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Abstract
English, in the words of Bill Bryson, ‘is one of the world's great growth industries’. Like some kind of metalanguage with its own Europe‐based meaning systems, it has constructed its own discourses in relation to Africa's conserved natural environment, nature documentaries, tourism and environmental education – at the expense of indigenous knowledge systems, cultural practices and languages. This paper examines the potency of English when it comes to notions such as that of the animal, the ‘wilderness experience’, hunting practices and ‘the African bush’ and how these meaning systems have percolated through to environmental education in relation to conserved areas in eastern and southern Africa. Drawing on critical language awareness theories and informal interviews and discussions with staff and students (representing a multitude of languages) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, the predominance and hegemony of English as the exclusive language of learning and teaching in environmental education is questioned.
Notes
1. This paper concentrates on English – but one could make a similar, but perhaps not as strong an argument, in relation to other colonial languages in Africa, such as French and Portuguese.
2. While many language theorists use discourse in a particular way, whenever I refer to discourse I prefer the Foucauldian sense of discourse as a ‘field of thought’.
3. Teaching and learning in schools and universities in regard to inter‐language exchange lag behind botanical, zoological and medicinal discourses when it comes to traditional knowledge and uses of plants and animals.
4. From the essay, ‘The analytical language of John Wilkins’ (Kuhn Citation1988, 101–5). In the essay Dr Franz Kuhn is further attributed to bringing the encyclopaedia to the world's attention. No references for Kuhn are given and it is unknown whether Borges (Citation1988) made the entire classification up or not. The Chinese example is used partly because it is so often cited and partly because Foucault's application of meaning systems and categorisation principles from his own culture has mostly been left unquestioned.
5. Originally written in French and titled Les Mots et les Choses (1966).
6. In The Order of Things, Foucault then proceeds with the undertaking of establishing how it came about that the west thinks this rather than that.
7. Biologically, we are all, of course, animals. However, for the purposes of this paper, unless otherwise stated, animal will refer to the non‐human animal and, in particular, to the wild animal.
8. Seminal postcolonial and feminist works that come to mind here are Edward Said's Orientalism (Citation1978), Homi K. Bhabha's notions of hybridity (1990), Luise White's Speaking with vampires (Citation2000), Linda Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies (Citation1999), Gayatri Spivak's work on the subaltern, Lois McNay's Foucault and Feminism (Citation1992), and Chandra Mohanty's work on feminist literary theory.
9. The Bakhtin Circle was founded in Russia and developed a school of thought based on the work of its principal member, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975). The Circle, whose members included Pavel Mevedev and Valentin Voloshinov, addressed social, cultural, linguistic and artistic issues raised as a result of the Russian Revolution. Bakhtin's ideas, which only came to the knowledge of the west in the mid‐twentieth century, continue to influence critical work regarding literature and language.
10. It is estimated that there are over 500 African languages in the Bantu grouping. Bantu means ‘people’. Population‐wise, Bantu‐speakers make up the majority in eastern and southern Africa.
11. Even today, the ideal is to accumulate livestock. Domestic animals might be killed on special occasions such as a wedding or initiation ceremony. Before marriage in southern and eastern Africa, men are still expected to pay a bride price in livestock to a young woman's parents. Only recently has it come about that a cow may sometimes be replaced with a monetary equivalent.
12. Royal game, such as whales off the coast of England and swans, belongs to the monarch unto this day by decree.
13. Adams and McShane (Citation1996) provide a cogent history of the early days of the Serengeti National Park.
14. See for instance, http://www.sa-venues.com/gamereserves/mpl_kruger.htm (accessed July 2, 2009).
15. The Constitution's Bill of Rights takes into cognisance the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as well.
16. Literature has received significantly more attention than linguistic meaning systems. See, for instance, ecocritical works by Dan Wylie (Citation2001), Elwin Jenkins (Citation2004) and Wendy Woodward (Citation2007).
17. Phrases from Thomas Pringle's ‘Song of the wild bushman’ in Poems illustrative of South Africa (Citation1970). Pringle, who lived from 1789–1843, is considered South Africa's first major English poet.
18. From Jeremy Cronin's ‘To learn how to speak’, in his anthology of poems, Inside (Citation1983).
19. Of course, Europe over thousands of years had also been ‘tidied up’. It is probable that most colonial settlers did not consider that the very landscapes they had come from and were often trying to recreate, were themselves human constructions.
20. Afrikaans‐speakers make up 13.3% of the total, isiNdebele 1.6%, isiXhosa 17.6%, isiZulu 23.8%, Sepedi 9.4%, Sesotho 7.9%, Setswana 8.2%, Siswati 2.7%, Tsivenda 2.3%, Xitsonga 4.4%, Other 0.5%.
21. Soon after independence, Namibia switched from German and Afrikaans as official languages to English. Rwanda is busy making the transition from French to English as its official language. Increasingly, English is enhancing its ‘symbolic power’ in countries where it was not traditionally spoken as a colonial language (e.g., Mozambique and Madagascar).
22. See the WWF website on CBNRM for capacity building in southern Africa at ⟨http://www.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/projects/projects_in_depth/cbnrm⟩ (accessed September 1, 2009).
23. Why the area may be considered fearful was not documented by Wolmer. It is quite possible that the fear arises out of a particular belief system or because of the mythology of a group of people.
24. From 2010 English became a specialist major. The new BEd degree requires that students would need to study a language that they have not studied at school. First‐language English and Afrikaans speakers would be obliged to do a beginners' course in isiZulu or Sesotho for instance. Indigenous language‐speakers could do a course in Afrikaans or another African language.
25. See an analysis by the author, ‘Ecofutures in Africa: Jenny Robson's Savannah 2116 AD’ (Cloete Citation2009).
26. I myself am a white, female professor of English who grew up in Kenya. My own home language is Afrikaans, my second, almost first language, used to be Kiswahili, but English has since become my primary language.
27. It is understood that soldiers from the erstwhile Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) also went ‘bossies’ during the bush wars against indigenous, pro‐independence forces during the 1970s.
28. I am especially indebted to the following colleagues who confirmed aspects of my research into indigenous language meaning systems: Joe Magwaza, Mathakga Botha, Junius Makgato, Sebolai Mahope and Margaret Atsango.
29. In Cape Town, the no‐man's land between the national highway and the township is sometimes used for initiation schools, since travel to the eastern Cape, the traditional lands of the Xhosa, is beyond the means of many township dwellers. Xhosa‐speakers often refer to ‘going to the bush’ as ‘going to the mountain’ as well.
