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Language, under erasure:

A critique of ‘neocolonial’ linguistic nationalism

Ashan Weerasinghe

The binary opposition between language and dialect can be seen as a violent
consequence of the neocolonial project which began to establish its hegemonic ideology
along with the so-called ‘post-colonial’ period. Even though the term ‘neocolonial’ does not
represent the opposite of ‘postcolonial’, it critically challenges the boundary between
colonialism and post-colonialism – the belief that the latter stands for the ‘post-’ era of
colonialism as if colonialism was ended. This raises the question: how can one speak of the
death of colonialism if it is still in progress in another subtle form? In the present essay, this
term will be used to refer to the continuity of colonialism inside the territorial limits of the
former colonies. This also suggests that colonialism did not end in order to mark the
beginnings of what is called ‘post-colonial’; rather, its political agenda was handed to the
local-(neocolonial)-elites who then began carrying out the same project under ‘intra/inter-
colonialism’. My use of ‘neocolonial’ in this essay signals this shared dimension of power.

This essay does not belong to any kind of defined literary or philosophical genre.
Rather, it tries to explore some of the cultural implications before and after European
colonialism in order to examine how language ideologies have been played a crucial role in
the circulation of power/knowledge/discourse. In this respect, my personal view is that
language based ideologies are not merely cultural representations of language-as-
communication, but they represent the ways in which the former colonies were re-colonized
by the local elites to exclude non-elite groups from the discourse of state-nations and nation-
states. Language was considered a crucial part of this project, for it represents the most
sensitive element of one’s subject-position. Therefore, the so-called difference between
language and Other forms of language – for example, dialect – has become an effective
means of othering.
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Since the idea that ‘dialect is the supplemented other of language’ was successfully
established in the academic domains, those people who speak ‘dialects’ rather than
‘languages’ are/were considered the Others of linguistic-selves at the same time. For
example, metropolitan based local elites. In this essay, I shall critically examine this
metaphysical ideology, and suggest that the very notion of language must be written under
erasure in order to: (1) trace its origins located in the absent Other; and, (2) interrogate the
dominant view of language as a meaning giving phenomenon. My position here is that the
meaning of language itself is always subjected to what Derrida calls “différance”, and, for
that reason, it cannot have a stable, transparent meaning. Thus it is impossible to use
language to represent any kind of cultural, national or political “unitary identity”, if it does
not have a meaning of its own. I shall also suggest that this deconstructive close-reading
would critically interrogate the difference between language and dialect together with all the
political agendas associated with it. I try to explore how colonial language-cultural ideologies
were transformed into neocolonial linguistic nationalisms in the name of ‘national
languages’, and then analyze the ways in which linguistic-knowledge has created certain
neocolonial marginalized (more correctly, ‘Third World’ subaltern) groups. To conclude at
the outset, this essay is an attempt to examine how language has been used as a means of
Othering.

In the imperialists’ words, colonialism was a ‘civilizing mission’ with the aims of
modernizing the ‘other’ parts of the world. This slogan - ‘civilizing the Other mission’ - was
enormously important for them, because it provided them with a powerful instrument of
justification. Thus, they claimed, the rest of the world must be exposed to European colonial
languages, religions and cultural values, because ‘that was the only opportunity for the
indigenous people to get rid of their ‘incorrect, local, unorganized and uncivilized cultures’.

However, our own histories reveal the other side of this so-called civilizing mission.
Gaining more and more economic and political power was the foremost objective of their
activities. Since this goal could not be achieved without proper external-support, they
strategically used their cultural ideologies. Language was one of the most powerful tools used
to obtain the fragmented social consensus.

This brief account on the history of colonization leads our discussion to the
neocolonial era where language ideologies have been played a key role in internally
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hegemonizing the “post-colonial” – common nationality. National integrity was given a

greater emphasis and was considered the only possible way of reforming the cultural
uniqueness which was ruined by former colonialists. With this new emphasis on ‘our single
country’ theme, certain languages and religions were highlighted as the key elements of the
reformation process. Reformation was essential. For colonialism ruined the great
national/historical identity of former colonies. This was how local elites propagandized the
rest of the population1.

