Language, Culture, and Development

Language, Culture, and Development
(First published in The Island/Sri Lanaka)
Any human society can be described as a product of three interrelated, mutually dependent processes which are coterminous: language, culture, and economic activity. Social interaction motivated by our innate gregariousness as a species is at the root of these processes. Though almost certainly they had a common origin at the dawn of human civilization these processes, taken in isolation, are today found to have become infinitely sophisticated and multifaceted. They can be looked at from different perspectives, assigned specific functions, and given appropriately diverse definitions. For example, language is much more than just a medium of communication; culture is infinitely more complex than what a dictionary definition like “a way of life of a particular group” or “a set of beliefs, customs, and art forms characteristic of a community” might suggest; similarly, economic behaviour comprehends an infinity of activities around “organized operation of processes of producing wealth, commodities, services, etc”. But they still serve the rudimentary purpose for which they came into being: supporting the survival of the human species by securing their needs for food, clothing, and shelter in interaction with the natural environment (economic activity), which is facilitated by a mechanism for communication with each other (language), and which is subject to a system of customs, beliefs, values, principles, and rules established to control their individual and collective modes of behaviour (culture).
By ‘language’ is meant the language faculty which is common to all humans. Human language manifests itself in thousands of different forms which we call languages. Probably, at the beginning, our cave-dwelling ancestors lived in groups only marginally different in organization from other apes. With the gradual evolution of the social group through collective economic activity, language, and culture from their nascent state humans became the most successful in their long struggle for survival against nature’s unfriendly phenomena including the threat of wild animals; this may explain humanity’s unique expansion across most inhabitable parts of the earth (and perhaps, correspondingly, the extinction of other competing species engaged in a losing battle with them).
Now, the feature that most distinguishes humans from other animals is their language faculty, an aspect of the power of their highly evolved brain. Undoubtedly, greater language ability gave humans a competitive edge over other allied species in evolutionary history. It goes without saying that language largely accounts for human ‘superiority’ over other animals in the matter of controlling nature. Humans control nature not only to ensure their survival, but to increase their physical comfort and mental happiness. It is through language that knowledge about the world is created, transmitted, preserved, retrieved, and tried out, reviewed, and enhanced. Language is knowledge. Applied knowledge is key to the creation of wealth. As Peter Drucker writes in his book The Age of Discontinuity (1969) knowledge is “… central to our society … as the foundation of economy and social action”. If knowledge is a prerequisite of an economy the connection between language and economic development need hardly be stressed.
Though controversy about language policies has dominated at least half a century of Sri Lankan politics, neither the general importance of language nor its central role in the promotion of economic development received due recognition in our education sphere until recently. This is evident in the relatively low importance that was attached to the study of languages with an emphasis on their functional aspect in our school system. However, at long last, an attempt is now being made to solve the problem through the government’s ten year trilingual programme for teaching schoolchildren the three languages of English, Sinhalese, and Tamil. The governmental initiative has resulted in growing popular awareness of the economic usefulness of learning languages among other benefits.
In the highly globalized and technology-driven world of today English is the most important language we need to possess as a tool of economic development. It is both convenient and beneficial for us to adopt English as a second language in order to interact with the rest of the world in all areas including economic development not only because of the English language legacy left by 150 years of British colonisation, but also because of the recent emergence of English as the single most powerful common language of global communication. There’s no question about this. However, the message implicit in the fact that English is still a closed book to more than 90% of the country’s 20 million people even after 200 years of its dominance on their affairs cannot be overlooked. The current three language enterprise seems to have taken cognizance of this message.
As American anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir (1884-1939) pointed out language, in addition to being a vehicle for the expression of thoughts, perceptions, sentiments, and values characteristic of a community, gives individuals social identity. He further said: “… the mere fact of a common speech serves as a peculiar potent symbol of social solidarity of those who speak the language”. Therefore a language is not something that you can take possession of or discard as easily as you can put on or take off a garment. This is the reason why English failed to establish itself in Sri Lanka as the common tongue of its people despite its dominant position in government and business. There already were the indigenous languages of Sinhalese and Tamil to give the respective speakers of those languages their cultural identity and sense of social solidarity.
Ignorance or deliberate repudiation of their own history and culture leads some people to underrate the indigenous languages, Sinhala and Tamil. For the overwhelming majority of us these languages are vital in the sense that Sapir explained. The change of the medium of instruction from English to local languages benefited the masses. The elevation of Sinhala and Tamil to official language status was also a bona fide move. Such measures were in the interest of the underprivileged masses and were meant to safeguard their rights. At the same time the very architects of these changes were not oblivious of the vital importance of English as a tool of modernisation, and initiated a tradition of teaching English to all schoolchildren from Standard Three onwards. But second language English teaching failed mainly because people don’t learn a new language unless there is a compelling reason for doing so. These days we hear about tens of thousands of young people appearing for Korean language tests in expectation of finding employment in Korea. No government encouragement was offered them for learning the Korean language. Still they took the initiative to learn it because they were motivated to do so by their desire to find lucrative job opportunities in Korea.
English should have been much easier for most of our students to learn because of the abundance of resources for learning it, and all the support that they were usually given to learn it. Their failure was not due to lack of these. It was largely due to the non-perception of a strong motive for learning English. But today the situation is different. Most students, parents, and teachers know that without a knowledge of English there’s no future prosperity. This will motivate the learning of English. At the same time, it’s good to remember that the wholesome development of a society comprehends more than mere material development. That society is truly developed whose members are not only efficient economic units, but also cultured individuals. As for Sri Lankans, they need all three languages (English, Tamil, and Sinhalese) to build such a society.