Using household survey data, we quantitatively analyse the relationship between social class and educational attainment in Malawi through the lens of linguistic capital and the differential impact of linguistic capital on diverse socio-demographic groups. This study thus helps unmask possible reasons for this inequity by uncovering the relationship between social class, linguistic capital and learning outcomes.įrom a post-colonial perspective, power relations between English, Chichewa and other vernacular languages in Malawi are crucial to the formation of language policies including the LoI in school, alongside the implications of these policies on social mobility and inequities. To our knowledge, such explorations are negligible globally and non-existent in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with the largest linguistic heterogeneity and entrenched language hierarchies due to colonial legacies 1. We approach the much researched area of the relationship between language and equity from a rather under-researched theoretical lens-linguistic capital-drawing on Bourdieu (1991) who argues that language competence, as a form of cultural capital, is linked to the reproduction of social class in school. The country has wide inequities in education and is one of the few countries in sub-Saharan Africa that shifted to the use of a foreign language, English as LoI from standard 1 since 2014. This paper engages with global concerns surrounding the relationship between language and equity in education by focusing on the resource-constrained, postcolonial context of Malawi.
All three countries have ethno-linguistic diversity, ranging from 12 languages in Bulgaria to 104 in Peru and 110 in Vietnam ( ). For example, in the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), on average, a 33 points gap was found in Vietnam, 67 in Peru and 79 in Bulgaria between students who mainly spoke the test language and those who did not (OECD, 2016 cited in UNESCO, 2017a). Learners who do not use the language of assessment outside school are disadvantaged. Against this backdrop, an estimated 40% of people are denied access to education in a language they speak or understand (UNESCO, 2016b). Trudell, 2016 UNESCO, 2016b, 2017a) exploring the relationship between LoI and learners’ outcomes makes it abundantly clear that the LoI policy ‘can hold the key to making education more inclusive for disadvantaged groups’ (UNESCO, 2017a, p. In many countries of the Global South, high linguistic diversity, colonial legacies and considerations of competitiveness within the global labour market and economy result in the choice of a language as LoI that is often in tension with the local/national linguistic landscapes, resulting in exacerbating the marginalisation of disadvantaged social groups (Tikly, 2016). While the complexity of the above issues mean that learning outcomes cannot be reduced to any single factor, the global learning crisis reported in much of the Global South can be linked, at least in part, to the language of instruction (LoI) policy (UNESCO, 2016a). Thus, language, thinking and educational success have a complex relationship, shaped by social attitudes to language that tend to maintain the privilege of some social groups at the expense of others (Stubbs, 2012). While learners from such groups tend to benefit from the linguistic hierarchies in education, students using non-standard dialects or speakers of minority languages are deemed less academically able because of the form of their language rather than the content of their expression. Furthermore, language in education is socially important, as some dialects or languages are given a higher social status and these are often closely linked to upper income groups and historically privileged linguistic groups (Stubbs, 2012). In the context of schools, language is the medium of education (Grenfell, 2011) and central to both teaching and learning (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1996). Language is at the core of meaning making (Grenfell, 2011) and thought is profoundly shaped by the language that expresses it (Vygotsky, 1962).
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