Supermarket in Naples (Image credit: Marco Santello)

A key part of the experience of migration is not being in full control of one’s circumstances and doings. In this episode, Ingrid Piller speaks with Marco Santello about his research with Gambian migrants in Italy. The focus is on Marco’s recent article in Language in Society about migrant experiences of constraints and suffering.

This article explores one underestimated aspect of language in migration settings, namely the experience of not being in full control of circumstances and doings. Recent linguistic research often highlights transcendence of boundaries through migration and celebrates the fluidity and hybridity of multilingualism. By contrast, Santello argues that this discourse neglects migrants’ experiences of constraints and suffering. He sees limitations not just as structural inequalities resulting from macro-social pressures that migrants have to navigate, but focusses on the lived experience of constraint at the individual level.

The study is based on fieldwork with Lamin (pseudonym), a young man from Gambia in Italy. Instead of asking the conventional question how language learning unfolds, the researcher was interested to understand why Lamin had not learnt to speak Italian to any significant degree.

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Call for papers

Marco is currently guest-editing a special issues of Language and Intercultural Communication devoted to “Constrained Multilingualism.” The Call for Papers is available here (abstracts accepted until Nov 21, 2024)

Reference

Santello, M. (2024). Constraints, suffering, and surfacing repertoires among Gambian migrants in Italy. Language in Society, 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404524000423

Related content

Piller, I. (2016). Portrait of a linguistic shirker. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/portrait-of-a-linguistic-shirker/
Piller, I. (2016). The real problem with linguistic shirkers. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/the-real-problem-with-linguistic-shirkers/

Transcript (by Brynn Quick; added 18/10/2024)

Welcome to the New Books Network.

Piller: Welcome to the Language on the Move podcast, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Ingrid Piller and I’m distinguished professor of applied linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. My guest today is Dr. Marco Santello.

Marco is a researcher in multilingualism at the University of Turin in Italy. Marco has a PhD from the University of Sydney in Australia and has held academic positions at the University of Warwick in the UK, at Monash University in Melbourne, and at the University of Leeds where he taught intercultural competence. Marco’s research interests revolve around the intersections between language and migration.

Welcome to the show, Marco.

Santello: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Piller: Marco, so your current research is with African migrants to Italy, and maybe you could start us off by telling us about your research project and the approach you’re taking.

Santello: Yes, that’s right. So, my research at the moment is with migrants from Africa to Italy, and in particular with the group of these migrants, those that come from Gambia, which is a small country in the west of Africa. So, it’s a country which is basically enclosed within Senegal.

It’s only three million people live there, more or less. And that’s a group of migrants that is quite common, actually, in Italy, that I was able to come across. And I thought of being interested in.

The way the project unfolded is due to, first of all, my reading of certain authors in particular, Michel Destot. And so, first of all, I did some kind of academic intellectual work, if you will, on his understanding of everyday life, action in everyday life, and how important are constraints for his understanding of creativity and action within the space of action, indeed. So, this kind of idea that very many people operate within a specific space of action, and don’t have quite the possibility of going beyond it in so many ways.

And on the other hand, migrants have always been at the centre of my attention. I’ve been a migrant myself, travelled, as you were saying before, and lived in different countries. And it’s also been challenging for me at times.

So that’s always been some kind of an interest. At the same time, I was, I always worked in, with multilingualism. And so, from an academic perspective, that’s what prompted me to do a PhD and then to work with migrants afterwards.

And but also in my personal life, I’m just simply dedicating some of my free time to volunteering for new migrants and that I’ve been doing.

Piller: Maybe you can tell us a bit about that intersection between your volunteering and what your volunteering involves and how this relates to your research project.

Santello: Yeah, that’s right. Listen, it’s, you know, I’m a researcher, but I’m also a person. So, the, it just makes me happy really to be surrounded by foreigners.

And it, I volunteer for a couple of NGOs. One of these provide shelter and support to migrants near Padua. And this is something that just I wanted to do and I started doing.

And I didn’t have much of an idea other than I can support them with their linguistic needs. And they were really, the NGOs, they were really telling me, you know, we would need this, would you be happy to do this? Would you be happy to do that?

For example, meeting one to one with people or supporting some small classes. And it’s something I simply did. That was it really.

But then when I thought about this, and this kind of idea that we don’t know for sure constraints that people experience as they migrate, immediately I thought about the possibility of, you know, getting in touch with the NGO and see if they had anything to do, if they thought that was a good idea. Because in my research, I always try to start from the needs that might be coming from the field. So, if of course, on one side, as I was saying, I’m doing some kind of, you know, reading as a researcher, at the same time, you know, what matters to me is really that somehow, I’m connected to people and they were really enthusiastic about it.

And at the very beginning, I remember, I wanted to focus on people who had just arrived. Because that was my idea, and that’s also the kind of people that I was meeting in these kinds of volunteering activities. But then they told me, why don’t you instead talk to these Gambians?

Because they’ve been in Italy for a much longer time, and then probably have much more to say. And honestly, they don’t speak much Italian, some of them. And we don’t know exactly what happens there.

And I also thought to myself, actually, it is very interesting as a question, like why after years, you are not able to easily have a conversation. Some of them, of course, do have conversations in Italian, some of them really don’t, they struggle. So it was an interesting question.

And that kind of linked back again to this kind of idea that we focus a lot on the resourcefulness of migrants, but sometimes there is just something that happens and it doesn’t seem to be working as well as perhaps we would hope for or think about. So that was the whole reason.

Piller: So, what did you actually find in terms of why is it that they take such a long time to learn Italian? I mean, it is a really interesting question. And particularly with Africans, I mean, we know that there is a lot of language learning going on on the continent and people are often very, very multilingual and sort of learn languages easily.

And then we suddenly find that once they come to the global north, to Europe, same in Australia. We’ve just seen that in this new research that we’ve published, Life in a New Language, that actually then all of a sudden learning English becomes really difficult in all these everyday language learning skills that they brought along no longer seem to work. So, what did you find?

Santello: Yeah, I mean, listen, with this particular study that I published called Constraints, suffering, and surfacing repertoires among Gambian migrants in Italy, what I found was that there’s a level where there’s an impossibility to practice spoken Italian because of lack of an environment which is conducive to it. So people working in jobs that don’t require much interaction, and also not having a circle of people with whom they can speak Italian. And that was one of the constraints.

Another constraint that people brought up is the lack of classroom instruction available to them. So, in the specific case of these migrants that I met, the NGO provides some support from volunteers. But it’s a kind of a support which is quite limited in terms of hours, for obvious reasons.

Whereas there might be other schools in other places. But what Lamin, the specific migrant, my main informant for the study reported, it was that he tried to call the local school, but nobody replied. So, he assumed there was no space for that to happen.

And that doesn’t mean of course, that he doesn’t speak any Italian or he can’t communicate at all. But that he feels the need or the willingness to advance in certain aspects. And Lam also showed me a notebook filled with exercises.

And you could see the effort that was there in terms of the learning. But from the spoken perspective, there was a kind of limitation that he was experiencing. So we really see, we touch concretely through his experiences, the range of constraints that he experiences, particularly in terms of the environment.

Piller: Can you tell us a bit more about Lamin? Just introduce him as a person?

Santello: Absolutely. So, Lamin is a migrant, of course it’s a pseudonym, a migrant who moved to Italy six years ago. So, we’re talking about a migrant who has been in the country for a long time.

He comes from Gambia, as you were saying, and he speaks English fluently. Now, I usually have these exchanges in English, and it was important for him, particularly that he could speak English with me, because of course he’s extremely proficient, so he’s able really to make himself understood. He also speaks Mandinka.

That’s his main language, as he describes it. But then he also speaks Wolof, and bits and pieces of other languages. indeed, that was one aspect that came up through my research, which was the progressive surfacing of linguistic repertoires and interactions.

So, what both me and him made apparent at the very beginning, in terms of the languages we speak, was not what actually unfolded during the exchanges. So, by talking about constraints, we were able to bring up bits and pieces of our repertoires. For example, for him, in Italy, it is very important to speak Wolof, because Wolof allows him to communicate also with Senegalese.

The Senegalese are very numerous in Italy, in a long-standing community, many more than the Gambians. Many people in Gambia speak Wolof as well. But at the very beginning, he did not make that apparent to me that he spoke Wolof.

Now you would think such an important language for his life would have been apparent to him straight away. But this is not surprising at all that bits and pieces of our experiences and our speaker would also become apparent in conversation. The same goes to me.

When I explained to him that I’ve lived in Norway, then immediately brought up the fact that he spoke a little bit of Swedish. So, he said a few sentences to me, which was very important because I wasn’t expecting myself, as I was saying, I’m a person, I’m a researcher. So, it immediately brought some kind of emotional reaction on me, very positive.

Hearing this language, I wasn’t expecting to hear it in the shelter in Padua. So yeah, so he’s a multilingual, that’s for sure. And he has lived in the south and in the centre of Italy, going through different camps and also living in the streets.

So as a homeless person and was now living in Padua in the shelter, working in a local factory and trying really to settle in Italy in many ways. So, and when I when I introduce myself to the group, he was immediately very, very keen on telling me about his experiences and so on and so forth.

So, another thing that I want to be an opportunity for him to practice Italian or not, not really?

In this specific case, I don’t think so. In this specific case, I think that for him, it was really important to make his experiences known. And one aspect also that came out of my study was the fact that he was also trying to convey to me that his experience is not like an isolated experience.

That is something that is shared among several migrants. For example, when he was talking about the fact that he arrived in Italy, but some people didn’t because he crossed the Mediterranean. And it’s a very dangerous road as a road and route, really.

As he was putting it, he was really kind of representing it as a collective experience because it is. It’s not just him. There are many, many people taking that boat and trying to cross the Mediterranean.

The same goes for being homeless. So, he was really talking about this in the plural. And conveying the idea that people suffer.

And that’s one of the aspects that I wanted really to include in my article because I sensed that something that he wanted me to communicate. And even though this suffering is not strictly related to language, I thought it was a very good idea to insert it in many ways as part of the data. Because it was, I felt that it was important for him.

And it was important for me to be faithful to what I was given. And so, whilst, of course, every time we do research, particularly this type of research where the researcher is highly involved because again, it’s a kind of ethnographic and it’s a participation of US researchers, he at the same time, for me, was important to do justice as much as possible to what he was giving me. So even though it was something that wasn’t related strictly to language, I wanted for it to be inserted in the research so that again, I did something that I thought was faithful to what he was telling me.

Piller: Yeah, I think we’re both sort of interested in how language actually shapes your life, and the lived experience of language learning and language as a part of life. So, I thought that was really, really important and just so interesting to also for him to have that desire. I mean, again, that we see that a lot in our research as well, that sometimes participants really have this expectation that if they speak to a researcher, we’ll be able to, I don’t know, bring their experiences to the proper authorities, to the attention of people who can actually make a difference in their lives, and I sometimes find that really hard to deal with actually, because I think there is a bit of an expectation that by talking to someone who is in a fairly privileged position as a researcher or who they perceive to be as influential, even if we aren’t really socially influential.

That has a positive aspect or a positive consequence for themselves, but really for the larger structures under which they labor. As you say, he often wanted to make explicit to you that this was not only his experience but that suffering is sort of an endemic condition, I guess. So how did you deal with that expectation?

Santello: Yeah, listen, I don’t tell him, I’m going to solve your problems, etc. I’m just telling him, we don’t know these things, we just don’t know. My job as a researcher is to try and understand them with your help.

What I’m doing is simply trying to understand what’s going on, but I don’t have any power to change policy or anything like this. On the other hand, of course, it is a way for him to take these experiences in another place so that other people are aware of, for example, the constraints he experienced, or the suffering, or the deprivation, and so on and so forth.

And of course, also the sheer fact that we could have this conversation in English, as I was saying to you, at the moment in Italy, my position is within English. And for him, this was very important. And so, I was really, and it was something really united us because just the possibility for him to articulate himself the way he wanted to was key.

And that again tells us something about the importance of the resourcefulness of migrants and of multilinguals more generally, in being able to use different linguistic resources to make meaning. However, as I was also trying to explain in my article, very often we focus on the resourcefulness only from below saying that there’s a kind of a freedom of fluidity, etc. And that somehow by being multilingual, almost automatically, if you will, we will be able to advance or at least to be oppositional to some kind of a given system.

Whereas I didn’t necessarily find that in my research. In the sense that it’s not that by being multilingual, you’re automatically trying to disrupt the system or by going against monolingual norms, etc. Sometimes none of that really happens.

Another thing I also was interested in is in how the constraints are part of the multilingualism that people experience. For example, something really surprising in a positive way that I found was that he was even welcoming some constraints.

For example, in his house, and most of them are from West Africa, and he can speak with them either in English, or in Wolof, or in Mandinka, and so on. But there’s one person who doesn’t speak any of these languages. And so, for him, the only way to speak with this guy is in Italian.

And initially, at the Wolof, that must be difficult, you’re not. But, and I asked him, is that okay for you to speak? And he said, yes, yes, because it’s the only way I can improve my Italian by speaking it.

So, the constraint then was not experienced as a dramatic predicament in that specific circumstance. He was even welcomed as an opportunity to be in a, to be able to speak another language which he finds useful. And in a situation where he’s, that he’s lacking in his daily life, which is the possibility to speak in Italian, because of what we were saying before, the isolation, the non-Italian speaking environment in general, and some many tasks that don’t require any circles of people that speak other languages that he speaks, which are very important, of course.

And he says that very often with the Senegalese, with the Gambians and so forth, and other people from the foreign parts of West Africa, that also speak languages related to Mandinka. But so, there’s a kind of a, it’s a complicated picture, where the constraints are not simply impediments that are lived as something to be overcoming on costs. There is also that aspect, of course, of something that is experienced as a problem, and that is actually something that’s blocking.

But at the same time, there are many more things that we can see happening in, for the understanding of the multilingualism.

Piller: Yeah, I mean, just let’s continue with this idea a bit more that constraints can also be opportunities, because I guess from the national European perspective, from the perspective of the Italian state, or from the majority population, there is this idea that if you don’t speak Italian, you’re hugely constrained, and that’s a real lack, and without discounting that it’s important to speak Italian and whatnot, I think you’re also drawing attention to the fact that there are other multilingual repertoires or other languages in Lamin’s repertoire that are really important and that open doors for him in some kinds of ways and enable his life in Italy. So maybe you can speak to that a bit more.

