A comprehensive and critical overview of the field of intercultural communication

• Key concepts and discussions illuminated with international case studies of intercultural communication in real life
• Includes learning objectives, key points, exercises and suggestions for further reading in each chapter
• A new chapter devoted to intercultural crisis communication; expanded coverage of language in migration; and new studies and examples of virtual, online and computer-mediated communication throughout.

Combining perspectives from discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, the third edition of this popular textbook provides students with an up-to-date overview of the field of intercultural communication. Ingrid Piller explains communication in context using two main approaches. The first treats cultural identity, difference and similarity as discursive constructions. The second, informed by multilingualism studies, highlights the use and prestige of different languages and language varieties as well as the varying access that speakers have to them.

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Transcript (coming soon)

The conversation focuses on a study of adults with three languages ‘at play’ in their childhoods and lives today, exploring how visible racial differences from the mainstream, social power, emotions, and familial relationships continue to shape their use – or erasure – of their linguistic heritage.

Zozan’s book opens with a funny and touching account of how her own experiences as a person of “ambiguous ethnicity” shaped this research. We begin our interview on this topic. Zozan points out that the last Australian Census showed that 48.2% of the population has one or both parents born overseas. Yet, she argues, “our teachers and our education system are unprepared, perpetuating the power relations that reinforce injustice and inequality towards half of the population”.

Then we focus on what diversity feels like to her research participants and how “mixedness” or “hybridity” is not normalised, despite being common. We build on a point Zozan makes in her book, that throughout their daily lives the participants “have to position themselves because our [social and institutional] understanding of identity is narrow-mindedly focused on a single affiliation. […] While all participants are engaged in such strategic positioning, my findings emphasise that this can come at a great personal expense, something which is not sufficiently recognised by scholarly work in this field thus far.”

Dr Zozan Balci with her new book (Image credit: Zozan Balci)

We then delve into the emotions experienced and remembered by participants in relation to certain language practices in both childhood and more recent years, and the way these shape their habits of language choice and self-silencing. While negative emotional experiences have impacted on heritage language transmission and use, Zozan’s study shows how people who had distanced themselves from their heritage language – and its speakers – then changed: “it only [took] one loving person […] to reintroduce my participants to a long-lost interest in their heritage language”. We focus on this “message of hope” and then on another cause of hope, being the engaged results Zozan’s achieved when she redesigned a university classroom activity to un-teach a deficit mentality about heritage languages and identities.

Finally, we discuss Zozan and her team’s current “Say Our Name” project. This practically-oriented extension of Zozan’s research addresses one specific aspect of linguistic heritage and identity formation: the alienation experienced by people whose names are considered ‘tricky’ or ‘foreign’ in Anglo-centric contexts. The project has created practical guides now used by universities and corporations and the City of Sydney recently hosted a public premiere of the Say Our Names documentary. Soon, Zozan will be developing an iteration of the project with the University of Liverpool in the UK.

Follow Zozan Balci on LinkedIn. She’s also available for guest talks and happy to discuss via LinkedIn.

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Transcript

ALEX: Welcome to the Language on the Move podcast, a channel on the New Books Network. I’m Alex Grey, and I’m a research fellow and senior lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia. My guest today is Dr. Zozan Balci, a colleague of mine at UTS. Zozan is an award-winning academic, a sociolinguist, and a social justice advocate. Zozan, welcome to the show.

ZOZAN: Hello, thank you for having me.

ALEX: A pleasure! Now, Zozan, you teach in the Social and Political Science program here at UTS, and I know you have a lot of teaching experience, but today we’ll focus on your sociolinguistics research. In particular, let’s talk about your new book. How exciting! It’s called Erased Voices and Unspoken Heritage: Language, identity, and belonging in the lives of cultural in-betweeners. You’ve just published it with Routledge.

The first chapter is called A Day in the Life of the Ethnically Ambiguous, and you begin by talking about your own, as you put it, “ambiguous ethnicity”. So let’s start there. Tell us about how your own life shaped this research, and then who participated in the study that you designed.

ZOZAN: Yeah, thank you so much, and yes, “ethnically ambiguous” is kind of like the joke that I always introduce myself with. So, I was born and raised in Germany to immigrant parents, so although I’m German, I look Mediterranean. And so people mistake me from being from all sorts of places. I’ve been mistaken for pretty much everything but German at this point. So, you know, I personally grew up, in my house, we spoke 3 languages, so we spoke German, Italian, and Turkish, which is essentially how my family is made up. And, you know, this has kind of resulted in a bit of a… I’m gonna call it a lifelong identity crisis, because, you know, that’s a lot of cultures in one home.

And it also has played out in language quite interestingly, and I just kind of wanted to see with my study if others struggle with the same sort of thing, other people who are in this kind of environment, and I found that they do. And so in the book. I tell the stories of four people, all who have two ancestries in addition to the country they are born in, so there’s three languages at least at play. And all are visible minorities, so they… they don’t look like the mainstream culture in their… in the country where they were born. And all struggle having so many different cultures and languages to navigate. And, you know, it’s quite interesting, in some of the cases, the parents are from vastly different parts of the world, so the kid actually looks nothing like one of their parents.

So, one example is my participant, Claire. She has a Japanese mother and a Ugandan father, and so she speaks of the struggle of looking nothing like a Japanese person, so in her words, all people ever see is that she’s black.

And so there is some really heartbreaking stories about, you know, how challenging that is, growing up in Australia when you look nothing like your mum, and…You know, it’s also hard to assert your Japanese heritage when people look at you and don’t accept that you are half Japanese, even though she strongly identifies with it, for example. So, there are a couple of participants like that.

One of my participants, Kai, is probably the one I personally relate to the most. His mother is Greek, and his father is Swedish, and he looks very Mediterranean like me. So, he talks a lot about, you know, the guilt towards his heritage community, also internalized racism, and that is something I could probably personally very much relate to. So these are the kinds of stories that are in this book.

ALEX: They’re wonderful stories because you frame them in such a clear way that connects them to research and connects them to bigger ideas than just the personal experience of each participant, but it becomes very moving. These participants clearly have a great rapport with you. When Claire talks about speaking Japanese and the impact being a visible minority and visibly not Japanese, it seems, to other people, has on her. That’s incredibly touching, but also the effect that has on her mum, and her mum’s desire to pass on heritage language to Claire.

But the opening few pages are also, I have to say, really funny and interesting. They drew me in, I wanted to keep reading. So I’ll just add that in there to encourage listeners to go out and seek more of your voice after this podcast by reading the book.

Now, in this book, your intention, in your own words, is to explain what diversity feels like, and to normalize mixedness. And you point out that this is really important, pressing, in a place like Australia, but many places where our listeners will be around the world are similar. In Australia, about half the population are what we might call second-generation migrants, with at least one parent born overseas. And so you go on to say, this book aims to have a genuine conversation about what diversity and inclusion look like.

So, tell us more about what hybridity is. This is a concept you use for the, if you like, the sort of

embodied personal diversity of people, and what it feels like for your participants, and whether hybrid identities are recognised and included.

ZOZAN: Yeah, you know, it’s actually quite interesting, because when people hear that you’re culturally quite mixed, they kind of misunderstand what it’s like. So, you know, your mind doesn’t work in nationalities or languages, right? So in the case of my study, where three cultures or languages, are at play, you know, those… these participants don’t consider that they have three identities. Like, that is not how a mind works.

So rather, you are a person who has mixed it all up. So you don’t just think in one language, unless you have to. Like, for example, right now, I’m speaking to you in English, because I have to, but, you know, when I’m just chopping my vegetables and thinking about my day, I don’t think in only English. It’s a mix, in a single sentence, I would mix. If I speak to someone who can understand another language that I speak, I would probably mix those two. Like, it’s just… but I don’t do this, like, oh, let me mix two languages. Like, I’m not consciously doing that. And the same goes for behaviours or practices.

So, the way I kind of, you know, an analogy that I think you can use here, maybe to make it easier to understand, is if you think of, you know, say you have your 3 cultures, and there are 3 liquids, and so you pour them all in a cup and make a cocktail, right? So you mix them all up. And…

ZOZAN: you know, it’s… It’s very hard, then, to tell the individual flavour of this new cocktail now, right? It’s all mixed. But, you know, that’s not something that people understand. They want… they want the three liquids, the original liquids, what is in there? And often, you know, they will tell you that you probably ruined the drink by mixing them.

Laughter

ALEX: We laugh, but your participants have really experienced words to that effect, sure.

ZOZAN: Absolutely, and so, you know, you are often forced into a position, so you are forced to pretend you’re a different drink, because it’s very hard to, you know, separate the liquids once they have been mixed, right? And, you know, now I’m also Australian, so a dash of a new liquid has been mixed into it, you know, making the whole drink more refreshing, I think.

But, you know, unfortunately, most people still have very rigid ideas about identity, including our parents, right? So my parents cannot relate to my experience at all. They are not mixed. My teachers didn’t get it at school, right? Only people like me get it. But it’s important that we all kind of start thinking a little bit about what we’re asking people to do, because, you know.

when I went to school, for example, I could only be German, so I had to leave my other languages and my behaviours at home, because, you know, of assimilation, right? You need to assimilate to everybody else.

And then in my house with my parents, you need to leave the German outside, so it’s considered disrespectful if I say I’m German, right? So my parents would hate to hear this podcast, for example. Because to them, it’s like renouncing your heritage, right? So it’s about… you need to preserve what we have given you. And so you are kind of this person who’s like, well…

I don’t see it the way… I’m not three things. This is all me, and it’s actually people trying to over-analyse what kind of nationality this behaviour is, or this language is. In your head, you’re not actually doing that. You’re just one person who is a cocktail.

ALEX: That makes a lot of sense when you explain it, but in the findings, it becomes really clear that that’s actually very hard for people to assert as an identity. As you say, with parents, with teachers, with the public at large. You call it strategic positioning, the way people have to downplay, or almost ignore, or not show their language, or not show their other aspects of their… their different heritages, and that that can come at great personal expense.

And you point out that, in fact, while a lot of the research literature may celebrate this mixedness or this hybridity, the fact that it comes at personal expense and is difficult is not really acknowledged very much.

Now in this work you’re also drawing on some really foundational theories of language and power. So it’s not just about feeling bad or feeling excluded. The way people are able to mix their heritage languages and other aspects of their heritage, and the way they’re not able to comes within a power play and that draws really on the work of Pierre Bourdieu. I won’t delve really deeply into his theory of habitus, but I’ll quote this explanation of yours, which I loved: “the habitus can be understood as a linguistic coping mechanism, which is very much shaped by the structures around us. We develop language habits, whether within the same language or in multiple languages, which secure our best position or future in a particular market.”

And then really innovatively, you link the formation of these habits to our emotional experiences, drawing on the work of another theorist, Margaret Wetherall. Please talk us through how these theories help explain the way your participants pretended, as children, not to speak their heritage languages. This is just one aspect of how these emotions have influenced their… their behaviours, but I think many of our listeners will have done the same thing as children themselves, or relate now to knowing children who do this.

