Leading Language Liberation as a Young Person
For years I led language liberation at young people's workshops. I'd like to share what I learned.
I learned the importance of language liberation for my personal liberation, and I learned that language plays a role in all forms of inequality. By language, I mean all means to convey a message. I consider language to be “the art of communicating.” When I speak, I may use facial expressions, gestures, drawings, and words to deliver my message.
My mother tongue is Dutch. It is a language that is sometimes dominated, mostly by English. In the Netherlands itself, however, it is the dominant language with respect to the many languages that are spoken locally. One of these rich languages is Frisian, the language spoken by my native ancestors.
Because of the Dutch colonial past, forms and parts of the Dutch language are also spoken across the world.
HOW LANGUAGE OPPRESSION RELATED TO YOUNG PEOPLE'S OPPRESSION
Young people can think tremendously well. But because they don’t have as much information yet, people mistakenly assume they cannot. The minds of babies are ignored; people often act as if “no one is home” [as if babies have no mind] yet. Whether or not you can talk decides in large part whether you will be acknowledged as a human.
How great is it when a newborn human realizes they can look into someone’s eyes, can laugh, can touch! And the way babies learn spoken language is incredible. Imagine you go to another land, a place where the people speak a language you don’t know and where they don’t know your language either. Word by word, you’d learn. After a year you could probably make very simple conversation. This is what small children do. But they do it without already knowing another language as a reference for understanding abstract concepts.
Language oppression is different from most oppressions but similar to young people’s oppression in that none of us is born in the oppressor role. We were first the target and only later assumed the oppressor role.
What are considered language “mistakes” are often intelligent exercises and may even be getting the message across just fine. Parents, teachers, and other adults, and older young people and later our peers, often want to “help” us with our language. However, because everybody has been hurt, their responses to our “mistakes” usually involve humiliation.
Taking the time and making the space for everyone is language liberation.
OTHER OPPRESSIONS AND LANGUAGE OPPRESSION
Complicated language is frequently used to make different constituencies feel stupid. (Being able to explain things to young children in words they understand is an art.) The middle and owning classes (often unawarely) use complicated language to exclude working-class people and immigrants. In my university education, I am trained to use complicated words and long sentences.
In schools, children who don’t speak like the teacher expects them to are often the target for oppression. They are often children of the Global Majority or from working-class families or may speak another language at home.
In many places in the world, the number of languages a person speaks depends in large part on the period and class they were brought up in.
DISCHARGING ABOUT LANGUAGE LIBERATION
For some time, as an experiment, I started every Co-Counseling session with a mini-session about language liberation. It gave me the opportunity to counsel a lot of people on the topic—including people who had English as a first language and those who, like me, had Dutch as their first language. As counselor I encouraged my clients to discharge about their early experiences with language oppression. Topics that came up included dyslexia, school, trouble pronouncing certain sounds, parents who had a different first language, speaking a different language now than in the first years, and the “correct” way of speaking.
Discharging about language liberation, I became more conscious in my communication. It helped my sessions to be more able to notice the other person instead of hiding behind a stream of words. As the pressure to be productive is great, tackling this benefited my sessions.
At an International young people’s workshop, I asked everyone to do a mini-session on language liberation. People often use such a mini-session to discharge feeling irritable about the slow pace required by interpretation or on similar small annoyances. I asked everyone to look at their old feelings about language. In language liberation we need to work on the early distresses, just like we do with other oppressions. Few people had worked on the topic in that way. They were surprised at all the things that came up.
LEARNING NEW LANGUAGES AS ADULTS
I don’t believe that adults are worse than young people at learning new languages. In time we just get more restimulated. As soon as we are old enough and know enough words that we are no longer constantly humiliated, we say “never again.” All the insecurities and messages that we are stupid come up when we try to learn a new language. But underneath that restimulation, we have lost nothing of our intelligence.
Groningen, the Netherlands
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of language liberation
(Present Time 203, April 2021)