Paper presented at the “Africa in a changing world”, Conference, Institute of Africa , Moscow, 1 – 3 Oct, 1997.
Author – Raphael Gamaroff
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Language, culture and conceptual frameworks
3. Translation between conceptual frameworks
4. Languaculture
5. Is reconciliation possible?
6. Conclusion
7. Bibliography
Many African intellectuals are caught between the Western scientific and African traditional mentality, between the Western way and “our way”. This article poses three main questions: 1. Is there a significant difference between Western and African spaces of culture; between the Western way and “our way”? 2. Is there a homogeneous African space or way – a unanimous African animus? 3. Is it possible to achieve cultural integration, or, failing that, effective intercultural communication? It is argued that there are significant differences between Western ways and African ways, which make intercultural communication very difficult. Many African intellectuals are caught between the Western scientific and African traditional mentality, between the Western way and “our way”. This does not mean that differences are only of a group-cultural nature. There are also differences that exist at the individual level, e.g. different learning styles. What is required in education is the creative ability to appreciate the fundamental problems of knowledge and interpretation, of the (creative) conflicts between different visions, interpretations, and offerings. It is the value one attaches to the rainbow of individual offerings that characterises the real cultural, political, educational and spiritual crisis in South Africa, in Africa and beyond.
The story of humanity is a story of similarities and differences – of assimilation and isolation, and the fear of both. In cultural studies there are those who accentuate differences; the cultural nationalists, and those who accentuate similarities; the cultural internationalists.
Senghor’s attempt to assimilate Europe into Africa has been castigated by many Africanists, e.g. Mphahlele, Soyinka and Wiredu. The négritude poets in the Francophone countries distanced themselves from Senghor’s idea of négritude and formulated the notion of difference in which African culture (in the Francophone countries) “could contextualize the clash between tradition and modernity”. For Diawara the “concept of difference…seeks to undo hierarchies and create the possibilities for cultures and nations that are diverse in origin, customs, religions and race to work together.” It is the possibility of reconciling differences that this article is concerned with. Three questions are posed:
1. Is there a significant difference between Western and African spaces of culture; between the Western way and “our way”?
2. Is there a homogeneous African space or way – a unanimous African animus?
3. Is it possible to achieve cultural integration, or, failing that, effective intercultural communication?
I shall argue that there are significant differences between Western ways and African ways which make intercultural communication very difficult. Effective intercultural communication between Western ways and African ways are possible but only to a limited extent.
2.Language, culture and conceptual frameworks
The following question has never been satisfactorily answered: Are concepts language-relative (Humboldt; Whorf ) or are they universal? If universal, they would be only superficially modified by the differences between languages. In other words, is “reality” an objective entity, or is it a construction: a linguistic or a social construction? With regard to the linguistic construction of reality, Whorf’s well-known example comes to mind of the Hopi Indian’s view of time and space being determined by the structure of the Hopi verb system. Pinker maintains that Whorf’s “outlandish claims” are a product of bad analysis and “leanings towards mysticism”. Yet, mystics, unlike Whorf, are supposedly preoccupied with domains “outside” space and time, and would probably be oblivious of the “philosophical nightmare” of culture, which is the human embodiment of space-time.
With regard to culture, Agar relates the following incident: “A few years ago, at the International Pragmatics Association meetings in Antwerp, I stood in the hall and talked with my old teacher, John Gumperz. A colleague came up and said, “You know, this is really an interesting meeting. But how do you tell who the anthropologists are?” Gumperz smiled and answered, `It’s easy. They’re the ones who never use the word culture‘.” I do use it. By culture I understand, with Clark, Hall, Jefferson and Roberts
that level at which social groups [or individuals] develop distinct patterns of life, and give expressive form to their social and material life-experience. Culture is the way, the forms, in which groups [or individuals] `handle’ the raw material of their social and material existence… Culture is the distinctive shapes in which this material and social organization expresses itself. (My square brackets)
Culture is fundamentally a state of mind, a symbolic system through which one reaches out to the world, touches it, expresses it, communicates it, turns away from it, is “ex- communicated” from it.