Santello: That’s right. Yeah. So, as we know, in many countries around the world, there’s this kind of sense that a successful migrant is a migrant who’s able to speak very fluently the national language, for example, the national languages.

This is something that we kind of take for granted. And we know how this is very problematic because it kind of assumes that everybody is a more is more a lingual, it assumes a native speaker standard, and so on and so forth. But actually, even if you think about Italy, people born and raised in Italy, we have plenty of people in Italy who don’t speak Italian fluently, maybe they understand, but then to speak it fluently.

For example, people who speak regional languages, dialects, etc., who are not really able to have an entire conversation, monolingual conversation in Italian. And nobody would even dream of telling them that they are not good citizens.

Or else, we often put this label on migrants who might not be entirely proficient the way we think they should be in Italian, for example. So, there’s a huge problem there. And indeed, when you look at people’s lives, you look at the reality of them living with multiple languages and using many of them to create social networks, to work, to shop, for example.

Now, Lamin, for example, talks about this, the importance of using Mandinka and Wolof, or particularly Wolof, in shops, when he was living in Naples, and when he was going around the Central Station, and there were African shops, he says, and there I would be speaking my language, he says. And that’s where I realized that he was talking about Wolof, not Mandinka. So, you can tell that in that specific circumstance, there is no need for him to necessarily to speak Italian.

Of course, Italian is important, because it allows you to do things. And also because, you know, the overall society has a specific idea of Italian, what confidence in Italian is, but that’s not the only side of the story. So, by shedding light on this multilingualism, we try to understand better how things work, simply and without having this kind of preconceived idea that either you speak Italian like a native, or you’re not very, very good as a migrant, right?

So that’s not what comes out of this. However, he really hopes to improve his Italian and to be able to attend classes. That’s something that he conveyed to me.

Remember that Lamin has been in Italy for six years. And to this day, he has problems, you know, having a full conversation in Italian. So, there’s, and his willingness is there.

And he’s hopeful that that can change, particularly when it comes to spoken language, because it’s important for him. But again, that doesn’t mean…

Piller: Are there any Italian speakers in his social networks? Or is Italian really just the language he needs to interact with institution?

Santello: Yeah, so he didn’t say to me that he has any Italian-speaking friends. And so, I don’t think he has a kind of, you know, interaction from that kind of perspective with Italian speakers. So that’s one side, you know, of the coin.

On the other hand, of course, you need Italian in Italy in many ways, also to interact not just with institutions, but sometimes but also with people around. And then in the future, you know, with potential employers and whatever. So, there’s a, he knows that’s useful, that’s for sure.

One thing that, for example, he mentions to me, which is also very interesting, is this kind of idea that he cannot rely fully on English in Italy. Whilst he was making this comparison to Scandinavian countries, for example, where the knowledge of English is much more widespread. And so, people like him who are proficient in English, can easily rely on English if they don’t speak, for example, Swedish or whatever.

And whereas in Italy, he says, that’s not exactly my experience. So, it also tells us something about people speaking in the country. Of course, people in Italy, lots of people speak Italian, but that doesn’t mean, what I’m trying to say is that English and knowledge of English, which sometimes is regarded as only the kind of way to advance your career, etc.

It actually can be a way to create an easier environment for newcomers. In the beginning, those who speak English, so that at least when they’re very proficient in Italian, it’s not there yet to be able to communicate what they want to communicate. You can resort to English.

That’s not exactly his experience. So, he was making this kind of comparison, which also tells me about his knowledge of different countries, different languages, different, this kind of idea that these people come with a boat and they are unaware where they are. That’s not what I’ve found at all.

Piller: Yeah. Let’s maybe just have a bit more of a look at the conceptual side of things a bit more, because one thing that I really enjoyed about your article was actually that going back a bit, typically in applied linguistics, we see individuals as really creative, and you see a lot of multilingual playfulness, and individual multilinguals enjoy their multilingualism, and on the other hand, when we talk about constraints, when we talk about inequality, we locate that on the macro level, or in terms of language policies, in terms of the state, in terms of institutions. I think you are trying to break down that dichotomy a bit, that the constraints are macro, and the playfulness and the joy is individual.

Maybe you can explain that a bit more.

Santello: That’s right. Yeah. It’s exactly the way you explained it to us.

Basically, often what we see is that there are some societal structures that impede multilingualism, and that really is something that comes from above, and it constrains people, and from below instead, there will be a freedom and fluidity, a playfulness. Some authors talked about unbridled use. But actually, what we see happening among these individuals is something a bit more subtle than this.

It’s not simply social structures that push down, and that are, and these kinds of multilinguals would fight against it somehow. Nor is something at the bottom level unbridled use, where simply linguistic resources are used without any problem, and that they just show creativity and so forth. It doesn’t work like that in this kind of experiences.

What you see is something much more subtle. For example, one aspect which comes out of my research, is this kind of constraints that have to do with their personal life. It’s not only societal structures, for example, you know, something that you experience yourself, you know, for example, in another piece of research, you know, the family member passes away, and that actually sets in motion a change in your investment in language or investment in certain things that you need to do for your migration.

So, and that doesn’t mean that it’s not entangled with some other societal processes, it’s also a personal component. There’s also, you know, the lived experience of people in interaction, the social networks, the people helping each other or not helping each other, and so on and so forth. And so surely, we don’t see at a base level, the simple and unbridled use where people, you know, enjoy their multilingual resources, and this is somehow, you know, they will be unrestrained if they could.

It’s not exactly like that. And there are many more aspects that we need to consider. For example, indeed, what we were saying before, this kind of idea that certain constraints actually can function as a way to exercise certain linguistic skills that the person wants to exercise.

And so, it’s not the unbridled use in that case that becomes relevant, that becomes powerful, that becomes meaningful, but it is indeed a constraint which is inhabited. This is what Destot used to say. People inhabit what is given.

And what they inhabit, what is given, doesn’t mean that they adapt to it. It means that they engage with it in a creative way. So there’s a lot of…

Destot never talks about being passive. Quite the opposite. He says there’s a way to be active, to be proactive, to be able to be creative, which isn’t against the system.

It is within a system where people kind of manage to find a way to be creative, to be able to communicate within a given system. Which was sometimes there is no solution to that at the very stage. There is no way that you can all of a sudden speak Italian, all of a sudden doesn’t work like that, right?

And so that’s what I was interested in. There’s a level of creativity, of resourcefulness, which happens within a space of action. And that specific moment that migrant is not trying to go against anything really, she’s just trying to get things done and communicate within that specific space of action.

And we can see a lot of multilingualism there, a lot of creativity, a lot of things being done. So again, this kind of idea of a dichotomy between strong macro structures that oppress us and something at the bottom which is just free and fluid, I think it’s much more complicated than that. That’s what I found.

Piller: Yeah, so true. Look, Marco, before we go, what’s next for your research? Where will you take this project?

Santello: Yeah, so I’m really trying to expand on the things that I’ve been working on. And one thing that, for example, I would like to expand on is a kind of idea of how are constraints related to this kind of educational deprivation, and how is this educational deprivation actually being counterbalanced by other activities? So, for example, things that don’t happen in the classroom, where people, for example, you were saying about the multilingualism of Africans, you know, how is that ability to learn languages in the street, for example?

So many interacting with people inside the classroom. How can this become resourceful for them in the migratory settings? So, in the host country, in this specific case, how is that worked out?

So how is the constraint inhabited by interacting with people when classes are not provided, for example, because it’s not a situation, it’s not conditioned or you yourself are experiencing certain problems, et cetera. So that’s something I’m working on at the moment. Very excited about it.

Piller: Oh, that’s fascinating. Yeah. I mean, we’ve also found that even where classes are provided, they sometimes can be so unsuitable.

And so, you know, besides the needs of the learners, that actually the classes can become another barrier to language learning. So, look, good luck with that. Thank you so much for the conversation, Marco.

Santello: Thank you very much. Grazie.

Piller: Grazie mille and thanks for listening, everyone. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe to our channel, leave a five-star review on your podcast app of choice, and recommend the Language on the Move podcast and our partner, the New Books Network, to your students, colleagues and friends. Till next time.

***

‘The Glory’, a Korean drama, has ranked the top among the ten most watched TV and films since its release on March 10, 2023 on Netflix. The Glory has received 1.82 billion views on Weibo, the second largest Chinese social media platform at the time of writing this blog. Chinese youths, the largest group of Weibo members, are enthusiastic about discussing the plot, sharing their memes about this drama, and picking up popular terms for fandom communication.

Over the past two decades, Korean cultural products such as dramas, movies, music and dance, food, cosmetics etc. have gained worldwide popularity, and the global spread of Korean culture is known as Hallyu or Korean Wave (한류). Hallyu has been promoted by the South Korean government as cultural diplomacy and soft power projection since the 1997 financial crisis. The global promotion of Hallyu turns out to be a huge success. There are about 51.74 million population in South Korea, but the number of Hallyu community members reaches over 156 million people across the globe. China constitutes over half of the fan community with over 86 million.

As Hallyu emerges as a global cultural consumption among young people particularly in China, learning Korean has rapidly carved out a niche market for China’s youth to craft their subjectivities and produce bundles of skills. Mr. Bin He, a postgraduate student at Yunnan University under the supervision of Professor Jia Li, has conducted an ethnography with four Chinese university students on how relevant practices and discourses socialize Chinese youths to align themselves with learning Korean through self-study and out of class channels.

Even though China has the largest number of students learning English as a compulsory course, Chinese youths do not necessarily see English as the only source for empowerment and upward mobility. Chinese students who are economically and linguistically under-privileged find it more useful and easier to learn to speak ‘small languages’ (as we previously discussed here and here). This is exactly what happened to Bin’s participants who major in English but found it more desirable and promising to invest into learning Korean and dreamed of taking up Korean-related jobs.

Performing cool posture

Chinese youths develop their initial incentive to learn Korean because of their desire to get close to their Korean idols and their orientation to be part of a Korean-oriented consumption style. The digitization between China and South Korea facilitates such transnational communication. By subscribing to a paid app (about 5 $) per month, Chinese youths can get in contact with their Korean idols by listening to their voices or reading their updates online on a daily basis. They also choose to spend about 20$ collecting a Korean album imported from South Korea to show their distinct cultural taste.

Ming’s Weibo post

Their affective attachment to the Hallyu community gets closer through their interactions with other Hallyu fans on public and private social media platforms. Ming, one of Bin’s participants, has been learning Korean by himself for over six years. Like many Hallyu fans, Ming has developed basic Korean proficiency by watching Korean dramas and variety shows and listening to Korean songs. To test his Korean proficiency and to enhance his reading competence, Ming took up a volunteer job translating Korean idols’ stories into Chinese on Weibo for Chinese fans to keep updated with their idols. In addition to being recognized as a legitimate member of the Hallyu community because of his Korean proficiency, Ming also likes to share his consumption of Korean lifestyle on Weibo.

The screenshot captures Ming’s enjoyment with his friends drinking 참이슬 (“Chamisul”), the most popular brand of Korean liquor that frequently appears in Korean dramas, TV series, and variety shows. 참이슬 is recontextualized as symbolic source styling himself as someone cool and authentic. Using English ‘talk with’ indicates both modernity and the imagined engagement with the Korean world as Ming told us in interview: “感觉喝着烧酒，仿佛喝着烧酒就置身于韩剧中。” (“I feel like drinking soju, it’s like I’m physically in a Korean drama while drinking soju.”)

Consuming desire

Longing is one of the most featured themes in Korean dramas. The filming locations of hit Korean dramas are often promoted as must-go destinations for Chinese tourists travelling to South Korea. For Chinese youths who are living and studying in China, love stories constitute an important part of their romantic imagination as reported by Fang, a Chinese female university student: “想去首尔学习生活，去看看电视剧里出现的各种场景。” (“I dream of studying and living in Seoul. I want to visit the featured locations that appear in Korean dramas.”

Fang’s post

As someone who was born and brought up in the hinterland, Fang has grown up with the imagination of the sea, and the sea is often depicted as semiotic potential for romance in Korean dramas. Fang expressed her sense of attachment to 갯마을 차차차 (Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha), a romantic story in a small coastal village. She posted a moment on her Chinese social media in Korean: “아~듣기만 해도 바다 냄새 맡은 것 같애” (“Wow～ Just listening [to the song in Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha] I feel like the smell of the sea”).

Fang’s sense of enjoyment and desire is also expressed by her semiotic and linguistic choices. Using tilde ‘～’ after ‘wow’ (아) emphasizes her desire and longing. The choice of using Korean indexes her sense of feeling distinct and unique compared to her Chinese peers who might understand English but who are unlikely to be able to read Korean.

Crafting a niche in learning Korean

Ad for Korean online classes

Both Ming and Fang started to learn Korean online through various apps after they had been exposed to Hallyu for some time. Their desire to seriously invest in learning Korean took a clearer form when they saw an ad for online classes:

Why learn a small language
Korean

• The most accessible second foreign language. You will be surrounded by Korean from the moment you turn on your app.

• There are about 70% of Chinese words in Korean. Korean is the language that sounds like ancient Chinese. Chinese students learning Korean do not start from zero.

• Cheap tuition fee for overseas study. The best choice for the working-class family.

• Advanced educational system with the combination of the East and the West and world-leading IT shipping industry, mass communication, e-sports etc. All of these advantages can provide Korean learners with more opportunities.

In contrast to the way Chinese youths learn English, learning Korean has been discursively constructed as ‘accessible’, ‘easy’, ‘affordable’ and ‘advanced’. This promotion discourse is particularly attractive to those who cannot afford to travel to Western countries and who are fed up with the exam-driven learning style in English. As confessed by Ming, “我就是不知道为什么我对好莱坞电影、美剧不感兴趣，我想可能是讨厌英语总是考试吧” (“I just don’t know why I didn’t have any interest in watching Hollywood movies or American TV series. I guess it’s because I was tired of taking English exam.”)

