IN the last few months, I have given lectures and had many conversations with colleagues about the present condition of languages and linguistics in the Philippines. These discussions with colleagues invariably led me back to a troubling pattern in our academic and intellectual culture: we are exceptionally good at issuing statements, expressing positions and posting opinions, but far less capable of transforming these into sustained institutional action.
One only has to look at the public reaction to the repeal of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) policy. Many individuals and organizations quickly released official statements, social media posts and declarations lamenting the decision. The rhetoric was often passionate and morally compelling. Yet, after the statements were made and the online discussions faded, very little concrete work followed.
This is not to say that advocacy is unimportant. Public statements matter. Intellectuals and academics have a responsibility to speak when language issues affect communities, cultures and educational futures. Silence can also be a form of complicity. But advocacy without implementation eventually becomes little more than lip service. At some point, one must move from declaration to doing.
If academics and organizations truly believed in MTB-MLE as a transformative educational project, then many of them could have directly engaged local governments, schools and communities to develop teaching materials in Indigenous Philippine languages. They could have organized teacher-training workshops, built repositories of localized educational resources, created accessible orthographies and grammars, or lobbied educational agencies systematically rather than episodically. Such work is admittedly difficult, time-consuming and often unglamorous. It does not generate the same visibility as a strongly worded public statement. But it is precisely this kind of labor that creates long-term change.
The same pattern can be seen in discussions about Philippine English. For decades, Filipino linguists have argued that English teaching in the Philippines should recognize local standards instead of relying exclusively on external norms. We have repeatedly insisted that Philippine English is a legitimate variety of English worthy of recognition in education. Yet despite this, very few academics have seriously and consistently engaged the Department of Education or broader governmental institutions in order to transform this scholarly position into actual language policy and curriculum reform.
We have many excellent studies on Philippine languages (including Philippine English) and their pedagogy. We have a sophisticated understanding of language identity, language variation and language diversity. But the uncomfortable question remains: How much of this knowledge has materially changed classrooms, teaching materials, assessment frameworks, government policies or public attitudes toward language in the Philippines?
Too often, Filipino academics mistake commentary for intervention.
Part of the problem lies in how academic success itself is defined. In contemporary academia, researchers are rewarded primarily for journal publications, conference presentations, citation metrics and institutional prestige. These are, of course, important. Scholarly rigor matters. Research excellence matters. A strong international publication profile matters. But when academic work ends entirely within journals, conferences and metrics, it risks becoming socially detached from the very communities it claims to study and represent.
Linguists, in particular, cannot afford this detachment because language is not an abstract object existing outside society. Language is lived reality. It shapes education, mobility, labor, governance, identity and belonging. The communities whose languages we document and theorize about are not merely “data sources”; they are people whose lives are directly affected by linguistic inequality and language policy decisions.
This means that linguists must rethink what “impact” actually means.
Real impact is not only publishing in high-impact journals or presenting at prestigious international conferences. Real impact is also creating dictionaries that communities can actually use. It is preparing teaching materials for schools. It is advising governments and local institutions on the language choices they make. It is helping migrants navigate linguistic barriers. It is preserving endangered languages not merely through documentation but through revitalization efforts. It is ensuring that scholarship reaches beyond the university and enters the lives of ordinary speakers.
In this sense, the highest form of academic excellence is not visibility within academia alone, but usefulness to society.
The irony is that Filipino linguists are among the brightest scholars in the region. There is no lack of intelligence, creativity or theoretical sophistication in Philippine linguistics. Indeed, many Filipino scholars produce work that can stand alongside the best scholarship in the world. What we often lack is the willingness — or perhaps the institutional culture — to sustain the slow and difficult work of implementation.
Doing is harder than advocating.
Doing requires meetings, negotiations, funding proposals, partnerships, administrative work and long-term commitment. Doing often means working quietly without applause. It means accepting that meaningful social transformation is rarely achieved through a viral post or a single public statement. It is built patiently over years through institutions, materials, policies and communities.
The Philippines does not need fewer advocates. It needs more advocates who are also builders.
Only then can scholars truly claim not only academic excellence, but social relevance.
Ariane Macalinga Borlongan is a public intellectual, language scholar, and migrant advocate. He is one of the leading researchers on English in the Philippines and one of the pioneers of migration linguistics. He is the youngest to earn a doctorate in linguistics, at age 23, from De La Salle University, and has had several teaching and research positions in Germany, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland and Singapore. He is currently associate professor of sociolinguistics at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.