English and ASEAN

Ever since I arrived in Bangkok in 2011, I’ve being witnessing the amazing spread of English fever. At the national level, Thailand is wholeheartedly invested in the promise of English – the idea that proficiency in English will make ‘it’ happen for them, be it more economic development, more participation in global spheres or more 21^st century cosmopolitan look to the international community. “Learn/teach English, better and faster!” is very much the message at the education level where we are seeing the rising number of English-medium programs in secondary and higher education, the constant come-and-go of fly-in/fly-out ‘language experts’ in Bangkok, and mushrooming private English language schools throughout the country. Similar to those in many other non-English speaking Asian nations, everybody I know wants to learn English to get a good job, and most academics I meet speak of English as the key to Thailand’s brighter economic future.

The discourse of English for employment and for national competitiveness was also on everyone’s lips at this year’s Thai TESOL Conference (27 -28 Jan, 2012). One of the first panels on Day 1, “Thailand English language readiness and action plans for ASEAN 2015”, argued that English is imperative towards the launch of the Asean Community in 2015. In less than three years from now, they pointed out, the ten Asean nations will open their national borders, and Thai nationals will have to compete against English-speaking professionals and skilled workers from the other member states in local employment sectors. The panel warned that Thai people’s English is not good enough and that lack of English will leave the nation out in the cold, a sentiment that is widely circulating in media. Having attended this panel and other papers, I came out of the conference with a sense of renewed interest in the issue as well as a great sense of puzzlement.

First of all, although everyone seems to recite “Thai people’s English is not good enough”, the discussion stops short of explaining what not good enough means and for what. Most academics I speak to suggest that the notion of ‘native-speaker’ is dead in that non-native speakers should be proud of their ‘non-standard variety of English’ (whatever that maybe). However, papers at the conference and discussions I’ve had in Bangkok to date seem to suggest otherwise; these are all about how a Thai accent has to be eliminated or how Thai grammar interferes with standard English grammar, or that Thai people should stop being shy, etc. All of these discourses are evidence for the fact that the native speaker/Western ideal is well and truly alive. This schizophrenic-like approach to assessment of what’s good English is the hidden mechanism that keeps Thai non-native speakers of English forever insecure about their English, and that keeps Western native speaker teachers popular in the job market.

Another sense of puzzlement comes from a near-absence of research reports on actual language needs in Thailand’s employment sectors. This strikes me as odd, particularly since the current push for English has a strong employment basis as discussed above. At the conference, little information was offered as to what level of proficiency in what languages are needed or valued for what kinds of positions in what industry. The lack of such research, and the single-minded focus on English, also seem to blind us from multilingual resources that already exist and have worked well in industries such as tourism, and that could be expanded to strengthen Thailand’s competitiveness.

Phanisara (Nina) Logsdon on the panel above rightly called for a sustainable approach to improving language policy and education in Thailand towards 2015. Collaborative research between researchers and local industry partners, with an aim to producing an in-depth understanding of linguistic resources and changing linguistic needs in local employment sectors, may just contribute towards building part of a sustainable approach. In Asia as a whole, it’s been a popular practice to bring in Western ‘language experts’ to a country for a week or so, but such an approach has proven to be of limited benefits. A sustainable approach to researching language resources and needs entails inviting experts with a proven record of industry-based research, to work with us for capacity building on a long-term basis.

Without empirically-based research and long-term research collaborations between local and international researchers from relevant fields and industrial partners, Thailand’s debate on language policy and programs, including Thailand’s Year 2012 English Speaking Program (for which Tony Blair is a fly-in/fly-out English teacher), will remain uninformed and even continue to work as an unproductive threat to society.

Since the very beginning, I’ve been very strict in terms of our one parent, one language policy. I haven’t ever spoken English with my children, one of whom is 7, and the other of whom is 5. Our daughters also watch only German-language DVDs and German-language TV – which we stream over the Internet (I’m so grateful for the Internet, something which essentially wasn’t there just one generation ago).

