Image from a university website

“An amazing student experience awaits you!” – “a multicultural vibrant experience” in a “stunning landscape” covered by “year-round sunshine.”

These phrases do not come from a tourist brochure, but the websites of Australian universities. They are accompanied by stunning images of urban or natural landscapes and aim to attract international students.

International education is often hailed as a way to keep economies growing as higher education has shifted towards a commercialized model. However, the efforts to increase enrolment numbers are also accompanied by worries that in the haste to attract more students, the admission requirements – in particular that of English language proficiency – are lowered.

Gatekeeping

Countries built on immigration are looking to recover the immigration loss caused by the pandemic years and the ensuing border restrictions. A new proposal to overhaul the Australian visa system has attracted attention as the country is forecast to grow by 715,000 from 2022 to 2024.

International students are affected, of course, as student visas and possible immigration pathways attached to students visas are discussed in the report. In particular, the English language requirements for admission into university courses are recommended to be raised from a “low base” of Band 5.5 on the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) to be able to meet the language demands of the labour market after graduation.

We have addressed this deficit approach to international students before. Recent research by Ingrid Piller and I on university admission requirements found that English language proficiency requirements maintain exclusionary practices of international students by setting up the binary categories of tested and ‘inherent’ English language proficiency (read more about it here).

But how do universities reconcile these two opposing forces of, on the one hand, needing to attract international students for commercial reasons, and on the other, setting up linguistic requirements as a gatekeeping mechanism?

An idealized lifestyle

To answer this question, in my recently published paper at Higher Education Research & Development, I turned to university websites. I wanted to explore what role language plays in the admission process caught between these two opposing forces. And how does it affect the communication of English language proficiency requirements to prospective international applicants. The analysis went beyond looking at content and text and included the multimodal features of the websites: naming and positioning of webpages, the visuals accompanying the texts and, of course, the language use of the English language proficiency requirement webpages.

Image from a university website

I found that the language use, which ranged from highly formal to conversational, references the authority of the law, thus adds objectivity and authority to the requirements. The paper provides an analysis of how the generic features of legal language use are applied to the educational context and interact with marketing discourses.

The visuals on these webpages create a different effect, though.

They serve to depict an idealized student lifestyle to which English language proficiency is a vehicle. The pictures and videos on the websites analysed depict students engaging in various social situations and leisure activities such as shopping, eating out or engaging in activities at the beach. The participants in these activities are depicted in engaging in intercultural situations (indexed by looks of various ethnicities) and enjoying each other’s company, communicating with ease.

In reality, these are activities international students report to struggle with because of social isolation or the difficulty to use English in everyday situations. These visuals of ‘success’ legitimize the English language proficiency requirements, where participants become role models or protagonists in a video footage.

What effect does this representation have on the concept of English language proficiency used as an admission requirement?

A simplified English language proficiency and an accessible student experience

Firstly, English language proficiency gets simplified through the objectivity of simple numerical scores and the authority of legal discourse. After all, if the university policy states that an IELTS Band 6 is  adequate to study in English and the students have this level, they should have no problem with their studies or socialization – a view commonly held.

At the same time, the website visuals communicate a desirable student experience. This is both a misrepresentation of the language proficiency needed for further studies, which in fact all students need to develop, not just internationals, and the realities of the international student experience.

As much as we would appreciate “year-round sunshine”, we need to acknowledge that the weather in Australia is more nuanced than that.

Likewise, university admission requirement communication should indicate that English language proficiency is not a fixed ‘product’ described by the applicant’s IELTS score but rather a process, and acknowledge that discipline-specific language proficiency may need to be developed by all students during their studies.

References

Bodis, A. (2023). Gatekeeping v. marketing: English language proficiency as a university admission requirement in Australia. Higher Education Research & Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2023.2174082
Bodis, A. (2021). The discursive (mis) representation of English language proficiency: International students in the Australian media. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 44(1), 37-64.
Bodis, A. (2021). ‘Double deficit’ and exclusion: Mediated language ideologies and international students’ multilingualism. Multilingua, 40(3), 367-392. doi:doi:10.1515/multi-2019-0106
Piller, I., & Bodis, A. (2022). Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission. Language in Society. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404522000689

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Editor’s note: There is a Chinese saying that two heads are better than one (三个臭皮匠赛过一个诸葛亮). This proverb emphasizes both collective wisdom and the value of grassroots work. At its best, teaching is both. In this mini-series, Dr LI Jia and Ms LV Yong, Yunnan University, share how teaching about linguistic diversity has changed their understanding of linguistic diversity. Specifically, they summarize the findings of 77 small research projects undertaken by their undergraduate students. These research projects provide insight into the multifaceted and dynamic language experiences of Chinese youth from Yunnan province, a highly diverse border region in the southwest of China. Following on from their recent post about the revalorization of Chinese dialects, the second article of this 3-part series explores the state of minority languages in China.

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Maoduoli candy from Yunnan is a huge success. Its name means “bright boy” in the Dai language.

Yunnan province is one of the most linguistically diverse provinces in China. It also ranks near the bottom for degree of socioeconomic development in China. With China’s rapid development in the world economy, Yunnan is seeking to capitalize on its linguistic and cultural heritage to integrate itself into China’s regional expansion. Tourism is one of the three pillar industries in Yunnan, and offers associated business opportunities related to minority languages.

Ethnic minority people’s languages and their cultural products increasingly come to be seen as a form of capital to boost the local economy.

This is apparent in the names and images of local foods, as Xiong Qingqing (熊青青) has found. Xiong finds that ethnic minority languages transcribed in Mandarin scripts can create exotic and authentic feelings among Chinese customers who are keen to purchase these commodities. Maoduoli (猫哆哩) is such a case in point: this snack made from local fruit is named after a word from the Dai language, where “Maoduoli” means “bright boy”. Since it was first sold online in 2011, Maoduoli has gained such nationwide popularity that there was a significant rise in its Baidu index from 300 to 2500 within half a year.

Ethnic minority people lack interest in maintaining their heritage languages

The commodification of ethnic minority languages has been studied by many scholars both in China and the world. Some of our students are ethnic minorities themselves, but what they have observed is quite different from the official discourse of celebrating diversity via tourism. Their studies indicate that ethnic minority people themselves do not have much confidence in maintaining their heritage languages.

Wang Liping’s (王丽萍) study is based on the language practices of Bai people from Heqing, Yunnan. Despite the tourist discourse in promoting Bai language and cultural products, the local Bai people see it as challenging to revitalize their heritage language. There are a number of reasons for this.

First, the Bai language in Heqing has no written script and Bai people do not have any religious belief or other strong ideological desire to maintain their cultural practices.

Second, Heqing’s geographical location between two popular tourist destinations (Dali and Lijiang) have actually sped up the loss of Bai. This is due to the fact that more and more translocal migrants settle down in Heqing and marry locals. In the process, Putonghua replaces Bai as the medium for family and wider communication.

Third, many local Bai people migrate to more developed cities in the east of China for better prospects.

Finally, despite the discursive valorization of Bai as a commodity, the language has not been legitimized in the mainstream educational system.

For all these reasons, Bai people do not find it worthwhile to pass Bai on to their younger generation. Instead, the prefer to invest in Putonghua and English. According to Wang’s study with Bai people of different age groups, young people between 7 and 18 have only receptive but no productive knowledge of Bai language, even though they live in a Bai-centered region.

Constructing ethnic minority language as soft power

Despite the lack of interest in minority language maintenance on the part of minority groups, local governments are keen to promote these languages by displaying ethnic minority language signage at tourist destinations (see also Yang Hongyan’s study) and other public spaces. Such top-down approaches to revitalizing ethnic minority languages and cultural practices become more prominent in Yunnan’s border regions such as 西双版纳 (Xishuangbana; see map), a Dai-centered city bordering Myanmar and Laos.

