Glocal Languages and Critical Intercultural Awareness

The South Answers Back

Manuela Guilherme, Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza, Manuela Guilherme, Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351184632
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume provides a new perspective on prevailing discourses on translanguaging and multilingualism by looking at 'glocal' languages, local languages which have been successfully "globalized". Focusing on European languages recreated in Latin America, the book features examples from languages underexplored in the literature, including Brazilian Portuguese, Amerinidian poetics, and English, Spanish, Portuguese outside Europe, as a basis for advocating for an approach to language education rooted in critical pedagogy and post-colonial perspectives and countering hegemonic theories of globalization. While rooted in a discussion of the South, the book offers a fresh voice in current debates on language education that will be of broader interest to students and scholars across disciplines, including language education, multilingualism, cultural studies, and linguistic anthropology.

Section I
Glocal Languages—Theoretical Background

1
Glocal Languages, Coloniality and Globalization From Below

Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza

There is strictly speaking no single process called globalization; there are, rather, globalizations; bundles of social relations that involve conflicts and hence both winners and losers. More often than not, the discourse of globalization is the story of the winners as told by the winners. The victory appears so absolute that the defeated end up vanishing from the picture altogether.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2002a)

Our capacity to see is poor because our apparatus of knowledge-production is poor. We are tied up with our European inheritance and more recently, with an American empire, in the thinking of our Social Sciences.

Milton Santos (2007)

In the context of current language scholarship, reflections on the relationship between language practices, policies and language ideologies are not new. It seems, however, that the ideologies within which these studies are framed need to be the object of more critical focus. As Joseph (2006) reminded us, language is a political construction. Makoni and Pennycook (2007) highlighted the inequality of power dimension by adding that language classification is a political construct instrumental for the control of variety and difference.

Previously, Blommaert and Verschueren (1992) had also pointed out the controlling role of language ideologies in Europe but saw them as emerging from and pertaining to nineteenth century European nationalism. Makoni and Pennycook (2007) see both language and the metalanguages that conceive and categorize it as political constructs. As such, languages are inseparable from metadiscursive regimes that are not only representations of language but also social-institutional instances that produce knowledge about and control language. Makoni and Pennycook point to the need to not only see language and its study as inherently implicated in ideology and politics (local, national, colonial, or Eurocentric) but to also understand the interrelationships that prevail in order to seek ways to reconstitute the constraining consequences of these interrelationships.

More recently, Flores (2013) and Kubota (2014) discussed the interconnections between language ideologies and global neo-liberal ideology. Canagarajah (2017), building on these interconnections, reinforces the need to consider language ideologies more deeply rather than persist in the current focus in applied linguistics to describe and analyze strategies deployed by users in multilingual practices. Stroud (2015), also building on the interconnections between language, ideology and politics and the need for a reconstruction of these interconnections, introduces the concept of linguistic citizenship as “an invitation to rethink our understanding of language through the lens of citizenship at the same time that we rethink understandings of citizenship through the lens of language” (24).

Given these interconnections between language and ideology, this chapter discusses the concept of glocal language, glocalization and globalization from a southern perspective in the context of decoloniality. These terms will be explained below.

Hegemonic and Non-Hegemonic Globalization

Speaking epistemically from the margins of the hegemonic North, Santos (2002a), in an effort to examine emancipatory possibilities away from the negative effects of globalization and its accompanying cultural influences, proposes an analytical framework to apprehend globalization from a non-hegemonic, southern perspective. Santos prefers to see globalization as plural and sensitive to social political and cultural factors and always entailing localization. He differentiates between hegemonic and non-hegemonic forms of globalization. Whereas hegemonic globalization builds on and maintains established hierarchies and functions through an impetus for regulation, non-hegemonic globalization seeks horizontal collaboration and solidarity. When neo-liberal globalization and its penchant for de-regulation¹ becomes hegemonic, de-regulation acquires a normative stance; by forcibly demanding de-regulation it maintains a hegemonic position and functions as a variant of regulation (the rule is to de-regulate).

For Santos, there are two interconnected manifestations of hegemonic globalization: First, there is the successful globalization of a localism. The point here is that there is nothing that is transnationally globalized that does not originate locally somewhere; i.e. there is nothing that is not always already embedded in some specific culture. Given that all knowledge needs to be produced by someone, somewhere, there is, in social terms, nothing that is not already a localism. Through hegemonic expansion, certain localisms are globalized and acquire the aura of being universal. One consequence of the hegemony acquired by these globalized localisms is their capacity, not only to deem themselves universal, but also to deem all other localisms as merely and insignificantly local.

