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

Language, History and
Hybridity
From Margaret Atwood to
Laiwan, M. Noubese Philip,
Starting Questions: Language,
History and Identity
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How do the four novels deal with history
differently?
General Q’s:
– Does being able to speak in English have
anything to do with your sense of identity?
– What do you feel about the “All People’s
English Movement” (全民英語運動)？
The Blind Assassin (2000)
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Coral Ann Howells
“As…multiculturalism [Canadian
Multiculturalism Act in 1988]has been a major
force in transforming Canada’s discourse of
nationhood, opening up the nation-space to
accommodate the heterogeous histories of its
citizens, so in her recent historical novels Atwood
has been engaged in a somewhat similar project,
opening up English Canada’s colonial history and
its heritage myths.” (26)
Several Female
Historians/Artists
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in Atwood’s novels – The Handmaid’s Tale,
The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, etc.
The handmaid: framed by the male historian
Atwood’s use of the Gothic to introduce the
“uncanny” in history. (28)
Hybridity
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Generic hybridization in BA: the Victorian
sensation novel, science fiction, modernist female
romance and American detective pulp fiction.
(28)
The fictive autobiography becomes a kind of
textual theater where a changing self displays and
hides itself through a series of disguises and a
parade of doubles, aways eluding fixed
representation. (29)
P. 49 a strangely duplicitous novel with its ghostly
voices, multiple narrators, and overlapping texts…
Different Kinds of Languages
and Silences
Silence is gold. Forbearance.
2.
Secrecy & Repression
(Disappearing Moon Cafe);
Silence of History (The Blind
Assasin)
3.
Silence as a kind of
language; Attentive Silence
(e.g. Obasan).
4.
Ethnics– Being “ManyMouthed” or Losing a
Language (SFG);
1.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Self-Defense.
Communication; Language
for Artistic Self-Expression
(The Blind Assasin)
(Disappearing Moon Cafe);
Languages as systems of
beliefs (“Discourse on the
Logic of Language”)
Hierarchy of
Languages//Races
(“Imperialism of Syntax”)
Distortion, Fiction and Lies.
(“Universal Grammar”)
Hybridity and Hyphen
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Fred Wah: “Half-Bred Poetics” p. 73 “hyphen”
Though the hyphen is in the middle, it is not in the center. It
is a property marker, a boundary post, a borderland, a
bastard, a railroad, a last spike, a stain, a cypher, a rope, a
knot, a chain (link), a foreign word, a warning sign, a ‘head
tax,’ a bridge, a no-man’s land, a nomadic, floating magic
carpet, now you see it now you don't"
The issue of names (pp. 80-82)
Code-switching  contact language
To emphasize the blank space both to preserve and
perpetuate the passage position(92)
Creative Usages of Two
Languages or More
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Laiwan “Imperialism of Syntax”
M. Nourbese Philip
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. (source:
http://artgallery.dal.ca/engaging/LAIWAN.html)
殖民化了的文化
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Who is the “you” in this poem, Laiwan herself?
What does syntax here mean?
What does the “it” refer to in “still it happened/”?
What do you think about the Chinese translation?
Imperialism of Syntax (2)
很快，那些語法的規戒使你忘了自己。
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．
“. . . 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 . . . “
M. Nourbese Philip
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http://www.nourbese.com/
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
"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 (庶民的) 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.
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)
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.“ (p. 66)
What does the tall, blond, blue-eyed, whiteskinned man represent? (63, 65, 67)
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 –exodus, 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.”
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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