Feeling cosmopolitan

After two years of formal training at a language school, Ming decided to take the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK), and pursue her master’s degree in South Korea after her graduation from an English department in China. When she prepared her application documents, she worked as an English tutor for a Korean family where she taught two children English in Korean. Because of her capacity in Korean, Fang was able to communicate with the Korean mother about her children’s English performance, which in turn facilitated her Korean oracy. Over two years, Fang used the money she earned by working as an English teacher to pay for her Korean language test and tuition fee for Ewha Womans University.

Fang’s chat

In September 2022, Fang started her postgraduate study online due to the restricted travel policy and the Covid-19 pandemic. Fang was eager to go to South Korea and socialize with local people to fulfill her Korean dream. While doing her online classes, she liked to share with her WeChat friends her Korean learning experiences.

The image in Fang’s chat shows the official promotion image of her Korean university with the blooming cherry flowers and one of its famous buildings. By re-posting this world-famous university, Fang also displays her privileged access to advanced education in Seoul, a cosmopolitan city with all her imagination for study and lifestyle in South Korea, as commented by her post “나한테 이게 학교아냐 자유다” (“To me, this is not only a school but also freedom.”) It is worth noting that Fang’s choice of studying in South Korea is partly due to her unwillingness to follow a planned life trajectory by working as an English teacher in her hometown like her peers. Despite her parents’ disagreement with her decision, Fang gave up working as an English teacher and chose to take the risk of investing into an unknown future with Korean.

Becoming entrepreneurial

Apart from desire and cosmopolitanism, Hallyu also displays a strong embodiment of neoliberal discourse upon individuals. Both Ming and Fang have been nurtured by entrepreneurial discourses while exposing themselves to Hallyu. Self-entrepreneurial ethos prevails in many Korean songs, books, and movies. Growing up with Hallyu for over 10 years, Chinese fans have witnessed the ups-and-downs of their idols and have been encouraged by their positive and never-give-up spirits, as Ming shared: “一直喜欢她(Taeyeon),我能从她身上看到许多积极的能量，情绪低落的时候，我就会听听她的歌或是刷刷她舞台表演的视频。” (“I’ve been one of Taeyeon’s fans. I can sense her positive power. When I’m feeling down, I would like to listen to her songs or watch her dancing performance.”)

Ming recalled his struggling experiences when he prepared for his postgraduate entrance exam. For over a year, Ming had to fight alone given that most of his classmates decided to look for a job and very few people including his parents understood his emotional struggles. By listening to Taeyon’s songs, Ming felt understood and comforted. Ming drew strength from witnessing Taeyon’s confrontation with suicide. Taeyon’s re-fashioning herself as someone overcoming her depression became a mental power for Ming to draw from in his own struggles in a competitive and stressful society.

Fang’s post about her Korean readings

Self-regulated and self-enterprising discourses are often circulated on Fang’s social media. Apart from signing up for a gym club and following a healthy lifestyle, Fang also likes to share her reflection on reading Korean novels. The caption about the images of the books she’s reading says: “One section a day; 43 days to finish the book; a story book on life experiences for the youth.”

By purchasing imported reading materials from South Korea, Fang said that she could kill two birds with one stone: enhancing her Korean reading capacity while enriching her life experiences. The philosophical statements of life experiences in the book are mainly self-enterprising and self-driven as indicated by her underlined notes like “너에게 주어지는 기대에 합당한 자기관리를 시작해” (“Start taking care of yourself and meet your expectations”) or “값진 자아 반성 시간” (“the valuable time of self-reflection”).

Navigating between freedom and precarity

Language learning in the digital economy is not problem free. Despite their aspiration to manage their life trajectory through neoliberal promises, Chinese youths find themselves constantly navigating between their desired freedom and structural constraints.

One of the problems that hinder their desire to invest in learning Korean is their lack of time. Chinese youths keep their strong connection with Hallyu but they find it hard to keep learning Korean as learning a language requires consistent and systematic devotion. As English majors at university, they are kept busy by taking exams and getting various certificates to enhance their employment prospects. Two of Bin’s participants imagined that they would have more time for themselves to pick up Korean after they started to work as English teachers in future.

For those who squeeze time and save money to take the TOPIK, their devotion to learning Korean may suffer from anti-Hallyu sentiments due to the diplomatic disputes between China and South Korea. Over the past three decades, the surge of Hallyu has also coincided with several waves of anti-Hallyu movements in China. Ming’s diligence and persistence in learning Korean is not recognized but misunderstood by populist nationalists as “媚韩” (literally, “flattering South Korea”), meaning betraying China and showing allegiance to South Korea.

Publicity shot of Korean star Taeyeon

For Fang who is receiving her master’s degree in South Korea, she is confronted with high living expenses in Seoul and thinking of returning to China to settle down. However, when it comes to her future employment prospect in China, Fang seems to lack of confidence. For one thing, she does not think she can compete against ethnic Korean Chinese for a job position in teaching Korean to Chinese students. For another, her master’s degree in TKSOL is not as desirable as an English major to secure an English teaching position.

By the time of writing up this blog, two of Bin’s participants had to give up learning Korean because of their overwhelming workload and new identity as English teachers. Only Fang and Ming still kept learning Korean. As noted, Fang is doing her master’s degree in South Korea, and Ming has just got a job offer from a Chinese multinational automotive subsidiary targeting the South Korean market. After several months of training, Ming will be sent to South Korea to work for this Chinese company in South Korea.

This study has provided a nuanced understanding of Chinese youths’ Korean language learning experiences in the context of emerging Asian pop culture and digitization. Chinese youths’ learning of Korean is not driven by pragmatic pursuits or academic pressures, but largely rooted in their desire to be part of the Hallyu community. Growing up with Hallyu and learning Korean opened up new spatial and affective imaginations for them to capitalize on their performance and cultural consumption that traverse national boundaries in our digital age. Despite having access to Hallyu and learning Korean through new technological affordances, their pursuit of Korean-related subjectivities gets inculcated with the affective facets of language learning activities rooted in the neoliberal logic of self-management, human capital development and surging populist nationalism.

Related content

Li, J. (2020). Foreign language learning for minority empowerment? Language on the Move. Retrieved from https://languageonthemove.com/foreign-language-learning-for-minority-empowerment/
Li, J. (2021). Esports are the new linguistic and cultural frontier. Language on the Move. Retrieved from https://languageonthemove.com/esports-are-the-new-linguistic-and-cultural-frontier/
Li, J. (2021). Peripheral language learners and the romance of Thai. Language on the Move. Retrieved from https://languageonthemove.com/peripheral-language-learners-and-the-romance-of-thai/
Ma, Y. (2020). Empowerment of Chinese Muslim women through Arabic? Language on the Move. Retrieved from https://languageonthemove.com/empowerment-of-chinese-muslim-women-through-arabic/

Multilingual responses are common during the special liturgies of Lent

Many people celebrated Easter with chocolate bunny treats and by enjoying the long weekend. But not as many know the religious significance of this celebration, which is regarded in the Catholic faith as even bigger than Christmas!

What makes Easter extra special is the commemoration of Jesus Christ’s resurrection three days after dying in the hands of Roman soldiers and religious leaders over 2,000 years ago. His rising from death gives hope to his followers that they, too, one day will transition to eternal life.

Christians prepared for this great feast for 40 days, the season of Lent. For Catholics, this is an important time of prayer and fasting, somewhat similar to the observance of Ramadan by our Islamic sisters and brothers. An important difference is the reason for the Lenten fast.

Catholics are exhorted to take up some form of sacrifice, like abstaining from meat on Fridays, saving the money they would usually spend on their favorite fast food to give to the poor, or not using Facebook for 40 days and dedicate scrolling time to prayer. These practices of self-restraint, contemplation, and almsgiving are acts of solidarity with the passion and death of Jesus Christ, the central figure of the Christian faith. Jesus Christ’s free choice to embrace an unjust sentence and lay down his own innocent life to free the sinful is the standard of true love that is the centerpiece of the Christian Gospel. This very important season in the Christian tradition culminates in the Sacred Triduum, the three days leading to Easter Sunday, which are called Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Black Saturday.

In places that are deeply Catholic in number and devotion like the Philippines, Vietnam, and Argentina, these three days are very eventful for priests and priests-in-training (seminarians) as they perform various functions to provide more spiritual support to lay Catholics through sacraments and practices of piety. They preside at longer, elaborate liturgical celebrations and hear more confessions from the lay faithful.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle leads the commemoration of the Lord’s Passion at Manila Cathedral (Photo by Maria Tan/Rappler)

As an active Catholic myself, I especially appreciate how the Holy Week liturgies are not only more solemn and musical but also more beautifully multilingual. In my Parish, the celebrations are mainly in English but with a modicum of Greek, Hebrew, and Tagalog. For instance, we say “Kyrie Eleison” where outside of Lent, we would typically say “Lord, have mercy.” Our Parish Priest gives very passionate homilies where he sometimes mentions Hebrew words like “Mashiach” in place of the more familiar “Messiah.” During communion (the most solemn part of the Mass), the choir sings beautiful songs of repentance, like “Maging Akin Muli” [Be Mine Again]. In other churches in Manila, we also hear other Philippine languages, like Cebuano, incorporated in the liturgical responses or songs.

There seems to be something about Lent that loosens the multilingual tongue and opens the sacred space to accommodate linguistic diversity more than we usually do at any other time of the year. Of course, this openness to other languages is not new in the Catholic Church. After the Second Vatican Council, it became more common practice to use the mother tongue of the community for Mass, which traditionally was said in monolingual Latin (Bennett, 2018).

But the story is a bit different for priests and seminarians from non-English speaking backgrounds who celebrate Catholic liturgies in places like the US, the UK, and Australia, which are still largely Anglophone despite the growing multiculturality and multilingualism of the population. In these Global North countries, religious workers from the Global South are expected to speak in English, the assumed heart language of the community. One can only imagine how challenging it must be for this group of adult migrants to deliver profound yet relatable homilies in this second or foreign language before native speakers who look to them for spiritual inspiration and guidance.

Father Harold Camonias is a missionary priest from the Philippines working in Australia

This untold story is what I set out to uncover in my qualitative study about the English language learning experiences in Australia of Catholic missionaries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. How do they learn English in Australia? What are their struggles as adult language learners? What ideologies do they hold about language learning and languages? (Tenedero, 2023)

These questions were answered thanks to seven Catholic missionaries from non-English speaking backgrounds. Originally from Argentina, Ghana, Madagascar, and Vietnam, these were active members of a big international Catholic missionary society, which sponsored their coming to Australia to complete some English language courses as part of their preparation for missionary work.

Overall, the findings of this new study provide evidence that English language learning Catholic missionaries from the Global South are a distinct Community of Practice. More than the average adult language learner, they are highly invested in learning English fueled by their mostly positive beliefs about English and language learning in general, as well as their imagined future selves. The research also gives a glimpse of how the view of English as language of global affordance has the potential to revise or extend novice missionaries’ vision of themselves as users of English. While learning the language for religious work, they also open themselves to alternative pathways to become global language workers.

This new study demonstrates that language in faith contexts serves evangelical and pastoral purposes, as in multilingual Lenten liturgies. At the same time, language could serve other non-religious aspirations of missionaries. This further demonstrates that while people shape language, it, too, has power to (re)shape us, our practices, the way we see ourselves, and our hopes.

References

Bennett, B. P. (2018). Sacred languages of the world: An introduction. Wiley.
Tenedero, P. P. P. (2023). Learning English for faith work: The Australian experience of non-Anglophone Catholic missionaries. Journal of Language, Identity & Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2023.2181813

“Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” banner displayed by Bayern Munich soccer fans (Image credit: Archie Rhind-Tutt)

Some recent images from around the globe: protest rally in Rome with a banner featuring the slogan “donna vita libertà” (“woman, life, freedom”); cover of the French newspaper Libération with the bilingual Persian-French headline “زن زندگی آزادی/femme, vie, liberté” (“woman, life, freedom”); fans at a match between two major German soccer teams holding a banner with the Kurdish slogan “jin, jiyan, azadî” (“woman, life, freedom”); video of feminist protesters in Chile chanting in Persian and Spanish “zan, zendegi, azadi; mujer, vida, libertad” (“woman, life, freedom”); poster for a rally in Bilbao, in the Spanish Basque Country, with the bilingual Kurdish-Basque headline “jin jiyan azadi/emakume, bizitza, askatsuna” (“woman, life, freedom”).

The list could go on: in a few hours of internet search, I compiled a 100+ corpus of the slogan used on banners, posters, billboards, graffiti, in digital art, chants, and as hashtag – in 23 different languages. Since a few days ago, the slogan even has a Wikipedia entry, currently in English, Persian, and Kurdish.

That a protest slogan from outside the Anglosphere is spreading globally and multilingually is highly unusual. So, let’s explore the story of the slogan that is travelling against the global linguistic current!

International slogans

The word “slogan” comes from the Scottish Gaelic word “sluagh-ghairm”, which mean “battle cry”. Essentially, slogans are linguistic tools of mass mobilization. This means that the limits of a language are the limits of mobilization. For many mass movements – those devoted to local issues or those with national ideologies – this is not a problem. But movements that seek to mobilize across linguistic boundaries face a challenge.

“Woman, life, freedom” – bilingual English-Persian billboard display, Piccadilly Circus, London (Image credit: Xanyar)

The international workers’ movement has dealt with the linguistic problem of global mass mobilization through translation. One of the globally most recognizable slogans – “Workers of the world, unite!” – is a translation of a German original (“Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt Euch!”) and the Wikipedia entry for the slogan lists around 50 additional versions in other languages.

With the global spread of English, some slogans, particularly commercial ones, have taken a different route. Instead of translating slogans into all the languages of target markets, the English version is used internationally. Famous examples include Nike’s “Just do it”, Apple’s “Think different”, or Uniqlo’s “Made for all.”

A spin-off of “Made for all” can be found on the “Peace for all” t-shirt range, Uniqlo’s charity sale range. The example illustrates how commercial and political slogans have come to shade into each other under the hegemony of English. One of the many global roles of English is that it has also become the language of choice of global mobilization. Political slogans from the Anglosphere spread readily across linguistic borders, too. “Black Lives Matter” and “Me too” offer powerful recent examples.

