I speak in the track of language and literature. That is, I speak in the track where words are what get paramount importance. And I am glad to be doing that at this moment of history – at this time, in this country, well, anywhere in the world really – because words seem to have become all powerful – either for the good or the bad. I will touch upon both aspects – though unfortunately what seems most apparent is the latter. They are powerful even to the point of being able to mobilize people towards war. That have always been true – ‘King and Country!’ and so on – this is nothing new – but in the modern world, the deviousness and effect of words is almost breathtaking, and we need to think about this more, especially if we are working within the frameworks of language and literature.
As Sri Lankans we only have to remind ourselves of words like vanda kottu or vanda sathkam to get an idea of what I mean. Or look at the powerful social media these days to see how words can be used for deflection – how attention is caught for superfluous fights on what words are used by random individuals to describe religious relics, for example – while the actual problems – like how the word suicide can be used for murder, the unbearable living costs – are not being protested about. I am glad to be speaking on this – the power of words - at this moment, for we seem to be a nation that sways to it, and worse – we go and vote on that rhythm and our politicians know it – and therefore this cataclysmic force normally remains protected and undissected at public forums most of the time.
Words as weapons
With regard to the two ways words can be used - the joy of literature is that almost all superb writers use it for the good. We see truth being spoken to power, be it in Nadine Gordimer making us aware of the evils of apartheid, or Rushdie talking about the need to be fearless against any form of silencing, or Atwood speaking about women’s position in society, or Jeanette Winterson peeling away layers of hypocrisy in the social world - in the most stunning of ways possible: through fiction and poetry. They do not change the world through dictates and acts or bills in parliament. They change the world through changing the minds and hearts of people, which are actually the only places from where true change is born, I feel. Maybe they were not the only causes for what happened afterwards, but surely they mattered - the fate of Salman Rushdie, as sad as it is, showed the importance that some gave of silencing him; apartheid is over in South Africa at least in the legal sense; more women are speaking out than ever before; there is recognition for marginalized communities across the LGBTQ spectrum at least in some parts of the world - we cannot say that words do not bring good change to the world. At least, at the minimum, more and more people who had felt they don't belong, have found a more inclusive space to exist, through words being used for justice and equality.
But of more concern to me right now - living as I do in Sri Lanka in 2023 - is the other side of the coin - the power words have to do harm. It’s real to the point of being physical – the effect of words. Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Prize winner in 2018 and Man Booker International Prize winner of the same year, in an article where she discusses the very public assassination of the Polish Mayor in 2019, has said, “The body reacts to verbal aggression with reflexes. It curls up into a little ball and starts to sweat, adrenaline pumping. If this happens to many people at once, then we are in a mental war, where instead of bullets, words are fired. I believe absolutely that words must be treated as material weapons, every invective or threat as violence and aggression” (2019).
To see the relevance of what she says to Sri Lanka, just look the words and phrases that are let loose in our society – especially during election time. The irony is, it doesn’t matter to whom these words are directed at – politics in Sri Lanka is so unsteady that the very same target might end up being the leader of the people who were flinging words at him at one time, who now have to sing his praises! No problem, by all appearances, here. It’s just noise floating around – the target is almost formless – it just takes on a face for that passing minute. But at that passing minute these words are dangerous – missiles even; they are volatile and can be used for specific purposes. As Tokurczuk says, “The emotions unleashed by the escalation of the language of political debate may easily pass over into action, and then this aggression gets directed at a specific object. One misguided soul is all it takes. The cord, pulled to the limit of tension, snaps at its most sensitive spot” (Ibid).
How is this the concern of the disciplines of language and literature?
The reason this is being discussed here is that I believe that in academia, to teach language or literature without touching upon politics and ideology should not be done – too much is at stake for us to pass literature with the old adages. Literal and cultural theory has exploded the earlier frameworks with which we have regarded both these fields. I know many Departments of English across the country consider literature and cultural theory as essential parts of their courses now, but I am not sure how many Sinhala or Tamil Departments do it. But the power of language – it’s awesome and cataclysmic power - is something that all our students need to be acutely aware of. They are going into a world in which this force is being used to great effect both by the media and politics – which is essentially the same thing, because politics controls the media eventually. If they do not see through the fog, distraction, and the outright lies that come out under a better sounding name - then there really is no hope for a better world, run by better people, heading towards a better future.
But to talk about whether native language departments have enough people with the knowledge of international languages to get these ideas into their workplaces and students, is to take myself from this track to another track: the Teaching of English as a Second Language (which is also my discipline by the way, and my career in the university), so this is not something I will pursue here. I want to go back to the power of words - power of language that is - and take an example from right here, right now - the words of this conference itself, which comes under the theme “Enhancing the Quality of Life through Innovative Strategies for Sustainable Development” – to make a point.
