Modern languages departments are neither colonial nor obsolete

The majority of UK modern languages departments were set up in the aftermath of the First World War with the aim of helping understand the country’s closest neighbours. Many of those neighbours were fellow colonial powers, of course, and it would be misguided to deny that the era’s Eurocentric worldview does not linger in elements of today’s pedagogical structures.

This issue of confronting the colonial legacies of the past is one that concerns the whole of academia. Modern languages – more correctly designated Languages, Cultures and Societies – has played an important role in the critical self-assessment of the humanities. The discipline has often spearheaded cultural studies research and pedagogy that directly addresses the nationalist and imperialist histories and ideologies underpinning contemporary cultures and societies.

These changes have occurred as part of a radical rethinking of the field over the past decade or more. Contrary to what was recently argued in Times Higher Education by St Andrews academic Tomasz Kamusella, it now encompasses an array of methodological approaches, areas of study and objects of analysis. Its strength resides in its wide-ranging, porous nature, permitting the integration of high levels of linguistic proficiency into its study of cultural, linguistic and social realities.

Nor is the purview of modern languages confined to speakers of a single language. Departments have developed a range of connections with others, bringing their expertise to bear on the study of languages and cultures through the lens of other transnational or global perspectives, alive to how the legacies of European imperialism are experienced and contested.

These developments have enhanced a core element of modern languages: its attention to how the creative expression of a given society at a given time can be seen through a multiplicity of shifting cultural and linguistic perspectives.

But there is tremendous potential to further develop beyond current boundaries to include specialists working on all areas of the globe. This would lead naturally to the growth of networks of obvious importance for academia and the UK and the development of highly visible and goal-directed research collaborations. In turn, these initiatives would facilitate the preparation of students as global citizens with a high degree of agency in a world that is changing with disconcerting velocity.

This direction of travel has been given enormous impetus by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Translating Cultures theme. Between 2012 and 2020, this funded more than 120 projects, all of which engaged with key concepts such as multiculturalism, multilingualism, cultural exchange and identity. The Open World Research Initiative devoted £16 million to building on these themes from 2016 to 2020.

The transformative effects of this investment have extended to providing resources for reinvigorated teaching practice, ensuring a closer relationship with the school sector, raising community involvement and working with non-academic partners. This is helping to ensure that language learning and research are embedded in local, regional, national and global contexts, attuned to human mobility and more aware of the policy dimensions that necessarily arise.

The focus in coming years has to be on extending cooperation between university departments and broadening the language curriculum for schools and universities to include home, heritage and community languages. We also need to ensure public awareness of the benefits of language learning and reduce regional cold spots for language acquisition, in part through cross-sector initiatives such as the Languages Gateway: a one-stop shop for getting information on language teaching and research.

We are already pushing on an open door in that regard. In a poll published in 2023, 71 per cent of UK adults supported the idea of making the study of a modern language compulsory in secondary school. And popular concern about recent advances in AI-based language technologies highlight the need for their ethics and efficacy to be evaluated by graduates with a critical understanding of language, culture and communication.

The irony in Kamusella’s critique is that St Andrews – as well as Cardiff University, the proposed closure of whose modern languages provision he advised us not to lament – has been at the forefront of curriculum innovation. Cardiff offers master’s programmes in global heritage and global cultures, while St Andrews’ undergraduate modules include topics such as environmental humanities, postcolonialism, migration and diaspora from the medieval to the postmodern period. In these programmes, language is not an ancillary service. It is crucial for expanding understanding of key issues of our age beyond anglophone perspectives and assumptions.

Advanced linguistic and cultural skills are essential for any deep understanding of how people see themselves and their relationship to the precarious and rapidly changing world around them. We must not let them slip away out of a misinformed sense that technology will solve all our problems or that colonialism’s legacy will always fatally undermine efforts to promote better transnational understanding.

Wendy Ayres-Bennett is emerita professor of French philology and linguistics at the University of Cambridge. Charles Burdett is professor of Italian and director of the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Emma Cayley is chair of the University Council For Languages and head of the school of languages, cultures and societies at the University of Leeds. Nicki Hitchcott is professor of French and African Studies and head of the School of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews, where Mary Orr is Buchanan Chair of French.