Anthony Browne, My Dad

The next seminar of the 2012 series of Applied Linguistics seminars at Macquarie University will be held on Monday, May 21:

Semiotic plays on facial expressions

When: Mon 20/05, 4:00-5:00pm; Where: C5A 565, Delbridge Room

Presenter: Ping Tian, UNSW

Abstract: Facial expressions are a significant form of communication. They communicate many emotions including, happiness, surprise, fear, anger, contempt, disgust and sadness. Facial expressions are an active area of study in many diverse disciplines. Questions such as whether facial expressions are universal or culturally specific are debated intensively (Darwin 1872/1965, Ekman 1985, 2003, Russell 1994). Adding to these studies, from a social semiotic perspective and, in particular, drawing on Hjelmslev’s (1943/1961) theory of expression and content, this paper presents a stratified semiotic approach to the understanding of illustrated facial expressions. This approach systematically separates the investigation into two stratified planes: the expression plane and the content plane (Tian, 2011). On the expression plane, the semiotic resources involved in constructing a face i.e., dots, lines and shapes, are discussed. At this level I also investigate how these resources are combined. On the content plane, negative, neutral and positive emotions are considered. System networks, a diagrammatic map of combinatorial choices in the expression plane are introduced. This supports a framework where the expression plane is related to meanings conveyed in the content plane.

The analysis, discussions and findings presented in this paper are generated from the study of a small archive of 482 illustrations of faces (Tian, 2011). These illustrations are collected from ten children’s picture books published in between 1980 and 2000, by the well-known picture book artist Anthony Browne. The paper argues that images, in this case illustrated faces, involve distinctive semiotic resources of their own (i.e., dots, lines and shapes). Looking from the expression plane (from below), images constitute a distinctive/independent semiotic system; Looking from the content plane (from above), the meanings of these images are those constituted by languages.

References

Darwin, C. (1872/1965). The expression of the emotions in man and animals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ekman, P. (1985). Telling lies: clues to deceit in the marketplace, politics, and marriage. New York: Norton.

Ekman, P. (Ed.). (2003). Emotions inside out: 130 years after Darwin’s the expression of the emotions in man and animals. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.

Hjelmslev, L. (1943/1961). Prolegomena to a theory of language [originally titled ‘Omkring sprogteoriens grundlæaeggelse’, published Munksgaard: Copenhagen (1943); translated by Francis J. Whitfield]. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Russell, J.A. (1994). Is there universal recognition of emotion from facial expression? A review of the cross-cultural studies. Psychological Bulletin, 115 (1): 102-141.

Tian, P. (2011). Multimodal evaluation: Sense and sensibility in Anthony Browne’s picture books. PhD Thesis. Sydney: The University of Sydney.

About Ping Tian

Ping Tian recently received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Sydney. She currently works at the School of Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales. Her research areas include media and communication, intercultural communication, multimodality, social semiotic theory and its application. She also works as a freelance translator (English <> Chinese).  Her recent publications include studies on bilingual children’s picture books, facial expression and multimodality.

(a) Because I speak German.

(b) Because it’s a place name, so a translation is not going to make it any more meaningful.

(c) Because verdammt noch mal I speak German!

Issues of opportunity to practise come up a lot in a language classroom, and as an English language teacher I’ve done my fair share of encouraging learners to take every opportunity to practise their newly acquired language skills. I am guilty, however, of ignoring the politics of speaking different languages in different contexts and what using different ways of speaking means in different spaces. For a classroom of Mandarin speakers in Australia, asking them to speak English with their fellow students may in fact be asking them to ignore context-specific rules about what is appropriate language use. Different language ideologies come into play: how is each language valued in that space? What does it signify, to use English or Mandarin or another language to a fellow student?

In her article “Malays are expected to speak Malay”, Rajadurai describes a case study of a learner who went to great lengths to practise her second language, English, despite the social isolation she encountered as a direct result of what speaking English meant in many Malay-speaking contexts, where “promoting English is often regarded as a threat to the Malay identity and an erosion of Malay dominance” (Rajadurai, 2010, p. 94). Her efforts to use English were seen, not as an attempt to engage with dominant ideas about the value of English as a global language, but rather as an attempt to distance herself from her Malay identity and to criticise Malay culture as inferior.

In my case, I think that my new acquaintances were drawing on a their own ideas that speaking English was the appropriate thing to do in a space where there were non-German speakers present, while I was drawing on my identity as a second language speaker who was keen to become visible as such, not something I get to do very often in Sydney unfortunately. So while my conversation partner was no doubt responding to pressure from herself and her friends about the right thing to do, I was very disappointed that she didn’t pick up on what I actually wanted, which was to speak a bit of German! Interestingly, the one non-German speaker there was herself multilingual, so being in a multilingual environment would have been familiar. Despite the fact that everyone at the gathering was multilingual then, I felt that the language ideology which ‘ruled’ was a monolingual one, which privileged singularity over diversity. It would be interesting to explore these sorts of language contact events more thoroughly to see if my ideas about language ideologies actually hold.