The complete overuse of some words that are almost a mantra to keep the same systems going under fancy sounding concepts. In Sri Lanka, some are hopelessly ubiquitous, drawing the attendant mists with them as they proliferate - phrases like ‘Sustainable Development’, for example, or words like ‘Innovation’ – which have been heard so much by Sri Lankans that they have lost their currency, and has become irritating noise. What development, for example, have we seen in this country in these nearly 75 years of independence, sustainable or otherwise? These are phrases that come in every manifesto put forward by every government that have failed to bring any kind of prosperity to this land; they are still being trumpeted off rooftops by every thug wise enough to know that Sri Lankans will get caught, yet again, to the same wordy net of lies they spin, cast out, and reel in again with the spoils, at election time. Words have become empty skeins which cover walls that have been crumbling since around the 1950s in this country. Arundhati Roy, the Indian writer who won the Booker Prize in 1997, explains this well when she speaks about the webs words can spin in diplomatic corridors for example, according to John Berger who wrote the foreword to her collection of essays titled The Algebra of Infinite Justice, where, among other things, she also speaks about the “the ritualistic slaughter of language”. She says,
As a writer, one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language, trying to minimize, if not eliminate, the distance between thought and language. . . At the Hague I stumbled on a denomination, a sub-world, whose life endeavour was to mask intent. . . They breed and prosper in the space that lies between what they say and what they sell. (xix)
It is the duty of those who deal with teaching language and literature, to go into “the space that lies between what they say and what they sell”, and teach the students how to analyse that gap, how to figure out what it means, and how to ask why it is there. We cannot now just teach a poem and speak of its beauty – practical criticism has moved way beyond the confines of the artwork.
For then, when we teach such skills to students, maybe they can see how words are used to mask something else in real life very often – these days, maybe the rot, the corruption and the hopelessness of a nation that have been led by the incompetent, whose incompetency has been excused by the masses who repeatedly vote them in, and - this is what I want to stress here - for which we, the academia, have also to take much of the blame. And because the academia is culpable, we need to ask ourselves some questions: in this context, for example, this - now that we dissected what words can do, where do we go from here?
There is one suggestion I would like to make and leave with you: let's stop talking, let's do.
In the faculties of arts, especially in the humanities, academics are necessarily involved with words, perhaps exclusively so. We don't teach people carpentry, we don't teach them how to fix a nut into a bolt. Unlike fine arts, which involves the body, there is nothing much we teach them at practical levels. So we need to think carefully about what we do when we deal with this intangible dimension of words. Of course, we research, we find out more about or disciplines, we think deeper and broader and – hopefully - weirder. We write, we teach people to write and think and be more involved in their disciplines. But while we do all that - crucial as these activities are - we also need to see how we can make practical changes in a country that is crying out for improvement. So I say, let’s do – also – while we think and talk and philosophize about our subject areas.
What can we do to make this happen?
There is no way I can hold myself, nor any of those listening to me, away from the criticism due to those responsible for the state of affairs in Sri Lanka now - belonging as we do to the most important institutions that exist in the country responsible for the intellectual health of the nation. If there are academics listening to me, they cannot be unaware of the existing conditions of our arts faculties, where despite the fact that we keep bumping into words like ‘innovation’ in every corporate-world sounding plan we are meant to waste time over, we have the sad reality of the majority of teachers not being able to read the most modern of knowledges coming into existence, because of the problem of language; tertiary education being reduced to note taking and repetition of whatever the teacher was taught when they were undergraduates; recruitment and promotions given that make a joke of what it is to be addressed by particular titles sometimes – though admittedly this is not all over and there are places and people that are shining with light within this system. If you think I am exaggerating the woes, all you need to do is look at who we produce. What can the young men and women we are putting out to society capable of doing? Not agitating against, not pontificating on, not simply thinking and worrying about – but simply - doing?
I do not have to tell you the answer. You already know. The situation in the country makes it obvious anyway, should you want to make a guess, if you are not aware.
So how do we actually try and make things better and not simply get lost in the meaningless of words like ‘system change’ and ‘sustainable development’? We – we all – need to change. We need to teach students how to calculate the worth of graduation not in the glossiness of the photos at graduation day and the smiles and the makeup (though that happiness is important too, I agree): we need to create a generation of people who believe in things beyond image, in this day and age that it seems to have become the be all and end all of all things. This is not easy – not here, where cultural parametres seem drawn in stone (like some other places in the world, too, if truth be told, but my attention is on this place because this is where I live and work in, and therefore my concern). Downsizing the importance of image is not easy in a country where the worth of a teacher is measured by the dress she wears and on not how effectively she does her job. Then we have inauthenticity: we have young academics who get through the grueling process of getting a permanent position in the university system almost as a first step to get a visa into a developed country, all this always covered with excuses – “we have nothing to do if we come back”, or “we did it for our children” – as if their job was not given to them in the first place to serve all the children of the nation; as if they are right in demanding and are entitled to be provided opportunities to put their skill to use – when they have been blessed with enough brains to see how work can be created within a system that the politicians have sucked dry. That’s our job – to see how things can be made better in a very terrible place: if it is through protest and constant pressurizing the powers to solve issues, so be it; if it is through finding new ways to solve old problems, so be it. There is always something to be done. That is why we have been given a salary and been paid to study – so that we can make things better in this country.