Former colonies such as Sri Lanka, India, and Africa etc., provide rich evidence for
this argument. Even though they became multicultural states after European colonialism, the
so-called anti-colonial movements were always associated with certain languages which were
believed to be ‘national’. Accordingly, Sinhala and Hindi became the official linguistic
means of Sri Lankan and Indian post-independence nation building projects. Nevertheless,
the reality is that there are/were many (local) languages other than Sinhala and Hindi in both
countries. Contrary to this reality, the local elites re-narrativized history in order to encode
counter-colonialism in a single linguistic-cultural discourse. Obviously, languages/forms
other than this common ‘national’ language were considered alien practices by somehow
relating them to the colonial policies. Tamil in Sri Lanka was such a ‘transplanted language
in the course of European colonialism’ - Sinhala nationalists argued. This again led to a
number of ethnic issues in the later period. Thus, it can be correctly argued that both
colonialism and anti-colonialism can be considered two sides of the same coin of which the
sole aim was dominating the Others.

One interesting aspect of this neocolonial power distribution was that it strategically
adapted the narrativization used by European colonialists. European imperialism could
expand its vision for a considerable period because it was able to successfully re-write the
‘non-European history as an uncivilized and fragmented one’. Similarly, the major objective
of the neocolonial local elites was to‘re-form’ the national as well as cultural uniqueness of
their nations. For example, in Sri Lanka, Tamils and other ethnic groups were represented by
the Sinhala Buddhist nationalists as ‘new-comers’ to the island which ‘historically’ belonged
to Sinhala people. A glance at the major political movements of this period clearly shows the
one-dimensional nature of Sri Lankan anti-colonial struggles. It should also be stressed at this
point, that this ideology was supported by a number of agencies, which were essentially
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It is no surprise that every “post-colonial” resistance was lead by the local elites.
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urban elites, for example, religious, educational, cultural and political institutions. This fact
demonstrates how earlier colonial ideology was successfully absorbed by the local elite
groups to justify their nationalist movements which sought to satisfy the interests of the
majority.

Another noteworthy aspect of colonialism and post/neo-colonialism should be

illustrated here. That is, both movements segregated not only their Other’s societies, but also
even their own ones. This situation is very interestingly portrayed in E. M. Forster’s famous
novel, A Passage to India ( ). The reason for this intra/inter ideological segregation is not
difficult to understand. No matter however radically and democratically both movements
presented their own goals, in practice, only the privileged elite groups were benefited from
them. Thus, like European colonialists, the local elites often propagandized the native people
in order to organize common consensus around their hegemony. One such powerful tool of
this process was emphasizing the need of purifying and safeguarding the ‘national’ language
spoken by the majority. This task was always carried out against the former colonial
language(s) such as English2. Even though the local elites pretended to be promoting the
‘national’ language as a common medium of ‘re-building the nation’, the hidden objective of
this process was to limit the access to the language from which they maintained their
hegemony while suggesting local languages to the non-elite groups.

The second part of this essay attempts to relate this analysis to the language/dialect
binary by looking more closely at the situations involved in the internal-colonialism of
former colonies. This task requires a close engagement with the ‘post-colonial’ ideologies.

II

This essay began with two basic arguments: (1) ‘language’ does not have stable and
transparent meanings of its own; therefore, it cannot be used as a meaning giving
phenomenon to other constructs, for example, ‘national identity’. Thus, assigning ‘national’
meanings to particular ethnic and cultural groups in terms of language is a forceful practice
2
However, almost all of the leading anti-colonialists at this time were fluent in English. At the same
time, they used the knowledge in these Other languages to keep a gap between them and local non-elite
groups. Thus, their resistance to the colonial languages and cultures was not as progressive as it seemed to
be.
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imposed by European colonialism: (2) Therefore, language must always be written under
erasure in order to point to this instability which leads to delaying its own existence. Taken
together, these two basic propositions suggest that hierarchizing ‘language’ over other forms
of speech is a violent metaphysical event occurred in the history of colonial/neocolonial
expansion of dominant hegemony. With this idea in mind, I shall try to critically analyse the
above mentioned language/dialect binary.