Rohner defines culture as a “system of symbolic meanings”, i.e. how we conceive our behaviour. Rohner’s definition highlights two things: 1. Culture is systematic, i.e. it is concretised in a group; 2. Culture is a way of representing one’s world through mind. Thus culture is a “collective programming of the mind”.,
What is functionally relevant to one culture may not be relevant to another, as is evident from research into cross-linguistic differences in word learning in different cultures. Children only learn those categories that are functionally relevant and that are significant in the cultures in which they are raised. Thus what is functionally relevant is heavily dependent on the culture into which one has been “programmed”. What is functionally relevant determines the meaning of the words that represents these functions. Consider the following examples from Sawadogo. Sawadogo maintains that adult training in sub-Saharan Africa
is often carried out in Africa in the same way it is delivered in the West and particularly in the United States. The underlying assumption, whether explicitly articulated or not, is that Africans learn in the same way that Americans or other Westerners do.
Sawadogo contrasts the following four “Western principles” of adult learning with the African way: 1. Adults learn best through active participation; 2. Adults are independent learners, or if they are not, should become active learners; 3. Feedback is essential; and 4. Western languages (e.g. English and French) are appropriate for training.
Consider the following comparison of Moore (a language of Burkina Faso) with French and English. French and English share cognate concepts, e.g. apprendre-learn and essayer-try. Moore’s closest concepts to these concepts are zamse (which also means “to teach” and “to imitate”) and makre (which also means “to demonstrate”), respectively. Sawadogo explains the Moore terms zamze,makre and ne bugsego in Mossi culture:
In modern English or French culture, imitate has a negative connotation and excludes the notions of learning and teaching (which might not have been the case in old English and old French), whereas in Mossi culture (modern, and old culture, I would think), one doesn’t learn without imitating. (This is also true of the majority of world cultures). In English and French culture, imitation connotes not only plagiarism but passivity, “a lack of energy”, “sluggishness”. But in Moore passivity means “good heart” (ne bugsego) or a “person who proceeds cautiously” (ne maasgaa).
Thus the concept of passive learning through imitation in Mossi culture is regarded as good, where learner-centredness – a buzzword in modern Western education – would be regarded as anti-educational. In Mossi culture, according to Sawadogo, the notion of feedback is “inconceivable” because of the “negative view of the practice of questioning” or of anything that smacks of criticism (widbo). Sawadogo states:
The lack of cross-linguistic correspondence often leads to differing interpretations between trainer and trainees and makes it difficult, if not impossible, for trainees to develop behaviors corresponding to these [i.e. English and French] concepts or words.
Although what Sawadogo says of Moore may be completely correct, it is dangerous to generalise to other African cultures/languages. (I shall adumbrate on this issue shortly). For example, in Xhosa culture linganisa “to imitate” used to be regarded as purely a good thing, until books arrived on the scene. Without books there was no school; children learnt everything from their elders, and couldn’t even conceive that there existed people who thought differently. In modern Western society one learns mostly through books from the age of about seven years. Further, Western children are encouraged to be critical from an early age, as Sawadogo points out. So it would be correct to say that in the traditional African culture, where formal schooling was not established on Western lines, imitation and its corollary of passivity, e.g. not asking questions, were regarded as virtues. In a school/literary culture, however, linganisa could be good or bad depending on the context.
To chew a little more on that contentious bone of a unanimous African animus, or culture, or worldview. There is nothing that gets an African academic’s goat more than talk of an African philosophy – especially talk of a collective one. As Abrahams puts it: “[t]hat all Africans share the same worldview, both Gyekye and Houtondji reject with the vehemence it deserves. (Abrahams is reviewing Gyeke’s [1987] book on the Akan conceptual system. Indeed African philosophy/culture is not a homogeneous system. In fact there are lots of individual life-forces, vital forces, energies in Africa. The European scientific mind – to generalise – seeks grand unified theories (GUT) and theories of everything (TOE); but this does not preclude the abundant diversity of philosophic, religious, cultural, systems. Science may not be well developed in Africa, but this does not preclude as rich, or even richer diversity of world views and philosophic systems – nor does it preclude a unifying force (?). Similarly, there are many Western philosophies and myriads of Western religions/myths.
3. Translation between conceptual frameworks
Conceptual commonalities between groups or individuals logically imply that there also exist conceptual differences between them:
Understanding a new culture, the argument goes, is about making sense out of human differences in terms of human similarities. The similarities are the ground against which the figure of differences are understood. And the differences, most of them any way, surface out in the spaces between people.
