My call to use language shaming as a lens through which to explore processes of language subordination, domination and (de)valorization struck a chord at the conference and I have since received a number of emails asking for the write-up of my lecture. The slides that accompanied the lecture can be downloaded here and conceptually the lecture was based on Chapters 3 and 7 of Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice. Additionally, I’ve decided to start a mini-series devoted to explorations in language shaming here on Language on the Move. What follows is the first entry in this series.

#ICMLXVI @rejadam Dr Robert Adam emphasising the concept of "language shaming" (re: Prof Ingrid Piller) pic.twitter.com/O5GOgQWDPP

— efsli (@efsli) August 29, 2017

A persistent theme in linguistic diversity is that some ways of using language are heard or seen as indices of laziness, stupidity and backwardness. Speakers of non-standard varieties and particularly migrant speakers are often denigrated in this way.

Teachers may well be amongst the worst offenders when it comes to making migrant students feel inferior. For instance, a sociolinguistic ethnography with Burmese migrant students in a high school in Southwest China by Li Jia provides numerous instances of language shaming. The focus of the research was on the language learning and educational experiences of students from Myanmar who had come to China for their high school education. Many of these students had a Chinese background and most had studied Chinese as an additional language for a number of years prior to coming to China. Even so, their Chinese was different from the Chinese of local students: there were the usual accent differences and additionally there were significant differences in literacy: the Burmese students had had far less opportunities to practice Chinese literacy than the students who had been educated in China throughout their entire school career. Furthermore, they had usually been instructed in traditional Chinese characters and they had learnt to use pinyin according to a different transliteration system.

Chemistry presentation by Year 11 student (Source: Li, 2017, p. 234)

These observable linguistic differences were mostly seen in terms of deficit and often became the focus of student-teacher interactions as in the following example, where a migrant Year 11 student was required to deliver an oral presentation in his Chemistry class. The topic of the presentation was about the weather and specifically temperature fluctuations and cold spells. When the student had finished his presentation and the teacher provided feedback, the feedback had nothing to do with the content of the presentation. Instead, the chemistry teacher focused on the student’s language. He pointed out some unfortunate vocabulary choices made by the students as well as spelling mistakes. The teacher summed up his assessment of the student’s Chemistry presentation as follows:

你看都是高二的学生了，寒潮的潮字都不会写。

Look, you are already a Year 11 student and how come you can’t even write the word “spell”? [as in “cold spell”; “tide”] (Quoted from Li, Jia. 2017, p. 234)

The comment focusses on the language of the presentation instead of the content and denigrates the student by linking the spelling mistake to his age – a typical example of language shaming.

This kind of language shaming is detrimental to the student in at least two ways: first, the student is obviously humiliated and his personal worth is being questioned in highlighting that his Chinese language proficiency is substandard for his age cohort (and ignoring that he is not a first language speaker of Chinese but a Chinese language learner). Second, the focus on language instead of content deprives the student of a learning opportunity.

That means that language shaming has the pernicious effect of not only denigrating students’ language proficiency but also jeopardizing their overall educational success, including achievement in the subject area. Language shaming thus serves to instill the very “stupidity” is claims to diagnose.

Poster with the school’s hair style regulations (Source: Li, 2017, p. 179)

Being scolded for the way they spoke Chinese was but one of the ways in which the students were subjected to a deficit discourse. It was also other aspects of their bodies and behaviors that were subject to criticism: they were often seen as not conforming to the strict dress code of the school or as lazy and careless with the tasks assigned to them. During classroom observations it became obvious that teachers sometimes spent up to half the lesson “criticizing Burmese students who did not obey the school rules” (Li, 2017, p. 248).