ZOZAN: Yeah, absolutely, and I think, you know, you almost need to go back to basics. Like, we use language to communicate, and we communicate to connect with others. You know, it’s a social need, it’s a human need to connect, to belong to a group, because we are social animals. So that’s actually the purpose of language, right?

But we also associate language with a cultural group. So, if the cultural group is well-regarded, so is their language, and vice versa. So, for example, here in Australia, obviously, English is highly regarded. And Arabic is not, for example, right? So this is a direct link to how we perceive the people of these cultures, right? So we’re comparing the dominant mainstream Anglo-Saxon cultural group versus Arabic in an era of really strong Islamophobia, right? So language is both this tool for communication, and it’s also this… this… this symbol of… of power, really. And so if the way you try to connect, so the… whichever language, you use, but also how you present yourself, if that results in a negative experience in disconnect, in fact, or feelings of rejection or inclusion, we will absolutely try and avoid doing that again. So we will try to connect… we will always try to connect in a way that is more successful to achieve inclusion and connection, right? So this is kind of like the theory simplified.

And obviously, you feel these experiences in your body, right? You feel shame, or you feel rejection, you feel loneliness, whatever it may be. And equally, on the bright side, you can feel happiness, you can feel, you know, togetherness, whatever it is, inclusion. So, this is kind of the emotional aspect, right? You feel… because this is a human feeling, the connection and disconnect. So, I think that sometimes we take that a bit out of our study of language. And I think we just need to bring that back a little bit, because it actually explained…explains then, how this plays out with language, so language being a key aspect.

You know, if you are told off for speaking a certain language in a certain context, or you’re being made fun of for speaking it, or something bad happens to you when you speak it, maybe you’re singled out, because you can speak something that others can’t. You will resent that language, and you won’t want to speak it again, and you will habitually almost censor yourself from speaking it, because you don’t want to feel like that again, right? So that’s kind of… and you don’t necessarily consciously do that. This is very important. I don’t mean that, like, you know, a 5-year-old is able to notice that about themselves. But typically, the rejecting a language, by and large, happens the first time a child leaves the home, in the sense of going to kindergarten or preschool, or somewhere that is not within the immediate family, where there’s almost, like, you’re being introduced to the mainstream culture in some systemic way, and you are meeting the mainstream culture there as well. So, you are with children, especially if you have an immigrant background, or your parents do, you’re meeting lots of children who don’t. And so this is your first becoming aware of being different, and so, of course, if you look differently already, that’s… that’s difficult. But then also, if you speak differently, that makes it extra difficult.

And so, you know, one of the examples, from the book that I think was just, it actually, when he did say it in the interview, I did tear up, so I want to share this one. And so this was, Kai, so just as a refresher, he is half Greek, half Swedish, and he grew up here in Australia. And so, at the time that he grew up there was still a lot of, sort of, discrimination, towards Greek people. That has probably tempered down a little bit since, but at the time, it was very acute still, where he grew up. And so, in a school assembly, he must have been in primary school, so fairly young, in front of the entire school, he was asked, singled out, and say, “hey, Kai, you… you speak Greek, right? How do you say hello in Greek?”

And he said, “I don’t know”.

And so when I had this interview, we paused for a second, and I said, “but you knew. You knew how to say hello in Greek”. And he’s like, “yes, I knew”. And I said, “well, why… why do you think you said you didn’t know?” And he said, “well, because they didn’t know, so if I don’t know, then I can be like them”.

And I think that is very heartbreaking, right? Because, especially here in Australia, there’s this idea that, you know, if you speak another language, if you are multilingual, that is almost un-Australian. You’re supposed to be this monolingual English speaker, right? That’s the norm, that’s the mainstream. So if you divert from that, that’s different, but especially if you speak a language where the cultural group is not well regarded, right? That positions you as, firstly, different, but also lower.

ZOZAN: Right? And so we can understand, again, he probably didn’t realize, as a 7-year-old, or whenever this was, what he was doing, consciously, but you can see this pattern, right? That’s why I’m saying it’s more a feeling than it is rational thought. The way your language practices develop is based on how your body feels in response to you using, like, language.

ALEX: And the fact that it’s such an embodied feeling comes out in your participants, who are now in their 20s and 30s, remembering in detail a number of these instances from way back in their childhood. I mean, the example of Kai jumped out at me too, the school assembly, because in the context, it might have seemed to the teachers that they were trying to celebrate his difference, to sort of reward him for knowing extra languages, but that’s not how it came across to him, because he’d already started experiencing the negative disconnection that that language caused.

Now that’s one example of negative feelings, but your study shows quite a number of how people in your study developed very negative feelings and distanced themselves from their heritage languages, partly consciously, partly unconsciously, or perhaps as children, consciously, but not knowing what a drastic impact it would have in the future on their ability to ever pick that language up again.

But then you say, this changed, and this is in adulthood usually, changed through relationships with people who they love and admire: “It only took one loving person to reintroduce my participants to a long-lost interest in the heritage language. I believe this is a message of hope.”

Well, I believe you, Zozan, when you say that’s a message of hope, so tell us more about that hope.

ZOZAN: Yeah, I mean, and again, it’s about connection, right? So, this is really at the forefront of everything. So, you know, if there is a person that you can connect with, that will somehow encourage you to rediscover what you have lost, then it’s actually… it can be reversed. It doesn’t mean that, you know, now you’re completely like, “yay, let me start speaking my language again”, or whatever. It’s not necessarily that, but, you know, it tempers down some of that self-hatred that you perhaps have, that guilt, whatever it is, so that you can actually deal with this illusion.

ZOZAN: a little bit more rationally. And, you know, a lot of participants, also, kind of talked about how they’re psyching themselves up to actually visit the country where their parent is from, because slowly, they can, you know, get to that place where they are able to do that, where that… where, you know, the realization that actually there’s nothing wrong with my heritage, it’s just I have been socialized to think that, because the people I have been trying to connect with couldn’t connect with me on that.

And so in the book, there’s a couple of such examples. So in the example of Claire, she, she met a friend at school who also is Black, and has sort of introduced her to this world that she didn’t know, whether it’s, you know, beauty tips for actually women like her, which of course she said was a struggle with a Japanese mother who didn’t know what to do with her hair, and all of those things, so little things like that, but also just, you know, embracing some of these things that… that she couldn’t actually seem to, sort of grasp in her home or in school. We have Kai, whose grandmother, so he loves his grandmother, she hardly raised him, and she developed dementia, and she forgot how to speak English as a result, so she could only speak Greek, so she kind of remembered only that. And so he was like, “well, I want to speak to my grandma”. So now I have to actually up the Greek, because otherwise I cannot communicate with her, and that would be a huge shame”. So you know, that connection is much stronger than everything else. Like, “I want to stay connected to grandma”. In another instance, you know, we had, father and daughter having a bit of a difficult relationship, as is so common in our teenage years, you know, we struggle. But so her dad then taught her how to drive, and they spend all these long hours, driving together, and he, in fact, is a taxi driver, so he showed her all the, you know, the tricks and the, you know, the shortcuts. And, you know, all this time, almost forced time spent together, kind of reconnected them, and, you know, now she’s much more open to, “hey, can you… can you tell me how I… how I can say this in Hungarian?” Or, you know, feeling excited about maybe visiting Hungary, for example.

So these are the kinds of stories, and so this is really important, because connection can just undo some of that traumatic stuff that happens earlier. And you’re quite right, it typically happens as an adult. It’s almost when you kind of have fully formed, and you can look at it a bit more rationally, and actually realize, you know, all of these experiences, it’s not because something’s wrong with me, but rather there’s a lack of understanding, or there are prejudices around me. That doesn’t make it, you know, they are wrong, and I’m okay, kind of feeling, yeah.

ALEX: Yeah, yeah.

ALEX: And you point out that it’s really, at least in your study, really clear that it’s this relationship, or a change in a relationship, that comes first, and then prompts that return to the heritage language, or that renewed passion for spending some time speaking it, or learning it.

And there had been debate in the literature as to whether it’s, you know, that you learn the language first and that enables connections, and you say, well, at least in your study, it seems to be the other way around, so maybe we really need to think of building those relationships first to enable people to want to, or to feel comfortable embracing that heritage language.

I guess, to that end, to try and help people come to that position of, you know, “it’s not me who’s wrong, there’s this world of prejudices or exclusions that are a problem”, you give the wonderful example of you yourself changing your classroom behaviours in the university subjects you teach to try and unteach the idea that heritage languages and identities are deficits. And when you tried it, this wasn’t your study, but it’s, you know, something you were doing because your own study encouraged you to go in this direction, you got such engaged student participation as a result. Can you please tell our listeners about that?

ZOZAN: Yeah, absolutely, and so this was based on an experience I had in my schooling. So I, as I mentioned, I went to school in Germany, and it is very common in Germany still to study Latin as a foreign language throughout high school, and so I was one of those poor people who had to do that.

ALEX: So was I, and you can imagine it was not as… not as common here in Australia.

ZOZAN: I, I… oh, God. It was tough, …But obviously, I speak Italian, so to me, often it was much easier to write my notes in Italian, because it’s almost the same word, right?

ZOZAN: So it just helps me learn that easier. So just in my notebook by myself, I used to write, you know, the Latin word and then the Italian word next to it, because, you know, it obviously makes it easier. Now, my teacher then came around and looked at my notes and said, “well, you have to do this in German”, and I’m like, “well, these are just my personal notes, I can do whatever I want”. And he’s like, “no, that’s an unfair advantage, you have to do it in German’, right? So I’m like, okay, great, so it’s an… it’s a problem at all other times, and all of a sudden, it’s an unfair advantage, so I just… I was not allowed to use my language, even though that was the better way to teach me, right? Like, I mean, that was my individual need as a student, that would have helped me.

So, I know that, obviously, you know, I teach in Sydney, it’s a very diverse student cohort, we have people from all over the place, we have international students, we have students whose first language isn’t English. And I know that many of them, especially if they grew up here and they’ve had this background, this, you know, their parents from elsewhere, they might have had similar experiences to me, whether it’s, you know, either being shamed in some shape or form, or actively forbidden, right?

And so I thought, okay, let me try and see what we can do with that. And so in my class, I then kind of started off with, does anyone here speak or understand another language? And I think it’s very important to say, speak or understand, because that firstly opens up this idea that, oh, okay, maybe the language that I silenced myself in. Typically you can still very much understand it, so I can barely say anything in Turkish, but I understand it quite well. And so, that’s not because I’m not linguistically gifted, it’s because of what I’ve done with it, right? And so, they will then raise their hand, and you can kind of… “what language is that?” And, you know, interestingly, obviously, you will find you speak 10, 15 languages in a classroom of 30 people, because it’s typically quite diverse.

