East African Journal of Education Studies

People’s attitudes play an important role in designing a language policy that intends the development of a language. The present study explored the influence of Rwandans’ attitudes towards the development of Kiswahili which is considered the language of trade and integration in the East African Community. The study used primary data collected from participants found in the Rwandan bordering and urban communities. The data collected about people’s opinions towards the promotion of Kiswahili were statistically processed and analysed by use of hierarchical linear regression. Results showed a significant influence on people’s attitudes at the p-value below .05.


INTRODUCTION
Psychologically, attitude is a psychological construct, mental and emotional entity that inheres in or characterises a person towards an object or another person.In this sense, attitude can be negative or positive depending on the past experience or first impression that someone has towards an object or a person.Maniraho (2013, p. 20) quoted different scholars like Ajzen (2005), Agheyisi and Fishman (1970) and Eagly and Chaiken (2007) and defined "attitude" as a term which can refer to evaluative, multi-componential, latency, past experience, and importance aspects.Cambridge Dictionary defines attitude as a feeling or opinion about something or someone or a way of behaving.In addition, an "attitude" has a cognitive, affective, and behavioural component; it is bipolar, and it is a response to a stimulus.The empirical referent must measure these together.Many authors argue that an "attitude" cannot be directly measured (Tanya, 2010).
The functional attitude theory of Katz (1960, p. 168) defined attitudes by saying that attitude is the predisposition of the individual to evaluate some symbol or object or aspect of his or her world in a favourable or unfavourable manner.He continued by saying that attitude can be expressed through verbal opinion and non-verbal expression, which is behaviour.Also, the conceptualisation of attitude by the expectancy-value model sees an individual's attitude towards an object as a representative summary of conception or evaluation based on his or her cognition or beliefs.
It can be said that the measurement of attitude function must manifest the following components.The first component is the cognitive component, which comprises thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that someone has about something.The second component is the affective component, where feelings or emotions are evoked about something.The third component is the behavioural component which can be measured through the tendency or disposition to act in a certain way towards something.More about the manifestation of attitudes was also discussed by Henerson et al. (1987) by showing how readers can find basic skills in designing and using instruments for the measurement of attitudes, procedures, rules of thumb, and practical strategies for performing evaluation tasks related to the assessment of peoples' attitudes.
The functional attitude theory by Daniel Katz (1950) holds the idea that beliefs and attitudes are influential to various psychological functions.The theory goes further and says that attitudes are considered qualitative variables in relation to the function that they serve.It means that attitudes are the independent variable of a set of functions like utilitarian, social-adjustive, etc.Before explaining more about the approach to the attitude of people, Katz (1960) viewed the traditional approach to people's attitudes.In his view, he discussed two major models from whereby sources of people's attitudes were thought to come from.Such models were, namely, the irrational model of man and the rational model of man.
According to the functional approach to the study of attitudes by Katz (1960), the reasons for holding or changing the attitudes by an individual are psychologically found in the function that those attitudes perform in relation to adjustment, ego defence, value expression, and knowledge.The conditions necessary to arouse or modify an attitude vary according to the motivational basis of the attitude.From this perspective, the monitoring and measuring of modification or development of attitude can be a challenging task for psychologists.Thus, researchers in psychology stated that attitude functions could directly or indirectly vary in measurement (Hereck, 1999, p. 4).
By analysing the relationship between attitudes and behaviours, Lyn (2011) evaluated factors that work together with attitudes for an individual to produce certain behaviour towards an object.The author mentioned factors like personality characteristics which include selfmonitoring and the need for recognition; characteristics of the attitude which include its experiential base; circumstances surrounding the performance of the behaviour which include the level of awareness in the situation and the nature of the behaviour selected to represent the underlying disposition.
Through the hierarchical regression, Lyn (2011) analysed the correlation that existed between attitude towards behaviour, subjective norm, and perceived behaviour control of recreational activities.He found that attitude is as important as the prime construct in social psychology.He found that for behaviour to be produced, there must be, first of all, a certain attitude of an individual towards such an object.He clearly stated that behaviour to come out; there is a combination of three facets.Different to the present study, the study wants to analyse the attitude of participants towards Kiswahili.Such attitude can produce good behaviour, which might be a factor in promoting Kiswahili as a language of regional integration in the East African Community (EAC).