For Santos (2010a), such is the case of what is considered to be scientific knowledge. As a monoculture of knowledge, modern science has ‘forgotten’ its local origins and development in Western Europe, and its implications in European philosophy, history and politics, and transformed itself into a global, universal yardstick that does not accept as science or as knowledge the multiple knowledges produced outside Europe. It is our contention in this chapter that hegemonic ‘language ideologies’ considered to be placeless, and hence ‘universal,’ may be following the exemplar of modern science.

The second manifestation of hegemonic globalization, according to Santos, is localized globalism; this refers to the imposition on particular localities of elements originating in the hegemonic transnational ‘global.’ Given their hegemonic force, such elements cannot be easily resisted but can be recontextualized to suit the conditions and interests of the local. Santos exemplifies this with the case of North American cinema whose stars are seen as transnationally global whereas other national cinemas and their stars are seen as merely local. He also cites the case of the global spread of English becoming a lingua franca in several local contexts. Both forms of hegemonic globalization maintain their hegemony by establishing an abyssal line, which separates what is considered to be of value on this (hegemonic) side of the line and consequently produces the invisibility of whatever is located on the other side of the line. Modern science, for Santos, is a prime example of the abyssal line (see below for further discussion).

Santos exemplifies non-hegemonic globalization with counter-hegemonic social movements and other forms of grassroots global exchanges; in these, collaboration and solidarity set the tone. Santos calls this subaltern cosmopolitanism. Given that established hierarchies of globalized power are unable to exclude the possibility of contact, exchange and collaboration between local (un-globalized) groups, it is this sphere of translocal exchange and solidarity that Santos defines as subaltern cosmopolitanism. Unlike liberal elite cosmopolitanism that emphasizes the individual and aims at the acquisition of social and cultural superiority through the accumulation of symbolic capital, subaltern cosmopolitanism aims at the creation of south-south dialogues and networks for mutual benefit and mutual emancipation.

Two features that highlight the horizontal nature that characterizes such networks and dialogues are an ecology of knowledges and the importance of translation. As an effort to deconstruct the hegemonic abyssal line that purports to separate the ‘global’ from the ‘local,’ the concept of an ecology of knowledges is based on the presupposition that no knowledge is total, complete and capable of everything. As Santos (2007) says, knowledge and ignorance are interconnected; a community’s knowledge of something implies an ignorance of other forms of knowing; thus, this same community’s ignorance does not invalidate the fact that it also knows.

The concept of translation comes into the picture in the wake of the same reasoning: The need for translation implies the need to know what one does not know. Translation, like the knowledges interconnected horizontally in an ecology, rather than signifying a total transference of meaning, implies incompleteness and ignorance and the need to overcome both; translation refers also to the fact that overcoming both of these in order to attain the desire of completeness is beyond realization. However, these difficulties in translation do not indicate incommensurability; they do indicate the need for constant exchange and for the persistence in the continuous work of translation.

These characteristics of a translocal ecology of knowledges and the unfinished work of translation add depth to Robertson’s (1995, 2015) and Pieterse’s (1995) descriptions (see below) of the complexity of glocalization, beyond the standard reductive dichotomies of local-global and homogeneous-heterogeneous. However, it is essential to note that unlike Pieterse and Robertson, Santos is self-consciously aware of his epistemic location in the global south.

As we shall see below, the concepts of subaltern cosmopolitanism and the ecology of knowledge are relevant for a consideration of glocal languages from a southern perspective.

Glocalization

As we have seen, globalization, according to Santos (2002a), is necessarily also about localization, not only in the sense of the global forcefully affecting non-global locations, but also in how it involves the expansion from one local to other locals; it also involves, where necessary, the forceful returning of its competitors-in-the-process-of-expansion to their original locations. Globalization is then about the play of asymmetrical relations. Glocalization, as we shall see, is about how all these actions of localization play out at relatively non-hegemonic levels in the process of hegemonic globalization.

As my first epigraph says, a large part of the discourse of globalization is the story of the victors as told by them. If this is to change, it needs to go beyond substituting one story (the victor’s) for another (the loser’s). It needs to go beyond telling the story from a single perspective. Thus, besides troubling the singularity of the story, it is also necessary to “change the terms of the conversation” (Mignolo 2007) in order to ‘re-localize the global,’ mark the unmarked and in short, ‘provincialize’ the apparently universal. In this process, the unmasking of one’s locus of enunciation or that of other theorists and critics becomes increasingly significant.