Bai Qiongfang’s (白琼芳) analysis of official documents about the promotion of Dai and Dai culture indicates that Xishuangbanna is becoming a window targeting its neigbouring countries where there are many cross-border ethnic groups living on both sides of the border and sharing a similar language and culture.

Dai people constitute the majority in Xishuangbanna. The Dai are called Shan in Myanmar, and Dai language is also similar to Laotian, the national language of Laos. Given its geopolitical importance, Dai language is not only promoted as commodity but more importantly as “soft power of the borderland”. By making use of digital information technologies and social media transmission, the quality of spreading Dai language and culture has been greatly enhanced, and many national projects and funding supports have been granted to revitalize Dai language and culture via TV/radio/movies and by compiling Dai textbooks and a dictionary.

The local government has even initiated a new policy requiring local leaders and civilians to wear ethnic minority clothes and accessories for at least two days a week.

The increasing visibility of minority languages and cultural practices in China and across its border constitutes a new perspective on China’s language practices in which ethnic minority languages are part of China’s soft power projection, revitalization of the local economy and reinforcement of minority groups’ cultural confidence. However, it remains to be seen whether the discourse of constructing ethnic minority languages as commodity and symbolic identity is actually beneficial to ethnic minorities and does not create more tensions and discontinuities within ethnic minorities and cross-border groups.

Despite the discourse of embracing diversity and having abundant linguistic and cultural resources in Yunnan, we should not exaggerate the idea of multicultural prosperity.

Based on our decades of teaching experience, we are well aware that only a very small number of ethnic minority students can overcome the linguistic and social barriers to being accepted into university. English still constitutes a huge barrier for their access to equal education especially in remote and minority-centered regions of Yunnan. An in-depth and longitudinal study is needed in future in order to understand how ethnic minority students might get empowered through education and at work. What our students Zhu Ziying (朱子莹), Li Jincheng(李锦程), Liu Zongtuo(刘宗拓),Bi Yanming(毕砚茗) and Li Jia have been doing in recent months and in the years to come is to investigate how language shapes the educational and employment trajectories of Yi ethnic minority students and hopefully our study might contribute to the linguistic diversity at the borderlands.

In the next and final part of this series, we’ll focus more on these cross-border languages and explore foreign language learning of languages other than English in China.

Related content

• Baioud, Gegentuul, Will education reform wipe out Mongolian language and culture?
• Grey, Alexandra, How do language rights affect minority languages in China?
• Li, Jia and Lv, Yong, Power to Fangyan!
• Ma, Yuanmeng, Empowerment of Chinese Muslim women through Arabic?
• Piller, Ingrid, Access denied

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.

“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

In this post, I will explore the global flow of remittance monies and the language practices to which they are related.

Remittances are big business

The amount of remittances – monies transferred internationally by individual international migrants to family members in their home countries – is staggering: according to World Bank data, in 2016, migrants remitted USD 601 billion to their families back home.

Migrants in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are amongst the world’s top senders: in 2015, Indian nationals alone transferred USD 13 billion from the UAE to their families back home; another USD 5 billion were sent to Pakistan and USD 4 billion to the Philippines.

Multillingual money transfer ad in English, Hindi, Bangla, Urdu, Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil

Staggering as these totals may be, they are made up of relatively small individual sums: the average value of an individual transfer from the UAE is 700 dirham, that’s about USD 190. Workers remit about 70% of their salary.

During Ramadan 70% is not enough, though, as Abdullah, a construction worker from Pakistan, explains:

“There is a need for more money in every home for Eid, it’s a necessity,” [he] said. He earns Dh700 [USD 190] but sent home an extra Dh200 [USD 54] on top of the Dh500 [USD 136] he sends each month. “I budget and save, and keep less for my needs. A gift must be given and everyone at home must get a gift.”

That it is very modest amounts that add up to form these large remittance streams is further illustrated by Zubair, a factory worker from India:

“Some people borrow but then they spend the whole year paying back,” said Zubair. “I try and save Dh30-40 [USD 8-11] more a month, so I can send more money now. Slowly, slowly that is how you can keep money aside, but it will not stay with you for long, so best send it home quickly.”

Bank ad offering to transfer “happiness” from Dubai to India

Languages in the UAE

The official language of the UAE is Arabic and the de facto language is English. This overview statement hides as much as it reveals, as I explain in a chapter about the urban sociolinguistics of Dubai. One of the complexities the statement hides is the fact that the UAE’s huge migrant population of around 85% speak a great variety of languages other than Arabic and English.

As is true of most migrant-receiving countries, migrant languages are, by and large, hidden and rendered invisible in public space. Migrant languages do, of course, appear in the signage of small ethnic businesses but they are excluded from “mainstream” commercial spaces: in the large supermarket chains, the shopping malls or the multinational eatery chains one will look in vain for any signs of languages other than Arabic and English.

For people on salaries such as those of Abdullah and Zubair, these venues have nothing to offer and just as these men are excluded from Dubai’s glitzy image, their languages are.

Multilingual money transfer businesses

While the signage in each and every corporate business in the UAE is dominated by English and, to a lesser extent, Arabic, there is one industry that is an exception and where extensive multilingualism is prominently displayed: money transfer businesses.

The ubiquitous retail outlets of global money transfer service providers constitute one domain where Dubai’s other languages have a strong presence in the public linguistic landscape. Given the figures cited above, it is not surprising that money transfer businesses in the UAE always seem to be doing a brisk business and on Fridays long queues can often be observed as migrants use their weekly day off to send remittances back home.

Money exchanges advertise their services in many different languages. It is not unusual to find advertising materials printed in up to seven languages in a variety of scripts.

Ad for moneygram.ae

What do remittances buy?

The main purposes for which remittance monies are used are education, emergencies and gifts, according to a survey by Western Union. These material uses are loaded with an emotional connection in remittance advertising, where the money sent home constitutes the migrant’s key link to family left behind. Remitting money is invested with the promise of belonging, connection and happiness.

The lives of migrants are often schizophrenic and caught up in transnational circuits where different parts of the migrant’s identity are anchored in different places. The money migrants send and Dubai’s other languages provide a link between their economic identities in their destination and their familial identities in their place of origin.

Want to learn more about urban sociolinguistics?

Watch out for this new book on urban sociolinguistics due to be published by Routledge later this year:

Smakman, D. & P. Heinrich. Eds. 2018. Urban Sociolinguistics: The City as a Linguistic Process and Experience. London: Routledge.

From the blurb:

From Los Angeles to Tokyo, Urban Sociolinguistics is a sociolinguistic study of twelve urban settings around the world. Building on William Labov’s famous New York study, the authors demonstrate how language use in these areas is changing based on belief systems, behavioural norms, day-to-day rituals and linguistic practices.

Each chapter is written by a key figure in sociolinguistics and presents the personal stories of individuals using linguistic means to go about their daily communications in diverse sociolinguistic systems such as:

• extremely large urban conurbations like Cairo, Tokyo and Mexico City
• smaller areas like Paris and Sydney
• lesser developed areas (from an urbanisation point of view) such as the Western Netherlands Randstad area and the Kohima area in India.

Providing new perspectives on crucial themes, such as language choice and language contact, code-switching and mixing, language and identity, language policy and planning and social networks, this is key reading for students and researchers in the areas of multilingualism and super-diversity within sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and urban studies.

A preprint of the chapter about Dubai – “Language in the ethnocratic, corporate and mobile city” (pp. 77-94) – is available here.

