The heroic EDG esports winning team of League of Legends

Chinese esports team Edward Gaming, or EDG for short, has just won the first ever Leagues of Legend (LoL) world championship. This is exciting news not only for esports fans but also for those interested in linguistic and cultural diversity.

Video gaming is a billion-dollar industry that has received a significant boost by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, international gaming revenue reached over USD 173 billion and this figure is expected to be double by 2026. 40% of this revenue is generated in China alone. China also has the largest number of gamers (650 million). In fact, out of 3.24 billion gamers internationally, 1.48 billion are based in Asia.

But do the language choices on video games match Asian markets and player demographics?

My students at Yunnan University, Chang Zhou (常州)， Hao Guorong (郝国荣)，Yang Dongqi (杨东祺)，Zhang Can (张灿)，Fu Decai (符德才), and Luo Jihang (罗纪航) set out to answer this question.

Gaming is dominated by English

Despite the emergence of Asia as a giant gaming market, global video games continue to be dominated by English-mediated communication. It accounts for close to 40% of all language choices in gaming, followed by Chinese (21%), and Russian (11%). Another 26 languages have some representation but the percentages are minuscule.

Languages used in video gaming (Source: Steam)

The dominance of English is problematic for players who do not speak English and Chinese players regularly mount “我们需要中文” (“We need Chinese!”) campaigns.

Multilingualism increases revenue

Games that are available in multiple languages generate more revenue, as can be exemplified with the Metro games.

Metro 2033, Metro Last Light Redux and Metro Exodus are a series of first-person shooter games based on a novel by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. Released in 2014, the game was initially available only in seven European languages, namely English, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Ukrainian. The interface and the subtitles – but not audio – were additionally available in Czech, Dutch, and Polish.

Asian players campaigned for the inclusion of Asian languages and in 2019 Chinese (both in simplified and traditional forms), Korean, Japanese, and Portuguese were added (while Dutch was deleted). This linguistic expansion brought a huge increase in player numbers.

Language patches

While Metro shows the benefits of increasing language choice, many video developers continue to focus on English as the assumed ideal means of international communication.

In such cases, Chinese players have to mobilize other resources to participate in English-mediated gaming. “汉化补丁” (Chinese language patches) are one way to get around the language constraint.

However, these Chinese language patches are not without problems. For one thing, not all language patches are free and thus increase the cost of gaming. Second, the installation of Chinese language patches tends to slow down the Internet connection, which can be very frustrating.

The low quality of the translation of patches is another problem and often the Chinese translations does not make any sense at all.

Game vloggers

Given the low quality of many translations, Chinese players turn to Chinese game vloggers who broadcast themselves while playing. These vloggers share tips and tricks on how to play the game, and are often famous for their skill in a particular game.

Genshi Impact

While Chinese game vloggers can help to overcome the language barrier, having to go through them to play the game delays enjoyment. And delayed entertainment is decidedly uncool in the gaming world.

From lucrative industry to soft power construction

Seeing the huge profits to be made in Asia, more and more game developers come to follow the market and include Asian languages. Money talks, after all. At the same time, more and more games are actually designed in Asia.

China is not only home to the world’s largest number of players but has also become the game design capital of the world. In particular, China is leading the development of mobile video games that can be played by China’s 882 million smartphone users.

In 2020, China’s largest gaming company, Tencent, generated USD 7.1 billion revenue through its game Honor of Kings alone. Tencent also has full control of the League of Legends – the world championship of which is currently creating so much interest.

These games not only generate huge revenue but have also emerged as a medium for constructing Asian culture as a form of global cultural capital. For example, Genshi Impact, which has been developed by a company in Shanghai and combines both Japanese and Chinese elements, has been distributed to over 140 countries and is considered the most successful Chinese mobile game abroad.

The success of Genshi Impact suggests that global audiences are ready for gaming content based on Asian cultures. In gaming, linguistic and cultural change is in the air!

Victorian Multicultural Commission, Melbourne (Image credit: Pramuk Perera, via Unsplash)

In August, Australia’s Acting Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, Alan Tudge, announced the extension of the Adult Migrant Education Program (AMEP) as well as a stronger focus on Australian values in the Australian citizenship test.

Increasing the provision of free English classes through the AMEP is undoubtedly a good thing. Although it needs to be mentioned in brackets that most classes will be online, which is highly problematic because language in use actually involves collaboration and communication.

Here, I am concerned with the rationale for the extended provision of English language lessons.

Non-English speakers a fifth column

In his address to the National Press club, “Keeping Together at a Time of COVID”, the minister claimed that national cohesion in Australia was at risk because of communities who have poor English. He explained that “poor English” made them “more reliant on foreign language sources.” This is a problem, according to the Minister: ‘‘Despite now being proud Australians, some communities are still seen by their former home countries as ‘their diaspora‘ – to be harassed or exploited to further the national cause.”

This negative understanding of  “diaspora” is selective because, in fact, the overwhelming majority of Australians are part of some diaspora or other. After all, all non-Aboriginal Australians have ties and loyalties to ancestral cultures and languages that come from somewhere else. This is true even if their family has lived in Australia for generations. When I grew up in Australia in the 1960s, we learnt Scottish, Welsh, and Irish folk songs at school, about heather and misty braes, and we swore allegiance to an English queen.