Attitudes of people towards the promotion of any language are considered by the theory of language policy as a very important component while designing a language policy.The theory of language policy views attitudes as those beliefs that people from a speech community hold on a certain variety of languages (Spolysky, 2007).Subsequently, the study intends to answer the question related to what influence people's attitudes can have in promoting Kiswahili in Rwanda as a language of trade and integration of the EAC.Thus, the hypothesis of the study states that people's attitudes have a positive and significant influence on promoting Kiswahili in Rwanda as a language of trade and integration in the EAC.This serves the hypothesis of the study, which is tested statistically.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Coming to Africa more particularly to Kenya, which is a member country of the EAC, Mukhwana (2014) in Attitude towards Kiswahili in Urban Kenya, revealed that attitudes of urban Kenyans towards Kiswahili are mostly based on what the use of it rewards them.Apart from what Kiswahili rewards urban Kenyans, the attitudes towards Kiswahili were found to be positive according to integrative reasons.
Along the same line, Mutuku et al. (2018) analysed the attitudes of students towards the use of Kiswahili in teaching communication skills in technical institutes in Kenya.He concluded that differences in attitudes towards the use of Kiswahili among students in technical schools are not caused by the level of study but by the feeling of incompetence and gender factor.
In Rwanda, a study about the interface between language attitudes and language use in a postconflict context found that students' language attitudes in the development of Rwanda that Kiswahili which was among the four languages studied got a negative attitude Mbori (2008).The author analysed this result as the effect of the then status of Kiswahili on the Rwandan language landscape.
By looking at existing studies on the language policy of Rwanda towards the promotion of Kiswahili as a language of regional integration, it can be said that few studies have been carried out.One of them is the study of Ntakirutimana (2002) which looked at Kiswahili as a unifying language in the great lakes region.In his study, he looked at possible attitudes that people might have towards Kiswahili as a language of unity in the region.He found that Kiswahili is accepted although its functioning was low.It can be said that the author tried to work on the state of Kiswahili in the great lakes region.However, his study did not look at the effectiveness of policies and even examine the attitudes of people in domains of language use that might need Kiswahili usage more than others.
The background use of Kiswahili as a foreign language in Rwanda was discussed by Niyomugabo (1992Niyomugabo ( , 2016Niyomugabo ( , and 2019)).He showed that Rwandans have a positive attitude towards Kiswahili regarded as a foreign language.Kiswahili is discussed as a language of trade and regional integration in the East African Community.Whereas, Niyomugabo discussed it as a foreign language.The present study also tries to analyse people's opinions statistically and participants are those found around Rwandan borders with other EAC partner states and those participants in urban areas.
The existing literature on the attitudes of people towards Kiswahili is not enough to consider the current status of Kiswahili.The up-to-date status of Kiswahili in Rwanda shows that it is an official language, as indicated in article 1 of the organic law that was signed on April 20 2017 (The Republic of Rwanda, 2017).The reviewed studies talked mostly about the attitudes of students both in Kenya and Rwanda towards the Kiswahili language.Kiswahili, in this study, is also viewed as a language of trade, regional integration, and a common language in the East African Community.

METHODOLOGY
The study used Rwanda as an area of study where bordering and urban communities were selected purposively.Since Rwanda is surrounded by countries that use Kiswahili, this geographic position can be considered as a pathway for the development of Kiswahili in Rwanda, as Niyomugabo (2019, p. 8) noted.The aforementioned communities were Cyanika, Gatuna, Rusumo, and Nemba as bordering communities, and then Kigali and Huye were selected as urban communities.The idea of choosing urban areas is also supported by the General Census of the Population of 2002, which reported that most Kiswahili speakers are found in town (Maniraho, 2013, p. 3).
