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development from a local perspective A case study from Ivory Coast *

Dans le document en Afrique (Page 35-117)

ThomasBEARTH1

The global setting

The World Development Report (WDR) 2004, issued by the World Bank, has rightly been called a ''miles1one'' (Villar& Dodd 2005:327a).

It reverses the perspective: the "poor" themselves come in10 the picture as a resource indispensable for ensuring that the so-called millennium deve10pment goals (MDG) will be reached. In the paper, success and failure are explicitly linked to the degree of involvement of the poor in the decision-making processes accompanying the implementation of the program destined 10 eradicate poverty (WDR 2004:31f.): ''The main difference between success and failure is the extent to which poor people themselves are involved in deterrnining the quality and quantity of the services they receive".

Not only are the target populations assigned an active role in the process of implementation of the MDG but they are identified as 'talking actors' - as participants called upon to make themselves heard and understood. "To improve those services," says the World Development Report (WDR) 2004, "the voices of the poor have to be listened to by the Paper based on field research carried out between 1964 and 2007 under varying auspices. Recent field work and corresponding theoretical work wascarriedout between 2003 and 2007 as part of the project "Language, Gender, and Sus-tainability" (LAGSUS, www.lagsus.de) supported by the VolkswagenStiftung (Hannover, Germany) aspartof their program "Key issues in the Hurnanities"

(SchlOsselthemen der Geisteswissenschaften). Special thanks to Mr. Joseph Baya, MA, Mr. Goh Soupou, and Ms. Geneviève Singo, MA, for their help with the transcription and analysis ofrecent source texts.Inthe latter task, many have contributed, but 1should mention especially Mr. Diomandé Fan, ing. agr., Benomba/Kassel. To Dr. Richard Chadwick 1 owe, apart from routine improv-ements of the English, sorne insightful proposais for reformulating key notions.

1. Professor Emeritus, Department of General Linguistics, University of Zurich (Switzerland).

36 LANGUES, CULTURES ET DÉVELOPPEMENT EN AFRIQUE

politicians and other decision-makers - their opinions, incentives, and movements have to be taken into account" (loc. cit.).

With a slightly more polity-oriented and institutional slant, the European Union's Report on Millennium Development Goals 2000-2004, intended to be the EU'S "contribution to the review of theMDG at the UN 2005 high level event,,2, draws a sunilar conclusion concerning the role of the poor themselves in attaining theMDG (EUreport 2005:77):

"Helping poor people to organize themselves and thus influence the political sphere and institutions so that they refiect their lives and their rights, shall be a priority for all deve10pment assistance".

In associating "agency" (emphasized in the EU report) with

"loquency" (emphasized in the WDRdocument), we must remember that the socio-economic condition of "poverty" - which MDG sets out 10 reduce by half by 2015 before eliIninating it al10gether by 2025 (Sachs 2oo5:266ff.) - is not only defined in terms of deficiencies in physical wellbeing affecting nutrition and health, but also in terms of negatively indexed parameters such as lack of Western education and, as a corollary, of inequality of access to communicative resources and hence to participation in decision-making. In asymmetric multilingual situations, proportionately overrepresented at the receiving end of development co-operation, poverty tends to be corre1ated with a low level of competence in the languages of wider communication and with a high illiteracyrate.

It is therefore by no means a trivial question to ask in which language -or m-ore precisely, in whose language - the poor might make their voices heard in order to be listened to by those in control of decisions affecting their destiny.3

Communicative dependency

Typically, poverty is accompanied by a lack of access 10 information and to communicative commodities and resources. This condition -which we shall callcommunicative dependency - tends to be accentuated

2. The United Nations Summit on theMDGtook place in New York from 14 to 16 September 2005.

3. While sociolinguists (CHAUDENSON 1999), development sociologists (CHAM-BERS 1997) and economists (STIGLITZ 2002) havebeenquite outspoken on the general truth of a negative correlation between access to information and economic growth, hard facts which might serve as a solid empirical basis for the negative correlation between lack of access to communicative resources, including degree of competence in majority languages, on the one hand, and economic capacity on the other, are difficult to comeby.

through linguistic fragmentation. Language transitions are not only zones of contact and overlapping competence but constitute epistemic, cognitive and psychological barriers whose constraining effect on exchange of infonnation and participation is often explicitly recognized as a factor of disempowennent and pauperization by those whose lives are affected by it, particularly women.4

Communicative dependency is a compound phenomenon resulting in part from isolating effects of geographically identifiable language barriers still prevailing in many regions, and in part tied to peripheral language status, classical illiteracy, single-button access to media, and, more recently, to strategic computer illiteracy. While its causes may change with the spread of basic education, globalization and cybercafés, it does not represent a mere transitional state as technology-blinded evolutionary views of African society have held since pre-independence and early post-independence days, but must be envisaged as a sociologically and linguistically complex structural phenomenon to be <lealt with from various complementary angles reflecting this complexity.

