Reflection 3 : More important than norms

            Tupas’s article catapulted the privileged (or cursed?) role of the English teacher in making proactive decisions in choosing pedagogical norms to be taught in class. What I like most about the article is its sea-changing stance on teaching norms. Tupas argued for situating the debate on norms in the complexities of the classroom and in the needs of the local communities in general. I must say that I agree with the Filipino teachers’ stance on choosing and teaching the “right” norms in their class.

            First, I agree that they still choose to teach the American English norms to “recognize the economic imperative of teaching and learning SE [Standard English]” (p. 570). For me, the norm that will help bring food to the Filipino table will be the norm or one of the norms to be taught in my classroom. People need food to live; other concerns are secondary. If Standard American English is what companies and employers in the Philippines and in the world want, then, I think it must be taught to my students. Anyway, I will let them be aware of the presence of Philippine English. I will also let them use it in the class as long as they know the consequences. I will tell my students that I am teaching them SE because there are just things that are beyond our control right now such as the “whims” or requirements of the companies (although I personally think that research is needed to investigate what are the consequences in the workplace for teaching both PE and SE and whether English norms really have significant impact on the job application and employment of my students). Teaching SE is not passivity; it’s being realistic.

            Second, beyond the economic necessities, I really like the stance of Filipino teachers saying that they can teach localized content to teach SE. I agree that the cultural content of the English class is more important than norms. When I taught ESL writing for one semester, the talk of norms was not really central in my class (although of course, I do think now that it is important). But what mattered more for me are the essays that we read about being a good Filipino citizen, being a good student, and being a good person in general. These are the content that we talked about as we tried to discuss the composition and organization of our sample essays. My students also wrote about self-awareness, specifically their own history, their own personal stories, and their future personal goals. In other words, the content of the lesson is more important than being stuck with what norms to teach. The personal, communal, and nationalistic values that they developed in my English class were the things that mattered the most.

            At the end of the day, my students will be “judged” not so much on how well they used English norms in whatever variety. They will be appraised on how well they used their communication skills to further the good of their community, the good of their country, and the good of humanity. Amen.

Reflection 2 : History, Politics, My ELT Classroom

Since I read articles written by Canagarajah and Pennycook on ELT as a political enterprise and on the need to be critical in the profession, I cannot not look at any ELT textbook the same way again. Everytime, I skim pages of textbooks and reference materials I come across with, I cannot help analyzing at the back of my mind the various ideologies and discourses embedded in them and whose interests were forwarded by the said ELT materials. This is really disturbing! But at least, I am conscious of these things happening.

Ang hirap pa lang ma-colonized. It is really unfortunate to be colonized. This is what I realized after reading Canagarajah and Pennycook for week 2. First, a colonized country would have to be denied of its natural resources. Second and more importantly, the colonized people would have to be denied of its identity, its own history, and its consciousness as a nation. Colonized countries such as the Philippines were conditioned to think that their colonizers are better, the ideal. Little wonder, a lot of Filipinos dream of a White Christmas, or fairer white skin, all for the sake of mimicking the West’s lifestyle. At this point I recall, Ambeth Ocampo’s lecture at the Ateneo saying that history is political. History as stories always carries with it some hidden agenda of its storytellers. For example, I learned from that talk that the notion that it was the Spanish who brought civilization to the Philippines was false. The notion was just part of Spain’s colonial project to make the Filipinos believe that they need Spain to be “civilized”. The country had already its own functional civilization even before the Spanish came.      

In ELT, this translates to the colonized being led to believe that their local language and their local knowledge are irrelevant. Pennycook and Makoni even applied this to language studies and claimed the concept of language is actually invented by the colonizing West, a process charged with political and ideological agenda. I find it fascinating that terms like mother tongue education, multilingualism, codeswitching and many more are terms which are not neutral and random terms but they were actively constructed and invented by the colonizers to pursue some agenda. 

    

            Given this, Canagarajah urges fellow scholars to be engaged with what he calls deconstructive and reconstructive project. This deconstruction entails showing the biased nature of dominant discourses toward western communities while investigating the validity of dominant discourses in its context of origin. On the other hand, reconstruction means considering how local knowledge is relevant for the contemporary needs of the local community and of the changing social and geopolitical domains. For me, this means that there is still value in consuming materials and scholarly works produced by the West. However, these materials and concepts should be utilized with critical and questioning attitude. For instance, I will still use the references and books on curriculum development that I have collected (eventhough they are published by Cambridge or Oxford), maybe the key is just to modify the concepts presented to suit the local needs of my teaching context.

  

            This also has implications for my research. Because some of these constructs are conceptualized by the West, I think I should be careful with using them in my theoretical framework. Because constructs in the conceptual framework are bodies of assumptions about a (linguistic or cultural) phenomenon, I should critically reflect whether the constructs that I am using are the “appropriate” ones, that is, whether the constructs could capture the phenomenon that I am observing and investigating. “Inappropriate constructs” might not allow me to see what I should see in my research context.

