Scribd
Upload
120 views16 pages

The Colonial English Inheritance

The colonial English inheritance can be seen through England's language and educational policies in its colonies. In India, the British implemented policies to promote English over Indian languages to establish control. This included Macaulay's Minute that argued teaching English was more beneficial than local languages. In Africa, education focused on teaching English to "civilize" local people rather than respecting their traditions. As a result, English became the dominant and inherited language even after independence, replacing native languages.

Uploaded by

Lacey Lisbeth Llcc
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
120 views16 pages

The Colonial English Inheritance

The colonial English inheritance can be seen through England's language and educational policies in its colonies. In India, the British implemented policies to promote English over Indian languages to establish control. This included Macaulay's Minute that argued teaching English was more beneficial than local languages. In Africa, education focused on teaching English to "civilize" local people rather than respecting their traditions. As a result, English became the dominant and inherited language even after independence, replacing native languages.

Uploaded by

Lacey Lisbeth Llcc
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 16

The colonial English

inheritance
Name: Lacey Lisbeth Conde Carhuancho
Course: Culture and context in ELT
Teacher: Miguel Oré de los Santos
Semester: Second
CONTENT

A master’s language
Colonial educational language policy and
practice
In India
In Africa
English as a colonial inheritance
A master’s language

“I was greatly delighted with my


new companions, and made it my
business to teach him everything…;
but especially to make him speak,
and understand me when I spake,
and he was the aptest scholar that
ever was.”
(Defoe, 1719).

Robinson Crusoe
By Daniel Defoe
A master’s language

• It was one of the first times that it was talked about English

teaching.

• It was suggested that Robinson Crusoe is the

unacknowledged founder of the British Council.

• The people of the colonized territories had to learn the

language and the culture of their master, the British.


Colonial educational policy and practice

In India:
In India:

• When the British colonies were established, colonizers needed a language and
education policy to have people under control.

• A way to refer to this situation is to talk about the “modernizing” of India.

• So, the British Government had as their principal object to promote European
literature and science, in other words, to impose a foreign culture.

• The medium of instruction in school, universities and other formal national


institutions was the English language. Thus, Indian languages were not valid
anymore. That is the reason why “proficiency in English became the gateway to
all social and material benefits
ANGLICISM • Imposing • Value

ORIENTALISM
English native
over other languages
languages. over
English.
In India

- Macaulay’s minute

• Lord Macaulay had an


important post as a chairman of
the Governor-General’s
committee on Public Instruction
and wrote a minute about
education in India.
• It was necessary to teach them
English so that they can be
“Indians in blood and color, but ENGLISH
English in taste, in opinión, in
morals and in intellect.”

• He explains that it is best worthing


knowing English than any other
native language because English NATIVE
is the language of science and LANUAGES
literature.
In his opinion, it was a waste of money and
time to teach the local people their
langauge because of their “absurd history,
absurd metaphysics, absurd physics, absurd
theology.”
IN AFRICA
• Local traditions and culture were ignored
in education imparted in Africa.

• To civilize primitive people it was


neccessary to shape their minds at
schools so that they can be useful for the
colony.

• The most important agent of civilization


was teaching local people gramatical
knowledge of English.

• People needs and cultural background


was never taken into account in the
colonized territories.
Racism
• Many British were ethnocentrism, such as Reverend Metcalf Sunter thought that Africans
had no history of own and studying their languages was a waste of time.

• Malinowski, anthropologist, suggested that education in Africa should not give hope to
local people to “become the White man’s brother and his economic and political
equal”.

• Colonial eduactional policy was fundamentally racist: there was separate education for
Europeans, Asians and Africans, in kenya in the 1950s, for example.

The white people are to


be leaders…
English as a colonial inheritance

The dominant The learning of Nowadays,


language as well English was the speaking native
as the content primary goal in languages is
taught was alien. colonial educational related to being
systems. ignorant or inferior.

Education was English became the


simply understood oficial language in
as the ability to many ex – colonies
speak and write even after their
English. independency.
Bibliography

• Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: OUP.

• Pennycook, A. (1994). The Cultural Politics of English as


an International Language. New York: Longman.

• Macaulay, T. (1835). “Minute on Indian Education”. In


Thomas Babington Macaulay. Selected writings,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

You might also like