Language and Ethnic Identity

1
Language and Ethnic Identity

• Obasan, Double Happiness,
• Laiwan, M. Noubese Philip,
• a Singaporean Example

2
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 Peoples English
  Movement (??????)?

3
In-Between Two Languages

• English on the practical level business daily
  communication, jobs, etc.
• On the level of identity
• Two languages used/combined creatively ?
  broadened world views? conflict, ambiguity,
  duality ? self-rejection or diffidence

4
Different Kinds of Languages and Silences

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 Jades father)
5. Distortion, Fiction and Lies. (Universal
   Grammar)

• Silence is gold. Forbearance.
• Silence as a kind of language Attentive Silence
  (e.g. Naomis family).
• Ethnics-- Being Tongue-Tied or Many-Mouthed
• Losing a Language Secrecy Repression
• (Obasan, Double Happiness)
• Silence of History
• Freeing Word

5
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.

6
Obasan search for liberation

• I 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."

7
Obasan

• Revelation 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

8
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? ??,see you
  got us all so sentimental. Lets eat.

9
Creative Usages of Two Languages or More

• Laiwan Imperialism of Syntax
• M. Nourbese Philip
• ????

10
Laiwan

• Laiwan was born in Zimbabwe of Chinese parents.
  She immigrated to Canada in 1977 to leave the war
  in Rhodesia. She is an interdisciplinary artist
  and writer based in Vancouver, BC.

11
???????

• 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 yourself.
• 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 . . .

12
Imperialism of Syntax (2)

• ?????,???????
•         ??,
•         ??????????,
•         ????,???????.
•         ???????.

13
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 full-time
• Harriet's Daughter novel for young adult
• She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks.
  (the Casa de las Américas prize)

14
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 . .
   .

15
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."

16
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)

17
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)

18
Her Styles

• Multiple styles

Apparently official documents
Orality rhythmic creole language
Parody
Re-defining, changing the meanings
Combined search for the mother tongue
19
Her Styles

• asymmetrical patterning of free verse. Discourse
  on the Logic of Language
• a Collage of ?

a search for mother (tongue)
A critique of medical, scientific discourse
other authorities.
a personal statement of ones linguistic identity
and anguish.
20
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

The capitalized part Connected and nourished
physically by the mothers tongue in the past.

• (cannot create tongue to create tongue)

21
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.

22
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)

23
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

24
Critique of Authorities

• What are the answers to these multiple choice
  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.

25
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
26
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

27
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.

28
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.

29
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)

30
Singapores Multi-Lingualism

• ???? as an Example

31
Singapores Language Policy

• Singapore is one of such multiethnic countries in
  Southeast 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 language for moral education. (source)
• Movements 1) Mandarin in 70s 2) Singlish No
  More! --to remove all use of Singlish from the
  media, especially the local sitcoms and comedies
  (source)

32
????I Not Stupid

• ???2002 ????????????????????????????????????????
  ?.
• ????????????,???????,?????EM1?EM2?EM3??????,??EM3?
  ???,?????????
• (source)

33
Language and Hierarchy

• Chinese not important English and Mathematics
  most important.

34
Hybridity, Language Hierarchy and Government
Control

35
Hybridity, Language Hierarchy and Government
Control (2)

36
References

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