Language Choice in the Post Colonial World

• In Event: Cultural Foundations of State Building

Abstract

The designation of an official language or languages for administration is an essential institutional element of state rationalization, along with standard weights and measures and legal currency. Factors that determine this choice have not been fully accounted for. This paper provides a framework to explain official language policies in the educational realm for post-colonial states. The framework highlights two historical factors that are keys to predicting the role of indigenous languages as media of instruction in public education: the availability of a written tradition by a major group in the country in the era before missionary and/or colonial exposure, and the degree of linguistic fractionalization within the colonially-set borders. The paper then shows how consideration of these two factors has implications for human development (literacy and infant mortality) as well as state capacity (the legibility of the population). A set of vignettes illustrate the workings of these historical factors in accounting for post-colonial language policies.

Authors

• David D. Laitin, Stanford University

• Rajesh Ramachandran, Heidelberg University