While one isolated incidence of the kind that occurred in the Chemistry lesson may be easy to write off, for the migrant students in the study such incidences of language shaming were regular occurrences; and it was their regularity that left deep psychological scars, as another student confided in the researcher:

我8岁来中国学习汉语，一开始什么都不明白, 真的很想回家，特别是老师骂，大姐姐欺负我的时候，感觉真的很无助。 […]

I came to China to learn Chinese at the age of 8. At the beginning, I didn’t understand anything, and I was missing home very much especially when I was scolded by my teachers and bullied by older students I really felt helpless. (Quoted from Li, Jia. 2017, p. 148)

Like all systems of oppression, language subordination has a psychological component, and shame is a key mechanism that leads oppressed people to accept their oppression: sociologists consider shame as a key aspect of poverty as it leads poor people to accept that their poverty is their own fault and to accept that the rich deserve to be rich. Similarly, theorists of racial and colonial oppression have long noted a psychological component where those who are subject to racism and colonialism may come to accept their oppression as justified because an inferiority complex has been instilled in them.

The examples of language shaming offered here come under the guise of teaching and must be considered a key tool in the arsenal of social reproduction. A first step in breaking their power is to call them out for what they are.

Make sure not to miss out on future installments in the series “Explorations in language shaming” and subscribe to our alerts in the bottom right corner of this page.

References

Kaufman, G. (1996). The Psychology of Shame: Theory and Treatment of Shame-Based Syndromes (2nd ed.). New York: Springer.

Li, J. (2017). Social Reproduction and Migrant Education: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Burmese Students’ Learning Experiences at a Border High School in China. (PhD), Macquarie University. Retrieved from http://languageonthemove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/LI_Jia_Social_reproduction_and_migrant_education.pdf

Piller, I. (2016). Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. [for your chance to win a copy, tweet about #linguisticdiversity by Oct 10; details of the draw here] ]]> https://languageonthemove.com/explorations-in-language-shaming/feed/ 36 20607 https://languageonthemove.com/educating-burmese-migrant-students-in-china/ https://languageonthemove.com/educating-burmese-migrant-students-in-china/#comments Fri, 22 Sep 2017 01:51:56 +0000 http://www.languageonthemove.com/?p=20594

Dr Li Jia (4th from right) with her supervisor, Professor Ingrid Piller, and members of the Language-on-the-Move team

The Language on the Move team is proud to celebrate another PhD in our group. Dr LI Jia was awarded her PhD degree by Macquarie University for her thesis about “Social Reproduction and Migrant Education: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Burmese Students’ Learning Experiences at a Border High School in China.”

Congratulations, Dr Li Jia!

The thesis takes the reader to the Chinese-Burmese border area of Yunnan province in South-West China, and begins as follows:

Excerpt from Li Jia (2017), “Social Reproduction and Migrant Education: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Burmese Students’ Learning Experiences at a Border High School in China”

Borderlands are often flashpoints for political or ethnic tensions. At the same time, they may also be sites of heightened intercultural engagement and contact. The China-Myanmar border area is an example of the latter, where in recent decades people’s desire to interact with each other and to understand each other’s languages and cultures has increased substantially. As a native of the China-Myanmar border area, I was born and brought up in a Chinese border town close to Myanmar, and many of my relatives and friends to this day work and live on the Burmese side of the border. Like many Han people, my family has kept our ancestral book, which traces my family’s presence in the region back to the military migrations during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The book records the male names of each generation and highlights the images of those who bore official ranks. Despite the fact that my family can clearly trace our Han ancestry over six centuries, our lifestyle is quite different from that of Han people in more central areas of China. As border people, we find it much easier to go “abroad” to Myanmar than to travel “nationally” outside of Yunnan province. Border people are conveniently allowed to travel to designated Burmese border towns without applying for a visa. Crossing this international border for us often means little more than crossing a bridge, a road or a river. Living in the border area, we are more familiar with the tropical foods imported from Myanmar and Thailand than many of the foods advertised on Chinese national television.

Trilingual signage at the Muse checkpoint on the China-Myanmar border

Despite this familiarity, interactions between Chinese and Burmese are not necessarily deep. Over the past three decades, Burmese people can also be seen across all walks of life on the Chinese side of the border particularly in domestic work, on construction sites, in restaurants, shops, hospitals and schools. However, despite their increased visibility, I grew up knowing very little about this group of “familiar strangers” who cover their faces in thanaka, a yellowish-white cosmetic paste made from ground bark, and who wear longyi, a sarong-like skirt, and flip-flops in the streets. At a very basic level, my research was motivated by the desire to learn more about interactions between the “familiar strangers” calling the Chinese-Burmese borderlands home.

