Language Policy and Identity in Mauritania. El Hacen Moulaye Ahmed
On the contrary, every phenomenon has some forces that influence and shape its nature and lead to its birth or rebirth. As such, there are many factors that influence language policy. The factors can be categorized into five main categories: political, linguistic, social-demographic, linguistic culture, and religion. Politics is a major force that influences language policy. The influence of the general policy of the former colonial powers, on the colonized countries across continents, is a typical example of the political factors’ influence on language policy. In Mauritania, or, say, the North African countries, for example, even though French was not the mother tongue of the people of the geographical area, it was imposed on the countries and thus gained the status of the official language in them. Even today, French, whether explicitly expressed as in the case of Mauritania or implicitly felt as in the case of Morocco, is the official language of the countries beside Arabic and Tamazight in some of them. What is more, some countries of the ex-colonizers, like Portugal, pursued a policy of restricted assimilation and discouraged the uses of the vernacular languages. Spencer (1974) stated that the Portuguese authorities asserted that “nothing may appear in print in an African language without a concurrent translation in Portuguese. Portuguese is the only language permitted in education” (p. 170). In addition, the counter narrative to the above-discussed colonial linguistic policy is an instant where politics influences language policy. In the 1960s, when almost all the ex-colonies got their independence, some of them elevated the status of the local languages as Mauritania did to Arabic.
Linguistic factors are mainly concerned with the status and character of language. With the fact that the ex-colonized countries are located in multilingual continents, Africa and Asia, the choice of selecting a national language was based on the very characteristics of the local languages. That is, codified languages were considered the best candidates for the states’ use. Given the fact that most of African languages are not codified, the colonial languages gained the race (Appel & Muysken, 2005, p. 56). In addition, the similarities between languages can influence language policy. For example, the predominance of Swahili in Tanzania was due to the fact that it is an amalgamation of well-nigh all languages that were spoken in Tanzanian’s history. Therefore, it was considered easy to understand and learn by all Tanzanians, observed Appel and Muysken (2005, p. 56).
Sociodemographic factors refer to the number of languages spoken, the numbers of their speakers, and their geographical distribution. A typical case is East Africa, particularly the contrast Tanzania-Kenya. Appel and Muysken (2005) stated that Tanzania has about a hundred languages. “The fact that these ethno-linguistic units were numerically small clearly favoured the selection of Swahili as a national language. . . . In contrast to Tanzania, Kenya has . . . small number of languages. They were able to compete with Swahili, and therefore English could strengthen its position” (p. 56). It is clear that the competition between languages to the position of national language is more strengthened whenever the number is big and less strengthened whenever the number is small. Pertinent example that depicts the influence of the number of the language speakers and their geographical distribution on language policy is Indonesia and Malaysia, which consist of thousands of islands. The fact that Malay became the lingua franca, a common language, was to a great extent determined by the number and distribution of its speakers. Malay is the mother tongue of people who lived in both sides of the Straits of Malacca, the most important sea rout in this sea. As such, Malay was chosen as a national language in Malaysia “and as the base for the national language Bahasa Indonesia in Indonesia, although it was culturally and quantitatively (with regard to numbers of mother-tongue speakers) not the most important language of the Malay-Polynesian group” (Appel & Muysken, 2005, p. 56).
Another factor, which has a great impact on language policy, is linguistic culture. By linguistic culture, is meant the beliefs about and attitudes toward language. As such, we line up our definition of linguistic culture with that of Schiffman who argued that it refers to “a set of behaviors, assumption, cultural forms, prejudices, folk belief systems, systems, attitudes, stereotypes, ways of thinking about language, and religio-historical circumstances associated with a particular language” (1996, p. 5). In this sense, the issue is more or less related to myths that are held about a language. Some languages were seen as primitive and others as more developed. By the same token, in contrast to monolingualism, bilingualism, and multilingualism were seen as an obstacle to political and economic stability as discussed earlier under the heading of “myths about language.” Accordingly, many states adopted monolingual approach in their language policy. In the United Sates, for instance, indigenous languages and immigrant languages have limited or no legal status because of the national attitudes toward language which favor monolingualism and consider multilingualism as unhealthy. Such view is reflected in the existence of English only Movement in the United States (Grenoble & Whaley, 2006, p. 30).
In addition to political, linguistic, social-demographic, linguistic culture, religious factor affects language policy. According to Ouedraogo (2000), Christianity, particularly Catholicism, has promoted the teaching of Latin and Greek in parochial schools such as seminaries (p. 36). Furthermore, Arabic is gaining more importance in new territories because of its relation to Islam since the Quran, the central religious text of Islam, is written in Arabic. Ouedraogo (2000) reported that religious pressure groups, in Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, and so forth, are creating schools where Arabic is either used as the medium of instruction or as main the subject matter. Because the groups have great influence on a considerable proportion of the people, politicians, and decision-makers cannot ignore their demands. The local groups are not alone; in fact, the Arabic-speaking countries and international organizations related to the Islamic world, say, the organization of Islamic conference, the Islamic Bank of Development, the Islamic education, science and cultural organization, support and call for the promotion of Arabic in the countries where Islam is the religion of the majority of the population (p. 36). As a result, and because of its relation to Islam, Ouedraogo concluded that “Arabic is likely to emerge as the third language of wider communication alongside English and French” (2000, p. 36).
Identity
In his introductory note to identity, Riley (2007) stated that for over 2,000 years, identity has been viewed “as a philosophical aporia, a problem so deep that we can hardly formulate the questions, let alone the answers.” Some thoughts of just how knotty a problem is can be collected from the fact that “not only is the debate as intense now as it was in the times of Aristotle or Aquinas, say, but it is still essentially about the same issues and concepts” (p. 70). Riley’s remark reveals that even though enormous works have been generated about identity, a single overarching framework of it is a far-reaching goal. Similar observations about identity are made by Erikson (1974) who thought that identity is a phenomenon which “the more one writes about,” the more it “becomes a term for something as unfathomable as it is all-pervasive” (p. 9). Nonetheless, in order to comprehend this all-pervasive notion, some of the different conceptualizations that this notion has been subjected to in the literature are mapped out in this study. In so doing, its definitions, theories, types, and factors, which affect it, are explained.
Defining Identity
The term “identity” is derived from the Latin word idem, which indicates sameness and lack of change and is, indeed, still used in this sense, though most frequently in its adjective form “identical.” The Latin word identitas, nevertheless, refers to “the way in which the substantia of an entity remains the same despite all the changes undergone by its accidentes” (Van der Ven, 1994, p. 28). Both Latin words idem and identitas, the root for the English word “identity” and its synonyms, rest on the idea of sameness. The idea of sameness, which suggests uniqueness, people difference in relation to others, and which defines identity according to the above-stated Latin terminologies, crosses freely into the minds of many scholars. Nonetheless, the sameness in relation to difference cannot be pinned down in one single definition since there are many factors, ethnicity and gender, to name but two, which lead people to define themselves in different places at different times. The following definitions run some of the different views of identity.
In The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English two definitions of identity were given. The first one described identity as “1. state of being identical; absolute sameness; exact likeness. 2. who sb. is; what