So then we looked at, in this particular example, we looked at a political issue that was, happening at the time. I actually don’t remember what it was now. But I said to them….

ALEX: Hong Kong. I think it was….

ZOZAN: The Hong Kong protests, maybe? This is a while ago. But you could do this with anything. Like, I mean, let’s say I want to do this on the, war in Ukraine, for example. You know, what is the reporting around that? So, importantly because the lesson was around political bias in news reporting, that’s why it’s important for this particular activity to pick a political issue, but you could pick something, obviously, much less confronting, if you want.

So I asked them to look at news reporting about this issue from the last week or so, and I said, if you can speak or read another language, or even listen to, say, a news report on video, have a look at what, around the world, the reporting on the same issue, how are different countries reporting on it, right? So we actually used these other languages. And it was so interesting, because obviously, once you have, you know, some people looking at, you know, obviously news from Australia, but then others news from around Europe, from around South America, from around Asia, you can absolutely see that the news reporting is different. The angles are different, what is being said, who is being biased, is different, right?

And so here we then, you know, this discussion was much richer than had I just said, okay, read news in English, or just from Australia, where, you know, we’re just gonna hear the same perspective. And so I’ve been trying as much as possible to always do that and allow my students to, you know, if you want to read a journal article for your paper from another from an author that didn’t write in English, please do, if that is helpful. You know what I mean? So, these are the kinds of things I try to bring into my classroom to kind of show them, “hey, this is an asset. You speaking another language is great. It opens another door to another culture, to another way of thinking and viewing the world. It’s not a bad thing. You should use it whenever you can.” And it has worked really well.

ALEX: Oh, I love it, and I love that it doesn’t put pressure on those people to then be perfect in their non-English language or languages either. The way you describe it in the book, the more people spoke, the more other students said, “oh, actually, I do understand a bit of this language”, or “oh yeah, I didn’t mention it before, but I also have these linguistic resources”, and everyone just feels more and more comfortable to bring everything to the table.

ALEX: The next question, I don’t know if we’ll edit it out or not, just depending on the time, but it does flow quite nicely from what you’ve just been discussing, so I’ll ask it, and you can answer it, and we’ll record it.

ALEX: So, Zozan, another way you’ve built on this project, which was originally your thesis, and then you’ve written in this wonderfully engaging book. You’ve then gone on since then to do a different related project that’s ended up with a documentary and a lot of practical applications. And I think listeners would love to hear about it. It’s a project called Say Our Names. You’re leading a team of researchers from various disciplines in this project, and it’s about challenging quote-unquote “tricky” or “foreign” names in Anglophone contexts. You’ve created some really practical guides for colleagues, which I’ve seen, and even directed a mini-documentary that showcases the lived experiences behind these names. It premiered a few months ago here in Sydney in collaboration with the City of Sydney Council. Can you tell us about this project in a nutshell, and what the public responses have been like now that your research is out there beyond the university?

ZOZAN: I know, the Say Our Names is a bit like the beast that cannot be contained for some reason, it’s really, blown up, but I think what made it so successful is because it is such an easy entryway into cultural competence, very much to, you know, speaking to the kinds of themes that are in the book. So as you know, my name, people find hard to pronounce. It really isn’t, but it is immediately foreign in most, in most places that I would go to. And I actually… my name is mispronounced so often that sometimes I don’t even know how to pronounce it correctly anymore. Like, I have to call my mum, reset my ear: “How do I say this again?”

And, you know, there’s obviously lots of people in Australia, around the world, who have this very same issue, right? So you have your name mispronounced, you have it not pronounced, because people are so scared to say it, it looks so wild to them, they just call you “you”, or just don’t refer to you at all. Or perhaps, they anglicize it, or they shorten it, and you know, it seems like a harmless thing to do, but actually, it’s sort of like, you know, it scratches the surface of a much bigger issue, right? So you have, again, this dominant culture, and so here in Australia, obviously, the English-speaking Anglo-Saxon culture with everybody else, right? And so English names we are totally fine with, but as soon as something is not English or not, you know, common European, it becomes a tricky thing, and it’s hard to say. And so you internalize that, as the person whose name that is, you internalize, my name is hard to say, my name is foreign.

And your name is the first thing you say to someone, right? You meet a new person, you say, “hi, my name is Zozan”. And… I mean…

ZOZAN: 90% of the time, either people will mispronounce it, or they will ask me more about it.

ZOZAN: And I tell this story, not in the documentary, but when I introduce the documentary. I tell the story about how I actually, a couple of years ago, this is quite, timely, I had podcast training, how to speak about my research in, for podcasts. The first task that we had to do in this training was explain our work, like, what kind of research are you, what is your research?

And I found… I got really stuck with that, like, I couldn’t put in writing what I do. And I’m a very chatty person, I normally have no trouble talking and, talking about myself, but for some reason, that seemed like an impossible task. I couldn’t… I had no idea how to say it. And I realized the reason why I don’t know how to say it is because I never, in a situation where people speak about their work, I never get past my name. People don’t want to hear about my name, sorry, my work, because they want to hear about my name.

So, you know, I say, hi, I’m Zozan at a networking event. And, “oh, what kind of name is it? Oh, where are you from? Oh, you know, what are your parents? Where are your parents from?” And you don’t actually get a chance to do what you came to do, which is, I would like to speak about my work, because I’d like an opportunity.

And so we realized this is quite important, and yes, of course, it’s adjacent to all of this work from the book. It’s, it’s, you know, your name is a lexical item as part of language, right? So we realized the need to… maybe this is an easy entry point to connect people. If we just show the importance of trying to get someone’s name right, how to ask, how to deal with your own discomfort of not knowing how to pronounce it and asking how to… to take off a little bit of the burden of the other person who’s continuously uncomfortable anyway, right?

And so, yeah, we, we, again, storytelling is my thing, so we, we had some focus groups, obviously where we could do a bit more, you know, what is your story, what is your experience, and also how would you like to be approached, right? This is very important. We don’t want to assume that, as researchers, you know, obviously I have my own ways and thoughts. But it was important, so we asked, and created this best practice guide that really came from community: “This is how people would like to be approached. This is what you can do”.

And then we also created this, little documentary. It’s… it’s really, really beautiful, I think, if I have to say so myself. But obviously it just shows the stories, it shows stories of what it… what the name means, because it is obviously part of your cultural heritage, how people have felt resentful towards their names, and ashamed of their names, in exactly the same way as people do with language in my book. So there were a lot of parallels.

And also what it means when people try to get it right, when there’s actually a person making an effort, because again, it’s about connection. Here’s someone who wants to connect with me, and who’s making the effort. So, of course, now I also want to make the effort, right? So it’s almost like this beautiful…

ZOZAN: Like, thank you for trying, and yes, I want to be your friend, let me help you. …

And so, yeah, and it went beyond UTS, it went citywide. I am… we have been receiving requests around Australia to come and screen it and hold a little panel. We’ve had panel discussions with people who are experts in this field. But also, I think what is important that we now brought in as well is Indigenous voices, because obviously there’s an erasure there of names and language that we also need to talk about in the Australian context. So, we’re doing a lot around that, and yeah, it’s been… it’s been the most practical application, I think, of my research so far.

ALEX: When I heard a panel talking about it, something I took away is just to be encouraged, you know, if you’re the person who’s asking, “how do you say your name?” You don’t have to get it right the first time, you don’t have to have just listened to it, and then you can immediately repeat it, because maybe it is an unusual name for you. You just have to be genuinely making an effort to learn, and to show that you want to connect, and that you want to get it right, and you want to ask the person how they want to be known. And that, I think, is just so important for people to keep in mind. It’s not a standard of immediate perfection, it’s a standard of attempting to genuinely respect and connect with people.

Before we wrap up, can you tell us what’s next for us, Zozan, and can we follow your work online, or even in person?

ZOZAN: Well, …

ZOZAN: Obviously, the book is available, you can buy it as an e-book, or obviously, if you’re really into hardback, you can do that too. Say Our Names is spreading far and wide. I’m taking it to Europe, at the end of the year. It will be, used in classrooms in the UK. I will be screening it at a conference in Paris, so there’s actually quite a bit of… because it’s obviously really relevant all around the world, right? We are more globalized, so very happy to do more screenings and introductions and panels. Obviously, a book tour is in the works … let’s see how we go with that, but, certainly around Sydney, and then perhaps also overseas. So I’m trying to spread the word, and, you know, I’m the kind of person who actually just wants to make an impact. I want to, you know, obviously it’s wonderful to do this research and dive into the literature and all of that, but, you know, I think I am quite proud of having translated it into something that is, you know, we have now in corporate offices our best practice guide on language and on names, and people are trying. And so, you know, I think that is the most rewarding thing, and that’s really something I want to keep working on.

ALEX: Thank you, and we’ll make sure we put your social media handles in the show notes. So thank you again, Zozan, and thanks for listening, everyone. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe to our channel, leave a 5-star review on your podcast app of choice, and of course, recommend the Language on the Move podcast if you can, and our partner, The New Books Network, recommend to your students, your colleagues, your friends. Until next time!

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr. Sara Hillman, Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and English at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University about Qatar’s multilingual ecology and its linguistic landscape. The focus is on the emergence of Chinese in Qatar amidst the interaction of multiple languages.

The conversation delves into the socio-political background that contextualizes the visibility of Chinese in Qatari public spaces and education. Sara explains the impact of diplomatic relations and economic interactions that impact cultural exchange and accompanying language use. She also tells us about the use of other languages in intercultural communication.

If you enjoy the show, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

Reference

Panda (Image credit: J. Patrick Fischer, Wikipedia)

Hillman, S., & Zhao, J. (2025). ‘Panda diplomacy’ and the subtle rise of a Chinese language ecology in Qatar. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 46(1), 45-65.

Transcript (coming soon)

In this episode, Brynn and Lauren discuss a paper that Lauren wrote in 2024 with co-author Dr. Kensey Cooperrider entitled “Emblems: Meaning at the interface of language and gesture”. Brynn and Lauren talk all about how emblems are different to gestures, cultural uses of emblems, emoji, and how emblems might be changing in the digital age.

Discussions in this episode include references to Lauren’s book Gesture: A Slim Guide, the video episode on gesture that Lingthusiasm made and Gretchen McCulloch’s book Because Internet.

If you enjoy the show, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

Transcript (coming soon)

In this episode, Brynn and Amy discuss Amy’s doctoral thesis entitled “Learning From Student Perceptions and Peer Feedback in a Virtual Exchange: Reconceptualizing Intercultural Competence as ‘ICCCSA’ – Intercultural Competence as a Co-Constructed and Situated Achievement”. This thesis explored Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) and its influence on (inter)cultural competence in digital spaces.

Image credit: National Centre for Cultural Competence

If you liked this episode, leave a 5-star review on your podcast app of choice and be sure to say hello to Brynn and Language on the Move on Bluesky! Also be sure to check out the Intersectionality Matters Podcast, the National Centre for Cultural Competence and How to be Anti-Racist by Dr Ibram X. Kendi.

