Human Social Rights: a Nonkilling checklist, by Francisco Gomes de Matos
Let's not kill a person / a group /a community socially by depriving him, her, them of
A place to live
A job
Literacy / Literacies
Daily food
An education system
A healthcare system
A transportation system
Sanitary conditions
Retirement legislation
Family law
A security system
Law and order
Linguistic rights and responsibilities
Interaction
Dignity
What else would you add? Why?
A person/a group / a community may be KILLED COMMUNICATIVELY, when he, she, they are FORBIDDEN/NOT ALLOWED to: communicate in their native language; to communicate in speaking, writing, or signing; in a language of their choice; to learn other languages.
Add other instances of Communicative Oppression and justify your additions.
A person, a group or a community may be KILLED COMMUNICATIVELY, when he, she, they are FORCED to lie, under some kind of life threat (for instance, in the case of war prisoners who give videotaped statements or who are interviewed, saying things they don’t mean, telling lies, sometimes offending their own country).
Add instances of Life-threatening communicative violence and justify your contributions.
Discuss your contributions with classmates, etc.
A student, a group of students may be KILLED COMMUNICATIVELY when he, she, they ARE FORCED or HAVE TO do exercises or be engaged in activities for which no alternatives are allowed, for instance, they are told to do something only orally, without the possibility of also doing it in writing. An example: students are told to visit website X, and report on the topic Y, only orally. In this case, pedagogical flexibility is now allowed.
A student, a group of students may be KILLED COMMUNICATIVELY when he, she, they hear authoritarian classroom instructions such as this: "You should never interrupt me, your teacher, when I’m explaining something to the class". In this case, the students’ right to ask for clarification, or of questioning what is being said is not being respected. Pedagogy worthy of the name is above all humanizingly flexible.
Teachers are usually unaware of the implications, possible effects or the classroom phraseologies they use. If they are prepared to anticipate such potentially harmful uses of language and to avoid them in interacting with their students, an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding will be build and sustained .Verbs such as ALLOW, LET, HAVE ( I have my students do this, do that,... instead of ASK, ENCOURAGE, CHALLENGE...), FORCE, may be destructive of human relations in contexts such as school, place of work , home, etc.
You might not have been introduced to Human Linguistic Rights, so be sure to google TWO TYPOLOGIES OF LINGUISTIC RIGHTS, by the author of this Checklist. Challenge yourself to add to the examples in the two classifications. Google UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF LINGUISTIC RIGHTS and learn more about this important dimension of human rights. If you teach languages, by all means read the chapter Second language learners’ rights by Gomes de Matos, in the book Portraits of the L2 User, edited by British linguist Vivian Cook, published by Multilingual Matters,2002. In that text, you will find specific typologies of language learners rights, such as Vocabulary rights, Grammatical rights, Pronunciation rights.
Francisco Gomes de Matos is an applied peace linguist from Recife, Brazil; Co-author of the chapter "Toward a Nonkilling Linguistics" (Toward a Nonkilling Paradigm, Honolulu, 2009), basis of the Course "Nonkilling Linguistics" at Wikiversity's School of Nonkilling Studies. Professor Emeritus, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco; Co-founder and currently President of the Board, Associação Brasil América. He can be reached at fcgm@hotlink.com.br