Honestly, I do not know what to do when I teach again. Teaching English has become complex after my academic course work in my Master’s. I just trust that if will be critical and reflective of my classroom and instructional decisions, I think I will be on the right track.  

HW 2: Localizing KFC

This essay is an analysis of a public sign/logo of a private business establishment. The essay has three objectives: 1) describe briefly the profile of the business establishment; 2) describe its sign/logo; and 3) show how the sign reflects local realities. Ultimately, I argue that even as the local business establishment uses the ‘global’ to its advantage, it still is able to assert its local identity by using the language of the local community in its sign.

The data are composed of the sign itself, interviews with the two service crew members of the establishment (on behalf of the unavailable owner) and interviews with seven random customers (male and female, ranging from 18 to 45 years old).

Business first . . .

            The Kanto Fried Chicken (hereafter KFC) is estimated to belong under Small & Medium Enterprise (SME). It sells fried chicken in different cuts (whole, drumstick, thigh, chicken skin) for a range of prices. Within just a year, it already has 15 branches scattered in 13 barangays and 2 villages. The specific branch discussed here is on Chorillo St., Barangay Barangka, Marikina City near my boarding house.  

            Barangka is a local community where one middle-class subdivision lies beside households of working class people. KFC is situated at the street corner leading to the entrance of Barangka. A tricycle terminal is just opposite KFC where tricycle drivers wait for passengers. The street corner lies along Marcos National Highway where traffic is very busy for the whole day as jeepneys and buses unload and load passengers mostly, local employees and students. Across from the street corner is a shopping mall where people can buy groceries and enjoy meals from most of the country’s most popular fastfood chain which of course serve fried chicken. This location seems strategic for KFC because it is near to the passengers’ terminal where it is easy for tricycle drivers and passengers to drop by and buy their viand for supper. It is also nearer and cheaper compared to the fatsfood chain in the nearby mall.

I saw the sign. . . 

            The sign may be described in terms of its semiotic resources, its purposes, and its target audience. The following description will be used in the analysis later on.

The semiotic resources utilized by the sign are languages and pictures. The English language and the Filipino language are both used in the sign. The words “The Original” and “Fried Chicken” are in English while Kanto (which means street corner) is originally a Spanish word (Spanish being the language of the Philippines’ colonizers) but was eventually accepted as an everyday Filipino word. On the left side of the sign is a round logo. In the logo are a drawing of a face of a man surrounded by the words “Arnoco’s Pritos”; the first word is the family name of the owner while the second is the Filipino word for fried. The crew identifies the face as a caricature of Mr. Arnoco.

            The sign has two purposes. The first is to bear the identity of the establishment. Any business establishment is incomplete unless it has a name. Usually, its name is bannered on a public sign, a logo. This sign becomes the identity of the establishment before the public eye as it will be the first thing to be noticed by the public and the name that people associate the business with as a whole. It may be a reflection of the business’s values and products/services. The second purpose is to call attention. The mere presence of a sign already means that something should be noticed. Thus, it becomes an important stimulus for the people to notice the establishment and what it offers.

            The target audience is the customers, especially the potential customers. Specifically, it

targets the local community which is , as discussed earlier, composed of mixture of households from the low-and middle-class families. That KFC targets this market is suggested in their price list and its list of products. Its products are food items which are commonplace in Filipino local communities and streets but are seldom found in high-end malls such as fried chicken skin and neck coated with breading mix. These items also cost a lot cheaper (Php 10.00 – Php 150.00)  than what is offered in fastfood chains. The crew also confirms that their customers range from bystanders to professionals who drive cars.

The wise ‘local’

            The terms ‘local’ and ‘global’ are not be used entirely in Canagarajah’s sensibility (2005) since these pre-existing constructs do not account for the ‘local’ and ‘global’ in economic business terms. For my purposes, the ‘local’ will be operationally defined as business establishments operating only in the local community while the ‘global’ refers to foreign business establishments which operate in different countries and have attained international prestige such as Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and McDonald’s; however, I am aware that specific nuances need to be done with these operational definitions which space does not allow. Here, I argue that the global business establishment’s identity is used by a local business establishment to its advantage yet the local still asserts its identity through local language use. The notion of visual grammar in the spatial organization of texts will be used in the analysis (Kress & van Leeuwen as cited in Taylor-Leech, 2011).  

             The local uses the global’s identity to the former’s own advantage. In this context, this means that the given local establishment purposefully uses the prestige of KFC (the global/ international one) to gain attention. The sign itself commands the reading public to associate it with KFC. The three capital letters K F C are placed in the center of the sign, in bold and the biggest characters. Given their placement, order, and size in the sign, these three letters may be the ‘new or more important information’ (Kress and van Leeuwen as cited in Taylor-Leech, 2011: 16). Also, on the left side of the sign is a male figure which was identified by the crew as their “kuya”, the owner Mr. Arnoco. This figure in the sign is an imitation of the KFC logo in two levels: a) putting Mr. Arnoco’s figure is similar with putting KFC founder Colonel Harland Sanders’ figure on KFC logo and; b) the placement of both figures are on the left side. Overall, what these suggest is that the given sign is constructed purposefully so people readily associate it with the prestigious KFC and get enticed to buy its products.

