Since everyone’s having so much fun with language, like Kelly I’d also like to relate a personal anecdote that some of you might have heard before. I was in a certain university in the US last summer, where a friend and I decided to enrol in a course of American film and lit. During the first lesson, the lecture handed out a (disturbingly long) reading list, peered down at our distraught faces and said with great kindness, “I won’t mind if you two can’t read English as well as the rest of the class”.
!!!!!!!!
(Of course my friend and I looked convincingly Asian and therefore, non-white, and therefore subjected to a mild form of the sort of experience that Fanon writes about).
Moving on, I’d like to examine Fanon’s quote on pg 18: “A man who has language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language…mastery of language affords remarkable power”. This reads very much like the kind of argument that the local government put forth when they first embarked on English education back in…errr…very long ago. In the colonial framework, language was one more divide along which the coloniser/ colonised could be dichotomised in order to perpetuate colonial difference, not only through the difference in articulation, but the corresponding intellectual ability it implied. To address a native “exactly like an adult with a child” is not only to dismiss him as inferior, but to forever exclude him from “the world expressed and implied by that language” – the colonial world of reason, rationality, progress, intelligence, technology, etc etc.
Prof Lim in my Asian American Lit class once referred to the language as ‘cultural currency’ – meaning that the English language, specifically has a very real value in a global culture that is increasingly becoming an English one. To speak today of a global culture, and global Englishes, for that matter, seems to me to imply a rupture in the entanglement of language and culture. We can probably all agree intuitively with the idea that English has cannibalised ‘local’ or ‘indigenous’ cultures through its sheer pervasiveness (my Chinese sucks) but I would like to question how viable this view is today. If English has been claimed by all culture and ethnicities and whatnot, I don’t believe it can still be seen as the carrier of a single (colonial) culture. The difference, I feel, between Fanon’s experience and ours (Singapore’s) today is the sense of confidence we (or at least) I can bring to my use of English.
(Seeing as it is the last post, I have been rather liberal with wordcount, which is 418. Please excuse :)
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Language: The Colonized and the Colonizer
It is ironic that Fanon uses the language of the colonizer (French in his case) to present the case about language as an instrument of imperial ideological domination. Like Joyce, and like many post-colonial intellectuals and writers from Acebe to Edward Said, he faces the paradox of needing to present the state, the case of his people and culture in a language that does not belong to him. In Joyce's case, he fights that paradox by, among other things, calling into question the Englishman's own command of language. The word 'tundish' comes to mind; in Portrait the professor thinks that it is an Irish word, when in truth it is as English a word as words can be (Heaney in his notes mentions that 'tundish' is in fact a mid-Elizabethian word). The slave knows the master's language better than the master. Ellis from Burmese Days would not have stood for this; "We shall have to sack [the native butler] if he gets to talk English too well," he says.
And yet English can itself be termed a 'colonized' language. It has roots in both Germanic languages and Latin, with a liberal helping from latter-day French and German, not to mention Hindi, Mandarain, Chinese, Malay, and a whole host of other languages. English is probably unique in this among imperial languages. Is it truely 'colonized', or does the very act of borrowing transforms the word into another instrument of ideological domination? 'Anime' in its native Japanese context refers to any animated work, including 3D modelling; in English it has come to mean cell-shaded animation from Japan or done in 'the Japanese style'. Is this an ideological stereotyping, or is this a simple case of borrowing from another culture? Is the act of 'borrowing' in language ever free of power implications? These are questions that I have yet to come up with answers for.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
"Your English Very Good!"
Fanon writes, “this self-division [behavioral differences of the Negro] is a direct result of colonialist subjugation”.
The relationship between power and language is evident in this article. The perpetuation of a dominant language and the “desire” to master the dominant language suggests the desire to be on equal footing with a “master”. The idea of a dominant language suggests to us a form of neo-colonialism.
