This book investigates Rwanda’s language policies in the (post)colonial period and examines the underlying factors behind the rise of English in the country. Departing from the premise that the ‘State’ erects major linguistic practices, Spowage highlights the contingent value of language to the State and neoliberal narratives. Deploying a political theory approach, Spowage develops a historical-materialist framework enriched by Marx, Gramsci, and Cox. She argues that language is of practical political importance (a tool of statecraft) for administrations to exercise hegemonic control, reproduce social structures, and consolidate power over society. She contributes to sociolinguistics by proposing a ‘Global English Nebuleuse’ model to fill the interstices of previously institutionalized models. It accounts for factors that make global English happen, such as capitalist local political processes, which previous models failed to explain. She explores the relationship between global English and social class and peels the multi-layered local-translocal factors that feed the spread of English.
In chapter 1, Spowage outlines statecraft—State involvement in managing sociolinguistic structures—and its links to hegemony, political economy, and society. Using Gramsci’s definition of hegemony, she charts the processes of ‘consent’ and ‘coercion’ in Rwanda’s political and sociolinguistic fabrics. Spowage pinpoints how the State has historically used language to assert dominance and maintain social inequalities. Language, she contends, is a social construct embedded in historical processes that shape hierarchies and ideologies.
Chapter 2 sketches Rwanda’s colonial past, where Belgian rule in 1916 introduced French, which remained dominant even after independence in 1962. The education system entrenched class division by promoting the minority French-speaking class while stifling the majority—the poor.
In chapter 3, the Rwandan anglophone Patriotic Front (RPF), after taking control in 1994, re-engineered the sociolinguistic landscape by elevating English. This shift was idealized as a path to prosperity, but Spowage critiques the ‘language of prosperity’ discourse as a poignant convention, a tool for elite consolidation. English begot a symbolic power and access to education, while the majority struggled with scant resources and inadequate training. The RPF’s language policy thus retained past exclusions, bolstering class divisions and inequality.
Chapter 4 expands on the neoliberal discourse surrounding English as the ‘language of prosperity’. Spowage argues that while English is kindled as a social mobility facilitator, it actually exacerbates inequality. Access to quality English education is circumscribed to those with economic capital, and English casts sorting mechanisms in education and work. English prioritization sustains the capitalist structure that benefits elites and perpetuates social stratification.
In the conclusion, she grounds the global spread of English as a political project through ‘nebuleuse’ (a diffuse network of elites, institutions, and economic forces), and a constellation of local and global factors closely intertwined with each other. The shift to English in Rwanda, like other post-colonial nations, reflects a ‘passive revolution’ led by elites, without popular input, sidelining public participation. The book calls for a critical, materialist-cultural, and structural approach to language policy, advocating for resistance to hegemonic forces through cross-class collaboration called ‘historic bloc’ and ideological awareness of the masses.