            This notion is called “Perceived Brand Foreignness”, a marketing communication strategy “which involves a set of functional and imagery associations with non-local appeals [foreign culture appeals] of the product” employed by the local brands (Keller, Maheswaran, Papadopoulos as cited in Zhou et al., 2009: 3). It is believed that it adds “to brand value as perceived by consumers” (Shocker at al.; Pappu et al. in Zhou et al., 2009: 3) and is more pervasive in developing countries (Batra et al. in Zhou, 2009). Again in this context through the local business establishment’s name written on the public sign, it aims to increase the brand value of their local fried chicken by making people associate their product with the global prestige of KFC.  

Although the argument above is not supported by the owner’s views due to his absence at the time of my visit, the customers implicitly got the same impression as I did. Furthermore, they also find it effective. One said that “Noong una kung nakita ‘yun, KFC na agad ang naisip ko.(The first time I saw it, I immediately thought of KFC).” The same respondent said that “Madali siyang mapansin dahil sa three letters na KFC (It is easily noticeable because of the three letters, KFC.)”. Another respondent said that the sign is “cute dahil ginagaya nila ang KFC na ‘branded’, kilala. Eh, ito pang-street lang, gilid-gilid lang” (cute because they imitate KFC which is ‘branded’ and known while this business establishment is only for the streets).  

            Even as the local business establishment uses KFC’s prestigious global identity, it still is able to assert its own local identity: by using the word “kanto”. As explained earlier, public signs/logos are business establishments’ identities. In this case while the establishment tries to associate itself with the elite KFC, it also projects a local image by using the local language. Why is “kanto” a reflection of the local?

            Kanto (street corner), as a word and concept, has a special place in the Filipino culture and vocabulary. It can be a place where waiting sheds are built for students and bystanders and  small-scale eating and shopping business establishments are situated as a convenient venue for family members to spend quality time together and for employees to relax after a hard day’s work. No wonder, kanto is also an effective reference point for people to use if someone is asking for directions. One would just say “Diyan lang sa kanto” (Go to that street corner) to point a person to an unfamiliar location near the street corner.

Apart from the fact that it is ingrained into the Filipinos’ daily vocabulary and way of life, the word has also been used to index something as local. Examples are the phrases, “salitang kanto” (street language), “kwentong kanto” (street stories), and “kainan sa kanto” (small-scale restaurant at the street corner). Using “kanto” in the sign of KFC suggests that the language and language practices of the local community index the business establishment as ‘local’, that is, the sign tells the local people that it is for the masses even as it says that it offers world-class fried chicken.  

Localizing the global for the local

            Fried chicken, as a food product, is one of the best-sellers of global/international fast food chain in the Philippines, especially for KFC. It is more of a “status symbol” for families whose income allows them to avail of this food item. What Kanto Fried Chicken (KFC) does is that it somehow ‘closes the gap’ between fried chicken as a status symbol and the working class in the local community. This is done by making the food item more accessible by offering it for cheap and affordable prices in a place near their doorstep. It is sending a message to the local community that, given their meager income, fried chicken is within their reach. And central to the sending of this message is the role of language, the function of kanto in the sign. The word Kanto draws the local people in and tells them that there is fried chicken made and seasoned especially for them.

This signal seems to reach the local people as articulated by one of the customers. Marites (not her real name) clutches her freshly-bought fried chicken with her left hand and holds her little boy with her right hand, along with her old mother who is carrying Marites’s young girl. As we were walking away from the store, she cheerfully shared, “Kung may KFC sa mall, meron ding KFC na pang urban. Urban ba ‘yun? ‘Yung tipong squatter. Same fried chicken lang naman pero mas class nga lang ‘yung isa.” (If there is KFC inside the malls, there is also KFC here in the urban. Is ‘urban’ the right term? That type in squatter areas. All those fried chicken are the same anyway although the ones in KFC [the international] are of class.)

            Here, she may not have the appropriate terms to express her idea but it is clear that Kanto Fried Chicken (KFC) means something deeper to the local community, more than a business establishment beside their street corner.   

References

Canagarajah, S. (2005). Reconstructing local knowledge, reconfiguring language studies. In S. Canagarajah (Ed.), Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice (pp. 3-24). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Taylor-Leech, K.J. (2012). Language choice as an index of identity: linguistic landscape in Dili, Timor-Leste. International Journal of Multilingualism 9 (1): 15 – 34.

Zhou, Lianxi. (2009). Non-local or local brands? A multi-level investigation into confidence in brand origin identification and its strategic implications. Journal of Academic Marketing Science 38: 202-218.

