We kick off 2022 with a new episode in our Chats in Linguistic Diversity. In this episode, I speak with Professor Adam Jaworski about his research in language and mobility.

Language as resource to style a place

A languaged Christmas tree in an upmarket Sydney shopping mall

Adam is best known for his work on “linguascaping” – how languages, or bits of languages, are used to stylize a place. A welcome sign may index a tourist destination, artistic arrangements of word blocks like “love”, “peace”, or “joy” may index consumption and leisure spaces, multilingual signage may index a cosmopolitan space, and the absence of language may suggest the quiet luxury of the super-rich.

As these examples suggest, Adam’s focus, often in collaboration with his colleague Crispin Thurlow, has been on privileged mobilities: European tourists in West Africa, business class travelers, and those frequenting the consumption temples of our time, upmarket shopping malls.

Such research is vital to understanding the intersection between language and inequality, as Adam explains in our interview.

Privilege is the other side of the inequality coin, and a side that sociolinguists have often neglected.

English is safe and multilingualism is fun

The research of Adam and his associates has shown that English is often used to index a place as “safe”. However, the English that makes a place safe is not monolingual but plays with other languages or allusions to them. The English of consumption and leisure spaces is one that is shot through with bits and pieces of other languages – an umlaut here, a “bonjour” sign there, and a tourist going “xie xie” over there.

Code-crossing – switching into another language to signal symbolic change of speaker status or identity – thus becomes a sign of privilege, a way to have fun and to index one’s cosmopolitanism and global-mindedness.

Visual language displays have long marked a space as privileged, as in this cross-stitched sampler (Image credit: Nick Michael, Wikipedia)

Focusing visual language

Much of the language that makes a place consists of visual displays. These linguistic signs predominantly serve a decorative purpose, and Adam takes us back to Roman Jakobson and his theorization of the poetic function of language. According to Jakobson, the poetic function of language forces us to attend to the sign itself – the signifier – more than its meaning – the signified.

In today’s world with its ubiquity of signs, images, and other visual displays, it is easy to forget that the presence of signs for the sake of the sign itself has always been a display of power and privilege.

In short, our conversation is an invitation to carefully attend to mundane and everyday (bits of) language as an entry point into the big social questions of power, inequality, and social justice.

And, as always, academic questions do not come out of nowhere. That’s why the conversation is also a chance to hear from Adam about his career trajectory over the past 40 years.

If you want to dig deeper into Adam’s work, here are some suggested readings

Jaworski, A. (2015). Globalese: a new visual-linguistic register. Social Semiotics, 25(2), 217-235.
Jaworski, A. (2015). Word cities and language objects: ‘Love’ sculptures and signs as shifters. Linguistic Landscape, 1(1-2), 75-94.
Jaworski, A. (2019). X. Linguistic Landscape, 5(2), 115-141.
Jaworski, A. (2020). Multimodal writing: the avant-garde assemblage and other minimal texts. International Journal of Multilingualism, 17(3), 336-360.
Jaworski, A., & Lou, J. J. (2021). # wordswewear: mobile texts, expressive persons, and conviviality in urban spaces. Social Semiotics, 31(1), 108-135.
Jaworski, A., & Piller, I. (2008). Linguascaping Switzerland: language ideologies in tourism. In M. A. Locher & J. Strässler (Eds.), Standards and Norms in the English Language (pp. 301-321). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (available for download here)
Jaworski, A., Thurlow, C., Lawson, S., & Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2003). The uses and representations of host languages in tourist destinations: A view from British TV holiday programmes. Language Awareness, 12(1), 5-29.Thurlow, C., & Jaworski, A. (2003). Communicating a global reach: Inflight magazines as a globalizing genre in tourism. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7(4), 579-606.
Thurlow, C., & Jaworski, A. (2006). The alchemy of the upwardly mobile: symbolic capital and the stylization of elites in frequent-flyer programmes. Discourse and Society, 17(1), 99-135.
Thurlow, C., & Jaworski, A. (2010). Tourism discourse: language and global mobility. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

There is lots of related content on Language on the Move and this is small selection

Alcaraz, A. T. (2015). Strolling in Barcelona with Sanskrit and Devanāgarī.
Farrell, E. (2010). Visiting the Ausländerbehörde.
Grey, A. (2018). Do you ever wear language?
Hopkyns, S. (2020). Linguistic diversity and inclusion in the era of COVID-19.
Kalman, J. (2020). Signs of the times: Small media during Covid-19 in Mexico City.
Piller, I. (2010). Toiletology.
Piller, I. (2012). Money Talks.
Piller, I. (2013). Polish cemetery in Tehran.
Piller, I. (2017). More on banal cosmpolitanism.
Tenedero, P. P. P. (2021). COVID-safe travel between care and compliance.
Valdez, P. N. (2021). COVID-19 and the struggle for inclusive mobility.

Condemned to consume

My migration newsfeed in the past few weeks has been dominated by news about the Syrian refugee crisis and the various European and international responses. But there have also been two other noteworthy migration news: one relates to the changing face of immigration to Canada as increasingly highly educated migrants are admitted and the other relates to revelations that the Australian 7-Eleven convenience stores systematically exploit international students and other temporary visa holders.

How do these various news hang together?

“Traditional” immigration countries such as Australia and Canada have a relatively small refugee intake in comparison to their various work migration schemes. While the former dominate the news, the latter dominate the numbers. According to ABS data, the net immigration to Australia, in the financial year 2013-14, for instance, was over 212,000 people; humanitarian entrants accounted for only around six percent of these. So, maybe unusually internationally, Australia accepts far more “economic migrants” than “refugees.”

The rationale for this selection is that skilled and well-educated migrants, who fill labour shortages, are good for the economy; while refugees are a “burden” on the economy. One of the many complexities that this dichotomy overlooks is, of course, that refugees are often likely to be skilled and well-educated, too.

Let’s ignore that detail for the moment and ask whether migrants’ skills and education necessarily lead to social inclusion.

Social inclusion is a notoriously difficult concept to define. Despite frequent references to social inclusion in contemporary national and international policies, there is actually a notable lack of consensus as to what constitutes social inclusion. Most commentators see the promotion of economic well-being as constituting the core of social inclusion. However, the contributors to two recent collections devoted to “Linguistic Diversity and Social Inclusion” that I (co)edited for the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism and the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics found it necessary to go beyond the economic core meaning of social inclusion to also include a wider meaning of social inclusion as a sense of community participation and belonging. The contributors showed that inclusion is a multifaceted phenomenon and linguistically diverse populations may well be included on one level but excluded on another.

Recent research with Soviet Jewish migrants to Germany offers a highly pertinent discussion. The researcher, Sveta Roberman, undertook a year-long ethnographic project to examine the migration and settlement experiences of this group. She developed the concept of “inclusive exclusion” in response to the following observation:

I kept sensing a peculiar atmosphere, intangible and hard to describe, that pervades the lives of many, an aura of dissatisfaction and restlessness that borders on—or has become—apathy and resignation, articulated in an often-expressed sentiment: “We are kind of existing here, not really living.” (Roberman 2015, p. 744)

It’s an observation that resonates with a lot of the research into the language learning and settlement experiences of adult migrants conducted with very different origin groups by my students and myself here in Australia.

The people Roberman conducted her research with are Jewish migrants from the former Soviet Union, mostly from Russia and Ukraine, who settled in Germany in the 1990s and early 2000s. About 220,000 Soviet Jews were admitted during that period. For the re-unified Germany, accepting substantial numbers of Jewish migrants was yet another step on the long road of atonement for the Holocaust. It was hoped that these migrants would contribute to a revival of Jewish cultural and religious life in Germany.

“Germany of all places?!” (Source: Jewish Museum Frankfurt)

Around 80% of these migrants were tertiary-educated and had established professional careers in the Soviet Union. Most of them were secular and, because “Jew” was an ethnic and not a religious category in the Soviet Union, only about a third of these migrants ended up joining Jewish religious communities in Germany. In fact, in contrast to Soviet Jews migrating to Israel or the USA, those coming to Germany were probably least motivated by ideological reasons. Roberman’s participants did not hesitate to explain that they had migrated for economic reasons, in search of a better life.

