#Reloading language programs

First, I want to state my agreement with the cause expressed by the authors of the World Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics (WLLL) case study at West Virginia University (WVU; Thompson et al., 2025, this issue). The knowledge and cognitive development encapsulated in languages, literatures, and linguistics courses are vital contributors to high-quality education in our time. The learning that we facilitate in these courses provides the cognitive and affective skills and knowledge that enable our students to create the “diverse and inclusive culture” (West Virginia University mission statement, 2025) that is needed at local, regional, and global levels more than ever today. South Africans should learn their home language and four additional language[s], because we are a diversified country with multiracial within communities, so this will help raise the spirit of ubuntu1 and understanding amongst citizens. [South Africans] need to unite and share, and languages will help keep a happy country and innovative citizens that understand one another in many more ways than one. It is important for diversity and so that we can all interact with each other, with understanding. As well as to unite one another because we will have a great level of understanding towards each other. South Africa is a diverse country therefore it's always essential for one to understand more than one African language for the sake of safety and peace. So that [South Africans] can learn to understand other people resulting into accepting them and who they are which will eventually put an end to racism, tribalism and xenophobia discrimination. (Coetzee-Van Rooy, 2016, p. 253) The students’ insights that being multilingual in a diverse context fosters understanding, happiness, innovation, interaction, safety, and peace and that multilingualism provides a bulwark against racism, tribalism, and xenophobia, are startling. The insights of these South African students surely provide strong support for the case Thompson et al. (2025, this issue) make to continue with teaching the knowledge and skills inculcated in courses in languages, cultures, and linguistics at WVU (and institutions across the world). Second, I want to appreciate the skill, finesse, and dedication of the authors of the WVU case study. I value their respectful and rigorous engagement with the management of their university to conduct arduous self-studies, gather additional empirical data via surveys, and craft appropriate responses (including reimagining how WLLL's work could continue via new scenarios). While I read the case study, a deep sadness enveloped me. I was struck by the authors’ sincere attempt to respond to the management of their institution using appropriate language. The authors tried their utmost to present their argument in the economic, financial, empirical, managerial, and scenario-building language used by the management of the institution. The tone was so polite. The authors did not dwell on the fact that faulty discourses of financial pressure (Duchêne & Heller, 2008) were used to argue a case for the closing or diminishing of the offering of languages, cultures, and linguistics at the institution. They never responded to the notion that many ideological fights across the world are fought on the seemingly clean and hygienic planes of language (Duchêne & Heller, 2008). I am proud that the authors held the higher ground, and I am saddened by our inability to stop the dismantling of hard-fought and important language, culture, and linguistic resources built with painstaking care across many years by many people at many institutions. The inevitable incessant institutional ebbs and flows related to restructuring (also called “transformation” in some contexts) at universities across the world were highlighted by the WVU case. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. In this commentary, I subsequently discuss what is different and similar when I compare the state of languages, cultures, and linguistics teaching in the South African context with that of the WVU case. This is a careful comparison because the histories and contexts differ and, for comparisons to be meaningful, apples must be compared to apples. I hope that this struggle to compare relatable experiences from the South African and WVU cases enables us to take back some control over our lives’ work: Applying our knowledge about languages, cultures, and linguistics to create a diverse and inclusive world where all people can experience advancement, happiness, safety, and peace. In addition to the general decline in the enrollment of learners in language programs in both the cases of South Africa and WVU, a macro-level similarity is that South African universities are part of the global commercialization of higher education (Bok, 2003; Swartz et al., 2019; Vally, 2007). As a result, social sciences and humanities faculties and their programs are also under pressure from university managements to restructure and use fewer resources (e.g., Everson, 2008). 28. Higher education institutions must assist in preparing sufficient language teachers, interpreters, translators and other language practitioners, to serve the needs of South Africa's multilingual society. (p. 14–15) Sections 41–45 of the LPFPHEI (2020) describe language policy implementation, monitoring, and evaluation activities conducted by the South African Minister of Higher Education. The slow progress with the implementation of multilingualism at all education levels in South Africa has been documented comprehensively (Beukes, 2009; Du Plessis, 2000; Madiba & Mabiletja, 2008; Makalela, 2015; Masoke-Kadenge & Kadenge, 2013; Webb, 2009; Yafele & Makalela, 2022). The inclusion of monitoring and evaluation activities in the LPFPHEI (2020) is viewed as an important step in the bolstering of the implementation of the multilingual language policies declared by all South African universities. The multilingual orientation in South Africa