Decoloniality and language in education: Transgressing language boundaries in South Africa

Abstract

This chapter draws on theories of Decoloniality  to show how language in education policy in South Africa continues to be shaped within a ‘colonial matrix of power’ (Mignolo, 2009).  This leads to the silencing of African children and their exclusion from access to quality education.  The chapter argues that transgressing socially constructed language boundaries and disrupting monolingual language ideologies is central to the repositioning of language as a resource for learning in South African schooling.  The first part of the chapter provides an analysis of the language ideologies underpinning language in education policies and curricula in South Africa. The analysis will show how Anglonormativity (the expectation that people are or should be proficient in English and are positioned as deficient, even deviant if they are not) and monolingualist ideologies shape the current implementation of language policy in South African Schools.  The second part of the chapter presents a case-study of decolonial language and literacy pedagogy that transgresses language boundaries enabling children to draw on their full linguistic repertoires as resources for meaning-making.