I stick to speaking German with my daughters one-hundred percent of the time, in every context, whether it is at the dinner table, where they are speaking English to my wife, the playground, where they’re speaking English to playmates (we often translate from German into English for my wife and others), or, at the grocery store where I am going shopping with them.

Language immersion
We’re also sending our daughters to the Colorado International School, a private language immersion school in Denver, Colorado – and this is costing us quite a bit of money. Some people also see this as “extreme”.

In fact, what’s truly extreme is American society’s single-minded determination to create – one might more accurately say impose — a monolingual society.

Indeed, it is American society’s extreme commitment to monolingualism – a commitment unfortunately shared by most “modern” nation states — that has forced me to be so “extreme” in our quest to raise our daughters as actually practicing multilinguals.

Nowhere is America’s extreme dedication to monolingual living more apparent, or more problematic, than in the public education system. There, you will encounter virtually no language teaching and learning until children are 12 years old. And then, “foreign” languages will typically only be offered as a subject, not as a medium of instruction.

Assimilation to monolingual ideal
Indeed, the goal of the American public education system appears to be decidedly anti-multilingual, with the focus almost exclusively on assimilating multilingual individuals to the monolingual model.

With some exceptions – according to the Center for Applied Linguistics, a little over 400 out of thousands of public schools in the U.S. offer either partial, full or dual-language immersion – in the American public education system, you’ll encounter no languages other than English being taught as a subject, much less being used as a medium to teach America’s children.

Instead, you’ll find monolingualism – to the extreme. Sadly, this monolingual practice – and the expectation that it is the way to do things — gets carried into most other social domains in the U.S.

No other languages other than English are regularly used in power domains such as politics, business, technology and, of course, higher education. In fact, I do not know of a single college or university in the U.S. that offers multiple university level courses in subjects such as history, geology, biology, journalism, etc. through a linguistic medium other than English, much less an opportunity to acquire a four-year degree by taking such courses.

So, who, or what, is it, exactly, that’s “extreme” – me and the approach I’m taking in order to raise our daughters as meaningful German-English bilinguals (it truly has been a struggle, though, happily a successful one so far)  – or America’s dogged determination to ensure that monolingual practice dominates in virtually all facets and domains of society?

Now, that we are ready to return to Australia and have to think of souvenirs for school and club mates back home, we’ve been looking at pens and pencils as convenient bulk souvenirs again. Here in Dubai, there are plenty of pens that say “I love Dubai,” are adorned with little models of camels, or sport pictures of Dubai’s two landmark buildings, the Burj Khalifa and the Burj Al Arab. That’s only pencils, of course, and I won’t even mention some of the completely whacky souvenirs for sale, including a salt and pepper shaker in the form of an Arab man dressed in a white dishdash (salt) and an Arab woman dressed in a black abaya (pepper). All these souvenirs are made in China, too, (maybe even in the same factory as the koala and kangaroo souvenirs?) but, again, the models and images of camels, traditional local dress, or landmark buildings are supposed to be code for ‘authentic Dubai.’

So, do you want to know what my daughter chose as Dubai souvenirs for her mates? None of the above. We ended up in a Daiso store in one of Dubai’s mall. Daiso is a Japanese chain that sells Japanese knickknack and displays huge signs “Everything in store imported from Japan.” Japanese stuff is hugely popular with children and young adults globally and my daughter felt that an ‘authentic Japanese’ souvenir would be more popular with her Australian friends than something Dubai-ish. Do I need to mention that, despite being ‘imported from Japan’ most of the goods in the store, and certainly the ones we ended up buying are also ‘made in China’?

To sum up this madness: I’ve spent money on objects made in China in Australia and Dubai. Then, I schlepped the objects bought in Australia to Germany, Iran and the UAE and the objects bought in Dubai to Australia. Why? As an expression of affection and a way to establish symbolic connections between my child and other children in diverse locations and as a reminder of various places to which we have been (Australia) or that are widely thought of as cool (Japan).