This context seems ideal to examine the social inclusion of migrants: a highly-educated migrant group, a high degree of cultural similarity between migrants and hosts, and public desire on the part of the destination society to embrace this particular migrant group.

A migration fairy-tale? Not quite.

In the way social inclusion is usually conceived as economic participation and cultural recognition, Roberman’s participants had little to complain:

When speaking about their encounters with the host country, my interviewees were not troubled by their economic situation; they felt secure and protected in that sphere of their lives. Neither did they complain about the lack of possibilities for the articulation of their Russian or Jewish identities: the former could be practiced at the range of Russian cultural centers, clubs, and libraries, while the latter could be actualized and maintained within Jewish communal centers and organizations. Even the constraint they faced in political participation, because many immigrants lacked full citizenship, was hardly an issue for my interviewees. (Roberman 2015, p. 747)

Migration had enabled the participants to partake of Western economic affluence, they had received significant, though not always full, legal and political citizenship rights, and, as a group, cultural recognition.

So what was missing? Access to regular, stable and meaningful employment.

Participants who, at the time of migration, were in their mid-30s or older found it extremely difficult to find employment commensurate with their education, skills and experience. This was not for lack of trying. Participants were deeply influenced by the Soviet work ethos and extremely resourceful in their attempts to find work. The German state also helped with the provision of language and training courses and a suite of short-term work and internship programs designed to help migrants transition into full-time regular employment.

Except they didn’t.

The usual intangible barriers of accent, non-recognition of overseas qualifications, lack of local experience, etc. that we have often discussed here on Language on the Move applied in this case, too. Age discrimination was another factor. Middle-aged participants in the study ended up trying to secure stable employment for years. During that time they were supported by welfare and a range of casual short-term jobs, including state-sponsored employment schemes.

Olga, a qualified and experienced teacher, for instance, arrived in Germany when she was 40 years old. Her qualifications were not recognized and she was involved in various re-training schemes. She also held various casual jobs as an attendant in an aged-care home and as a social worker. When she turned 50 without having achieved regular standard employment, she was officially “removed” from the labour market and declared an “early retiree.”

Being unable to find regular employment meant that the participants struggled to construct a coherent life-story and to see meaning in their migration, as was the case for Olga:

I was sitting in her apartment as she tried to compose a coherent narrative of the 10-year period of her life in Germany. But that seemed to be an unachievable task: the flow of her life narrative stopped at the point of emigration. What followed were fragmented facts that she resisted bringing together into a meaningful story, seeing little achievement or sense in her 10-year migration experience. (Roberman 2015, p. 752)

Another participant, Mark, who had been a cameraman in Kiev and was 53 years old when he arrived in Germany had given up looking for work after six years and lived on welfare. He said, “Once I had some objectives in life, I aspired to something, I had some plans, […] Today, I wake up in the morning, and I have one and the same question to ask myself: what do I do today?” (quoted in Roberman 2015, p. 754).

Sveta Roberman, Sweet Burdens (SUNY Press, 2015)

Like others in his situation, he filled his life with surfing the internet, watching TV, attending doctor’s appointments and, above all, shopping. Some developed elaborate routes to stretch out daily grocery shopping, others threw themselves into the pursuit of specials and sales. While these activities fill time, in the long run they breed a deep sense of isolation and loneliness. Being an anonymous shopper trapped them in the position of social strangers.

At one level, consumption spaces are some of the least discriminatory spaces imaginable; one participant made this point with regard to language proficiency:

One does not need language in the supermarket. The system is itself interested to sell you the thing, and the system finds its way to do it; they succeed in selling it to you in any way. It does not matter what language you speak. (quoted in Roberman 2015, p. 756)

At the same time, this participant makes the point that consumption spaces are spaces of extreme dislocation. In the supermarket or shopping mall it does not matter who you are. In fact, it does not even matter that you are there. Being reduced to filling their time with consumption resulted in a sharp feeling of невостребованность: “uselessness,” “redundancy,” like unclaimed luggage. One participant compared her situation to that of cows who are allowed to graze on lush green pastures but nobody bothers to come and milk them.

In short, participants were free to consume: they had achieved a comfortable and economically secure existence through their migration. However, their access to resources of real value – stable and meaningful work – was constrained. In this context, the freedom to consume condemned them to consume. Consumption did not result in a sense of dignity and self-worth, it did not allow them to forge coherent positive life-stories and it did not provide them with a sense of belonging. While included economically, legally and culturally, their participation is ultimately constrained – a condition Roberman calls “exclusive inclusion.”

Our economic system is characterised by overproduction and there is the regular need to dispose of surplus goods. Consequently, even relatively poor members of affluent consumer societies, such as Roberman’s irregularly employed and/or welfare-dependent interviewees, are readily included in the sphere of consumption. By contrast, stable and regular employment is in short supply. Exclusion from this scare and valuable resource continues to be a powerful way to reproduce social hierarchies. Disadvantaged groups of local people may be similarly excluded but migrants are particularly vulnerable on post-industrial labour markets and to the unemployment, underemployment and exploitation that go for “flexibility.” As Roberman (2015, p. 759f.) concludes:

Exclusive inclusion is a much more civilized, camouflaged form of exclusion. It seems to be mild. But, in spite of its apparent mildness, exclusive inclusion, which limits access to social resources of real value and to participation in the arenas of social recognition and belonging, is no less destructive in the ways it undermines the excluded individual’s world, threatens humanness, and strains the social fabric as a whole.

References

Piller, I. (2014). Linguistic Diversity and Social Inclusion in Australia. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 37(3), 190-197.

Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (2011). Linguistic Diversity and Social Inclusion. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(4), 371 – 381.

Roberman, S. (2015). Not to Be Hungry Is Not Enough: An Insight Into Contours of Inclusion and Exclusion in Affluent Western Societies Sociological Forum, 30 (3), 743-763 DOI: 10.1111/socf.12190

Further reading

Zwanzig Jahre Jüdische Zuwanderung nach Deutschland. (2009, 2009-09-22). Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland.

Ferguson, A., & Toft, K. (2015, 2015-09-02). 7-Eleven: The Price of Convenience. ABC Four Corners.

Goldmann, A., & Krauss, M. (2015, 2015-01-21). Weniger Jüdische Zuwanderer im Jahr 2013. Jüdische Allgemeine.

Ortiz, A. (2015, 2015-09-08). Increasingly Mobile and Educated: The Future of Canadian Immigration. World Education News and Reviews.

Shcherbatova, S., & Plessentin, U. (2013, 2013-11-18). Zuwanderung und Selbstfindung: Die Jüdischen Gemeinden im Wiedervereinten Deutschland. Heinrich Böll Stiftung: Migrationspolitisches Portal.

Sveta Roberman recently also published a book about the larger study, which, if the Google preview is anything to go by, is even more fascinating:

Roberman, S. (2015). Sweet Burdens: Welfare and Communality among Russian Jews in Germany. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Yangshuo’s West Street (Source: chinatravelca)

Tourism has been found to be beneficial for minority language maintenance in a number of contexts from around the world. For instance, Anand Torrents Alcaraz has recently shown here on Language on the Move that the growing tourism industry in the Pallars Sobirà region of the Spanish Pyrenees extends the range of uses of Pallarès, the local dialect of Catalan, beyond its traditional rural-agricultural domains. Similarly, PhD research by Yang Hongyan has demonstrated that the award of World Heritage status to the city of Lijiang in Yunnan province in China has provided a significant boost for the maintenance of the Naxi language (Yang 2013). However, it is not always the case that the local minority language benefits from the development of tourism in a minority area, as a fascinating case study of West Street in Yangshuo Town in the Guilin district of Guangxi Province in China demonstrates (Gao 2012).

Yangshuo was one of the first backpacker destinations to emerge in China and the frequency with which Yangshuo is featured in English-language travel reports is out of all proportion to its small size, as Xiaoxiao Chen found in her study of representations of Chinese people and languages in English-language newspaper travel writing (Chen 2013). Yangshuo is typically represented as “easy,” “accessible” and “English-speaking” to English-language audiences, as in the following example (quoted in Chen 2013, p. 207):

[Yangshuo] is the most accessible destination in China for independent foreign travelers, offering accommodation across all ranges, an eclectic array of restaurants with English menus and English-speaking tourism service providers.