Consider Van Niekerk’s view of translation/interpretation:
Isn’t the ease with which different cultures and languages seem to be conceivable and expressible in the other’s conceptual framework not remarkable? And does not that reveal something of a type of conceptual commonality or constant that is ab initio denied by social relativists?
Contrast Van Niekerk’s statement above with his following statement:
The contrast between Western and Azande culture is that the latter is unfamiliar with the theoretical approach to problem solving and rather represents a residue of the mythical thought pattern with its entwinement of knowledge and action. (Italics added)
(The meaning of myth in Van Niekerk is a story that conveys a system of values and meanings).
Van Niekerk’s latter statement implies that different cultures “have different views of the world”. But Van Niekerk also maintains that it is wrong to argue that the “practice of argumentation, that is of establishing relationships between beliefs by means of logical rules… does not obtain in certain cultures”. There are two points I would like to make:
Firstly, there are many who would disagree with Van Niekerk’s view that conceptual frameworks are easily translatable. Quine’s argument concerning the indeterminacy of translation owing to the incompatibility of cultural realities is well known. Sallis also finds the translation between cultures problematic. Sallis, like Derrida and many others, finds grist for his mill in the Tower of Babel story. One of the messages of the Tower of Babel story is essentially this: In order to build or construct (POIESIS “construct”) successfully, one has to move smoothly between the paradigm (plan) and its exemplification (the building). Architecture as paradigm is disrupted by its limitation to a site; a limitation that distorts the paradigm (image). Similarly, in translation it “goes without saying, translation is anything but a smooth and efficient circulation between signifiers [paradigms] and signifieds [exemplification, site].” (My square brackets).
Secondly, it may be true that the “practice of argumentation” obtains in all cultures, but this is a far cry from Van Niekerk’s claim that conceptual frameworks are intertranslatable. According to Verster “some, if not most executive processes may be culturally relative and hence not represented in all populations.” Executive processes could be regarded as an exemplication, or execution, of conceptual frameworks/paradigms.
In the context of schooling, Millar goes further than Verster by claiming that courses in skills development pursue the “impossible”, because processes such as classifying and hypothesising cannot be taught but can only develop. The upshot: Van Niekerk, maintains that cultures share a common conceptual framework; Verster says that conceptual frameworks may differ among cultures; and Millar, in the educational context, says if you haven’t got the wherewithal to develop intellectual skills, you’ll never get it.
Wiredu’s distinction between “conceptual relativism” and “conceptual disparities” is of interest in the “linguistic relativism” debate. Recall that “linguistic relativism” is the theory that language structures reality. Conceptual relativism, which is related to linguistic relativism, is a bit of a chicken and egg situation: concepts structure language, but language also structures concepts. Conceptual relativism stresses the differences between conceptual frameworks. Wiredu prefers to speak of conceptual disparities rather than conceptual relativism:
Conceptual disparities among peoples and cultures, even among individuals in limited environs, are a brute fact of the human situation. Doubtless, this is the source of all sorts of complications in translation, particularly across cultures…But overriding all such problems is the fact, which is surely one of the most remarkable facts about language, that we can understand even what we cannot translate. This is due to the fact that we can learn languages other than that (or those) in which we were brought up. The fundamental fact here is that, because of the biological unity of mankind, any human being can participate or imaginatively enter into any human life form, however initially strange.
By “relativism” Wiredu means that one culture is impermeable to another, and thus never the twain can meet.
The meaning Wiredu gives to “relativism” is not, it seems, the same that Verster gives to the term. Verster is arguing that concepts are culturally mediated; thus I don’t think that Verster’s “culturally relative” necessary means that one culture – Wiredu’s “human life form” – is unable to enter into another strange “human life form” (Wiredu). Verster seems to be merely arguing that deep conceptual disparities exist between cultures, and is not arguing that it is impossible to overcome these conceptual disparities. Therefore, Verster’s cultural relativity seems to be similar to Wiredu’s cultural disparity.
By cultural “disparity”, Wiredu means that differences exist between cultures. He argues that owing to the biological unity of mankind, it is possible for members of any culture to enter into the space of another culture, no matter how disparate the cultures involved.