The brisk business in souvenir shops seems to suggest that I’m far from being alone in engaging in such irrational practices. Indeed, “objects and language in trans-contextual communication” make up a fascinating area of enquiry and will be the focus of an upcoming special issue of the journal Social Semiotics. Check out the call for papers here. The deadline for abstracts is March 02, 2012.

It is our new year’s resolution here at Language-on-the-Move to continue to bring you the very best research-blogging in the sociolinguistics of multilingualism, language learning and intercultural communication.

Readers can also look forward to the expansion of our video exhibition of transnational life stories at Japanese-on-the-Move.

In fact, I’ve reflected on how this experience might be different in a personal language journal I started writing when my oldest daughter was four and which has now reached nearly 200 single-spaced pages in length.

Reading through Ingrid Piller’s book, Bilingual couples talk: The discursive construction of hybridity, today inspired me to write about my thoughts on how various combinations of bilingualism and racial and class identities are received in the U.S.

In the book, Piller notes that some of the English-German bilingual couples whose experiences she discusses and analyzes, explicitly address the comparative privilege they have as whites speaking German to their children in public in the U.S., as opposed to the indirect and, sadly, often direct mistreatment of those who speak Spanish to their children in public.

German is ‘wonderful’
In seven years of speaking German to my daughters, well, five years to the youngest one , I have never had an experience in which someone has admonished me for not speaking English to my kids in public. Indeed, the direct responses I have received have always been positive, a ‘Is that German you’re speaking to your kids? That’s wonderful, great, etc.’.

This positive feedback is often followed by an expression of regret: ‘I wish my parents, grandparents, had spoken German to me’. (In fact, I, myself, was raised monolingual in English, though my father is a first-generation German immigrant).

We do get some surprised looks when I speak German to my daughters in public, typically from children.

I don’t know exactly why this is, but I’m guessing this reaction – similar to the positive reaction I’ve gotten from adults — has quite a bit to do with the fact that I’m a middle class white male and both of my daughters are white.

Young children – in particular white children – appear to expect a white father to speak English to his kids. When they hear him speaking another language, they’re surprised in part because they expect this language scenario mostly, possibly even only, from parents and children who are not white.

German-English vs. Spanish-English bilinguals
Interestingly, many children who take the time to move beyond a surprised look to interrogation then assume I’m speaking Spanish to my daughters. I wonder what difference it would make to them if indeed it was Spanish rather than German — and what difference it would make to the adults who praise our German-English bilingualism.

In fact, I’m pretty certain I know the answer in the case of many of the adults – they wouldn’t be praising us, though I will say that I bet they would be thrown off by seeing a very Anglo-Saxon looking male speaking fluent Spanish to two also very Anglo-Saxon looking daughters. This, because the anti-Spanish sentiment that runs so deep in the U.S. is very clearly wrapped up in racism.

Defying stereotypes
I enjoy these moments in which we defy stereotypes and, through our public practice, show the world that multilingualism has many faces.

Paradoxically, I’m also troubled by these moments as well. This is because I know that at the same time we’re undercutting monolingual ideology via our very public multilingual practice, we’re contributing – via dominant social readings being projected onto us — to deeply embedded and even racist beliefs that hold that certain forms of multilingualism are “better” than others, namely, those in which white, Anglo-Saxon looking parents speak a non-threatening language such as German (or French, or Swedish, or Dutch – take your pick of any Northern European language) to their children, as opposed to those in which non-white parents speak a ‘threatening’ language (Spanish in particular) to their children.

It would be interesting to see what sort of reaction a parent who doesn’t fit the standard Anglo-American racial profile speaking German to his or her children might get from some of the same adults who praise German-English bilingualism vis-à-vis a white family such as ours.

At the very least, I’m betting this would throw a lot of people off. In fact, these moments — in which dominant ideology and stereotype are challenged and unsettled by direct observation and experience — are precisely what the U.S., and the world, needs more of.