However, catering to the international tourist market through the provision of English-language services is only one part of the success story of Yangshuo. Capitalising on its popularity with international tourists, Yangshuo began to strategically associate itself with English-speaking visitors in its marketing efforts directed at domestic tourists, as in the following strategy paper (quoted in Gao 2012, p. 343):

We should fully explore the opportunities of mixing Chinese with western cultures by strategically integrating more western elements into local Yangshuo culture.

As a consequence of this branding strategy, part of the attraction of Yangshuo for domestic tourists now is the presence of English in the linguistic landscape, as a tourism site points out (quoted in Gao 2012, p. 336f.):

Yangshuo has picturesque scenery and rich cultural heritage. The most famous is the ancient stone street, West Street, which has many craft shops, calligraphy and painting shops, hostels, cafés, bars, and Chinese kung fu houses. It is also the gathering place for the largest number of foreigners – more than twenty businesses are owned by foreigners. So the place is called the ‘Foreigner Street’. And since all the locals can speak foreign languages, it is also called the ‘Global Village’. Another attraction is the study and exchange of Chinese and foreign languages and cultures. Chinese people teach their foreign friends Chinese cultures including its language, calligraphy, taiji, cooking, chess; at the same time foreigners teach Chinese people their languages and cultures, so that both finish their ‘study abroad’ within a short time.

The presence of English in the local linguistic landscape is continuously stressed in marketing materials, such as this one from the Yangshuo Tourism Bureau (quoted in Gao 2012, p. 345f.):

Yangshuo is a good place to cure your ‘dumb English’ and ‘deaf English’. At West Street, you can always see West Street people talking in fluent English with western travelers for business or just having small talk. Even old grannies in their 70s or teenage kids can chat [Chinese original: 拉呱 lā guǎ] with ‘laowai’ [foreigners] in English. Many western travelers say they just feel no foreignness here. West Street is the largest ‘English Corner’ in China now.

One could assume that in this ‘culture- and language-rich’ tourist destination, local languages are also being strategically incorporated, particularly as Yangshuo is located in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the home of the Zhuang ethnic minority. However, this is not the case. In contrast to the ubiquitous focus on English, the local language, Zhuang, the local dialect of Chinese, and other local minority languages present in Yangshuo (Yao, Hui, Miao, Tibetan, Dong and others) are systematically erased: their existence is simply never even mentioned in tourism materials about the area.

Even if the local dialect is mentioned, as in this blog post by a visitor to Yangshuo (quoted in Gao 2012, p. 348f.), it is to be denigrated as not locally appropriate:

You must hold a CET-4 certificate, with relatively fluent spoken English, because at West Street, or just at countryside farmhouses of Yangshuo, even an old grandma or an egg-seller from a rural family could surprise you with their amazing English and at least another foreign language. Next of course you should know Cantonese, kind of an official language here, ‘cause more than half of the xiăozī [=cool person; yuppie] are from Guangdong. The third comes Putonghua, better with Beijing accent. The local dialect just does not work there.

In contrast to Pallars Sobirà or Lijiang, in Yangshuo tourism has done nothing to improve the status of local minority languages. On the contrary, as English takes on the function of indexing not only the global but also the local identity of Yangshuo, it is English that becomes a marker of local authenticity in the global village.

References

Chen, Xiaoxiao. (2013). Opening China to the Tourist Gaze: Representations of Chinese People and Languages in Newspaper Travel Writing since the 1980s. PhD, Macquarie University.

Gao, Shuang (2012). Commodification of place, consumption of identity: The sociolinguistic construction of a ‘global village’ in rural China Journal of Sociolinguistics, 16 (3), 336-357 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9841.2012.00534.x

Yang, Hongyan. (2012). Naxi, Chinese and English: Multilingualism in Lijiang. PhD, Macquarie University.

Actress Noemí Busquets as the wise yet naughty Esperanceta Gassia at the Ecomuseu de les Valls d’Àneu during the theatrical night visit to the ethnographic museum of Esterri d’ Àneu in Pallarès

When thinking of promoting tourism in a mountainous area of the Catalan Pyrenees it might seem as if using Pallarès, the local dialect of the Western Catalan type, with very specific vocabulary that visitors from other Catalan-speaking areas are not familiar with and which has been traditionally linked to rural and traditional lifestyles, would make little sense.

Nevertheless, much is to be gained by resorting to this local variety of the Catalan language in touristic activities in the area of Pallars Sobirà… why is that? Well, surprisingly, globalization is the answer.

One of the things that happen in the globalized touristic use of languages, according to authors such as Jaworski and Thurlow (2011) is the “commodification” and “recontextualization” of language. That means, language becomes a commodity in tourism … Aloha in Hawaii and Namaste in Nepal add authenticity to cultural visits, which is always a key asset in tourism. Beyond greetings and occasional language-learning through touristic “grazing” and “gazing”, though, tourism naturally creates new contexts for cultural phenomena and it currently values (oral) intangible heritage greatly. In fact, intangible heritage becomes visible precisely thanks to tourism. Pallarès is, in this sense, an intangible heritage of great value due to its connection to the authentic culture and territory of the Pyrenees.

According to dialectologists (Veny, 1993), Pallarès displays the marks of languages that were spoken before Catalan in the Pyrenees; mainly Basque, which vanished around the 8^th century AD due to the Romanization process, but which endured in “isolated” mountain valleys of the Pallars until the 10^th century, leaving a strong imprint on place names specially.

Mountain regions are ambivalent: either mountains and valleys “isolate”, or they “link” populations, villages, and cultures. So, when researching in order to assess the potential value of Pallarès in the promotion of the rich touristic offer of the Pallars Sobirà region (a land with prime adventure sports environment and unique cultural offers from Romanesque art to gastronomy) I asked cultural anthropologist and director of the Ecomuseu de les Valls d’Àneu Jordi Abella about this. Mr. Abella told me that “the villages of the Pyrenees in the 19^th century were already connected to European capital cities such as Madrid, Paris and Barcelona” and that too long a “good savage myth à la Rousseau had lived on to give a false romantic image of the Pyrenees” based on cultural purity due to isolation.

In a way, both isolation and globalization are forces at play here: isolation is evidenced by the fact that Basque lived on for 200 years in the Pallars; and globalization is evidenced by the fact that people changed to a common language – Catalan – which they could use at fairs and for trading.

Poster of the theater and dance festival “Esbaiola’t” in Esterri d’Àneu. The verb “esbaiolar-se” is unknown in other varieties of Catalan and means “to clear one’s mind” as well as “to clear up the mists (weather)”

Catalonia as a whole is going through what some have called a “thirst for history” (Toledano Gonzàlez, 2004). Catalans are more inclined to consume and discover more about their own culture at the current history-defining moment in which a Catalan vote for self-determination is being discussed. This creates a context that naturally invites greater use of Pallarès as Actress Noemí Busquets (who plays the role of a Pallarès-speaking witch-like wise and wacky lady that confronts local and global values during the night visits to the Eco Museum of the village of Esterri d’Àneu) emphasises: “now I feel that it (Pallarès) is better appreciated by visitors”.  And the fact is that 63% of the visitors coming to the Pallars region are from Catalonia (Boyra & Fusté, 2013), and mostly from the metropolitan area of Barcelona. What is it that Pallarès can offer them?

When in 1913, the philologist Pompeu Fabra wrote the Orthographic Rules of Catalan and later on the General Dictionary of Catalan Language (1931), he based them on the Eastern Catalan dialect – the one spoken in Barcelona – and left aside most vocabulary of other dialects and almost completely ignored Pallarès. Now, as a consequence of this, people coming to the Pallars get surprised by Pallarès. While queuing up at a grocery shop in the beautiful village of Esterri d’Àneu, a spontaneous conversation on dialectology started: a woman shared that when she got married to her Pallarès husband and moved to his village, her mother-in-law once asked her to fetch the “llosa”. “Llosa” in Catalan means “stone slab”; so, she continued “I was hoping that the stone slab wouldn’t be too heavy”. To her relief she later found out that “llosa” in Pallarès means “ladle”.