Wiredu above states that “we can understand even what we cannot translate.” Wiredu’s “translate” is probably referring to the technical know-how of translating texts – spoken and written – from one language to another. There is another sense of translate that Wiredu would probably agree with, namely, in order to understand another person or culture, one requires the ability to move from one conceptual framework to another (Van Niekerk above). (Thus one doesn’t have to be able to translate in the technical sense, in order to understand another culture). This ability is the ability to “translate” one conceptual framework into another. If one could not do this there would be no communication between cultural frameworks/paradigms. Yet, no one doubts that one can and must “translate” across cultures: the issue is the degree of consensus/communication that can be found between cultures/technologies, especially if the distance between them is great, e.g. between Western and African cultures/technologies. For example, although there are commonalities of understanding between ancestor “worship” and Christian worship, there are deep differences.
Wiredu states that “`translation of the language of an untouched people [!]‘ can be `de-radicalised’ through sustained cultural intercourse” (the words between single quotes are Quine’s]; the square brackets are Wiredu’s). Whether such deradicalisation is possible depends on the language content and genre involved. It also depends on the ability and creative imagination of the “translator/interpreter” who enters into intercourse with the “untouched” culture. Not easy meat. Wiredu’s description of difficulties in translating the Western concept of mind and other concepts into Akan testify to the fact that much more than sustained cultural intercourse is required. The problem is one oflanguacultural differences.
Language and culture are interrelated and inseparable. Owing to the rich connections between language and culture, Agar maintains that the “separation between language and culture makes no sense”. Agar coins the broader label “languaculture”, which is the same concept as Fantini’s “linguaculture”. Agar’s “languaculture” may be preferred to Fantini’s easier to pronounce “linguaculture”, owing to the fact that a common meaning of the term linguistic is “grammatical” (Chomsky’s “linguistic/ grammatical” competence). Language is much more than linguistic structure, i.e. grammar.
It is in the light of these attempts to meld language and culture that I mention a remark made by a colleague at the University of Fort Hare (South Africa) who is a Xhosa speaking South African educationist. His views are shared by many other black South Africans. My colleague stated that “conceptual differences between cultures [e.g. Western science versus African culture, one African culture versus another], is a myth.” (Myth in this context means “exaggeration”, “fabrication”).
Alexander, one of the most active proponents of a national culture in South Africa, expresses a similar view. Alexander has been campaigning assiduously for a harmonisation of the Nguni varieties (Xhosa and Zulu, Swati and Ndebele) and the Sotho varieties (Sotho, Sotho sa Leboa and Tswana). The harmonisation endeavour is understandable in the light of the fact that for Alexander and others the supreme function of language is the informational function.
Alexander maintains that the idea of a language group as the basis of a nation or a national group stems from a “mystique” about language, and from a failure to see this phenomenon in terms of the rise of capitalism. This “mystique”, he claims, is based on the mistaken belief that each language has its own “soul” or “psyche”. Alexander argues that
there is a historical explanation why language groups constitute the basis of nations in Western Europe and that historical explanation has to do with the fact that the development of means of communication was then in a very primitive state.
Alexander adds that the language question leads these (could we call them) mystics straight into the murky, obscure area of culture, to the idea that language groups are not just co-extensive with nations but that nations and language groups are different aspects of cultural groups, that languages and cultures are co-extensive. It leads us on the political plane to the debate in South Africa of whether one should guarantee group rights or individual rights? A debate of almost mystical proportions shot through with mist and schism.
This “murky, obscure area of culture” has developed in the last few decades into what is called multicultural education. Multicultural contexts obviously require Intercultural Communication (IC). If I have interpreted Alexander correctly, he is more interested in another kind of IC: Informational Communication, which brings us to the matter of formal education
“Schools everywhere” versus “our way”
In African cultures a conflict exists between formal education and the “togetherness of the tribe”:
The idea of education had now come to him like a demon, urging him to go on, do more. Even when later he was forced by the Kiama in their extravagant enthusiasm to take an oath of allegiance to the purity and Togetherness of the tribe, he did not stop to analyse if any danger lurked in such a commitment. Kabonyi did not exist. He saw only schools everywhere.
The togetherness of the tribe is not a random collection of individuals following along a random path:
Our way, the way, is not a random path. Our way begins from coherent understanding. It is a way that aims at preserving knowledge of who we are, knowledge of the best way we have found to relate each to each, each to all, ourselves to other peoples, all to our surroundings. If our individual lives have a worthwhile aim, that aim should be a purpose inseparable from the way.The irony, from an African point of view, of Western culture is that Westerners collectively contract (program themselves) to be as individualistic as they can, where self-will, independent thinking, initiative and value-free impersonal truth are given prominence in the “schools everywhere” (Ngugi above). It is in early childhood that children’s habits become fixed.
