(Image credit: Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino)

August is celebrated in the Philippines as Buwan ng Wika (language month).

This celebration began in 1946, shortly after the then Philippine President Manuel Quezon declared Tagalog as the basis for the creation of a national language (later termed Filipino). Initially, the annual events celebrated the unification of the archipelago of 183 languages through the national language. More recently, the focus has been on recognizing and celebrating the many languages of the Philippines.

This year’s theme declares Filipino at mga Wikang Katutubo sa Dekolonisasyon ng Pag-iisip ng mga Pilipino (Filipino and other Indigenous languages for the decolonization of the Filipino people’s way of thinking). This theme is an extension of UNESCO’s declaration of 2019 as the Year of Indigenous Languages and points to the upcoming decade of action for the world’s Indigenous Peoples and Languages.

The Special Broadcasting Services (SBS) in Australia, particularly it’s SBS Filipino segment, also celebrates Buwan ng Wika. It’s a way to pay homage to Filipino migrants in Australia.

For this year’s Buwan ng Wika, I have been interviewed by Nikki Alfonso-Gregorio about naming practices in the Philippines. You can listen to the interview here.

Before colonization, only given names were common and surnames were not formalized. These given names were based on nature, and cultural and spiritual beliefs. This is still true of given names today, although other themes have been added, including those that reflect love of God, love of family, love of literature and the entertainment industry, and love for creativity.

Family names arrived in the Philippines with the Claveria decree of 1849, which required Filipinos to adopt family names. To learn more, head over to the SBS website.

Image 1: Infographic in Tagalog on ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infection

Editor’s note: Timely and equitable access to information for linguistically diverse populations continues to be a major linguistic challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this latest contribution to our series of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis, Loy Lising introduces three grassroots initiatives to improve multilingual service provision in the Philippines. The call for contributions to the series continues to be open.

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The Philippines is a highly linguistically diverse country with Ethnologue listing 182 languages in use there. However, with Filipino as the constitutionally enshrined national language and English as the official second language, most of these languages are often relegated to the periphery when it comes to national activities. Their subordinate status has become salient with the COVID-19 pandemic, as it has become apparent that state public health information in Filipino and English fails to reach all the ethnolinguistic groups in the archipelago. Various NGOs and grassroots groups have stepped into the breach.

Since the initial case of COVID-19 in the Philippines in early February 2020, various grassroots-driven efforts have developed, and I, together with colleagues from the University of the Philippines, Kristina Gallego and Jesus Hernandez, are currently working to catalogue these and assess their effectiveness. As part of our ongoing investigation, we are surveying the availability of and access to COVID-19 information and prevention materials disseminated on social media since the lockdown of the capital region Metro Manila on 15 March 2020. In addition, we are interested in finding in what Philippine languages these materials are available. Our preliminary investigation has shown that insofar as COVID-19 infection prevention efforts in other Philippine languages are concerned, much of the work done are grassroots-generated rather than state-initiated, as in the following three examples.

Project #CAMPana

Through the Project #CAMPana of the College of Allied Medical Professions in the University of the Philippines, infographics on the prevention of the spread of COVID-19 were disseminated in various social media platforms immediately after the first occurrence of the virus in the country. One of these (Image 1) is an infographic for adults in Tagalog.

The infographic contains relevant information on the prevention of COVID-19 infection utilising a number of (non)linguistic modalities to make the information not only accessible but also interesting. These strategies include the use of images, colours, and mnemonics (in this image, LINIS). The Tagalog word linis means ‘clean’ or ‘being clean’ in English. In the image above, it is utilised as an easy-to-remember set of instructions to avoid contracting COVID-19: L is for linis (clean), I is for ilong (nose), N is for no, I is for iwasan (avoid), and S is for sabunin (to soap). The L instruction reminds readers to always clean frequently used objects; letter I instructs how to cover one’s nose and mouth when sneezing or coughing; letter N suggests refraining from touching one’s eyes, nose and mouth; letter I admonishes people to avoid crowded places; and S reminds readers to wash their hands or use sanitizers.

The other is an infographic for children available in eight Philippine languages: Tagalog, English, Cebuano, Ilonggo, Bikol, Iluko, Kapampangan, and Waray. Image 2 is an example in Cebuano.

Image 2: Infographic in Cebuano for children on ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infection

The infographic presents similar information but utilises, quite ingeniously, a strategy that makes the information not only accessible and interesting but also relevant to and attractive for children. The image juxtaposes the evil COVID-19 virus ‘crown’ image with a child superhero known as ‘Super Bata’, similar to Susana Distancia in Mexico. This clever strategy appeals to the children’s imagination and enjoins them to see themselves as superheros if they follow the eight strategies outlined in the pamphlet.

Language Warriors PH

The second grassroots effort is an initiative of the Department of Linguistics of the University of the Philippines in Diliman. They have created a working group called Language Warriors PH that aims to connect community translators and ‘language warriors’ across the Philippines to ensure COVID-19 related information is disseminated in as many indigenous languages as possible. This is a crucial step to ensure that especially those who are in the periphery, socially and geographically, have access to crucial information. This volunteer group, as of their May 08 report, has collected 927 COVID-19 related materials across 70 Philippine languages, dialects, and sociolects. The translated information spans topics on physical and mental health, socio-economic support, news and current affairs, and other miscellaneous information. The volunteer translators who have done the work of translating COVID-19 related information for various ethnolinguistic groups, which LWPH collect and help disseminate, include teachers, language enthusiasts, national government staff, local government unit staff, and private organization members.