Transcript (coming soon)

Sunjoo Kim (middle) graduating from her Master of Research

Whenever I write an email to a professor, there is one question lingering in my mind: Should I say “Dr + Last Name” or just “First Name”?

It might look like a simple question, but it exemplifies a deeper cultural dilemma to me.

When I was in university back in Korea, a professor from the U.S. asked us to call him by his first name, not the last name or job title. I understood what I had to do, but was it easy for me? Not really. It took me a while to get used to it. This is because the culture of address terms is quite different in Korea.

In English, first names can be used regardless of age and hierarchical dynamics in relationships without causing offense. This, however, hardly happens in Korean unless they are close friends of the same age. To be specific, addressing someone older and superior by their first name is impossible, unless I want to pick a fight. Likewise, age and social hierarchy are the core elements that have been deeply rooted in Korean society, playing a salient role in the choice of address terms.

Instead of first names, Koreans tend to choose alternatives including kinship terms and professional titles. Kinship terms, such as unni (older sister, 언니) and oppa (older brother, 오빠) are extensively used to non-family members. Professional titles are used as a generic way to address someone politely. For example, I can call someone sacangnim (CEO, 사장님). It does not necessarily mean that he or she is the head of the company. Rather, it is one of the most neutral and polite titles I can use. All choices depend on the nature of the interpersonal relationship.

The complexity of the societal and cultural characteristics reflected in the use of address terms poses a significant challenge in translation. The challenge gets exacerbated in subtitle translation, combined with spatial and temporal limitations. Multiple layers of relational dynamics and cultural nuances can easily get lost and simplified in translation. In relation to this, for my Master of Research, I explored subtitle translation of Korean address terms.

More Than Meets the Eye: Indexical Analysis on Korean Address Terms in Subtitle Translation

Abstract: Cultural references are one of the most significant challenges in subtitle translation. One example is Korean address terms due to their complexity and multiple dimensions reflecting societal and cultural values in Korea. In this vein, this thesis investigates the translation of address terms in English subtitles of one Korean drama, within the theoretical framework of indexicality as conceptualised by Michael Silverstein (1976). Adopting power, solidarity and intimacy (Lee & Cho, 2013) as an analytical prism, the thesis examines the complex interplay of each dimension to construct the non-referential indexicality of the address terms. The drama, Misaeng (Incomplete Life), which portrays corporate settings where Korean societal cultural values are well-reflected, was chosen for the data set. Thirty cases of address terms within a variety of interpersonal relationships from the drama were chosen to explore the formulation of indexical meaning and how it is transferred into the English subtitles. By adopting qualitative analysis focusing on both linguistic and multimodal elements, results from the study underscore the dynamic fluctuations of indexicality depending on the contextual dimension of the interaction, which makes the translation challenging in reflecting this whole range of indexical meanings. This leads to the inevitable indexical meaning gaps between the original and the subtitles. However, non-linguistic elements contribute to understanding of the indexical meaning, which mitigates the limitations of linguistic translation. The findings indicate that, although the translation of Korean address terms has been domesticated to be aligned with the target culture, this practice of domestication may change in a direction to keep the cultural references as much as possible. This study suggests the need for a subtitle translation direction that can preserve indexicality for global audiences to have a better cross-cultural experience, with relevance to the global attention to Korean cultural products.

You can download and read the full thesis from here.

Translation helps bridge language barriers. With the global rise of Korean culture, now is the time to move towards a translation practice preserving the original cultural depth as much as possible. This will open global audiences’ eyes to the unseen layers and help them genuinely enjoy the culture, as there is so much more than meets the eye.

References

Lee, K., & Cho, Y. (2013). Beyond ‘power and solidarity’: Indexing intimacy in Korean and Japanese terms of address. Korean Linguistics, 15(1), 73-100. https://doi.org/10.1075/kl.15.1.04lee

Silverstein, M. (1976). Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description. Meaning in anthropology. https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/Courses/ParisPapers/Silverstein1976.pdf

Flag for autism rights (Image credit: Deviantart)

In this post written for autism acceptance month, autistic anthropologist Gerald Roche discusses connections between the communication styles and life expectancy of autistic people, and encourages sociolinguists, linguistic anthropologists, and applied linguists to help work towards a better life for autistic people. 

Content warning: This post discusses suicide, sexual and physical violence, discrimination, and negative attitudes about autistic people. If you are in Australia and find this post distressing, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or chat online. Lifeline offers language support services. For non-urgent information about autism, call the Australian national autism helpline on 1300 308 699.

***

Hi I’m simply dying to speak to you! I have so much I want to tell you about being autistic because I’ve learned so much since I found out that I’m autistic. I’d love to tell you everything I know but that would probably take too long, so let me just tell you one thing about being autistic. Let me tell you why I went online and searched up “autism life expectancy” soon after I was diagnosed.    

Around that time, I’d just published an article examining how linguistic minoritization reduces life expectancy. To write that article, I’d been reading across literatures in the anthropology of violence, genocide studies, and critical public health for several years, learning about how different minoritized populations are subject to structural violence that produces a ‘slow death’ and reduces their chances of living a long, healthy life. This creates ‘death gaps’ in the social fabric, where the ultimate benefits of privilege are additional years of existence. So when I found out that I was autistic, I had a sense that I might be living in a death gap. And I was right. 

Autistic people in Australia, where I live, have a life expectancy 20 years below the national average. Similar findings have been produced elsewhere. Studies from the UK, USA, and Sweden all show that autistic people die alarmingly early. A recent study in The Lancet has suggested that the ‘death gap’ might be closer to 7 years, showing that the figures are still being debated. But, the pattern of severely reduced life expectancy seems clear. Why is this, and what does it have to do with language?      

First, it’s important to understand that differences in communication styles and preferences are central to how autistic people experience the world. Whilst autistic people don’t speak a different language from allistic (non-autistic) people, our communicative practices are vastly different from those of allistic people. The differences are found across multiple areas of language, including acquisition, gesture, pragmatics, lexicon, and preferred modalities. Failure to acknowledge, accept, and accommodate these communicative differences plays a crucial role in reducing autistic life expectancy. 

The most direct connection between autistic communication and premature death relates to health communication. Autistic people experience increased rates of multiple chronic health conditions, including physical health problems across all organ systems, as well as increased rates of multiple mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression. The impacts of all these health conditions is multiplied by failures to accommodate autistic communicative styles and preferences in healthcare settings. For example, one study from 2022 found that many autistic people struggle to make doctors’ appointments by phone (we generally have a strong preference against using phones), and then experience difficulties communicating with doctors, often feeling misunderstood. A 2023 study from Australia found that autistic people frequently felt that healthcare providers did not take their concerns seriously. These communication issues potentially result in delayed treatment, undiagnosed conditions, misdiagnosis, healthcare avoidance, and other problems that lead to poor health.  

Beyond issues of health communication, there are also more diffuse links between communication and the premature death of autistic people. To understand these, we need to think about autistic people as a minority group who experience “exclusion due to discrimination, stigma, and their perceived inferiority.” Since communication is part of what makes us different, it is also part of what makes autistic people vulnerable as a minority. 

Like other minoritized groups, autistic people experience personal and systemic discrimination from the dominant population. The press typically reports negatively on autistic people. Derogatory views of autistic people circulate openly online. Allistic people find us to be deceptive and lacking credibility, in part because of our ‘low quality and inaccurate’ facial expressions. They judge us as less likable, trustworthy, and attractive than allistic peers, and have reduced interest in pursuing social interactions with us. Even when allistic people express explicit positive views of autistic people, psychological testing shows that their behavior is guided more by their implicit negative views. Exposure to such bias and stigma is ‘constant’ for autistic people.

Rather than simply experiencing bias and stigma in the abstract, they manifest in our lives as violence. This begins in childhood, with autistic children experiencing much higher rates of multiple forms of violence than their allistic peers. This continues into adulthood, with autistic people experiencing higher rates of several forms of violence, including sexual harassment, stalking and harassment, sexual violence and physical violence, producing a condition known as poly-victimization. One recent study found that 99.6% of autistic adults had experienced at least one form of violence. Autistic women suffer disproportionately: in one study, nine out of ten autistic women reported being victims of sexual violence. Surrounded and overwhelmed by this violence, many autistic people normalize it as an inevitable part of our life, and even blame ourselves for it. 

Allistic people are able to target us for discrimination and violence in part because our communicative difference makes us visible to them. Perhaps not surprisingly then, many autistic people engage in ‘masking’ or ‘camouflaging’ – suppressing visible signs of autism, such as stimming, and changing our communicative practices to be more acceptable to allistics. However, this only defers the direct and immediate harm of allistic discrimination and violence. In the long term, masking is bad for our mental health, leading to higher levels of depression and anxiety, as well as lower self-esteem. It also contributes to autistic burnout, a debilitating condition characterized by “exhaustion, withdrawal, executive function problems and generally reduced functioning.” 

Masking, discrimination, and violence accumulate in a form of ‘minority stress’ in autistic people that results in “diminished well-being and heightened psychological distress.” In research carried out with other minoritized populations, the impact of such chronic stress on the body has been described as a ‘weathering’ that reduces overall immune function and leads to higher incidence and severity of disease. Chronic discrimination and violence thus harm autistic people both physiologically and psychologically. 

But perhaps the most distressing and tragic impact of this violence and discrimination is autistic people’s increased risk of suicide. Numerous studies show that autistic people are more likely to think about, attempt, and commit suicide; a 2023 meta-review of this literature concluded that “suicidality is highly prevalent” in the autistic population.

When I look at all this information as an autistic person, even though I’ve only learnt the statistics recently, none of it is particularly surprising. It more or less accords with my own lived experience. However, when I look at this information as a researcher, I am surprised: not so much by the information itself, but by who produced it and how. 

We are looking here at a population that is minoritized, in part, because of communicative differences. They are then subjected to discrimination and violence, with tragic outcomes. Despite the centrality of language to this situation, research in this area is led primarily by psychologists, with some speech therapists, a few sociologists, and the occasional anthropologist. The cluster of allied disciplines that look at language and communication in relation to social justice, including applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and sociolinguistics, have so far had very little to say about this issue. 

It’s clear to me that our disciplines have a significant contribution to make here. We collectively know so much about the harms of language: slurs, labels, insults, jokes, and insidious discourses. We pay attention to the maldistribution of respect and resources to different language communities. We study how minoritization is produced and reproduced in everyday institutions, like schools, and how it enters into the most banal and intimate spaces and relations. We think carefully about how policy and practice stratify, exclude, and harm through and on the basis of language. And we also have plenty of ideas about what justice looks like, and the languages it uses. It therefore seems to me that we have an important part to play in conversations about what it really means to accept autistic people, and how to go about doing it. As a researcher, I know that we can, and as an autistic person, I hope that we will. Because right now, I’m dying to speak to you, and I wish that I wasn’t.    