Interestingly, when I complained to a friend of mine who counts German and English as part of her language repertoire she responded by assuring me that although she would make an effort to speak as much German with me as possible, it was in fact impolite to speak a language others around you do not understand.

In my Australian TESOL contexts this constitutes a powerful discourse of language control. Something I often heard in the staffroom was that it was impolite for Mandarin speakers (for example) to speak Mandarin if there were other language speakers in their group. This linguistic control is often cast as being in the best interests of the learners, rather than being about teacher exclusion from learner talk and the consequent loss of power over what is said to whom. Speaking another language in an ‘English-only’ classroom is thus constructed as being a bad student who is also a rude person. This is also an ideology learners themselves internalise, as I often found when I discussed “class rules” with learners. As language teachers and researchers, we need to be more aware of the ways in which our students really experience what we might think are ideal opportunities to practise, but which they may see and experience very differently.

Rajadurai, J. (2010). “Malays Are Expected To Speak Malay”: Community Ideologies, Language Use and the Negotiation of Identities Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 9 (2), 91-106 DOI: 10.1080/15348451003704776

(British) people ask, “Are you from Japan?,” so I say, “Yes, I am from Tokyo.” Then they really like it! They ask lots of questions… They want to know about the Japanese hair style and kimono, temples, how to use traditional wrapping cloth that we don’t even use now… They worship us. In their fantasy, they want to believe we wear kimono usually and serve tea nicely.

They seem to know Japanese culture through the media… geisha in kimono, Pokémon, advanced technologies… I came here (London) to become modern and independent, not a traditional Japanese woman. But Western men like traditional images of Japanese women, and they expect traditional Japanese women when meeting us.

The overall interest in, or fascination with, the appeal of uniquely Japanese culture in touch with tradition signifies the modern West’s desire to be cosmopolitan by intermixing with Japanese otherness in their capacity and willingness to take pleasure from the transnational cultural exchange. The representation of Japan in the Western popular imagination is paradoxical and complex; the Western fear of Japanese corporations, economic power and powerful masculine nationalism by which Japan is seen as a site of potential threat, but on the other hand, the Western attraction to an orientalist fantasy and subservient object of desire which is constructed through the West’s sexualization and feminization of Japanese culture.

If multicultural diversity is celebrated in a cosmopolitan vision of the world, Japan could stand for a distinctive, albeit ambiguous, positioning within reciprocal recognition. Cosmopolitanism, as a relational and dialogic term, operates within the contexts of encounters, favorable or unfavorable, inclusive or exclusive, thereby a cosmopolitan possibility may emerge or not. Such interplay may generate a situated, but characteristically thin cosmopolitanism; even while women denounced and repudiated Japan’s traditional masculine culture, they become more attached to the place called home with its cultural particularities yet simultaneously embracing pleasure from the interactions with the modern West, however in contradictory and implicitly forced ways with struggles in the language of paradox.

They are interested in traditional Japanese culture I don’t even know about. This is a surprising discovery. I have to learn to explain to them.

In Japan, I was not Japanese. I was liberal, against old traditions. I preferred the Western world and imagined changing my self through the media… I just imagine through the media but cannot act. I am becoming more Japanese while living abroad… There is no reason to change or become like them. Being distinctively Japanese is an advantage.

The Western worship of traditional Japanese otherness, often seen as accidental knowledge to many women on the move, can impact upon and interplay with how women come to redefine a new subject position. The fluidity of conceptions of identity and change were once powerfully imagined through the Western media and occidental longings in their homeland, while mobilizing the scope to act beyond localized contexts. However, the actual interactions, discursive and communicative encounters with the West re-contextualize such imagined cosmopolitan identification and precariously expose, or impose to some extent, a fixed categorical distinction of Japaneseness.

Why be a woman of the world? The motivational reasons, which would allow for the possibility of cosmopolitan subjectivity and the determination to act on it, depend on what distinction and what gain is to be made, to what end. Far from a robust cosmopolitan projection, a self-determined reaction to how best to act from the learning of cosmopolitan knowledge rather foregrounds a national self in the distinctiveness of cultural difference, representing Japaneseness even more strongly than before (“becoming more Japanese”) in the relational experience of the transnational field.

ABC Radio in Sydney

Ingrid Piller and Kimie Takahashi are talking about the making of Japanese on the Move on ABC Radio National Lingua Franca. Tune in at 3:45pm on Saturday, May 05 or for the repeat on Wednesday, May 09 at 9:45pm. Alternatively, you can listen any time on ABC Radio National Lingua Franca.

