The Revival of Scottish Gaelic Through Education By Michael McIn ...

literature, which, after all, supposedly constitutes the highest linguistic expression of thought. The belief, enunciated by Thomas Macauley in the early 19th century, that “our language…stands pre-eminent…[and] whoever knows that language has a ready access to the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded over 90 generations,” (as cited in Phillipson, 1992, p. 136) has led to the assumption, until very recent times, that a study of literature meant a priori the study of English literature, with some occasional nods to an overachieving American or a stray Scot or Irishman, and with only slight augmentations at the fringes from occasional non-English-language writers who happen to “make the mark.” Even in this inclusion, the standards remain those of the dominating language culture.

In a way, this last idea is correct and has been written about, for example, in the forcing of a Eurocentric education upon African colonials. This type of forced acquisition of a language produces “a slavery far more subversive of the real welfare of the race than the ancient physical fetters,” (Phillipson, 1992, p. 70) for the subjected group internalizes the assumption that the dominating language and culture is the standard by which everything is judged; that the ideals and ideologies of the dominating culture are the valid ones; and that the behavior, the values, and even the identities of the dominated are to be despised. The dominating language becomes the language of important transactions of life, in what Ghanaian sociolinguist Gilbert Ansre called linguistic racism: “They believe that they…should use only that foreign language when it comes to transactions dealing with the more advanced aspects of life such as education, philosophy, literature, governments, the administration of justice, etc.” (as cited in Phillipson, 1992, p. 56). In such an environment, a people's native tongue, their “home language,” is relegated to less prestigious uses—the home, gatherings of friends, or manual labor. And so a language, a culture, and a people are gradually and softly suppressed until not a breath remains. As the quote from Robinson Crusoe suggests, the assumption is that the Fridays of this world have no speech of their own until they are taught “everything that is proper and useful, and especially to make [them] speak,” think,