Reading, Early Grades, Art and Language Education (REGALE)

A third truly outstanding effort worth featuring is the community-generated dictionaries for children produced by the Reading, Early Grades, Art and Language Education (REGALE) cluster from the College of Education of the University of the Philippines. In their efforts to ensure that children are kept up-to-date with information related to COVID-19 and its prevention, they have produced thus far four dictionaries for children: one in English, one in Tagalog, one in Cebuano, and the most recent one in Surigaonon. These dictionaries are also accessible in Filipino Sign Language, the link of which is embedded in the dictionary. In addition, and more recently, REGALE also produced video clips to further engage children in COVID-19 discussions. The first of these is now available.

Is public health information reaching the Philippine’s ethnolinguistic minorities?

Public dissemination of information in a multilingual ecology that is inclusive of all ethnolinguistic groups is always challenging, particularly one that involves so many languages. In the Philippines, the predominant use of Filipino and English across a number of national domains has always been motivated by the privileged position these languages hold in the country’s national language policy. The necessity, however, of ensuring the dissemination of potentially life-saving information at a time of a pandemic to as many ethnolinguistic groups as possible cannot be overemphasised. Thus far, in the country, we have seen various grassroots efforts, as exemplified above, rise to the challenge in bridging the information gap. My colleagues and I hope that once our research is concluded, we will be able to emphasize the role of grassroots efforts in the production of public health information across the archipelago to be able to influence state policies to improve information dissemination in all the languages Filipinos use and understand.

Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic

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

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“The trend of the future is working from home. The big question is: Are Filipinos ready for this kind of work?” This question was asked by an employer of Filipino virtual accountants providing offshore services to clients overseas during my fieldwork in June 2018. Two years later, office workers all over the world find themselves forced to do just that—work from home—as a social distancing measure in light of the COVID-19 pandemic situation. In Australia alone, 1.6 million reported this significant change in their working conditions.

Unsurprisingly, there are many different reactions to this global shift to remote-work setup—some readily embracing it as the new normal, others taking a more critical stance. In the interim, as working from home continues to be the norm for some occupation groups, the experience of offshore accountants, who are employed to work remotely, pandemic or no pandemic, provides a picture of how this work arrangement works on a permanent basis.

A sociolinguistic analysis of the globalized accountant experience of working from home was the subject of a webinar co-organized on 3 July 2020 by the Linguistic Society of the Philippines (LSP) and the Lasallian Institute for Development and Educational Research.

In this online lecture, I explore how working remotely has shaped communication practices and ideologies in globalized accounting practice in the Philippines. Examining communication in this context is important as the demand for off-shored (including home-based) accounting services is increasing. This trend comes with the positioning of the Philippines as an emerging global provider of knowledge process outsourced services to businesses headquartered overseas. Ethnographic data collected from this work context for my PhD thesis (in progress) is analyzed using the lenses of performance and audit. Findings show that the way accountants communicate has evolved to fit the shape of virtual work environments. Digital solutions are making communication skills more salient and creating new norms and protocols of transparency that contribute to tensions between autonomy and accountability. The lessons highlighted from accountants’ experiences potentially reflect communication challenges and opportunities in other work domains especially during this period of COVID-19 pandemic, when mandatory physical distancing is redefining workplace interactions.

You can watch this virtual presentation uploaded in the LSP YouTube channel.

Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic

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

Watch this research presentation by Pia Tenedero to find out.

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

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

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

Abstract

Preparing Global South Accountants to Communicate in Global North Workplaces

Pia Tenedero, Macquarie University

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

English-Only at Bon Secours

From what I read, there is a nursing shortage in the Global North. From North America to Japan and from Europe to the Gulf countries, rich societies suffer from a “care deficit,” which they fill by importing – mostly female – labor from the global South. I have published about the intersection of language, gender and global care chains before (check out our resources section on “Language, Migration and Social Justice”).

If there is a nursing shortage in a country like the USA, it’s hard to understand why a US hospital, Bon Secours Hospital in Baltimore, would choose to fire four nurses from the Philippines for no other reason than that they spoke Tagalog during lunch break. Current management theory suggests that it’s a good idea to minimize staff turnover and to try and hang-on to talent when you have it, particularly in an area with a shortage of qualified workers. So, how come four nurses get dismissed, without warning, for no other reasons than that they spoke a bit of Tagalog? Not even on the job but during break-time, and, for all I can gather from the media reports not even a Tagalog-only conversation but Tagalog-words mixed into an English conversation.

Indeed, when the four nurses filed a discrimination complaint, their lawyer argued that the lack of guidelines in the hospital’s English-Only rule made it impossible to abide by:

All it takes is just one word. That can be a greeting, a remark or even the name of a Filipino dish. Based on this rule, you could say bagoong (a fish sauce) and lose your job.

According to the lawyer, the hospital could not actually cite specific instances where or when the alleged violations of their English-Only rule had taken place. Huh?! How come an organization that claims to have “respect, justice, integrity, stewardship, innovation, compassion, quality and growth” as their core values can suspend all of these, and plain common sense to boot, in dismissing four employees without good documentation and due course? Not to mention that it’s economically irrational to dismiss health workers for no good reason when there is a shortage of them.

English-Only rules are born of ignorance and bigotry and they breed more of the same. It’s sad to see that the idea of English-Only was obviously so powerful at Bon Secours Baltimore that it suspended all other considerations.

As an afterthought, I can’t help wondering about the wisdom of throwing English-Only stones when you sit in a Bon-Secours-glasshouse …

Piller, Ingrid, & Takahashi, Kimie (2011). At the intersection of gender, language and transnationalism Nik Coupland. Ed. Handbook of Language and Globalisation. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 540-554