The study used Rwandans as the population of the study, where the target population was those people working in different domains of language (categories) use, as indicated by Fishman (1972).Such categories are administration, business, education, religion, and media.Due to this, the study used probability and non-probability sampling while designing and selecting the sample and sample elements.The study used probability while calculating the sample size, where the study used Kothari's (2004) formula to get the sample.Kothari formula is as follows: Where n is the sample size, z is the level of confidence which equals 95%=1.96,p is the population proportion which equals 0.5, and e is the margin error which is equal to 5%= 0.05.q is found by taking (1-p). Therefore: To this, the study used 384 people as the sample.
After calculating the sample size, the study used non-probability sampling in distributing and selecting sample elements according to their domains of language use and location.The study adopted a questionnaire as a technique of data collection where questions were designed in Likert scale form where participants could react from strongly disagree up to strongly agree.After collecting data, the study used a statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) for data processing, where the information given was coded and quantified.To this end, the study ran a hierarchical linear regression in order to analyse the data.The study used people's attitudes as the independent variable and trade language (Kiswahili) as the dependent variable.Apart from these variables, the study used controlled variables like location, the domain of language use, and age in order to see the change they could bring to the outcomes.In order to carry out statistical inferences, the study used Pearson's value, where a value below 0.05 was considered significant.In order to arrive at this, the study interpreted the coefficients, standard error, Fratios, and P-value.

Participants' Demographic Characteristics
The demographic characteristics of the study's participants are age, domains of language use, and location.These demographic characteristics were used because the researcher thought that they might scientifically have an influence on how participants respond.Presenting general information on the study's participants would help the reader to understand the results of the study very well.  1 presents statistics on the demographic characteristics of participants.It should be noted that the characteristics were coded as follow.Age: 12-18 is coded as 1; 19-25 is coded as 2; 26-45 is coded as 3; and 46 and above is coded as 4. For domains of language use, the administration was coded as 1, education was coded as 2, journalism was coded as 3, business was coded as 4, and religion was coded as 5.For the location, the urban community was coded as 1 and the bordering community was coded as 2. Table 1 shows that age as participants' characteristic has a mean of 2.87 which tends to a mean of 3, and this means that many participants were between the age of 26 and 45.Participants from this category present 52.6 % of participants (Table 2).In relation to domains of language use, the mean is 2.97, which means that many participants were from the journalism domain.Participants from the journalism domain of language use present 20.6% of all participants (Table 3).Then on location, the mean is 1.53, which means that more participants were from bordering communities than those from urban communities.Participants from bordering communities present 52.9% of all participants (Table 4).Then 2 was the mode for location characteristic which means that participants from bordering communities appeared many times.Cook (2000) states that the acquisition of language is not the same among learners.He also believes that there are three main factors which influence second language acquisition.Those factors are age, personality, and motivation.The study used participants whose ages were divided into four categories.Table 2 shows that the lowest category of age was between 12 and 18 years old.The highest category of age was 46 years old and above.
Statistics on the age of participants show that many participants were between 26 and 45 years old, as they made up 52.6 % of participants.This means that this category made up the majority of participants in the study.The minority of participants was made of those participants whose age was between 12 and 18 years old.This category presents 4.4% of participants only.Table 3 shows that participants of the study from their respective domains of language use were almost equal in the figures.By looking at the valid percentage of participants in each domain of language use, it is clear that the first four domains, which are administration, education, journalism, and business, have almost the same percentage.Their percentages are 20.3, 20.1, 20.6, and 20.3, respectively.The only domain that has a percentage below 20 is that of religion, which has only 72 participants, which is equivalent to 18.8 per cent of all participants.However, the percentage of the religion domain is approximately equal to the percentages of other domains.The fact that the percentages of participants in their different domains are almost equal, it means that participants were almost equally distributed.This gives a balance in the distribution of participants, which in turn gives the impression that responses from all domains of language use studied are reliable.
According to Table 4, many participants were picked from bordering communities, while a small number of participants were picked from urban communities.As it is shown in Table 4, participants from bordering communities counted 203 out of 384 participants in the study, which equals 52.9% out of 384 participants of the study, whereas participants from urban communities counted for 181 participants, which equals 47.1%.The number of participants from bordering communities is big compared to the number of participants from urban communities because the study used four bordering communities (Cyanika, Gatuna, Nemba, and Rusumo) against two urban communities (Kigali and Huye).