“The Negro of the Antilles will be proportionately whiter… in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language”. We don’t have to look so far to understand where Fanon is coming from. Our local education system instills the importance of the English language right from the start- fail English and you fail to communicate, you are left behind (quite literally for some- being “retained” and repeating certain levels of their education). Mastering English becomes not a source of becoming "whiter" over here but rather, becoming a “model” citizen and becoming part of a dominant culture/community that is imagined, preferred and perpetuated by certain political entities.
A rule of difference is hence coded in language. Within our current globalized context, the impression of many is that one needs to speak English in order to assume a better position to the First-World countries. MNCs, trade and business relations are vastly communicated in English [or if need be, an English translator in the negotiations]. One could argue that even the Tiger Economies of Asia fall back to communicating through the “common” medium of English.
The relationship between power and language is evident in this article. The perpetuation of a dominant language and the “desire” to master the dominant language suggests the desire to be on equal footing with a “master”. The idea of a dominant language suggests to us a form of neo-colonialism.
“The Negro of the Antilles will be proportionately whiter… in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language”. We don’t have to look so far to understand where Fanon is coming from. Our local education system instills the importance of the English language right from the start- fail English and you fail to communicate, you are left behind (quite literally for some- being “retained” and repeating certain levels of their education). Mastering English becomes not a source of becoming "whiter" over here but rather, becoming a “model” citizen and becoming part of a dominant culture/community that is imagined, preferred and perpetuated by certain political entities.
A rule of difference is hence coded in language. Within our current globalized context, the impression of many is that one needs to speak English in order to assume a better position to the First-World countries. MNCs, trade and business relations are vastly communicated in English [or if need be, an English translator in the negotiations]. One could argue that even the Tiger Economies of Asia fall back to communicating through the “common” medium of English.
However, a recent observation of language and power and its relationship to the economies can be seen in the increased attention given to the Chinese Language and Arabic Language when places like China and Dubai are becoming increasingly important economic entities. But I think we're still far away from Mandarin or Arabic usurping the English language. The point for my ramble here is that language of the dominant economic power/s is that which people strive to assume in order to be on an "equal" position.
To speak English is thought to be understood and to be part of the global culture. The irony is this: the global culture we so fondly talk about in transnational texts, the idea of an increasingly shared culture, a breaking down of barriers and being a citizen of the world isn’t all that “globalized”. Many things are still coded in the English language and by extension, “First World” ideals and values. [Sidenote: Maybe this is why the French and Japanese are so averse to the English language]
I’m not against the use of English as a common language [after all, I am an English Literature student]. But if “to speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization”… just whose culture and civilization are we assuming?
To speak English is thought to be understood and to be part of the global culture. The irony is this: the global culture we so fondly talk about in transnational texts, the idea of an increasingly shared culture, a breaking down of barriers and being a citizen of the world isn’t all that “globalized”. Many things are still coded in the English language and by extension, “First World” ideals and values. [Sidenote: Maybe this is why the French and Japanese are so averse to the English language]
I’m not against the use of English as a common language [after all, I am an English Literature student]. But if “to speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization”… just whose culture and civilization are we assuming?
Monday, November 10, 2008
Waiterrrl, hor woarh ji buie jiu (Bing me a beeya)
Fanon's very first paragraph left an indelible impression on me:
In the texts that we have studied, I argue that this phenomenon is not just limited to the Black man, but almost everyone in the colonies. I find this split in identity or consciousness intriguing, mostly in part that it is a very modernist aesthetic, something of schizophrenia. This pattern of fragmentation and splitting of identities, or double-standards, can be traced to administrations of colonial rule. How colonialism is ruled on difference, but it is also very ambiguous because the government in the colony is mediated to a degree to suit the cultural context, marking its difference of metropole rule. I think it can be said that colonial rule is schizophrenic in itself.
