Fighting the Current Pandemic: Deploying Linguistic Resources is the Key
Multilingualism – the use of two or more languages within a polity – is often seen by governments as an impediment, if not a threat, to nation-building and national identity. In promoting official language(s), many governments, therefore, discourage, even oppose, the use of minority languages. The hostility towards the use of Spanish in the US, 5 lack of government support for Cantonese in Hong Kong, and the state-led suppression of Urdu in India 6 exemplify this ideology. The spread of COVID-19 and themeasures to tackle it, however, challenge the monolingual ideologies and practices of governments because the degree of success in fighting the outbreak depends substantially on the dissemination of correct information in different languages. Many governments, which otherwise have aggressively implemented monolingual policies, have taken recourse in minority languages to spread awareness about the pandemic. The availability of knowledge in the languages of the people ensures that the message is not misunderstood due to a poor command of the official language and also creates trust, which increases the likelihood of acceptance. Roots of Monolingualism The roots of the monolingual state ideology trace back to the 19th century European nationalism in which language, nation (as a cultural unit), and country (as a political unit) were considered coterminous. Until the arrival of guest workers after World War II and more recent migrant and refugees from Asia and Africa, European countries such as Germany, Spain, France and England were “good” examples of this model in which language, the people, and the country coincided. In order to give authenticity and credibility to such a conception of a nation-state, histories of languages were created to show that they have existed for centuries. 7 An example of this is the use of the term 5 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50550742 6 https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/renaming-india-saffronisation-public spaces-181012113039066.html 7 https://theconversation.com/back-to-the-19th-century-how-language-is-being-used-to-mark-national-borders-66357
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