Language - 輔仁大學英國語文學系 Fu Jen University

Language and Ethnic Identity
Obasan, Double Happiness,
Laiwan, M. Noubese Philip,
& a Singaporean Example
Starting Questions: Language
and Identity
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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
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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
Different Kinds of Languages
and Silences
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.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Communication.
Language for SelfExpression; Self-Defense.
Languages as systems of
beliefs (“Discourse on the
Logic of Language”)
Hierarchy of
Languages//Races
(“Imperialism of Syntax”;
Jade’s father)
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 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."
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
Different Kinds of Silences &
Communication
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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
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Laiwan “Imperialism of Syntax”
M. Nourbese Philip
《孩子不笨》
Laiwan
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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.
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
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 . . . “

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
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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)
She Tries Her Tongue, Her
Silence Softly Breaks
1.
2.
"And Over Every Land and Sea,“--Ovid's version of
the story of Ceres searching for Persephone (mother
searching for her daughter)
“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
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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
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“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
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“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
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Multiple styles
Orality:
rhythmic
creole
language
Combined;
search for the
mother tongue
Apparently official
documents
Parody
Re-defining, changing
the meanings
Her Styles
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asymmetrical patterning of free verse.
“Discourse on the Logic of Language”
a Collage of 
a search for
mother (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?
The capitalized part:
Connected and nourished
physically by the
mother’s tongue in the
past.
I have no mother
tongue
no mother to tongue
no tongue to mother
(cannot
create
tongue
to
create
to mother
tongue)
tongue
Critique of Authorities (1)
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"EDICT I: Every owner of slaves shall,
wherever possible, ensure that his
slaves belong to as many ethnolinguistic 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
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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)
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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
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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.
Her Styles
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“Universal Grammar” – a Collage of 
Breaking
down to
the smallest
fragments
 cell
Making a
sentence
about
“Man”
Universal
Grammar
Re-member the African
origins and history of
exploitation
Critique through redefinition
Tongue = penis
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she describes the cultural violence practiced
upon non-Europeans in the Caribbean as
"linguistic rape."
What does the tall, blond, blue-eyed, whiteskinned 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
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Parsing  into fragmentary cells to remember.
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
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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"
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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
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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 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
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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
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Chinese not important – English and
Mathematics most important.
Hybridity, Language Hierarchy
and Government Control
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Hybridity, Language Hierarchy
and Government Control (2)
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References
1.
2.
3.
Marlene Nourbese Philip. She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly
Breaks. Ragweed P, 1989.
Anatol, Giselle Liza
Speaking 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.

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