Pallarès brings back to Catalan-speaking visitors, a richness of vocabulary that they would otherwise ignore. When I asked Yolanda Mas, tourism specialist of the city hall of Sort (the capital of the Pallars Sobirà) what she thought of promoting Pallarès through tourism, she said that “it is an endangered resource that we should definitely invest in”. Nowadays, the visitors to the Pallars Sobirà are very diverse; from French and English to Spanish, Israeli and Russians; so the linguascape of the Pallars might become even more complex soon, and while offering touristic activities in Hebrew or Russian may respond to the economic need of the moment, offering activities in Pallarès Catalan in addition to activities in Standard Catalan and other languages, will be proof that “identity sells” while being at the same time a necessary expression of authentic identity.

References
Boyra, J. & Fusté, F. (2013). Anàlisi dels instruments d’ordenació i dels recursos territorials i l’activitat turística a la comarca del Pallars Sobirà GREPAT/ Escola Universitària Formatic Barna, Barcelona

Fabra, P. (1913). Normes ortogràfiques. Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona.

Fabra, P. (1931). Diccionari general de la llengua catalana. Llibreria Catalònia, Barcelona.

Jaworski, A. & Thurlow, C. (2010). Language and the Globalizing Habitus of Tourism: Towards a sociolingüístics of Fleeting Relationships (From: Handbook of Language and Globalization, edited by Coupland, N.) Wiley- Blackwell Publishing ltd. West Sussex, UK.

Toledano Gonzàlez, L. (2004). Atles del Turisme a Catalunya mapa nacional dels recursos turísitics intangibles. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona- Grup de Recerca Consolidat Manuscrits / Generalitat de Catalunya.

Torrents, A. (2014). La variant dialectal pallaresa com a bé immaterial de la marca de turisme cultural “Pallars”. Creació i comercialització de productes turístics. Quaderns de recerca Escola Universitària Formatic Barna, Barcelona.

Veny, J. (1993). Els parlars catalans (Síntesi de dialectologia) Editorial Moll, Mallorca.

Who profits from an early start in English language learning?

不要讓你的孩子輸在起跑點上 (Don’t let your children lose out at the starting point.) is one of the most popular slogans whenever English education in Taiwan is discussed. The notion that, when it comes to English language learning, younger is better, is widely accepted by Taiwanese people.

As a result, Taiwanese children are compelled to learn English as early as possible. In 2004 Taiwan’s Ministry of Education mandated all public elementary schools should start English courses from Grade 3 but the majority of schools actually begin to teach English in the first grade. Some private language schools even offer all-English programs for toddlers as young as one-year-old. Thus, there can be no doubt that both the public and private sectors subscribe to the argument that English should be taught at an early age.

The belief in the importance of an early start in English is widely promoted by private language schools, as in this video clip, which likens young children to the earth in which English is planted like a seed. The short text in Mandarin Chinese introducing the video explains the principle as follows:

埋下一顆種籽

教育，在孩子的心裡埋下一顆種籽

在往後的人生中發芽、抽枝，

終至成為綠葉成蔭的大樹。

自然而然的讓語言活起來！

 

Plant a seed

Education (English) – plant a seed in children’s minds.

It will germinate and eventually it will grow into a big tree with large green leaves.

Let language grow naturally! (My translation.)

This text implies that age is the critical factor in successful English language learning  as an early start will enable “natural mastery” of English. One of the central themes of the commercial is the repeated assertion that children have an extraordinary ability to learn English and that they will acquire English naturally through English-Only immersion methods taught by native English-speaking teachers. The video also suggests that English can be learned in a “joyful” way at an early age in the school’s playful learning environment and that this “natural method” will achieve extremely positive outcomes.

The commercial drives this point home with testimonials by parents interspersed throughout the video: they claim that their children became “more confident”, “more active” and “more opened-minded” through learning English. Reaffirming points made by the parents are native English-speaking teachers basically promising that Taiwanese children will see the whole world differently as English will give them a global perspective. The overarching concepts of the text and video are that English should be learned at an early age and in doing so English learning will transform Taiwanese children into “global” individuals.

As mentioned earlier, although public schools officially start teaching English from 3^rd grade, the language school market pressures Taiwanese parents to send their pre-school children to language schools to get a head start. Language schools market English language learning to mirror first language acquisition. In other words, age is considered the primary determinant in successful English language learning. This directly links to the widespread belief that there is a critical period in language learning and that children are better second language learners.

However, there are many studies that contradict the premise of “the earlier, the better.” There is ample evidence to suggest that language learners who have a firm foundation in their native language, in this case Chinese, will fare better in second language learning. Nonetheless, in Taiwan there is no shortage of over-eager parents sending their children to language schools or bilingual kindergartens to obtain an English education at a very young age. Given the English learning hype they are prepared to ignore the possibility that their children might be disadvantaged eventually for being deprived of basic knowledge in their first language.

Furthermore, even when Taiwanese English learners begin at an early age, they rarely exhibit perfect mastery of English. In reality, age is only one of the many factors that contribute to an individual’s language learning. Second language or foreign language acquisition involves a number of complex learner variables, such as student motivation, attitudes towards learning, learning styles, aptitude, conditions for English teaching and learning and the goals of English education. Furthermore, these are all embedded in the broader political, social, economic and teaching contexts.

The aim of an earlier start for English is assumed to lead to modernization and internationalization in Taiwan but before achieving this lofty ideal English creates an unequal relationship among the people in contemporary Taiwanese society.

In light of the evidence that an early start in English is not necessarily beneficial and may have negative consequences even for the individual and in light of the heavy social cost of Taiwan’s English craze, Taiwan may need to re-evaluate its current beliefs and think about restructuring its failing English learning system. Just because children start early, does not mean they will reach the finish line faster. In fact, when it comes to English language learning, there is no absolute finish line …

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.

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.

Constructing language learning as global choice on melale.ir

Persian version of Vahid Parvaresh, “Supermarket Language Learning”; translated by Behnam Keimasi (بهنام کیماسی)

در ایران، همانند بسیار دیگری از کشورها، دولت به صورت مرسوم نقش پررنگی در عرصه یادگیری زبان دوم ایفا نموده است و امتیاز انحصاری سیاست گذاری های رسمی را در دست دارد. در این زمینه، یک سیاست رسمی کلی که وزارت آموزش و پرورش آن را تدوین و تنظیم نموده است، معرفی زبان انگلیسی (و عربی) به دانش آموزان پس از رسیدن به سن 11 سالگی می باشد. هر چند این سیاست، آن گونه که از این مصاحبه کوتاه اما آشکار کننده با معاون وزیر آموزش و پرورش بر می آید، هم اکنون در حال بازنگری می باشد. طبق گفته های معاون وزیر، سیاست جدید به مدارس دولتی اجازه می دهد تا زبان های خارجی (نه تنها انگلیسی و عربی، بلکه فرانسوی و آلمانی) را در قالب “بسته های سوپرمارکتی” گوناگون به دانش آموزان پیشنهاد دهند تا آنها بتوانند هر زبانی را که بیشتر دوست دارند انتخاب نمایند. علاوه بر این، سیاست جدید به دانش آموزان این اجازه را می دهد تا بسیار زودتر از 11 یا 12 سالگی به “انتخاب زبانی که دوست دارند” بپردازند. این حقیقت که وزارت آموزش و پرورش ایران تصمیم گرفته است تا از سیاست زبان خارجی سفت وسخت خود در راستای اجرای یک سیاست انعطاف پذیر تر دست بکشد، قابل توجه است.

اما چه چیزی می تواند موجب این تغییر باشد؟ یا به عبارتی دیگر، چه اتفاقی افتاده است که وزارت آموزش و پرورش را بر آن داشته است تا سیاستِ زبانِ خارجی خود که همواره تنها شامل زبان های انگلیسی و عربی بوده است را بازنگری کند؟ مصاحبه پاسخی قطعی ارائه نمی کند اما نگاهی موشکافانه تر به سیاست های اجرا شده در مدارس غیر دولتی در فهم موضوع به ما کمک می کند.