The national character stereotypes of intercultural communication advice are completely mono-dimensional and not inflected by any other aspects of their identities. They are presented as free of class, gender, ethnicity, regional background, personal traits or any other individuating aspects of their being. Much intercultural communication advice is so obviously lacking in common sense – people obviously are rarely, if ever, stick figure representatives of national stereotypes – that it is intriguing to consider why the genre is so successful and continues to flourish.

I suspect it is due to a mismatch between what intercultural communication advice says it does and what it actually does. Ostensibly, intercultural communication advice aims to teach readers better communication skills and to make them more aware of difference and diversity. However, the genre actually does a lot of additional discursive work: it sustains the nation as a key category, presents national belonging as overriding any other aspects of identity, and, consequently, renders other aspects of identity invisible – in short, intercultural communication advice constitutes a prime example of banal nationalism.

The term ‘banal nationalism’ was introduced by the social psychologist Michael Billig ‘to cover the ideological habits which enable the established nations of the West to be reproduced’ (Billig, 1995, p. 6).

Many people think of nationalism as extremism. However, Billig points out that nationalism is the endemic condition of established nation states, that it is enacted and re-enacted daily in many mundane, almost unnoticeable, hence ‘banal’, ways. It is these banal forms of nationalism that lead people to identify with a nation. Examples of banal nationalism are everywhere although they often go unnoticed. Typically, the discourses of banal nationalism emanate directly from state institutions. They are then taken up by non-state actors and become enmeshed with a range of discourses that at first glance have nothing to do with nationalism at all, such as intercultural communication advice.

Page from Persian primer: reading passage ‘We are the children of Iran’

The discourses of banal nationalism are often embedded in the practices of state institutions. Schooling is a prime example of the way in which children are socialised into a national identity. It is school where we become members of the nation and where we are taught to think of ourselves as nationals. The Pledge of Allegiance in many public schools in the USA is an oft-quoted example. On the other side of the world, in Australia, many public schools hold a weekly assembly, where the school community comes together to listen to a speech, watch a performance or be part of an award ceremony. The joint singing of the national anthem plays a central part in the school assembly. In yet another example, Indonesian public schools conduct a flag-raising event every Monday morning and also on every 17th of the month (in commemoration of the national Independence Day, which is celebrated on 17 August).

In addition to ceremonial activities such as these, the socialisation into the nation is also part of teaching content in many schools around the world: there are the lyrics of national poems that are used to teach students how to read and write, the national anthem that is taught in music and recital lessons, the focus of much history teaching on national history, or the valorisation of the national language as the only legitimate medium of educational activities.

Banal nationalism on a cornflakes box

Schooling is widely controlled by the state and the fact that it is used as a vehicle to socialise students into the nation is maybe not particularly surprising. However, the discourses of banal nationalism also emanate from less likely sources. Billig’s (1995) example of the daily weather forecast on TV is a particularly convincing one: the daily weather forecast is usually presented against an image of the national map – as if national borders were meaningful to weather patterns. Banal nationalism in sports has also been widely studied: sporting competitions are typically framed as national competitions and most spectators are more likely to support co-national competitors on the basis of their nationality rather than using criteria such as sportsmanship or elegance of the game.

Yet another domain of banal nationalism can be found in consumer advertising, where national imagery is used to create positive associations with a product or service or consumption in general. At the same time, the use of national imagery in consumer advertising increases the presence of national imagery in the mundane spaces of everyday life and thereby continually reinforces the message of national belonging. The discourses of banal nationalism that come associated with consumer advertising have come to pervade our private lives.

Associating products with national imagery is a widely used marketing strategy in Australia, just as it is in many other countries (click here for examples of a car painted in the Union Jack, French on cookies or UAE-themed coffee and cake). Through everyday items such as the cornflakes box in the image, national symbols enter mundane everyday spaces such as supermarket shelves and the breakfast table in our homes. They keep circulating in those spaces as constant small reminders of national identity.

National identity is a discursive construction – a highly pervasive one but a construction nonetheless. This point is basic to most of the contemporary social sciences but it continues to elude the literature on intercultural communication, where national identity tends to be treated as a given. In the end, intercultural communication advice is nothing but yet another instance of banal nationalism, a discourse that reinforces readers’ sense of national belonging rather than one that leads them to genuinely engage with difference and diversity.

References
Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.
Piller, I. (2017). Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction (2nd ed.) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Do clouds over VW equal clouds over Germany?

The Volkswagen (VW) emissions scandal has received significant media coverage in and outside of Germany. Besides accounts of the developments that led to the discovery of Volkswagen’s unethical behaviour, the immediate impacts on the company’s finances, CEO Martin Winterkorn’s resignation and Matthias Mueller’s appointment as the new chief executive of the firm, a focus on wider impacts of the current affair quickly emerged. Not long and concerns were raised that the unethical actions of the car manufacturer could have negative consequences for the German automobile industry in general and the German and the European economy more broadly.

This has raised a related discussion and media anxiety about the implications of the Volkswagen affair for the trademark “made in Germany”. The German Handelsblatt (Daniel Delhaes 2015), for instance, cited various politicians expressing concern over the loss of the country’s reputation:

Auf alle Fälle ist das ein riesiger Schaden für die Industriemarke Deutschland. (“This is definitely a huge damage for the German industrial brand.”)

Es geht um die Glaubwürdigkeit des Gütesiegels‚‘made in Germany’. (“It is a matter of credibility of the quality label ‘made in Germany’.”)

Both politicians anticipate negative consequences not only for VW but for national reputation, too.

How do constructions of German cultural stereotypes and self-stereotypes become visible in the media reports concerned with the Volkswagen affair? How do they relate to the car manufacturer’s misconduct and how are they aimed at influencing the general public?

A careful analysis of the current media discourse may provide some insights into the discursive construction of “made in Germany” as a “quality label” and, more generally, the discursive construction of reputation as an economic asset. The discussion will be grounded in research in communication studies and applied linguistics that examines advertising as cultural discourse and shows how notions of national identities and ethno-cultural stereotypes are constructed and reproduced through discursive practices.

Volvo campaign: Breaking up with a German

German ethno-cultural stereotypes in advertising

Intercultural advertising has been shown to valorise languages in their symbolic rather than their communicative meaning. The symbolic function of languages is to be understood in this context as “the product of intercultural social, political, economic, historical and linguistic relations between countries” (Kelly-Holmes, 2000, p. 71). In what Kelly-Holmes defines as a deep-rooted ‘cultural competence hierarchy’, “Germans have been assigned the role of car-maker/engineer and brewer” (2000, p. 71). Piller notes that foreign languages in advertising are used “to associate the product with the ethno-cultural stereotype about the country where the language is spoken” (2003, p. 175). In the case of German, these are connotations of reliability, precision and innovation, above all regarding technology.

Hence, it is not surprising that it is a common marketing strategy amongst multinational companies to use the national language of their headquarters for advertising their products on the foreign market. Volkswagen and Audi are two successful examples of global corporations based in Germany that take advantage of this strategy by using the slogans ‘Volkswagen – Das Auto’ and ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’, respectively, in print and audio-visual ads.

It is first and foremost the recognition of these words as German, rather than their literal meaning, that is important for their success. For instance, a monolingual English-speaking Australian recently cited the Audi-slogan ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ to me when he discovered that I was German. To my surprise, and despite the fact that he was able to pronounce the catchphrase quite well, he had no idea what it actually meant. I was German; the slogan was German; and that’s all that mattered.

It is not only German manufacturers who use ethno-cultural stereotypes to promote their products. A marketing campaign by the Swedish car manufacturer Volvo uses associations with German ‘efficiency’ and ‘order’ defensively to promote their own products.

How does all this relate to the Volkswagen scandal?

