Language and Ethnic Identity

Obasan, Double Happiness,

Laiwan, M. Noubese Philip,

& a Singaporean Example

Starting Questions: Language and Identity

Does being able to speak in English have anything to do with your sense of identity?

What do you feel about speaking in English and in Chinese or the other languages?

What do you feel about the “All People’s English Movement” (全民英語運動 ) ？

In-Between Two Languages English on the practical level: business; dai

ly communication, jobs, etc. On the level of identity:Two languages used/combined creatively broaden

ed world views conflict, ambiguity, duality self-rejection or diffidence

Different Kinds of Languages and Silences

1. Silence is gold. Forbearance.

2. Silence as a kind of language; Attentive Silence (e.g. Naomi’s family).

3. Ethnics-- Being Tongue-Tied or Many-Mouthed;

4. Losing a Language; Secrecy & Repression

(Obasan, Double Happiness)

5. Silence of History

Freeing Word

1. Communication. 2. Language for Self-

Expression; Self-Defense.3. Languages as systems of

beliefs (“Discourse on the Logic of Language”)

4. Hierarchy of Languages//Races (“Imperialism of Syntax”; Jade’s father)

5. Distortion, Fiction and Lies. (“Universal Grammar”)

Obasan: two kinds of silence

There is a silence that cannot speak. (repression) There is a silence that will not speak.(protective silence) Beneath the grass the speaking dreams and beneath the dreams is a sensate sea. The speech that frees comes forth from that amniotic deep (source of maternal nourishment). To attend its voice, I can hear it say, is to embrace its absence. But I fail the task. The word is stone.

Obasan: search for liberationI admit it.I hate the stillness. I hate the stone. . . .Unless the stone bursts with telling, unless the seed

flowers with speech, there is in my life no living word. The sound I hear is only sound. White sound. Words, when they fall, are pock marks on the earth. They are hailstones seeking an underground stream.

If I could follow the stream down and down to the hidden voice, would I come at last to the freeing word? I ask the night sky but the silence is steadfast. There is no reply."

ObasanRevelation 2.17: To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna and will give him a white stone and in the stone a new name written. hidden spiritual nourishment from bread and stony

silence Another history written

Different Kinds of Silences & Communication

Japanese: “To the issei, honor and dignity is expressed through silence, the twig bending with the wind. The sansei view silence as a dangerous kind of cooperation with the enemy.” (Kogawa)

Chinese: “Do you need me now, Dad?” “ 阿宏， see you got us all so sentimental. Let’s eat.”

Creative Usages of Two Languages or More

Laiwan “Imperialism of Syntax” M. Nourbese Philip 《孩子不笨》

Laiwan Laiwan was born in Zimbabwe of Chinese par

ents. She immigrated to Canada in 1977 to leave the war in Rhodesia. She is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Vancouver, BC.

殖民化了的文化 Who is the “you” in this poem, Laiwan herself? What does syntax here mean? What do you think about the Chinese translation?“. . . those rules of grammar were the forgetting of yours

elf. Those letters never pronounced before became the subject of your ridicule. The bitterness on your tongue became hidden in need for

survival a proof of assimilation, the invisibility of yourself . . . “

Imperialism of Syntax (2)生硬的發音，成了讓人奚落的 笑料， 強咽舌上新文化的苦澀， 為了生存，得證明你的同化． 證實自我的消失．

M. Nourbese Philip

born in Tobago, Trinidad Nourbese "noor-BEH- seh"; BA-- at the University of the West Indies

, Kingston, Jamaica. 1968 -- Arrived in Canada 1973 -- a law degree from the University

of Western Ontario 1982 -- gave up law completely to write f

ull-time Harriet's Daughter –novel for young adu

lt She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly

Breaks. (the Casa de las Américas prize)

She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks

1. "And Over Every Land and Sea,“--Ovid's version of the story of Ceres searching for Persephone (mother searching for her daughter)

2. “Cyclamen Girl," "African Majesty," "Meditations on the Declensions of Beauty by the Girl With the Flying Cheek-bones," "Discourse on the Logic of Language," "Universal Grammar," "The Question of Language is the Answer to Power," "Testimony Stoops to Mother Tongue," "She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks"--a woman growing through adolescence into adulthood becomes aware of language as a barrier to expression. In the last poem, the speaker is ready to try her language, always counterpointed by quotations . . .

Her Views of Language & English

English as a "father tongue" for those of African-Caribbean heritage ("Absence" 276).

demotic or creole English as the "mother tongue.“

"For the many like me, black and female, it is imperative that our writing begin to recreate our histories and our myths, as well as to integrate that most painful of experiences--loss of our history and our word."