The clash between “schools everywhere” and “our way” (Armah above) is a crucial problem in education in Africa. These (Western) “schools everywhere” stress according to Kaplan an inductive cognitive strategy (arriving at principles) based on the individual learner’s effort. The African way, in contrast, follows a deductive path, where the principles are imparted by the teacher. An inductive approach requires the speech act of asking questions, which, according to Sawadogo, is deficient in the collectivist, authoritarian cultures of Africa. According to Sawadogo, African cultures emphasise passive participation, which logically excludes independent (individual) thinking.
5. Is reconciliation possible?
At the XIX World Congress of philosophy in Moscow (August 1993), Wiredu presented a colloquium entitled “Man and nature” with R. Balasubramanian. Wiredu was asked by one of the participants, myself, during the subsequent discussion what he meant by his passage on cultural disparities that I quoted earlier. He replied that translation is “a mapping of one language on to another”, and added: “Because I have learnt English, I cannot translate it, but I can understand it.” This seems to mean that Wiredu is better at comprehending a second language than producing it. But this is also true of one’s mother tongue. The observation that one can understand more than one can produce is a universal law of learning and thus applies to both the mother tongue and other languages one may learn. The main issue is that Wiredu, a West African, finds it easy to understand a language that he has (consciously) learnt, namely, English, because he learnt it – and well, and presumably from an early age.
With regard to learning a second language at an early age, I refer to my University of Fort Hare colleague mentioned earlier. To recap, he does not believe that there exist conceptual differences between cultures. The point is that his school education from an early age was through the medium of English. Therefore, in Wiredu’s terms, my colleague probably found it relatively easy to “participate or imaginatively enter into [the] human life form [of English culture], however initially strange” (Wiredu above; square brackets added). The mother tongue issue is a sensitive one in South Africa, because mother tongue instruction was assiduously promoted by Bantu Education. This assiduous promotion is interpreted by many blacks, including my Fort Hare colleague, as a device to keep black ethnic groups politically divided. Yet mother tongue instruction, especially at primary school level, is one of the most well-established educational principles; common sense I would think. I suggest that my Fort Hare colleague’s view would have been quite different if he had not been educated from his early years in English. The issue is that most of the children in South Africa have not had the “good fortune” of early childhood education through English. Therefore, the problem of overcoming conceptual disparities looms large in a society like South Africa, where the insemination of the conceptual spaces across the colour line was tantamount to an “immoral[ity] act” .
Conceptual disparities, i.e. cross-cultural conflicts, according to Wiredu, can ultimately be overcome. Cross-cultural conflicts are optimistically referred to by Agar as “rich points”. Much of the literature on cross-cultural adaptations (see Anderson for a survey) would describe these cross-cultural conflicts not as rich points but as painful punctuations in the turbulence of change. Disparate conceptual frameworks do not only exist between cultures but also within cultures. For example, experts on Akan such as Wiredu and Bedu-Addo (both mother tongue Akan speakers) can’t agree what an Akan means by truth and fact. Wiredu takes these disagreements “philosophically”: he states that the exchange between himself and Bedu-Addo “promises an exciting feast of philosophical controversy which should demonstrate at least that, whatever the peculiarities of African philosophy, unanimity is not one of them.” Thus there is no unanimous African animus (anima?). The problem is that while the people with the necessary literary and philosophical expertise to translate these (radically?) different languacultures are feasting on, or promising to feast on, the meat of one another’s philosophical speculations, the patient Akan student is anxiously waiting in the wings for his or her Akan translation of, say, Aristotle. Likewise the French (or English) student is patiently waiting for a translation of an Akan text – oral, if not written, owing to the paucity of written philosophical texts in Akan: and true philosophical discourse is not viable without written texts.
A society that is not able to criss-cross the conceptual boundaries between and within different languages/cultures is destined to falter. This is not to say that cultures or concepts should be compounded into a potpourri of uniformity:
Culture… always participates in a conflictual economy acting out the tension between sameness and difference, comparison and differentiation, unity and diversity, cohesion and dispersion, containment and subversion.