Volkswagen as a symbol for German cultural core values

Media reports about the Volkswagen scandal draw on the same ethno-cultural stereotypes of technological advancement and high quality:

A lot of Germany’s present economic success is based on engineering expertise, specialised technology and expensive heavy machinery sold to fire up China’s factories. […] But “Made in Germany” is supposed to be a quality trusted brand worth paying money for. (bbc.com; McGuinness 2015)

“Made in Germany is quality and trust. Now that trust is lost,” said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer of the University of Duisburg-Essen. (autonews.com; Chambers 2015)

Thereby, the media reinforces the positive connotations with German national culture but, at the same time, mounts the argument that the company’s misconduct is threatening exactly these. This argument is strengthened by means of a link that the reports establish between Germany, “made in Germany”, the corresponding ethno-cultural stereotypes and Volkswagen itself. Autonews (Chambers 2015), as well as the German Handelsblatt (dpa 2015), provide good examples:

The great success of the export nation of Germany rests on the quality label ‘Made in Germany,'” said Marcel Fratzscher, head of the DIW economic institute in Berlin. “VW stands for this German quality — for perfection, reliability and trust.

Ob Volkswagen, ob Deutschland verlorenes Vertrauen zurückgewinnt, entscheidet sich auch bei der Aufarbeitung des Skandals. (“How the scandal is dealt with will determine whether VW and Germany can regain trust.”)

In examples such as these, Volkswagen is put into place as an emblem for the positive associations with Germany and “made in Germany”. But not only that: striking in these and the preceding excerpts is the recurring association with ‘trust’ that is put into place alongside the ethno-cultural stereotypes commonly connected with Germany and also Volkswagen. It seems to do two things. First, it enables the media, and the referenced commentators, to strengthen the argument that the positive connotations with German products have been challenged by the company’s wrongdoing. The use of ‘supposed to be’ in the second BBC comment indicates that one cannot be entirely sure whether the label “made in Germany” still stands for good quality. One of the commentators goes even further by saying that trust has already been ‘lost’. Second, and possibly even more important, it allows for a reinforcement and maintenance of the ethno-cultural stereotypes. It is not the quality that is ‘lost’ in the eyes of commentator Dudenhoeffer but the trust in this quality. In this way, quality is implicitly constructed as the dominant connotation.

What is achieved by introducing trust into this discourse?

Volkswagen. Das Auto.

The nation brand and Germany’s reputation are constructed as greater than just the sum of cultural values associated with the nation. ‘Reputation’ ties the belief in a certain moral standard to the cultural values which, only then, attain relevance. Therefore, trust issues regarding the positive cultural stereotypes must arise if a company like Volkswagen, which stands for the country’s reputation, acts against these moral standards. This construction of ‘reputation’ allows the media to paint Volkswagen as a ‘black sheep’ and to elaborate about possible nationwide consequences of the emissions scandal without saying that assumed high quality, reliability and precision of German products may no longer apply. That Volkswagen is the one to blame is also strongly expressed by the title of a Handelsblatt article:

Volkswagen und der “Anschlag auf den Standort Deutschland. (“Volkswagen and the ‘attack on Germany as a business location’.”)

“Anschlag” (“attack”) even has connotations of terrorism on the part of Volkswagen.

In sum, ‘reputation’ is an economic asset and a crucial aspect of Germany’s economic success. To minimize the risk of losing this national reputation a former national emblem can quickly become a villain.

The way in which language is used in the media coverage of the Volkswagen emission scandal has transformed a corporate issue into a nationwide cultural concern. Ethno-cultural stereotypes are not only questioned but also reinforced.

Media and political discourse are powerful institutions. However, they only constitute one side of the medal. If and how the receivers of their messages will be influenced by them, can only be seen in the long run. Since ethno-cultural stereotypes have slowly grown over time and are deep-rooted in people’s minds, it remains anyone’s guess whether the Volkswagen emission scandal will change people’s associations with Germany and German products.

References

Kelly-Holmes, H. (2000). Bier, Parfum, Kaas: Language Fetish in European Advertising. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 3(1), 67-82.

Piller, I. (2003). Advertising as a site of language contact Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 23, 170-183 DOI: 10.1017/S0267190503000254
Further reading

Chambers, M. (2015, September 22). Diesel scandal at VW threatens ‘Made in Germany’ image. Autonews.

Delhaes, D. (2015, September 23). ‘Made in Germany’ ist in Gefahr. Handelsblatt.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (2015, October 4). Volkswagen und der „Anschlag auf den Standort Deutschland“. Handelsblatt.

‘Luxury permanent’ Mongolian yurt for sale on Alibaba

Last week when I saw in my friends’ Wechat group an advertisement for delicately made Mongolian yurts, I thought of an article I had read earlier written by Mongolian scholar Naran Bilik. In his paper about urbanized Mongolians Bilik writes:

In the Inner Mongolian region, emotional discourse and collectivism are welded together by events and inventions of the past, as well as by regular cultural activities. […] To be modern means to rebel against or modify a tradition that legitimizes the ethnicity previously taken for granted. If the gap between modernism and traditionalism, which is often translated into one between practicality and emotion, can be bridged, it is by symbolisms that overlap, touch upon, invent, or transpose reality. However, this sort of reconciliation is bound to be short-lived, situational, superficial, and manipulable (Bilik 1998, pp. 53-54).

The bridging of traditional symbols and commodification is indeed situational, relatively superficial and easily manipulable for different interests, but not necessarily short-lived. I kept visiting my friends’ Wechat group, and I found notices in traditional Mongolian script (Mongol Bichig) about looking for a sheepherder, about renting grassland, and also about selling camels. There are also advertisements for teaching how to play the Mongolian horse-head string instrument, and notices about an evening class for Mongolian costume making.

Ad for teaching how to play the Mongolian horse-head string instrument

The enthusiasm for learning a traditional musical instrument, the lack of tailors due to the increasing popularity of Mongolian costumes, and those very artistically made Mongolian furniture items and yurts confirm Naran Bilik’s argument: the gap between practicality and emotion is bridged by the reinvention or transformation of ethnic symbols.

However, in this case the reinvented symbols are also a commodity with high symbolic and material value, as Trine Brox, a scholar from Copenhagen University, explains with reference to a Tibetan market in Chengdu. In that market, Tibetans and Han Chinese meet to buy and sell ethnic minority products (Brox, 2015).

Since the mid-1980s the Chinese central government has embraced a more lenient and tolerant policy concerning religion and this has allowed a revival of Tibetan Buddhism. And Tibetan businessmen began to trade in religious commodities and set up shops in Chengdu, where they sell stone beads, ceremonial scarfs, Buddha statues, carpets, etc. to the Tibetans, Chinese and foreign tourists.

Brox speculates at the end of her article whether we are witnessing the transformation of the minzu (‘ethnicity’) categorization from a political collective identity to an economic collective identity. While she does not suggest any de-politicization of ethnic identity, she speculates that markets may be the future of ethnic culture.

Even if a market does have the potential to provide ethnic groups with a new form of ethnic collectivity, the reality will be replete with contradictions resulting from the tension between ethnic culture, on the one hand, and national and global structures, on the other hand. These tensions will leave particular Mongolian and other ethnic identities more fuzzy and shaky, but Mongolian identity will undoubtedly endure the ‘modernization’ process, as it is reinvented or reinterpreted (Bilik & Burjgin, 2003).

WeChat containing Mongolian script

Let us look at the advertisement written in traditional Mongolian script on Wechat: Mongolian script is very eye-catching because it is surrounded by other information that is predominantly in Chinese. In this case, the traditional Mongolian script is not only telling us the content of the advertisement, but also, more importantly, acting as an advertising image. In other words, the symbolic or emotional meaning of the script outweighs its practical purpose. Of course, it also demonstrates who is excluded and included, given that there is no Chinese translation provided.