As compared to his previous essay, I quite sympathize with Fanon this time round. His lamentation that the Black man seeks to emulate European culture and rejects his indigenous culture is poignant. This psychological brainwashing that European culture and language as the benchmark and symbol of progress/modernity is a form of cultural genocide of Black man culture.
I feel for this on a personal level perhaps because I have never mastered Teochew (think LKY bilingual policy), which severely handicaps my communication with my grandmother. We can communicate only through a series of guesswork, gestures, and awkward smiles. It is this irreparable loss of being able to communicate in Teochew, to connect to a lost past, to understand the nuances of my dialect (for want of a better word) group that struck me personally.
"The Black man has two dimensions. one with his fellows, the other with the white man. A negro behaves differently with a white man and with another Negro. That this self-division is a direct result of colonialist subjugation is beyond question ..." (17)
In the texts that we have studied, I argue that this phenomenon is not just limited to the Black man, but almost everyone in the colonies. I find this split in identity or consciousness intriguing, mostly in part that it is a very modernist aesthetic, something of schizophrenia. This pattern of fragmentation and splitting of identities, or double-standards, can be traced to administrations of colonial rule. How colonialism is ruled on difference, but it is also very ambiguous because the government in the colony is mediated to a degree to suit the cultural context, marking its difference of metropole rule. I think it can be said that colonial rule is schizophrenic in itself.
As compared to his previous essay, I quite sympathize with Fanon this time round. His lamentation that the Black man seeks to emulate European culture and rejects his indigenous culture is poignant. This psychological brainwashing that European culture and language as the benchmark and symbol of progress/modernity is a form of cultural genocide of Black man culture.
I feel for this on a personal level perhaps because I have never mastered Teochew (think LKY bilingual policy), which severely handicaps my communication with my grandmother. We can communicate only through a series of guesswork, gestures, and awkward smiles. It is this irreparable loss of being able to communicate in Teochew, to connect to a lost past, to understand the nuances of my dialect (for want of a better word) group that struck me personally.
Lingua [Franca] Siapa?
The exploration of language as it affects/ is affected by the colonizer and the colonized is one that is perhaps most interesting when we consider Joyce. While language is obviously a carrier of culture, the adoption of language in terms of colonial dynamics is perhaps most aptly captured in Fanon’s idea that “the Negro wants to speak French because it is the key that can open doors” (Fanon 38).
The language of the colonizer, indeed that that is foreign to the native language( British English to Irish in Joyce’s novel), is deemed as superior and the underlying need to survive in the colony ( or in the face of the empire) sees the native “ incarcerating a new type of man”(Fanon 36). Here we see the ideas of language as opportunity, language as professed through power and therefore language as a form of power to be partaken of.The link between identity and language is further confounded when we contemplate Fanon’s idea that “every dialect is a way of thinking”( Fanon 25) and that the native adoption of a “language different from that of the group into which he was born is evidence of a dislocation” ( Fanon 25). The complexity lies in the way the native tries to forge a new identity by acquiring the power of the new language, but at the same time renounces his own identity. What Fanon suggests is that the Negro/Native has “no culture, no civilization” (Fanon 34) to fall back on and so his native language is bankrupt of value in the opinion of the Western world( the colonizers)
What remains to be asked then, is who’s language is it really, this language of the colony? It takes on words of the native language/dialects, but is forcibly structured to that of the colonizers. Meaning in some cases remain constant, but take on different forms: Joyce’s novel sees Stephen wonder about how even in the existence of “different names for God in all the different languages in the world … still God remained always the same God and God’s real name was God” (CH 1). Lingua Franca becomes Lingua Siapa, in the imposition of foreign on the local(in the eyes of the colonized) and of the local on the alien( in the eyes of the colonizer).
