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ABSTRACT
Building on previous studies, this paper addresses the geopolitics of knowledge circulation in an academic field known as sociolinguistics in France, showing firstly the common erasure of research produced in the Global South and in languages other than English, and secondly the need to decolonise entire fields of research, in which analytic frameworks are mostly produced in hegemonic Global centres. As part of this special issue, we ask how far concepts rooted in Southern or non-hegemonic experiences are marginalised, co-opted or reused in academic circles in the West in general and in France in particular. As a modest epistemological contribution, this paper then focuses on two concepts – sumak kawsay/buen vivir and translanguaging – looking at their archaeology and development and at how they circulate in these fields, both in Northern and Southern academic circles. Both examples illustrate their circulation but also erasures and compartmentalisation through language.
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Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Parts of this article were given as a paper at the conference on ‘Globalisations et circulations des idées, des savoirs et des normes’ which I co-organised within the Fédération Sciences Sociales aux Suds (2019) and as a plenary at the Sociolinguistic Symposium in Ghent (2022).
2 More than twenty years of companionship experiencing coloniality in French overseas territories and discussions with French Guianese friends, including local activists and political leaders, has made me very sensitive to Indigenous claims and also receptive to Southern epistemologies. Among many other occasions, the conferences of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics were crucial opportunities for me as a young researcher to first encounter powerful discourses by Caribbean scholars. Years later, regular meetings with colleagues from the Southern Multilingualisms and Diversities Consortium gave me the opportunity to learn from experiences in South Africa, Australia and many other countries.
3 Following Santos (2011, 39) I understand the Global South as ‘a metaphor for human suffering caused by capitalism and colonialism on the global level, as well as for the resistance that seeks to overcome or minimise such suffering’, a phenomenon that exists both in Western or Northern countries and in Southern contexts.
4 Drawing on the conception of comprehension, as articulated by Bourdieu and Culioli, as a particular case of misunderstanding, communication always needs inter-individual adjustments. In my view named languages, theories and illusions of understanding might constitute obstacles to be overcome to avoid common misunderstandings.
5 At the time, the first author was affiliated with a university in South Africa and the second in Singapore, both locations they consider as belonging to the Global South, an expression which ‘encapsulates the conflation between geographical positionality and political marginality, as well as captures the complexity of contemporary postcolonial conditions’ (ibid.).
6 Viteri Gualingua was working with the Sarayaku people in the 1990s; in relation with the Pastaza Indigenous Peoples’ Organisation, he ‘systematized this concept until it became a theoretical model of welfare and a proposal for social transformation’ (Hidalgo-Capitán, Cubillo-Guevara, and Masabalín-Caisaguano Citation2020).
7 The meanings of the expression in Quechua (sumak kawsay) and Aymara (suma qamaña) are so extensive and complex that they are practically untranslatable in languages such as Spanish or English (my translation).
8 Referring probably to South America.
9 Data accessed at theses.fr (10/12/2020).
10 Lewis, Jones, and Baker (Citation2012) discuss the origins of the notion, which was introduced by Cen Williams and his colleague Dafydd Whittall during a training session for school head teachers. It was first translated into English as translinguifying, but in the end translanguaging was adopted following a discussion between Williams and Baker. They claim that it was the third edition of Baker’s work Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, in 2001, which ‘made the term internationally known’ (Citation2012, 645).
11 In one sense via the notion of cultural transculturation introduced by Ortiz in 1940, and in another sense with respect to the ‘trans-formative’ and transcendent power of translanguaging.
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Isabelle Léglise
Isabelle Léglise is Directrice de Recherche in Linguistics at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS, Paris). She is head of the Federation of Centres on Social Sciences in the Global South and cohead of the CNRS-IRD-INALCO SeDyL Centre. For the last 20 years she has been engaged in research projects and scientific cooperation in French Guiana, Suriname and Brazil, and more recently Cambodia, with a special focus on multilingualism related to migration and educational issues. She has published widely on contact linguistics and variation, multilingual practices, heterogeneous corpora, discourse analysis and language policy related to education and health in postcolonial settings.