در ایران نابردباریِ مرسوم در خصوص تنوع زبانی – همین حقیقت که آموزش زبان های خارجی محدود به زبان های انگلیسی و عربی شده است – با سیاست های زبانی که بخش خصوصی اعمال می کند، همخوانی ندارد. مدارسی که به بخش خصوصی تعلق دارند، خیلی وقت است که به آموزش زبان های فرانسوی، آلمانی و انگلیسی به کودکان، اغلب از سن 5 سالگی، پرداخته اند. نتیجه این آموزش، بازاری رقابتی نه تنها برای زبان انگلیسی که برای زبان های فرانسوی و آلمانی بوده که با نابردباریِ مرتبط با تنوع زبانی در تضاد است. بدین گونه بخش آموزش خصوصی شکل های جدیدی از کالای زبانی را پدید می آورد؛ حقیقتی که مسائل پیچیده ای را در رابطه با تغییر تعادلِ میانِ سیاست های زبانی دولتی و خصوصی به وجود می آورد.

علاوه بر این، اینترنت فضای بزرگ و تقریبا غیرقابل کنترلی را برای مدارس خصوصی جهت استفاده از بسته های آموزشی زبان فراهم می آورد.  ملل یکی از چنین وب سایت هایی است که متعلق به یک مدرسه خصوصی با نام ملل می باشد. هدف ادعایی مدرسه تشویق دوزبانگی از طریق روش موضوع محور می باشد. مجموعه آموزشی ملل آموزش زبان های انگلیسی و فرانسوی را فراهم آورده است. در این محیط، شکل های کاملا انعطاف پذیرِ آموزش زبان ارائه می شود تا پاسخگوی نیازهای گوناگون مشتریان باشد. به عنوان مثال، در این مجموعه یادگیری زبان فرانسوی (در ایران!) طبق سیاست های وضع شده توسط اتحادیه اروپا ممکن است. بنابراین بسته های آموزشی زبان در شکل ها و اندازه های گوناگون ارائه می شوند آن چنان که گویی وارد یک سوپرمارکت بسیار بزرگ زبانی شده اید.

به طور کلی، این که دولت تصمیم گرفته تا سیاست های مرتبط با زبان خارجی سابق خود را اصلاح کند به نظر پاسخی به تغییرات ایجاد شده در روش هایی است که از طریق آن هم دانش آموزان و هم والدین در جریانِ گفتمانِ آموزشِ زبانِ بخشِ خصوصی قرار گرفته اند؛ جایی که آنها به مصرف کننده تبدیل شده اند. بسته های سوپرمارکتی نه تنها در بخش خصوصی که هم اکنون در بخش آموزش عمومی نیز به این مصرف کنندگان پیشنهاد می شود. در این روند، سیاست گذاری مربوط به زبان های خارجیِ مرسوم و ریشه دار نیز همسویِ “انتظاراتِ جهانی” می شود.

برچسب ها: زبان عربی، مصرف، زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان جهانی، زبان فرانسوی، جهانی شدن، ایران، آموزش زبان، سیاست زبانی.

Jogiyuhak (early study abroad) is very popular in South Korea (Source: chosun.com)

Readers of Language on the Move will be familiar with South Korea’s English fever, the sweeping zeal for learning English. Parents enrol children in English medium-preschools, arts and sports classes, nursery schools with native-speaking English staff, toddler gyms with English speaking trainers, or hire English-speaking babysitters to talk to their baby in English. Pregnant mothers read an English storybook, attend English medium church services or listen to online English courses for prenatal education in hopes that their foetus will hear and absorb English. Some parents drag their child to a clinic to have tongue surgery, snipping the membrane under the tongue, on the assumption that they will then be able to pronounce the r-sound better.

In short, Koreans are obsessed with English, particularly with native-like fluency and accent.For Koreans who have limited English skills, English proficiency means native-like accent and fluency and the key to this is starting early and being around English speakers. Children’s study abroad, jogiyuhak, is the perfect embodiment of the belief in early exposure in a native environment. While it is often said that Korea’s examination-obsessed education system and intense competition is another reason for early study abroad decisions, the overarching goal is to achieve a native level of English proficiency. More precisely, their ultimate aspiration is to add perfect English to their presumably impeccable Korean.

My first encounter with an early-study-abroad student dates back to the days when I was doing my master’s degree in TESOL as a ‘late’-study-abroad student in Sydney. It was for the first time in my life I was sitting in two hour-long academic lectures in English and I missed much of the lecturer’s instruction. I thought that my problem was normal for an adult international student from Korea who had hardly experienced such a situation before. After the class, I went up to another Korean student, I’ll call her Jenny, and said, in Korean, of course: “It’s hard to understand the lecturer, isn’t it?” Jenny’s response was surprising, “No. I’m used to listening to lectures.” Oh, was this only my problem? To my relief, she added that she had completed her bachelor degree in Australia. Yeah! I was not abnormal after all!

Later on I found out more about Jenny’s background. She had come to Australia at age 16 and had joined a private high school as a boarder, spending a total of eight years in Australia before starting her master’s degree. Soon I started to notice that Jenny often missed the point of an argument or presented irrelevant ideals in informal discussions with other Korean international students. It was obvious that she frequently did not understand the subject of discussions. In addition, she did not understand some words that we were using in discussions, which we had learnt from books or through formal education. These language problems in her ‘mother tongue’ presumably resulted from the fact that she had been absent from the Korean curriculum and other Korean literacy contexts. So, there was a formal Korean register she either forgot or had never learnt.

This observation led me to ponder the role of literacy in language development. The absence of Korean education during jogiyuhak would mean an interruption to the development of formal and literate varieties in Korean.

Well, you might say that stunted Korean is the price Jenny had to pay for her high level of English. However, it did not take long before I found out that, even if listening to a two-hour lecture in English was not arduous to her, her level of understanding of the class contents was not enough to fulfill subject assignments. Jenny often had to ask her Korean classmates, including myself, about concepts and terminologies and she sought assistance with her assignments. I should acknowledge that she wasn’t hiding her difficulties and was straightforward enough to tell everyone that she wrote her essays by cutting and pasting from other texts and that her boyfriend helped her.

Jenny’s struggle with academic English reminded me of Cummins (2000), who argues for the need to distinguish conversational fluency from academic language proficiency, noting that despite their seeming fluency in English, the level of migrant students’ academic achievement is usually far behind their local peers. He suggests that the students may attain age-appropriate levels of conversation fluency within two years. However, it takes at least five to seven years to reach grade-level academic proficiency in English. Furthermore, this does not necessarily mean that migrant students eventually catch up to grade norms after five to seven years. Rather, during that time of language learning students’ academic performance is most likely impeded due to language barriers. This long period of language impairment of migrant students has significant implications for their overall academic development and their preparation for the worlds of employment and citizenship.

My own PhD research on Korean students’ early study abroad and bilingualism in Australia sheds further light on these issues. Many of my research participants reported that they were constrained to select learning areas such as Mathematics and Sciences in which reading and writing was less demanding compared with humanities subjects. So, ironically, early study abroad placed a severe constraint on pursuing language-related areas of inquiry: those who might have had more aptitude for heavily language-dependent fields in the humanities and social sciences were not able to pursue those areas of study in English. Consequently, their choice of careers in Business and IT was linguistically constrained.

To put it differently, early study abroad seems to be more favorable to those with an aptitude for and an interest in these less-language-dependent areas.

On the other hand, the language barriers and impeded adaptation can also mean that early-study-abroad students lose interest in studying. Some of my participants accordingly were regretful that they had come to Australia where they felt they had been transformed from academic high achievers into students with no interest in academic work.

Overall, early study abroad or submersion into English monolingual education in an English-speaking environment seems to entail the under-development of linguistic repertoires in both languages. Most participants revealed that they felt that neither language was fully developed or that they were not as good as a native speaker of either language. This resulted in a sense of confusion and feelings of discomfort. Consequently, they reported difficulties in interactions with speakers of both languages and a sense of not knowing where to belong.

Sending children overseas is costly but many Koreans believe that early study abroad will bring their children advantages outweighing those enormous expenses. While the assessment of the outcome is an individual one, as young adults many of my research participants, whether they continue to reside in Australia or have returned to Korea, struggle to find their place – maybe more so than those who never left?

