The Value of Language and the Language of Value
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The value of language and the language of value
By Syed Nageeb M Ali
WE HAVE FOUGHT for Bangla. We have made plays in Bangla. We have
created fountains of literature in Bangla that bring tears to the eye
and joy to the heart. And yet, I think, we come up with the worst
reasons to value our language.
There have been many reasons offered for valuing our mother language,
all of which seem to miss the point. One line of reasoning goes as
follows: linguistic diversity is a global communal good that is to be
valued, and thus, we should preserve Bangla so as to promote variety.
Another argument goes down the road of saying that if we do not learn
Bangla well, we will not be able to learn foreign languages. And then
of course, there's the protectionist view that we need to protect
Bangla to defend ourselves from cultural imperialism. I wish to examine
each argument in turn, showing how these really should be the roads not
taken, but first let me offer you an analogy.
Let's say I meet you walking down Bailey Road after many years. You're
striding down with a most wonderful family, children with beaming
smiles, and you yourself ebullient with the joys of settled life. Now,
if I were to ask you why you valued your family and you responded that
you loved your family because they are yours, that your life would be
unimaginable without them, that they are a part of who you are, I would
go my way, and wish for you the very best. But if you told me that you
loved your family because you think the world with more families is
better, or that loving your family will make it easier to love someone
else's family or even worse, that you love your family because they
protect you from other families, I would stop in my tracks, bewildered
and puzzled wondering which brick fell off the wall and knocked your
head.
So what I am getting at - to put all my cards on the table - is that we
should value our language because it is ours and has over time provided
sensible ways of referring to our lives. Before I get ahead of myself
and put positive arguments for this point of view, let me show why the
other roads lead to dead-ends.
The argument promoting linguistic diversity is very much an external
argument for Bangla, that may appeal to the linguist, but has little
reason to move the non-linguist. The linguist however would have on
this basis as much reason to value Bangla as she would to promote the
resurfacing of ancient Aramaic or teaching Latin. On the basis of
linguistic variety, we would have little to argue specifically for
Bangla.
This is not to say that I oppose linguistic variety. Mother languages
are valued objects because they have evolved over time to provide
references for the lives of the people that speak them. It would be
difficult for anyone to argue that thought does not influence language,
and even harder to argue that our lives do not influence our thoughts.
Thus, the Bengali may find useful Bangla expressions to understand his
life, the Welsh may have a handy expression to express hers and so on
and so forth. The differences that we face do provide good grounds for
having our own mother languages; though the cosmopolitan spirit of
creating Esperanto (a language that was devised to be universal) may be
commended, the notion of having one world language to express all that
we go through is rather ridiculous. Of course, different languages may
be as good as one another at reflecting some human commonality. After
all, we all do need nutrition, and we all yearn for a certain level of
freedom. Yet, despite all the human commonality, there are context-
specifics that we face as human beings living in different potholes on
this rather large rock.
Let us turn to the path on the crossroads - we should learn our
language because otherwise we could not learn others. Let us ask this:
will learning Bangla well really help us be multilingual? Each language
provides us with a syntax and vocabulary and it is with these two that
we put combinations of words together to express our joys and sorrows,
to be as brief or hopelessly verbose as we should ever desire. Now
those who are most comfortable with varieties of syntax and vocabulary
are rarely the same people who have mastered one language and gone to
another. Most multi-lingual people that I have met have learned their
languages simultaneously (some European countries have education
systems that do this with splendid efficacy). Now memorizing the entire
works of Tagore, I truly doubt will ever help me master Portugese. At
the same level, I would never approach a Shakespearean scholar thinking
that his exposure to the slings and arrows of wonderful literature
would make learning Bangla any easier for him. I don't mean to be
churlish, but do we really think that we should learn Bangla so that we
may be multilingual?
Well, now that we've reached two dead-ends, let's take the third road -
the one that protects Bangla from cultural imperialism. This road in
itself stops rather quickly as one is forced to understand why we
should protect ourselves from cultural imperialism. Opposition to
cultural imperialism often leads to ethical relativism. This would seem
to imply that our values are the right one to have given our
circumstances and that other values do not make sense in Bangladesh.
But actually, cultural relativism is an even weaker argument in the
space of values - what it means is more along the lines that "we" have
the right to form our values the way "we" want to, and that there isn't
a concept of right or wrong to be attached to those values. On the face
of it, this may be innocuous but there are some disturbing components
of this belief.
