Remembering as a Decolonizing Project in Language Policy

This chapter argues that language policy is imbricated in the politics of historical memory. Although much has been written about language policies in southern contexts as colonial, much less is written about how the policies themselves are mobilized by particular versions of historical memory which, in turn, frame the (non)choice(s) of languages in nation-building. The case of language policymaking in the Philippines will be used to demonstrate this. The chapter argues that forgetting the brutalities of US colonialism and the resistances against it is one important reason that language reforms in the country have been difficult to implement. Remembering is included as a decolonizing project in language policy. This directly affects the way in which teacher education must be reconceptualized to include critical engagement with imperial memory. It does not endorse the view that there is or should be one correct version of history. Rather it seeks to show how historical memory frames language policy and how this, in turn, shapes language choices. Remembering as a decolonizing project brings to the surface the ideological configuration of historical forgetting and links it with the valuing, privileging, and marginalizing of languages.