By Saad Shafqat

Date:20-11-05

Source: The Dawn

The limits of my language are the limits of my world. Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus)

It would be fair to say that Wittgenstein knew a thing or two about language. One of the 20th century most influential philosophers, in 1921 he published a deceptively brief 75-page volume titled Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in which he laid out a series of carefully ordered propositions about the nature of language. Everyone is familiar with the possibilities of language, but it was Wittgenstein who dissected the anatomy of language to identify its limits. As much as language opens up a universe of prospects and possibilities, it also restricts and controls us, and therefore defines and confines us. For students and practitioners of language policy and planning, this is a clarion message: you have got to get it absolutely right, because language shapes a society as few things can.

In Pakistan, an adolescent nation with a society still in flux from multiple forces, the language issue is of course a minefield. The official language is Urdu, and although widely spoken, the majority of Pakistanis do not claim it as their mother tongue. English is officially subservient to Urdu and spoken by only a thin minority, yet it is nevertheless the undisputed currency of social and professional advancement. There is also a rich diversity of regional languages and dialects, each a testament to Pakistan cultural wealth. Clearly, the task for the nation language planners has not been easy.

Sabiha Mansoor new book Language Planning in Higher Education: A Case Study of Pakistan is therefore timely, topical, and extremely relevant. A language scholar, academic head of Aga Khan University Centre of English Language, and author of an influential previous work (Language Policy, Planning and Practice: A South Asian Perspective), Dr Mansoor has substantial credentials for tackling this subject. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, she has approached the problem as a research study exploring the role of languages, especially English, in the educational system in Pakistan. Her accomplishment has been substantial.

Although running well over 400 pages, the book is essentially organized as an academic research paper, comprising the key elements of background, methodology, results, and discussion. In this comprehensive, rigorous, and extensively referenced work, reasoned speculations have been put to scientific test. Concepts are well defined, objectives clearly laid out, and the strategy of argument outlined beforehand. Figures and tables are frequently interspersed to clarify subtleties and drive the point home. There is also a sizeable appendix to satisfy the aficionados and the extra-curious.

What especially inspires confidence in the author efforts is her meticulous and painstaking research. To give but one example, in a background chapter on language planning in education, she begins with the 1998 Census Report, discusses the origins and evolution of Pakistan’s regional languages, provides a commentary on the origins and development of Urdu, reviews the status of English in post-colonial societies, and proceeds to a structural analysis of higher education in Pakistan, referencing key pieces of information such as book publishing statistics and official reports from government-appointed bodies as well as international commissions and organizations.

Needless to add, an abundance of interesting facts is presented. We learn, for example, that as far back as the late 1950s, a Karachi University Enquiry Committee recommended to Ayub Khan’s martial law regime that English should be the medium of instruction in higher education in Pakistan. It was emphasized that the need was for “not highly idiomatic English, but for intelligible English as it is written and spoken in every foreign country. Reports commissioned by other leaders, including Yahya Khan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Ziaul Haq, and Nawaz Sharif, are also discussed, as are the recommendations of the task force on higher education that presented its report to President Musharraf in 2002. In an irony that will be familiar to all Pakistanis, the author is still forced to conclude that despite these multiple tributaries of learned opinion and comment, there is still no realistic language policy in Pakistan.

The specific objectives of Dr Mansoor’s study are presented as a series of scientifically testable hypotheses. The essence of her conjectures is that English is the dominant language in the private educational sector, while Urdu dominates the public sector. She further hypothesizes that English proficiency amongst university students is low, and that support and resources for developing English competency are scarce and of questionable quality; at the same time, the foremost status of English continues to be acknowledged through positive attitudes towards the language and a strong motivation to master it. Finally, Dr Mansoor hypothesizes that private sector students are having greater academic success than students from the public sector.

The hypotheses were evaluated using a socio-linguistic survey conducted through structured questionnaires given to students, parents, and teachers; through tests of language proficiency; through unstructured group interviews; and through a pre-specified analysis of relevant documentary sources. The sample size was robust and statistically justified, comprising in excess of 2,000 students spread over 53 public sector and 46 private sector institutions of higher learning in Pakistan.

The results of the study are presented in Chapter 5, by far the longest of the book’s six chapters, which runs on for 156 pages. Although it is a cluttered and busy chapter with distracting statistical notation and crowded tables, the author message does get across in that her hypotheses stand uniformly verified by the data.

There are other parts, too, where the book sometimes becomes encumbered and burdensome, reading like a doctoral treatise or an official World Bank report. Indeed, the book is based on Dr Mansoor’s PhD thesis, but it seems that the dissertation has been published without much editorial transformation that would make it accessible to a wider readership.

In the final chapter, Dr Mansoor presents conclusions and implications from her work, and proposes a set of recommendations for policy-makers and planners. There is no denying the importance of English as the leading international medium of communication and a business lingua franca, yet this reality is not adequately reflected in Pakistan higher education systems. With the weight of objective data behind her, the author lays the blame squarely on Pakistan’s perpetually ambiguous language policy. Over the long run, the nation’s potential and productivity in the global commercial and intellectual arenas has been shortchanged.

This needs to be redressed urgently. Dr Mansoor articulates a language policy with short- and medium-term goals that is founded in an ideological framework respecting a Pakistani citizen’s need for education in English and Urdu, as well as at least one major regional language. At the same time, she proposes elimination of the elitist and divisive dual medium of instruction in higher studies, to be replaced by the core objective of English for all.” The ingredients are all there one can only hope that our policymakers, educationists, and political leaders will take notice and implement lasting change at the language policy level that will sustain Pakistan in a global new world of soaring competition and intellectual ferment.



Language Planning in Higher Education: A Case Study of Pakistan By Sabiha Mansoor
Oxford University Press,
Plot # 38, Sector 15, Korangi Industrial Area, Karachi
Tel: 111-693-673
Email: ouppak@theoffice.net
Website: www.oup.com.pk
ISBN 0-19-597860-9
445pp. Rs595