A Critical Analysis of Ethno-linguistic Diversity Discourses in Ethiopian Government Universities
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2014-05
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This dissertation is concerned with the way ethnic and linguistic categories are sustained in the
daily talk of university students. Language contact and its social consequences in the universities
are discussed in an attempt to shed light on ethno linguistic diversity discourses.
I argue against the notion of ethno-linguistic categories as immanent cognitive structures whose
existence can be taken for granted. The categories are constructed recurrently in students
discourses. One of the greatest challenges of Ethiopian government universities is ethnic and
linguistic diversity because the notion of diversity falls prey to atomized competitions, hostility
or conflicts. The representations of ethnic categories are studied by analyzing recorded
discussions on ethnically sensitive issues. To this end, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) design
was employed, taking universities as a case. The research was interested in how ethno-linguistic
diversity constructed among the students, while the experiences of diversity are very closely
inter-related with students' day-to-day life.
Examples from five universities on the construction of ethno-linguistic diversity discourses are
used to illustrate the major challenges. In the research framing key findings about ethnic and
language differences have done. As a result, the study came up with the findings of ethnic
epithets, ideological differences, the differences of ‘us' and ‘them', prejudice, ethnocentrism are
the major discourses. They were found to be causes for the on-campus inter-ethnic conflicts that
occurred recurrently. The disagreements also manifested in forming in-group and out-group
demarcations based on ethno-linguistic diversity. In such a case, sensitivity to ethnic diversity
was also the other factor, which led students to conflict.
The ways in which categorical constructions are represented vary in the identified discourses.
Student used different criteria for constructing ‘us‐them’ distinctions. For one thing, they
develop strategies for reconstructing the predominant distinction between ‘us' and ‘them'.
Attention is also focused on exploring the use of language in legitimizing the representations. In
some cases, notions of ethno-linguistic freedom, equality and tolerance used in wrong ways and
construct ethnic diversity conflicts.
In general, ethnic and linguistic diversity tolerance, mutual respect, inter-group harmony and the
celebration of differences were lacking in the studied universities. There was a progressive
erosion of ethno linguistic tolerance in spite of the recurrently ethnical based discourses. There
seem to be simmering ethnic and linguistic diversity conflicts. The research recommended,
multicultural education of ethno-linguistic diversity tolerance might be provided as a significant
move to reduce the problem.
Description
Keywords
A Critical Analysis of Ethno-linguistic Diversity