What is true of a specific culture is also true of individuals. The group and the individual are both involved in the symbiotic renovation of culture. Arbib and Hesse put it this way:
There is no reason that schemas developed in one culture should be fully translatable into patterns and schemas in another language. Even for persons raised in the same society, the differences in genetic constitution and individual experience provide “individuality” and “personality” as is constituted by a distinctive network of schemas for each person.
The health of a culture depends on its creative ability to criss-cross between sameness and difference, unity and diversity, etc. What is required is the creative ability to appreciate the fundamental problems of knowledge and interpretation, of the (creative) conflicts between different visions and interpretations. Without these conflicts, higher levels of learning are likely to remain out of reach. Hence the Piagetian notion that “[a]ll development is composed of momentary conflicts and incompatibilities which must be overcome to reach a higher level of equilibrium.”
Mazrui posits five stages of “cultural integration”: Stage 1 – cultural contact; Stage 2 – cultural conflict; Stage 3 – cultural conquest; Stage 4 -cultural confusion. In Stage 4 the choices for the subjugated culture are surrender, alienation, revival or resurrection. Mazrui asks whether these are the only options. Mazrui’s posits another option, his optimistic Stage 5, namely cultural coalescence or integration, which for Bhabha aims to “transform our sense of what it means to live, to be, in other times and different spaces, both human and historical.” I suggest that the more the contact between Western conceptual frameworks and African conceptual frameworks, the more difficult it is to communicate interculturally on the basis of equality. In this regard, creative thinking is required to make a breakthrough. According to Popper,
creative thinking is characterized by the ability to break through the limits of the range -or to vary the range…This ability, which is critical ability, may be described as critical imagination. It is often the result of culture clash, that is a clash between ideas, of frameworks of ideas.
Although Popper does not mention the individual, I would think that he is concerned with individual creative ability: a very Western idea.
One should be sensitive to the cultural and psychological upheavals that may result from trying to impose a “Western” English/American or French cultural system on traditional Africa. One of the puzzles encountered by English mother tongue (usually white) teachers in South Africa is the general bewilderment rather than resistance of black learners when confronted by the cultural demands of white society. What these learners seem to regard as central is not cognitive growth, reasoning, or logic, but rather the social adjustments needed to cope with learning a different language. This is not to say that there is no logic in Africa!.
Cultural imperialism and economic growth work together in making people members of technological civilisation where the existential equilibrium of people is often considered to be a minor concern:
For their part the African people had to adopt and adapt to the unilaterally imposed epistemological paradigms. The challenge for African people is to strive to understand themselves in the light of their existential circumstances.
Feelings and emotions play a determining role in the learning process. Accordingly, feelings of cultural anomie (estrangement) should not be pushed aside in the rush to develop educational programs – which may suddenly appear as “monsters from the new world”. Educationists in Africa are searching for a way in which the African way – “their tricks” – can reconcile with the Western way – “our tricks” – in such a way as to ensure the least amount of pain; the pain of opposing, adapting to or integrating with Western culture (Mauer & Retief 1987). The big question is whether it is possible to find a common way. According
to Sawadogo the African learning mode is not only “less compatible” with French and English languages but the latter “may even interfere with or negate African cultural and contextual meanings and implications.” This is the reason for the strong Africanisation movement in South Africa where one of its main concerns is the endeavour to develop the African languages as the medium of instruction at least up to the end of the senior secondary phase. The irony is that “Bantu Education” also encouraged the use of the mother tongue as a medium of instruction at higher levels of education, but on the proviso that the mother tongue also give a turn to Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in some of the school subjects. The history is well known.
Many African intellectuals are caught between the Western scientific and African traditional mentality, between the Western way and “our way”. This does not mean that differences are only of a cultural nature. There are also differences that exist at the individual level, e.g. different learning styles. There are also universal principles. Two of Sawadogo’s universal learning principles are that one learns by trial and error and one learns better what is relevant. The transformational question in contemporary South Africa is deciding what is relevant. It is on the issue of relevance that people differ. The relevance of Western ways clashes with “our way”, where breakdowns in intercultural communication are likely to occur.
For Serote (chief culture spokesperson for the African National Congress) culture is “The manner of making people members of civilisation” (Radio Today, South African Broadcasting Association, 27 April, 1993). Mazrui’s relationship between culture and civilisation is worth quoting:
We define culture as a system of inter-related values, active enough to influence and condition perception, judgement, communication and behaviour in a given society. We define civilisation as a culture which has endured, expanded, innovated and been elevated to new moral sensibilities.Whether we succeed in bridging the gap between the different spaces of civilisations, few would disagree that civilised people regard variation as a gift and not as a poison:
Let every people bring their gifts to the great festival of the world’s cultural harvest and mankind will be all the richer for the variety and distinctiveness of the offerings.