Diaspora, then, is the lived experience of millions of Australians. But does a diasporic sense of belonging – the experience that various cultural traditions may touch your heart or that your palate has a taste for cuisine associated with more than one place – necessarily involve dual loyalty in the political sense?

Non-English media as sources of misinformation

The Minister says so and his reasoning is this:  “malign information or propaganda can be spread through multicultural media, including foreign language media controlled or funded by state players.”

The connection between English language proficiency and “multicultural or foreign language media” consumption is spurious. After all, in a globalized world, direct contact with home country media is just a few clicks away. Even fluent bilinguals are likely to access news from their home country and keep in contact with family members, who are often dispersed across the world and intertwine other languages with English in their home.

The choice of media and language is complex, depending on the time, the place, the users and the context. A Chinese friend who has lived in Australia for 25 years tells me that she and her husband access multiple daily sources of information in both languages, of both local and international provenance. Her Australian-born children use only English-language media and her elderly parents-in-law rely exclusively on Chinese language media and their family members as sources of information. She reports that this diversity of information sources sometimes leads to lively family discussions!

English doesn’t make national cohesion and multilingualism doesn’t break it

Furthermore, the Minster confuses community and foreign languages when he claims that “through the pandemic […] it has been difficult to communicate with all Australians through the mainstream channels.” “Mainstream channels”, in Australia, of course, include local multilingual sources, including government notifications and the extensive local ethnic media, as well as recognizing that most immigrant families and networks include some fluent English users who pass on information.

Finally, “malign information or propaganda” does not only spread through languages other than English. English monolinguals are just as prone to draw on malign sources and fall prey to “fake news”. And many of the English-language media sources they draw on are not Australian at all and emanate from foreign countries.

Ultimately, the link that the Minister makes between English language proficiency and national cohesion is unfortunate. Instead of building bridges between communities and enhancing national cohesion, as was presumably intended, the framing of English language learning as a matter of national loyalty can only increase barriers between communities and lead to distrust.

***

New Media is defined as the combination of traditional media, such as television, newspapers, radio with information and communication technology (ICT), such as smartphones, computers and the Internet, in all its forms (social networks, search engines etc.). When the new media emerged, information began to be considered as fast, omnipresent, economical, democratic and interactive, encouraging users to provide feedback, form a community and creatively participate in the creation of such content.

However, this wealth, that is access to information, is not distributed equally and the convergence of traditional and new media has not been everywhere completed. Poor communication infrastructure has halted the spread of information to more rural areas where the majority of people live. Particularly, access to health information, education and promotion, has been limited, even though it sometimes is the main factor for dealing with the spread of contagious diseases.

Such contexts are evident across Africa. Africa has a rich oral tradition. The transmission of knowledge, history and experience, especially in West Africa, occurs mainly through story-telling rather than written texts. This tradition guides social and human morals, gives people a sense of place and purpose, while at the same time, being a community activity, it educates children and passes on history, values and lessons.

virALLanguages as a bridge

The Internet could become the solution for this inequality in information sharing. However, according to Chhanabnai and Holt (2010), there are certain limitations: connectivity, IT literacy, cultural appropriateness, and accessibility. The virALLanguages project is trying to combat these limitations and make the Internet a bridge for endangered language communities around the world to achieve access to accurate and culturally appropriate information, while keeping in mind issues of connectivity and accessibility. The most evident examples of this come from piloting the project in Cameroon.

IT literacy

The virALLanguages library

In Cameroon, there is limited infrastructure in terms of education, and literacy, numeracy, and IT skills are limited (Mbaku, 2016: 150). The virALLanguages project contributes to overcoming these limitations, by enhancing IT skills of younger community members who take part in the project. Older members contributed by performing their role as storytellers who share knowledge with the community. Contributors learn how to document themselves and their language in an additional medium apart from community memory, that of the Internet. In the process, they also enhance their IT skills.

Accessibility and Connectivity

As much as possible, virALLanguages project materials (videos, audios and pictures) are available in various forms and media. An Internet Archive account is provided with the option to download the materials, from low to high quality, adapting to connectivity and accessibility, since the productions (even the videos!), can be shared as voice messages on WhatsApp, a popular and accessible option for Cameroonians.

Additionally, radio and television continue to be popular throughout Cameroon. Radio, in particular, remains the most important and most effective way of disseminating information (Mbaku, 2016: 173). For this reason, virALLanguages has reached out to local radio stations (like Radio Echos des Montagnes) adapting the recordings in languages spoken within the reach of these radio stations. Popular traditional and new media come together in the town crier, who opens this Babanki recording by Julius Viyoff and Godlove Zhuh.

In short, virALLanguages is located at the convergence of old and new media in Cameroon.