is also seen in the language requirements for the exit levels of high school and consequently the offering of languages at South African high schools and universities. Table 1 provides information about the number of high school pupils in South Africa who wrote the final national examination (Grade 12, or matric) for language subjects (2019–2024). In the South African school system, pupils have to pass a language at the home language level and a language at the first additional language level when they exit high school. These languages are official South African languages. More languages (including foreign languages like French, German, or Mandarin) can be taken at the level of a second additional language beyond the home language and first additional language if they are available at the school. In 2024, a total of 705,291 pupils sat for the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations. As shown in Table 1, most high school pupils take English as a first additional language and their home language as subjects. The multilingual orientation in South Africa, expressed as a minimum requirement for languages offered at the exit level in high school, at least contributes to ensuring that high school pupils leave school bilingual in their home language and English. The state of the offering of foreign languages (second additional or nonofficial languages) in the South African high school context is “precarious,” according to Van der Walt's (2024, p. 324) recent review. Arabic, French, German, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Latin, Mandarin, Modern Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu are offered as second additional languages in the South African high school system, and there are plans to add Kiswahili (Van der Walt, 2024), but policies are hampering the offering of these second additional languages, such as the Department of Basic Education (DBE)'s decision to not schedule time on the official national timetable for the offering of foreign languages (Van der Walt, 2024). As a result, individual teachers and their learners need to find times (often after 5 PM) to schedule classes. So, in South Africa, second additional or nonofficial languages are often offered at a few elite private and public high schools, where the parent communities value the offering of these languages enough to contribute to the payment of the teachers (Van der Walt, 2024). The numbers of pupils taking second additional or nonofficial languages are difficult to determine, as the DBE reports focus on presenting the results for the “11 gateway subjects: Accounting, Agricultural Sciences, Business Studies, Economics, English First Additional Language (FAL), Geography, History, Life Sciences, Mathematical Literacy, Mathematics, and Physical Sciences” (South African DBE, 2024). While the reports include information about the official languages as subjects (see Table 1), no reports on other subjects (including the nonofficial languages) are reported by the DBE online. Van der Walt (2024) therefore stated that we make a lot of “suppositions” (p. 335) related to the teaching of these languages at the high school level. We assume that from Grades 10–12, classes would be small, and there would be a lot of interaction between the teachers and the learners. We also assume that the number of learners taking nonofficial languages has been declining (Van der Walt, 2024). It is difficult to find comprehensive numbers of pupils enrolled for foreign language teaching in South African schools. The decline in the number of high schools teaching French in South Africa was reported by Snyman (1995). Other than this, I could not find comprehensive details of the number of French learners. Scholars like Ferreira-Meyers and Horne (2017) reported the “receding status of SAL [second additional languages]” (p. 26) in their reflection on the position of French as part of the multilingual dispensation in the South African education system. For German, it seems that the number of pupils taking German at high schools in South Africa has declined but remains relatively stable at about 7,000 learners enrolled at schools annually (Bauer, 2016; Wittmann, 2020). For Mandarin, the enrollment numbers are also difficult to find. Chutel (2019) claimed that there is growing interest in taking Mandarin at high schools in South Africa, although formal reports of enrollment numbers are not available. What we can conclude from these incomplete enrollment data sets is that at least these languages are offered at South African schools. However, it seems that the numbers remain relatively small and that data are lacking, perhaps indicating the low status of these offerings across the education system. The offering of foreign languages at universities in South Africa is also under pressure. The restructuring that started in the higher education system in the early 2000s and its effect on the offering of foreign languages at universities have been reported widely (Annas, 2016; Von Maltzan, 2020). As of February 2025, based on a review of the websites of all 26 public universities in South Africa, the following nonofficial languages had a presence on university websites as a language taught in traditional schools of languages or in the form of short-learning programs aimed at communicative competence: French (10 universities), German (9), Chinese (4), Classics (Greek, Latin; 4), Arabic (3), Portuguese (3), Hebrew (2), Italian (2), and Spanish (2). It is true that the lot of the French teacher in South Africa is not a happy one. Most often he has been forced into the position of having to defend himself and his raison d’être against a hostile world. In expanding educational institutions where development is only too often regulated in terms of strictly measurable usefulness, he has come to be regarded as, at best, an expensive luxury, and at worst, as a not very vigorous parasite soon to wither away. (Niddrie, 1948, p. 16) While little current data across the higher education