Cummins, Jim (2000). Language, power and pedagogy: bilingual children in the crossfire, Multilingual Matters

Constructing language learning as global choice on melale.ir

In Iran, as in many other countries, the state has traditionally been a very powerful actor in the field of second language learning and has the monopoly of formal policy making. In this context, a general official policy formulated by the Ministry of Education has been to introduce English (and Arabic) to students no sooner than when they are 11 years old. However, this policy is currently under review as revealed in this short but illuminating interview with Iran’s Vice Minister for Education. According to the vice minister, the new policy allows state-run schools to offer foreign languages (not only English and Arabic but also French and German) in various “supermarket packages” so that students can “choose” whatever language they like more. Further to this, the new policy allows students to “choose the language they like” much earlier than when they are 11 or 12 years old. The fact that the Iranian Ministry of Education has finally decided to abandon its sacrosanct foreign language policy in favour of a more flexible policy is significant.

What could be the cause of this radical shift? Or to put it differently, what has happened that has finally convinced the Ministry of Education to modify its foreign language policies which had always been aimed at English and Arabic only? The interview does not reveal a definitive answer but a close look at language policies implemented by private, non-state-run schools provides a clue.

In Iran the traditional intolerance of the state of linguistic variation – the very fact that the teaching of foreign languages is geared toward English and Arabic – is not matched by the politics of language that operate in the globalized, private sector. Schools that belong to the private sector have long taught French, German and English as foreign languages, often aimed at children as young as 5. The outcome of this has been a competitive market not just of English but also of French and German which defies the state’s traditional intolerance of linguistic diversity. The private education sector thus creates new forms of linguistic commodification; a fact that raises quite complex issues related to the shifting balance between state and private language policies.

What is more, the Internet provides these private schools with a wide and virtually uncontrolled space for language learning packages. Melale.ir is one such website that belongs to a private school named melal (“nations”). The purported aim of the school is to encourage bilingualism through content learning and the target audiences are elementary and secondary students. Melal provides instruction in English and French, among others.

In this environment, highly flexible forms of language learning are offered to cater to diverse customer needs. For example, it is possible to learn French (in Iran!) according to the policies set by the European Union. Language learning packages thus come in all shapes and sizes as if you have entered a giant linguistic supermarket.

Overall, that the state has decided to modify its former foreign language policies seems to be a response to the changes in the ways that both students and parents are positioned in private sector discourses of language learning. There, they have been turned into language-learners-as-consumers. These consumers are offered supermarket packages of foreign languages, now not only in the private sector but also in public education. In the process, a traditional, deep-rooted foreign language policy becomes transformed in line with “globalized expectations.”

Pompei Restaurant, Karachi (Source: fcpakistan.com)

A few days ago I had an Alice-in-Wonderland experience. Having lived all my life in Karachi, I had until then never heard of the Pompei Restaurant. I was invited there by a visiting British academic, who declined my invitation to have dinner at our house and wanted to meet me at the Pompei instead. He seemed very surprised that I had never heard of the Pompei, which he seemed to know well.

Armed with the Google map directions, I still managed to lose my way but arrived a few minutes before my host.  Stepping into the restaurant was like going down the rabbit hole: I left Karachi behind and entered Europe.

The furniture, the wall hangings, the light music, and the candle lit tables all made me feel as if I had been transported to Italy. I was greeted very politely by the valet and the gentleman at the reception and was taken to the table my host had booked for us. I sat down and looked around. The bar with impressive brass levers to pour beer caught my attention. I asked the waiter for a glass of wine in Urdu but my eagerness was met with a thin smile and the English response: ‘Sir, wine is not served here.’

At that moment, my host arrived. Before sitting down, he handed a bag to the waiter. The waiter took the bag and returned with two menu cards. The menu card was in English only but, despite the fact that English is the main language I use in my professional life, I did not recognize the name of single dish on the menu except for pizza.

My host graciously helped me with the selection of starters and the main course when he realized my ignorance of Italian cuisine. Before the starters were served, my host’s bag was brought back to him and a bottle of wine emerged. The waiter apologized to my host and said he wasn’t allowed to pour the wine for him. My host smiled back in the manner of a man of the world who understands cross-cultural differences and filled our glasses himself.

While savouring the novelty of eating Italian food and drinking alcohol, I did not omit to look around me and take note of the people who had by now filled the place. The majority were foreigners but there were also a fair number of locals. Nearly everyone was drinking alcohol and smoking. English was the only language I heard.

Feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the novelty of it all, it was good my host kept the conversation going by telling me about his interactions with Pakistani scholars, who he had been visiting as a UN ambassador in the previous weeks. His role was to provide consultancy on improving academic standards. ‘You guys don’t know how to write,’ he observed casually. In my mind, I was busy adding all the other things I had discovered in the last hour only that we didn’t know.

When we finished the meal, I of course tried to pay my share. However, I have to admit I was grateful to my host that he wouldn’t allow me. I also have to admit that I tried my best not to stare when he put his hand in his pocket and pulled it back out with a fist full of currency notes. The bunch of currency notes was so thick that he had a bit of a problem picking out 7,000 Pakistani rupee notes out of this thick wad of US dollars. He gave those 7,000 rupees (ca. 70 Australian dollars) in the same manner as if they were worth 70 rupees. We had just spent around 7% of the average annual per capita income in Pakistan on a meal!

I thanked my host for his generosity and we parted ways.

Walking back to my car, I kept on thinking about my experience: I had just stepped out of Pakistan for a few hours without ever leaving Karachi. The material difference between the Pompei Restaurant and its surroundings was spinning in my head. I also thought about the role of language in this world of mirrors. Pompei exists in Karachi because of the development industry and the foreigners who come here as part of international institutions, which are supposed to help our poor economy. But are they really helping by creating islands of opulence that are unrecognizable to the average citizen? For me Pompei seems like a new sovereign state maintained by international money that has come to us from the World Bank, the IMF and other international bodies – ostensibly to reduce the deep and pervasive poverty in Pakistan but practically to be enjoyed by whom?

I was also musing on the intercultural nature of this encounter: a British and a Pakistani academic meeting in an Italy-themed space in globalized Karachi sounds very cool and postmodern and like a coming together in some global, hyprid, even ‘metrolingual’ space. But is that what had happened? To me, the encounter felt as one that accentuated difference and increased distance between people of different cultures. Had this encounter not turned me into someone utterly deficient: an academic who doesn’t know how to write? A customer who doesn’t know how to order? A local who doesn’t belong?

My last thought was about resistance: who is going to resist this new economy and its language? How can we truly achieve meaning in intercultural communication in a grossly unequal world?

WSB TV report: Apple discriminates against Persian-speaking customers

I’ve just found an e-mail from Apple in my spam folder with a ‘personal’ invitation to attend one of their new store openings in Sydney. I’m not going for two reasons: first, Apple has not yet done anything to improve working conditions in their Chinese supplier factories. I keep checking up on Apple’s progress towards improving working conditions at ethicaliphone.org and might consider their invitation once I see some progress there. The second reason I’m not going is that one of my family languages is Persian and I have no desire of entering potentially discriminatory situations if I can avoid it.

I’m referring to the case of Sahar Sabet, a bilingual (English-Persian) US-American woman who was recently refused the purchase of an ipad in an Apple store in Atlanta, Georgia. According to media reports (e.g., BBC, International Business Times, MSBC), Sahar, a 2^nd-generation American with an Iranian background, was shopping in an Apple store together with an uncle visiting from Iran. She had an extensive service interaction about two different versions of ipad with a salesperson there in English, finally made up her mind and was just about to make her purchase, when her uncle asked her in Persian about the price of another product he was looking at. She responded in Persian and, at the sound of another language, the salesperson immediately asked what language they were speaking.

Sahar told him and added helpfully that Persian was a language spoken in Iran. At that the salesperson declared that she could not purchase her ipad “because Iran and the US don’t have good relations with each other.” The store manager backed the salesperson’s decision – made on no other grounds than speaking Persian to another potential customer – and Sahar left the store without her ipad and in tears.

However, she did not just leave it at that but called up Apple’s customer relations office, who apologized and recommended ordering an ipad over the internet (if you are not an embodied customer, you can’t be discriminated against …). Sahar also called Atlanta’s TV news station WSB-TV, who picked up the story and brought it to international attention (in addition to English-language media, I’ve also seen the story in the German (e.g., Spiegel) and Persian (e.g., BBC Farsi) language media). The statement Sahar made about the incident through her attorney can be found here.