Cultural Appropriateness

The Babanki team, Julius Viyoff (right) and Godlove Zhuh

In oral traditions, information is perceived as reliable when it is demonstrated. This is possible in the virALLanguages project because of the use of video. In the Mundabli video, for example, the speaker demonstrates the adequate distance to be kept between individuals. In terms of cultural appropriateness, virALLanguages also encourages participants to share information in a culturally appropriate manner, in the local language and by choosing leaders or respected people of each community. This way the reliability of the message is underlined while at the same time oral tradition rituals are followed, with the community gathering in order to receive this important piece of information.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the inherent complexities of technology and developing country setting are significant obstacles to the fast transmission of Covid-19-related information materials. Against this background, the virALLanguages project hopes to contribute not only to the dissemination of public health information but also to community development. The technology used in the project is simple and local, it builds on what is already there, it involves users in the design, it strengthens the capacity to use, work with and develop effective ICTs, it introduces greater monitoring and evaluation, and, last but not least, encourages ongoing improvement of communication processes.

Reference

Mbaku, J.M. (2016). Cameroon, Republic of  (République du Cameroun). In Toyin F. and Jean-Jacques D. eds), Africa: an encyclopedia of culture and society. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic

Visit here for our full coverage of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The scripts on the Wikipedia logo (Source: Wikipedia)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From perpetrator to victim

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reference

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

Map of European languages (Source: SB Language Maps)

Invitation to public seminar about “Minority Languages” at Macquarie University

What: Minority languages: what are we talking about? And why are we talking about it now?
When: Wednesday, November 22, 12:00-2:00pm
Where: Macquarie University Y3A 211 Tute Rm (10HA)
Who: Professor Josu Amezaga, University of the Basque Country

Abstract: Minority (or minoritized) languages can be defined as languages historically excluded from the nation-state. Following the French Revolution, which imposed the need of a common and unique language on the French state, many countries applied the “one-language-one-nation” pattern and, in the process, minoritized numerous languages. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, many countries almost seemed to have reached this monolingual ideal. However, in recent decades major changes in mediated communications together with growing migration flows have called this state of affairs into question as minority languages – both “old” and “new” – reassert themselves. At the same time, the reemergence of linguistic diversity has provoked state reactions in the form of new re-nationalization policies focused around language.

In my presentation I will first explain what minoritization of languages means. Then I will show how changes in communication and migration flows have affected the linguistic landscape of Western societies. The focus will be on commonalities and points of difference between regional and immigrant minority languages. Finally, I will discuss why minority languages should be addressed not only as a matter of cultural heritage but also a need for the future. This will lead me to close with some questions about the monolingual paradigm.

Bio blurb: Josu Amezaga is Professor in the Department of Audio-Visual Communication and Advertising at the University of the Basque Country, Spain. After completing his Ph.D. in Sociology about Basque culture, he started researching Basque language and media, from where he moved to a more comprehensive view of minority languages in media and as identity tools. This interest has led him to immigrant languages, as yet another type of minority languages. Currently, he is a visiting professor at Charles Sturt University.

A monument near Baganuur (Outer Mongolia) with an inscription of poem “My Native Land” by Natsagdorj (Source: Wikipedia)

In the middle school Mongolian textbooks there is a well-known text called “Huuchin Huu” (“A young man fallen behind the times”) written by the famous Mongolian writer D. Natsagdorj. Most of us still remember how it starts:

Hudeegin baidal shaltar boltar, chagin ularil oroo bosgo …

(“The rural village is messy and shabby, the society is full of ups and downs…”)

I was impressed by the author’s ironic way of describing a Mongolian young man who was caught in the sudden change of rural life and in the end saw a light under an ‘upside-down’ big metal pot during the Mongolian revolution in the 1920s.

Recently, one of my friends sent a short story called “Suljeen Huu” (“A young man living in the Internet”) written by an online writer, whose pseudonym name is Tatar, in which he describes a phone-addicted young man in a Mongolian village in the same ironic way by employing almost the same sentence structures as those in “Huuchin Huu.”

It starts like this (the full text is available here):

WeChat version of “Huuchin Huu”

Suljiyen ne baidal uimeen shoogaan tai, suruglegsen humus eniyed tai haniad tai. Haaltai Google haxiltai Facebook uruu haya nig hoyar hun herem haraiju orona … gar chenegin haluun yilqi nuur ood nil geju hums in setgel  ig bohinduulna… barimjiya abiya gi urbuulen hurbuulen xinjigseer uder sarig uliruulna… boljoo doyan Mongol soyol ba Mongolchuud in garh jam, delhei dahini hugjiltin tohai hedun mur bichije… nig urloo gi barana.

(Life on the internet is full of noise and hustles, the crowds are smiling and coughing… looking at one or two guys jumping out of the ‘wall’ and wandering on Facebook and Google occasionally… the heat from phone battery flowing to his face and his heart is wistfully wondering… surfing and thinking about the online debate about standard Mongolian implementation, writing and boasting in heaps and bounds from time to time….) [my translation]

The parody focuses on the young man’s “wide knowledge” including others’ secret affairs, the prize money won by celebrity wrestlers, online medicine, the “deteriorating” quality of Mongolian women, and the politics of “hateful” Japan and “evil” America. Off the Internet, this young man leads a reckless yet aimless life: in the winter he plays Mah-jong, and goes bathing in the banner centre; in the summer he frequents fairs in various towns and banners, drinks with “table girls” and sings songs about the wide open grasslands.

