Language surveillance as coloniality: learners’ experiences in Nigerian secondary education

Abstract This paper explores learners’ experiences of language surveillance in Nigerian secondary schools. We draw on George Dei’s anticolonial lens to show that such experiences in postcolonial contexts such as Nigeria need to be understood as permeations of coloniality. Our findings are based on observation, map-making, talk circles, storytelling and participatory analysis with 56 learners. Through an empirical mapping of language surveillance across the whole school ecology, we extend analysis beyond classroom spaces to show how constant monitoring and discipline shape learners’ everyday movements and interactions. We present the concept of a “conditioned reflex”, a term coined by learners themselves through the participatory analysis, which captures how colonial language hierarchies become internalised and operate at both conscious and subconscious levels. In our conclusions, we consider the importance of anticolonial research approaches that position learners as experts in their own experiences to deepen understandings of the ways coloniality of language continues to shape Nigerian education.