Communicative dependency is by no means restricted to geograph-ically territories of minority groups, nor doesitnecessarily correlate with pockets of illiteracy or low rates of enrolment in primary school educ-ation. Ratherthanany single factor of retardation, it reflects a pervasive condition of communicative marginalization of demographic majorities on the African continent which, as a result of the spread of colloquial varieties of official, mostly European languages and basic education, is, paradoxically, on the increase ratherthanon the decrease. From the angle of language use, communicative dependency is a majority condition correlating with the stigmatization of non-standard speech varieties irrespectively of the location of their speakers, and irrespectively of their demographic spread and importance. Communicative dependency is the outcome of counter-productive efIects of semi-education, only super-ficially masked by educational statistics. Itsummarizes a state of afIairs that bas been taken for granted since colonial times, and is still being taken for granted, as being inherent to Africa south of the Sahara as it is, was and will be.

Applied to local constituencies, communicative dependency means to those affected by it in the context of development, to have to rely on the local, mostly orally used language "as the principal or only medium at

4. Lack of access to communicative resources is a recurrent featureinthe self-diagnosis of Tura women, and is resented as a principal cause of lack of economic autonomy and as a major obstacle to economic advancement of the community as a whole. See VÉKOUADIO(2007) for a case study.

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their disposai for daily interaction, the cognitive processing of their experience and the management of their natural and social environment, for working out solutions to their individual and collective problems and conflicts, planning and coordinating future action, as weIl as interpreting national and global events which affect their lives. Communicative dependency, in a more subtle way than exclusion, stands in the way of communicative self-reliance as a prerequisite to dialogue, participation and, ultimately, sustainable co-operation in global development" (Bearth

&Fan 2006:281).

Such a dim view of the social and communicative implications of African multilingualism might naturally be seen as exaggerated and overly pessimistic. It could be held against it that by emphasizing structural and extraneously defmed static aspects of multilingualism, it emphasizes linguistic discontinuity over continuity in terms of similarity of structure and content organization ("inner form"), diversity over homogeneity in terms of mutual intelligibility, while underrating closeness between African speech varieties and, following from this, ease of learning and adaptation from which the African genius of polyglossy has developed and stood the test of time through centuries of cross-regional African oral communication. From whatever angle one chooses to observe and describe the communicative aspects of linguistic diversity across the continent - emphasizing fragmentation or emphasizing cont-inuity - diversity of speech competence dovetailing with diversity of speech form appears to be a generously available resource aptly designed to counter-balance and neutra1ize negative effects of language diversity on practical communication.

The apparently almost effortless mastery of the gamut of registers and speech varieties required for daily survival in a complex linguistic environment - to the extent that both the mastery and the complexity can he ascertained - is undeniably a remarkable achievement in cognitive terms. However, it is not valued as such by society at large, nor seriously taken into account as a resource by development planners. Serving too weIl its purpose for survival under precarious conditions, it becomes a symbolic means of confirming thestatus quo, rather than of transcending it. Interms of contents and negotiating scope, it tends to be restricted to domain-specific repertoires. Lacking public recognition as an achiev-ement, it does not generally count as a blueprint for participation in decision-making beyond narrowly defined bargaining. In short, it is far from being the comprehensive antidote capable of canceling out com-municative marginality. The contrary is the case: stigmatized as a defic-iency, rather than valued as an asset, popular polyglossy, whatever its

range in tenns of inclusion of "European" varieties, remains emblematic of socio-cultural marginalization. Extending into the 21stcentuIy a history of suppression, discredit and prejudice dating back to the 191h,it is part of a mechanism of self-reproducing social inequality and communicative apartheid reinforced by "objective" linguistic segmentation and stratif-ication.

Institutional and technological façades may change with the spread of education, removal of technical obstacles to access global media, and the outreach of cyhercafés toruralcentres. But such changes do not reach to the heart of the problem of communicative dependency hecause they tend to overlook or ignore its roots in language. The net result of improved technological infrastructure for the "sHent majorities" is not participation but a shift of dependency towards mediating agencies, loquencies and processes, and as a further consequence, an increase of communicative dependency still precluding actorship and ownership in vital areas of development.