This satire shines a critical spotlight on a life characterized by limited information, declining morality, enjoyment of drinking and partying, pursuit of cars and beauties, and boasting about the great Mongols of the past. It shows the dark side of a society under tremendous transformation that can be found in many small towns across Inner Mongolia.

Mongol-related headlines on WeChat

Let us look at some “detours” taken by Mongolians in the north eastern part of Inner Mongolia. Marois (2006) notes that former herders today live in sedentary house as their Chinese counterparts in this area. But they arrange their houses differently from Chinese villagers and engage in different occupancy practices. They keep their ger (“tent”) next to their house and move seasonally to graze their cattle on fertile pasture. Inside the settled-down house the honorific zone is kept at the back of the room as it is in the ger, and they locate the hearth in the room immediately behind the door. This is due to the fact that for Mongolians the fire is a purifying element. By contrast, Han villagers would locate the kitchen and the fire at the back of the house.

Marois (2006) argues that the adoption of sedentary life, fixed dwellings and other material objects are not enough to say that the herders have become sinicized. While making choices from a variety of objects modernity offers the herders, they take detours to make their choices suit their own needs and to express their distinctiveness.

The author Tatar very vividly tells about the life of young Mongolian village men. It is very hard for such men to find a wife, particularly if they do not own an apartment or a car.

But I also want to stress the adaptation made by the herders as they embrace modernity thrust upon them by the nation state and globalization. For instance, an increasing number of villagers in my hometown are buying cars and using WeChat now. The cars have increased the frequency of visits between relatives and friends, and some of them formed a WeChat Mongolian song competition group of over 100 people across several Mongolian villages.

Administrative map of Inner Mongolia (Source: Inner Mongolia News)

I therefore favour the term “cultural strategizing” (Silverberg, 2007) – instead of “cultural borrowing” – to explain the processes of social change that can be observed in the lives of Mongols. The emphasis on cultural strategizing is predicated on multifaceted dialogic interactions between local and global, between tradition and modernity.

Instead of wasting their lives on the Internet, contemporary Mongols also strategically use the Internet to commodify their culture and in search of profit. On sites such as 蒙古丽人 (“Mongol beauty”), 蒙古圈 (“Mongol circle”) or Onoodor (“Today”), Mongol photography is intended to lure tourists to Inner Mongolia. Traditional costumes and Mongolian girls and women are becoming something to be gazed at, and the herder with his sheep is parading before online users.

The virtual space also allows young Mongols to experience a sense of symbolic connection with their community and a form of ethnic identity, even if one that is entwined with the manipulation of markets.

Online Mongols are beautiful and glamorous people, with an amazing homeland and culture. By contrast, mundane news such as the dropping price of lamb, the harsh weather with summer droughts and winter storms, or the high levels of pollution are rare.

The Mongols’ nostalgic imaginings and pride related to the beauty of traditional life or pristine scenic spots divert their attention from many of the realities of their circumstances.

Social media “recreate” Mongolian lives for their followers, though cloaked ones.

Wedding party in Horqin, Tongliao, Inner Mongolia (Source: Xinhuanet)

The question then is how to play out their identities in their desired symbolically cloaked communities? Maybe attending one of the popular Mongolian weddings to “feel” more Mongolness is not a bad idea; at least our Internet boy can leave his phone for a moment and take a walk in another symbol-cluttered event. He might meet his soul mate dressed in traditional costume.

References

Marois, A. (2006). The Squaring of the Circle: Remarks on Identiy and Change from the Study of a Mongol-Han Community in Hulun Buir, Inner Mongolia. Mongolian Studies: Journal of the Mongolia Society, 28, 75-86.

Silverberg, M. R. (2007). Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Who is a real refugee?

The refugee crisis in Europe has caught a lot of global media attention. Countries at the entry points and their official actions, as well civil organizations, get a lot of attention in online media; furthermore, social media comments quite often focus on the refugees’ origins, intentions, religion, and behaviour. For instance, in the coverage of how a parish near the Hungarian border helps refugees, one interviewee voices her misgivings:

They spend a lot of money for coming, but if they are real refugees, they can come on order, on normal way. Not this other ways how they are trying.

While not uncommon, comments such as this one miss a key aspect of the refugee experience. Having taught refugees in Australia, I am aware that people intending to leave their countries may sell all their possessions to be able to afford a journey to a safer place. When it isn’t possible for whole families to move together, they may raise money to enable a select member who may try to help others once they have reached safety.

So what are some of the possible origins of this ‘not a real refugee’ discourse?

It is quite often attributed to politicians. Earlier this year, in June, the Deputy of the ruling party in Hungary commented on national radio that people entering Hungary are not ‘real refugees’ as they have the funds to buy even first class plane tickets to Europe, but somehow they prefer to pay thousands of Euros to people smugglers and walk all the way. This comment, of course, blatantly ignores the fact that one needs both a passport and a valid visa to board a plane. While it is virtually impossible to trace the origins of such ideas, the above opinion seems to be a popular one globally present in reader comments on social media as well.