The re-emergence of language/dialect division and the greater emphasis placed on it

in the ‘post-colonial’ language ideologies can also be traced back to the European
colonialism. One can easily understand this tendency by examining the status of colonial
language(s) and local languages at that time. As we already know, only the dominant colonial
languages such as English, French etc., were believed to be developed enough to carry out the
‘civilizing and modernizing’ mission of the European ‘selves’. Consequently, the local
languages were used only as supplements when it was necessary to disseminate such
hegemonic ideas among the native people3. Thus, these local languages were always given
the inferior (second) position in the binary pair. The best example of this may be the
conversion of educational and administrative processes into the colonial languages.
Occasionally, the local languages were also used but in limited circumstances to strengthen
the European authority over the local population. They aimed to achieve at least two goals
from this strategy: (1) imposing European cultural and political as well as economic
ideologies on the local populations; (2) breaking up the traditional administrative and
educational systems so as to fragment the collective consciousness of the colonized nations
while forcefully organizing the entire society around the dominant colonial hegemony.

According to the post-Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci, one of the most important
functions of the State4 is to

raise the great mass of the population to a particular cultural and moral level, a level
(or type) which corresponds to the needs of the productive forces for development,
and hence to the interests of the ruling class (Gramsci: 1978, p. 258).

3
Jacques Derrida’s critique of supplementing is worth noticing here. See Derrida (of gram) p.
4
Gramsci’s State is a complex of what he calls “civil society” and “political society”. See Gramsci
(1978) p. 264.
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Thus, it is correct to argue that one powerful means of successfully achieving this
“particular cultural and moral level” which “corresponds to the.......interests of the ruling
class” during the colonial period was language ideologies. One reason for this may be the
crucial role played by language in constructing subject-positions of the individuals.

Same applies to the neocolonial language ideologies, especially after the European
colonialism. Initially, the former colonial languages were used by a limited number of
privileged elites for specific purposes. This was a beneficial opportunity for them especially
because of the status attached to those languages during the colonial period. On the other
hand, the language used by the majority of the population was also given a higher status
compared to the other languages, because of the ‘national’ character associated with it. This
can be seen as a critical moment that marks the transitive period from colonial to
neocolonial.

The clash between these two languages clearly demonstrates the nature of power
politics during this time. If one focuses on the ‘national’ language debate for a moment,
she/he will be able to observe the other aspects of this clash, to mention only one example -
silencing the non-dominant linguistic and cultural practices in the name of ‘national re-form’.
Not only the languages other than this ‘national language’, but also varieties of that particular
language were disenfranchised in various ways. The emphasis on ‘dialect’ is an obvious
instance of this linguistic nationalism/terrorism.

Jacques Derrida’s Monolingualism of the Other or the Prosthesis of Origin (1998) is

an interesting work that critically deals with the difference between language and dialect5.
For Derrida, the view that language is the root and author of other forms such as dialect,
idiom etc., is exclusively based on the metaphysics of presence. Thus, he argues:

If we do not take into consideration, in an always very determined context, some

external criteria, whether they are "quantitative" (the age, stability, and demographic
extension of the field of speech) or "politicosymbolic" (the legitimacy, authority,
and domination of a language over a speech, dialect, or idiom) , then I do not know

5
Derrida never tries to explain the major theme of the text. This is a common fact that can be found
when we read Derrida. However, I shall relate his work to this essay depending on my reading of the text.
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where we can find internal and structural features in order to distinguish rigorously
between a language, a dialect, and an idiom. (Derrida, 1998: p. 8-9)