One of the Nowruz traditions involves leaping over bonfires to rid oneself of pain and sorrow (Image credit: Borna News)

As people in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Iran, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan prepare to celebrate Nowruz, there is a palpable sense of excitement and anticipation in the air. Nowruz, which literally means “new day” in Persian, marks the beginning of spring and the start of the new year for many peoples across the Middle East and Central Asia.

Nowruz is celebrated on the vernal equinox, typically falling on March 20 or 21, and lasts for thirteen days.

Rooted in the Zoroastrian tradition, Nowruz is a time of renewal, hope, and cultural celebration that transcends borders and unites people across the Persianate world.

Nowruz Down Under

Although in the Southern hemisphere Nowruz falls in the beginning of autumn rather than spring, still it takes on a special significance for Iranian Australians as we bring the traditions and customs of our homeland to this distant land.

The Haft-Sin table, with its seven symbolic items representing rebirth and renewal, takes centre stage in our celebrations. From sprouts symbolising growth to apples representing beauty and health, each item holds deep cultural significance and is a reminder of the values we cherish.

Spirit of Nowruz

Haftsin Table in the Victorian Parliament (Image Credit: Australian Iranian Society of Victoria)

Poetry and music fill our homes with joy and inspiration during Nowruz. Poets and writers have long captured the essence of this festival in their verses, expressing themes of renewal and spiritual growth. Music, too, plays a vital role, with traditional songs and melodies evoking a sense of nostalgia and connection to our roots.

At the heart of Nowruz is the spirit of unity and solidarity. As Iranians around the world come together to celebrate, we are reminded of the bonds that unite us as a community.

Solidarity with the people in Iran

Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran in 1979, the regime has suppressed the nation’s multifaceted and ancient culture under a theocratic dictatorship. However, for Iranians, both inside Iran and in the diaspora, Nowruz is not just a celebration of a new year. It is a celebration of our rich cultural heritage, resilience in the face of adversity, and hope for a brighter future.

So, this Nowruz, as an Australian-Iranian, deeply concerned about the future of Iran, I unite with my compatriots across the globe who embrace and celebrate Nowruz. For us, at this moment in history, Nowruz is more than just a cultural tradition. It is a unifying force and a symbol of Iranian-ness and unity, with a rich history that predates the current regime.

At the outset of Nowruz, we remember Mahsa Amini, and many other young people whose tragic deaths during the recent protests against the injustices in Iran have ignited a renewed sense of solidarity among Iranians both inside Iran and in the diaspora. Their memories remind us of the importance of standing together in the face of adversity and working towards a brighter future.

My music

This Nowruz, it’s fitting to dedicate to everyone two of my songs, that encapsulate the longing for freedom, love, and peace, “Hamseda” (Sympathizer) and “Eshghe-Bimarz” (Endless Love), which were created by a group of artists inside Iran and performed by myself.

Happy Nowruz! نوروزتان پیروز

Ramadan Lights on Coventry Street

Ramadan in London is exceptional in many ways. As the centre of a former Empire which still exerts a global pull on its former subjects and their descendants, London has been at the heart of a wave of migrations since the times of the British Raj. Initiatives inclusive of Muslims have normalised the Muslim presence. While there is no doubt that islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate is on the rise in Britain, too, the relative ease and acceptance of being a Muslim in the public space is manifested here in pragmatic ways, such as the widespread availability of halal food.

London’s Ramadan celebrations are in a class of its own. London’s Ramadan illuminations of 2023 were a testament to the diversity, inclusivity and vibrancy of London. When London’s first ever Ramadan lights were switched on by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and the Lord Mayor of Westminster, Hamza Taouzzale, Muslims felt acknowledged in the public space generating a sense of understanding and promoting an equitable society.

Open iftars are another example. These have taken place for decades in Britain, and Muslims and non-Muslims break the fast together in public spaces. Sharing meals with strangers is a powerful experience for people of all faiths. Open iftars are incredibly important to get visibility and also to have communitywide engagement with each other, as is the essence of Islam. Some of the picturesque and breathtakingly beautiful environments where open iftars have taken place include Victoria and Albert Museum, Trafalgar Square, and Cambridge University.

Ramadan 2023 marked a particularly significant moment in British history as Muslim leaders were for the first time invited to the official residence of the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street for an iftar meal.

Corporate Europe is starting to celebrate Ramadan, too. Furniture retailer IKEA, for instance,  launched the GOKVÄLLÅ collection this year with clear connections to the Ramadan spirit.

My Ramadan

The visibility of Ramadan in public shapes personal experiences of Ramadan, too. For me, we start preparing for Ramadan months ahead by getting the house ready, shopping, and cooking. What I aim to do is complete mundane task before the start of the Holy Month, so that there is more time for spiritual reflection and Quran reading.

Ramadan lights in the streets and open iftars remind me of the beauty of our human diversity through these newly formed traditions in Europe.

As the Quran states, “Among His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the difference of your languages and colours. There are indeed signs in that for those who know” (30:22).

I wish all who celebrate and observe the month of Ramadan a time full of divine blessings! Ameen.

Image 1

Like many parents of teenagers, I delightedly welcome any occasion to connect with a generation I don’t always understand and that doesn’t always understand me. As a Muslim family in Australia, this inter-generational exchange is often characterized by questions from my children about our Islamic practices and how we talk about these with our friends who are not Muslim. One of the most questioned of these practices is Ramadan, the month in the Islamic calendar when Muslims abstain from consumption of food and drink during the day.

So, when my children began texting me a range of Ramadan-themed memes, I was elated to find something that we could relate to and laugh at together. Image 1 has always topped the list of our favorites.

There are many versions of this meme, and it owes its popularity to the fact that across generations, we answer this question every Ramadan, without fail. In fact, the first time I showed this meme to a work friend, he exclaimed, “Hey, I asked you that, too!” We both laughed (at him) and then, spent the next half hour going through other Ramadan memes, like those in Image 2 and Image 3.

Image 3

Image 2

And once more, I shared not just a laugh with someone, but an opening for genuine intercultural communication and sharing. In the numerous conversations these memes inspired, most expressed that they had no idea that there was a ‘world’ of Muslim memes that entertained and explained.

For me, these memes have played two important communication roles: intergenerational and intercultural. In the Australian context, second and third generation Muslims communicate with each other and outside of the Muslim community in English. Many of their linguistic expressions relate to sarcasm, irony and wordplays based on English. Their cultural references are TV shows like Friends and The Hunger Games and there is no shortage of memes based on dialogues from popular TV shows and movies. The creative efforts behind Muslim-based memes have been written about in numerous places such as here.

The humor not only provides a platform for internal communication for Muslims but also a means to connect to non-Muslims, with whom they share these linguistic expressions and cultural references. Both my Muslim and non-Muslim friends always get a kick out of the memes in Image 4 and Image 5. By the way, iftar is the meal eaten at sunset to break the day’s fast and traditionally begins with the consumption of dates.

Image 4

Image 5

Humor – specifically, humor in a language and mode that we all relate to – connects us and provides access to the practices of a community often questioned and misunderstood. A few years back, the ABC offered a Ramadan explainer using a series of memes and tweets. There are also innumerable social media feeds devoted to Muslim memes, such as this Facebook page or this Twitter feed.

The volume of meme production on these platforms is indicative of the time devoted to this means of communication. In a study of young American Muslim women who engage in meme-making, Ali (2020) showed how these memes allow their creators to negotiate aspects of their citizenship in USA. For a community that is often subject to stereotyping, these memes offer a way to construct their own identity.

I think that is true, also, of me and my teenagers. We can rummage through our sociolinguistic repertoire, draw on the pertinent elements of our identities, and exercise some control over the way we present ourselves as Muslims. Many of these memes have been the starting point of deeper and more engaging conversations about being Muslim in Australia today.

Image 6

As we come to the end of Ramadan this week and look forward to the day of Eid to celebrate a month of fasting, I have been sharing the meme in Image 6 far and wide.

References

Ali, I. (2020). Muslim women meme-ing citizenship in the era of War on Terror militarism. The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 106(3), 334–340.

Related content

Piller, I. (2009). Ramadan Kareem! Or: Urban Etiquette for Monolinguals. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/urban-etiquette-for-monolinguals/
Piller, I. (2017). Money makes the world go round. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/money-makes-the-world-go-round/
Tenedero, P. P. P. (2023). Lent, Language, and Faith Work. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/lent-language-and-faith-work/
Wehbe, A. (2017). Silent Invisible Women. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/silent-invisible-women/

Despite being ordinary and unremarkable, a little Persian preposition has caught international attention over the past three months: “baraye” (“برای”), which means “for, because of, for the sake of.”

What makes “baraye” special?

As you might have guessed, the sudden explosion of “baraye” onto the global stage is connected to the ongoing protest movement in Iran, and its brutal repression – similar to the stories of the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” and of pop stick paddle boats.

Baraye – the anthem of a freedom movement

“Baraye” is the title of a song by a young musician, Shervin Hajipour, released on his Instagram channel on September 28, 2022.

The lyrics of the song were compiled from tweets stating reasons why (“baraye”) tweeters are protesting and what they are protesting against (“baraye”) and protesting for (“baraye”): baraye dancing in the streets, baraye fear when kissing, baraye my sister, your sister, our sisters, and so on. The song culminates in “baraye woman, life, freedom, baraye azadi, baraye azadi.”

Shervin was imprisoned and forced to delete the song from his Instagram channel within 48 hours of its release. However, by then, the song had reportedly already been viewed 40 million times, and it had been posted and reposted on countless other platforms.

Initially restricted to Persian-speaking audiences inside and outside Iran, the song soon reached a global audience. How did that happen?

Baraye at protest rallies

First, the song made it from online spaces to the real world through global solidarity rallies. Played on large screens and over loudspeakers, soon protesters started to sing along, as in this example from Berlin.

Baraye covered by artists around the world

Second, more and more artists started to cover the song. One of the versions with the widest reach was sung by British rock band Coldplay during a performance in Buenos Aires, which was broadcast to 81 countries. Another major live performance by German-Iranian singer Sogand was broadcast on German national TV, where thousands of audience members were shown singing along to the final lines “baraye azadi.” Another popular performance is by a collective of some of the most prominent French artists.

It is not only celebrities who are covering the song. In a true testament to the song’s global inspiration, choirs have taken up “Baraye” for their performance projects. Students of a German high school, for instance, sang “Baraye” during their solidarity day with Iran on November 16. In a regional TV segment about their day of action, they were even shown practicing Persian pronunciation with a language teacher in preparation for the performance. Another version that has been widely shared on social media is the rendition by a choir in the small French town of Chalon-Sur-Saône.

The list could go and on. New cover versions are being released all the time, by artists from many parts of the globe. Only last week, a feminist art collective in Rojava released this haunting version.