Undoubtedly, Hungary is just one of many countries using the ‘not a real refugee’ discourse, and possible reasons, like having enough money to buy plane tickets, and the issue of these people having smart phones, have been discussed in the media in other countries, too. Consequently, ideas and concepts linked to the construction of ‘non-real refugees’ are not localized to Hungarian politicians and media only. However, it is obvious that the position and role of the country in tackling the refugee crisis gives Hungary a central place in the discussions, so I will focus on the Hungarian context.

Confusion regarding terminology can be a possible reason why refugees are not seen as ‘real’. When analyzing discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press 1996-2006, Baker et al. (2008) mention a fundamental disagreement in defining refugees and asylum seekers in official bodies and sources, such as the Refugee Council or various dictionary definitions. By commonly applying the term ‘migrants’ to all people on the move, refugees and their rights for asylum can become invisible or even associated with those of ‘economic migrants’. In an attempt to clarify the issue, the UNHCR has published a statement saying:

Conflating refugees and migrants can have serious consequences for the lives and safety of refugees. Blurring the two terms takes attention away from the specific legal protections refugees require. It can undermine public support for refugees and the institution of asylum at a time when more refugees need such protection than ever before.

Since early September, when Hungary sealed its border with Serbia and made border-crossing punishable with up to three years imprisonment, the terminology used in the media has been shifting to ‘unauthorized or irregular arrivals’.

Could it be that, apart from politicians fanning the flames, Hungarians simply have a different picture of ‘refugees’ in their minds? To answer this, I have examined how two historical events are linked to the construction of ‘real refugees.’

Based on Ruth Wodak’s (2001) discourse-historical approach in her work exploring anti-Semitic and populist discourse in Austria, I firstly focus on the historical dimension of the discourse, then briefly look at argumentation strategies, also called topoi, to examine claims about refugees, and finally focus on metaphors.

Linking refugees to history

In media and social media comments world-wide, Hungary’s response to the refugee crisis is most commonly linked to two events in the country’s history: the Holocaust, and the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, both of which produced huge waves of Hungarian refugees needing to be resettled in various parts of the world. In a reaction to these parallels, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance even released a statement in September, stating that:

The circumstances surrounding the current refugee situation are notably different from the persecution of Jews and other victims before, during and after the Holocaust; nonetheless, there are parallels between the treatment of refugees then and now – particularly regarding the shameful closing of borders, the rise of xenophobia, and the use of dehumanising language.

In referring to these two historical points, contemporary events become understood against these foils invoking above all shame. Reader comments on social media, however, oftentimes reject any kind of connection to the actions producing the present refugee situation, sometimes even clearly stating ‘we are not responsible for what happened to them’. Responsibility then, is an important element in constructing the meaning of ‘real refugees’.

The other element is resilience, at least the attribution of it to a certain group, which manifests in two ways: firstly, Hungarian refugees of the 1956 Uprising are said to have experienced the same treatment in refugee camps before they were admitted in other countries. This can be seen from the following excerpt from a reader comment detailing what those refugees had to endure:

How do you think the 1956 dissidents were treated? They slept in wooden barracks for at least 20-27 months. […] it was very cold. In summer it was scorching hot. In the meantime they worked in labour camps. There was no talking back or demanding things, blackmail or other things. If they were late, they risked being returned… [my translation]

It is clear that strength and endurance are values attached to the 1956 refugees, and this seems to be contrasted with contemporary refugees who are constructed as lacking these characteristics.

The second way attributed resilience gets expressed is by linking it to moral worth and referring to Hungarians who stayed behind during the events in 1956 as patriots. For example, a Hungarian conservative paper suggested that it as a moral obligation towards the country to stay rather than to flee, i.e. those who fled are ‘exiles with bleak souls’ while those who stayed have ‘the homeland in their hearts’. What this romantic presentation of the past does is that it positions people staying behind as superior to people fleeing war, and consequently, it questions the moral worth of all refugees.

Argumentation

Getting back to my first example from Al Jazeera, it is clear that commenters have clear arguments to support their views on refugees. The noun for ‘refugee’ in Hungarian (‘menekült’) derives from the verb ‘to flee’ (‘menekülni’), which suggests leaving everything behind and run. Having no possessions then is an important feature of a refugee. Linking these to topoi, we can apply the topos of definition to this case, which says “if an action, a thing, or person (group of persons) is named/designated as X, the action, thing or person (group of persons) carries or should carry the qualities/traits/attributes contained in the (literal) meaning of X” (Wodak 2001, p. 75). And being able to organize an escape and pay people smugglers clearly contradicts the above picture of a ‘menekült’.

Another reason brought up in the argument that contemporary entrants to Europe are not real refugees is their behaviour: they are violent, they refuse help; consequently, they are not ‘real refugees’. An example of this can be seen in a Tweet of two pictures presented side by side: on the left, people apparently protesting against Hungary’s closed borders, and on the right, a woman and children lying on bundles of clothes. A commenter mentions that the ‘real refugees’ are in the right hand side picture. Although this particular tweet emanates from the UK, it is a good example for what can be found in local comments in Hungary too. The reasoning behind this distinction between ‘real’ vs. ‘ not real refugees’ is based on their behaviour – filtered through media coverage, of course – and suggests that ‘real refugees’ should be humble and behave so that they could ‘earn’ their admission into Europe, quite like the 1956 Hungarian refugees supposedly did 60 years ago.