While Sahar chose to speak out about the discrimination she experienced, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) says that her experience is not unusual. It is not unusual because companies are walking a fine line between either falling foul of civil liberty legislation (discrimination is illegal) or falling foul of strict US export regulations relative to countries subject to broad economic sanctions, such as Iran. So, while it’s of course perfectly legal for Apple to sell their products to anyone in the USA (as the State Department was quick to point out after the incident hit the headlines), they are required not to if they have grounds to suspect that the customer might intend to import the product to Iran – an offence carrying heavy penalties, as in this recent case. Given such drastic penalties, it seems that some companies or individual employees reckon that breeching civil liberties legislation is not as bad as breeching export restriction legislation.

Persian-speakers are not the only ones in the USA to experience discrimination in service encounters on the basis of language, as is well documented – the 2^nd edition of Rosina Lippi-Green’s English with an accent has just come out for anyone who needs a refresher. A recent study (Yoo et al. 2008) reports that 12% of the Asian-Americans they surveyed reported having experienced discrimination on the basis of language in a service encounter (in a health care context) in the past two years. This was more than those who reported that they had experienced discrimination on the basis of race. Even more intriguingly, the researchers found that there was a statistically significant correlation between having experienced language discrimination (above and beyond the effects resulting from having experienced racial discrimination) and health: those who reported having experienced language discrimination in service encounters in the past two years were more likely to suffer from chronic conditions, and this effect increased the longer they had been in the country.

Good on Sahar for kicking up a fuss! Hopefully, her attitude will keep her from getting sick from shopping!

Hyung Chol Yoo, Gilbert C. Gee, & David Takeuchi (2008). Discrimination and health among Asian American immigrants: Disentangling racial from language discrimination Social Science & Medicine, 68 (4), 726-732 DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.11.013

Eurovision Baku 2012 (Source: i3.mirror.co.uk)

This year’s Eurovision Song Contest has come and gone with Sweden crowned the winner for 2012, also taking the title of Australia’s unofficial winner (over 130,000 people in Australia visited the SBS Eurovision websiteto vote). Until recently, I did not take much interest in Eurovision, regarding it as lame, embarrassing and a lightweight media exercise in banal nationalism.

But a few years ago my daughter, who was on an exchange trip to Norway, said she was attending an actual, live Eurovision Grand Final! The idea that she would be somewhere in the crowd prompted me to tune in and since then I have joined the throng of avid Eurovision fans. Over the years the contest seems to be taking itself less seriously and, lord knows, we could do with some frivolity in these times of political crisis and economic austerity.

Julia Zemiro and Sam Pang’s hilarious commentaries are an added bonus! They epitomise the fun of being young, transnational, multicultural, irreverent and quintessentially Australian:  “The UK’s youth policy does not seem to be working,” quipped Sam drily as crooner Engelbert Humperdinck (now well into his seventies) bombed to the bottom of the Eurovision league table! UK nul points!

Let me first recount a little of Eurovision’s fascinating history: The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) was formed in 1950 by 23 broadcasting organisations from Europe and the Mediterranean. First conceived as an international experiment in live television, the Eurovision Song Contest has been a focus for Pan-Europeanism since long before the days of satellite TV, digital broadcasting and high definition TV.  In 1954, the Narcissus Festival procession was relayed across the Eurovision network and was watched by four million viewers across Germany, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland. In 1955, the EBU proposed the idea of an international song contest whereby countries could participate in one television show, to be transmitted simultaneously in all represented nations. The Eurovision Song Contest has been broadcast every year since 1956, which makes it one of the longest-running television programs in the world.  In response to the setting up of the Eurovision network, Eastern European television stations set up their own network called Intervision, which started its own song contest, presumably in an effort to prevent viewers being too bedazzled by cultures not approved of by the Politburo!  The two networks merged in 1993, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification.

Today the Eurovision Song Contest is broadcast throughout Europe and also in Australia, Canada, Egypt, Hong Kong, India, Jordan, Korea, New Zealand and the United States, even though these countries do not participate. These days, with the entry of former Soviet Bloc and Warsaw Pact nations and those that lie within the European Broadcasting Area or are member states of the Council of Europe, the contest has become increasingly diverse and acts as a social barometer of changing international relations in the region.

But there is another side to Eurovision that is extremely interesting from a sociolinguistic point of view.  The contest has always managed to combine a comforting picture of harmony-in-diversity with the shameless promotion of national chauvinism. Today some 43 states vie for the title of best song in Europe and when one looks at the voting trends among the competitors, they often appear to be along political and nationalistic lines with nothing at all to do with the merits of the music! Voting is the most hotly contested aspect of the contest; geography, history, culture, religion and other socio-cultural affiliations certainly do seem to influence how countries vote. The more dominant countries pack the kind of clout others command in the United Nations: The so-called Big Five countries (UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy) get automatic spots in the final regardless of their positions on the scoreboard. Indeed, on a number of occasions the contest and its voting practices have sparked patriotic indignation and withdrawals for political reasons.

Changing Eurovision Song Contest language policies and practices also make for interesting reading. According to Wikipedia, from 1956 to 1965 songs could be sung in any language. In 1966 a new rule stipulated that songs must be performed in one of the official languages of the participating country. This rule was abolished in 1973 and performers were allowed to sing in any language they chose. Several contestants in the mid-1970s took advantage of this relaxation, including Abba in 1974. In 1977, the EBU decided to revert to the national language rule, with special dispensations to Germany and Belgium who had already been selected and whose songs were in English.

By 1999 the hegemony of English in Europe was already well on the rise. At the 1999 contest, the language restriction was again lifted and today songs may be performed in any language. As a result, many of the songs are performed either partly or completely in English. Entries are often performed in English to reach a wider audience but at the same time this practice is often regarded as being unpatriotic. In 2003, Belgium found an alternative solution, entering a song, entitled Sanomi, in an artificial language developed especially for the song. This strategy proved successful as Belgium finished second, only two points behind Turkey (but in the eyes of many it was a sympathy vote. Belgium and France had opposed the British-American proposal to put NATO anti-aircraft guns into Turkey as defence against the threat of Iraqi retaliation in the event of a U.S. invasion of Iraq). In 2006 the Dutch entry was sung partly in an artificial language but it did far less well, coming 17^th out of 23 contestants; the contest was won by the Finns, singing a hard rock song in English.

Songs have been performed in a minority language in only 19 out of 53 contests.  Much like the Olympics, French is used by the contest presenters but it appears to play a largely symbolic role. The presenters announce the scores both in English and in French, a practice which has given rise to the famous exclamation “douze points” when the host repeats the top score in French.

This year the Buranovskiye Babushki, a.k.a the Russian Grannies, took hybridity to a new level in their song Party for Everybody performed in Udmur and English.

What can I say? Eurovision may be trivial and may gloss over political tensions but nobody can deny that it is fun. On a final and uncritical note, whatever you might think about the essentialised, commodified identities promoted by the Eurovision Song Contest, for me nothing will ever surpass the sheer kitsch fabulousness of the unbeatable Abba!

Asia’s Chronic English Disease

The promotion of English in Asia is a frequent topic here on Language on the Move. Striving for global competitiveness and internationalization, states across Asia strongly promote English. Additionally, on the personal level, English is supposed to broaden an individual’s perspective and to enable upward mobility. Across Asia, English has come to assume the mantle of magic!

The converse of all this hype is that lack of English has come to be equated with deficiency. So much so, that lack of English is now a chronic disease endemic in Taiwan, as I’ve recently discovered when watching this TV commercial for a private English language school. Here, English is presented as a disease that needs to be cured. The ad features a white male doctor with an Asian female patient. The white doctor, the only character in the ad to speak, delivers his lines in Taiwanese and says:

Tutor ABC cares about your chronic English illness. Chronic English illness causes you tears of sorrow when reading English, and canker sores, sore throat, and cold feet when speaking English. If you suffer from these symptoms, please call our toll-free number 0800-66-66-80, 0800-66-66-80 [my translation]

For Taiwanese, the ad is hilarious. Not because of the content of the language doctor’s message but because it imitates another famous Taiwanese commercial advertising for sciatica treatment, which started to run more than a decade ago. In that commercial, the main character, a doctor, seriously delivered a message about sciatica treatment. Unexpectedly, the commercial caused a sensation through its unintended comic effect arising from the amusing contrast between the serious message delivered by the doctor with his earnest facial expression and attitude, and the childish, catchy rhymes and rhythm, particularly in the case of the phone number with its repetition. Despite its status as a budget ad, the clinic became famous overnight and the commercial continues to run on Taiwanese TV, recently with the addition of another character, a foreign blond female model. The doctor’s message has remained unchanged in more than a decade:

Jian-sheng Chinese medicine clinic cares about your sciatica. Sciatica is a lumbar disc displacement or lumbar intervertebral disc disorder, resulting in low back pain or limb pain. If you suffer from these symptoms, please call our toll-free number 0800-092-000, 0800-092-000. [my translation]

The intertextuality between the two ads serves to reinforce the notion in the language ad that English is a disease: a disease in need of a doctor and a cure. In the process, the majority of Taiwanese who don’t use English comfortably are constructed as patients. The doctor they can turn to is, of course, white but, at the same time, an approachable speaker of Taiwanese.

