Language, Education, and Culture (review)

Although, as Rahman writes, ‘Pakistan is perhaps the most backward country in South Asia in the field of linguistics’ (26), he is, nevertheless, well-known to linguists in that part of the world, especially those in the various university language departments and language academies (Urdu, Sindhi, Pashto, Brahui, and Punjabi). Pakistan, it should be noted, does not even have a single department or research institute for linguistics; yet it might be going overboard to claim that ‘the subject is not taught anywhere in the country’ (26). It is taught, even by R’s own admission, in departments such as English (26). R asserts he ‘has the reputation of being a linguist but that only reflects the state of the ignorance of the country’ (26), but there is no doubt, in my view, that this work is linguistic in orientation. Furthermore, his Pakistani English (Islamabad: National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, 1991) is definitely a linguistic treatise. Readers of Language may recall my review (75.3:626) of his seminal Language and politics in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1996). Ch. 11 of the present volume, ‘Language and ethnic politics in Pakistan’ (224–34), is, in fact, a fine summary of parts of that previous book. Some of the ten remaining articles have been published previously in international journals such as Mankind Quarterly or Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. Others originally appeared in Pakistani outlets such as the Pakistan Journal of History and Culture. This collection has the distinct advantage of making these essays, all of which deal with the author’s native country, available in one convenient place. I agree with R’s elaboration: ‘they should interest not only linguists, educationists, or sociologists but all readers who have an interest in the social sciences or Pakistan’ (xv).

I take up those chapters which are the most linguistically oriented. Ch. 1, ‘Linguistics in Pakistan’ (5–34), discusses the prescriptive Urdu tradition (7–14); however, its primary focus is on Western scholarship of Pakistani languages (15–26). R furnishes some evidence for his assertion that ‘serious research in linguistics is not being produced by Pakistanis’ (5) by mentioning publications which claim, e.g. that Sindhi is a Semitic language (17). One can understand the motivation behind such claims, given the fact that Pakistan is an Islamic republic and Arabic is the language of Allah and his word (the Koran). R emphasizes: ‘Indeed there are some people in Pakistan who argue that all languages came out of Arabic’ (17–18). This is reminiscent of the claims that Hebrew is the mother of all tongues.

Ch. 2, ‘Languages of the proto-historic Indus Valley’ (35–59), is a solid survey of Harappan civilization, the arrival of the Indo-Aryan languages, and the influence of Persian and Greek on the languages of the Indian subcontinent, among other related historical topics. R believes that the Harappan language was probably Dravidian (38), following Murray B. Emeneau’s classic ‘Linguistic prehistory of India’ (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 98:282–92 [1954]) (source erroneously cited, 56).

Ch. 8, ‘Language, knowledge, and inequality’ (161–71), is Whorfian in its argumentation. While rejecting the strong form of linguistic determinism, we see R committed to the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (and this reviewer is in agreement): ‘What is perhaps still controversial is that Western science, despite its claim to objectivity and universality, is culture-bound in so far as it uses human language’ (168–69). He further affirms: ‘The problems it formulates and the way it approaches them is (sic) influenced, though not determined, by a world view mediated by Western languages’ (169).

Ch. 9, ‘Language and feminist issues in Pakistan’ (172–82), presents a solid case for the inferior status of women marked in Urdu, Punjabi, and other Pakistani languages. Offered into evidence are Urdu words such as aadmi ‘man’ which are used to include women. Furthermore, the author stipulates that a Pakistani husband addresses his wife with the pronoun tum ‘you...