Abstract:
Christian missionaries have played a crucial role not only in assisting past and current
forms of colonialism and neocolonialism, not only in attacking and destroying
other ways of being, but also in terms of the language effects their projects have engendered.
The choices missionaries have made to use local or European languages
have been far more than a mere choice of medium. On the one hand, missionary language
projects continue to use and promote European languages, and particularly
English, for Christian purposes. The use of English language teaching as a means to
convert the unsuspecting English language learner raise profound moral and political
questions about what is going on in English classrooms around the world. On the
other hand, missionary linguists have played a particular role in the construction and
invention of languages around the world. Of particular concern here are the ways in
which language use, and understandings of language use, have been-and still
are-profoundly affected by missionary projects. Bilingualism between indigenous
languages and a metropolitan language, for example, was part of a conservative missionary
agenda in which converting to Christianity was the inevitable process of being
bilingual. The ongoing legacy of the language effects of Christianity is something
that needs urgent attention.
