From the Common Name to the Scientific Name

Linguistic Coloniality and the Hierarchy of Knowledges in Science Teaching in Angola

Abstract

This theoretical-critical essay examines, from a decolonial perspective, the linguistic hierarchy that pervades Science/Biology education in Angola, taking as an illustrative case the relationship between vernacular plant names in Bantu languages such as Umbundu and the Latin binomial nomenclature of Western scientific taxonomy. Drawing on Quijano (2005), Mignolo (2007), Walsh (2010) and Maldonado-Torres’,s (2007) contributions on the coloniality of power, knowledge and being, and in dialogue with language studies on critical literacy and linguistic racialization, the essay argues that learning school scientific language functions, for many Angolan students, as the acquisition of a prestige additional language, superimposed on Bantu languages and on everyday vernacular Portuguese, and structured by a colonial hierarchy that delegitimizes local botanical knowledge. Drawing on experience with herbarium and ethnobotanical collections in Angola, the essay discusses decolonial pathways for teacher education and teaching-material design, namely the pedagogical valuing of vernacular names as a starting point, rather than an endpoint, for teaching scientific nomenclature. It concludes that decolonial science education does not require abandoning scientific language, but rather relativizing its hierarchical position relative to local linguistic knowledges, recognising them as legitimate classificatory systems and as a central didactic resource for linguistic inclusion in Angolan contexts of plurilingualism.