Language use

Metaphors are important linguistic devices used to create these ideas, and, ultimately, the picture of ‘real/non-real refugees’ in people’s heads. On Language on the Move, we have discussed the effects of metaphors here and here. In her recent article in the Austrian newspaper Kurier, Ruth Wodak explains that certain word choices in the discussion of the refugee crisis in Europe can gear people towards thinking about refugees as armed and violent. The use of metaphors of natural disaster (‘waves’ and ‘floods’ of refugees) creates a menacing picture. Wodak argues that these metaphors create the misconception that the reasons for the refugee movements are not human-made, which ties in well with the idea of ‘responsibility’ discussed above.

However, there are more direct references to danger, too. Wodak mentions the construction of Europe as a ‘fortress’, which needs to be ‘protected’ from refugees by Hungary’s ‘border guards’ who ‘hunt’ refugees. It is not difficult to see how these metaphors of war can relate to the reasoning regarding ‘behaviour’ discussed above, and thus further strengthen the idea that these refugees are not ‘real refugees’.

In sum, historical experience, argumentation and metaphors have contributed to creating a powerful anti-migration discourse in Hungary and Europe as a whole. This may feed the interests of certain political elites and parties but it cuts short any attempt at having an objective and effective discussion on the issue.

References

Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., KhosraviNik, M., Krzyzanowski, M., McEnery, T., & Wodak, R. (2008). A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press Discourse & Society, 19 (3), 273-306 DOI: 10.1177/0957926508088962

Wodak, R. (2001). The discourse-historical approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (Vol. 63-94). London: Sage.

Voice of China Sydney 2015, Program Booklet

It’s a weeknight at the Sydney Town Hall, an ornate 19^th century building in the city centre. Almost everyone bustling in the entryway is of Chinese extraction, except the ushers (and me). They’re all ages, and as I pour inside with them I hear Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka, and a little English. There are posters and flyers using simplified and traditional Chinese characters alongside English text. These scripts are not in-text translations but code-switching sentences working together within each ad to sell Australian Ugg boots or New Zealand throat lozenges. The ticket I hold and the banners on stage are also multilingual. They read “The Voice of China 中国好声音 澳大利亚招募站 Season 4 Australia Audition”. The tickets were free and ‘sold out’ days before this event. It’s the final audition – in a live concert format – for the upcoming season of a popular reality TV franchise, based on ‘Voice of Holland’, and available on a subscription channel in Australia. This is the first season of ‘Voice of China’ in which ‘Overseas Chinese’ can compete for the chance to be ‘The Australian Contender’ and flown to mainland China to film the series.

In-Group, Ethnicity and Language

The Town Hall this night is clearly a space where people operate within “multi-sited transnational social fields encompassing those who leave and those who stay behind”, as Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller (2004, p. 1003) have put it. These sociologists posit that migrants may simultaneously assimilate into a host society and maintain enduring ties to those sharing their ethnic identity, “pivoting” between the two. This is a useful lens through which to regard the event. What is most interesting with ‘Voice of China’ is the use of language to extend who counts as “those who leave”. The contestants have not necessarily actually left China, many are originally from Australia. Maybe their parents, or even their grandparents, once migrated. The audition’s winner [SPOILER ALERT!] is one of the few contestants without a Chinese first name: Leon Lee, a university music student from Sydney.

As these contestants pivot towards China – particularly through their use of Putonghua-Mandarin – so too does the Chinese community pivot towards the diaspora through the vehicle of this show, both by holding these Australian auditions at all and by incorporating Cantonese and Australian English. Together, the singers, hosts, judges and audience are constructing a transnational social field that incorporates both Australia and China; Sydney is not simply a city in Australia but an Asian migration hub located in reference to Beijing. All the fans sitting around me, who might watch other ‘Voice of China’ events in virtual spaces – online and on international pay TV – while living in Sydney, demonstrate the layers of place in one geographic space.

The use of language also reveals interesting dynamics in who counts as having a shared ethnic identity. In an adjustment invisible to the audience, one contestant did not perform in his first language, the Kam-Tai language Zhuang, which is an official ethnic minority language in China. The show’s producers had said he could choose only English, Mandarin or Cantonese songs.

There is a normative equivalence of language and ethnicity being reproduced here. The way in which language features associated with Mandarin, Cantonese and Chinese minority languages “index” (Blommaert and Rampton 2011) Chinese-ness (or do not index it) is shown to be more complicated as the auditions unfurl. It is a linguistic manifestation of a recurrent normative tension over what features are identified with the Zhonghua Minzu. On one hand, Chinese minority languages and common Chinese-heritage dialects in Australia such as Hokkien and Hakka are totally absent from stage. On the other, Cantonese, although it is officially deemed a dialect not a minority language, is used by the hosts, contestants and judges. Despite Cantonese’s status, until recently it, rather than Mandarin, was the language identified as “Chinese” in Australia. Cantonese is also the Chinese language historically strongest in Hong Kong, and after all it’s a Hong Kong station (TVB) organising and presenting these auditions. Cantonese is given equivalent official status in the Town Hall show, with hosting duties meticulously shared between a Mandarin speaking man and a Cantonese-speaking woman.