Since this call becomes only bombastic rhetoric if said without giving examples of what changes I myself have tried to bring into my own field – and we really have had enough of that - let me give you some instances of what had been tried in recent times, twice within the university system and with its help, and once as an individual. All are from the discipline of teaching English as a Second Language in Sri Lanka - the arena I am in, as a senior lecturer, in the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. Similar interventions from other fields – say of literature - maybe harder to find given the differences in the nature of disciplines, some may not be as necessary either - and this is not the place I would try and come up with a few examples within other disciplinary frameworks, and in any case, there are enough competent people in these subject areas here, should this need to be done. Examples from any track, so to say, is alright, for what needs to be shown here according to my opinion, is this: our purpose as academics in arts faculties is to teach our students one main thing - that education is mainly about change.
A good education will change a human being - not in the sense of making her or his head more full of facts - but of making some fundamental change within the human being that would make them straighter and more upright as individuals, more moral, more aware of justice, more keen to inequality, more sensitive to pain, more appreciative of authentic beauty both in people and the world. They need to be more knowledgeable yes, but they also need to be braver and more truthful to their hearts and minds and want to do better, both for themselves and the society they are born into. They need to think about, and bring about, change into the world. They need to be intelligent enough to have ideas, and courageous enough to put them into practice.
Do we do this now, do we create such people now? You think on these things. Each of us will get different answers.
There is a more terrible question - something that we do not generally approach, and the articulation of which puts me immediately into a ‘holier than thou’ category, though I am too invariable caught within, and deserving of, the charges made by this question: how many teachers in the university system think of education on those terms?
So to TESL and the possible changes: two things that we did in the university of Sri Jayewardenepura to create new ways of helping people learn English as a second language was the “Basha Buddy” Project and the “English for Fun” Project. The discussion will not be based on the success or failure of these projects, because, firstly, a proper feedback was not carried out yet, and in the case of the first, we only remember random individual examples of success and that is not enough for any statements about it, and secondly, we have anyway given too much importance to these two notions at present. Not only might worrying about success and failure make us prefer not to do anything different at all, but no one hardly ever questions the fact that we have bought wholesale the idea of success given by a profit-driven capitalist economic system that is fundamentally warped. This is not about final judgements but about the possibility of change; of thinking outside the box; of trying to beat the system through over-riding it if it is not possible to change it. One of the major problems I see here is that we, as a people, don’t try new things enough, we do not try and change things enough. We don’t try fresh young people in positions almost left alone for old people to fill – think about our most powerful politicians if you need examples; we don’t try breaking frontiers in academic subjects in arts faculties often enough; we do not try leaving aside old and heavy cultural baggage that have kept women miles back in some aspects; and if it is fear of failure that is making us not do any of this, then fear of failure is the first thing that needs to be thrown out of the window, if we are even thinking of going where the word innovation is leading us.
To the examples again: the Basha Buddy project (which at the moment is on hold as time needs to be freed up to start it in a new format, and I am working at the moment on the second project) was one in which a practice platform was created for anyone in Sri Lanka to practice one-to-one texting with a fluent English language user. One of the main problems of learning English here is that people do not have opportunities to use it - and language is mainly learnt through use. Our normal instruction – ‘please practice speaking English’ - recently got a very valid response from a stranger on social media who asked me – ‘with whom?’ I remember the answer being 'find a friend' and the rejoinder coming in Sinhala that said 'but madam, I don't have a friend who can speak in English.’ This is the reality: we know there aren’t enough people to help everyone practice their second language out there – but we still keep advising them to do it anyway. In this case, when the hypocrisy of my own answer struck me, I got to thinking – what if we provide a human being who knows English to act as a practice board to the people who need someone to communicate with? So, we did provide a team of such volunteers starting with my own students who had been there when many changes had been brought into the ELTU during the time I was heading it in around the 2015s. The students had known the concept of peer learning and teaching – and as adults now working in different careers, they could immediately grasp the importance of this – and the Basha Buddy system was born. It was administered through my faculty – the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences – and in the first round we got around 300 applicants and therefore our network of buddies grew – some buddies were Heads of DELTS – but we all remained anonymous with just a Buddy Number – and provided practice on WhatsApp on special SIMS, and this went on for about 6 months. Changes needed to be brought in despite the success of some of these interactions – because one-to-one meant a long term relationship and freeing time up at the same point every week was difficult – not so much to the buddies who were prepared for it – but for the applicants. A new format has been drawn now where the applicants can choose when to have their practice – but we haven’t started again within the changed framework because I was involved in a second project that I hoped would make it easier for adults who to make themselves familiar with the English language. That is the Atharamadiyawa YouTube channel.