Communicative dependency stands in the way of the poor and the less poor marginalized people sharing fully and as equal partners in the elaboration of policies and in the negotiation of issues that shape their own lives and communities. Reflecting on the WDR formula quoted above: it is not just economic weakness but even more communicative dependency that makes it difficu1t or impossible for them to have ''their voices listened to". Communicative dependency, a consequence of poverty and also one of its causes, needs to he addressed for what it is, and effectively dealt with if the ''poor'' are to become the powerful and eloquent actors with access to the policy-making floor as which they are portrayed in both theWRDand theEUdocuments.

In economic tenns, the concept of communicative dependency provides a frame for assessing theories linking economic backwardness with ethnic (and by implication linguistic) fragmentation of the continent (Easterly & Levine 1997), or, procedura11y, with the ''broken feedback loop" heing invoked for explaining the low retum of development cooperation in general (Martens et al. 2002). Generally speaking, communicative dependency provides an alternative to deterministic or probabilistic theory, by moving the question of language choice and language policy to the centre of inquiry and thereby opening a space for human intervention in reversing its negative effects, wrongly taken to he the result of sorne sort of a law of nature.

40 LANGUES, CULTURES ET DÉVELOPPEMENT EN AFRIQUE

Communicative sustainability

From the above we are led to conclude that in sub-Saharan Africa, a majority of those local players on whose shoulders crucially rests the fulfil1ment of globally recognized objectives for sustainable development are still maintained in a state of communicative dependency due to the prevailing linguistic fragmentation and communicative marginalization.

This cornes about as a consequence not only of inequality of access to communicative resources, e.g. oflack of formaI education or ofilliteracy, but also as a consequence of theira prioriexclusion from the means of expression and communication in which these crucial players are competent, i.e. local African languages. No dramatic increase in financial assistance (Sachs 2(05), no degree of involvement of civil society (Wieczorek-Zeul 2(05), no strengthening of accountancy towards local constituencies (Villar & Dodd 2005:329), no conditionality imposed by partner governments and institutions will change this endemic conditio humana Africanaunless the communicative marginalization issue is fust addressed in its own terms and answers are found and tested on the ground which will deal with it and break the dead10ck resulting from the mutually reinforcing negative power factors of poverty, communicative dependency and indifference to local perceptions of vital issues including those pertaining to language and communication.

Communicative empowerment

Given the declared inclusive scope of the MDG5, communicative empowerment appears as a priority of its own, and needs toheconsidered on equal terms with the other currently listedMDGS,in none of which it is aIready contained.6 Seen from this angle, communicative empowerment as advocated in the WDR and EU statements quoted above, is indeed a prerequisite to reaching the stated goals, and therefore in making the program as a whole sustainable. What justifies its definition as a goal of

5. See e.g. the editorial to theUNsite <www.un.org.milleniwngoals>.

6. PANOS (www.panos.org.uk) sees communication needs and strategies as being at the heart of sustainable development in general and poverty reduc-tion in particular. However, ''the Milleniwn Development Goals(MDG)only touch on it in passing". (Wilson & Warnock 2007:1) "Reaching theMDGin 2015 will require huge investments of political will and financial resources by governmentsin both the developed and the developing world; but it will also require a belated recognition that communication is central to an aspects of sustainable development". (Warnock et al. 2007:6).

in its own right, is its role as a "meta-resource", on whose optimization depends the optimal use of resources essential for theMDG. The concept ofcommunicative sustainability, as we shall call this precondition, ap-plies to, (i) the set of communicative resources required for, or conducive to, sustainability in development, (ii) access to, and control over these resources by the primary actors, (iii) the communicative management of goals and contents of development in accordance with (i) and (ii).

If control over communicative resources constitutes a major criterion for sustainability of development action at the local level, how could language in general, and the locally dominant language in particular - the one which the actor community uses most - be ignored or its distinctive role downplayed, as the silence in literature on communication for devel-opment still by and large suggests?7 Not only does this defy logic - its practical result is the marginalization of development projects by the actor community, and an ensuing lack of sustainability.

Language and sustainability: bridge language axiom vs. local language axiom

The effects of discriminatory language policies on development have mostly been described from a macro-sociological viewpoint (e.g. Pütz 1995;Bamgbo~e2000), and very little from the local, micro-sociological viewpoint. One major exception is Robinson's well docwnented study on the Cameroonian grassland's Ngunu (Robinson 1996). Beck's detailed analysis of the concluding meeting of an unsuccessful cattle-raising project in a Herero farming community, through the zoom-in effect conversational analysis is able to provide, throws an enIightening spotlight on the negative impact that the communicative discrimination of a local linguistic majority may have on participants' morale and commitment (Beek 2006).8The use of English as mediwn of reference, 7. MELKOTE& STEEVES (2001), for instance, while offering a penetrating analysis of communication models and communicative practice in development around the world; remain silent on the language issue. WILKINS&MODY (2001), while leaving no stone untumed in exploring ways to improve development communication, do not even mention language divergence as a potentially relevant factor tohedealt with in order to attain their goal.