The traditional scripts, the Mongolian yurts or the costumes are indeed commoditized for diverse interests, but their dynamic interaction with Mongolians’ identity and their role in both compliance with and resistance to inescapable structures should not be neglected.

So when ethnic culture and identity meet the market and go through the process of commodification, we cannot simply assume that the ethnic identity or traditional culture is undermined in the ‘modernization’ or that they are in opposition to commodification. What future research should focus on is the interaction between ethnic practices and overarching structures and influences from modernization, or globalization.

References

Bilik, N. (1998). Language Education, Intellectuals and Symbolic Representation: Being an Urban Mongolian in a New Configuration of Social Evolution. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 4(1-2), 47-67. doi: 10.1080/13537119808428528

Bilik, N., & Burjgin, J. (2003). Contemporary Mongolian Population Distribution, Migration, Cultural Change and Identity. Armonk, N.Y.: Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe.

Brox, T. (2015). Tibetan minzu market: the intersection of ethnicity and commodity Asian Ethnicity, 1-21 DOI: 10.1080/14631369.2015.1013175

The front cover of the tourist map of multilingual Macau

Last week I had the privilege of visiting the University of Macau and in Macau I discovered yet another unique variation on the many multilingual landscapes we have featured here on Language on the Move.

Macau, a former Portuguese colony, has been a Special Administrative Region of China since 1999. The official languages of Macau are Chinese and Portuguese. English plays an unofficial but highly prominent role: it is the medium of instruction at the University of Macau and at a number of secondary schools. Other schools use Cantonese as medium of instruction and there is one Portuguese-medium school.

Trilingualism in Chinese, Portuguese and English is just the beginning, though. The linguistic situation is further complicated by the diversity of Chinese and the importance of the tourism industry.

The version of Chinese that is local to Macau is Cantonese but Putonghua is gaining in importance. Macau has about half a million residents but welcomes a staggering number of tourists: close to 30 million tourists visit Macau each year. Most of these come from Mainland China and so it is not surprising that in tourism spaces I overheard much more Putonghua than Cantonese. Written Chinese, too, comes in at least three varieties: traditional characters, simplified characters and pinyin. Furthermore, pinyin looks different depending on whether the writer followed English-based or Portuguese-based conventions.

The languages of other tourist markets also feature with maps and signs in Japanese, Korean and Thai.

The linguistic landscape of Macau is thus extremely diverse and each tourist site has its own conventions, as the following examples demonstrate.

A-Ma Temple

Chinese inscriptions at the A-Ma Temple

The famous Taoist temple dedicated to the goddess of seafarers, Matsu, from which the name “Macau” is thought to derive, is enlisted on the UNESCO World Heritage List. On the day we visited it was crowded with Chinese tour groups. The languages on display were ancient Chinese inscriptions in stones and on the temple façades. The prayer tablets where the devout can record their wishes and prayers also seemed to be Chinese only (although there were hundreds of them so I cannot be sure that prayers in other languages were not also hidden away somewhere).

The direction and prohibition signs were either in Chinese only or in Chinese and English (of the non-standardized “Chinglish” variety). One stall selling incense sticks and other devotionalia featured Chinese and Thai signs. Portuguese and what might be called “standard English” were notable for their absence.

Our Lady of Penha Church

Latin and Chinese on a devotional card at La Penha Church

One of Macau’s many Catholic churches (Macau used to be the staging post for the Christianisation of East Asia and has the largest number of Catholic churches by square mile in Asia), Penha Church sits on a hill and affords an excellent view over the harbour and across the bay to the mainland. The church itself is not a tourist destination but the spiritual centre of a community of Trappist nuns from Indonesia.

When we visited, the church was empty. Outside, there were a few newly-wed couples in Western wedding garb who were out to have their pictures taken. As far as I could hear, they received their instructions from the photographers on how to pose in Cantonese.

The languages on the signage could not have been more different from the A-Ma Temple: inscriptions on the façade were also monolingual but monolingual in Portuguese rather than Chinese. Signs about the code of conduct came in three language combinations: Chinese-Only, Chinese-English and English-Chinese.

Signage relating to the spiritual life of the church was either predominantly in Chinese or English, with one or the other language predominating and a few expressions in the other interspersed. To my great surprise, I also discovered some Latin slogans on devotional cards. A collection box, which looked quite old and featured Portuguese, Chinese and English suggests that the English presence in Macau predates the tourism boom and globalized signage of the past decade.

Mandarin House

Trilingual poster at the Mandarin House about 盛 世 危 言 (Warning to a Prosperous Age)

The so-called “Mandarin House” is another UNESCO World Heritage listed building. It used to be the residence of the Qing dynasty reformer Zheng Guanying. When we visited, the building was deserted and other than the attendants we were the only people present making it a very serene space. Information and prohibition signs were relatively standardized and trilingual in Chinese, Portuguese and English although some prohibition signs were more haphazard and contained only Chinese and English.

What was most interesting was the posters about Zheng Guanying’s book Words of Warning to a Prosperous Age (Shengshi weiyan 盛 世 危 言). What little information about the book I could gather from the information panels suggests that it is a highly relevant text for Intercultural Communication Studies. One website sums up the argument as follows:

As a famous reformer of late Qing China, Zheng Guanying was the earliest advocate of representative and participatory political system in the 1870s, the earliest to call for “commercial warfare ” against Western economic imperialism, and one of the earliest to seriously study international law and its relevance to China’s national identity and foreign relations. He was also one of the earliest Chinese to emphasize the combination of Western medicine and Chinese medicine.

His ideas continue to be highly influential in contemporary China and a translation of Shengshi weiyan would be highly desirable. Unfortunately, I have not been able to discover an English translation. I hope this is not another case of “no translation;” if it is, a translation would be highly desirable not only for Chinese Studies but also for Intercultural Communication Studies.

Casinos

Official trilingual “no smoking” sign

A discussion of the touristic linguistic landscape of Macau would not be complete without reference to the casinos because that is where most of the 30 million annual visitors are headed. I got to visit two of them: the Venetian, which is operated by the Las Vegas-based Sands corporation and is an imitation of the Las Vegas Venetian, and City of Dreams, a joint venture between the Macau casino dynasty Ho and the Australian billionaire James Packer. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, the gambling areas occupy only a relatively small part of the casinos and while that is obviously where the action is, I did not enter.

Casino resorts are intended to be spectacular and novel. The Venetian, for instance, looks like a cross between a baroque church and Venetian canals and plazas and City of Dreams features a huge fish tank with (digital) mermaids. However, when it comes to signage there is no trace of the spectacular and unique. In both casinos, commercial signage was completely standardized in the non-language of other global consumer spaces. Direction signs were also standardized in Chinese and English.

Portuguese, by contrast, only had a tiny presence on state-mandated signs, particularly the ubiquitous no-smoking signs, which are in Chinese, Portuguese and English. The biggest surprise were the emergency exit signs: they did not contain any English and were in Portuguese and Chinese only.

Linguistic Pragmatism

Analysts of multilingualism in Macau have described multilingualism in Macau as “an illusion” because official societal Chinese-Portuguese bilingualism is rarely undergirded by individual bilingualism. Indeed, all the people I had extended conversations with were either English speakers from Australia, UK and the USA or Putonghua speakers from Mainland China and Taiwan. With three exceptions none of these had learnt either of the two official languages (the exceptions being an American and a Tawainese who had learnt Cantonese and an Australian who had learnt Portuguese).

Despite the amazing multilingualism in the public signage it may thus well be that the various language communities largely keep themselves to themselves. The fact that each space I visited has its own language practices with regard to signage seems to point in the same direction. If so, it is a pragmatic approach that seems to work perfectly well as a way to manage linguistic diversity and public communication with multiple audiences.