Non-English slogans in the global arena

While “Black Lives Matter” and “Me too” readily captured the imagination of masses outside the USA, it is difficult to think of a non-English slogan that achieved any level of international recognition in recent decades.

The slogans of major protest movements have certainly been widely translated into English: for example, one of the main slogans of the Arab Spring, “الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام”, often appeared on banners as “the people demand removal of the regime”; or the main slogan of the Hong Kong Uprising “光復香港，時代革命” was often accompanied by “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.”

The function of these English translations, however, was not so much mobilization of non-Arabic-speaking or non-Chinese-speaking groups. Instead, their function was to draw international attention to these movements.

Kurdish origins of “Women, life, freedom”

The Kurdish slogan “jin, jiyan, azadî” has been around for about 20 years. It is closely associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a socialist armed guerilla movement operating in the Kurdish-majority areas of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Women’s liberation has been a cornerstone of the ideology of the PKK, and the slogan “jin, jiyan, azadî” speaks to a radical commitment to women’s liberation (“jin”), ecology (“jiyan”), and against state oppression (“azadî”).

"Jin, jiyan, azadî" comes from militant, anti-system women. It's a universal slogan – but it mustn't be stolen by the dominant liberal power system.

JIN cannot rely on capitalism and the state.
JIYAN means being against all war and arms trade.
AZADÎ is opposing colonialism.

— Dilar Dirik (@Dlrdrk1) October 1, 2022

The slogan first attracted a larger audience outside Kurdistan in the mid-2010s when a PKK-affiliated all-female militia unit in the Syrian civil war, YPJ, was part of the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region, Rojava.

The YPJ was the subject of various documentaries and attracted some outside support, particularly in the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. And that is how the slogan began to spread. It could now be found in Kurdish and English as the title of a 2017 photo essay, in Kurdish and Italian as a book title and on the banner of a 2017 protest march in Rome, in Kurdish on a mural in Vienna, in Kurdish, German, English, and Turkish in a 2014 tweet, in Kurdish, English, German, French, and Turkish in a 2019 art exhibition, and in Kurdish and French in the 2018 movie “Les filles du soleil” (“Girls of the sun”).

“Women, life, freedom” extends from Kurdish to Persian

The internationalization of the slogan in the 2010s kept it firmly associated with the Kurdish struggle for self-determination. The traditional homeland of the Kurdish people is spread out over Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and in all these countries Kurds have faced various levels of oppression since the end of the First World War.

Persian-French bilingual version on the newspaper cover of “Libération”

With the recent exception of the autonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq, the Kurdish language is largely excluded from public life in the Kurdish areas and is not taught in schools. The linguistic oppression of Kurdish has been most extreme in Turkey, where it was even prohibited to be spoken in the home and could not even be named.

The situation of the Kurds in Iran is somewhat different from the other three main countries due to strong ethnolinguistic and cultural ties between the Kurds and other peoples of Iran. Kurdish and Persian belong to the same language family and share many similarities, in contrast to the majority languages of Turkey, Iraq, and Syria (Turkish and Arabic).

It is against this background that the transformation of the slogan from Kurdish to Persian must be understood: Kurdish “ژن ژیان ئازادی/jin, jiyan, azadî” and Persian “زن زندگی آزادی/zan, zendegi, azadi” share obvious similarities. The words for “woman” (ژن/jin, زن/zan) and “life” (ژیان/jiyan, زندگی/zendegi) are etymologically related across the two languages, and the word for “freedom” (ئازادی/azadî, آزادی/azadi) is the same in both languages.

The catalyst for the adoption of the slogan in Persian was the death of a young Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody in Tehran on September 16, 2022. “Women, life, freedom” became the battle cry of a movement against state oppression in Iran and beyond.

Transformations in the global linguistic hierarchy

The global linguistic hierarchy can be understood as a pyramid: the vast majority of languages play no official role anywhere in the world and, as peripheral languages, are relegated to the home and community. Above this large layer sits a smaller layer of a few hundred central languages with an official role in a nation state. On top of the hierarchy sit one single language only, English, the hyper-central language of globalization.

English is exceptional because it can be used for home, national, and international communication. English can fulfill all the linguistic needs of a speaker, and an English speaker may never have to learn another language.

Multilingual version as digital art (Source: H_Rafatnejad)

Speakers of a peripheral language, by contrast, cannot afford to remain monolingual. To get an education, to communicate nationally and internationally, they have to learn other languages.

The same is true for slogans. An English slogan can mobilize locally, nationally, and internationally.

Neither a Kurdish nor a Persian slogan offers such affordances. Peripheral to the global language system, Kurdish slogans can only mobilize locally. For national mobilization, they need to be translated into a language higher up in the hierarchy, Persian in this case. And for international mobilization, it needs to be translated yet again, first and foremost “up” into English, but also laterally into other languages.

Content worth listening to

The global linguistic hierarchy is not only about form (which language?) but also about content (what matters?).

Content in English is widely considered worth paying attention to, as is evidenced by translation statistics: English is the source language of the overwhelming majority of translations in the world. It is the source language of 1,266,110 translated documents recorded by UNICEF. The second most frequent source language is French, and it is far behind with 226,123 translations.

Content translated from Persian is minuscule in comparison although it still ranks as the 34^th most frequent source language with 3,041 documents. There are no statistics for Kurdish – translations from that language are so rare.

Seen against the global linguistic hierarchy, the story of “ژن ژیان ئازادی/jin, jiyan, azadî” and “زن زندگی آزادی/zan, zendegi, azadi” is quite miraculous: the slogan has been swimming against the global linguistic tide. It is meaningful to audiences around the globe who have been using it both in the original language and in translation.

Official coronation portrait (Image credit: Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2015)

The Queen and the English language are both unique within their categories. The Queen enjoyed special social status among humans through a complex combination of exceptional legal standing, imperial power, accumulated wealth, and sophisticated celebrity cult. The same is true of English: it is different from any other language in terms of reach, clout, and popularity.

English has more speakers than any other language

English today is said to have around 1.5 billion speakers, close to 20% of the global population. Even if counting speaker numbers is notoriously tricky, that’s a lot more than any other language in history. If we were to include everyone with basic proficiency, 1.5 billion is a substantial undercount.

But it is not the large number of speakers that makes English exceptional. After all, Chinese is not far behind with 1.1 billion speakers.

What makes English categorically different from Chinese is the relationship between first and second language speakers. The overwhelming majority of Chinese speakers live in Greater China and speak Chinese as their mother tongue.

By contrast, only a minority of ca. 370 million English speakers live in the United Kingdom and its settler colonies (most notably the USA but also Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa).

The vast majority of English speakers live outside the Anglosphere: some in former exploitation colonies of the UK or USA (e.g., India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Bangladesh, Ghana), and others in countries with no special ties to the Anglosphere where English is learned as a foreign language (e.g., China, Germany, France, Japan, Russia).

In short, what makes English exceptional among languages is twofold: it is widely used outside the heartlands of the Anglosphere, and it is learned as an additional language by countless multitudes across the globe.

The most spoken languages worldwide, 2022 (Source: Statista)

English is more powerful than any other language

A language does not have power per se. It derives its power from the people and institutions it is associated with. And English has been associated with some of the most powerful people and institutions of the 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st centuries.

The British Empire was the largest empire in human history, covering 35.5 million km² in 1920 (when it was at its largest), or more than a quarter of the world’s land mass. Even after the decline of the British Empire, English got a second imperial boost due to US global domination.

English is not only associated with powerful states but almost all international organizations have English as their working language (sometimes along with a few other languages), from Amnesty International to the World Trade Organization. Even organizations far removed from the Anglosphere have adopted an English Only policy, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The political might of English is accompanied by economic clout. Most of the world’s most powerful corporations are headquartered in the USA, and even those that are not have been adopting English as their corporate language.

The world’s richest people speak English, too: 8 of the world’s 10 richest people are based in the USA, and the other two (one in France, one in India) undoubtedly also have English in their repertoires.

The examples could go on and on to illustrate that English is spoken in most of the world’s halls of power. That creates an effect that sociologists call “misrecognition”. Power comes from control over military, economic, or political resources; not from language. However, because English is so consistently associated with high power, it becomes “misrecognized” as a source of power.

And because everyone wants a piece of the cake, everyone wants to learn English so that they, too, can reap the successes it seems to confer.

Countries with largest numbers of English speakers

English is more hegemonic than any other language

Misrecognition is closely tied to another exceptional characteristic of English: it dominates through the ideas associated with it. English is stereotypically associated with the best in almost any field of human endeavor.

Most languages are associated with cultural stereotypes, beliefs, ideas, and emotions. Unlike the specific and relatively narrow cultural stereotypes associated with other languages (e.g., “French sounds romantic”), ideas about English are highly versatile: it is the language of modernity itself.

English is seen as the language of Hollywood media glitz and glamour, the language of freedom and liberal democracy, or the language of science and technology. Indeed, the cultural versatility of English is so great that it not only serves as the language of global capitalism but can also appear as its antagonist: the language of resistance.

One important way in which the hegemony of English is maintained is through the pomp and pageantry of the British monarchy. We are currently seeing global media saturation coverage. Its effect is not only to create a cultural, emotional, aspirational, and personally-felt connection with the Queen but with everything she stands for, including the English language.

The future of English

Although the role of the Queen is highly exceptional, her passing reminds us that the role was filled by an ordinary human being. It is likely that the next incumbent will be less capable at arresting the decline of the British monarchy. The role is likely to become less special, with a reduced realm and against the continuing diversification of celebrity cults.

The passing of the Queen has unleashed a global media frenzy, which also reinforces the hegemony of English (Image credit: sohu.com)

It might take longer for English to see a diminished status. In the past, imperial languages such as Latin and Persian survived the empires that spread them by hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

At the same time, the fate of English now rests to a significant degree with the language policies of countries outside the Anglosphere. And these might change as beliefs about the importance of the language change. For instance, if China were to curtail the role of English language proficiency for university entrance, this could send speaker numbers plummeting quite quickly.

The role of English is no longer solely in the hands of the Anglosphere.

Related content

To explore further how English went from peripheral peasant tongue to global superspreader language, and what its meteoric rise means, head over to this guest lecture I delivered at Yunnan University, Kunming, China) on Sept 28, 2021.

“The Tosa dialect is fun!!” Notebook with characters representing the grammar of Tosaben, the dialect of the Kōchi prefecture in Shikoku. The cover also features popular landmarks of the prefecture.

Japan is often erroneously perceived as a monolingual country. This is not true and Japan is a multilingual and multicultural country where varied languages and traditions coexist.

This post explores Japan’s linguistic ecology by exploring the relationship between center and periphery. On our journey, we will see how linguistic resources change value, function and ownership as they move through an ideologically stratified system where the norms and criteria of appropriateness that emanate from the center influence those of peripheral and liminal territories.

Center

Our journey starts from the capital Tōkyō, the city that hosts the majority of the financial and political institutions of the country. Given its importance, it is not surprising that the city has had a central role in issues related to language as well.

Tōkyō has had a decisive impact on the ‘movement for the unification of the written and spoken language’ 言文一致運動 genbun itchi undō. Its goal was to replace older forms of the Japanese language with the vernacular variety of the time to facilitate literacy.

To achieve that, the Tōkyō variety (or “Edo”, as Tōkyō was called until the late 19^th century) was chosen as the base to envision a ‘national language’ 国語 kokugo.

150 years on and the political efforts that have been made to establish a common language can be considered largely successful. Communications in Japan have indeed been standardized, and Japan’s literacy rate is as high as 99%, one of the highest in the world.

Periphery

Standardization implies deviation. Therefore, all the other ways of speaking throughout the Japanese archipelago were categorized as dialects. Other varieties saw their usage severely curtailed, starting in schools which tried to stamp out anything other than Tōkyō Japanese.

Discouraged in official communication, dialects have become an expression of locality, part of the cultural identity associated with a specific place. This role has been embraced by prefectures and individuals alike. Institutional bodies such as museums and tourism boards use dialects as a means to promote local culture.

Sometimes grammar rules and words are turned into anthropomorphic characters and appear on souvenirs and merchandise like the notebook I have received at the University of Kōchi during my time there as an exchange student. The linguistic and cultural distance between center and periphery has been turned into a marketable commodity. Dialects are also used to portray characters in media for their ability to convey the stereotypes associated to them.

In real life, too, dialects enable people who do not wish to fit within mainstream language practices to inhabit a different ‘voice’, performing what has been called ‘dialect cosplay’ as an act of linguistic transgression.

Dialects may seem to assume playful roles in many occasions. However, it is not all fun and games as the necessity to confront the demands of standard language remains, and most young Japanese students know this well. The dreaded ‘exam hell’, a series of standardized examinations that Japanese students must take during their entire school lives, require mastery of the standard language as well as being able to produce it as part of an appropriate repertoire. The stakes are high and students, already under immense pressure, can afford little to no space for linguistic deviations.

Liminality

The more we head towards the borders of the country, the greater diversity we find, including a number of endangered languages. The languages of the Ainu people from the northernmost island of Hokkaidō, for instance, are on the verge of extinction. The same is true of languages spoken on the islands that dot Okinawa prefecture to the South and those of the Izu islands, an archipelago that stretches far into the Pacific Ocean east of Tōkyō.

In these areas, the demographic crisis is taking a heavy toll on the number of speakers, as young people leave rural areas in search of opportunities otherwise unavailable to them.

The center cannot hold

Meanwhile, Tōkyō has become super-diverse linguistically. It is no longer only the center of Japan but also a global city. Japanese is today used alongside English and a host of migrant languages. Against these, struggling peripheries are trying to find new ways to express their local identities through “authentic” language. They follow the center’s norms but occasionally playfully transcend and violate those norms.

Overall, Japan’s linguistic ecology is deeply rooted in the center-periphery dichotomy but the center and the peripheries are themselves changing.

Reference

Heinrich, Patrick. (2018). Dialect cosplay: Language use by the young generation. In Patrick Heinrich & Christian Galan (Eds.), Being Young in Super-Aging Japan: Formative Events and Cultural Reactions (pp. 166-182). London: Routledge.

Easter chocolates in the supermarket (Image credit: Wikimedia)

I’ve been thinking a lot about chocolate lately. Maybe because it is Easter and supermarkets in my part of the world are laden with chocolate products.