Descriptive Statistics for People's Attitude Variable
For a quick presentation of data, the study presents statistics on how people responded to questions according to their level of agreement.This kind of presentation shall give a quick look and analysis.The study presents statistics of the variable by using different statements as they were described in the questionnaire.This presentation gives only statistics on participants' level of agreement with each statement.
According to Table 5, frequencies show that many participants were in agreement with the first item.This is explained by the fact that those who agreed with the item were 124 and those who strongly agreed with the item were 254.By adding this, it gives 378 participants who were in the range of agreement with statement 1.This also goes to the second and third statements, where many participants agreed and strongly agreed with them.Kiswahili is believed to be a unifying language in the EAC 5 10 32 179 158 384 Source: Field Data, 2020 In the second statement, both levels of agreement made a total of 369 participants.In the third statement, the two levels of the agreement made 348 participants agree with the statement.Contrarily, participants disagreed with the fourth and fifth statements.In the fourth statement, the two levels of disagreement counted 337 participants, while the fifth statement counted 354 participants in the two levels of disagreement.Coming to the sixth and seventh statements, many participants agreed with the statements.Two hundred ninety-one participants agreed with the sixth statement, while 337 agreed with the seventh statement.This means that participants almost agreed with statements under the people's attitude variable except when it came to the fourth and fifth statements.
To identify the attitudes of people, the researcher structured seven statements which were used to test how people think of the trade language (Kiswahili) in Rwanda.The study was able to establish the influence of people's attitudes towards trade language in Rwanda and in the EAC as well.Table 6 shows that the first statement, which related to the will of people to learn Kiswahili scored a mean of 4.63 which shows that participants are willing to learn Kiswahili as a common language in the East African Community.This result has a direct relationship with the statement of Moshi (2006, p. 167), who stated that there was no doubt that Kiswahili has gained ground as a language of choice by millions of people in East Africa and its neighbours.This positive attitude might have also been influenced by the fact that Kiswahili is being considered by the whole East and Central African region as a language for wider communication, improving literacy, galvanising unity, commerce, and many others as Mukuthuria (2006, p. 154) asserted.The second statement scored a mean of 4.41 which means that participants' attitudes are positive in relation to whether Kiswahili can be used in working domains in Rwanda.This result is backed by the identification of domains of language use by Fishman (1972), from which, of course, the promotion of a language can take place.
The third statement was about whether Kiswahili can be applied in all sectors of activities in Rwanda.The statement scored a mean of 4.37 which means that participants' attitudes were positive.Participants could agree that Kiswahili can be applied in all sectors of activity in Rwanda so that it can be promoted towards the effectiveness of regional integration in the EAC.This falls in the same line with Mulokozi (nd,p. 5), who discussed problems of Kiswahili promotion in Tanzania.Among other problems he mentioned there is the use of Kiswahili in primary and high education, the use of Kiswahili in justice institutions, and the use of it in sciences, including social and technology, where he suggested that the users should work hard to develop an adequate corpus of terminology in all fields which means all sectors and try to write or translate books and papers from those fields into Kiswahili.
With regard to the fourth statement, participants could not agree that Kiswahili is a language of hypocrisy.This statement asking whether Kiswahili is a language of hypocrisy scored a mean of 1.50, which means that participants' views were positive, contrary to the statement.The next statement was in the same line with its precedent statement, where participants were asked to agree or disagree on whether Kiswahili should be taught to intellectuals only.But the statement scored a mean of 1.43 which means that participants did not agree with the statement.That is to say, participants believe that Kiswahili which is a trade language in this study, can also be taught to all people not only to intellectuals.These results show that there has been a development in how people viewed the Kiswahili language in the past, as one of the respondents used by Ntakirutimana (2002, p. 241) associated Kiswahili with prostitution and theft.