system are available, evidence suggests that university programs enroll approximately 100 students in French (Everson, 2008), 1,000 in German (Bauer, 2016), and 100 in Mandarin (Qi & Lemmer, 2013) annually. Despite the lack of systematic documentation of student numbers for French, German, and Mandarin at universities in South Africa, these foreign languages (and others) are at least offered nationally. Similarly, all the official South African languages had a presence on the universities’ websites: English (26 institutions had language programs in this language), Afrikaans and Dutch studies (15), isiZulu (11), isiXhosa (9), Sesotho (7), Setswana (6), Sesotho sa Leboa (6), isiNdebele (4), Tshivenda (4), South African Sign Language (3), Siswati (3), and Xitsonga (2). Scholars have warned that enrollments in the Indigenous official languages were in decline. Pillay and Yu (2015; see Figure 1) documented the enrollment numbers for English and Afrikaans and the aggregated numbers for enrollment in all African Indigenous languages at universities for the period 1999–2012. As Figure 1 displays, enrollment in African languages declined sharply after 1999. This was ironic because it was expected that African languages would gain importance in the post-apartheid new South Africa. In a recent study of the state of African languages at universities in Kenya and South Africa, Khohliso et al. (2024) found that South African universities had made strides in making provisions for the offering of African languages as university subjects. Although I caution against binary approaches, I argue in this chapter that a “bottom-up” approach [fostering multilingualism “from below”] can result in governments and ministries of education abdicating their responsibility in promoting and developing non-hegemonic languages, thus maintaining official monolingualism, or at best, official bilingualism. (p. 102) Aligned with Desai's thinking, what we do see in the South African context is the power of a legislative framework espousing a multilingual orientation. The mere declaration of 12 official languages and multilingual legislative frameworks for schools and universities do not result in the continued and successful offering of Indigenous and/or foreign languages at large scales. However, a multilingual legislative framework creates affordances for the offering of more language programs in the South African context, a necessary yet not sufficient condition for language programs to survive. The question is: What can we learn from the South African context that could be useful for the WVU case? Would it be possible to foster the adoption of more multilingually oriented legislative frameworks at the state or institutional levels? Would this approach even be conceivable or helpful to explore? Engaging with the WVU case study by reflecting on the similarities and differences in our contexts brought the realization that, as language people, we are in the same boat, no matter where we are in the world. I had a wonderful moment of happy clarity when I realized that there is much strength in our diversity. We can think through this together and create something truly meaningful and beautiful. I think the similarities between the South African university context and the WVU case study offer crucial points to ponder. Even in a context like South Africa with a supportive multilingual-oriented legislative framework, the teaching of languages other than English (and the home languages taught as part of the Grade 12 exit-level requirements) is declining at the high school and university levels. Students do not enroll in either Indigenous language or foreign language programs enthusiastically. In a context where the commercialization of education in the state and private school systems, as well as in higher education, has been cemented thoroughly, declining enrollments for Indigenous and foreign language programs will continue to put pressure on program providers. We will have to continue to offer high-quality education with fewer resources because we understand that knowing more languages creates communicative affordances in a world that hosts increasingly polarising and isolating communities. A more multilingual population holds the potential to foster communication and facilitate relationships, leading to more integrated and cohesive communities. So how do we, supporters of language programs across the world, respond to these challenges? I wish I had definitive answers to share. Let me conclude with two thoughts. Raising awareness of the value of the knowledge and skills brought to the world by multilingual people is one issue on which we should focus. The challenge is to communicate in clear terms the benefits of the hermeneutic (interpretative) skills that language learning fosters in a world flooded with many versions of “the truth.” The challenges of texts created by a variety of sources (including artificial intelligence content creators) are enormous. Are we able to distill the complex cognitive processes that are engaged in solid hermeneutic work into language programs and communicate these complex processes to potential students and their parents? Even more important, are we able to inculcate these much-needed skills into language programs? Try this thought experiment. Take a team of academics and a group of students from a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Tell the team, ʻʻWe want you to create a humanities and social sciences programme that will help to create a diverse and inclusive world. You are free to organise the programme in any way you like. The only thing you are required to do is to produce the desired result—produce student learning that will contribute to the creation of a diverse and inclusive world. (p. 25) Are we ready to contribute with the knowledge and skills we know language programs should add to these reloaded humanities programs? We could learn (what worked well and what did not work well) from the WLLL case and the options implemented by WVU.