Chocolate is good to think with

Chocolate is good to think with – and I don’t mean just because chocolate is known to make our brains release endorphins, chemicals that make us feel good.

Chocolate is good to think with because it provides an easy-to-grasp explanation of the workings of global capitalism and the persistence of a colonial world order.

Global chocolate

The global chocolate industry is worth over 100 billion US$ per year. That wealth accumulation starts with the cultivation of the cacao bean and ends with the Easter egg melting in your mouth.

Cacao grows in tropical climates close to the equator. The world’s largest producer and exporter of cacao beans are two West African countries, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Together with Ecuador, Cameroon, Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil, and Papua New Guinea they grow most of the world’s cacao.

Virgin forest cleared to make way for cacao plantation (Image credit: Peru Reports)

Cacao farming is a fast-growing plantation monoculture and a major factor in deforestation. 80% of Côte d’Ivoire’s rain forest, for instance, has in the past few decades been cut down to make way for cacao plantations.

Even though Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana dominate global cacao production, your Easter egg is not going to say “Made in Côte d’Ivoire” or “Made in Ghana.”

The label on your Easter egg is most likely to read “Made in Germany” because Germany is the world’s largest chocolate producer and exporter, followed by Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland.

Cacao – the raw product – is shipped from Africa to Europe to be transformed into the valuable chocolate.

The main consumers of chocolate are in North America and Europe. Over 10% of the world’s chocolate is eaten in USA alone, followed by Germany, France, United Kingdom, and Netherlands.

Per capita chocolate consumption in some of these countries is truly staggering. The average Swiss person, for instance, eats a whooping 8.8 kilos of chocolate per year. The thought alone is enough to give me constipation (although Australians are in no position to point fingers: each of us eats 4.9 kilos of chocolate per year).

The biggest multinational corporations running global chocolate are based in USA (Mars, Mondelēz, Hershey), Italy (Ferrero), Japan (Meiji, Ezaki Glico), Switzerland (Nestlé, Lindt & Sprüngli), UK (Pladis), and South Korea (Orion).

The back-breaking work of cacao production is done in the (supposedly former) colonies (Image credit: Insider)

The global division of labor could not be clearer: those who do the work and suffer the degradation of their environment are completely separated from those who grow rich on their exploitation and those who enjoy the fruits of their labor.

The chocolate profiteers and chocolate victims remain invisible

Despite the ubiquity of chocolate in supermarkets of the global north, few people know how the chocolate got there.

Most of us are ignorant of the money behind chocolate. Italy’s richest man, for instance, is Giovanni Ferrero, of the Nutella chocolate spread. Giovanni’s fortune is estimated to be 32 billion US$. By contrast, the average cacao farmer earns less than one US$ per day.

Now that we have the economics of global chocolate straight, let’s turn to language. The way we think about the word “chocolate” can tell us as much about language and culture contact, as it does about capitalism and colonialism.

“Chocolate” is a universal word

One of the most foundational ways to think about languages is to classify them into many different languages, each separate from the other.

From Afrikaans to Zulu, there are 6,000 languages or so. Each different from the other and each tied to a particular nation, ethnicity, or culture.

The word for “chocolate” and “cacao” in 56 languages (sourced from Google Translate; Latin alphabet used throughout for easy comparability)

Now consider the word for “chocolate” and “cacao” in those languages.

The table shows 56 translation equivalents of “chocolate” and “cacao”, all based on Google Translate, and all written in the Latin alphabet for easy comparability. One glance suffices to see that “chocolate” and “cacao” are essentially the same word in all these languages. There are pronunciation differences, for sure, but it is obvious that that is all there is.

Does it make sense to say that “cokollate” is an Albanian word, that “shukulata” is an Arabic word, that “tsokolate” is a Cebuano word, that “qiǎokèlì” is a Chinese word, that “chocolate” is an English word, that “Schokolade” is a German word, that “chokollis” is a Korean word, that “shoklat” is a Persian word, and that “ushokoledi” is a Zulu word?

Of course, each of these forms is adapted to the phonology of each language but it is equally clear that the most salient aspect of each of these words is not their difference but their similarity.

The German philological tradition has a term for these types of words that are pretty much identical across languages: wanderwort. Wanderwort literally means “wandering word” or “migrating word.” Such migrating words are “items that are borrowed from language to language, often through a long chain of intermediate languages” (Hock & Joseph, 2009, p. 484).

A textbook example for a wanderwort is “sugar” – another key ingredient in chocolate – which probably started out in Sanskrit as “śarkara” and moved westwards to become Persian “shakar,” Arabic “sukkar,” Greek “sákkharon,” and Spanish “azúcar.” The word did not stop with Spanish but hopped over to French “sucre”, Italian “zucchero”, German “Zucker”, and English “sugar.” The Greek version “sákkharon” took an additional route into Western Europe and also gave us English “saccharin”.

Migrating words – and there are many of them – remind us that the borders between languages are not fixed but highly porous. Language and culture contact is the norm, and has been the norm since time immemorial.

That is the first language lesson of chocolate.

Chocolate is a colonized word that has become universal

The overarching narrative of language contact and language spread in our time is of the triumph of English. Language – like everything else of value – supposedly emanates from the European centre to the rest of the world. Colonial languages are powerless and dying away in the face of the English juggernaut.

There is certainly some truth to this story but it is not the only story. An alternative story is encapsulated in the word for “chocolate”.

Precolonial Mesoamerican depiction of a marriage ceremony involving a drink of chocolate (Image credit: UC Davis Library)

The cacao bean has been cultivated in Mesoamerica and brewed into a chocolate drink for thousands of years. Accordingly, the words for “cacao” and “chocolate” have a long and varied history in the precolonial languages of the region (Dakin & Wichmann, 2000).

The migrating words for “cacao” and “chocolate” that we encounter today in (possibly?) all the world’s language is based on Nahuatl “kakáwa” and “čokola:tl.”

While colonial languages have certainly been spreading, individual words from colonized languages have been on the move, too. Some, like “kakáwa” and “čokola:tl” have made themselves at home universally.

Like “cacao” and “chocolate,” many universal words come from the world’s most threatened and minoritized languages.

Another iconic example is “kangaroo.” This universal word comes from Guugu Yimidhirr, an Australian language from Far North Queensland with less than 1,000 speakers.

The second language lesson of chocolate is that language spread is not a one-way street and colonized languages have also made their tracks around the globe.

Eurocentric etymologies

The Spanish conquest of the Americas brought the cacao bean and its preparation to the attention of Europeans.

The internet is full of claims that “Cortés was believed to have discovered chocolate during an expedition to the Americas” or that “Christopher Columbus discovered cacao beans after intercepting a trade ship on a journey to America and brought the beans back to Spain with him in 1502” (my emphasis).

Europeans have long lied to themselves about chocolate: this 17th century treatise depicts an Indian princess handing over chocolate to the higher-placed Poseidon, the ancient Greek god of the seas (Image credit: Internet Archive)

This is incorrect – like most “discoveries” of the colonial period and the so-called “Age of Discovery,” the existence of the cacao bean and its use in chocolate preparation was well-known to the Aztecs.

In today’s terms, what Cortés, Columbus, and all the other “discoverers” did might be called plagiarism or intellectual property theft.

Words like “cacao” and “chocolate” bear witness to that grand theft in the languages of the world.

Not surprisingly, the colonizers have tried to erase those linguistic tracks.

“Kangaroo” was for a long time thought to be “unknown” in any Australian language, and the idea was that Captain Cook and Joseph Banks somehow made up the word. Another apocryphal story had it that “kangaroo” actually means “I don’t know” in Guugu Yimidhirr. In this anecdote, local knowledge is completely erased while Cook and Banks come out as the heroic discoverers who made sense out of local ignorance.

It was not until 1980, when the publication of R.M.W. Dixon’s The languages of Australia finally settled the debate and confirmed something the Indigenous people of North Queensland had known all along: that the universal word “kangaroo” came from their language.

A similar obfuscation takes place when you look up the etymology for “chocolate” in English. English “chocolate” is said to derive from Spanish “chocolate” or French “chocolat.” The latter in turn derives from Spanish “chocolate,” and only in another step does it go back to Nahuatl “chocolatl.”

The etymology of the German “Schokolade” similarly highlights inner-European transmission by deriving German “Schokolade” from Dutch “chocolate,” which derives from Spanish “chocolate.” Nahuatl is only mentioned at the end of that list.

In Imperial Eyes, Mary Louise Pratt writes that “an imperial tendency to see European culture emanating out to the colonial periphery from a self-generating center has obscured the constant movement of people and ideas in the other direction” (p. 88).

Amongst other things, colonialism has been a huge project of knowledge transfer from the colonized to the colonizers. The third language lesson of “chocolate” is to lay bare the big con that has made it look as if knowledge only travels in the other direction.

References

Dakin, K., & Wichmann, S. (2000). Cacao and chocolate: a Uto-Aztecan perspective. Ancient Mesoamerica, 11(1), 55-75.
Dixon, R. M. W. (1980). The Languages of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hock, H. H., & Joseph, B. D. (2009). Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship: An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics (2nd rev ed.). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Pratt, M. L. (2008). Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

(Image credit: Farooqi & Aftab, 2018)

Editor’s note: As Confucius Institutes are closing in western countries, as Jeffrey Gil analysed recently, Chinese language learning continues to expand across the global South. As an example, Kashif Raza reflects on the linguistic implications of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) here.

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The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a multimillion dollar project between Pakistan and China through which both countries aim to develop bilateral economic, cultural, social and military ties. However, none of the 68+ Pakistani languages are being used for information creation and dissemination in the operationalization of the project. In its current form, the project only enables participation by speakers of two languages, English and Mandarin Chinese, which have been adopted as official languages for the project. This is a missed opportunity for both countries to benefit their multilingual populations. With proper language policy development and implementation, this project could become an ideal multilingual economic model of South-South cooperation, where a multilingual workforce is engaged, recognized and benefits.

CPEC and Language Use

CPEC has many benefits for both Pakistan and China. However, the project has also posed a serious question for both countries: What languages are people going to use to communicate with each other? In correspondence with an official of the CPEC, I was told that there are three types of scenarios happening at the CPEC:

1. Chinese officials and stakeholders communicating with Chinese workers through Mandarin or other Chinese languages
2. Chinese officials, stakeholders and workers communicating with Pakistani worker through English, Urdu, or through interpreters
3. Pakistani officials, stakeholders and workers communicating with each other using English, Urdu, or any of the other local languages

Although Mandarin is used by the Chinese, and Urdu and other Pakistani languages by Pakistanis, English dominates the operationalization of the CPEC project for policy development and implementation with Mandarin taking the second place. Evidence of this comes from the use of English and, to a lesser degree, Mandarin in the production and dissemination of the information related to the CPEC. The Long Term Plan for China-Pakistan Economic Corridor 2017-2030 states:

This Agreement is copied in duplicate, each of which is written in Chinese and English, and both versions have the same meaning and will have the equal effect. 

Urdu learning in China

Both China and Pakistan are trying to promote each other’s languages at different levels. These language exchange initiatives, some of which started long before the inauguration of the CPEC, are led by governmental agencies (e.g., embassies) and private institutes.

Considering the importance of relations between Pakistan and China, different initiatives have been taken by the Chinese authorities to promote Urdu at multiple levels in China. One of these endeavors is the promotion of Urdu in education through major and minor courses that are mostly taught by Urdu-speaking Pakistani faculty and are offered by multiple universities in China. In an attempt to increase the number of Urdu speakers in China, several works have been translated from Urdu to Mandarin and Urdu language courses are being delivered at different institutions.

Peking University, in particular, has undertaken considerable work in this regard where efforts are being made to increase resources for Mandarin and Urdu language learners. After establishing the first Urdu Department in 1950 to offer basic Urdu language courses and translating multiple works from Urdu to Mandarin, the institute developed the first ever Mandarin-Urdu dictionary in the 1980s.  Similarly, Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) has been teaching Urdu language courses since 2007. In order to provide an interactive Urdu language acquisition atmosphere, BFSU has been organizing various competitions in calligraphy and speech to familiarize Chinese students with Pakistani culture and history. Recently, Urdu Departments were established at Xi’an International Studies University and Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. We also see a lot of videos circulating on social media like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc. where Chinese speakers of Urdu share their views in Urdu on contemporary topics like COVID-19, Pakistani culture and cuisine, tourism in Pakistan, and the Sino-Pak friendship in general.

Tea ceremony at Confucius Institute Islamabad (Image Credit: Xinhuanet)

The two main reasons for the popularity of Urdu in China since the CPEC inauguration are economic and cultural benefits. In terms of economy, many Urdu learners see either employment opportunities or chances of starting their own businesses. Since Chinese companies doing businesses with Pakistani counterparts need people that can help in communication between the two parties, learning Urdu can provide job opportunities for many as translators, Urdu language teachers, bilingual contract writers, and managers. Similarly, knowing Urdu can also help run businesses like import/export, manufacturing, and educational institutions (similar considerations with regard to Arabic in China are discussed here). On the other hand, attraction towards Pakistani culture, its tourist and religious destinations, food, and people are other reasons for the popularity of Urdu in China.

Chinese learning in Pakistan

As Chinese are learning Urdu, Mandarin Chinese is becoming popular among Pakistanis. We see governmental institutes as well as private entities involved in the promotion of Mandarin in Pakistan. A few examples of governmental support are the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, Confucius Institutes, Pakistan Television, Sindh government memorandum of understanding with Chinese Education Department, Pakistan Senate Resolution in favor of teaching Mandarin in Pakistan and scholarships for Pakistani students and teachers who wish to develop Mandarin learning and teaching skills. Private institutes are also playing pivotal roles in promoting Mandarin.

As far as the benefits for Pakistanis learning Mandarin are concerned, the biggest incentive is the economic opportunities. Since CPEC is attracting a lot of Chinese businessmen and workers, Pakistani students of Mandarin find it as an opportunity to secure work as bilingual translators, interpreters, lawyers as well as supervisors. Similarly, there are educational, political and social factors that are encouraging Pakistanis to master Mandarin as a foreign language.