But there’s still an observable norm of language dominance. When Jessica and Deborah Kwong, two Melbourne sisters, use Cantonese to introduce themselves in their pre-recorded video, then sing a live duet in English, a judge doesn’t hesitate to give all his feedback in Mandarin. They nod as he speaks. It’s only when the next judge takes his turn that the girls ask to switch to “Guangdonghua” (Guangdong Speech, a colloquial name for Cantonese) that we all realise the sisters didn’t understand the first judge. There’s laughter all round, and the judges pledge to ask all future contestants which language they’d prefer. For all the deliberate announcements in Cantonese, not being fluent in Mandarin is not ‘normal’ in this context.

Leon Lee sings a lovely, English-language mash-up of rap, R&B and John Lennon’s Yesterday, ending with a modest xiexie (‘thank you’ in Mandarin). True to their recent pledge, the judges ask if they can comment in Mandarin. Leon explains – in Mandarin – that he speaks it imperfectly but understands it, and the judges proceed.

Only one contestant sings in Cantonese in the round, although many more speak Cantonese in their videos. Their practice again reveals the language expected by ‘Voice of China’s mainland producers and viewers. (While a Hong Kong station produces the auditions, it’s a mainland Chinese station, ZJTV, that produces and airs the series.) Sydney, being oriented to China but not actually in China, is a space where different linguistic norms can apply and so we get a slightly uncomfortable, simultaneous centralization and marginalization of Cantonese.

Translocal and Global

In addition to the associations between language and Chinese identity, tonight’s language practices happen under conditions of globalization. The singers at once use features associated with American English to link to the global scripts of reality TV song contests, and Australian-accented English to localize themselves. Their use of Mandarin can be understood as an additional attempt to localize, to differentiate from the global English language, global pop culture and global TV media.

Some contestants take on American accents in singing English-language songs, including Gaga’s Paparazzi, or employ the style of Anglo Pop music by inserting “yeah yeah yeah” into Mandarin songs. The judges also use features associated with American English – “Dude, your range is incredible,” says one judge – which functions to harmonise the show with the “international” American style of reality TV. However, when the contestants speak English to thank the crowd, they have unabashed Australian accents.

The contestant I’ve come to support, Wei Baocheng, linguistically localises in a different way. He makes his rendition of ‘The Sound of Silence’ more Australian than the American original not through accent but through prosody in his laconic rendition. The judges employ some translanguaging to describe it as “hen[很] laid back” and “hen[很] ’Strayan”. Hen is the Mandarin word for ‘very’, and ’Strayan is a jocular, colloquial term for “Australian”.

Localization is also achieved through song choice, amongst other things. For example, contestant Wang Chen sings the yearning rock ballad “Beijing, Beijing”, popular in China in recent years (and already on Voice of China in 2012). The pathos with which he performs it reinforces that, for him, Sydney Town Hall is oriented to China. Wang is singing about a city at the imagined heart of the community he (and the producers) imagine the audience to be.

Blommaert, J., & Rampton, B. (2011). Language and Superdiversity. Diversities, 13(2), 1-22.

Levitt, P., & Schiller, N. (2006). Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society1 International Migration Review, 38 (3), 1002-1039 DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-7379.2004.tb00227.x

‘Soaking up English like a sponge:’ The researcher’s young son engrossed in a Thesaurus

If someone cannot now learn their native language, adding a couple of foerign (sic) dead languages is not going to help them. And there is no possible economic return such as is available from Asian languages or living European languages – either of which will improve syntactic awareness as much as or better than Latin and Greek. All in all, deluded and wasteful. (Reader comment, 23 June 2014, The Guardian)

with Indigenous Australian languages, the buck stops here – if they are not supported in Australia there’s definitely nowhere else to go to later on…the dreadful finality of that should not escape us (Reader comment, Aug 2014 The Conversation)

Our opinions on language education are influenced by our firsthand experiences about languages: our memories of language learning, having friends, family from other countries, or traveling. Our experience is also affected by language policies which reflect the dominant social forces of the era, e.g. assimilation of migrants was the predominant force shaping language policy until the 1970s. Last but not least, the way information about languages and language education is transmitted to us conveys messages.

One very important source of information and thus conveyor of opinions is online news media. Catalano and Moeller’s (Catalano & Moeller, 2013) article about media discourse on language education in the US focuses on how media discourse may affect people’s opinion on dual language programs. The authors analysed 29 online media articles on dual language education (DLE) to explore what linguistic features they use to affect public opinion.

One such feature was the use of metaphors. These are figures of speech that contain an implied comparison, for example ‘the wheels of justice’, ‘a broken heart’, or having a ‘bubbly personality’. As Santa Ana (2002) argues in his work on metaphors of Latinos in US public discourse, the casual use of metaphors in everyday discussions and texts is a way to reproduce social inequality as they gear us towards a certain view of the world.