HW 1 An Essay Gone Astray: Revealing Myths about the English Language in the Philippines in the James Soriano Essays

            In the month of celebrating the Pambansang Wika ,an essay by Ateneo senior James Soriano was published in The Manila Bulletin (MB) trumpeting the privileged status of  English over Filipino in the Philippines from his point of view, a young adult/student from a common Filipino middle- and upper-class. It received mixed reactions from Filipino netizens which led to MB’s withdrawal of it and to other Filipino columnists’ responding to it. 

            This essay is an analysis of the assumptions about English and the Filipino language and other Philippine languages that are embedded in Soriano’s essay and the response essays of the columnists. The analysis is guided by Martin’s (2010) book chapter on the four myths about English in the Philippines. Overall, she suggests that the combined power of curriculum, western literary canon, and pedagogy during the American colonial period propagated present-day myths about the English language in the Philippines. These myths are originally conceptualized by Kachru (cited in Martin, 2010). 

            The response essays were written by columnists from diverse background, each having different approach in responding to Soriano’s essay. A professor of English and teacher of writing, Butch Dalisay responds to Soriano’s essay as if it was an essay in his writing class. In his piece entitled A testimonial to alienation, Dalisay commends the student for confessing that he is a “split-level Filipino” yet thinks that Soriano’s essay “needs more thinking-through” as it embodies significant social truths that  need to reach its intended audience effectively. In The Filipino is multilingual, creative writer and former U.P. professor Mila Aguilar stands for multilingualism and revealed Soriano’s “revelation of a princely life with English” as a push for “the superiority of English in the Philippine scene.” Dennis Clemente approached Soriano’s essay from the perspective of someone in Filipino-American community in New York. In her essay entitled The Filipino boy who doesn’t want to speak Filipino is what, exactly?, she sees Soriano as a symptom of a bigger problem of the country’s social stratification and the dispassionate teaching of the Filipino language in the country. Columnist William Esposo in his article, Anti Filipino article reaps the whirlwind, highlights arguments which he thinks some of the Filipinos lose sight of due to pressures of economic deprivations, namely arguments on the loss of identity and on the non-necessity of English in some Asian countries. All too often, these articles seem to agree on major points that circulate in these essays but approach these assumptions in a different perspective.   

Methodology

            I picked the controversy over James Soriano’s essay for two reasons. First, the debate about the status and functions of languages in the Philippines has been a classic one which still is very vibrant until today. Second, this controversy gained national attention and nationwide involvement of almost all of the Filipino netizens especially in this Facebook era. For a considerable amount of time, this has become the topic of discussion among social networking sites and blogging sites, not to mention the plethora of emotion-charged comments that come with the posts.   

            Choosing the response essays to be included in this paper underwent a system. First, I looked for the websites that has to do with James Soriano’s essay. The search led me to various personal blogs and Philippine online newspaper websites which contain essays that respond or discuss James Soriano’s essay. Second, I decided to only analyze the column articles from Philippine online newspapers and exclude personal blogs because column articles are in the mainstream and are more accessible to the most of the Filipino people across the country. Comments of the readers on the selected essays are not included in the analysis to make this paper more manageable. Third, I then looked at the background of these writers to make sure that I have a pool of diverse perspectives to be analyzed. Indeed, the writers are an educator, a creative writer, a member of the Filipino-American community in New York, an activist, and a veteran journalist.        

             The analysis started by identifying the assumptions embedded in Soriano’s essay. In my close reading, I identified three main assumptions about English language in relation to other languages in the Philippines, learning and development, and national identity. I then read closely the response essays and checked whether the writers affirm or refute those assumptions.

   

Myth 1: English and Filipino are languages in opposition.

Martin (2010) summarizes this myth as “the [English] language. . . in direct opposition with other Philippine languages, especially the national language” (p. 257). In his article, Soriano highlighted the privileged status of English in the Philippines and took it against the Filipino language, positing that the two operate in mutually exclusive domains. He said that English is the language of learning while Filipino is the language of the streets. Filipino is a language portrayed as ‘the other’ subject which is to be learned for his survival in the outside world.     

All of columnists seem to agree on the importance of utilizing these languages yet they appear to vary in the way they value each of these languages. All of them agree that English is important but it is not the only language “that will save” the nation. Aguilar recognizes that English is the language that “the upper classes of the Philippine society” need to deal with CEOs from China and Japan in the same way that Clemente mentions that English is the language of “our educational system and form of business communication”. Dalisay confesses, “I have no problem valuing and promoting English as the language of global business”. He says “[W]e need to master [English] . . . so it doesn’t master us”. As a professor of English, he says he teaches  the English language and (American) literature for his students “not to try and become Americans, but to become better Filipinos.” Esposo, while initially claiming that Philippines’ neighbors in Asia “did not need English to excel economically”, he later on said that “[b]oth Filipino and English can be learned” as long as the Filipino language is not sacrificed. 