Economic Approach to Language Development for CPEC

As CPEC is a long-term economic project and has multiple advantages for both Pakistan and China, its success requires a deeper understanding and cooperation between Pakistan and China at social, cultural, educational, defense, economic as well as linguistic levels. A pragmatic approach that can guarantee the achievement of the objectives of this project is decision making through discussion and dialogue on all of the issues that both countries face. Language as a medium of communication is one of these issues that needs to be discussed and negotiated from both sides. This is not only important for increased communication between the two sides but also mandatory for strengthening other areas of cooperation.

Since Sino-Pak relations have a long history, both countries have been trying to promote each other’s languages through different means to strengthen multi-layered relationships between the two governments as well as its people. Nevertheless, language exchange has never been as critical as it is now. This calls for a proper language policy development that can resolve the medium of communication issue between the two neighbors and can pave the way for smooth people-to-people relationship development.

There are a lot of debates and discussions on the economic and military benefits of the CPEC project for both Pakistan and China. Although a few voices are also heard discussing the language issue related to CPEC, most of these articles portray the imposition of Chinese languages and the suppression of Urdu. None of the work done in this area looks at language issues through the lens of economic benefits for both countries in terms of increasing employment, enhancing people-to-people relations, developing cultural exchanges and promoting each other’s languages.

It is time to rethink multilingual language policies beyond established truths.

Wei Duan introduces herself to a group of Bangladeshi students at Yunnan University

As a postgraduate student at Yunnan University in Southwest China, I have been conducting a longitudinal ethnography with a group of international students from Bangladesh since their arrival at my university in 2018. While receiving Putonghua-mediated courses, many of my participants complain that they do not see their identities as Chinese language learners depicted in their textbooks. Their exposure to Chinese language textbooks does not expand their intercultural communication capacity but reduces them into reproducing stereotypes.

How is that possible? One of the reasons relates to the representation of interlocutors’ cultural elements in Chinese textbooks, as I found in my research.

The selected data for investigation of Chinese language textbooks are the eight textbooks of the Boya series including four levels: Elementary I/II, Quasi-intermediate I/II, Intermediate I/II, and Advanced I/II. The reasons for selecting this series are that Boya textbooks are the main materials for Bangladeshi students learning Chinese at my university. These textbooks have been published by Peking University Press and were approved by China’s national Eleventh Five-year Plan for general higher education.

Despite their thoroughly Chinese identity, an investigation of the linguistic and cultural representations of the imagined Chinese language learners in these textbooks reveals surprisingly Anglo-centric perspectives on human diversity.

International students with innate English proficiency

One of these Anglo-centric assumptions about Chinese language learners is that they naturally have English language proficiency.

Among eight Boya textbooks, there are 69 units in total and each unit consists of a Chinese reading passage with more than 30 lists of words for explanation. Almost all of the Chinese words listed are matched with English definitions. The frequency of using English as equivalent translation for Chinese words and Chinese grammatical knowledge is quite intense for the elementary level I and II. For example, the phonological knowledge of Chinese language is illustrated with English translation: “汉语的音节由三部分组成：声母、韵母和声调。声调不同，意义就可能不一样” (Among the components of a Chinese syllable, there is tone besides the initial and the final. Syllables with same initials and finals but in different tones usually have different meanings) (Elementary I, p. 1).

Examples such as these are obviously informed by the assumption that international students learning Chinese can refer to English as help if they find Chinese words difficult to understand. However, this assumption is questionable and not borne out by the reality that not all international students are proficient in English.

What further problematizes such English translations is their redundancy and low quality. When international students move to intermediate and advanced levels, they are assumed to be able to understand the basic terms but need additional help in culture-loaded words such as “宝剑” and “内涵”. However, these two words have been mistranslated into “double-edged sword” and “intention” respectively on p. 79 from Intermediate II and p. 45 from Advanced I. In reality, “宝剑” is best translated simply as “sword”. It refers to a traditional hand sword used as a weapon. “内涵” is used to describe someone’s quality or cultural knowledge of a certain practice. It has numerous English translations, including “attribute”, “connotation”, and “inner quality”.

English as panacea in China

Apart from the overwhelming coverage of English translation, English is constructed as a panacea in China: English is presented as the key to solving intercultural communication problems, finding a profitable job, and establishing social status. This is illustrated in the following example, a sample dialogue between a Chinese restaurant owner and international students at a Chinese restaurant in China.

有一天，我们四个刚来中国的老外去饭馆吃饭。点菜的时候碰到了麻烦：我们不认识菜单上那些奇奇怪怪的菜的名字。老板想了不少办法，希望我们能明白这些菜是什么。他一边做着奇怪的动作，一边在桌子上画画。他重复了好几遍，可我们还是猜不出他的意思。这时，一个中国姑娘在旁边说话了：“老板，很多老外不吃鸭头，也不吃猪心、猪肚。”她又用英语解释给我们听。听了她的解释，再想想老板的动作，我们都笑了。我们上了来北京后最有用的一堂课，记住了“心”“肝”“肚”“下水”。

One day, we four newcomers went to a Chinese restaurant. We had some trouble ordering dishes because we didn’t know the odd names on the menu. The owner tried several ways to make us understand what dishes they were. He was drawing pictures on the table while doing weird actions. He repeated several times, but we still couldn’t get his meaning. At this moment, a Chinese girl said to the owner, “many foreigners don’t eat duck heads, pig hearts or stomach.” Then she explained to us in English. Hearing her explanation and recalling the funny actions of the owner, we all laughed. This was the most useful lesson we had when we first arrived in Beijing. We remembered the words for “heart”, “liver”, “belly” and “meatloaf” in Chinese. (Quasi-intermediate I, p. 32, my translation)

The above excerpt seems to convey a delightful tone in understanding Chinese culture. However, a close examination of the excerpt indicates the unequal and hierarchical relation. First of all, the Chinese restaurant owner turns out to be incompetent and powerless in front of a group of newly arrived international students in Beijing, the capital city of China. Instead of using Putonghua, the lingua franca in China or turning to any translation apps, it is the Chinese restaurant owner who has to make all the effort to make himself understood by using “weird” and “funny” actions. Second, the newly arrived international students seem to be the norm-givers in judging what to eat, what is “odd” and “weird”, and how others are supposed to behave when any intercultural communication problems arise. The efforts made by the restaurant owner are not appreciated but considered as laughing stock for fun. Thirdly, it is English that comes to the rescue and helps overcome the supposed embarrassment of the Chinese restaurant owner doing business in China.

The effortless experiences that the Chinese language learners represented in the textbooks have in China is often associated with constructing “laowai” (foreigners) as desirable speaker of English in China,

在大城市，能说英语的人太多。在北京，连出租车司机也能说英语。很多时候你刚说出“你好”，好学的中国人就会马上说起英语来。由于你的汉语不如他们的英语流利，所以常常是他们说，你听。

In big cities, many people can speak English. In Beijing, even taxi drivers can speak English. Many times when you begin to say “Hello” in Chinese, studious Chinese will immediately talk with you in English. As your Chinese is not as fluent as their English, it is you who listen and them who speak. (Quasi-intermediate II, p. 32, my translation)

English is also constructed in Chinese language textbooks as desirable capital for getting a profitable job and upgrading social status.

汽车杂志》诚聘记者2名：汽车专业、中文专业或其他相关专业大学本科以上，英语 6级 425分以上或托福 500 分以上。

“Automobile Magazine” is looking for two journalists with majors in Automotive Studies or Chinese or other related subjects with Bachelor degree or above. The applicants should provide their English certificates either with more than 425 scores in CET 6 or more than 500 in TOFEL. (Quasi-intermediate II, p. 62, my translation)

王大伟的简历：在美国上大学，在英国读研究生，在中国学汉语，在美国 IBM 公司做工程师，香港 IBM 公司经理，上海大学教授，北京大学教授。

Wang Dawei’s CV: undergraduate study in the USA, postgraduate in UK, learning Chinese language in China; an engineer in the American IBM company, a manager in Hong Kong IBM company, professor in Shanghai University and Peking University. (Quasi-intermediate I, p. 206, my translation)

The USA as source of reference

When non-Chinese cultures and identities are referenced in the eight Boya Chinese language textbooks, USA-related cultural practices and figures predominate and they always are presented in a positive light. Statements like “美国人……” (American people are …) or “美国……” (the USA is …) are ubiquitous throughout the textbooks. If the topic is about self-introduction, American people are definitely included in the content. If it is about geography, the USA, or US states and cities such as California or New York are chosen as example for comparison. With other social issues like education, festivals, food or the economy, the USA is the ever-present reference point in the textbooks.

The USA not only predominates quantitatively but is also constructed as a desirable way of living. One of the highly valued qualities is that the USA is constructed as the best destination for learning English. “我想学习英语， 我一定要去美国” (I want to learn English. I must go to the USA) (Elementary I, p. 180). Besides, the USA is reproduced as the most developed and most powerful country. For instance, on p. 105 from textbook Advanced II, the USA is described as “世界最发达国家” (the most developed country in the world); on p. 167 from textbook Intermediate I: “在今天的世界舞台上，美国扮演着非常重要的角色” (The United States plays a very important role throughout the world today). Apart from that, American people are represented as successful, innovative and flexible.

比尔盖茨20岁有了自己的公司，开始做微软老板

Bill Gates had his own company at the age of 20 and has became the boss of Microsoft. (Intermediate I, p. 112, my translation)

Other American figures such as Olympic athletes and the founder of Disney are also positively represented in these Chinese language textbooks, to name only a few.

工作时是医院的大夫还是公司老板，一到球场美国人就会完全变成另一个人。他们会身    穿公牛队服，脚上穿着200美元一双的耐克运动鞋，把自己当作一个篮球运动员，完全       和他们本来的身份不同。

They might be hospital doctors or company owners. As long as American people go to a basketball match, they will wear Bull uniform and Nike shoes worth US$200 and make themselves look like basketball players, totally different from who they are. (Quasi-intermediate I, p. 75, my translation)

Wei Duan celebrates the successful defense of her thesis together with her supervisor Dr Li Jia

Where does the ubiquity of English leave Bangladeshi Chinese language learners?

As one of my Bangladeshi friends complained: “My country has been colonized by Britain for over 200 years. I used to think I could escape from English control when I migrated to China, but you see what I’ve learned here? All about America!”

My friend has good reason to point out the Americanized orientation in China as exemplified in the Boya Chinese language textbooks. They construct a world where English and the USA are on top, Chinese and China are subordinate, and other languages and countries simply don’t exist. As such, these Chinese language textbooks surprisingly replicate English monolingual ways of seeing a multilingual world (Piller, 2016).

This erasure not only frustrates and denies international students of non-English backgrounds but also limits the potential of Chinese language learning as bridging China to the world. It is high time that a more inclusive approach should be adopted in Chinese language textbooks targeting international students of diverse backgrounds.

Reference

Piller, I. (2016). Monolingual ways of seeing multilingualism. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 11(1), 25-33. doi:10.1080/17447143.2015.1102921 [available open access] ]]> https://languageonthemove.com/can-chinese-language-learning-reinforce-english-supremacy/feed/ 25 22517 https://languageonthemove.com/preparing-filipino-accountants-to-communicate-in-global-workplaces/ https://languageonthemove.com/preparing-filipino-accountants-to-communicate-in-global-workplaces/#comments Mon, 09 Mar 2020 04:21:54 +0000 https://www.languageonthemove.com/?p=22359 How do universities in the Philippines prepare accounting students for communication in global workplaces?

Watch this research presentation by Pia Tenedero to find out.

This presentation was originally intended for the Georgetown University Roundtable (GURT) 2020 conference in Washington, D.C. Not only was Pia successful in having her abstract “Preparing Global South Accountants to Communicate in Global North Workplaces” selected for inclusion in the GURT 2020 program but she also received a highly competitive Macquarie University Postgraduate Research Fund travel grant to enable her to attend and share her research.

Imagine her disappointment when GURT 2020 had to be cancelled due to the global COVID-19 outbreak!

We are taking this opportunity to actually extend the reach of Pia’s conference presentation by making it available to a global audience. Consider this a virtual opportunity to attend Pia’s talk. Sit back at your leisure to watch her 20-minute presentation about “Preparing Global South Accountants to Communicate in Global North Workplaces”. And please feel free to post comments and questions below. Pia will be on stand-by over the next few weeks to respond to comments and questions. The presentation is part of her doctoral research and your feedback will help to support a high-quality submission later in the year.

Abstract

Preparing Global South Accountants to Communicate in Global North Workplaces

Pia Tenedero, Macquarie University

This paper investigates how universities in the Philippines prepare accounting students for communication in global workplaces. For some years now, the country has positioned itself as an emerging global leader in knowledge process outsourcing, providing offshored accounting services to companies in the Global North. The growing demand for communicatively competent accountants who can be deployed globally consequently places a greater onus on the education system to produce accounting graduates with these desired qualities. This paper examines the way “effective (global) communication” is constructed in two top-performing accounting schools in Manila. Using ethnographic data, I do this by first investigating how education authorities frame the notion of “effective communication” in accountancy program documents and by examining how students and teachers, in turn, enact this notion in classroom interactions. Analysis of the discursive and interactional construction of communication in accounting education shows tensions in ideologies about English and Filipino, which are differentially valued relative to students’ global opportunity and national identity, their future work and present learning goals, and their specialized knowledge and relational competence. Ideological tensions are reflected in the shifts in the framing of effective communication in curricular guidelines as closely tied to English and in the way local actors interpret and shape communication in the classrooms, where Filipino comes to the fore. The study has implications for the language instruction of future accountants aspiring to participate in the global enterprise.

Welcome message to the Aga Khan IV inscribed into the mountain, Pasu, Upper Hunza, Pakistan

Transnationalism is a notion that is both presumed to be clear whilst also recognised as in need of explanation. Perhaps we can talk about it as a keyword, in the sense of Williams (1976, 14) – as a term that is used in “interesting or difficult ways”. Transnationalism has been defined from myriad perspectives. For Levitt (2001, 196), it is “used to describe everything under the sun”; a fact “which seriously diminishes its explanatory power”. At the same time, it tends to take on the meaning of “another form of migration” (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002, 322), such that transnationalism is presumed to be the result of migration. Transnationalism is, from this vantage point, created through migration from one nation-state to another.

