Language and The Sustainable Development Goals: A Symposium

Photo: Ben Hilty
The seventeen Sustainable Development Goals approved by the UN General Assembly aim to engage not only governments, but “all people, everywhere,” at all levels of civil society.  

(April 2016) Several SIL staff attended and made presentations at the recent symposium on Language and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the United Nations complex in New York on 21-22 April. The symposium brought together speakers from nine countries to discuss the linguistic implications of the SDGs. It was organized by The Study Group on Language and the United Nations in co-operation with The Center for Applied Linguistics, the Center for Research and Documentation on World Language Problems, the Universal Esperanto Association, and other organizations.

The seventeen Sustainable Development Goals approved by the UN General Assembly for the period 2015-2030 aim to engage not only governments, but “all people, everywhere,” at all levels of civil society.  Their implementation will require active, two-way, democratic communication in a multiplicity of languages.  This symposium focused on the linguistic obstacles that could potentially stand in the way.

It was an excellent opportunity for SIL Executive Director Freddy Boswell and other SIL staff to interact with scholars and practitioners who are researching and working in some of SIL’s key areas including mother tongue-based multilingual literacy and education.

The keynote address was given by Suzanne Romaine Ph.D. Merton Professor of Language at Oxford University, UK, for thirty years. She authored Language in Society, and Vanishing Voices and From Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals: Leaving no one behind. She is concerned that the Sustainable Development Goals still need to more strongly address the place of language in their outcomes.

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In their session, Dr. Mark E. Karan & Elke Karan with SIL, explained the need for societal change to fuel the use of non-dominant language as the language of instruction in primary schools in their presentation: “The Use of Non-Dominant Languages in Primary Education: The Key to Maximizing Learning Outcomes for Learners Who Speak These Languages.”

Dr. Kathleen McGovern of University of Massachusetts spoke on “Dialogic Practice in the Language Classroom.” She has been engaging her students in formal drama productions by using dialogues from every day scenarios to help non-mother tongue speakers of English acquire further language skills.

Another presentation by Dr. Aneta Pavlenko from Temple University was entitled, “You have the right to remain silent, do you understand?” American readers will recognize the first part as an excerpt from the Miranda Rights, which must be read to anyone charged with a crime in the U.S. She and her students have conducted extensive research on how the Miranda Rights are misunderstood by non-native English speakers who are arrested in the U.S.

Other topics discussed during the symposium emphasized that there is no true development without language development. Literacy is a core component of the right to education and an indispensable prerequisite to lifelong learning. For example, eighty percent of the poorest communities of the world live in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where growing populations experience low levels of literacy and low school attendance. Studies demonstrate that, on average, students in these countries complete four years of schooling. However, simply “getting more children into school” will not solve educational challenges—the initial language of instruction should match the language of the home and community.

Language can be an issue of discrimination as well as communication. For example, lack of access to dominant languages and only speaking a minority language compounds female marginalization while adult illiteracy is a legacy of inequalities and restricted education opportunities.

SIL’s Bloom software was mentioned affirmatively in another presentation. Bloom enables local-language speakers with minimal computer skills to participate in building a large collection of local language books and promote the development of literacy skills.

As the international community works toward achieving these new Sustainable Development Goals, SIL will be working hard to ensure that the language and culture factors of development are taken into account.

 

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