Baraye in translation

Third, translation played an important role in making the Persian song accessible to global audiences. Many of the music videos floating around the Internet are fitted with subtitles in languages other than Persian. I’ve seen versions with English, French, German, Kurdish, Swedish, and Turkish subtitles. I’m sure there are lots more.

Beyond translated subtitles, the song has also inspired a wave of reinterpretations in other languages. Australian singer Shelley Segal has produced an English version. Other versions receiving a lot of attention include a Swedish version by pop star Carola Häggkvist, a German version by folk singers Lisa Wahlandt & Martin Kälberer, and a version in Iranian Sign Language by Maleehe Taherkhani. Again, the list could go on and on.

Baraye: the global struggle for freedom and justice

Slate Magazine has just declared that ““Baraye” is objectively the most important song of 2022.”

Singing “Baraye” is a way for the world to express its solidarity with the Iranian people and their struggle for freedom. Their struggle is our struggle, in a world where freedom is under threat everywhere. The most recent report on civil society by the German human rights organization “Brot für die Welt” shows that only 3% of the global population live in truly free societies. Another 8% live in societies with narrowed rights (Australia is in this category). The remaining 89% of the world’s population live in obstructed, repressed, and closed societies. Iranians find themselves in a closed society, along with over a quarter of the human population.

“Baraye” strikes a chord because we all need to ask ourselves what we are fighting against and fighting for on this broken planet that we share:

Baraye dancing in the street; Baraye fear while kissing; Baraye my sister, your sister, our sister; Baraye changing rotten minds.
Baraye shame of poverty; Baraye yearning for an ordinary life; Baraye the scavenger kid and his dreams; Baraye the command economy.
Baraye air pollution; Baraye dying trees; Baraye cheetahs going extinct; Baraye innocent, outlawed dogs.
Baraye the endless crying; Baraye the repeat of this moment; Baraye the smiling face; Baraye students; Baraye the future.
Baraye this forced paradise; Baraye the imprisoned intellectuals; Baraye Afghan kids; Baraye all the barayes.
Baraye all these empty slogans; Baraye the collapsing houses; Baraye peace; Baraye the sun after a long night.
Baraye the sleeping pills and insomnia; Baraye man, country, prosperity; Baraye the girl who wished she was a boy; Baraye woman, life, freedom.
Baraye freedom; Baraye azadi.

Memorial for Kian Pirfalak at Isfahan University (Source: Twitter)

In the Name of the God of the Rainbow, let’s today think about bilingual double vision. Double vision is a condition where you see two images of the same thing. The two images can be separate from each other but, more often, one overlaps the other, blurring the boundaries.

“Azadi” and “Freedom”

Learning a new language creates a new way of seeing, overlapping previous ways of seeing. The Persian word for “freedom,” for instance, “آزادی” (“azadi”), begins with the first letter of the Perso-Arabic alphabet (آ) and ends with the last (ی). This feature makes it a very special word. It symbolizes that freedom is essential, in the same way that Christians say that God is the alpha and the omega – the first and last letter of the Greek alphabet – to indicate the comprehensiveness of God. Like the Christian God, آزادی is all-encompassing and includes everything else. In the case of آزادی, that “everything else” is life itself, as the آ and ی frame the word for “born”, “زاد” (“zad”).

Once you’ve learned Persian “آزادی”, English “freedom”, too, takes on a different tinge, and comes to be seen as essential to life itself.

The double vision created by “آزادی” and “freedom” exists on the level of the language system. In fact, you do not need any level of bilingual competence to appreciate that different languages provide different perspectives on the world, as ever-popular trivia lists of supposedly “untranslatable” words demonstrate (see, e.g., “203 most beautiful untranslatable words” or “28 untranslatable words from around the world”).

The more powerful double vision effects lie well beyond the language system. Becoming bilingual is not only, and maybe not even predominantly, about learning another language system but about joining another discourse community. And what discourse communities are concerned with and talk about can be wildly different, even in our globalized world.

Pop stick paddle boats carried at Sydney solidarity rally (Source: Twitter)

“Pop stick paddle boat” is another word for freedom

Let’s go back to “freedom.” Another Persian word for “freedom” is “قایق پارویی چوب بستنی” (“pop stick paddle boat”). I’m not kidding, even if no dictionary will tell you so. “Pop stick paddle boat” also means “life,” “justice,” “peace,” “future for our children,” “end oppression,” “stop killing innocents,” and “we mourn the death of a 10-year-old boy.”

“Pop stick paddle boat” took on all these meanings only a few days ago when 10-year-old Kian Pirfalak was shot dead by anti-riot police. Shortly after his death, a short home video emerged of Kian, proudly showing off a pop stick paddle boat he had built. In the video, he explains how the contraption works, starting his explanation with “in the name of God,” the conventional formula that often begins educational events in the Islamic Republic. In Islam, God has 100 names, and the name that Kian chooses in the video is “the God of the Rainbow.”

Kian’s tragic death and the joyful video of a little inventor have since imbued pop stick paddle boats with grief and hope. The devices and their paper boat variations have become features at protest rallies and have inspired protest songs and videos.

The tears through which I have looked at these images have literally given me double vision. It is an apt metaphor for living a bilingual life. I’ll never look at a little boat nor a rainbow again without also seeing a murdered child and the Iranian struggle for freedom.

Related content:

Piller, Ingrid. (2022). “Women, life, freedom” – the slogan swimming against the global tide. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/women-life-freedom-the-slogan-swimming-against-the-global-tide/

Afghan-style mantu (Image credit: Wikipedia)

One of our family’s favorite dishes is mantu. Mantu are steamed dumplings filled with minced lamb meat and served with a spicy lentil sauce and yoghurt. Mantu not only make a delicious meal but also offer a fun family activity. To prepare the thin dough sheets, the mince filling, and the lentil sauce, to stuff, fold, and steam the dumplings, and to get the whole assemblage together requires all hands on deck: it is a family affair that easily takes up a few hours.

Because mantu are time-consuming to prepare, it’s not a regular food in our house but we like it well enough that we cook it as a treat for special occasions a few times a year – we’ve recently had it to celebrate a birthday, a graduation, and an anniversary. This suggests that mantu play a pretty important role in our family culture.

Despite this importance, I had never tasted mantu or even heard of them until I was well into my thirties. In other words, mantu are not an ancient family tradition for us but a relatively recent addition to our culture.

Encountering mantu in Sydney

I first encountered mantu on the menu of an Afghan restaurant in Sydney – the excellent Khaybar in Auburn that always deserves a shout-out. Afghan restaurants are today an inextricable part of Sydney’s highly diverse food scene. Indeed, its multicultural cuisine is always a bragging point in Sydney destination marketing. As as a tourist article gushes: “From Hungarian to Taiwanese, Ethiopian to Chilean, Sydney’s multicultural food scene is as diverse as it is delicious.”

Turkish-style mantu (Image credit: Wikipedia)

Most often diversity is indexed through reference to a specific place overseas – the cuisine of a nation or city. For instance, on the Macquarie University Wallumattagal campus alone, our food options include outlets that self-identify as offering Istanbul, Korean, Lanzhou, Malaysian, Mexican, and Việtnamese foods; and there is even the option to have food that is “a French love affair with Vietnamese flavors.”

These restaurant self-descriptions point to the fact that we conceive diverse cuisine as additive: many different national cuisines exist side by side.

Outside marketing discourses, however, cuisines are rarely kept neatly separate, as my family’s adoption of mantu demonstrates.

Who owns mantu?

As I first encountered mantu in an Afghan restaurant, I believed them to be an Afghan dish. When I said so during a party conversation, I was strongly corrected by a man who claimed that mantu are a Turkish dish (and should be called “manti”).

A subsequent internet search informed me that manti (Манты) are a Russian dish.

And when I turned to discuss the matter with my students, I was told that mantu (馒头) was a Chinese dish. Not only that but I was also kindly advised that I was using the term wrong: mantu were steamed buns. The dish I was describing was supposed to be called “baozi” (包子).

Chinese mantu (Image credit: Wikipedia)

It seems that several groups lay claim to the dish; and can, in fact, not even agree what the dish that goes under this name is. Do some of them have to be wrong or can they all be right?

Food chains

Food has been a key site for language and culture contact since time immemorial. The earliest trade probably was in food stuffs. Barter economies center on food. Some of the most universal words are food terms, as I previously discussed with reference to “chocolate.”

Beyond basic necessity, food has also travelled as a marker of identity, out of curiosity, and as a luxury good. The consumption of exotic foods has long served as a marker of distinction for the rich and powerful. In his study of foodscapes in the 19^th century Indian Ocean world, Hoogervorst (2018), for instance, introduces us to an Acehnese sultan with a penchant for Persian sweets and to Mughal court culture, where professional cooks with expertise in West, Central, and South Asian cooking were considered indispensable to the display of courtly sophistication.

In short, food travels readily across languages and cultures. In the process, both the dishes and their terms undergo modification.

Mantu probably originated in China, where the term initially may have been the general word for filled and unfilled buns and dumplings. Its meaning contracted over time although in some Chinese dialects it may apparently still refer to a filled dumpling.

The Mongols picked up the dish and word from the Chinese, liked it, and took it with them to spread it across central Asia all the way to eastern Europe. Along the way, the precise details of the recipe have passed through the hands of countless cooks and so changed countless times.

The way we make and like mantu in my family is one such variety. To think of the language and culture chains and webs through which mantu arrived with us is both exhilarating and humbling: via an Afghan restaurant in Sydney our food connects us all the way back to the Mongol invasions and ancient China.

Do you have a favorite food with an interesting story of linguistic and cultural connections across time and space?

Reference

Hoogervorst, T. (2018). Sailors, Tailors, Cooks, and Crooks: On Loanwords and Neglected Lives in Indian Ocean Ports. Itinerario, 42(3), 516-548.

Related content

Piller, Ingrid. (2021). Thinking language with chocolate. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/thinking-language-with-chocolate/
Wilczek-Watson, Marta. (2019). Eating, othering and bonding. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/eating-othering-and-bonding/

***

Adéṣínà Ayẹni [@yobamoodua] to Gerald Roche [@GJosephRoche] (2 Feb 2022): I will surely love to be a part of the global day. But one question, can I contribute in my language in place of English?

Gerald: My heart sank as I read this message on Twitter. I’d been messaging people all day, promoting Global Language Advocacy Day (GLAD22), the first ever global event dedicated to raising awareness about language rights. I was really proud to be part of this event, but reading this message suddenly filled me with doubt. Although I had assumed and hoped that people would use whatever language they wanted in participating in the day, I hadn’t really made that clear in how I communicated.

