Language Values

There’s this phenomena becoming very popular around the world that I find very concerning. It is the assimilation of other languages and cultures into that of [American] English. It is very sad to me that in order for my thoughts to reach more people, I “need” to write in English. Indeed, the other two languages I’m fluent in are very powerful in my mind, but when it comes right down to the knitty gritty, it is English that “saves the day.” So why should I be concerned, after all, using English to write/speak/etc. simply allows me to express myself to more people and is essentially a more utilitarian path to take, right?

Wrong. (My opinion).It concerns me because I am an English teacher here in Japan. Please do not get me wrong, I love my job, I love my students, schools, and teachers, but I find I have to catch myself sometimes and be sure that my own unique individual cultural/linguistic identity does not get pushed aside because of the “convenience” of a certain type of English.

Here’s another thing coupled with that that bothers me. There is this assumption in many countries (at least the ones I’ve lived in) that English itself is the language to know, because English is what gets you places. On a historical note, this is interesting, because at one time, it was French that “got you places” and earlier it was Latin [no longer in wide use]. So now, English is very much in the mode. So what, why fuss?

I fuss because this ideal to strive to achieve this perfect English proficiency (which by the way is an elusive myth at best) comes at a linguistic and cultural cost to those individuals attempting to achieve this fluency. Indeed, many of those individuals may think my argument is strange, a bit colonial in a sense in that I write in English to show how English should not be valued more than any other. It’s a paradox I must cope with, it’s one I have to challenge, and until my professional linguistic skills in Spanish and Japanese get better (I’m working on it), I am relegated to English.

This concerns me. When I first lived in Japan, there were words that had been introduced via English. But being in Japan this time around, I find that there are now many more words that have been adopted via English and are used in Japanese. Words that back when I was here the first time had Japanese names/words/kanji, but are now common words in Katakana (the alphabet used for foreign words) English.

So here in lies a question of values. English’s popularity has picked up not only in Japan, but in other parts of the world, especially with the younger [but not exclusively] generations. Technology has forever changed the ways in which we communicate, for better or worse. But I worry [and get pissed off sometimes] because English itself as an entity almost, thrives as this valued language that so many more people will overvalue and strive to be proficient in for many different reasons.

What bothers me isn’t the English learning itself per se. In fact, I think my job is very worthwhile as I get to expose and introduce to young learners the idea that there are other languages [in this case outside of Japanese] that are used by people just like them. However, I do at times feel this comes at a cost. See, many folks here know I speak Spanish, and many folks here know I also speak English. So the first thing many do when they want to practice another language with me is speak in English. Fine, I am an English teacher after all.

But the problem is that English is so valued that I get put into the American box. Sure, I’m not white skinned, I don’t have green eyes, and I have long dark curly hair, so I do help to break that physical stereotype. But the language stereotype tends to be a ton more subtle, much more taken for granted, and much more overlooked. This is what concerns me. Which is why I got so excited when one of my schools asked me to make Mexican food, and teach them a bit of Spanish. I don’t like being pinned as only “American,” because with this comes a whole range of ideologies and expectations that I don’t buy into because they just were not a part of my upbringing and though I can appreciate them for being the realities of other people, they were never entirely mine.

I don’t ride horses because I’m from Texas, I don’t eat steak, I don’t really know any “real” cowboys, and I was born in a part of Texas with its own unique heavily Northern Mexican influenced culture and a cuisine to match. And this is what I wish folks would understand. I don’t blame them, especially folks who may have known only one culture and only one language growing up. See, here’s where I wish language education would go: I wish it would focus less on what we want to try and make us feel comfortable, and focused more on developing our innate and instinctive communication skills. We should learn many languages at once, and take a less bureaucratic, less highly organized, and less systematic approach.

I wish language pedagogy was more multicultural. It is very possible to be multilingual without being multicultural. I wish more students could have the awesome opportunities I had, not the exact same ones of course, but their own set of challenges that challenged their realities and socially constructed beliefs. For me, it was easier having to navigate in a culture “different” from the one I grew up with [like in Japan] because I grew up in two cultures. While my Mexican side told me to speak Spanish, focus on community, and all that jazz, my American side told me to learn English well, to study hard [in English] and to do what I could to accomplish my individual success. these two mixed, had their conflicts, and essentially helped mold my ideologies and values.

Argue what you will, but folks who experience different cultures and languages at an early age tend to do a whole of a lot better when it comes to communication and getting their point across while keeping society in mind. Slightly egocentric? You bet your ass it is. I’m not saying we should get rid of English education, but what I am saying is that this irrational struggle that “we MUST learn English” in order to succeed is just not warranted. In fact, I think that by having the world cater to American English and value it so much, we are doing a disservice to our own wonderful diversity. We are devaluing our own unique ways of life, saying that they are okay, but lifestyles that include more English are better. Essentially, I don’t believe any language is more important or useful than any other.

There are many things that I do, that I believe, that I speak, that I write, that I think, that I dream, etc. that are not in English. My life is a mish mash of multiple languages all at once, and unfortunately for my other languages, I’ve been socialized into valuing English over my other proficiencies. But I am in the process of deconstructing these ideologies and reconstructing the multilingual existence I envision for myself, and it is going well.

So my final questions/thoughts are that if English is so great, how come I’m still at a loss for words when expressing certain things. How come it is easier for me to think in Spanish, and to speak in Japanese, and then to write in English. If English were so great, well, wouldn’t I be able to express myself in English all the time? And then I remember that I learned the lesson of language at a very young age. Language is contextual, it is filled with emotions, but it is also very limited. With the rush to learn English, we lose our focus on the fact that the world exists, has existed, has succeeded in existing, and continues to exist in many places, without the use of English. My concern with any language education is that when we try to create this so called “level playing field” to create “equal opportunities” for the most amount of people, what we’re really saying is that the level playing field comes to those who are the best at assimilating into the dominant culture (English in modern society), and that equal opportunities are equal only amongst those who speak a certain proficiency of English. So rather than push our citizens to learn other languages and give them the opportunities to actually experience another language and culture [read way of life] for themselves, we first strain it through the lens of English ideologies, package it neatly into English proficiency tests (language is never neat by the way), and then present this to the general public as the solution to the “diversity problem” that so “plagues” our world. And just like inbreeding, we become more homogenous, much less receptive to different realities, and much less able to understand that entire, completely functional, worlds exist outside of English.