Handout for SARS 523,
Multilingual Education in South/Southeast Asia
Two theories of Language Genesis:
This hypothesis states that New Englishes are conditioned by the substrate languages encountered by English in the contact situation; in the case of Singapore: dialects of Chinese, Malay, and Tamil.
This hypothesis claims that the features of New Englishes emerge because of the constraints of universal grammar which provides a kind of genetic blueprint for natural languages in the minds of users. (Both of these hypotheses also used to explain the emergence of pidgins and creoles).
Problems with all of this is that the structures we see in New Englishes sometimes seem to come from one of these, and sometimes from the other, though each hypothesis claims to be the 'true' explanation. We will see them as complementary in their effect.
We are interested in this book in the post-colonial context of the emergence of New Englishes, and the human beings involved, i.e. it is not languages that come in contact, but speakers that come in contact, individuals who find themselves with the need to communicate and interact with other real human beings who use a different language. The theoretical basis for language interaction is done at an abstract level, but they do not explain everything.
Crucial dimensions: what kinds of human initiatives are left to language users, irrespective of the hypotheses theorized above? How deterministic are these hypotheses and what is actually true of practical usage? Users are not trapped in a choice-denying straitjacket; there is some freedom within the determinants given them, i.e. there is creativity. Users want to construct an enabling code, one that allows them to make meanings, interact within the realities of their contexts and successful ways.
Colonial context was a dispossessed one; unequal and lacking in social status and power. Colonizers claimed and owned the language, right to determine its norms. After colonialism ended, these rights did not necessarily end, but are still enshrined in the official education policies of at least some of the ex-colonies. And they remain in the psychologies of the people in both centers.
New users nontheless put all these resources to work: dealing with the constraints of the substrate influences, the constraints of universal grammar, but also using their creativity in their own contexts. New Englishes provide examples of all these.
Chapter I gives accounts of the roles of human users. What about the deviations from Standard Older English(es)? Terms such as
But this ignores how these new codes seem to take on a life of their own in these accounts; the codes go on, independently of their users and contexts, deterministically. The users are therefore perpetual non-native users because their codes are not theirs, but have come about because of these outside factors operating. Native speakers (back in England etc.) are the natural users; their codes have been developed by them. All of this means the New Englishes are the result of imperfect learning.
Kachru (1982) tries to distinguish between mistakes and deviations:
But Kandiah rejects this: New Englishes are always held up to the norm set by others, not by themselves. Kachru tries to
'make grammatical deviance from a foreign norm acceptable, i.e. to turn the mistakes of a prescriptive tradition into permissible alternatives.'
Kachru's Cline of Bilingualism
We have seen this before; it is a scale of proficiency from monolingual to bilingual:
Monolingual Central Ambilingual
|__________________________|_____________________|
This is a scale of proficiency; bilinguals are ranked in terms of their proficiency; users of NE's begin as monolinguals and proceed on a scale towards ambilinguality (bilingualism); it also assumes they always have another language in their head before they start learning English. Monolinguals obviously have no English in their heads; ambilinguals supposedly have two perfect grammars in their head, but Kachru also says that in fact few users ever achieve 100% native proficiency. Users of Standard (Indian) English, e.g. rank somewhere in the middle; i.e. they are at about 50% to 75% knowledge of English, because of interference and other problems. Their varieties will never have the status accorded speakers of Older Englishes.
Problems with the cline of biling:
We claim that
Other problems: insistence on norms of OE's at the proficient ambilingual end: New users always have to satisfy norms of another community, not their own. NE's are thus always
Perhaps evolves from the view of bilingualism as always additive which of course in the monolingual viewpoint, always is. The reality of multicultural/multilingual contexts may be different; the needs of users are different; and they do not react the way monolinguals react. The norms of monolinguals have no salience for them. Ambilinguals may also experience changes in the behavior of their own language, which interacts with the NE in ways monolinguals can't know. The deviationist paradigm always has as its end point levels of attainment and status of resulting codes.
What is the status of the code that emerges: What these users seem to do is to fuse various features in a new and organic, rule-governed, symbiotic system. It is not simply a collection of disparate structures and deviated broken codes. The elements work together as their own system, which have values, meanings, qualities, textures of their own, for their own context.
Gives example of Sri Lankan use of the word uncle which fits neither a Sri Lankan set of rules, nor an English set of rules. (Pg. 83-4)
Here a new systematic unit emerges, neither Lankan nor English, but drawing upon both. It can only be described systematically in its own right It draws from the substrate and superstrate, but is different from both. Kandiah calls this fulguration (in Kandiah 1987).
Another example is the sentence:
Aiyah, lecture very cheem, what.
This sentence uses a word borrowed from Hokkien ('cheem') where it means 'deep.' In Singapore English, its use here is slightly ironic, a meaning which the Hokkien word does not have. This sentence also has other structural features not found in St. E., but not used the same way in the donor languages, either. Cheem can be inflected like other adjectives (cheemer, cheemest) and a derived noun can be made: cheemness (depth). But it cannot be used like 'deep' in English, i.e. cannot be used literally (*'this drain is very cheem.) (Kandiah gives other features of what it can be done with.) Upshot is: this 'substrate' influence has its own meanings, not to be confused or attributed to either its substrate or superstrate donors.