Marking the unmarked and changing the hegemonic terms of the conversation is the strategy of epistemic reconstitution that various Latin American thinkers propose under the terms decoloniality and coloniality. It is a strategy of response to the singularity of perspective and to the predicament that the Brazilian social scientist Milton Santos (2007) describes in my second epigraph above.

Grosfoguel (2013) calls this predicament epistemic racism;² Santos (2014) calls it epistemicide.³ Given the significance of power relations and their unequal distribution in globalization, the manner in which globalization and glocalization are understood is inseparable from the locus of enunciation of the theorist or critic. This concurs with Santos’ concept, mentioned above, that one’s embedding in a specific local is inescapable. Similarly, in theorizing about language ideologies, whether to identify them, describe the practices and strategies through which they are manifested, or to undo their effects and transform them, one’s locus of enunciation is crucial. It is in general what will situate the theorist on this side or the other of the abyssal line of modern science; it is what will deem certain knowledges as ideology and others as scientific fact.

For two theorists of glocalization, Robertson (1995) and Pieterse (1995), for whom identifying their loci of enunciation is not significant, globalization is portrayed as a dynamic process more complex than that of a unified and unifying homogenizing force. They describe it as involving varying degrees of contact between the so-called global and the so-called local, including moments of convergence and divergence, interaction, interconnectedness and resistance. These complex moments of contact and their consequences are defined as glocalization.

Reading Pieterse and Robertson critically, Roudometof (2015) contrasts on the one hand Pieterse’s conception of glocalization as an integrative process of degrees of homo- and heterogeneity convergently integrating the global and the local in ever-changing patterns with, on the other hand, Robertson’s conception of glocalization as not only creating new, homogeneous units (albeit constructed from heterogeneous elements) but also initiating non-convergent processes of fragmentation.

Robertson, in a later discussion (2015), now in a post 9/11 frame, calls for a critical global consciousness and claims that a focus on globalization as mere interconnectedness has helped to hinder this consciousness. According to Robertson, such a global consciousness is of dire importance in light of some of the deleterious effects of glocalization. An effect that he cites is related to one possible process of glocalization as non-convergent fragmentation, often called indigenization; here, as in the localized globalism of Santos, elements absorbed from transnational global origins are integrated into local systems. However, their integration is forgotten and the local systems are seen as remaining unchanged, untouched by external influence and authentically local. As a conservative reaction of resistance to exogenous intrusion from the global, indigenization is seen to propitiate cultural and religious fundamentalisms and foster violence and unrest. For Robertson, this kind of reaction highlights the critical importance of calling attention to the processes of recontextualization and resignification in glocalization, lest they be forgotten.

In general then, for both Pieterse and Robertson the process of glocalization involves external (‘global’) elements coming into contact with preexisting local elements; these external elements, originating in different and distant contexts, are recontextualized as they are accommodated into local cultures, knowledges or beliefs. Glocalization necessarily involves the re-recontextualization and resignification of both external and local elements. This is not a simple top-down phenomenon in which the external global element remains intact globally and is only recontextualized and resignified locally; it is not simply a process of an external element imposing homogeneity and eliminating pre-existent heterogeneity or a reverse process of unleashed hybridization. As we shall see below in the case of perspective and locus of enunciation, in the construction of knowledge, as Santos reminded us above, the ‘global’ is always someone’s ‘local.’

In relation to the case of fundamentalism cited by Robertson (2015), though indigenization might, in practice, involve a large degree of recontextualization and resignification of extraneous elements absorbed into a local culture, in order to become ‘fundamentalist’ it must involve a simultaneous denial and rejection of such extraneous influence and adaptation. This denial and rejection are often a posteriori and mask the already occurred resignification of the new elements (now recontextualized and resignified as ‘old’ or pre-existing).

In light of this, Robertson proposes what he calls a critical perception and understanding of the processes of glocalization—recontextualization and resignification—as possible correctives not only to prevent fundamentalism in such cases but also to minimize the homogenizing force of globalization in cases that don’t involve fundamentalism but where there is little local resistance to the extraneous elements of the global.

Roudometof (2015) calls attention to the fact that in much of globalization theory, specific considerat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Glocal Languages, the South Answering Back
• SECTION I Glocal Languages—Theoretical Background
• SECTION II Indigenous Languages as Glocal Languages
• SECTION III Portuguese as Glocal Language
• SECTION IV Spanish as Glocal Language
• SECTION V English as Glocal Language
• Conclusion: Towards Globalization From Below
• Contributors
• Index