The sixth statement scored a mean of 3.89 which means that participants were neutral about whether Kiswahili can be considered a language of trade in the EAC.This means that participants took into account other languages instead of Kiswahili alone.But if we consider the tendency of its mean, it can be said that participants almost agree that Kiswahili can be considered as a language of trade in the EAC, along with other languages used in the community.Mukuthiria (2006), in regard to this result, emphasised the role of Kiswahili in development, specifically in commerce.This was later supported by Habwe (2009) in arguing that Kiswahili is one of the ways that establish and reinforce the unity of diverse groups in East Africa through cross-border trade.In addition, Niyomugabo (2019, p. 9) depicts the need for Rwandan business people to learn Kiswahili since most of them do their trade activities in places like Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, Goma, and Dubai, where they meet Kiswahili speakers.The study's participants were also asked to give their views on whether Kiswahili can be considered a unifying language in the EAC.Results show that the statement scored a mean of 4.24 which means that participants positively agreed with the statement.The same results were also found in the studies of Ntakirutimana (2002), Habwe (2009) and Niyomugabo (2019).In general, the highest score mean was 4.63, which goes to the first statement.

The Influence of People's Attitudes towards Trade Language in Rwanda
The study checked which changes would be brought by controlled variables in the model when it was testing the data to attain the objective of the study.The first model for people's attitudes as a study variable has 0.196 as an R square change which means that people's attitudes could bring a 19.6 % change in the outcome.Table 7 shows us that the second model, where age was a controlled variable, was entered and showed 0.014 of R square change.This means that participants' age, as a controlled variable in this study, could have a 1.4% change in the outcome.In the third model, participants' domain of language use brought 0.000 of change in the R square change.It means that participants' domain of language use could bring a 0% change in the outcome.Looking at the fourth model, where location as a controlled variable was entered, the change in R square is 0.009, which means that participants' location could bring a 0.9% change in the outcome.Thus, people's attitudes as an independent variable have a great significance on trade language outcome than other variables (controlled variables).
The assumption in the independent variable is tenable since the Durbin-Watson value is 1.531.Even though this value is not good, it is approximately 2 as the acceptable value to meet the assumption.The fitness of the regression model was also tested by checking the value of the F-ratio.The F-ratio for the first model is 93.118, which is significant at p<.001.The F-ratio for the second model is 6.886, which has a significant value of p<0.05.For the third model, the F-ratio is .038,with a negative significance of p>0.05.However, in the fourth model, the F-ratio is 4.263, which is significant at p<0.05.To this end, it can be said variables in the first, second, and fourth models can improve the ability to predict the outcome in the dependent variable.The statistical significance of the study variable and controlled variables towards trade language will be tested in Table 8.
The study adopted a hierarchical linear regression model so as to assess the influence that people's attitudes might have towards the promotion of trade language (Kiswahili) as the language of regional integration in Rwanda and in the EAC as well.The use of hierarchical linear regression permitted the study to enter other controlled variables in the model in order to check which change might be brought by those variables in the outcome.Source: Field Data, 2020 The study constructed seven latent factors of people's attitudes variable in order to assess which influence that can be brought by people's attitudes towards the promotion of Kiswahili as a language of regional integration in the EAC.The study constructed 15 latent factors for trade language variables.The main reason to use hierarchical linear regression is to analyse the effect of a predictor variable after controlling for others (Mitzi, 2007, p. 10).To this end, the study entered people's attitudes first as a predictor variable in the model then other controlled variables were entered later so as to check their value change in R square.
The study did a statistical test in order to test the significance of the influence of people's attitudes towards trade language.The study confirms this because its value is significant at p<0.05.Among other variables, it is the only location that might predict the outcome because its p< 0.05 (p= 0.040), although its t (z) is negative (t= -2.065).
The objective of the study was to analyse the influence of people's attitudes towards trade language promotion in Rwanda.Thus, null and alternative hypotheses were formulated.
Ho: People's attitudes do not have a significant influence in promoting the trade language (Kiswahili) in Rwanda as a language of regional integration.