I started this at the end of 2021 - a channel I called The In-between Space – Atharamadiyawa – to signify the necessity for us to move into a more amicable middle ground between those not knowing English and those proficient in it – without the usual dislike manifested towards each end by the other with words like ‘posh’ and ‘gode’ being used as names for each category or even ‘bayyo’ and ‘toyyo’ though that has a distinct political meaning as well. The channel gave Sinhala-speaking adults exposure to the English language through discussions with academics and artists both in Sinhala and English, or talks about significant books in English in Sinhala, or outright grammar lessons, or translated English poems and so on. It ran very intensively for a year; it fulfilled to necessary conditions of becoming a YouTube partner – which is a 1000 subscribers and 4000 viewing hours – within about ten months (when the stipulated time was a year); and had the transcripts of some of the interviews published in Sinhala and English newspapers as well, when I had time to get these transcribed. There was enormous support extended by both Lankadeepa Online and the Sunday Observer for this. The reason I gave this a break after one year was that now a third project was being thought of: the English for Fun Project.
The fact that we were intervening at the wrong age when we tried to teach university students English was something that had been going around in my head for a very long time. So this is a project in which we try to expose nursery level children to the language through fun things life like listening to songs and nursery rhymes or stories in English provided to them through audio tracks. The whole syllabus is uploaded and can be found in the library webpage of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. There are translations of the rhymes and stories into Sinhala and Tamil text too – so that any adult, whether they know English or not, can help their kids be exposed to the beauty of the English language. There are teachers guides in all three languages as well. A simple email request will get everything into their homes, all free of charge. This is already being piloted in 30 nurseries in the Northern Province and 12 nurseries in Colombo in the most underprivileged areas through the Colombo Public Library and the Colombo Municipal Council. This is also being taken across the country through the national public library system through the National Library and Documentation Services Board. At the moment it is only the nursery syllabus that is up and running in the English for Fun website that is being carried in the website of the library of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura – but we are working on three more levels: a middle and upper school level, and an undergraduate level. The whole purpose of this is to give everyone a chance of having even a little bit of the childhood that is given to privileged children here – which is normally bilingual and full of nursery rhymes and stories, at least in the case of a household that has educated parents. In Sri Lanka, we do not try to break cycles enough. For example, the practices of my upbringing I will give my children and they will give their children. A vital question then becomes: how do we try and give at least a drop of that to anyone born to an underprivileged family in Sri Lanka – say the children of the nattamis in Pettah? The two ways in which this is possible is the nursery system and the public library system – and that is what we are trying here. If we do not break cycles – there is very little chance of Sri Lanka changing anytime in the future.
Why universities matter
Forgive me if the above seemed too much like blowing my own trumpet. But I wanted to show you with concrete examples that it is possible to see if we can approach a situation in new and effective ways. That is what innovation means, after all. But an important point before I end – the role of universities in bringing change. Both the Basha Buddy project and the English for Fun project was supported by the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. It was really an incredible stroke of luck, to have belonged to a university that accepted and welcomed change.
This is what I believe, given the experience of the past few years of my career – at the beginning of it, I doubt that I had been of much use as an academic, if truth be told. Generally, the university system itself is too much of a white elephant to change its character much – but within that system, academics do have much freedom – and we are being paid to think and innovate. So, let’s use this chance, this slight opening, to see what we can do. And above all else, let’s teach our students how to use their brains to see how change can be brought into a country that is crying out for it. That is what we need to do if we are going to use words like sustainable development and innovation with the seriousness they deserve. We need to do just one thing: Change.
For hope must be kept alive. As academics, being in charge of thousands and thousands of young minds year after year, we have a big role to play in it. Especially now – where much hope seems to have died, we, of all people, must not give up. Let me put what I believe in the words of Arundhati Roy before I end. She has said,
‘The only dream worth having. . . is to dream that you will live while you are alive and die only when you’re dead . . .
“Which means exactly what?”
“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
Thank you.
Works cited:
John Berger, Foreward xxiii-xxiv, in Arundathi Roy, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, 2001, India: Penguin)
Olga Tokarczuk (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/opinion/gdansk-mayor-murder-poland.html)
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