A LANGUAGE FOR ALL
There is no human being without language. Every human child, unless physically and mentally incapacitated, constantly receives education from Nature and the society constituting its environment. Thus, every normal human being has a vernacular language and a vernacular education adequate for subsistence. It is when planning for development we either deny or underperceive their existence and slogans like 'Education for All' or 'A Language for All' are born.
'A Language for All' presupposes that language, which is the natural possession of individuals and societies, is inadequate for coping with the demands and needs of developing and developed societies. It also presupposes that, within a speech community, standard, and, within a country, the official, which is chosen by those who rule or exert influence over others, must be accessible to all constituting the community or the country. 'A Language for All', thus, involves usurpation of vernacular competence, imposition of artificial standards, controlling the access to that standard and, thus, creating an unfulfillable need, which provides legitimisation to such a slogan.
Every language has the potential to express any complex concept. If languages are unequal, they are so only in terms of their unequal use in different domains, styles, and registers. The term 'developed' qualifying language is a relative term. A written language is considered developed in relation to nonliterate language, a literary language, used in scientific, technological and legal domains, is considered more developed than the one not so used. Acceptance of such a nation of development reinforces relative deprivation.
There are other senses in which development imposes handicaps. A language which is used locally is considered undeveloped in comparison to a language or variety used regionally, the regional considered undeveloped in comparison to the one used nationally, and the national considered inadequate in comparison to an international language. Once this notion is accepted, and international language imposed upon a country, even if used by a limited number of people, assumes greater authority than the national language(s). Within a country, the one, designated or accepted as national, seeks to exert similar influence over the regional and local varieties by proclaiming itself as the language for all. Thus, languages used at successive stages, form local to the international, are seen to exist in states of perpetual tension, each trying to push its frontier to obliterate the other.
A vernacular approach to human existence rejects the notion of a language for all. It perceives languages in complementation, each expanding the horizon in everwidening concentric circles and thus demanding languages appropriate to context. Recognition of difference and respect for the different from the core value, as a result of which one seeks neither the suppression nor the supplantation of the other, but builds upon the existing potential and link the one with the one with the other. Every language is, then, seen as an integrative link in a chain of languages and language varieties, binding a community or a country in cohesion. Each undeveloped language, then, becomes a weak link in the chain, which poses as a potential threat to national integration.
A language for all is a myth and a misnomer. English is not a language for all the English speakers of the world. In spite of a single label, it is communicationally heterogeneous, and the English speaking regions are diverse in political systems and uneven in economic development. Language, like life, is multiform in expression. It is a fantasy to think that any country of the world would have a single uniform language for all its people. At one time every one talked of the English language. Today everyone talks of the Englishes world.
'A Language for All' engenders an attitude of assimilation. It expects smaller languages to melt and fuse their identity, and assimilate into the one chosen for all. 'Language for All', on the other hand, stands for incorporation of smaller identities under macro labels. Hindi is a good example, which not only was known by different names at different periods of time, but was accepted as a macro label by speakers of different languages as long as their identities were not threatened. Chinese in another example where mutually unintelligible language varieties were incorporated under a single label. When Mandarin becomes the chosen variety and pressure is brought to adopt the Roman script and generalise both for all the Chinese, the contradictions created threaten the integrity of the culture.
Equality of opportunity is sought to be denied to groups while the slogan of equality for all is raised. 'All men are born equal' masks inequality in the same way 'all languages have equal potentiality' masks existing social inequalities due to differential use of languages and differential access to languages of power and privilege. In social sciences, broader the generalisation the more abstract the theory, greater is the danger of the obvious escaping the attention. Language variation is a fact of life. It is the tyranny of theory and the theory of tyranny that leads some to blame others of promoting variation. They are ignorant of their own perception blind spot.
'Language of all' can be a reality only if the languages people use for communication are recognised and conscious effort are made to use them for informal knowledge and link them with languages of formal knowledge. Standardisation and modernisation, then, will be two way processes and not become manipulated imposition as is the case at present. Education, then, will not propagate a single truth, demand a single loyalty and expect multiple identities to merge in a common culture. Instead, education will encourage expression modernity to interact with tradition through traditional languages with a view to bringing about a partnership between the two for providing equality of opportunity for all, for marching forward in search of knowledge and opportunities.