This emphasis on migration has accompanied the concept since it became popular in the social sciences in the 1990s, with scholars using “transnationalism” to describe the fact that immigrants “live their lives across borders and maintain their ties to home, even when their countries of origin and settlements are geographically distant” (Glick Schiller, Basch and Blanc-Szanton 1992, ix). In connection with a widely shared understanding that the world has globalised, the term tends to be used to draw attention to movements, flows and interconnections across nation-state boundaries. And these resultant ties and networks are recognised as having implications for all kinds of social practice, including language.

However, without denying the potential relevance of migration, in practice there is no necessary tie between migration and transnationalism. A person can migrate yet not maintain transnational networks. On the reverse, someone can have transnational ties yet not have migrated themselves. This means that someone can also feel and believe that they are transnational in the absence of migration. This is an argument Dahinden (2009) makes on the basis of research carried out in the Swiss city of Neuchâtel. And her research leads her to argue for the importance of including non-migrants in studies of transnationalism.

Sign describing renovation of traditional house by the Aga Khan Cultural Service Pakistan, Altit Fort, Central Hunza, Pakistan

Such a view also has implications for how we might think about language and transnationalism. As Blommaert (2010, 6) reminds us, movement is never across empty space. Through movement people come into contact with one another, and in doing so, their ways of speaking come into contact, too. Whilst these different ways of speaking co-exist in new environments, their co-existence is stratified. This means that languages are typically used and evaluated in relation to one another, such that hierarchies of use and perception emerge. However, if we follow Dahinden’s (2009) approach to transnationalism, the ways people use and orient towards particular languages can be influenced by “connection[s] (elsewhere)” (Clifford 1994, 322) even in the absence of migration. This is the case for many Ismaili Muslims with whom I spent time in a village in Hunza in northern Pakistan and the city of Khorog in eastern Tajikistan. Part of a community who are dispersed in over 25 countries around the world, many Ismailis in Hunza and Khorog are not mobile themselves. Yet, we can still think about them as transnational and this is relevant for understanding their attitudes towards English.

In a 2011 interview given with the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, the community’s spiritual, social and political leader since 1957, the Aga Khan IV, refers to an explicit “language policy” which made English the community’s official “second language”. Implemented in the 1960s and 1970s, the language policy is said to have been put in place in an attempt to enhance the “development potential” of Ismailis. During fieldwork amongst Ismailis in Hunza and Khorog, I explored how Ismailis appropriate English and whether their attitudes towards and views on English match those suggested in official discourse. Whilst it was readily apparent that English tends not to have second but rather third (in Central Hunza, after Burushaski and Urdu) or fourth (amongst ethnic Pamiris in Khorog, after Shughni, Russian and Tajik) language status, I found a shared stance on English. In both Hunza and Khorog, my interlocutors underscored the key role played by the Aga Khan for their attempts to learn English. The Aga Khan orders Ismailis to learn English. A 1960 farman (‘edict’) issued during his first visit to Hunza in 1960, for instance, calls upon his followers to “Think in English, speak in English and dream in English”; a message which has been rendered durable, by being printed onto physical signs which hang in classrooms in the broader region. However, it is also the fact that the Aga Khan uses English himself which is deemed important. Ismailis describe themselves as trying to learn English to understand what he tells his followers and to gain “direct access”. In using English and ordering Ismailis to learn English, the Aga Khan gives the language status as a potentially valuable economic resource, and my interlocutors share this perspective on its value. However, English also becomes entangled with issues of identity and with what we might label transnational “consciousness” (Vertovec 1999) or “subjectivity” (Dahinden 2009). As put by an elderly authority in Hunza, Zafar, English has “almost become a matter of faith for every Ismaili around the world”. Its ready adoption can, as he explained it to me, be associated with the Ismailis’ “intellectual faith”, which emphasises “process” not “product”. Or as suggested by Salma, a young woman from Hunza, whilst non-Ismailis are recognising the importance of English, “our community has left other communities far behind in this race of learning”.

Photos displayed in Altit Fort of the Aga Khan IV with Prince Charles, during their visit in 2006

Writing about diaspora, Clifford (1994, 322) underscores the importance not simply of connections elsewhere, but more specifically that it is “the connection (elsewhere) that makes a difference (here).” Yet, this is not particular to diaspora. It is possible for meaningful situated local differences to be forged through connections with an elsewhere. In this case, with the Aga Khan; with Ismailis who have migrated and returned, or with whom one communicates online; and with texts and documents that circulate across space and time. This is not to deny the relevance of mobility. And it is probable that Ismailis who are mobile will engage in language practices (e.g., language learning) in an attempt to facilitate their mobility and that they will, in turn, be linguistically affected by their mobility. However, having a particular orientation towards a language – English in this case – which surpasses the utilitarian and becomes entangled with identity as a result of connections elsewhere is not the result of migration. Transnationalism in the sense of migration should perhaps not then be used as a starting point for thinking about language; or if it is, we need to be aware of the fact that it might not be the relevant starting point for our interlocutors. It might thus not be the most relevant frame to explore language on the move, and on the reverse, Ismailis’ languages might be on the move even in the absence of migration.

References

Blommaert, J. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clifford, J. 1994. Diasporas. Cultural Anthropology 9, 302–338.
Dahinden, J. 2009. Are we all transnationals now? Network transnationalism and transnational subjectivity: The differing impacts of globalization on the inhabitants of a small Swiss city. Ethnic and Racial Studies 32.8, 1365–1386.
Glick Schiller, N., L. Basch and C. Blanc-Szanton. 1992. Towards a definition of transnationalism. Introductory remarks and research questions. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 645, ix–xiv.
Levitt, P. 2001. Transnational migration: Taking stock and future directions. Global Networks 1.3, 195–216.
Vertovec, S. 1999. Conceiving and researching transnationalism. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22.2, 447–462.
Williams, R. 1976. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Advertisement for Wall Street English Institute

“Do you speak English?” is a frequently asked question, which Saudi people must be prepared to answer with a confident “Yes!” when applying for a job or to a university. In Saudi Arabia, as in many other places, knowledge of English has become a major prerequisite for many positions and in numerous disciplines. This demand for English has opened the way for an explosion of private institutes teaching the English language, where English is regarded as a commercial product that can earn good money for the purveyor. It is therefore reasonable to expect that the promotional discourses disseminated by these institutions conceal language ideologies that shape learners’ beliefs regarding English learning and its teaching.

My master’s thesis explored the approaches that English language teaching institutes use to persuade their audience that they should learn English in their institution. It examines language ideologies by looking at how English language learning is presented in the online advertisements produced by these institutes, and at the ways in which they represent themselves to their audience. To do this, I analyse visuals and texts to see how institutions make use of a range of language resources in promoting their services.

The analysis of the institutes’ ads shows that, in their attempt to persuade a potential audience to enroll, they conceptualize English as a global language. For example, English learning is described as totally advantageous as it supposedly opens the gates to job opportunities, education and travel. English learning is also represented as fun, confidence-building, and personally empowering.

Advertisement for Adwaa Almarefah Institute

The findings also reveal concepts that simultaneously mystify and oversimplify English learning. For instance, native-English speaking teachers are described in idealistic terms; there are claims that the use of specific textbooks will guarantee successful language learning and that success in global English proficiency tests such as IELTS or TOFEL is assured.

To be presented with such ideologies must affect people’s beliefs about what English learning involves. The elevated position given to English in the ads must diminish the status of Arabic in the minds of the younger generation. Thus, the English language teaching industry in Saudi Arabia must consider an approach that avoids presenting English learning as a totally beneficial phenomenon. In addition, other misrepresentations, such as the value of a specific textbook or considering native-English speaking teachers as being the best, should be reconsidered by the industry as these representations may deceive English learners regarding the utility of other language textbooks or the characteristics of the ideal teacher.

My PhD research will expand on the study of the language ideologies underlying the promotional discourses of English language teaching institutes in Saudi Arabia. Videos, pictures and texts taken from the institutes’ websites and Twitter accounts will be included in the study. The thesis will also explore how audiences actually receive the promotional discourses of the institutions.

Reference

Alkhalil, S. F. A. (2018). Promoting English in Saudi Arabia: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Advertisements for Private English Language Teaching Institutes. (MRes), Macquarie University.

As its user population has exploded, however, the Internet’s linguistic repertoire inevitably has expanded, too, and transformed it into a multilingual space.

But how multilingual is the Internet? What languages other than English does it speak? Why these languages?

The development of the Wikipedia logo is a metaphor for the journey from English-monolingual to multilingual Internet (Source: Wikipedia)

These are some of the key questions explored in Internationalizing Internet Studies: Beyond Anglophone Paradigms. Published in 2009, this collection of articles celebrates the non-Western, non-English speaking face of the Internet that is often hidden from academia and the media limelight.

Editors Gerard Goggin and Mark McLelland challenge the tendency of communications and media scholarship to overemphasize the Anglophone-orientedness of online phenomena, taking for granted the multicultural and multilingual realities that persist alongside Western hegemony in virtual spaces. Using this skewed representation of the Internet as take-off point, the articles problematize whether the Internet truly bridges boundaries or, otherwise, creates other forms of division.

One obvious form of division online is the linguistic divide, which pertains to the differential valuing and representation of languages on the Internet. This issue is elaborated in the second part of the book—Language Communities Online. Through case studies of language practices in non-Western online communities, this section foregrounds languages other than English in the Internet and how the online space and these languages mutually shape each other.

In Chapter 5, Nanette Gottlieb presents the case of Japan:

While language use on the web in Japan, in terms of the selection of languages, is conservative overall with a strong monolingual bent, as dictated by national language policy, infrastructure, and cultural considerations, ludic use of the Japanese language itself online is multifaceted and far from conservative. (p. 65)

The scripts on the Wikipedia logo (Source: Wikipedia)

Gottlieb then describes Japanese language play in online messaging, which is exemplified in the use of emoticons as substitutes for verbal emotive expressions. Despite their banality as built-in features in hand-held gadgets and mobile messaging apps, emoticons can be valued as indexes of cultural distinction.

Subsequent chapters discuss the more serious function of the Internet as instrument for linguistic resistance and cultural preservation. Chapter 7 focuses on Welsh-speaking Internet users promoting Cymraeg as language of choice in their websites, forums, blogs, and social networking sites to assert its status as a contemporary language. The author, Daniel Cunliffe, argues that the success of this language movement can be attributed to institutional policy (the Welsh Language Act) and technical backing (software localization). Despite not having the same quality of support, the case of Catalan, articulated in Chapter 8, shows that the Internet can be a potent tool for the propagation of a minoritized language. The authors, Josep Lluis Mico and Pere Masip, partly echo the insights of Professor Josu Amezaga in his lecture about minority and minoritized languages and evinces the power of new media to facilitate the resurgence of languages silenced in traditional media platforms.

The final chapters in this sociolinguistic section focus on the intersection between language use and identity formation. The link between language and identity particularly in the context of migrant experience echoes the theme of the New Finnish Grammar, which was also reviewed for the Language-on-the-Move Reading Challenge. Chapters 9 and 10 talk about how specific groups of migrants use language online to define aspects of their identity, which may be displaced and denied in the “real world” offline.

Urmila Goel examines the Indernet (www.theinder.net), a website that uses German language but which is primarily an Indian space. Through this forum, second generation Indians in Germany, who are othered as neither of India nor of Germany, find a virtual home where their transnational identity is accepted. Meanwhile, Ljilijana Gavrilovic talks about Serbian refugees, for whom “language is the primary element of identification” (p.147) and who use their home language online to assert their pre-refugee identities.

Overall, I found the recognition of the Internet as a beyond-Western phenomenon refreshing. The descriptive articles, whilst not equally engaging, provided information that made me more conscious of what and how languages are used online, by whom, and for what end. Of course, I was silently disappointed that Philippine languages were not mentioned in this conversation, but so were a host of other languages that are certainly represented in some corner or thread of this wide virtual web today. As an introductory reading on multilingual practices in cyberspace, however, the book succeeded in defamiliarizing the English-dominant Internet and inspiring a fresh curiosity for its linguistic repertoire.

The website of Hohhot Baita International Airport provides information in Chinese and English but not in Mongolian

Update, Sept 16, 2020: A Mongolian translation of this blog post is now available here. Translated by Cholmon Khuanuud.

In April 2016, a Mongolian family missed their flight at Baita International Airport in Hohhot, the capital city of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR), an autonomous region within China. People missing their flights happens all the time, of course, in every corner of the world. However, this mishap made national headlines and became symbolic of the struggle faced by speakers of small languages such as Mongolian vis-à-vis a large national language such as Chinese and global English. It demonstrates how even Mongolian, one of the official languages of IMAR, can be sacrificed to the discourses and practices of global English.

Let me relate the incident: an elderly woman from Shiliingol League (also spelled “Xilingol” in English) in mid-eastern Inner Mongolia required medical attention that was not available in her hometown and had to fly to Hohhot for the procedure. Her son and grandson accompanied her to provide support. Mother and son are both monolingual in Mongolian, the official language of IMAR (along with Chinese). The grandson, who brought this story to the attention of Mongols across the country, is bilingual in Mongolian and Chinese. None of the three speaks any English, a language that is irrelevant to people in Shiliingol League, as it is to people in many places around the world.

On their way back home from Hohhot to Shiliingol this family arrived at the airport in good time but missed their flight when they could not make it to the gate on time. As the grandson relates the story, they missed the flight for two reasons.

Map of Inner Mongolia (Source: TravelChinaGuide)

First, announcements at the airport were only provided in Chinese and English but not in Mongolian. This made it impossible for them to obtain timely information. When the Chinese announcement was made, the young man happened to use the bathroom. On his return, his grandmother told him that the loudspeaker had just chattered something in Chinese. A few seconds later, the English announcement for the flight was made but, naturally, they did not think it would be relevant to their flight within IMAR and they could not understand it anyways.

Second, by the time they realized their flight was being called up, an excessive security check caused them further delay. The grandmother was asked to remove her scarf and two layers of winter coats and was checked from head to toe. As no one else was subject to such excessive scrutiny except the old woman wearing minority dress, it is reasonable to assume that the family was the victim of racial profiling.