Even as they see English as important, they all agree that treating English as the nation’s only panacea and superior among the languages is dangerous. Dalisay said that he has seen Filipino children being raised in solely English in the hopes of “turning them into globalized Filipinos” yet they turned to be “socially maimed individuals who can’t relate to their own people and who don’t feel at stake in their own country’s future.” Aguilar cites US’s bilingualism policy as its recognition to the notion that “monolingualism makes of a dumb population”. Esposo argues that, “Using English as the medium of instruction [in the tertiary level] ” not only is ineffective in facilitating English language acquisition  but “merely adds another impediment to progress [ delivering the content of the courses]”. Clemente said that “[t]he use of English among the rich sets them apart from the rest who speak Tagalog” thus creating or reinforcing the social stratification of the country.   

          Although they seem to agree on the economic functions of English in the Philippines and

 the potential harms of English monolingualism, they seem to have varying pictures of an ideal linguistic scene in the Philippines. Aguilar and Dalisay both champion explicitly multilingualism for the Philippines. Aguilar’s thesis has always been that “the Filipino is multilingual”, using herself as an example of a Filipino who easily adapts and learns languages that s/he is exposed to. Dalisay “believe[s] in a bilingual – indeed, a multilingual – policy, not only it’s nationalistic, but because it works, and kinder to the child in the long term” as it allows the child to be ‘a globalized” Filipino while being socially capable of dealing with the Filipinos across the nation.He adds that:

“The real tragedy of the James Soriano episode for me is that despite both the academic and anecdotal evidence, many Filipinos keep clinging to the illusion that only English will save us, and that any proposal to promote Filipino and other Philippine languages in the classroom alongside English is a step back into the jungle.”

            The other two columnists appear to have no explicit stance in terms of what they want to do with these languages but the bulk of their analyses would suggest that Soriano’s article is just “the struggle over the Filipino language”. Therefore, the balancing act is just between English and Filipino with little or no reference to the “other Philippine languages”.  

Clement seems to shift stances from bilingualism to Filipino-only. She claims the Filipino language is at a disadvantage. It was the ‘interventions’ of foreign colonizers which hindered the development of the Filipino language. She said that the development of the language should not stop especially that Filipino-English code switching is “already acknowledged” (without specifying where and by whom). She seems to endorse the idea that “having one language” is ideal, thus, catapulting Filipino language to an important place. For the Filipinos in the Philippines, she believes that using Filipino (more), this one language, is beneficial in “break[ing] down social divisions” between the rich and the poor because the poor now have access to knowledge. Here she establishes a parallel with America’s monolingualism without taking into account the Philippines’ some of the poor students who also are foreign to Filipino. She said that “[i]f the use of one language can be ultimately unifying and there are more Filipinos speaking Filipino, some sort of compromise could be reached” although she did not specify or discuss what sort of compromise the situation entails (probably compromising other Philippine languages in certain ways). She suggests that “[t]eaching Filipino has to evolve” as teachers dispassionately teach Filipino leading to the decrease of motivation in learning the language and respect for the language among students. 

          On the other hand, Esposo seems to endorse multilingualism but with a marked emphasis on the Filipino language. He seems to favor multilingual education as he says: “More Filipinos can achieve levels of excellence when taught in the tongue they’re most familiar with.” Yet, this multilingual statement fades in the background as Esposo constantly refers to the Filipino language as the “country’s native tongue” and “the language of our Filipino soul” which confuses Filipino as not only the national language but also “the language of the mind and soul” of all Filipinos across the nation. His being caught in the Filipino-English dichotomy was further reinforced when he said that “[b]oth Filipino and English can be learned and this need not be at the expense of losing the natural language of the Filipino mind and soul.” This means that only the Filipino language is endangered once English is learned by Filipinos; other Phillippine languages are definitely out of the picture.  

Overall, all of them seem fine with English co-existing with Filipino and the rest of the Philippine languages as English proves to be valuable to the country. However, Clemente and Esposo appear to be caught in the Filipino-English dichotomy and have tendencies to brush aside the languages that many Filipinos speak as their first language. More important to note is the two columnists’ portrayal of Filipino as the ideal language in education for the rich and the poor (Clemente) and as “the language that capture the Filipino national spirit” (Esposo). This shows that the two suggest that the Filipino language is not just good as the lingua franca of the country but also as the ideal language for education and the only language for capturing the Filipino spirit which is a setback to multilingualism.   

Myth 2: English is the only language of learning. 

This myth is the assumption that the English language is the only language which provides access to knowledge, especially in Mathematics and Science (Martin, 2010). The first sentence of Soriano’s article clearly reflects this myth: “English is the language of learning”. He recalls his childhood experiences in learning his Math, Science, and Religion lessons in English. He went on to say that Filipino is not the language of the learned in the classroom, the boardroom, the courtroom or the operating room. 