Ingrid and Kimie speak about their 12-year academic collaboration in the sociolinguistics of language learning, bilingualism and intercultural communication, particularly as they are relevant in the contexts of migration to Australia and the global spread of English. They explain how Japanese on the Move grew out of this research and aims to showcase the experiences of transnational people with connections to Australia and Japan because the contributions of such people to both their countries of origin and their countries of residence are often overlooked.

A key achievement of Japanese on the Move is the way it pushes at narrow conceptions that closely link language and ethnicity as we feature many participants making ‘non-obvious’ language choices.

Japanese on the Move also makes a contribution to questioning the belief that successful settlement in Australia is tied to English as we feature successful business people with little English and who speak about state English proficiency requirements as barriers rather than supports to their businesses.

Japanese on the Move also shows that even the idea that the world of work is English-speaking in Australia is not always true.

Japanese on the Move is also concerned with language choice in the family and the joys and challenges of raising children as transnational parents.

Finally, Japanese on the Move shows how history complicates a personal sense of belonging as we feature different generations of Japanese migrants to Australia who arrived into “different Australias” at different times.

We also speak about the medium of Japanese on the Move as a unique way of conducting and disseminating academic research and making a contribution to re-imagining Australia. Being multilingual, being cosmopolitan or being Asian are often seen as somehow ‘un-Australian’ but Japanese on the Move features a uniquely Australian group of people who contribute immensely to the community as business owners, employees, artists, parents or volunteers.

The proudest contribution of Japanese on the Move is thus the way the portraits featured there challenge us to re-imagine what it means to be Australian in the 21^st century.

Yesterday, on an elementary school yard, that changed.

My daughters, 7 and 5 years old, were rushing around the playground speaking, and yelling, German to one another — as they do pretty much 100 percent of the time — and I was shouting something to them in German as well when a young boy, about eight years old, on a swing nearby said:

“What did you say?! Why are you speaking Spanish to your kids!?”

Confusing Spanish with German
This isn’t the first time that a child had asked me why I, or my daughters, are speaking Spanish, when, of course, we’re speaking German, though, amazingly, I’ve never had an adult ask me this.

I politely explained we were speaking German, not Spanish.

Pretty soon, the little boy and my two girls were playing with each other. The three of them were, of course, speaking English to one another, as my daughters are bilingual in English and German. And they were definitely having fun together. However, each time my daughters shouted something to me in German and I shouted back to them in German – on a playground you often have to shout just to be heard  ;-) – the little boy asked, “What did you say?” I, or one of my daughters, translated for him every time he asked, and he responded each time with an, “Oh, okay.”

‘No one can understand you’
After about 20 minutes of the three of them playing together, the boy, who’d returned to the swing where we first encountered him, asked me, “Why are you speaking German to your kids when no one can understand it?” I admit that I could feel my blood pressure rise just a bit. This question was a bit confrontational, though I understood that an eight-year-old wouldn’t have intended it this way.

I took a deep breath, and said: “Because we’re raising our daughters to be bilingual. I believe it’s better to be able to speak two languages than just one. I think it’s always better to be able to do more things than fewer things.”

The boy didn’t respond, just kept swinging on his swing.

English only in our house
About a minute passed. Then, the young boy, who was Caucasian and who was now sitting motionless on his swing, said, “My mom told me if I learn Spanish or German at school I’m not going to live with her anymore. She said, ‘We speak English in our house!’ ”

In fact, the boy’s mother wasn’t there – he was being watched by some after-school teachers. And, given what the boy had just told me, I was glad his mother wasn’t there.

A lot of thoughts were coursing through my head at this point. I thought about Bourdieu’s notion of distinction and the ways in which it captures some, though not all, of the social interplay that was going on here – I’ll admit to working hard to separate myself and my daughters from monolingual Americans and monolingual ideology.

I also thought about how all of us, even self-identified anti-elitists who would accuse me of thinking I’m better than others because I’m multilingual are inevitably caught up in a hierarchical notion of ‘better’. After all, the self-identified anti-elitists themselves believe it’s better to be part of the (monolingual) mainstream.

German only, 100 percent of time
I thought, too, about the social questions and tensions raised by me speaking German only to my daughters 100 percent of the time – I really do speak only German to them all of the time, no matter what the situation, though I, and they, will often translate for friends, family, or, in this case, even strangers.

Finally, I thought about how grateful I was that my daughters are enrolled in a language immersion school where they don’t have to face the anti-multilingual criticism this boy, clearly influenced by his parents, and other kids would surely be directing at them every single day.

In fact, I’m 100 percent sure my daughters would not be speaking German to each other still if they were enrolled in a traditional, public monolingual English school, which I view as the most crucial social entity in the annihilation of lived, everyday multilingualism of the sort that we’ve managed to practice for the past seven years.

But the role of monolingual public education in the elimination of linguistic diversity in the United States is grist for a future blog entry