If we take into account Stephen’s role as an artist and his struggle to forge an identity in a changing Ireland through language we are left to contemplate the implication of language on expression and identity.The power behind the imposition, accessibility and usability language then complicates itself in the forging of a new (colonial) identity.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The reality of language
Ireland's position as a site of divided identity, as Jackson suggests, lies partly in "the failure of the British to define Ireland either in fully metropolitan or colonial terms" (150). Definitions, and language as the key means of definition, are thus invariably tied to the shaping of identity and one's reality.
This is something that struck me very much about Joyce (and perhaps it is true of modernism in general as well): words are as much political as they are aesthetic. Like Orwell, Joyce seems to espouse a form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the language you use defines your reality, which in turn defines and restricts your language. Stephen's formative years are matched and reflected by the literal formation of language and its semantic possibilities. As a boy, meanings are multiple and malleable, reflecting the tabula rasa state of his mind: "What did that mean, to kiss?" (11-12); "God was God's name just as his name was Stephen. Dieu was the French for God and that was God's name too" (13). Meanings, however, become restricted by social conventions, as shown by the coding in colours and language that Stephen learns. The lexical item "green rose" must be rejected because "you could not have a green rose" (9). Green (and maroon) become associated with the political reality of Ireland - green for Parnell, maroon for Davitt. In this way the rejection of the "green rose" becomes more subversively diabolical: you can have red or white roses, York and Lancaster, but to map Irish green to a British symbol is denied by linguistic and "realistic" (insofar as the real is shaped by language and society) conventions.
The effect of language on the state of of being colonised is thus highly complex: if a person is brought up in the capacity of a colonised man, how does one separate what this reality imposes on him as opposed to the reality that is his and that he can shape? How does Ireland (or India, or other colonies) define its reality when it is caught in a linguistic and real-world "halfway house" (to quote Jackson)? Language is slippery; so is reality and identity. Joyce emphasises this with his use of language, which slips and slides, fractures and builds, to create a sense of the "real": Stephen's burgeoning consciousness, matched and mapped by the reader's own consciousness in the reading experience. And yet, in line with Joyce's own identity as Irish (reflected and shaped by this characteristic of his language), shadowing it all is a constant questioning of the "real" that he builds and its relation with the "master language" of English: "How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit...my soul frets in the shadow of his language." (167)
This is something that struck me very much about Joyce (and perhaps it is true of modernism in general as well): words are as much political as they are aesthetic. Like Orwell, Joyce seems to espouse a form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the language you use defines your reality, which in turn defines and restricts your language. Stephen's formative years are matched and reflected by the literal formation of language and its semantic possibilities. As a boy, meanings are multiple and malleable, reflecting the tabula rasa state of his mind: "What did that mean, to kiss?" (11-12); "God was God's name just as his name was Stephen. Dieu was the French for God and that was God's name too" (13). Meanings, however, become restricted by social conventions, as shown by the coding in colours and language that Stephen learns. The lexical item "green rose" must be rejected because "you could not have a green rose" (9). Green (and maroon) become associated with the political reality of Ireland - green for Parnell, maroon for Davitt. In this way the rejection of the "green rose" becomes more subversively diabolical: you can have red or white roses, York and Lancaster, but to map Irish green to a British symbol is denied by linguistic and "realistic" (insofar as the real is shaped by language and society) conventions.
The effect of language on the state of of being colonised is thus highly complex: if a person is brought up in the capacity of a colonised man, how does one separate what this reality imposes on him as opposed to the reality that is his and that he can shape? How does Ireland (or India, or other colonies) define its reality when it is caught in a linguistic and real-world "halfway house" (to quote Jackson)? Language is slippery; so is reality and identity. Joyce emphasises this with his use of language, which slips and slides, fractures and builds, to create a sense of the "real": Stephen's burgeoning consciousness, matched and mapped by the reader's own consciousness in the reading experience. And yet, in line with Joyce's own identity as Irish (reflected and shaped by this characteristic of his language), shadowing it all is a constant questioning of the "real" that he builds and its relation with the "master language" of English: "How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit...my soul frets in the shadow of his language." (167)
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