Text 10A1-III

Language is not any arbitrary fact of colonialism. We ought to consider it as another form of violence imposed upon cultures by colonial rule, as devastatingly treacherous as any other. Of course, there is an obvious distinction between physical and linguistic subjugation, and the previous claim is not to erase this in any element. Linguistic violence itself persists long past the departure of the colonist, it is a violence committed against a very culture, one from which it may never fully recover. Language is not merely a group of symbols or words; this is clear from the fact that we see it as having been the object of colonial assault. Imperial powers recognized it as anything but arbitrary, or else it would not have even been seen as necessary to subject to the same ravage. We ought not to let the role of language in colonialism slip into the background. Language as a means of colonial dominance has too often been seen as a symptom of a larger colonial pathology, as a side-effect which does not require to be dealt with urgently or with equal dedication as with more wide-spread and common conceptions of colonial violence.

As a defining aspect of culture, language is not only the means by which we pass on culture or share it, but in order to do so it must, and does, carry on its back the entirety of a culture and civilization. Further, it acts as a collective memory bank of a culture‟s historical existence and experience. Because of this, the erasure of language is necessarily also the erasure of pre-colonial history. By systematically and aggressively burying a language, also buried with it is every historical event and every person who existed through it. Something as fundamental as it becomes, or rather, has been a way by which we perceive ourselves as well as where and how we exist among others. When one examines the colonial circumstance, they can see the ways in which the linguistic take-over by colonial powers posed an existential threat upon the colonized. To take away one‟s language is to take away their means of making themselves visible and perceiving themselves. The forceful imposition of colonial language on the colonized is not simply a matter of easy communication and convenience, it is to impose upon a group the task of supporting the weight of a culture which refuses to recognize them as human. 

Ananya Ravishankar. Linguistic imperialism: colonial violence through language. Trinity College Digital Repository, 2020. Internet: (adapted).

Text 10A1-I 

There is no doubt that we are living in times of great change. Population mobility continues throughout the world at an all-time high in human history, bringing extensive cross-cultural contact among diverse language and cultural groups. Predictions focus on an increasingly interconnected world, with global travel and instant international communications available to more and more people. Businesses and professions seek employees fluent in more than one language, to participate in the international marketplace as well as to serve growing ethnolinguistic minorities living within each community. Employers increasingly want their employees to be interculturally competent. They want them to be skilful negotiators in increasingly intercultural work situations.

Change is not exclusive or selective in terms of the sectors of society which it affects. Industry, health, politics and business are affected, but also education. In different parts of Europe, just as elsewhere in the world, the presence of ethnic and linguistic minority children in schools is becoming an everyday phenomenon. Policy makers include intercultural objectives in curricula, and teachers find themselves faced with the challenge of promoting the acquisition of intercultural competence through their teaching. This is true for teachers of a diversity of subjects. It is definitely true for teachers of foreign languages. Foreign language education is, by definition, intercultural. Bringing a foreign language to the classroom means connecting learners to a world that is culturally different from their own. Therefore, all foreign language educators are now expected to exploit this potential and promote the acquisition of intercultural competence in their learners. The objective of language learning is no longer defined in terms of the acquisition of communicative competence in a foreign language. Teachers are now required to teach intercultural communicative competence.

Lies Sercu. Teaching foreign languages in an intercultural world. In: Lies Sercu et al. Foreign language teachers and intercultural competence: an international investigation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2005 (adapted)