Claire: I responded to Gerald’s plea for personal stories of multilingualism for GLAD22, and in so doing, drew from my English resources to concretise the dialogue with Gerald, as a mediator to his (and my) followers. I wrote about my experiences as a multilingual that began with learning German. But, I wrote it in English to attend to the monolingual question-answer framework implicit in the Twitter reply function. This framework mimics social interactions, particularly in institutional settings, to see a dominant speaker lead a discussion towards certain personal, political and institutional aims. Interactants (like me) know that they are cut-off from doing this if we deviate from the lingua franca, limiting our combined reach. Thus, the replying function alone is structured by a monolingual bias.

***

In this piece, we interrogate the exchange that followed the question above to explore how I (Gerald) endeavored to uphold the language rights that are at the centre of our combined work with GLAD22 and the Global Coalition for Language Rights (GCLR). We interrogate the options made available by social platforms like Twitter and make suggestions for multilingual frameworks for communication that might be upheld in our future language rights work.

GCLR is a relatively young organization. It emerged in the early days of the pandemic when a group of organizations, based mostly in Europe and North America, came together to discuss the promotion of language rights. Founding members and co-chairs of the coalition were mostly representatives of non-governmental organizations and professional translation services. Membership in the coalition grew substantially throughout 2021, as GCLR expanded to include individual academics, activists, and advocates. The changing composition of the coalition, and its increasing size, began to see us nurture our definition of ‘global’ and its articulation through GLAD22.

For GCLR, being global means not just getting the message out as widely as possible, but also being as inclusive as possible, and working in a way that responds to the diverse challenges facing language rights advocates around the world. This global inclusion creates solidarity so we can act together, lending our support to those who face greater risks in their own advocacy.

The first GLAD22 used the phrase ‘language rights are human rights’ to nurture such solidarity. Modeled on Language Advocacy Day, GLAD22 aimed to raise awareness of the need to defend language rights, and to expand our network of solidarity, thus strengthening our capacity to work together in defense of language rights.

There were several approaches via social media to facilitate multilingual discussions but the majority of the engagement came through English language dialogue, which is where the question via Twitter was located.

A Twitter Exchange 

I (Gerald) responded to the request to participate in languages other than English with an enthusiastic ‘yes’. What followed was a post in Yorùbá, featuring a banner image with the phrase ‘Ẹ̀TỌ́ ỌMỌNÌYÀN NI Ẹ̀TỌ́ SÍ ÈDÈ’,—‘language rights are human rights’—alongside the GLAD22 hashtag.

Òní tí í ṣ'ọjọ́ kejìlélógún, oṣù Èrèlé ọdún; 22-02-2022 ni Àyájọ́ Ọjọ́ Àgbàwí fún Èdè Àgbáyé, àkọ́kọ́ irú ẹ̀ lágbàáyé. A ya ọjọ́ òní sọ́tọ̀ fún ìgbàsọ̀ láárí ẹ̀tọ́ èdè ẹni.
Àkórí tí 2022 ni Ẹ̀TỌ́ ỌMỌNÌYÀN NI Ẹ̀TỌ́ SÍ ÈDÈ.#GLAD22 #YORUBA #ETOSIEDE pic.twitter.com/wJbX3bSJtE

— ỌMỌ YOÒBÁ (@yobamoodua) February 22, 2022

The post featured a long thread covering existing language challenges in Nigeria and suggestions for improvement. Priorities included refocusing policy concerns for Indigenous languages as well as prioritizing Indigenous languages in the home and in education.

It received several likes and retweets, including by Gerald to his followers. This is important because Gerald’s actions demonstrated not only that he supported participation in Yorùbá, but also his institutional alignment. Other members of GCLR also engaged with the post, and in doing so, advocated for multilingual participation.

Later in the day, one of Adéṣínà Ayẹni’s mutuals, Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún (커라 투버순) [@kolatubosun], called out for a language rights group in Nigeria. Several of the key points of the first post were highlighted, especially those that pressure the government for language policy changes. This post was liked by several more users, who commented with their support for the group.

We need a language rights group in Nigeria. An organisation dedicated solely to advancing the rights of its languages. That supports language revitalisation and commits funds to supporting efforts in that direction; pressures government and policymakers on relevant issues, etc

— Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún (커라 투버순) (@kolatubosun) February 23, 2022

This Twitter exchange provides some opportunities to ascertain the impact of Adéṣínà Ayẹni’s  multilingual interaction on the language rights values of GCLR and GLAD22. With the GLAD22 affiliation, users communicated their local barriers to language rights. They assembled to develop solidarity and organizing potential.

Importantly, these interactions were in contexts that GCLR has not yet managed to reach. As one observer pointed out on the day, GCLR had organized ‘no activities in or relating to Africa’ as part of the day. Thus, Gerald’s response helped catalyze meaningful discussion for Indigenous languages with strategies for implementation and, possibly, movement towards local organizing in Nigeria.

What if GCLR has real fit and capacity to do more? What if multilingual frameworks for communication were modeled by GCLR for use within platforms like Twitter, and beyond?

Initiating Multiple Moderators 

GCLR might mobilize the Twitter responses shown in this post, and others, to recruit them as moderators for future Global Language Advocacy Days. A series of starting points, methods for moderating in and to multiple languages might be developed amongst members.

These could include reaching out to key educational and government institutions listed in Adéṣínà Ayẹni’s post, to nominate individuals from their institution to speak on their behalf on the day within a nominated social media platform. GCLR members could act as moderators of these discussions in their languages, accumulating new communication hubs across several languages for GLAD23. These hubs could be observed to grow insight around multilingual designs for communication that may eventually be adopted by global north-based moderators such as us.

GCLR has the culture and capacity to do this. Throughout 2021, the coalition participated in a number of larger events, such as International Translation Day and RightsCon. Members’ presentations discussed the importance of language rights as a means of realizing linguistic justice, particularly in the digital realm. GCLR made this information available in as many languages as possible. We feel that it is a natural next step for GCLR to grow its member base meaningfully and initiate multiple moderators across several languages in GLAD23.

Redesigning Multilingual Frameworks for Communication

GCLR is also well-placed to improve decolonizing and multilingual frameworks for communication. Let’s say that Gerald offered to co-author a post with Adéṣínà Ayẹni that would be a thread between English and Yorùbá, linking with Australian and African institutions with power and reach. Such a post may invite comments in both languages (and varieties) that either moderator could respond to.

Such a post may invite language practices such as codeswitching to enter the dialogue because of an ease of intelligibility by the moderators. Users may draw from English resources creatively and as a tool for reaching wide audiences, defined by personal choices rather than monolingual biases. Such frameworks for communication may invite new language practices that emerge in digital spaces but rarely in English-dominated zones.

These frameworks go beyond the otherwise profit-driven knowledge generation in social media discourses as they redesign more socially and linguistically equitable interactions online.

There is great scope for testing such frameworks within Global Language Advocacy Day. On Twitter, the #GLAD22 hashtag received nearly 60,000 impressions with individuals contributing stories, ideas, and resources and language-focused organizations participating including the Linguistics Society of New Zealand, the PEN Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee, Cultural Survival, Tehlike Altındaki Diller, Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, and Hausa Language Hub.

Prefiguring Linguistic Justice

GCLR upheld language rights within several aspects of its communication in GLAD22, leading to 13 events in 6 countries in Asia, the Pacific, Europe, and North America and to the support of new debates such as those in Nigeria. We published about language rights issues in the UK and Bangladesh; New Zealand, Japan, the UK, Ireland and the USA, Australia, and Myanmar, organized a social media campaign on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and received attention in the media, such as this article in Kronos News that was published in English and Turkish. However, as advocates for language rights, we must discern ‘how’ we do this within the limited and often monolingual platforms that we are offered online.

We are currently working to create a set of multilingual principles and practices for the organization, which we aim to have in place before we begin planning Global Language Advocacy Day 2023. Doing so is part of the coalition’s prefigurative practices, i.e., those based on the idea that we should try to ‘create the sought-after forms of justice in the process of achieving structural transformation: to prefigure the world one wants to build.’

This work is also part of evolving organizational strategies in the coalition, which include the formation of working groups, modeled on processes that were used in the Occupy movement (among other contexts). These groups come together to undertake a specific task, without supervision, and then once that task is done, they dissolve. One of these working groups will develop the coalition’s multilingual principles and practices, which will undoubtedly evolve over time, while others address discrete issues raised by coalition members.

If you would like to be part of these language rights activities, and help to prefigure and work towards a world of greater linguistic justice, then we invite you to join us. Contribute your passion, ideas, and labor, your solidarity and commitment, to realizing our mission of language rights for all.

Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt by his jealous brothers

Academic interpreting often labors under the assumption that the profession was born in the early years of the 20^th century. Billions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, of course, know better. They first encounter an interpreter in the biblical story of Joseph, the favorite son of Jacob. Sold into slavery in Egypt by his jealous brothers, Joseph rises to become the deputy of the pharaoh by the grace of God. When the Israelites’ harvest fails, the brothers must travel to Egypt to buy grain. Joseph, who oversees the grain trade, recognizes them, but they do not recognize him. Joseph imposes a series of tests on his brothers to see whether they have repented. Eventually, he forgives them and the whole clan of Jacob moves to Egypt to share in Joseph’s good fortune.

One of the reasons the brothers did not recognize Joseph was that, as an Egyptian official dealing with foreigners, Joseph used an interpreter to communicate with foreign merchants. According to Genesis 42, 23 “[the brothers] did not realize that Joseph could understand them, since he was using an interpreter.”

Interpreting was institutionalized in the Egyptian bureaucracy

Trade was one of the domains that brought Egyptians into contact with speakers of other languages, as in the example of the Israelites. Diplomacy was another area and captive taking yet another. To cope with the intercultural communication demands raised by Egypt’s considerable external dealings in Africa and the Middle East, ancient Egyptians instituted the role of interlingual mediator in their bureaucracy (Kurz, 1985, 1986; Salevsky, 2018).

Some of the earliest evidence for Egyptian interpreting practices comes from the tombs of the princes of Elephantine, which date from the 3^rd millennium BCE. The princes of Elephantine were the governors of the Nubian border province in the south of Egypt. Their titles included “secret advisor for all business concerning the south of Upper Egypt,” “steward of the southern lands of Upper Egypt,” and “the one who has brought back the produce of all foreign lands for his royal lord and who spreads the fear of Horus in foreign lands” (Chrobak, 2013).

In short, the princes of Elephantine were in charge of what was essentially a colony and regularly led raids further south, into what they called “the land of Yam.”

To communicate with their non-Egyptian subjects and contacts, they employed interpreters, as is apparent from another one of their titles: “overseer of dragomans” (Gardiner, 1915). “Dragoman” is a fancy word for “interpreter” (Hermann, 1956), and one I will write about next time.

Whether “dragoman” or “interpreter,” the exact meaning of the hieroglyph “wa” remains a matter of some debate (Falbo, 2016). The hieroglyph is an abstraction of a loincloth that was only used by foreigners or by people speaking a foreign language (Salevsky, 2018). The Egyptologist who first deciphered the inscriptions had already cautioned that it might refer to any “speaker of a foreign language” (Gardiner, 1915). As such the duties of the “interpreter” were probably not restricted to linguistic mediation only but were quite wide-ranging in maintaining various forms of contacts with foreigners (Chrobak, 2013).

