https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4624-5594
![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This paper analyses how the lens of ‘colonisation/decolonisation’ is used by popular and academic accounts of language change in Algeria to structure understanding of contemporary language practices and conceptions of belonging. It shows how these frames lead to English being held up as a ‘decolonial’ option, supposedly allowing for the bypassing of existing hierarchies and the renewal of social and political categories. It also analyses the ways in which the sole focus on ‘English against French’ obscures the multiple functions of talking about English and in English. The sole focus on colonisation and the transformative hopes surrounding English also contributes to disconnecting research about English in Algeria and the Maghreb from existing research on English in the world. It further spotlights only English and French over more complex language dynamics.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/L012006/1) in a collaboration between the University of Portsmouth and the British Council in Algiers. The funders have not been involved in the study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data, nor in the writing of the article.
Although I cannot name them, I am indebted to my participants for sharing their time and insights with me, and for their constructive feedback throughout. Thank you also to Natalya Vince, Hayat Messekher, Olivia Rutazibwa, Mario Saraceni, and participants in ‘Language and Decolonisation in twenty-first Century Africa’, the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL)’s Language in Africa Annual Conference, held at the University of Portsmouth in May 2019, where an earlier version of this paper was discussed. Any remaining shortcomings are my own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 In Algeria, traditional centres of learning were closed and their lands were confiscated (Colonna Citation1975, 29–34). ‘Arabic’ was officially part of the curriculum in colonial schools, but all teaching was delivered by French teachers and the practice disappeared rapidly (Kadri Citation2014).
2 At the request of the editors, only the English translation for citations in French has been included. All translations are my own.
3 Personality (personnalité) is the most common term used during the 20th century to denote an Algerian collective identity.
4 All names are pseudonyms.
5 Parents were given the choice between their children starting French or English in the second year of primary school, with the other language to be started in the first year of secondary school.
6 Gaël’s words were that Arabic ‘n’est pas miné au niveau de la religion, du régionalisme, de la colonisation. Il ne questionne pas ce qu’est l’arabe’
7 These particular wordings are from Aymen, who works for an international organisation.
8 Cf. Quijano Citation2000; Ndlovu-Gatsheni Citation2013; Grosfoguel Citation2007.
9 Grosfoguel uses the concept of coloniality rather than neo-colonialism as a way ‘to understand the continuity of colonial forms of domination after the end of colonial administrations, produced by colonial cultures and structures in the modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal world-system’ (Citation2007, 219–20).
10 Ilyès was an English graduate and language teacher in Tlemcen.
11 Her words were ‘ l’anglais va remplacer le français dans quelques années, vous allez voir, les gens sont plus intéressés par l’anglais’.
12 ‘Les parents qui demandent ça, moi je sais qu’ici ceux qui viennent inscrire leurs enfants aux cours d’anglais, leurs enfants parlent déjà français. Maintenant est-ce qu’il y a des enfants qui parlent pas du tout français et qui sont inscrits en anglais je pense pas, ou qui viennent s’inscrire aussi en anglais … c’est une question de moyens aussi. Parce que celui qui inscrit ces enfants au cours de langue à l’âge de sept ans sachant ce que cela coûte, c’est quelqu’un qui a les moyens. Quelqu’un qui est aussi … averti et qui sait que les langues c’est un atout. Ils le disent “je fais un investissement”. Il y en a qui ramènent trois enfants et je dis “c’est, c’est beaucoup pour vous”, on se permet des remarques comme ça, “de débourser quand même pour trois enfants pour des cours d’anglais ici”. Et ils disent “pour moi c’est un investissement”’
13 Originally coined as trawsieithu by Cen Williams when discussing the practices of Welsh speakers (Lewis, Jones, and Baker Citation2012), translanguaging as an approach was developed further by Ofelia García when researching multilinguals in the United States and ‘considers the language practices of bilinguals not as two autonomous language systems as has been traditionally the case, but as one linguistics repertoire with features that have been societally constructed as belonging to two separate languages’ (García and Li Citation2014, 2). Language is understood as a ‘repertoire of multilingual, multimodal, multisensory and multi-semiotic resources that language users orchestrate in sense- and meaning-making’ rather than a set of distinct bounded and labelled speech forms (Zhu, Li, and Lyons Citation2017, 413).