Star teacher Ruby Hsu (Source: ruby.com.tw)

The global English language learning boom has resulted not only in a huge number of English learners but also created a tremendous demand for English teachers. Here on Language on the Move the preference for white native speakers as English teachers in Asia has often been featured (e.g., in Japan or Thailand). This is true in Taiwan, too, as I showed here and here, but it is only one part of the story of the global spread of English. The other side of the coin are Taiwan’s hot star teachers.

Star teachers are native Chinese-speaking teachers of English working in Taiwan’s buxiban. Buxiban are cram schools catering to the market for teaching grammar, reading and other exam-oriented English subjects. Buxiban invest heavily in promoting their teachers and, in the process, have created media super stars.

Star teachers are, of course, able to teach English well. Additionally, they are young, attractive, charming and vivacious, and both male and female star teachers are good looking. Star teachers are well-known and extremely popular and, this may be surprising to some readers, are paid considerably more than their native-speaker English teaching counterparts.

Both print and electronic media are used by buxiban to advertise their star teachers. For example, buxiban leverage their star teachers in marketing collateral such as fliers, posters, banners, websites, bus adverts and/or promote them in front of the buxiban. Star teachers even appear in TV talk shows and they gain additional fame (and income) through their endorsement of products.

In some cases, star teachers have achieved superstar status in Taiwan and they are treated like pop stars. The most famous star teacher is Ruby Hsu; she has been able to capitalize on her prominence as a superstar teacher to become a popular TV host of a weekday program called 上班這檔事 “Work.”

Star teachers like Ruby are actually perceived as a part of the entertainment industry and as a result the news media covers them like they would any other celebrity, always searching for gossip and stories of intrigue centered around these star teachers. One of the most prominent examples of this sort of coverage was back in August 2010 when two English star teachers, Kao Kuo-hua and Carrie Chen had an extramarital affair, which created a  media frenzy. The saucy affair was considered important enough that the television and print media closely followed this ongoing real-life soap opera every day from the moment the  story first broke for several months. Interestingly, not only did the scandal not damage their English teaching careers; on the contrary, it further enhanced their star teacher status and resulted in higher student enrollments for their classes. In Carrie Chen’s first day back to class after the scandal story hit the news headlines, she was bombarded with students asking her English questions, such as how to say 劈腿  (having an affair) or 喇舌 (French kiss), as this video shows.

Buxiban are an inevitable part of life for Taiwanese students. The main purpose of the buxiban is to sell their commodity, English, to their customers. Just like big brands use famous celebrities to endorse and promote their products, buxiban are leveraging the power of star teachers and have them play a lead role in selling English. Just like an actor can determine the success or failure of a film, these star teachers can often determine the prosperity or demise of a buxiban.

The box office power of star teachers in Taiwan’s English language teaching industry cannot be overestimated.

Kimie Takahashi (2013) Language learning, gender and desire: Japanese women on the move. Multilingual Matters.

It’s Valentine’s Day today. Valentine’s Day is a truly global event inextricably linking the emotional life of individuals with the capitalist world order. Young women around the world dream of romantic love and many men do their best to meet those dreams, showing how much they care by buying flowers, chocolates, lingerie, jewellery or any of the other consumer goods that have come to symbolize romantic love. Those that do not engage in the consumption bonanza also find their lives touched by Valentine’s Day: for instance, an estimated 198 million red roses are grown specifically for Valentine’s Day and that’s a huge amount of one particular crop to get ready, to harvest and to bring to market for one single day: the socio-economic structure of whole counties in Kenya, Colombia or Ecuador has been changed to make way for this floral industry.

Given the deep connections between individual emotions and the socio-economic order, it is not surprising that English, too, has found its way into this mix. A timely new book, Language Learning, Gender and Desire: Japanese Women on the Move* by Kimie Takahashi, explains exactly those connections.

Following a group of young adult Japanese women studying overseas in Sydney, the book shows how, during their teenage years, the romantic desires of these young women had been shaped by Hollywood movies and other popular media. Teenage crushes on media stars are nothing unusual and each generation seems to have their own idols. However, for the Japanese women in the study the pop stars they had teenage crushes on (men like Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt) had a salient characteristic: they were white native speakers of English.

As a result, they ended up making a deep emotional connection between romantic attractiveness, Whiteness and English. While they outgrew their teenage crushes, their desire for white English-speaking men lingered on.

As the study shows, this was not only an idiosyncratic romantic desire that the five women who were the study’s main participants happened to develop. Rather, the association between learning English, going abroad and falling in love is actively fostered in many discourses promoting English language learning, from women’s magazines to language school advertising. Indeed, teaching ‘the language of love’ – Relationship English or Renai English – has become a form of English for Specific Purposes that is addressed in specific language learning materials and courses.

In sum, a range of powerful media discourses worked to inculcate particular emotional sensibilities in these women, which included a conflation of going abroad, learning English, and romantic desires.

Once in Sydney, of course, a different reality quickly hit: establishing contacts and relationships with locals (and particularly the kinds of locals they desired) was far from easy; becoming fluent in English was not as easy as they had imagined it would be once they were in Australia; and few of the men they met conformed to the chivalrous image of Westerners they had formed in their minds.

Each of the participants has her own life story and had to face her own trials and tribulations in Sydney. However, their emotional experiences are deeply shaped by the role of English as both an object of desire and a consumer commodity.

If you are looking for some academic reading this Valentine’s Day, Language Learning, Gender and Desire: Japanese Women on the Move is the one. Don Kulick’s endorsement of the book sums up the reading experience you can expect:

Romance blossoms, hearts break, and lives change as Japanese women go troppo in the Antipodes and tell the author all about their dreams, adventures and experiences of learning English as a second language. This delightful book is the definitive answer to the question, ‘Is the concept of “desire” useful to students of language?’. The ethnography is wacky, the analysis is insightful and the writing is engaging and crisp. An absolute must-read for everyone interested in language and desire, language and learning, and language and globalization.

Enjoy! And Happy Valentine’s Day!

*In the interest of full disclosure: I was the supervisor of the PhD research the book is based on.

Takahashi, Kimie (2013). Language learning, gender and desire: Japanese women on the move Multilingual Matters

“美語是通往世界最近的路” (American English, for children, is the royal road to the world): An English educator promises the world

Taiwan is enthralled with learning American English. One of the reasons for this love affair lies in the fact that English is the global lingua franca. In Taiwan, as elsewhere, English is associated with status and modernity: an essential instrument to access the world of finance, economy, technology and science; in short, English is regarded as a tool to achieve social modernization, economic growth and internationalization. To individuals, too, English language mastery promises globalization: it is viewed as the key to achieving a better life and future in a world which is imagined as borderless.

In this post, I would like to show that advertising for private language schools is critical to creating the association between English and globalization and to keeping that discourse in circulation. As in my recent post about Taiwan’s love affair with American English, I draw on my PhD thesis (Chang, 2004), where I employed Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze data drawn from private English language school and buxian promotional materials.

Consider the following example from a TV commercial for the famous Giraffe Language Schools. In this commercial (1:10-1:25), two figures, a little Taiwanese girl and Father Jerry Martinson walk along a beach. Father Jerry Martinson is an American Jesuit priest who, as a Christian missionary and English educator, is one of the most recognizable public figures in Taiwan. In addition to being an influential broadcaster with Kuangchi TV, he is also the founder of the Giraffe Language Schools. The little girl is looking out at the sea and observes that the world is very, very big. She then asks “Uncle Jerry” how to get to the other side of the world. “Uncle Jerry” responds:

美語是孩子通往世界最近的路  ‘American English, for children, is the royal road to the world.’ (My translation).

As in the examples I discussed last week, this commercial reinforces perceptions of the close relationship between native speaker teacher (“Uncle Jerry”), American English (美語), and, particularly, globalization (indicated by the reference to 世界 ‘the world’).

