The sociolinguistics of nationalism in the Sudan: the politicisation of Arabic and the Arabicisation of politics

Abstract

This monograph describes the historiography of language ideologies that led to the politicisation of Arabic and the Arabicisation of politics in the Sudan, starting from British colonial rule until the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was a precursor to the separation of the South as an independent state. The monograph shows that the politicisation of Arabic in the Sudan is largely a product of British colonial language planning practices that essentially amalgamated Arabic, Islam and a pigmented, spatialised identity, constituting in the process ‘northern Sudan’ vis-à-vis its southern counterpart. The widely celebrated South–North multilingualism is largely a product of colonial linguistic intervention, which has been sustained by postcolonial rules. The postcolonial sociolinguistic order, which is a result of power holders' competing agendas, has reproduced this colonial narrative as the legitimate base of its official (northern) language policy, leading to the Arabicisation of politics. The monograph analyses these different historical trajectories in order to establish how they have intertextually played themselves out in the recent language policies of the South–North peace agreements. Although the ‘New Sudan’ project, promulgated by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army, was intended to de-politicise Arabic and de-Arabicise politics by advocating a political programme aimed at deconstructing the South–North polarisation, the South–North semiotically invented cartography is re-entextualised in the very ‘libratory’ postcolonial discourse of the CPA.

Keywords:

• Arabicisation
• language ideology
• Sudan
• colonialism
• Naivasha language policy

Notes

On Orientalism, see Said (1978).

We use ‘Sudan’ in this temporal sense unless otherwise stated.

For a detailed review of various definitional positions, see Eagleton (1991), Thompson (1984) and Woolard (1998).

For similar critical accounts, see, among many, Baldauf and Luke (1990), Ricento (2006) and Tollefson (1991).

See Spolsky (2004) for a model that differentiates between policy and practices. For a discussion of ethnographic perspectives of language policy, see Canagarajah (2006), Hornberger and Johnson (2007) and Johnson (2009).

For a detailed discussion of language ideologies in scientific linguistic scholarship, see Joseph and Taylor (1990). For a review of the historical development of language ideologies, see Bauman and Briggs (2003), Blommaert (1999b), Gal and Woolard (2001), Kroskrity (2001) and Schieffelin, Woolard, and Kroskrity (1998).

Note that this congruence is absent in most of the ‘plural states’ (see Smith, 1991).

For a discussion on the role of language in European conception of nationalism, see Blommaert and Verschueren (1989). For a discussion in the context of the Arab world, see Bassiouney (2009), Haeri (2003), Miller (2003b) and Suleiman (2003, 2004). On language ideologies in Pacific societies, see Makihara and Schieffelin (2007).

On the notion of ‘enregisterment’, see Agha (2007).

Cf. Silverstein's (2003) ‘indexical order’.

On the process of ‘replication’ as an aspect of the natural history of discourse, see Urban (1996) and Haviland (1996).

Regsha/Riksha is a three-wheel vehicle used in public transportation in a number of towns and cities in Sudan; it originated in India and is known as ‘Tuk Tuk’ in Egypt.

Although Ferguson (1959) described such language situations as ‘relatively stable’ rather than absolutely or permanently stable, from a radical pragmatic perspective there is no real stability in the division of labour between the Fusha (Modern Standard Arabic) and the colloquial (Arabic dialect), even if this division has persisted at the ideological level (see Verschueren, 1999).

This nationalist ideology of language was comparatively adopted by many nationalist leaders following the independence of their countries. For instance, in 1948 Assembly debate in Pakistan, the Premier was reported to have stated: ‘Pakistan is Muslim State and it must have as its lingua franca the language of the Muslim nation … Pakistan has been created because of the demand of a hundred million Muslims in this sub-continent and the language of the hundred million Muslims is Urdu. It is necessary for a nation to have one language and that language can only be Urdu’ (Akanda, 1970, p. 72, as cited in C. Young, 1976, p. 480).

