Linguistic Genocide

The concept of genocide makes most people think about the physical killing of a group of people. This article examines the five definitions of genocide in the United Nations Genocide Convention (1948) and shows that two of the definitions apply to certain types of minority education and include the education of deaf people, who constitute a linguistic minority. Indeed, in what follows, a claim is made that much of the education of deaf children today constitutes a form of linguistic genocide educationally, psychologically, sociologically, and linguistically.

The education of Indigenous/tribal/minority/minoritized (hereafter ITM) children, can, historically and to a large extent also today, be seen as genocide if it is conducted using a dominant language as a teaching language in submersion (sink-or-swim) programs. These programs represent subtractive teaching in which (some of) the dominant teaching language is learned at the cost of the children’s mother tongue. This means that formal education subtracts from the children’s linguistic repertoire rather than adding to it, as it should. For deaf children, this dominant language is an oral language, not a sign language. The negative consequences of subtractive education have been well-known for a long time (at least since the middle of the 1700s), not [Page 595]only by the ITMs themselves but also by researchers, governments, educational authorities, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), churches, and international organizations. Empirical research demonstrating this fact was available in South Africa as early as the 1940s (e.g., Malherbe). UNESCO’s classic 1953 book Vernacular Languages in Education stated clearly that the mother tongue was axiomatically the best teaching language (for minorities).

The United Nations International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide presents five definitions of genocide in its Article 2:

• a Killing members of the group;
• b Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• c Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• d Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• e Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group [emphasis added].

Before examining Article 2 in relation to the Deaf, we need to define Deaf children’s mother tongue(s). Table 1 is a starting point for these definitions.

We have to differentiate between Deaf children born to one or two Deaf parents and the majority of deaf children born to hearing parents. I use five theses about the definitions and relate them here to the Deaf:

• 1.
  An individual can have at least two, possibly three, mother tongues (MTs). A deaf child can have both a sign language (SL) and a written (sometimes also spoken) language as mother tongues.
• 2.
  The MT can vary, depending on which definition is used. A deaf child with hearing parents seldom has an SL as the MT of origin because the parents did not know an SL when the child was born.
• 3.
  The MT can change during a person’s lifetime according to all other definitions except the definition by origin. Here the deaf are an exception: A deaf child with hearing parents may be exposed to a lot of spoken language in infancy, and the parents may think it is the child’s MT. But the first language that the child may have meaningful communication in might be an SL.
• 4.
  The definitions can be organized hierarchically in relation to how much they respect linguistic human rights (LHRs). This definition by function is the worst one: Most deaf people cannot decide themselves which language(s) to use most. The definition by competence does not respect LHRs either, if the child has no opportunity to learn SL properly. After all, a sign language is the only language in which a deaf person can express himself or herself fully. But in many cases, deaf people know a written (or even an oral) language best. The role of lip-reading is important here.
• 5.
  It is possible to identify with a language that one does not know. It is possible to have an MT that one does not have (any or “full”) competence in. This thesis is especially relevant for those Indigenous people whose parents or grandparents were forcibly assimilated such that they did not speak the ancestral language to their children. It is equally relevant for deaf people who have been deprived the chance of learning a sign language but who, at least later, identify (one hopes, positively) with the Deaf community and an SL.

Deaf children with Deaf parents are possibly in the best position in terms of having most of their LHRs respected. This would presuppose, though, that their initial education for many years uses sign language as the main teaching language in mother-tongue-based multilingual education (MLE). This kind of education is unfortunately an exception in today’s world—most formal education that deaf children have, provided they receive any formal education at all—fulfills the criteria for genocide in Articles 2(b) and 2(e).

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