Her Views of Language & English

“My quest as a writer/poet is to discover my mother tongue, or whether or not peoples such as us may ever claim to possess such a thing. Since I continue to write in my father tongue, what I need to engender by some alchemical process . . . [is] a metamorphosis within the language from father tongue to mother tongue. In that process some aspects of the language will be destroyed, new ones created.” (278) (Cf She Tries 27)

Her Views of African Use of English

“The formal standard language was subverted, turned upside down, inside out, and even sometimes erased. Nouns became strangers to verbs and vice versa; tonal accentuation took the place of several words at a time; rhythms held sway. (She Tries Her Tongue 17)

Her Styles Multiple styles

Orality: rhythmic creole language

Apparently official documents

Parody

Re-defining, changing the meaningsCombined;

search for the mother tongue

Her Styles asymmetrical patterning of free verse.

“Discourse on the Logic of Language”

a Collage of

a search for m

other (tongue)

a personal statement of one’s linguistic identity and anguish.

A critique of medical, scientific discourse & other authorities.

mother tongue: connected & disconnected

What is my mother tongue my mammy tongue my mummy tongue my momsy tongue my modder tongue my ma tongue?

I have no mother tongue no mother to tongue no tongue to mother to mother tongue

(cannot create tongue to create tongue)

The capitalized part: The capitalized part:

Connected and nourished Connected and nourished physically by the mother’physically by the mother’s tongue in the past. s tongue in the past.

Critique of Authorities (1) "EDICT I: Every owner of slaves shall,

wherever possible, ensure that his slaves belong to as many ethno-linguistic groups as possible. If they cannot speak to each other, they cannot then foment rebellion and revolution" (She Tries 56).

control the slaves by destroying their language community.

Note: language switch

However, as is becoming evident in more recent Africanist research, ethnic identity in West Africa was fluid and multiple, and people could belong to several different communities, including groups based upon shared language. Certain Africans' ability to language-switch thus served as a site of resistance in the Americas; the aptitude for languages enabled them to avoid slave masters' attempts at complete control of their interactions and experiences.(Anatol)

Critique of Authorities (2) the theories of Drs.

Karl Wernicke and Paul Broca on the parts of the brain responsible for speech and the racist theories of Broca as to the superiority of Caucasians

Critique of Authorities What are the answers to these multiple choic

e questions? Which authorities are parodied here?

From critique of male and educational authorities, Eurocentrism, to rejection of being subject to the existing or absent languages.

Her Styles “Universal Grammar” – a Collage of

Making a sentence about “Man”

Universal Grammar

Breaking down to

the smallest fragments cell Re-member the African

origins and history of exploitation

Critique through redefinitionTongue = penis

she describes the cultural violence practiced upon non-Europeans in the Caribbean as "linguistic rape."

What does the tall, blond, blue-eyed, white-skinned man represent?

Man governing the verb “is” and woman. Male, White domination of the third world

(and the animal world) through their language (English?) and their cultures.

Rape

Self-Assertion through “parsing” and redefinition

Parsing into fragmentary cells to re-member.

The smallest cell – smallest an unsuccessful definition.

Remember re-member O: pain God African goddess; Ex –exorcize whom? The Other or the

white devils? Explosion of tremble and forgetting.

Self-Assertion through Rejecting Oppression

If the word gags— Spit it out/Start again. This is “How to make a language yours

and Now not to get raped.”

English as a "father tongue" English

is my mother tongue. A mother tongue is not not a foreign lan lan lang language l/anguish anguish —a foreign anguish. English is my father tongue. A father tongue is a foreign language, therefore English is a foreign language not a mother tongue. (She Tries 30)

Singapore’s Multi-Lingualism

孩子不笨 as an Example

Singapore’s Language Policy Singapore is one of such multiethnic countries in Southeas

t Asia, with about 77% Chinese, 15% Malays, 6% Indians and 2% of other smaller ethnic groups. Four official languages: Malay, Chinese (Mandarin), Tamil and English.

National language: Malay, but its function merely symbolic (e.g. national anthem)

Chinese: mother tongue – Hokkien; bilingual education: English for Mathematics, ethnic langu

age for moral education. (source) Movements: 1) Mandarin in 70’s; 2) Singlish No More!

--to remove all use of Singlish from the media, especially the local sitcoms and comedies (source)

《孩子不笨》 I Not Stupid

新加坡 2002 年最卖座的电影。《小孩不笨》探讨家庭關係、小孩子自殺、教育制度以及父母與子女溝通的問題．

新加坡的小學生到了五年級，便要依學業表現，被分派就讀 EM1 、 EM2 或 EM3 三種不同課程，其中 EM3 內容最淺，亦被視為最沒前途。

(source)

Language and Hierarchy

Chinese not important – English and Mathematics most important.

Hybridity, Language Hierarchy and Government Control

Hybridity, Language Hierarchy and Government Control (2)

References

1. Marlene Nourbese Philip. She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks. Ragweed P, 1989.

2. Anatol, Giselle LizaSpeaking in (M)Other Tongues: The Role of Language in Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother. Callaloo - Volume 25, Number 3, Summer 2002.

3. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 157: Twentieth-Century Caribbean and Black African Writers, Third Series. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Bernth Lindfors, University of Texas at Austin and Reinhard Sander, University of Puerto Rico. The Gale Group, 1996. pp. 296-306.