It is the value one attaches to the rainbow of individual offerings that characterises the real cultural, political, educational and spiritual crisis in South Africa, in Africa and beyond.
Achebe, C., Hopes and impediments, London, Heinemann, 1988, p.60.
Agar, M., “The intercultural frame” in International Journal of Intercultural Relations (Vol. 18, No. 2, 1994), p. 225.
Alexander, N., “Language policy and national identity”, in Language Projects Review (Vol. 4, No. 3, 1989), p.30 .
Anderson, L.E., “A new look at an old construct: Cross-cultural adaptation”, in International Journal of Intercultural Relations (Vol. 18, No.3, 1994), pp. 293-328.
Arbib, M.A. and Hesse, M.B., The construction of reality, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 58.
Armah, A.K., Two thousand seasons, London, Heinemann, 1974, p.39.
Bhabha, H.K., The location of culture, New York, Routledge, 1994, 256.
Cazden, C.B., John, V.P. and Hymes, D., Functions of language in the classroom, Illinois, Waverley, 1985, p. xxxi.
Clark, J., Hall, S., Jefferson, T. and Roberts, B., “Subcultures, culture and class: a theoretical overview”, in Working Papers in Cultural Studies (Vol. 7/8, No. 9, 1975), p.10.
Comenius, J.A., The Great Didactic, London, Adams and Charles Black, 1910, p. 140. Macdonald, C. A., Reasoning skills and the curriculum. Report soling, 18. Pretoria. Human Sciences Research Council, 1990, p. 38.
Derrida, J., “La Tour de Babel”, trans. Graham, J.F., in Graham, J.F.(ed.), Difference in translation, Cornell University Press, 1985.
Diawara in Mudimbe, V.Y., The surreptitious speech: Présence Africaine and the politics of Otherness. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992, p.383.
Harré, R., Social being, Oxford, Blackwell, 1979.
Humboldt, W. von., “Man’s intrinsic humanity: His language.” in von Humboldt, W. Humanist without portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt. trans. Cowan, M., Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963.
Kaplan, R.B., “Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education”, in Wurzel, J. (ed.), Toward multiculturalism: A reader in multicultural education, Yarmouth, Intercultural Press, 1988, p. 208.
Mazrui, G., The Africans: A triple heritage, Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1986, p. 239.
Mphahlele, E., The African image, London, Faber and Faber, 1962.
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, The river between, London, Heinemann, 1965, p. 68.
Piaget, J. and Inhelder, B., The psychology of the child, New York, Basic Books, 1969, p. 78.
Pinker, S. The language instinct. London/New York, Penguin Books, 1995, p. 63.
Popper, K. “On hypotheses”, in Johnson, P.N. and Wason, P.C. Thinking: Readings in cognitive science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 268.
Quine, W.V.O., Word and object, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960.
Sallis, J., “Babylonian captivity”,in Research in Phenomenology (Vol.22, 1992), pp. 23-31.
Senghor, L., “Negritude and African socialism”, in Kirkwood, K (ed.). St. Anthony’s Papers (Volume 15, 1963), Oxford.
Soyinka, W., Myth, literature and the African world, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Swanepoel, C., Kilfoil, W., Swanepoel, P. and Moeketsi, R., Languages and literatures at UNISA: Our commitment to the Reconstruction and Development Programme, Pretoria, University of South Africa, 1996.
Teffo, J. “The hounded black intellectuals.” in Centre of Scientific Development Bulletin (CSD), May. Pretoria, 1995, p. 12.
Van Niekerk, A., “Relativism versus ethnocentrism”, in South African Journal of Philosophy (Vol.12, No.2, 1993), p. 32.
Verster, J.M., Cognitive competence in Africa and models of information processing, Pretoria, HSRC Report 411, 1986, p. 15.
Whorf, B.L., Language, thought and reality, New York, Wiley, 1956.
Wiredu, K., Philosophy and an African culture, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Young, R.J.C., Colonial desire: Hybridity in theory, culture and race, London, Routledge, 1995, p. 53.
