ten year plan will depend on a number of factors. The commitment of those who are entrusted with the tasks involved in the five stages of the language planning enterprise will be foremost. Hardly less important will be the purposeful mobilization and exemplary professionalism of the educational authorities including teachers. The positive response of the target population is the next essential condition. Here the most important ingredient will be motivation. The students must be made to see a legitimate reason for undergoing the hassle of learning three languages where one or at the most two would appear to be sufficient. In addition to convincing them of the necessity of an English knowledge for a decent education, it will be necessary to inculcate them with an attitude of mutual respect and fellow feeling among the different communities.
In working towards that goal, the colonial origin of the language or ethnic problem should not be overlooked, nor a myth substituted instead. 1956 was not the beginning of our troubles, rather it was the successful conclusion of one stage of our emergence from the incubus of imperial domination, as later 1972 was. During their occupation the imperialists sought to strengthen and perpetuate their predatory stranglehold on our diverse nation by deliberately dividing it along ethnic lines. The privileged status that they conferred on sections of the population which had embraced the English language and the Christian religion was not to the advantage or the liking of the dispossessed masses of all communities. However, even among the privileged who enjoyed imperial patronage there was discrimination against representatives of the majority ethnic community paralleled by preferential treatment meted out to those of the minorities. Since the emancipation of the downtrodden of all the communities ushering in democratic rule meant the end of the perks and privileges that they were enjoying under the occupiers, naturally those elements were opposed to the fulfilment of the legitimate aspirations of the majority. We must come to terms with this past instead of demonising the majority community and blaming them for every problem that the country faces. Mutual hatred and recrimination fed by myths will take us nowhere.
Before independence, the ordinary masses belonging to all communities suffered as third class citizens in their own country except the thin upper crust of the population that collaborated with them. The supremacy of English and the undue privileged status of the small minority (the so-called elite) which benefited from that lingering colonial afterglow was significantly attenuated, if not completely eliminated, by the changes introduced in 1956. The real or perceived linguistic anomalies following from ‘Sinhala only’ (which was no worse than ‘English only’ in multilingual America or ‘Hindi only’ in multilingual India as ‘national’ languages) have been constitutionally resolved since. Today we live in a country where we are all equal citizens, enjoying the same linguistic and other rights. Just as we share equal rights, we must shoulder equal responsibilities.
It is said that divisive tendencies based on the language issue eventually led to the separatist terror which ravaged the country for thirty years. We have now successfully put behind us both of those problems. If the language problem put us in trouble in the past, this time around a trebly powerful language factor has come to our help. We are on the threshold of a new era of national unity and economic development, neither of which is possible without the other. No more propitious time has ever emerged for such a bright prospect for development since Independence. The key to economic and social advancement is a developed human resource base, for which high quality education is a sine qua non. The three language treasure that we have inherited or acquired must be utilized to the full for human resource development in pushing for the goal of Sri Lanka being eventually hailed as the Wonder of Asia.