Multilingual examinations: towards a schema of politicization of language in end of high school examinations in sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT

In many countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the release of each year’s results for the end of high school examinations heralds an annual ritual of public commentary on the poor state of national education systems. However, the exoglossic/monolingual language regime for these examinations is infrequently acknowledged as contributing to the dismal performance of students. Even less attended to is the manner in which the language of examinations, through shaping students’ performances, may be exacerbating social inequalities. This article politicizes the language of examinations in the region in the hope of generating policy and research interest in what is arguably an insidious source of inequality. The article makes three arguments. Firstly, it is argued that current exoglossic/monolingual practices in these examinations constitute a set of sociolinguistic aberrations, with demonstrable negative effects on students’ performance. Secondly, it is argued that the gravity of these paradoxical sociolinguistic disarticulations is better appreciated when their social ramifications are viewed in terms of structural violence and social inequality. Thirdly, in considering how to evolve a more socially equitable examination language regime, it is argued that the notion of consequential validity in testing positions translanguaging as a more ecologically valid model of language use in examinations.

KEYWORDS:

• High school examinations
• sub-Saharan Africa
• monolingualism
• social inequality
• translanguaging

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Bassey E. Antia is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Across multilingualism and terminology (two areas of his research emphasis), his work problematizes and seeks to respond to the marginality experienced by specific groups in education. He has previously authored Terminology and Language Planning, and edited Indeterminacy in Terminology and LSP, both from Benjamins. Recent journal articles have appeared in Language Policy, International Journal of the Socioloigy of Language, and Terminology.

Notes

1 Arabic would be a sixth language at the continental level, rather than specifically in sub-Saharan Africa.

2 In this province, the official languages are English, isiXhosa and Afrikaans. The Kaaps variety of the latter is spoken in coloured communities and it has a larger speaker base than the standard variety. Kaaps includes many English loanwords.

3 These datasets were obtained at the University of the Western Cape where respondents were more at home with the Kaaps variety of Afrikaans than with the formal variety. The patterns seen might have been different at another institution with respondents who are more at home with the standard variety.