Language wars? Language of instruction policies and post-conflict transitions in Cote d'Ivoire

• In Event: Dissertation workshop session
  In Special Session: Language Policy

Proposal

Education plays a role in promoting or limiting conflict, and researchers who have established this posit that language may be a contributing factor. However, this has not been explored. Drawing upon literature in horizontal inequalities (or inter-group inequalities), conflict and education, and language regimes, I make the case that language of instruction (LoI) and sociopolitical conflict interact in a complex manner. In my study of the relationship between conflict and education, I focus on horizontal inequality-based conflicts and look at how language of instruction policies/practices enact language regimes which create, reinforce, or mitigate horizontal inequalities. This process is further emphasized through education’s role in creating, reinforcing, or mitigating horizontal inequalities more broadly, and finally the resulting horizontal inequalities are strengthened by the language regime’s role in society outside of education to reinforce language-based horizontal inequalities. I use LoI policy and practice as the specific element of education in which the conflict-education nexus occurs, doing so by incorporating language regime scholarship and sociolinguistic scholarship on language and power to provide a framework for why and how language can be the mechanism driving horizontal inequalities. My overarching hypothesis is that language regimes, which are enacted in education systems through LoI policy and in schools through LoI practice, contribute to horizontal inequalities which in turn drive conflict. I seek to understand how this occurs through a comparative case study about conflict, education, and language of instruction policy/practice in Cote d’Ivoire. By focusing on the language-education-conflict nexus in one country, I seek to extend scholarly discourse about the relationship more broadly. Thus, I seek to answer the following research questions:
(1) How do education policies in Cote d’Ivoire express a specific language regime in the country? How do these policies and the language regime express the relationship between language ideology, language power, and access to power in the country?
(2) How does LoI policy implementation in Cote d’Ivoire enact a specific language regime?
(3) How does LoI policy implementation as a language regime reflect horizontal inequalities? How do these horizontal inequalities reflect larger tensions in the country?
(4) How do educator and parent perceptions of language, language of instruction, inequality, and conflict reflect actual horizontal inequalities, conflict, and language regimes?
In my dissertation, I seek to illuminate how language of instruction policies and practices contribute to or reflect socio-political conflict in Cote d’Ivoire through a comparative case study comprised of classroom observations, participant interviews, and policy document analysis. I will observe classrooms in a French-medium public school in Abidjan and a Malinkekan-medium public school in Touba, Cote d’Ivoire; I will interview parents and educators in each of those communities; and I will collect current and historic education policy documents. Through critical narrative analysis of the data, I will provide evidence that language of instruction policies and practices reflect larger social power structures in a conflicted society thus reinforcing existing inter-group inequalities that are known to lead to conflict. I set my case study in Cote d’Ivoire due to its recent history of conflict and its history of elevating French at expense of the 60+ indigenous languages actively used in the country. Although official policy designates French as the LoI in public schools, the Ministry of Education has implemented local-language curriculum in rural schools. I chose urban Abidjan in the south and rural Touba in the north to represent the country’s diverse social and education structures and to account for the different experiences of the civil war. My study will stress the complexity of socio-political conflict in multilingual contexts by linking language in education to conflict.
I am in the dissertation proposal stage at Michigan State University under the direction of Dr. Amita Chudgar, with a proposal defense date quickly approaching on November 26. I expect to complete data collection for the policy analysis and be fully in data analysis for this component of my dissertation while preparing for data collection for the second component of my dissertation at the time of CIES.

Author

• Michelle Lilly Solorio, Michigan State University