This is an important analysis where the “domination of a language over a speech,

dialect, or idiom” is attributed not to the “quantitative” factors such as “age, stability and
demographic extension of the field of speech”, but to the “politico-symbolic” aspects. The
principal argument that runs through the entire text is, as I understand it, that one cannot
‘posses’ more than one languages, rather, s/he can have only one ‘language-version’6 which
consists of all kinds of linguistic means that s/he uses. This again interrogates the notion of
‘bilingualism’. For, one cannot have two languages or language forms but her/his language-
version. Thus, Derrida continues:

No such thing as a language exists. At present. Nor does the language. Nor the idiom
or dialect. That, moreover, is why one would never be able to count these things, and
why if, in a sense I shall explain in a moment, we only ever have one language, this
monolingualism is not at one with itself. (Derrida: 1998, p.65).

The division between language and dialect in the neocolonial language ideologies
clearly signifies the power structure of these former colonies. As I already pointed out, this
fact reveals the nature of elitist decision making which lead to the internal-colonialism in
terms of cultural elements. Almost in all of these states, only the language-variety spoken by
the most powerful has been given the superior “national” status. Other language varieties are
considered regional language forms that are confined to specific purposes, areas and classes.
This hierarchizing becomes even more obvious if one looks at the language-form used in
educational and administrative domains.

If we re-consider the opening paragraphs of this essay, it would be possible to argue

that this language ideology can equally be compared to the colonial language policies.
Encoding power structures in the dominant language has been used as a means of gaining
superiority over the (neo)colonized population was practiced in both eras. Consequently,
language hierarchies which were favorable for the ruling groups were forcefully imposed on
the society. This is another method of, as Gayatri Spivak would say, silencing the third would
6
I use the term ‘language-version’ to emphasize the fact that the language variety used by someone is
her/his own adaptation of a particular language. This again stresses, that one can speak only an adaptation
of a language rather than The Language or its dialects.
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subaltern; for the decisions have been taken on behalf of the marginalized groups by the
dominant groups. As Spivak argues in a remarkable essay, “subalternity cannot be
generalized according to hegemonic logic. That is what makes it subaltern” (Spivak: 2005, p.
475).

It cannot be expected that writing ‘Language’ under erasure7 alone would resolve the
whole issue. However, it may lead us into a critical re-consideration of language and
linguistics – the ‘science’ of language. This may allow one to locate all of the taken-for-
granted meanings attached to language in différance. That means, differing and deferring
‘language’ at the same time. As Caputo (2000) comments on the term,

it [différance] is the condition of possibility of these things, which are so many effects
of its play, traces traced on its surface, from which it itself withdraws (re-trait). More
strictly still: différance is a quasi-condition of possibility, because it does not describe
fixed boundaries that delimit what can happen and what not, but points a mute8
(Caputo: 2000, p.101).

Thus, it seems quite obvious that this would be a useful approach to smudge the
boundary between language and dialect. Whenever one tries to make linguistic-meanings, the
very notion of language is delayed, postponed and differed from itself. The suggestion that
language must always be written under erasure would point us into that direction.

References
7
In Derrida’s terminology, the French equivalent of this term means, according to Spivak’s
“Translator’s Preface” to Derrida’s Of Grammatology, crossi……
8
Italics added.
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Caputo, John D (ed) (2000), Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques

Derrida, Fordham University Press: New York.

Derrida, Jacques (1974), Of Grammatology, Trans. Gayatri Spivak, John Hopkins University
Press: Batlimore.

Derrida, Jacques (1998), Monolingualism of the Other or the Prosthesis of Origin, Stanford
University Press: California.

Gramsci, Antonio (1971), Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Q. Hoare &
G. Nowell-Smith, Lawrence and Wishart: London.

Spivak, Gayatri (2005), ‘Scattered Speculations on the Subaltern and Popular’, in

Postcolonial Studies, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 475-486.