8. Superficially speaking, the circumstances of the failure, judging from the author's account, are unrelated to the incriminated linguistic marginal-ization of the majority of participants. While this may serve as a useful reminder that local language-centred communicative strategies are not the panacea to aIl evils that may threaten to defeat well-conceived development projects, the account permits speculation about the way in which the condition of communicative dependency resulting from said

marginal-42 LANGUES, CULTURES ET DÉVELOPPEMENT EN AFRIQUE

outwardly justifiable on the ground that it is the preferred public space option of the elite and seerningly supported by the subdued co-operative attitude of the majority of those present, de facto entails, on merely linguistic grounds, the exclusion of that same majority of local stakeholders from participation in debate and deeision-making.

This is not ta deny that under given conditions, English, or another major language, may he the appropriate choice, e.g. at the interface hetween local associations and government agencies. This explains why young Herero interlocutors insist on competence in English as a prerequisite to successful development, as observed by Dôbel.9 But as Beck consistently shows (see e.g. Beek 2007), locally supported sustainability (in the broadest sense) is contingent upon processing in the locally dominant medium which is Herero.

The axiom accordingtawhich linguistic fragmentation typical of most African countries calls for broad reeourse to a bridge medium, conven-iently provided by the former colonial language or, in competition with it, an African lingua franca, is undeniably and trivially true. However, by taking the far end of development communication as its starting point, what the Herero case study shows is that carrying over this axiom to the local situation, most immediately relevant for development action and poverty reduction, is bound ta create precisely that situation which, in terms of the World Bank statement, will lead to failure. The bridge medium principle carried overtathe local situation, where deeisions are made in the local language, not only results in failure ta communicate, but provokes a generally unacknowledged, but rarely openly waged conflict with the axiom of communicative sustainability and its comp-onent principles - local ownership expressed through local language on marters of local relevance; communicative equality; equal access to relevant information, among other things - and will predictably leadta failure. Similarly, a carry-over of the local language axiom - locally relevant issues are to he negotiated in the locally dominant idiom in order tabe communicatively sustainable - ta situations where the bridge lan-guage axiom is applicable will leadta failure, for other, rather obvious reasons. And indeed, it is ta he feared that the MDG, like many other valuable development efforts, will fail in Africa because of a wrong ization negatively affects the constitution of local leadership capable of dealing efficiently with such threats.

9. "Active members of the younger generation see the appointment of insufficiently educated people with insufficient knowledge of English (which is the official national language) to offices under the traditional authorities act as a major impedimenttolocal development". (Quoted from

<www.lagsus.de/ScientificReport2003-2004. 3.3. (p. 5).

generalisation of the range of applicability of one or the other of the Iwo

complementary communicative axioms (most likely the tirst one). It seems therefore that two questions must be squarely and urgently addressed:

Why is it that in the international community only the tirst axiom is generally recognized as valid, not the second? Our best hypothesis is that this pervasive "language blindness" with its counteIproductive effects on the end-receivers of the "relief from poverty" message is itself a reflex of the socio-economically and communicatively weak position of the latter - a position typically compounded by institutionalized or at least routinized short-circuiting of their privileged medium of deliberation and reflection, thus perpetuating one of the major causes oftheir poverty.

How can the second axiom be brought into play without scaring the experts whothinkthey might have to learn local languages ifthey were to even consider it - a perspective which many of them shun and which might he another, rather down-to-earth practical reason for the tenacity of the "language blindness" disease?

We have to admit that, in view of the prevailing mindset and its unilateral bias in favour of the bridge language axiom, the concept of communicative sustainability was originally developed with a strong eye on the local language and the ongoing lack of recognition as the default medium in local development (Bearth 2000a/b). But its scope is not limited to the narrow concept of "local" nor to giving reasons for the rehabilitation of the local language; rather it should be seen as a set of c1aims, principles and criteria for bringing the two basic axioms into balance. For instance it might tum out that efficacy in the use of national and international languages at the appropriate level will he enhanced if the local language axiom is adhered to in its own appropriate context.

Languageandsustainability in the "local" paradigm: the kononprinciple Inthe current debate, the single most cogent argument in favour of an overdue prioritizing of the role of the local language in development research and practice is the weight given to the "local" in an emerging paradigm of development as a comprehensive response to global challenges which has dominated the sustainable development agenda since the Rio Summit 199210

10. "Indigenous people and their communities and other local communities have a vital roleinenvironmental management and development because of their knowledge and traditional practices. States should recognize and duly support their identity, culture and interests and enable their effective

Dans le document en Afrique (Page 35-117)