This phenomenon calls clearly for an evaluation of New Englishes as autonomous rule-governed systems in their own right, and an abandonment of the idea that they are collections of mistakes, failures, incomplete learning, etc. The material illustrated by the fulgurations indicate systematicity of structure and behavior, shared by the users, who have a notion of their competence in this system; agree on grammaticality and communicative competence, and so on. They do of course share features and similarities with the substrate and superstrate languages, but that does not mean they are not systems on their own.
Illustration: differences in lexicon, even though shared to some extent: the verb `bring' in SE and in Br.E: gives two sentences that show differences from BrE:
These usages are not the same. SE draws on other resources; bring contrasts with other elements, other structures.
Shared features with substrate languages: lends support to claim the NE's are not autonomous. Just transferred material from substrate. Kandiah says has to do more with culture, i.e. there are certain preferred ways and modes of making meanings, and these are what are important, not the encoding of them, or the source code.
Why so slow one? Wait, got no more, then you know!
'Why are you taking so much time? If you delay any further, nothing will be left, and then you'll find out (the consequences).'
Note how the SE sentence does not specify many things that the gloss (translation) does: there is ellipsis or deletion of many things, such as anything marking conditionality (if-clause). Are these things really deleted, or is this adequate by itself? Can deletion be an adequate explanation, given the literature on this phenomenon? Or is something else happening?
Kandiah (1996) claims it is not deletion, but a communication strategy that does not require overt specificity for all elements in the message. Users are left to supply the 'missing' parts. Reason:
True, substrate lgs. also exhibit these features; but how can this be transferred? Implies that meaning-making is a strategy that different cultures approach differently. Users of NE's call on these propensities and tendencies differentially.
Viable speech communities: emerge through normal processes, involving more than just parent-child, i.e. involves ordinary social interaction. Users get their material from various social interactions. Classroom may have a role, but only after the fact. These users are communicatively competent in the use of their varieties: share intuitions and can make complex judgements about
Users are thus communicatively competent (Hymes) in these varieties. They have acquired them through natural processes of growing up. Have sensitivity to what is a complex correlation of social variables and linguistic forms; intuitive understanding of how to use things, what it means, etc. Have a complex repertoire of styles and registers, and how to use them. They know how to use the sentence Aiyoh, lecture very cheem, what. as well as to use its "standard" version "That was a ridiculously deep lecture, right?" in appropriate ways. They also can explicitly state when and where each would be used.
This has to do with the notion that New Englishes are necessarily in contact with other languages, and that those languages have some functions in the multilingual, perhaps diglossic situation. Therefore, these NE's would necessarily have 'fewer functions' than would other Englishes. This is problematical; increasingly these NE's have expanded functions, and taken over functions from other languages. But those languages have also expanded their functional diversity, and have developed wider range of styles.
Variability in SE is associated with usual and common societal variables in speech communities: including
But a major dimension is overlooked here: issue of decreolization and post-creole continuum. Idea that the basilect (lowest proficiency level, lowest formality level) of (e.g.) SE is full of mistakes and inadequacies (Tongue 1974) is reinforced by the fact that these users are minimally educated, and control only the basilect. This is the expatriate point of view, Euro-American. We deny the primacy of this approach.
This approach not useful. Superstrate is always available to people learning English in classrooms, but they don't always use it. There are no principled ways that differentiating features can be decided on.
In fact the superstrate that supposedly dominates the upper range of SE is not the one that most users use; it shows some features 'leaked" from CSE which makes it different. These rules governing users' performance are different from the British or other BANA norms. They make choices and these choices have social and other kinds of meanings, and they are governed by social contexts.
Platt's (1975) solution is to refer to SE as as a creoloid but we reject this because it is simply a way to fudge out---recognize the older situation and keep it intact while admitting there are some differences. This makes things appear simple, which they are not.
Diglossia (Ferguson 1959) is a useful way to characterize the kinds of variability we see in New Englishes. But there are some differences from the 'classical' kind of diglossia Ferguson describes. The differentiation between high and low is somewhat different in Singapore:
These sentences are only found in L, not in H, and are most likely to be found in speech of Chinese Singaporeans. This usage is not just bad or less-proficient, it is
Other users (knowing H only) may have a passive understanding of these sentences, which non-S speakers would not have. There is a persistent class-basis for defining things, and one that tries to define only one variety of L.
Let us distinguish between non-proficient users and competent users of the colloquial. The latter have to be recognized as members of the speech community, though they don't participate as fully as others. Let us not just define the speech community by prestige and privilege, including those who speak both H and L as the most typical.
What is the meaning of `native' and what does it mean about who owns a language?
These are questions that need new answers.
New Englishes, having been developed by their users and their communities for their own needs and understandings, have self-identificational value for their users. They like and value these forms; they help them to construct and project their own sense of reality, values, concerns, and help them make their voices heard in ways that are most valid for them. They compel recognition of who and what they are. We need to recognize the hegemony of various languages and counter this with our own understandings.
last modified 4/21/99