Ha: People's attitudes can have a significant influence in promoting trade language in Rwanda as a language of regional integration.Source: Field Data, 2020 The study found regression appropriate in measuring the hypothesis because the regression model fitted the study as the F-ratio in Table 7 is 93.118 (F>1), and the Durbin-Watson value for the tenacity of assumption in the independent variable is 1.531, which is the approximate to 2. According to statistical results in Table 8, the p< 0.05 (p=.000).These results give the study the ability to reject the null hypothesis, which says that people's attitudes do not have a significant influence towards the promotion of trade language (Kiswahili) which is the language of regional integration in the EAC.To this end, the study accepts the alternative hypothesis, which admits that people's attitudes have a significant influence towards the promotion of trade language, which is the language of regional integration in the EAC.
It is clear evidence that the attitudes of people have much influence towards the promotion of any language or any language variety.O'Rourke and Hogan-Brun (2013) supported this assertion where they stated that language attitude and its related terms most of the time appear in the context of language policy and language planning.The authors had earlier stated that the advanced key idea was that attitudes exert influence on language behaviour.The above results are similar to the functional attitude theory of Katz (1950), which holds the idea that beliefs and attitudes are influential to various psychological functions.The theory goes further and says that attitudes are considered qualitative variables in relation to the function that they serve.It means that attitudes are the independent variable or set of functions like utilitarian, social-adjustive, etc.
Attitudes and language learning or acquisition can be said to be correlated, which means that one can influence another, as Khetir (2017) admitted.In the same line, many years before Ferguson (1996, p. 274) had admitted that effective language policy in any country is determined more by the attitude of people toward that language use than the simple demographic facts of that language distribution and use.This supports some of the results from the study carried out by Ntakirutimana (2002), looking at whether Kiswahili can be a unifying language in the great lakes region.Throughout his study, he studied the attitudes of some Rwandans towards Kiswahili as a unifying language and he realised that the majority had positive attitudes towards the Kiswahili language.
These findings are also supported by the theory of language policy proposed by Spolysky ( 2007) asserts that people's attitudes or beliefs enormously affect the way language policy is designed.It can be said that people's behaviours, attitudes, and beliefs towards a certain variety of languages can positively or negatively influence its promotion.The study also found out that language policy can promote Kiswahili as a language of regional integration in Rwanda when the attitudes of people are considered.By analysing the responses of participants in relation to their views and beliefs towards the promotion of Kiswahili as a language of integration, the study found that the attitudes of participants towards Kiswahili were positive, which means that people's attitudes have a significant role in promoting Kiswahili.

CONCLUSION
The present study on people's attitudes towards Kiswahili as a trade language in Rwanda and in the EAC as well looked at how Kiswahili is being viewed by Rwandans who are also citizens of the EAC, where Rwanda is a member country of the community.After analysing responses given by participants, the study found that people's attitudes towards Kiswahili are positive.Thus, their positive attitudes can have a significant and positive influence on promoting Kiswahili as a language of integration in Rwanda as well as in the EAC.The study revealed that in the process of designing a language policy that intends to promote a certain language, including Kiswahili, the following indicators of attitudes have to be considered.Among them, there must be a need of the population to learn that language to increase their level of communication; there must also be the acceptance of the population of that language to be used in working domains; there must also be an acceptance by the population for Kiswahili to be used as a language of trade in the EAC, and Kiswahili must also be accepted as a trade and unifying language in the community.It was also revealed that Kiswahili is no longer taken as a language of hypocrisy as it was before, and it is not even considered a language of intellectuals only.
The study recommends the government of Rwanda through the Ministry of Education, the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda, and its partners including media, researchers, private institutions, and regional organisations to always do research on people's attitudes before putting in place any policy that the government intends to introduce to people.The emphasis should, of course, be put on those communities that seem to have more travelling in countries where Kiswahili is being used.This does not mean that all citizens should not be given that chance to learn Kiswahili as a language of integration in the EAC.Other things that can be done include active use of Kiswahili in daily life, developing positive attitudes towards Kiswahili, and carrying out evaluation studies that would be a semester or annual in order to see how the language is facilitating the process of regional integration of ordinary citizens in particular.

Table 8 : Statistical Significance of People's Attitudes on Trade Language in Rwanda
Note: for models *p<0.05,**p>0.05