All of the columnists believe that it is not true that English alone is the language that can provide access to necessary knowledge. The Filipino language and the rest of the Philippine languages are equally intellectual. With the exception of Clemente, all explicitly claim that quality education comes easier when instruction is “in the tongue they’re most familiar with”. All also believe that the Filipino language is equally intellectual. Aguilar says she uses Filipino to translate Bible verses and to write underground tracts. She also gives the example of professors of University of the Philippines (U.P.) teaching Chemistry, Biology, and Physics in Filipino in the same way that Dalisay mentions that “Filipino is the language of many of my learned friends and colleagues at university”. Esposo highlights Rolando Tinio’s creative use of the language in translating foreign classic literature. Clemente even projects a hypothetical scenario in which Filipino is the only medium of instruction which would make the poor Filipinos “more functional members of the nation, able to compete against our most educated.” 

With the exception of Esposo, the three columnists point out that James Soriano’s essay and the view that English is the language of learning are “just a symptom of a larger problem”. Although Dalisay considers this an “insult”, he boldly concedes that Soriano is just describing a social truth:

“[W]e are bringing up and training many of our kids to join the social, economic, and political elite, which has spoken English as its language for the past century, and wears English proficiency as its badge of honor.”   

            Aguilar realizes that “life today is no different from life centuries ago” when the datu families, “a privileged class bragging about how good they are in the language of conquistador.”

Finally, Clemente points out that the essay is just a manifestation of the “glaring social stratification in the Philippines” which is closely connected to “one’s chosen language.” Dalisay maintains that James Soriano is not to be blamed but “our society and its priorities”, placing so much premium on English and on its speakers in a country where only a few get to access English and the prestige and the resources that come with it.  

Myth 3: English is not a Philippine language.                                 

            Technically, the third ‘myth’ is not one of the myths suggested by Kachru (in Martin, 2010) and Martin (2010). I am not even sure to call it a ‘myth’ to begin with. But as the essay of Soriano and of the columnists heavily talk about the connection of language and identity, I felt it is imperative that a discussion of this connection be included here. This is the view that English is still a possession of the Filipinos’ colonizers and therefore, does not represent our identity. By implication, the mastery of English at the expense of other Philippine languages is a betrayal to the Filipino identity. This runs counter to the notion of English being one of the Philippine languages. English is not anymore owned by its native speakers (the colonizers) but appropriated by different communities that use it (Widdowson, 1994). In particular, Philippine English “began to develop as a ‘variety of English in its own right, associated with a distinct accent, a localized vocabulary, and even a body of creative writing by Philippine writers in English” (Bolton and Bautista, 2009: 9) and is recognized as a distinct variety of Asian English (Bolton, 2011).  

            Soriano calls himself “a split-level Filipino” for having English as his mother tongue. He realizes that he “smell[s] than a malansang isda” and “may be disconnected from my [his] being a Filipino”. This reveals the premises that 1) only the Filipino language and other Philippine local languages give identity to Filipinos; and 2) one’s mastery and preference of English is necessarily a detachment from the Filipino identity.   

  

            All of the columnists appear to still consider English as the language of the colonizers or a detached language as revealed by looking closely at how they refer to the English language. English took different labels in their articles such as “the language of the reconquistador” (Aguilar), “the language of the empires” (Clemente), “a foreign language” (Esposo), and a language which comes with “a persona, a social mask, every time I write and speak English” (Dalisay). 

            As they already recognize the value of English to the country, they maintain that the loss of Filipino identity only happens when we trade our Philippine languages with English for prestige and development. This is why they agree with James Soriano’s calling himself as a “split-level Filipino”. For Esposo, “[t]he nation pays a greater price for the loss of its identity when we allow a foreign language to replace what is the very soul of Filipino communication – our native tongue[.] . . . English can never capture the Filipino national spirit.” While Aguilar was allergic with Soriano’s pushing of the “superiority of English in the Philippine scene”, Clemente was sorry for Soriano for putting himself “in a mental box too final and unduly conclusive”. However, Dalisay does not just stop at agreeing with Soriano’s admission of self-alienation as a Filipino; he goes beyond that and expresses his respect and admiration for the young writer’s courage and honesty. He writes:

“[The essay] would have been perfect as a confession of sorts, as the testimony of a self-aware Filipino alienated within his own society by his family’s and even by the educational system’s single-minded insistence on English as the key to success and happiness. Those who’ve heaped scorn on James for raising himself above the common lot are glossing over the key point: James realizes and acknowledges his alienation, which is frankly more than what many Filipinos in his situation seem to be capable of.”    

            Here, it is clear that English is seen as an important language and one that can co-exist with “our nation’s languages”. Dealing with English is dealing with a language that is not ours, not one of the Philippine languages, not a language that embodies our identity as a nation.  

Conclusion

            Analyzing essays written about the roles and functions of the English language in the Philippines reveals a lot about our conceptions and assumptions about languages that are at play in the Philippine linguistic scene. Indeed, the grip of English in our education, business, and socio-political sectors has been widely recognized by the writers above. Nonetheless, they are still vigilant of the possibility of the loss of the nation’s identity and the perpetuation of the nation’s social stratification once English is treated as the only language that will save the nation.