The interactions I am interested in are embedded in significant socio-economic and developmental differences between China and Myanmar. With China and Chinese people the “senior partners” in most border relationships, Chinese language learning is of immense economic value to Burmese people. For instance, Burmese workers are often paid differentially according to their Chinese language proficiency. The owner of a seafood restaurant in Tengchong explained to me that she paid the lowest wages to Burmese workers who could not speak any Chinese and who were washing dishes in the kitchen. Servers with some Chinese proficiency were paid more and could hope for further pay increase if they improved their Chinese. The top job in the restaurant was being a cashier and was reserved for the most fluent Chinese speaker. When I asked the cashier how he had learned Chinese, he explained that he had learned all his Chinese on the job. Having migrated to Tengchong from Myanmar two years earlier, he spoke the local dialect fluently. His dream for the future was to improve his standard Chinese, to move to Shanghai, to marry a Shanghainese girl and to start his own seafood restaurant. His story is not unusual. As I discovered over the course of my fieldwork, Chinese language learning plays an important role in the trajectories, experiences and aspirations of border people from the Burmese side of the border.

“Learn Chinese, Double Your World”: Promotion of Chinese as a global language

Burmese border people are not alone in learning a new language to be able to communicate more efficiently in the border regions. While Burmese may not be as essential to the socio-economic prospects of Chinese citizens as Chinese is to those of Burmese citizens, there is no doubt that Burmese language learning is beneficial and widely desired. For instance, a Tengchong policewoman, Ms Lei, told me that she had been recruited into the police force because of her Burmese proficiency. After failing the national university entrance exam, Ms Lei had to look for a job in her home town. Unsure of her prospects, she considered the importance of Burmese and decided to attend an evening school. Compared to English, Ms Lei felt it was so much easier to learn Burmese. It took her only two months to pass an interview for a border trade company selling agricultural machinery and equipment to Myanmar. This job experience helped her improve her Burmese greatly because she had to communicate with her Burmese customers every day. With her enhanced Burmese skills, she got a chance to work for the police emergency hotline. From there, she got promoted to a police officer role that focussed on the registration of Burmese migrants. Normally, such a position can only be attained by someone with a university degree but for Ms Lei Burmese proficiency proved more valuable than a university degree. Again, Ms Lei is not unusual, and many border people orient to local transnational opportunities rather than more centralized opportunity structures. Apart from being successful in finding work with a government institution, Burmese language skills are particularly useful in the burgeoning border trade with Myanmar.

Stories such as these are part of the everyday experiences in the border region, where people have come to realize the increasing importance of interacting with each other and knowing each other’s languages in doing business, making money, looking for a good job, gaining promotion or even creating a desirable marriage. For Burmese migrants, the hope that learning Chinese will improve their future is not only observable in worksites such as the restaurant described above, but also from the fact that an increasing number of Burmese students are sent to high schools on the Chinese side of the border for their formal education. As an educator, I decided to focus my research on this group of young people caught up in the socio-political transformation of the borderlands and the corresponding intense transnational interactions they experience. What are their educational trajectories and experiences?

Migration for educational purposes has become common practice as students and their families seek a better future. In the twenty-first century, educational migration is no longer confined to English-speaking countries and “the West”. Many Asian countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore and mainland China are emerging as popular destinations for international students (Chiang, 2015; Gu & Patkin, 2013; Kang, 2012). Therefore, there is a necessity to extend existing research in migrant education to include a greater diversity of sociolinguistic contexts (Piller, 2016a, pp. 1-15). Considering the increasing prominence of Chinese language promotion worldwide and very little research on international students’ learning experiences in mainland China, this thesis aims to contribute to the knowledge of migration, Chinese language education and social justice, in general, and of Chinese border high school education and Burmese students’ language learning experiences, in particular.