Similar ethnicisation or politicisation of language obtains in, for example, Mauritius (Eisenlohr, 2004), Israel (Shohamy 2006), Arab Middle Eastern contexts such as Jordan, Morocco and Lebanon (Suleiman, 2003, 2004) and former Yugoslavia (Tollefson, 1991).

For the full text of the agreement, see Abbas (1952).

Similar to the Closed District Order implemented in the Sudan that physically cut off the South from the North, the colonial policy in Nigeria administratively separated the Northern and Southern Provinces from 1900 to 1922, and dividing structures were maintained from 1922 for the Northern, Eastern and Western Regions (Peshkin, 1967, p. 323).

See Pollis (1973) for a discussion of various British colonial strategies.

The use of the term ‘negroid’ by the colonial Southern Policy reflects the racist ideology in nineteenth-century thought.

Masagara (1997) demonstrably showed that European Christian missionaries, particularly during the colonial period, severely disturbed the nature of the verbally constituted social order in some African societies by, for example, invalidating locally binding interpersonal commitments that were not mediated through the (western) technology of writing (e.g. written contracts). Masagara demonstrated that by contrast to colonial European languages, Kirundi and Kinyarwanda have an oral genre of traditional oath forms with practices that enable its users to interpret and negotiate the truth-value of claims. Masagara's empirically supported argument draws our attention to the fact that modernist (language) ideologies (i.e. Western worldview), evidently manifested in the missionary language-planning practices, had serious consequences on the ways in which contextually integrated and orally  negotiated unscripted social relationship were (mis)represented and (de)valued by Christian missionaries.

The parenthesised explanation is in the original.

For critical accounts on multilingualism, see Blackledge and Creese (2010), Gafaranga (2007) and Heller (2007).

For the full text of the educational note, see Beshir (1969, pp. 237–253).

Similarly, in such other contexts as North India, the elite appropriated English to serve their nationalist agenda (Sonntag, 2000).

Mahgoub's claim that ‘Arabism is not racism’ is structured as a factual statement using the epistemic modality of the present tense. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the universal validity of this ideological position.

The parenthesised explanation is in the original.

For the full text of the agreement, see Beshir (1975, pp. 158–177).

The language policy embodied in the Transitional Constitution of the Republic of South Sudan (2011) holds: ‘(1) All indigenous languages of South Sudan are national languages and shall be respected, developed and promoted; (2)  English shall be the official working language in the Republic of South Sudan, as well as the language of instruction at all levels of education; (3) The State shall promote the development of a sign language for the benefit of people with special needs’ (http://www.sudantribune.com/IMG/pdf/The_Draft_Transitional_Constitution_of_the_ROSS2-2.pdf, accessed 30 August 2011).

With respect to the natural history of this statement which can be revealed through the analysis of the drafting processes and other texts that preceded the final version of the constitution, this statement replaced the following one in the draft constitution: ‘Without prejudice to sub-Article (3) above, and for practical considerations, English shall be the principal working language of government business in Southern Sudan’. The sub-Article (3) is: ‘There shall be no discrimination against the use of either English or Arabic at any level of government or stage of education’. Had this statement survived the further revision of the constitution, it would have been a re-entextualisation of the language policy of Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972 nearly verbatim (http://www.gossmission.org/goss/images/agreements/interim_constitution_southsudan_2005.pdf).

Article (9) of the Interim Constitution of Southern Sudan defines a ‘Southern Sudanese’ as ‘any person whose either parent or grandparent is or was a member of any of the indigenous communities existing in Southern Sudan before or on January 1, 1956; or whose ancestry can be traced through agnatic or male line to any one of the ethnic communities of Southern Sudan […]’ or ‘any person who has been permanently residing or whose mother and/or father or any grandparent have been permanently residing in Southern Sudan as of January 1, 1956’. An earlier draft of this constitution even listed 63 ‘Southern Sudanese indigenous Communities’ (http://www.gossmission.org/goss/images/agreements/interim_constitution_southsudan_2005.pdf (accessed 15 March 2011).

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE6BI0SX20101219 (accessed 23 December 2010).