The interpreter relief in the tomb of Horemheb

The interpreting relief from the tomb of Horemheb. The interpreter (in the middle) mediates between Horemheb (left) and foreign envoys (right) (Image credit: Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden)

A striking depiction of the work of an Egyptian interpreter can be found on a bas-relief in the tomb of Horemheb, which dates from the 14^th century BCE. Horemheb was a general under the pharaoh Tutankhamun before he became pharaoh himself. The relief shows envoys from Libya, Nubia, and Syria prostrating themselves before Horemheb. According to the inscription, these foreigners are begging the Egyptians to send their armies and turn their countries into protectorates because the people there “live like animals in the wilderness” (Kurz, 1986).

One cannot feel but cynical about the age-old lies with which empires justify their exploits to themselves.

Between Horemheb and the envoys, we see an interpreter in action. It is a clever visual depiction of an essentially oral act: the interpreter is shown twice, once facing Horemheb and once facing the envoys. We can almost see him turn from one interlocutor to the other, as the image gives us a strong sense of the dynamism of the interpreting act.

Sadly, it is today impossible to get a full view of the complete interpreting scene because in the 19^th century the relief was broken up into pieces and sold to European tourists. The three pieces that make up the interpreter relief are today housed in museums in Berlin, Leiden, and Vienna (Kurz, 1986).

Training an interpreter corps

The records suggests that, for the longest time, Egyptians could not be bothered to learn foreign languages themselves (Hermann, 1956). In an eerie resemblance to today’s English monolingual mindset, they felt that for an Egyptian, speaking Egyptian was just fine. It was non-Egyptians who had to adjust and become bilingual by learning Egyptian.

Despite their strong sense of superiority, they did no want to leave the business of interpreting in the hands of foreigners. Therefore, they systematically created an interpreter corps of people who were not only bilingual but also Egyptian in culture and tastes. At least since the Middle Kingdom (2040 to 1782 BCE), they did this by bringing sons of foreign royal families to Egypt at an early age so that they could learn the Egyptian language and be socialized into the role of interlingual mediators (Kurz, 1986).

Only when the Egyptian empire began to decline, did Egyptians themselves start to learn foreign languages. From the 6^th century BCE, Egyptian boys were sent to live with Greek families so that they could become bilingual in Greek. The Greek historian Herodotus reports that, by the 4^th century BCE, their descendants had congealed into an interpreter caste, whose status ranked between that of merchants and seafarers (Kurz, 1986).

Interpreting gives way to multilingualism

By then, the power of the pharaohs had waned, and Egypt had become a multilingual polity. With the Persian conquest of 525 BCE, Aramaic replaced Egyptian as the language of the state, and with Alexander’s conquest in 332 BCE, Greek became the dominant language (Thompson, 2009).

Multilingual Cleopatra

When the pharaohs’ power had been assured, they could leave the pesky work of intercultural communication to others. Not so Cleopatra, the last pharaoh, with whose death in 30 BCE 5,000 years of Egyptian empire came to an end. In addition to Egyptian and Greek, she knew at least seven other languages. According to Plutarch’s Life of Antony (27, 3-4), “in her interviews with Barbarians she very seldom had need of an interpreter, but made her replies to most of them herself and unassisted, whether they were Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes or Parthians.”

References

Chrobak, M. (2013). For a tin ingot: The archaeology of oral interpretation. Przekładaniec: A Journal of Literary Translation, Special Issue 2013, 87-101.
Falbo, C. (2016). Going back to Ancient Egypt: were the Princes of Elephantine really ‘overseers of dragomans’? The Interpreters’ Newsletter, 21, 109-114.
Gardiner, A. H. (1915). The Egyptian Word for “Dragoman”. Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 37, 117-125.
Hermann, A. (1956). Dolmetschen im Altertum. In K. Thieme, A. Hermann, & E. Glässer (Eds.), Beiträge zur Geschichte des Dolmetschens (pp. 25-59). Munich: Isar Verlag.
Kurz, I. (1985). The rock tombs of the princes of Elephantine: Earliest references to interpretation in Pharaonic Egypt. Babel, 31(4), 213-218.
Kurz, I. (1986). Das Dolmetscher-Relief aus dem Grab des Haremhab in Memphis: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Dolmetschens im alten Ägypten. Babel, 32(2), 73-77.
Salevsky, H. (2018). The Origins of Interpreting in the Old Testament and the Meturgeman in the Synagogue. The Bible Translator, 69(2), 184-198. doi:10.1177/2051677018786366
Thompson, D. J. (2009). The Multilingual Environment of Persian and Ptolemaic Egypt: Egyptian, Aramaic, and Greek Documentation. In R. S. Bagnall (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of papyrology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199843695.013.0017

Diversity of international students is celebrated through images that map students onto nations represented by their flags

International education is often touted as a golden road to fluency in another language and the development of a global vision. However, ethnographic research into the language learning and settlement experiences of international students in a variety of national contexts has painted a less rosy picture, as the Language-on-Move archives devoted to international education show.

Such research has found many discontinuities between the promises of international education and students’ actual experiences.

One of the problems in the existing system of international education is the nation-based categorization of seeing international students of diverse backgrounds as a homogeneous group (Piller, 2017).

This categorization is further complicated when international students return to their ancestral homelands for their international education. Such “return migrants” may be positioned in often conflicting ways on the continuum of local and migrant, native and foreigner, as our recent research explores (Li & Han, 2020).

Ethnic Chinese students migrating to China for their international education

As one of the largest diasporas, ethnic Chinese constitute a population of over 50 million. The great majority of them live in Southeast Asia. Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia have been perceived as a powerful nexus between China and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, mostly due to their remarkable economic performance and their historical contribution to China’s nationalist movement in the early twentieth century. As China is emerging as one of the largest receiving countries for international education, ethnic Chinese may get the first admission ticket to higher education institutions in China.

However, the prioritization of ethnic Chinese migrating to China for their international education is not without problems. These students are confronted with several linguistic and cultural challenges.

Some of these challenges are similar to what has been reported in previous studies, and others are specific to this group and have to date mostly been overlooked in the existing literature on international education.

One big challenge relates to a conflict between students’ self-perceptions of their identities and the ways in which others perceive them. An ethnic Chinese student from Myanmar, for instance, expressed her shock and confusion since coming to China: “我以为我的根在中国，来中国我发现我没根了！” (“I used to think that my roots are in China. However, coming to China has made me rootless.”)

Like this female student, ethnic Chinese students from Myanmar used to be oriented towards China. Learning Putonghua in Myanmar was a top priority for their transnational empowerment (Li, 2017; Li, 2020; Li, Ai, & Zhang, 2020). However, once they move to China for their studies, their trajectories gradually gear them to identify Myanmar as their true homeland and as their land of opportunity. How is this possible?

Linguistic and cultural essentialism

To find out, we (Li & Han 2020) examined the learning experiences of 14 ethnic Chinese from Myanmar who were enrolled in Putonghua-medium degree programs at a Chinese university. We found that the language ideologies of speaking standard Putonghua and writing simplified Chinese characters challenged these students’ sense of being authentically Chinese. In the process, they were turned from proficient Chinese speakers in Myanmar to deficient Putonghua speakers in China.

Ethnic Chinese students from Myanmar are often made to feel weird for engaging in practices that are considered “Burmese”, such as putting on thanaka, a protective white-paste face mask

National essentialism was another ideological force that challenged their Chinese identity. In their classrooms and everyday interactions, the students found themselves positioned not as ethnic Chinese but as Burmese nationals. This “one nation, one culture, one language” mindset not only erased our participants’ Chinese identity but also reinforced an essentialist view of Myanmar as the country of the Burmese, the dominant ethnic group in that highly diverse country.

Neo-essentialist curriculum

Most research into international education is based in Anglophone countries, where a monolingual mindset prevails and exclusive use of English is promoted while languages other than English are devalued.

This is not the case in China. China’s promotion of Putonghua as an international language follows a reciprocal approach that also values the languages international students bring. Their bilingualism is regarded as an asset. In our case, both Burmese and Putonghua constitute desired linguistic capital to achieve mutual cooperation and promote the regional economy and integration between China and ASEAN.

However, this promotion of bilingualism is not unproblematic, either. Linguistic diversity is not unconditionally valued but rests on its convertibility in an international communication market – between the Chinese and Burmese state in this context.

This orientation to the nation as a market applauds bilingualism in Burmese and Putonghua but marginalizes bilingualism in non-standard Chinese varieties and languages that are not official to a nation.

In short, our research demonstrates that the neoliberal valorization of bilingualism is not in and of itself better than the monolingual mindset: it only reproduces the cultural superiority of essentialized linguistic icons while devaluing and erasing non-privileged cultural forms and identities.

The future of Chinese international education

While the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the language challenges confronting diverse populations worldwide (Piller, 2020; Piller, Zhang, & Li, 2020), it has also reconfigured the global economic and political order.

Since the outbreak of Covid-19 early last year, China has shifted its global strategy by strengthening its regional connectivity with Asian countries. In 2020, ASEAN replaced the USA and EU to become China’s largest trading partner. A recent trade agreement, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has reinforced the regional integration between China and its region. As the largest free trading zone covering 30% of the global populations and 30% of global GDP, RCEP will mark a new era for Asia-Pacific cooperation in various social dimensions.

Will the free movement of goods and people in this vast zone also lead us to a greater valorization of linguistic and cultural diversity? Will it open a space for embracing diversity and bringing greater equity and social justice?

Our research suggests that, as long as the ideological foundations of linguistic and cultural essentialism stay in place, the international education in RCEP may just be old wine in a new bottle.

References

Li, J. (2017). Social Reproduction and Migrant Education: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Burmese Students’ Learning Experiences at a Border High School in China. (PhD). Macquarie University.
Li, J. (2020). Transnational migrant students between inclusive discourses and exclusionary practices. Multilingua, 39(2), 193-212. https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2019-0125
Li, J., Ai, B., & Zhang, J. (2020). Negotiating language ideologies in learning Putonghua: Myanmar ethnic minority students’ perspectives on multilingual practices in a borderland school. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 41(7), 633-646. doi:10.1080/01434632.2019.1678628
Li, J., & Han, H. (2020). Learning to orient toward Myanmar: ethnic Chinese students from Myanmar at a university in China. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 1-19. doi:10.1080/07908318.2020.1858095
Piller, I. (2017). Intercultural communication. Edinburgh University Press.
Piller, I. (Ed.) (2020). Language-on-the-Move COVID-19 Archives.
Piller, I., Zhang, J., & Li, J. (2020). Linguistic diversity in a time of crisis: Language challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Multilingua, 39(5), 503-515. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/multi-2020-0136/html