Catalano and Moeller (2013) found two prevailing metaphors in their texts. The first one was language as water; for instance, being ‘fluent’ in languages, a school that ‘immerses’ students in a language, or ‘mainstream’ education. These are words and phrases that are so attached to the vocabulary of language education that we use them without thinking about the additional meanings they may convey. The interesting feature the two authors found about the use of this metaphor is that both those opinions that showed DLE in a positive light (as part of multilingual discourses) used these metaphors and also those that discuss problems with past models (monolingual discourses). This use of the same type of metaphor to express both positive and negative views on two different types of DLE, according to the authors, creates confusion in readers, which in turn does not foster an effective discussion of the topic. The second most common form of metaphor was dual language education as business/factory. Examples for these metaphors include ‘developing strategies’ to overcome ‘challenges’ in language education, students needing language ‘skills’ to ‘compete’, to mention a few.

Investigating the language market in Australia

How do metaphors of language and language education work in the Australian online media? As part of my research, I analyse publicly accessible online media articles about language education in Australia. The focus of the online articles I analyse are the following: English language learning for migrants; introducing classical languages in schools; our duty to enable migrant children to keep their first languages; the push to get more migrant children speak their native language; pre-schools trialing language lessons; and finally, language education being compulsory in Australian schools.

The dominant metaphor is language education as business, which appears in all six media articles I analysed, with 18 instances of use. To give a few examples,

• We waste a precious economic resource […] essentially a free natural resource
• The more cost effective option is to maintain what you already have – to maintain the mother tongues of our bilingual children.
• when there are many languages in the classroom, as there are in most Australian classrooms, bilingual programmes become logistically difficult
• What languages should we invest in?
• learning another language helps boost children’s literacy skills and comprehension of English.

What I find interesting is, similarly to Catalano and Moeller’s (2013) findings, these metaphors do not only appear in discourses in support of multilingualism, but also in those prioritizing the role of English in Australia. As an example, the excerpt below comes from an article reporting on Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells addressing migrants on Australia Day 2014.

A lack of English has a personal cost, especially in an ageing population with health issues, or for parents that cannot understand their child’s teacher (Hall, 2014, 26 January).

Here, lack of the dominant language is presented as an economic burden for the individual and indirectly for the whole society as well. The reliance on this kind of metaphor in discourses for and against multilingualism, just like the dual function of the language as water in Catalano and Moeller’s findings, may not foster a fruitful discussion on the role of language education in Australia. The other reason why Catalano and Moeller warn against the overuse of the business metaphor in discussions on language education is that this focus narrows down the numerous benefits of bilingualism to an economic one.

To show how prevalent the business metaphor is: the second most common metaphor in my analysis was language as living organism with nine instances, half as many as language education as business. Here are some examples:

• the best way to support their English language learning is to nurture their mother tongues
• we “kill” the languages children bring with them into Kindergarten
• It gradually withers and disappears
• We participate in the destruction of their mother tongue, because without the opportunities to develop the language it becomes stunted.

These examples are similar to Catalano and Moeller’s education as cultivation metaphors; however, their findings include ‘blossom’, ‘flourish’, and ‘shine’, which are rhetorically more powerful than the negative equivalents I have found (‘withers’, stunted’). According to Santa Ana (2002) these kind of metaphors are an alternative to the language education as business ones because they emphasize personal development and maturation – or in our case, a lack of these.

Other common metaphors were, in this order, language as object (e.g. ‘lack of English’, to retain a language’), classical language as royalty (e.g. languages as ‘rightful inheritors’, ‘the linguistic regalia of privilege’), and language as duty (e.g. it is our ‘personal responsibility’, languages ‘policed entry into medicine and law degrees’). Interestingly, water metaphors occurred only in two articles and with the words ‘mainstream’ and ‘fluent’ each mentioned twice. However, the metaphor of language as water with the misleading connotation that language learning is natural and happens without any effort is quite common in reader comments to these articles e.g. children ‘absorb English like a sponge’, which I explore in detail in my PhD research.

Improving communication on language education

Returning back to the reader comments I cited at the beginning of the post, it is clear that these metaphors find their way into our everyday talk. The two quotes employ metaphors of business (‘economic return’), gambling (‘the buck stops here’) and language as a living organism (‘dead’, ‘dreadful finality’). Current economic forces affecting people’s life priorities can explain the marketization of the way language education is discussed. However, slipping into this habit of constructing learning and learners solely as participants of the market economy diminishes the whole experience of language learning and excludes other benefits one can gain from the process. As an example, see proverbs around the world related to the connection between wisdom and languages. It is thus important to recognize the power of the ways in which we speak about language learning and the consequences these may have on indigenous and migrant languages and communities in Australia.

Catalano, T., & Moeller, A. (2013). Media discourse and dual language programs: A critical linguistic analysis Discourse, Context & Media, 2 (4), 165-174 DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2013.09.001

Santa Ana, O. (2002). Brown tide rising. Austin, US: University of Texas Press.

Date: Tuesday 13 May
Time: 12:50 – 14:20
Venue: H-367 International Christian University, Mitaka City, Osawa, Tokyo
Language: English
All welcome. For more information, contact Kimie Takahashi (tkimie[at]icu.ac.jp)

【特別講義】奈良橋陽子「言語とジェンダー in Films」

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