This paper draws upon discourse analysis to explore how language underpins disparities in educational outcomes in Cabo Verde. The research focuses on language and educational discourses produced in relation to a recent bilingual initiative to introduce Kriolu alongside Portuguese as a medium of instruction in two primary schools.
More than fifty years after most of the former colonial African countries gained independence, the West’s symbolic domination continues. This is seen especially in attitudes to language in Africa, where global languages such as English, and the languages of the former colonial powers (Portuguese, in the case of this study) continue to be highly valued symbolic commodities (Chimbutane, 2012). In educational settings, the former colonial languages continue to have privileged status, and Western-centric school curricula and pedagogy serve to marginalize local forms of knowledge (Chimbutane and Benson, 2012). In order for effective language policies to be implemented, the sociolinguistic context of a country needs to be understood. As Djité (2008, p. 7) notes: “making assumptions about the sociolinguistic dynamics of a country, or simply not taking it into account, will not make it go away”. This paper, therefore, draws on discourse analysis to explore how language underpins disparities in educational outcomes in Cabo Verde. The paper examines educational discourses produced in relation to a bilingual initiative to introduce Kriolu alongside Portuguese as a medium of instruction in two primary schools in Cabo Verde. The initiative began in 2013; however, following the change of government in 2016, the local education council have been inconsistent in their support, leading to temporary suspension of the initiative on several occasions. This paper draws on data from semi-structured interviews with teachers and other agents (politicians, educational administrators, activists) involved in the bilingual initiative. The analysis of the various discourses deployed in justifying both the initiative and its suspension reveals how the monolingual habitus of the education system often stands at odds with the linguistic diversity of the society which it serves (Piller, 2016).