For one, when it is said that "we" have the right to form our values,
who is the "we" that is being referred to? There is always some level
of dissent in ours, or for that matter, any society, and it is hard to
know whose values to take as "ours". Is it the values of the majority,
the elite or all bald men with moustaches? Even if we could ascertain
the values of the majority (a rather unlikely proposition), there are
few fates suffered by minorities that are worse than tyranny at the
hands of the majority. So what I am saying is that the defences of
certain values as being Bengali is nonsensical; there is really no way
to back up the statement, "X is a Bengali value", or for that matter "Y
is a value of culture Z." We may speak of Bengali laws (though many of
these are British laws historically), and even standard norms of
conduct, but we really cannot speak of objects being considered right
or wrong by Bengalis pro tanto.
For another, ethical relativism really weakens any ethical statements
we make. To make any fact or value culture-specific weakens the
veracity of that fact. For example, to say that the force of gravity
works in our culture but not in others, is to ascribe to an extremely
weak concept of gravity. Additionally, to say that "Women are equal to
men" qualified by "in our culture" would weaken the concept of
equality. When we condemn the treatment of the Kosovars or Checnyans,
we are not asserting statements qualified by our culture. Rather, we
are making assertions of how human beings deserve to live and to be
treated globally. Similarly, assertions that we may make about how
elders should be treated with respect and warmth, by no stretch of
imagination do we mean that it is only Bengali elders who deserve this.
Thus, ethical relativism isn't the way we want to go, being fairly
nonsensical. It makes sense for us to protect ourselves from "cultural
imperialism" if the institutions we have make sense. For example, if we
want to protect our belief in Allah, a way in which we construct our
world, it makes sense for us to protect these. After all, we do have
the right to our own theological beliefs. But on the other hand, if
what we want to protect is child labour or for that matter, child
abuse, or women's subordination, the road to justification is fraught
with potholes and difficulty.
Now, I guess it is time for me to shed some light on the avenue that
hopefully will not lead to a dead-end. Of course, this is the most
obvious route, but in our recent discourse, this has been the road not
taken. The reason we should value Bangla really is that it is ours. It
is a language that provides us with a set of references to communicate
to one another about our daily lives in a way that other languages do
not. We have lovely words for our six seasons that differ from the
English "Fall" and "Autumn"; words that through repeated use come alive
in our minds with vivid imagery. Our literature is filled with poignant
accounts of bravery and courage that are associated with our language
and identity; it would be rather ironic to read about the struggle for
Bangla in English.
Now this argument isn't very deep per se, but it is sufficient. Our
language is part and parcel of our identity; without Bangla, we would
indeed cease to be Bengalis in any conventional sense. Now it could be
argued that if the basis of identity constitutes a sufficient
justification for language, why not for ethics? It may indeed seem that
this road too leads to cultural relativism, and that I may have been
quite successful in shooting myself in the foot. Resisting my trip to
the surgeon, I would argue that to bracket language and ethics is to
make a category mistake. Ethics assigns a standard by which conduct,
behaviour or morality is to be judged right or wrong. Our ethical sense
sets a framework by which we can evaluate outcomes, states of the world
and policies. Language, on the other hand, provides a framework for
communication and understanding; in itself, it ascribes few normative
claims about the way we should live. We should value our language
because it is ours does not mean that we have to keep our language in
one constant state. In fact, what makes any language beautiful is that
way in which it evolves with our lives.
To avoid conflation, I should say that my argument for Bangla does not
constitute a negative argument for learning other languages. Being in
the state of destitution that we are, it may make sense to learn other
languages for the sake of employment, trade and exit. As our economy
becomes more dependent on outside economic linkages, it would make
sense to work on being more multi-lingual. But this does not mean that
we should stop learning Bangla.
Hopefully much of my task here is done. All I've attempted to show is
that many of the reasons we've given for valuing Bangla make little
sense, and that the right way of thinking about it need not go further
than realising that Bangla is our language. It is this road that drove
one generation to fight for Bangla, and it is the road we should
continue on.
The writer is an economic consultant working at Charles River
Associates, Boston, Massachusetts.
[THE DAILY STAR, Feb. 21, 2000]
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