Multilingual language policy discourses and superdiversity at the peripheries: exploring language policy and practice in Eritrea

Abstract

Based on critical perspectives where normative and essentialist perceptions of language and ethnicity in policy discourses are challenged, and where the lack of attention to forms of social uses of language are highlighted, this paper discusses the limitations of even the most progressive pluralist language policy to capture the cultural and linguistic ‘diversification of diversity’ in Eritrea, a country in East Africa. The language policy in the country embraces all the languages of the country and promotes their use in education, mass media, provision of legal services, etc. Policy documents mention the equality of the nine languages. However, the presumed number of languages and, to some extent, their naming reflect a persistent colonial and missionary legacy, echoing the argument of some sociolinguists that languages in Africa are the creation of colonialists or missionaries. Based on insights from recent sociolinguistic and ethnographic studies on diversity, language and language use, this paper problematizes the notion of language, the naming of languages and their enumeration to highlight the limits of multilingual policy discourses to capture the superdiversity in countries of the global south, even within pluralistic language policy contexts such as the one in Eritrea.

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