Constructing lack of English as an illness and language learners as patients seems an extremely manipulative way of promoting English. Presenting English as a cure to all kinds of social and personal problems and lack of English as a disease suggests that English is inscribed in the body and ties in with language ideologies that make the acquisition of the right linguistic capital a personal responsibility.

There really is a chronic English disease raging in Asia but it’s not the lack of English that is the disease; it’s the ravages caused by the blind faith in the miracle powers of English.

Branded kids' products on display in an Iranian store

Recently, I had occasion to visit a toy store in Isfahan to buy a present for my seven-year-old cousin, who had invited me to his birthday party. Grand, impressive and splendid, the store in question offered a variety of products, from children stationeries and toys of different shapes and colours to XBOX games.

My original intention was to buy something of the Dara & Sara brand, an Iranian line of dolls, books and audio materials. Yet, to my surprise, the store had almost no trace of local toys such as these. I left the shop in disappointment hoping to find something more ‘culturally relevant’ in another shop but I failed again. Eventually, I gave up and bought a Ben 10 watch and a Ben 10 backpack as gifts.

The majority of the products in these toy stores had English messages or expressions and were clearly coded as “global” rather than “Iranian.” The prestige, the price and the quality of imported toys have consigned local products to a marginal role such that I, the customer, was just a passive and helpless recipient and left without any choice. Unsurprisingly then, it turned out that I was not the only one without a choice: at the birthday party, I was disappointed to find out that almost all the guests had brought more or less similar presents.

However, there is a further twist to this story: A few days after the birthday party, I met my little cousin again at yet another family gathering. He was wearing one of his birthday presents, a Spiderman t-shirt, which was emblazoned with the slogan “The Amazing Spiderman.”

As members of my extending family were spending time together, the TV was on in the background. The channel was set to one of the Iranian national TV channels and the program that was running was an episode in a crime series featuring the Iranian police, which in Persian is called naja. In one of the scenes a group of naja commandos raided a building and arrested the bad guys.

The word naja was printed in bold letters on the back of their uniforms and my little cousin obviously made a connection between the uniform of these TV heroes and his own T-shirt: he shouted in amazement: “The amazing naja!”

When I had started my quest for a toy that was culturally relevant, I had been disappointed. However, my cousin’s reaction demonstrates that global, cultural symbols are always appropriated locally – often in unexpected ways. The episode throws into question the long-established assumption that linguistic and cultural hegemonies always work in a top-down manner and paves the way for a totally different interpretation: the spread of English and its related cultural products operate in complex and at times contradictory ways. Ultimately, Spiderman t-shirts display their own ‘local’ orders of indexicality.

I was curious to find out whether the emergence of a new industry (nail care) and the transnational domination of that industry by a specific ethnic group (Vietnamese) had anything to do with language? Sure has, as I’ve learnt from a 2011 article in the International Migration Review (Eckstein & Nguyen, 2011).

Migrants often find that lack of proficiency in the local language is a barrier to workplace entry in their field and/or at the level at which they are qualified. They also often find that they can’t wait around till their language has improved sufficiently before having to make a living. The Vietnamese leaving Vietnam in the 1970s were no exception to this.

Linguistic barriers to employment are highest in the professions, where usually (part of) the qualifications and training process needs to be re-done and/or certifying and registration exams need to be undertaken in the local language. That’s why migrant lawyers are rare. Linguistic barriers to employment are lowest for self-employment in areas with little state regulation. That’s why migrant-owned corner stores are frequent.

Within a particular industry, the same rules apply. Let’s take the beauty industry: if you are a cosmetic surgeon and want to move to another country, chances are you’ll never work as a cosmetic surgeon again. Depending on where you are from and how your previous qualifications are assessed, you are facing years of re-training, qualifying exams in the new language and other hurdles to re-gain your license to practice in the new country. At the other end of the beauty industry, you’ll find nail technicians: to practice as a nail technician in Australia, for instance, you don’t need any formal qualifications whatsoever. Limited proficiency in English thus poses no or only a minor obstacle to workplace entry as a nail technician. However, speaking Vietnamese might confer an advantage, as I’ll explain now.

In the 1970s, the family of a former commander in the South Vietnamese Navy found that there were few opportunities for them and fellow Vietnamese refugees in California. Like many others in a similar position, they tried their luck in all kinds of ways and opened a beauty school, the Advance Beauty College (ABC) in Garden Grove, CA, an area aka ‘Little Saigon.’ They taught in Vietnamese and after a short course, students could go and start their own nail salon. Many of them did because in addition to the lack of linguistic barriers, the financial investment was low, too.

At that time, nail salons hardly existed and manicures and pedicures were a preserve of the rich and famous. However, the emergent supply of Vietnamese nail technicians and nail salons meant that manicures and pedicures suddenly came into the reach of Californian women of lesser means.

Vietnamese nails-only shops revolutionized manicuring in much the same manner that McDonalds revolutionized inexpensive, fast food service. Like McDonalds, the nails-only shops appealed to busy Americans who wanted quick, dependable service, when convenient to their schedules, and who were content with the provisioning of the service in an impersonal manner. (p. 654)

Vietnamese entrepreneurs thus did not fill an existing market but created a new one. Once established, this market spread easily through franchises. Regal Nails, located within Walmarts, for instance, was founded by a first-generation Vietnamese, as was the Australian market leader, Professionails.

Once established, linguistic necessity became a virtue for Vietnamese nail entrepreneurs, as ethnic networks ensured a continuing supply of first-generation workers with few other options. As such the continuation of the business model depends on continuing emigration from Vietnam because with better education and bilingualism, the second-generation does not need to rely on their ethnic ties and have many other employment options.

As I’ve explained it was the absence of regulation combined with the availability of training in Vietnamese that made California that birthplace of the Vietnamese creation and subsequent domination of the nail care industry. Furthermore, when the State of California introduced licensing exams for nail technicians in the 1990s, there was the option to take the certifying exams in Vietnamese. Thus, the Californian state chose, in this instance, not to erect a linguistic barrier to employment for its Vietnamese-speaking citizens.

Once established, and as the nail care industry expanded beyond California, across the USA and, later, went global, Vietnamese domination had the effect of excluding non-Vietnamese from the industry so that today lack of proficiency in English is rarely a barrier to becoming a nail technician but lack of Vietnamese does constitute such a barrier. As the industry transnationalized, it moved back to Vietnam and many nail technicians now train there before emigrating and have jobs already lined up before they even leave the country.

In case any of our non-Vietnamese readers are inclined to feel jealous, consider that it is only the continued ‘Vietnamization’ of the supply chain that makes your cheap manicures and pedicures possible.

[…] they work in the least skilled, least revenue-generating segment of the beauty industry. Most typically, when Vietnamese entrepreneurs expand their business involvements they do so by opening additional salons of the same sort, not by diversifying their beauty care offerings to include those that are most profitable. Similarly, nail technicians do not invest in additional training to qualify for the better paying jobs in the beauty industry. Vietnamese, accordingly, are creating conditions that work against their own longer-term interests. They are fueling intra-ethnic competition that is likely to drive down their earnings, unless they further increase demand for their services. (p. 666)

Eckstein S, & Nguyen TN (2011). The making and transnationalization of an ethnic niche: Vietnamese manicurists. The International migration review, 45 (3), 639-74 PMID: 22171362