References

Aguilar, Mila (2011). The Filipino is Multilingual. Retrieved from http://philippinehistory.ph/the     

-filipino-is-multilingual-in-answer-to-james-soriano/#comments

Bolton, Kingsley. (2011). Introduction: The study of Philippine English: The contribution of

             corpus linguistics. In Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista (Ed.), Studies of Philippine English:

           Exploring the Philippine Component of the International Corpus of English (pp. xi-xiv).

           Mandaluyong City: Anvil.

Bolton, Kingsley and Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista. (2009). Philippine English: Linguistic and literary

            perspectives. In Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista and Kingsley Bolton (Eds.), Philippine English:

           Linguistic and Literary Perspectives (pp. 1-9). Pasig City: Anvil.

Clemente, Dennis (2011). The Filipino boy who doesn’t want to speak Filipno is what, exactly?

Retrieved from  http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/13471/the-filipino-boy-who-doesn%E2%80%99t-wato speak-         filipino-is-what-exactly

Dalisay, Butch (2011). A testimonial of alienation. Retrieved from   

              http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=723749&publicationSubCategoryId=79

Esposo, William (2011) Anti Filipino article reaps the whirlwind. Retrieved from

 https://globalbalita.com/2011/09/05/anti-filipino-article-reaps-the-whirlwind/

Martin, Isabel. (2010). Periphery ELT: The politics and practice of teaching English in the  

            Philippines. In Andy Kirkpatrick (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of world Englishes

           (pp. 247-264). New York: Routledge.

 Soriano, James (2011). Language, learning, identity, privilege. Retrieved from

             http://mb.com.ph/node/331851/language-learning-identity-privilege

Widdowson, H. G. 1994. ‘The ownership of English’. TESOL Quarterly 28: 377–88.

Reclaiming the Language Policy-making Practices of the Local: The Case of Speaking-English Zones in a Philippine high school

            Research in English-only policies has been limited to classrooms (Auerbach, 1995) and on English-only policy that is mandated by the national government form the top down (Combs, et.al , 2011). The tendency of this research is to focus on global issues such as immigration, globalization, and the economic workforce and to overlook the complex relationship between English-only policy and the local concerns. Therefore, there is a need to study English-only policies that are created by the local communities themselves and to investigate the reasons for crafting such policies.

            In the Philippines, as in many postcolonial countries, there has been a strong desire to learn English due to globalization and to the opportunities attached to the language (Lin and Martin, 2005). This leads to countries and their governments crafting polices that promote the use of English for “effective acquisition”. However, in some contexts, the schools themselves create these policies in respond to the circumstances that these schools are in.

            The purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons of some schools in crafting and implementing English-only policies for their own contexts. Ultimately, the paper argues that there is a need to locally ground the investigation of these policies to uncover the local discourses that have long been ‘silenced’ and ‘overshadowed’ by the global discourses. It also poses a challenge to model-building in language policies given that pre-existing frameworks in language policies do not account for the practices of the school being studied. It should be noted that the main focus of the paper is not so much to discuss the merits and demerits of the Speaking-English Zones (SEZ) policy of the school being studied ; rather , the intent  of the study is to examine the reasons behind the crafting and implementation of such policy and situate it in the local context. 

Theoretical Framework

            Canagarajah (2005) argues for a shift in the way knowledge is constructed traditionally. Knowledge construction has been biased in that it puts so much premium on “[g]eneralization, and systematization, and model-building [which] involve a certain amount of abstraction that filters out the variability of experience in diverse contexts” (p. 4-5). The more the scholars look for what is common among phenomena being studied, the more one phenomenon  becomes “removed from its locality, the structure is reduced of its social and cultural ‘thickness’”. This renders the particulars in that locality as “unruly or insignificant” (p. 5) while the generalizable become the dominant discourse and are perceived “as universally relevant or applicable” (p. xiv). He adds that this is not an innocent process but political in nature as one perspective that shaped the interpretation and analysis of the phenomenon is that of the privileged and the powerful.  Necessarily, the knowledge, practices, and perspectives of a particular local community have been rendered “disempowered”.     

            As knowledge is narrowly constructed under this traditional paradigm, Canagarajah (2005) argues for the “reclaiming of a space for the local in knowledge construction activities” to reorientate language studies. “A local grounding should become the primary and critical force in the construction of contextually relevant knowledge if we are to develop more plural discourses” (p. xiv). This reclaiming involves a deconstructive and reconstructive project (p. 14). This deconstruction entails showing the biased nature of dominant discourses toward western communities while investigating the validity of dominant discourses in its context of origin. On the other hand, reconstruction means considering how local knowledge is relevant for the contemporary needs of the local community and of the changing social and geopolitical domains.  

            Finally, Canagarajah clarified that the ‘global’ and ‘local’ are terms which are relative to different contexts and may take different forms. For some contexts,  the local may refer to a classroom, to a minority group, or to a community while the global may refer to something larger as the dominant discourses and institutions.  “ Whatever the domain of discussion” scholars should “articulate the case of the local before it gets silenced, distorted, or reproduced by the global” (2005, p. xvi).  