Want to read more? The full thesis is available for open access through our PhD Hall of Fame.

“Learn Chinese, Double Your World”: Promotion of Chinese as a global language

Research seminar about the language learning experiences of Burmese high school students in China

Topic: Following the China Dream (中国梦): Burmese students in a Yunnan border high school

Where: Macquarie University, S2.6 (AHH) 1.620 Faculty Tute Rm (16UA),

When: Wednesday, 22 February, 13:00-14:00

Presenter: Li Jia

Host: Professor Ingrid Piller

Abstract: In the current era of globalization desired migration destinations are no longer confined to Anglophone and Western countries. Given the increasing prominence of China’s economy and soft power projection in the world, China has emerged as an increasingly attractive destination for international students. One of the first studies to systematically examine their educational experiences, this seminar shares findings from an ethnographic research project on Burmese students’ language learning experiences at a border high school in Yunnan in China’s south-west. The focus will be on the educational barriers experienced by Burmese migrant students, the educational policies and teaching practices affecting them, the agentive practices of migrant students and their interactions with the educational context in which they find themselves. The presentation will be of interest not only to those with a background in Educational Linguistics and Chinese Studies but to anyone wishing to understand how migrant education produces and reproduces the social order, particularly against the novel promotion of Chinese as a global language.

Li Jia (3rd from left) during field work

About the presenter: LI Jia is Associate Professor of Foreign Languages at Yunnan University. For the past three years, she has been a PhD student in the Linguistics Department at Macquarie University. Under the supervision of Ingrid Piller and as a member of the Language on the Move research group, she has conducted a critical sociolinguistic ethnography of the education experiences of Burmese migrant students in China. Her thesis is currently under examination. Her research interests are in the sociolinguistics of language learning and ASEAN students’ education in her native Yunnan, China.

Christmas party at an International High School in Yunnan

Over the past few decades, an increasing number of Burmese international students have enrolled in high schools in Yunnan, a province in the Southwest of China bordering Myanmar. More and more Burmese students are crossing the border in order to receive formal education in China. These international students have come to China with various dreams and parental expectations. Upon crossing the border gates, the contrast between the two countries remains imprinted on their memory, marking the beginning of Burmese students’ lives in China. One Burmese university student told me about her first impression upon crossing the border:

我们的国门，我们的路是石头满地飞，中国是油漆路，有多大区别！ 这边是，国门很大，我们的国门就是一个篱笆一样的，去到中国人，人家很有礼貌，穿着制服问你：‘你好 怎么怎么样’； 我们是穿着拖鞋，拿着钢笔在那里给你勾，给你过.

Our national check-point, our road is full of gravel flying everywhere. In China, it’s a tarred road. What a big difference! On this side, the [Chinese] national gate is very big. Our national gate is like a bamboo fence. When you go to the Chinese border soldiers, they are very polite, dressed in military uniform and greeting you with ‘nihao blah blah blah’ [makes typing motions with her fingers to indicate computerized bureaucratic procedures]. Ours are wearing flip-flops, holding pens and ticking boxes on forms before allowing you to pass.

The modern border buildings and infrastructure, advanced computer technologies, standardized Chinese language and homogenous military uniforms seem to mark a positive beginning for the international experiences of Burmese students. However, being able to cross the geographical border does not mean that Burmese students are able to cross the various ideological boundaries that they encounter in their daily lives.

The story of Yingying (a pseudonym) shows that even after crossing a physical national border, international students may continue to carry the border within them.

Yingying, a straight-A student in Myanmar, came to China to attend high school in 2013 when she was 14 years old. She and her parents had a long-term plan for her education in China: after studying hard, she would go on to enrol at a Chinese university and eventually graduate to become a doctor.

However, things did not go according to plan. Her experience at school brought her nothing but feelings of discomfort and exclusion.