“For children” in this slogan does not refer only to the featured little Taiwanese girl but, by extension, to the television audience and all Taiwanese English language learners. Indeed, the question “How to get to the world?” is a vexing question for all Taiwanese.

Metaphorically, the commercial places all Taiwanese in a child position vis-à-vis an omniscient Western father figure. While viewers are left to fill “the world” with their own hopes and dreams, the commercial ultimately also suggests that the Taiwanese will only ever be able to enter the world, which is assumed to be Western, as child-like junior partners.

In sum, English language teaching schools in Taiwan respond to a need: the need to learn English for globalization and modernization. However, at the same time, that need does not necessarily pre-exist English language teaching schools. In their advertising they continuously discursively construct and re-construct that link between English and globalization.

Reference

Chang, J. (2004). Ideologies of English Teaching and Learning in Taiwan, Ph.D. thesis.University of Sydney.

Ad for a private English language school in Taiwan: the normalization of American English is obvious in the name and imagery

There is no denying the fact that English has become the global lingua franca. However, as far as English teaching and learning are concerned, there is a prevailing belief that the world should be learning  not some “English as a lingua franca” variety but “Standard English.” In this post, I want to explore what this kind of “Standard English” that is implicit in English language teaching and learning looks like in Taiwan.

Taiwanese are dedicated English language learners and Taiwan invests a lot in English language learning. Even so, there are often media debates that decry the poor quality of English in Taiwan. So what is the yardstick against which Taiwanese English is measured? It’s American English!

Despite the fact that English is now supposed to be learned for global communication, British English and American English have long been the two models underlying English instruction in English-as-a-Foreign-Language countries such as Taiwan. In Taiwan, it is American English that is regarded as  ‘good English’ because of the close historical and political relationship between the USA and Taiwan. ‘English’ for Taiwanese means ‘American English.’ This is a strictly perceptual and ideological issue and means that Taiwan is different from most other Asian countries, where British English is regarded as the ‘good’ or ‘correct’ model to emulate in learning English.

In examining the language ideologies that undergird English learning and teaching in Taiwan, I employed Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze data drawn from private English language schools and buxiban (Mandarin for ‘cram school’) promotional materials. In my PhD thesis (Chang, 2004), which is accessible here, I specifically analyzed school fliers, websites, television commercials, television English teaching programs and English teaching job ads.

Private English language schools refer to schools that offer general English courses for different groups (elementary, secondary and tertiary students, adults) and whose purposes are not geared towards academic tests. Buxiban refers to language schools that offer arduous supplementary English courses for test purposes, such as junior high, high school English, TOEFL, IELTS, GRE and so on.

The following are two short excerpts from private language school fliers in my corpus that demonstrate how American English is promoted and normalized by English language schools in Taiwan.

Example A:

無國界的世界來臨了， 從小提供小孩子世界通用語言(美語)的環境, 培養最有競爭能力的下一代，是現在父母的期望。

(The time of the world without boundaries has come. To provide little children a learning environment in an international language (American English) and to provide the next generation with competitive ability is every parent’s hope in the contemporary society.) [my translation]

Example B:

您知道美國小孩子如何開始學美語嗎? 您希望您的孩子有同樣的出發點開始學美語嗎? 100% 純美語環境。

(Do you know how American children start learning their American English? Do you want your children to start learning English as American children do? 100% pure American learning environment.) [my translation]

Text A makes a number of unstated assumptions including the one that American English is the global language. In fact, Text A illustrates three pertinent language ideologies of English language learning in Taiwan: in addition to the fact that American English is normalized as THE English, English is also presented as the global language and it is implied that an early start to learning English is imperative. Text B explicitly tells readers that American English is the Standard English and Taiwanese children need to learn it through an English-only immersion teaching method, and, again, suggests that the earlier a child starts to learn English, the better.

Other evidence for the predominance of American English in my data include lexical collocations involving USA, America or American such as USA degree, American English teacher, North American accent, American curriculum, American teaching method, American English learning environment, and American teaching materials. These all reinforce the notion that only one variety of English – American English – is standard, appropriate, correct and prestigious. As far as English language teaching in Taiwan is concerned, anything associated with the term USA or America or American is viewed as the best. Indeed, no other varieties of English were even mentioned in my data.

The language ideology of ‘American English is best’ constitutes the context in which English language teaching policies are formed and in which English is taught and learned. As a result, English language teaching and learning in Taiwan has become a one-language (American English) and one-culture (American culture) teaching and learning environment and has resulted in widespread lack of  familiarity with the existence of any other varieties of English. This, in turn, has resulted in linguistic and racial inequalities between varieties of English and their speakers. It is not uncommon for English teachers speaking other varieties or having been educated in other English-speaking countries (including English-Center countries such as Australia or the UK) to hide their backgrounds and pretend to be American-English-speaking and/or to be US-trained.

The belief that American English is the best English is interlinked with a set of further pervasive language ideologies such as “English is the global language,” “there is an ideal English teacher,” “there is an ideal English teaching methodology” and “the earlier English learning starts, the better.” I will discuss these language ideologies in future posts.

Chang, J. (2004). Ideologies of English Teaching and Learning in Taiwan. Ph.D. thesis. University of Sydney.

Toiletological English

Can you guess what kind of product the following text is promoting?

Your well-being is close to our heart

rail&fresh [product] areas are bright and friendly and leave nothing to be desired. The [product] facilities are kept perfectly clean round the clock. Scent sprayers, pleasant music, an attractive design and attentive, friendly and helpful staff round off the rail&fresh service package.

If you’ve taken your clue from my heading, you may have guessed it: [product] is a toilet. However, the text itself is pretty surprising as an ad for a public toilet with its generic corporate expressions that could be used for almost any product or service: “Your well-being is close to our heart,” “bright and friendly,” “leave nothing to be desired,” “attentive, friendly and helpful staff.” While these expressions are thoroughly familiar from corporate advertising and could refer to almost anything, it’s the first time I’ve ever encountered them in toilet advertising. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I’ve encountered toilet advertising! Until now I was under the impression that there is no need to advertise for public toilets as you either have to use them or you don’t. Now, the image that goes with the text seems to suggest differently, and I’m wondering whether I’ve missed a trend where public toilets have become whole-of-family excursion destinations.

Are you wondering how I came across this website advertising the public toilets at Munich Central Station? Let me put it on record that I was NOT googling international toilet destinations! Rather, the name of the toilet in question, rail & fresh, was mentioned in an article about English in Germany published in the German magazine Der Spiegel. The article argues that it is silly to object to English loanwords or English-based brand name creations such as rail&fresh in German. Reasons include that loanwords have always been around and are a normal part of all languages; people should be free to speak in whichever way they wish; there are more important things in life than loanwords and purists get worked up about nothing; and, finally, the usual clincher, the tide of loanwords can’t be stopped anyways.

The article’s target are German purists in general and, specifically, the Verein Deutsche Sprache (‘German Language Society’), a not-for-profit organization aiming to strengthen the German language and to enhance its reputation. Their main target is the use of English loanwords and English-derived brand names. Personally, I have little patience for linguistic purism. At least that’s what I thought until I read the Spiegel-article and found myself getting really annoyed with it. The reason I found the article annoying has nothing to do with the arguments put forward, which I’ve read countless times and which are the standard fare of the anti-prescriptivist tradition. Instead, it has everything to do with the identity of the author and the language in which the article was written: the author is a British expat based in Munich and the article was written in English in a German-language magazine. “Does an old and tired argument become fresh because it is presented in English instead of German?” I wondered.

