Week Twelve: Investment and Power Structures in Language Learning

This week, my Kinyarwanda language study witnessed me trying to regulate my learning. Indeed, insofar as I am in the process of constructing an assessment to evaluate my performance this semester, I am trying to “take stock” of what I have learned in comparison to what I set out to learn. Reflecting back on the beginning of the semester, however, I am not sure I had a clear picture of what I wanted to learn or, better put, what I wanted to do with the material that I learned. 

Pertinently, I read Bonny Norton Pierce’s article “Social Identity, Investment, and Language Learning” for another course in which I am enrolled, African 575: Methods in Teaching African Langauges- Theory and Practice. In the article, Norton Pierce proposes that “the language learner [h]as… a complex social identity that must be understood with reference to larger, frequently inequitable social structures,” after examining the experiences of five female ESL students in a Canadian context (13). Of course, the article does much more than what follows, including staging a very provocative discussion of power and identity, but for my purposes here, the notion of investment is equally important. The author states:

Some forms of cultural capital have a higher exchange value than others in a given social context. I take the position that if         learners invest in a second language, they do so with the understanding that they will acquire a wider range of symbolic and material resources, which will in turn increase the value of their cultural capital. Learners will expect or hope to have a good return on that investment- a return that will give them access hitherto unattainable resources. (17)

In reflecting on my own studies, I can admit: Sure, I am learning Kinyarwanda to gain access to material resources that I would otherwise not have access to, such as testimony, archival documents, and creative responses to the Genocide; however, I am also learning Kinyarwanda to earn a smile from my guesthouse keeper, to surprise the random passerby gawking at the “umuzungu,” and, ultimately, to talk to a person in his/her language without the expectation that they speak mine. These are hardly measurable exchanges, but it is what I wish to do with the language nonetheless.

In addition, I believe it to be reflective of a power exchange taking place. Outside the context of my research and my travels to Rwanda, my speaking Kinyarwanda has little exchange value. Indeed, it is not a critical language, nor is it taught widely within the United States. If I were being completely honest, within the context of Rwandan Genocide literature, the French language would be more useful to my studies. With that said, however, it shouldn’t be strictly about me and what I am getting out of this- my language study-, and in order to be an ethical researcher, I feel I must consider the perspectives of my subjects. Accordingly, I have concluded that the narrative of Rwanda belongs to Rwandans, and they should be able to express it in whatever language they would like, whether it be English, French, or Kinyarwanda, but in order to listen and to listen well, I have to know these languages too.

Perhaps these are not revolutionary ideas, or at least they shouldn’t be, but I find myself reflecting on them still. Such thoughts will help sustain me to the end of the semester and throughout the course of my language study, when I feel discouraged or have trouble seeing the “big picture.”

Now back to my self-assessment…