来这边在得不舒服，学习也跟不上，我旁边坐的是学习好的人，老师讲呢，不懂呢问他们，但他们爱理不理，不想理啊! 问老师，老师在批作业没有时间，等晚自习时才能去问。 以前在缅甸发高烧时都要去读书的，来这边连点小感冒都不想去，看他们觉得太不舒服了。

I have never felt comfortable since I arrived here. I can’t catch up with the others. I’m surrounded by high-achievers and my teacher said I could ask my peers if I don’t understand something, but they are indifferent, and can’t even be bothered to speak! I could ask my teachers for help, but they are busy marking students’ homework and don’t have time. I have to wait until evening class. When I was in Myanmar, I insisted on going to school even if I had a high fever, but since coming here I don’t want to go to class if I have even the slightest cold. Seeing them really makes me uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, sitting with the high-achievers does not help the new Burmese students successfully integrate into the class. To her surprise and disappointment, Yingying receives nothing but indifference and blank rejection from her Chinese classmates. Her only hope is that help will be forthcoming from her teacher, but the likelihood of this too becomes quite slim and her cumulative questions and uncertainties arising from the heavy coursework load have to wait until evening class every day. Within two months of starting at the school, this formerly outstanding student has already ‘learned’ to be absent from class in China, something she would never have been in Myanmar even when she had a high fever.

What has made this straight-A student learn to play truant, and what makes her feel ‘uncomfortable’ sitting with her Chinese classmates in class? Her laziness? Her isolation from her peers? Each and every Burmese student will have had different expectations of their life abroad before their departure, but what they could hardly have imagined is the overwhelming feeling of isolation from the mainstream school culture that they would experience. The students are all receiving the same education in the same school, but what has separated them from the mainstream group? What invisible borders stand between them? To answer these questions, I adopt critical race theory (CRT) as a lens to analyse the intersection between race, language and other social categories on campus.

Yosso et al. (2009) demonstrate how racial micro-aggressions can create a negative campus climate in US schools. Latina/o students were found to experience various forms of micro-aggressions at individual and institutional levels. Micro-aggressions include assaults, such as intentionally derogatory verbal or nonverbal attacks; insults, such as subtle put-downs of a rude and insensitive nature regarding a person’s racial heritage or identity; and invalidations, or remarks that diminish, dismiss, or negate the realities and histories of people of color (Yosso et al. 2009, p.662). No matter whether micro-aggressions are conscious or unconscious, they permeate everyday mundane life on campus, which can cause extreme stress to marginalized students.

Similar to exclusions experienced by Latina and Latino students on US campuses, Burmese students are also being racialized in Chinese schools. At educational institutions in China, Putonghua is the (only) legitimate medium of instruction and Burmese students’ linguistic repertoires are often problematized. Most of the participants in my study are huaqiao (华侨), Burmese nationals but ethnically Chinese. Huaqiao students such as Yingying believe that their motherland is in China even though their nationality is Burmese.

However, crossing the border often changes what it means to be huaqiao. Yingying speaks perfect Chinese; in fact, her Chinese writing has received the acknowledgement of her teacher by being awarded the highest mark in the mid-term essay writing exam. Despite this, she is treated as an outsider and excluded by her Chinese peers.

Yingying’s dream of pursuing her academic aspirations in China ended after only half a year when she could no longer cope with the exclusion she experienced. She has gone back to Myanmar to continue her studies, rationalizing her return as motivated by ‘the cold weather in China.’

Crossing the border back from her imagined motherland to her birthplace must also have changed her perception of the meaning of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’.

Yingying is not alone in traversing national borders only to find that borders are also being carried within as a sense of difference and exclusion. Every day thousands of Burmese people are crossing borders to seek their future in China. More and more highways, railways and airports have been established to facilitate mutual cooperation and understanding. China is working hard to open up to and strengthen its ties with Myanmar and other ASEAN nations. But Yingying’s story shows that transforming physical borders is not enough. Critical race theory can help us understand the intersection between language, race and other social categories in China’s rapidly transforming border regions, and more specifically, in China’s rapidly internationalizing educational institutions. Her experience reminds us that borders can take many forms.

Tara J Yosso; William A Smith; Miguel Ceja; Daniel G Solórzano (2009). Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate for Latina/o Undergraduates Harvard Educational Review, 79 (4)