My negative gut reaction against an ok, even if uninteresting, position goes to the heart of the matter: as many a language-ideological debate the debate about loan words in German is not about language but about identities, and my reaction was against the cultural defeatism that is implicit in offering a large public forum (Der Spiegel has 5.91 mio readers) in a German-medium publication to an English native-speaker rehashing a tired old argument.

In the end, both Der Spiegel and the Verein Deutsche Sprache completely miss the point: whether you think it’s a good idea – or not – to call a public toilet in Munich rail&fresh is not a matter of personal linguistic taste but of accessibility: toilet signage in a space frequented by such a diversity of people as Munich’s central station needs to be as language-neutral and as widely recognizable as possible. But the question of accessibility runs even deeper. Public toilets are a public necessity and as such it’s unfair to have them operate competitively and subject to the capitalist imperative for profit. Rail&fresh users are charged Euro1 per visit (at today’s rate that’s AUD1.40). Admittedly, you get half the fee back as voucher on a loyalty card (and, no, I’m not making this up!). I don’t know what the alternative for those who can’t pay the fee are at Munich Central Station. The key point is that access to decent public toilets is an equity issue that all citizens are entitled to irrespective of whether they can afford a 1-Euro-pee or not. Public toilets used to be truly public and maintained out of taxes. Privatizing them has given us toilet advertising, toilet brand identities and toilets with a bilingual website. That’s a pretty heavy price to pay for equal access.

Debating the use of English in the brand identity of a German toilet serves to obscure the continued assault on the welfare state and the dismantling of social justice. And that is why I object to toiletological English – because it dulls the critical faculties.

PILLER, I. (2001). Identity constructions in multilingual advertising Language in Society, 30 (2), 153-186 DOI: 10.1017/S0047404501002019

In this context, where so many people want to leave the country, the private, commercial foreign language sector has been expanding rapidly. Iran in general and my home town, Isfahan, in particular have undergone an unprecedented boom in foreign language learning and teaching. Accordingly, commercial language schools have mushroomed. It has been reported that, besides hundreds of unregistered ones, a whopping 3700 registered language schools are operating across the country.

The phenomenal market growth in commercial language teaching has also increased competition among language institutes and advertising materials for such institutes are a ubiquitous sight. Ranging from broadcast ads, via billboards, to all kinds of brochures and flyers, advertising materials are all designed to persuade even more members of the target group, i.e. Iranian youths, to engage in foreign language learning. In this way, language learning is no longer about education but about consumption and languages become nothing more than consumer commodities.

This typical flyer presents a case in point. I found this flier in Isfahan’s New Jolfa district, one of Isfahan’s hippest areas frequented by “modern” Iranian youths. The New Jolfa area is a gathering spot for fashionable Iranians to hang out. Consequently, it is also an ideal spot for promoting language schools.

In this flyer, the commodification of language learning is inscribed in the very grammar of the advertising text. For instance, ‘courses’ (دوره ها) and ‘classroom teaching’ (کلاس ها) are animated as participants and thus displace human agents such as ‘teachers’ or ‘students.’ That means that the ‘products’ themselves are ascribed roles and attributes that are in educational contexts normally associated with teachers. Modalities such as disappointment, failure, or risk do not even appear; all that is expressed is that ‘customers’ will receive a predictable, stable outcome. As the flyer has it, success is “100 percent guaranteed” (۱۰۰% تضمینی)!

Language learning thus becomes a product consisting of discrete units, which are separately accessible, and can be bought and sold as distinct goods in the range of commodities available in the market. In such commodified educational discourse, it is the duration of the course that takes on a symbolic significance; one can learn, say, Spanish in 90 days     (اسپانیایی ۹۰ روز)!

Apparently, the market is too competitive and the time is too short to check for typos. Infelicities such as “TOFLE” (i.e. TOEFL), “discution” (i.e. discussion), and “crusive” (i.e. cursive) are by no means limited to the flyer under scrutiny.

Last but not least, the use of flags in such a typical flyer perfectly fits its international and future-oriented purposes. These flags seem to have been intended to foster the link between language learning and mobility and hence to increase the marketing hype surrounding foreign language learning. The more language schools are hyped up, the more difficult it is to resist the urge to “buy” the advertised “products.”

Billboard advertising the Japanese food fair at Isetan

I’ve never felt more welcome in a foreign city than where I am at the moment – Bangkok! It has to do with Thai people’s gorgeous smiles, but there is more to this city that makes me feel at home. It is Bangkok’s amazing multilingual landscape, including the pervasiveness of Japanese! Before I left Sydney, I had a vague idea of Bangkok’s linguistic diversity, and simply assumed that English would be the default foreign language of public signs as Thom Huebner’s research has shown.However, I never expected to find so many Japanese businesses, products and services that target Japanese people here. The signage of Bangkok is simply overflowing with Japanese!

It all started to make sense after I learned some interesting statistics. According to Japan Tourism Marketing Co., 886,783 Japanese tourists visited Thailand in 2010. In addition, there are more than 7,000 registered Japanese businesses and over 47,000 registered Japanese residents here (the largest Japanese population in Asia outside Japan). Japanese signs are pretty much everywhere, but they are particularly concentrated in three areas – Sukhumvit, where many Japanese expats live, Sala Daeng, one of the financial hubs with many Japanese companies’ offices, and Pathumwan where two major Japanese department stores, Isetan and Tokyu, are located.

Let me take you to some small streets off Sukhumvit Road in Phrom Phong. You are now walking past a large range of Japanese restaurants, Fuji Super, beauty salons, real estate agencies, Japanese flower shops, bakeries, cram schools, one-dollar shops, Shimako and Fuji hairdressers, second hand book stores, all predominantly catering for Japanese customers. Moving into Thaniya in Sala Daeng, you also find many Japanese restaurants, but what stands out in this financial area is the large number of hostess bars (different from Bangkok’s famous go-go bars, and similar to those you find in Japan), whose clientele are mainly Japanese business men, their clients from Japan and male tourists.

Up-market Japanese unagi restaurant in Phrom Phong

Having said that, none of these businesses have monolingual Japanese shop signs. Even though their main clientele is Japanese, their shop signs are usually multilingual in Japanese, English and Thai. Obviously English serves the purpose of creating an international image as well as attracting non-Japanese who are into Japanese products and services. By contrast, the inclusion of Thai in shop signs is a different story. Thailand has a ‘sign tax’, which is apparently quite complex even for business consultants here, but basically, you pay much less sign tax if your commercial signage includes Thai on top of other languages. As a result, many shop signs include Thai, even if the font size is relatively small. I assume that businesses such as the upmarket Japanese restaurant in the picture have a relatively small Thai clientele. At the same time, it seems the sign tax works well to maintain the presence of the Thai language in Bangkok’s increasingly multilingual landscape, against the increasing prevalence of other languages, particularly English and Japanese.

Snacks with Japanese brand names and catch phrases

It is not only in areas with many Japanese residents and tourists that you find Japanese signage and advertisements. Just like Dubai, Bangkok has seen a ‘Japan boom’ in recent years, and as such, the Japanese language is widely used to boost the image of various local businesses and products for Thai consumers and foreign residents. A good example of this is snacks. There is an amazing range of snacks and sweets with Japanese brand names and catch phrases, even though many of them are not produced by Japanese companies. These snacks can be found practically everywhere, including small local markets where Japanese customers are unlikely to shop.

In contrast to static shop signage, Japanese signs printed on packages are always on the move: they are constantly moving from factories to trucks to shops to customers’ hands to rubbish bins, powerfully integrating Japanese into Bangkok’s public space as well as hundreds of thousands of workplaces and private homes in Bangkok.

Reference

Huebner, T. (2006). Bangkok’s Linguistic Landscapes: Environmental Print, Codemixing and Language Change International Journal of Multilingualism, 3 (1), 31-51 DOI: 10.1080/14790710608668384