Ulimi - Language, speech (Ubuntu as Re-Humanization Series)
Language is a litmus test for humanization.
If you’re new to Unlearning My Education, Welcome!
I write articles, poems, short stories and create art exploring my rehumanizing journey as an unlearner and new parent. Each Monday I offer work focusing on a theme:
Ubuntu as Rehumanization - I focus on Ubuntu as a radical force for human dignity by exploring its eight symbolic dimensions: Ubuntu (humanization), Umphefumlo (breath), Umzimba (body), Ulimi (language), Umqondo (head, brain, intellect), Inhliziyo (heart), Umoya (spirit), Amandla (power).
Unlearning My Apartheid Education - I examine what it means to unlearn my South African apartheid socialization. I write about anti-oppression: anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-capitalism, among more topics.
Childhood - I talk about growing up in the afterlives of apartheid South Africa in a multi-racial family as well as boarding school life in a colonial school.
New Parenthood - Invite you into our new parenthood journey with all its chaotic beauty.
If you’ve been here before — thank you for coming back. If you’re new here, below are some good places to start:
Ubuntu’s Written Lineage (Ubuntu as Rehumanization Series)
Umphefumlo - Breath and Humanization (Ubuntu as Rehumanization Series)
Umphefumlo as a Lens and Practice (Ubuntu as Rehumanization Series)
Umzimba - Body, Flesh, Form (Ubuntu as Rehumanization Series)
Umzimba and Shared Cultures of Humanizing Power (Ubuntu as Rehumanization Series)
Ulimi - Language, speech (Ubuntu as Re-Humanization Series)
Language is a litmus test for humanization
Ngiwulimi lwami. I am my language. NginguWarren. I am Warren. Ngingu. I am. Umoya wami, my soul, the sacred space inside my body where “I” exist, my center, holds sacred memory and knowledge. My feelings and thoughts are embodied forms of knowledge expressed through Ulimi lwami: my language and my speech.
Ulimi as a dimension of Ubuntu re-humanizes relationships to language and speech. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o argues that “Whoever controls the word, controls the world…a choice of language is central to a people's definition of themselves in relation to their natural and social environment.” Language describes and shapes the world. We become conscious of ourselves and enter into relationships with our reality through language. Reclaiming our bodies, healing our minds, and building humanized cultures of shared power involves words.
Ulimi scrutinizes the words I use, how I use them, and to what end. The tongue is a political, economic, and social instrument. It communicates, creates, and illuminates our position in hierarchies. Whose meaning and why reflects whose power. Hilary Janks proposes that ‘meaning is mobilized through language description, usage, and generation to maintain or challenge unjust power structures.’ Unjust power structures shape humanizing and dehumanizing outcomes.
Language is a litmus test for humanization.
It is never neutral, it is a power struggle.
Whose language reflects whose meanings.
Whose meaning reflects whose values.
Whose values reflect whose rules.
Whose rules reflect whose power.
Whose power coalesces as the culture of power.
Dehumanizing hierarchical and binary relationships between and within languages, including the (imposed) words we use, and how we convey them reflects society's culture of power.
Cultures of dehumanizing power center the language, foreground the meanings, position the bodies, distribute the benefits, and confine us within the powerful’s imagination.
Language is a communication tool and a vehicle for cultural reproduction. Stella Ting-Toomey posits that “Language infiltrates so intensely the social experience within a culture that neither language nor culture can be understood without knowledge of both. To understand a culture, we must understand its language. If we want to understand the context of a language, we must understand the basic value systems and beliefs that drive specific language usage.” Language identifies the power-full, the power-less, and the disempowered.
Wa Thiong’io describes how the world comprises a kaleidoscope of linguistic, and thus cultural centers. There is no natural hierarchy of cultures, bodies, languages, and expressions. Unequal value assignment is enforced through the colonial process.
Since colonialism entails imposing a human hierarchy on society, it is a linguistic project. The colonial project enforced the South African paradigm first through British, and then South African English (SAE). SAE describes an English born in Eng-land and brought to Africa alongside the gun to impose South Africa: a dehumanizing patriarchal, capitalist, and racist paradigm.
As a SAE speaker, I am a centered, cultural majority, even though I am a numerical minority. Despite English being framed as an equal to fellow eleven official languages and spoken as a mother tongue by only 9.6% of “South Africa’s” population it is still situated at the center of political, economic, and social power.
South Africa’s dehumanizing culture of power reflects the waters I swim in. As a fish, I breathe my environment into my bones. My water’s color, texture, and taste live as enveloping hierarchies. SAE carries South African culture by imposing dehumanizing hierarchies and binaries between languages, through words, and expressions. Our rehumanization involves decentering SAE and opening space for all languages and people to thrive.
Rehumanization does not replace one language or culture of power with another.
It practices inclusion by re-orienting from All's languages while decentering dehumanizing languages of power.
The equality and humanization of languages and their expressions cannot be achieved without the equality and humanization of people.
Shared cultures of humanizing power encompass all bodies, languages, and cultures as holding intrinsic, equal value in their own right.
Shared cultures of humanizing power operate from multiple linguistic centers, interwoven meanings, interdependent relationships, fair benefit distribution.
Humanizing language, meaning and practice heals.
Healing involves returning the land, operating from All’s languages, and re-imagining for an economy, politics, and social system that serves humanity.
SAE is centered in my life. In saying that my mother tongue is English, I am referencing my words and the chain of umbilical tongues that accumulate in my cultural being. English connects me to my body, my ancestors, and to Eng-land. I can’t escape English but I can be intentional about its relationship to power.
Decentering SAE maps one of the contours of our rehumanizing struggle. My unlearning journey entailed facing my linguistic identity as a settler speaker of SAE and to reorient my linguistic relationship and identity.
Appreciation Time: Thank you for spending time in community with me. Through this work I hope to deepen community, connection and justice with you.
Please consider joining the waitlist for my upcoming book: Unlearning My Education: Ubuntu. Schooling. Rehumanization (expected publication in the Fall of 2027). The analytical memoir explores how Ubuntu as a rehumanizing lens can help us understand colonial education using my personal story of attending a dehumanizing former British boarding school in South Africa.
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