Towards breaking linguistic imperialism in teaching and learning in South African universities : a decolonial perspective

Abstract

The elevation of English as the primary language of teaching and learning in South African higher education institutions defies the South African constitutional and other statutory obligations and their aspirations to promote the development of African languages as intellectual languages for teaching, learning and research. Thus, English hegemony must be teased out as part of the decolonial agenda that seeks to introduce pedagogical practices which break the coloniality of language and linguistic barriers to epistemic access to higher education. This conceptual paper problematised linguistic imperialism in South African universities and the hegemony of English over African languages. It employed decolonial tools to theorise the challenges and opportunities to negotiating a multilingual, Afrocentric approach to a democratised pedagogy in South African higher education. It concludes that deep introspection and complicated conversations are required on the intersectionality of decolonisation, multilingual pedagogical practices, and the English hegemony, which, in turn could map some way forward for the transformation of the self as a stakeholder, and the system at large as transformative tools. This, if consistently adhered to, could promote epistemic access in the teaching and learning of students, especially those who use English as an additional language in the predominantly English medium policy driven higher education contexts.