Realizing they had missed the last flight for the day was distressing, particularly as they had no idea how to spend the night with the sick elderly lady. They approached the service desk to ask for help. There, they received the following response, which infuriated the young man:

This is not Mongolia; this is Inner Mongolia. In Inner Mongolia we have to speak Chinese, it is our official language. Of course, English is also our official language. [my translation]

He has shared his frustration on social media:

After hearing this, my heart was struck as if by ice. It is unbearable. My Chinese is not good enough to argue with the service agent, although I know very clearly that Chinese is the national and official language, and Mongolian is the official language of Inner Mongolia together with Chinese. English is definitely not an official language. [my translation]

Then he continues:

This is my home but why does it look like the home of someone else? Is Britain my country? Is Britain my home? Why do we have to use English? Why can’t we have a service in Mongolian? [my translation]

The young man’s account was shared widely by Mongols, as was his anger. Luckily, IMAR’s Mongolian language regulation and guidelines actually stipulate the use of Mongolian in the public service: government offices and institutions have to be staffed by reasonable numbers of Mongolian and Chinese bilinguals, even if the story shows the gap between the language policy and its implementation (see also Grey, 2017, for another Chinese case study).

In the end, the story had a happy conclusion. The airport apologized to the family and reimbursed them. Even more importantly, Mongolian language announcements are now being offered at Hohhot’s Baita International Airport.

In this concept image of Hohhot Baita International Airport on the designer’s website, the predominance of white travelers is symbolic of the vision of the airport as a “global” rather than “home” space

“The discourses and practices of global English produce an orientation to the global at the expense of the local”, argues Ingrid Piller in her book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice (2016, p. 202). The incidence clearly demonstrates that the spread of English not just further subordinates the oppressed but also deprives them of their language rights on their own land, where they are, at least, the titular nationality. The presence of English in this Inner Mongolian airport gives this peripheral region which vies for investment and economic development an international and advanced outlook. The motivation and desire behind the replacement of Mongolian with English resembles what Bulag observes with relation to the replacement of the Mongolian administrative term aimag (盟, “league”) since the 1980s:

Cities have emerged as the centres where industrial miracles and ‘actions’ occur, pointing towards a future utopia, departing from Mao’s ideological ambivalence, and are represented in the media as an embodiment of modernity replete with much of the palette of global capitalist renderings of “modernity” and its radically persuasive imagery of the good life, progress and development. Such a modernity is what I will call alter/native modernity, that is, not just an alternative Chinese modernity, but one which hinges on altering the native Mongol cultural and political institutions and properties (Bulag, 2002, p. 198).

The presence of English instead of Mongolian at Hohhot airport shares so much similarity with the replacement of the “backward” Mongolian administrative names with modern capital-desiring cities. Or as Piller states, “the promotion of English is tied to an external orientation to development”, which ultimately serves only the interests of global and local elites.

However, in the context of Inner Mongolia, the promotion of English at the expense of Mongolian in public space does more than serve the interests of the small elite; it simultaneously delivers a severe blow to all Mongols. The public presence of Mongolian signifies the “remaining token degree of autonomy” (Bulag, 2002, p. 224) of Mongols; and the destruction of these remaining token means the loss of home. Or, as the young man in his account moans, it begins to look like someone else’s home.

Related content

Access explorations of the linguistic landscape at other airports here.

References

Bulag, U. E. (2002). From Yeke-juu league to Ordos municipality: settler colonialism and alter/native urbanization in Inner Mongolia. Provincial China, 7(2), 196-234. doi:10.1080/1326761032000176122

Grey, A. (2017). How do language rights affect minority languages in China? An ethnographic investigation of the Zhuang minority language under conditions of rapid social change. (PhD), Macquarie University.

Piller, I. (2016). Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

“This is English”, a shop assistant told me.

Language is literally “on the move” in the writing on clothing. We’ve all seen it but may not have taken much notice. It deserves attention as an increasingly visible and fashionable type of “banal cosmopolitanism”, which “refers to mundane discourses that enact globalization in everyday life”.

Wearable text was certainly part of everyday life in Wuhan, China, where I lived the last half year. Alphabetic letters on a garment, in particular, jumped out from the wearer’s surrounding linguistic environment, which consisted mainly of Mandarin written in simplified characters, and standing out from the crowd may have been exactly the reason the wearer chose letter-emblazoned clothes. This was articulated by one garment itself, on a breast pocket I saw when I looked up from my noodles over a cafeteria table one lunchtime, which read: “Fascinating//CROSSD CULTURAL HERO//96”

The wearer of this textile text literally becomes more “fascinating” (or distinct, in Bourdieuian terms). Wearing “foreign” language is an archetypal example of the “consumption of spatially distant places, [and] signifiers of cultural diversity, and opening up of lifestyles to new experiential spaces and horizons”, which is how Adam Jaworski (2015, p. 220) describes banal cosmopolitanism.

Wearing language is a personal, but often banal, embodiment of cosmopolitanism and I am interested how distant places and cultures are transformed into graphics, printed onto textiles, bought and worn in China. Of all the scripts and languages I saw on clothing, the alphabetic script, and recognizably (if not always 100% correctly spelled) English words predominate.  Wearing English is vastly more popular than wearing any other foreign language in Wuhan, but also vastly more popular than wearing Mandarin. For months, I took note of what I saw on sale in shops and worn in classrooms, restaurants, buses and trains. When I saw a textile bearing a Chinese or other non-English text, I then kept a rough count of how many items of clothing bearing English I saw until I next came upon a Chinese or other non-English wearable text. Never were the numbers even close: I saw many more English-emblazoned clothes every day.

Scattered letters on a jacket

The types of textile texts I observed can be subdivided for analysis:

1. Brand names (both foreign and Chinese) and trade-marked slogans;
2. Stand-alone messages that are not readily connected to any one brand;
3. Decorative use of writing without forming words

English predominates

In all these categories, English was more popular than any other language, although I saw some Chinese, French, Russian, Latin (Carpe Diem and Veni, Vidi, Vici, so arguably English borrowings from Latin), a little Korean and Dutch, and some non-languages, which I will come back to. As one of my students observed, the language her peers wear is “usually English. It looks more fashionable. But some extremely popular [Chinese] characters will be printed on clothes”.

Even Chinese brand names were often written on clothing in Romanized pinyin script instead of characters. For example, the puzzling ZYGW and PNADA on clothes or the pinyin brand name YUYUANPAI on a suitcase. This practice clearly positions Chinese brands within an international fashion of alphabetic brand names and logos, even if these Chinese brands are targeting the domestic market.

Examples in the second category ranged from short messages like TRENDY, Woosh! or fashion to whole sentences. For example, I saw someone wearing shoes with this long phrase printed on them: “Lets be [obscured] YOUTHFUL [obscured] LEADING THE [obscured] MORE CONFIDEN [obscured]”.

Texts on shoes, especially long texts like the sentence above, are uncommon on shoes in English-dominant places I’ve been to, but a more common sight in China. Similarly, work attire and men’s formal attire would not normally carry text in Australia, but I saw, for example, a middle-aged man wearing a work blazer embroidered with Autumn on a high speed train to Wuhan. The unspoken conventions about wearable text are of course different across cultures, and part of constructing locally-meaningful divisions and prejudices. I argue that in China, the local symbolic power of foreign languages affects the conventions about which clothes are appropriate for bearing text. English, in particular, is desirable enough as a mark of distinction to break into new micro-spaces (like a shoe or a work blazer), whereas foreign languages have less symbolic power and would therefore be less fashionable – maybe even inappropriate – if printed on similar garments in an English-dominant country like Australia.

Examples in the second category (stand-alone messages) abound as the butt of jokes on the internet because of the preponderance of language-like but incorrect or nonsensical phrases. I could add a belt I saw for sale shouting NANAN!!!, an overcoat reading Courtesy to a lady is a gentleman’s and pyjamas emblazoned with Slaap lekkeri (Google tells me this might be slightly off Dutch for “sleep well”).

However, I have long been intrigued rather than amused by these: are clothing manufacturers keen to identify their products with international fashion/culture/language but unwilling to pay for English language work in the design process? Are such language services difficult for designers and manufacturers to access for some reason other than cost? That is, do wearable texts reveal unequal access to linguistic resources, rather than differing aesthetics?

I asked a shop keeper such questions when I saw a top with the lettering “ADD SHE SSR ESSEG” in a relatively expensive women’s clothing store, which had correct English on other garments. I asked the shop assistant what this said, and she responded that it was English. Aware of my disbelief, she starting picking a glued-on letter off and explaining they could all come off. I said the top made no sense in English and she responded that it looked good, though. In a contrasting example, the assistant at a smaller, cheaper shop informed me that she was aware that a nonsense textile text was not English but, even so, it was selling well.

With its irregular spelling this “Vivienne” on a pyjama top is difficult to read (and its meaning even less clear).

Language play

Do designers and manufacturers simply not care about language quality assurance because they can sell the clothes regardless of language errors or oddities, and at a better price than clothes without any words? Or is “bad English” actually the design goal?

Playing with language can make it even more eye-catching. The brand Yishion is widespread in China and is a good example of such multilingual play: Yi is the pinyin of the Mandarin for clothes, and is combined with the English word fashion.

Whole playful phrases are rarer but include fun examples such as a female student’s overcoat, which read “Words//Boys//Empty words”; in another example, also observed on campus, a female student was wearing a jacket, which announced in French “J’ai perdu//Ma veste” (“I have lost my jacket”).

Adding visual value

Some of these fashion choices may cause you to ask “did the wearer know what the text said, or even that the text was (or was not) English?” That is, what if some wearable texts are worn for aesthetic or price-point reasons, and not “read”? The third category allows us to look at this further, as these are texts without an explicit meaning such as the scattered letters on the coat in the image.

Even so, these texts still have an indexical meaning as symbols of “English”, i.e. international, global culture. That is, these texts highlight the re-purposing of language into visual design resources; it is precisely the stripping back of meaning that makes this archetypal banal cosmopolitanism. To have no lexical meaning to wearers and viewers, and no desire for it, represents the ultimate indicator of language as bearer not of any one ethno-national identity; but of global consumer identity.

In certain markets like China, “foreignized, visual-linguistic forms” (Jaworski 2015, p. 217) are a more saleable commodity than local languages. As the “fascinating crossd cultural hero 96” in the cafeteria explained to me, he did not know the meaning of the text on his jacket but bought it because it looked 《好酷》(“cool”). In other words, the medium is the message, and the message is membership in the global. Or, as one of my students sighed: “sometimes people use the letters just because they worship foreign things”.

And readers, please feel free to tweet us further examples under the hashtag #wear_language (@Lg_on_the_Move).

Related content

• Banal cosmopolitanism
• More on banal cosmopolitanism
• Is English a local language in Berlin?
• Banal nationalism and the internationalization of higher education
• Halloween mystery

The oil slick as seen from space (Source: Wikipedia)

The British decision to exit the European Union (EU) in 2016 came as a surprise to many. In the lead up to the referendum, nationalist discourses were successfully mobilized to promote a vote for the anti-globalisation campaign. Nationalism proved to have an ongoing appeal in our global world.

But these nationalist discourses did not come out of nowhere in 2016 nor were they solely emanating from the sphere of politics.

In a recently published paper, “‘The BP is a great British company’: The discursive transformation of an environmental disaster into a national economic problem”, I examine the relationship between discourses of corporate responsibility and nationalism in the media coverage of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Surprisingly, nationalist discourses featured heavily in reports about that disaster.

The media play a powerful role in shaping our perceptions of global issues, including environmental disasters. The media may obstruct or support interests of various stakeholders, and do not necessarily educate us in an uninterested way.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the worst industrial disaster in US history and 4.9 million barrel crude were released into the environment. In addition to the huge immediate damage, long-term effects are as yet unknown but are likely to include oil remaining in the food chain for generations to come.

The disaster was the fault of BP (short for “British Petroleum”), a multinational corporation headquartered in the UK operating the oil well, who was found to be “primarily responsible for the oil spill because of its gross negligence and reckless conduct.”

So how did the media represent corporate responsibility in their coverage of the event?

From perpetrator to victim

Comparing UK and US media, I found that the former were less concerned with the environmental impact than the consequences for British interests and even cast BP in the role of victim rather than perpetrator. The Telegraph, for instance, headlined: “Barack Obama’s attacks on BP hurting British pensioners.” The article continued:

Barack Obama has been accused of holding “his boot on the throat” of British pensioners after his attacks on BP were blamed for wiping billions off the company’s value.

The corporation was metaphorically described as a person and depicted as vulnerable and in need of protection:

We need to ensure that BP is not unfairly treated – it is not some bloodless corporation.

It is not unusual for corporate responsibility to be obscured in the media, particularly if no individuals can be clearly identified as “bad guys”. However, British media went beyond that by casting BP as victim rather than perpetrator, and making it stand for a particularly vulnerable segment of the population, namely “British pensioners”.

As a consequence, solidarity was not rallied with the victims of the disaster but the perpetrator:

I want to see the UK government defend the company while it is under this attack.

This blame-shifting where the perpetrator turned victim meant that another scapegoat had to be found to fit the conventional narrative. In this case the head of another state, US president Barack Obama, was cast in that role. This further enhanced the economic and nationalist framing of the environmental disaster:

Although fund managers accept that BP must pay compensation for the oil spill and the damage it is doing to parts of America’s coastline, they argue that the cost to the company’s market value from the president’s criticism is far outweighing the clean-up costs.

In sum, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill was told in some UK media as a national-economic problem for Britain rather than a global environmental disaster. In the process, corporate responsibility was obscured and readers were led to see the issue as one of national threat to themselves. Reporting the news in this way aligns the readers with corporate economic interests by framing these as national interests.

This framing was then available to be mobilized in the Brexit campaign five years later.

Beyond the British case, my study is also relevant to the revival of nationalist and separatist discourses in other contexts, which similarly obscure that nationalism is entirely irrelevant to the big issues of our time as they pose existential threats to life on this planet. Like an oil spill, these do, after all, not stop at national borders …

Reference

Cramer, R. (2017) ‘The BP is a great British company’: The discursive transformation of an environmental disaster into a national economic problem. Discourse & Communication, 0(0), n/a-n/a. doi:10.1177/1750481317745744