Methodology

            The research context is a high school department of a private university in a city in Western Mindanao, Philippines. The school implements a bilingual education policy. The English language is used as a medium of instruction for English, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies while the Filipino language is used for Filipino subject and Physical Education (PE). Students are also expected to converse with the teacher and with fellow students using the language in which the subject is taught.

Four major languages are known to be spoken by most of the students and staff, namely English, Filipino, Visayan, and Chavacano and other local languages. Students usually come from middle class families.   

            Interview is the main source of data for this study. The interview lasted for one hour and thirteen minutes.  The topics centered around language policies in the given school, specifically on Speaking-English Zone (SEZ) Policy, the reasons for its crafting and its benefits and harms on students and on teaching and non-teaching staff as perceived by one high school teacher. The interview took place in the teacher’s apartment on May 6, 2012, 9 p.m.

            Anne (not her real name) was my respondent. She has been an English teacher in the school for six years but had to study on leave for her Master’s degree in English Language and Literature Teaching. She has been carefully chosen to be interviewed for this study for three main reasons: 1) Her relatively long teaching experience in the school would add some credibility and richness to her observations and narratives; 2) She has been groomed to be the next Chair of the English department of the school which makes her opinions more informed of the official stances and philosophy of the institution and its administration as she deals with the administration more than the teachers have; 3) More importantly, she was one of the main proponents of SEZ policy.

I consciously considered some factors which possibly affected the data from the interview. Her being a main proponent of the policy is both an advantage and a disadvantage. It is strategic because she was able to discuss the policy with personal conviction and a sense of moral obligation; it may also be a disadvantage as her position limits her to point out the shortcomings and harms of the policy. Finally, she was my classmate and board mate. Although this helped a lot in establishing the necessary rapport between us in the whole interview, this power relationship possibly gave her reservations with her responses knowing that I am usually perceived as critical in our classes.       

Although the interview provided telling narratives and rich information about the policy, I recognize that the methodology could have been improved had I conducted fieldwork and observation in the given school, data collection methods which were not possible given time and physical distance constraints.

Reasons for implementing SEZ policy

            Speaking-English Zones (SEZ) policy is a language policy started in and initiated by the English department of the school being studied. The policy mandates that students and teaching and non-teaching staff of the school should speak in English when communicating with anyone in some zones inside the campus, namely the classroom, school offices, and the faculty room. They may only speak languages other than English in the lobby, in the cafeteria, and in the school field. The policy has no sanctions for violators. 

The following were the reasons that led to the school’s enforcing of the English-only policy. I indentified these from the narratives that surfaced in the interview. Two of these are global dominant discourses while the other three are local in nature. It is important to investigate these reasons and uncover the discourses underlying them because these are the very same reasons that are used by the school to justify the policy and gather support from the stakeholders. If these policies are scrutinized, all the stakeholders of the policy and future researchers will be guided in assessing the principled and pragmatic justifications of the policy and in seeking for alternatives if need be.      

            The first reason is a classic: The school wants to increase spaces and opportunities for students and teaching and non-teaching staff to practice using the English language inside the campus. This is under the notion that practice in using the English language is a key to its mastery and, under the conditions prior to the policy, practice does not happen or is limited outside the school. According to Anne, half of her students speak the vernacular at home. Even students who already speak English at home are still encouraged as the kind of English at home is different from the English that they practice in school in terms of the topic, the communicative situations, and the people they speak with (i.e., only their parents and family members). The policy, which would require students to transact in offices in English, is even believed to prepare students for their future requirements (as interviewing city government personnel in English would be one of the subject requirements) and for their future real-world transactions in English such as being in a job interview or transacting with these offices. Finally, Anne said that it is only in school where students could practice English without being judged as “elite” or “arrogant” by the people who are listening. The teaching and non-teaching staff were also persuaded to support the policy. First, they were told that as professionals they are expected to be good English speakers. It is a matter of moral obligation as a professional to speak the English language fluently. Second, as professionals they are to be the role models in using the language so students follow their example. Finally, they were told that practicing English would expand their opportunities especially if they decide to apply for job opportunities in other schools.

Overall, because the necessary practice in English outside the school is constrained, limited, and almost non-existent  for students and the staff and practice inside the school is beneficial, the English department saw the need to add to the pre-existing mechanisms[i] they are using to improve practice in using English through the policy.

            The second reason has to do with the school’s trademark in being an institution that produces good English speakers.  According to Anne, even in the orientation program of the students in the beginning of the school year, it is always emphasized that the school is known for its prestige in nurturing students to be good English speakers which makes students duty-bound and “motivated” (to use Anne’s word) to continue the tradition. She added that even the parents of the students support the policy. It was not difficult for the school to convince the parents because they themselves are informed and well-aware that the trademark of the school is such. A lot of these parents are also alumni of the school. They are said to be “happy” upon hearing their children speak or try to speak in English at home.

Very much related with the second reason, the reputation enables the school to compete with other private schools in the city. This same trademark and excellence in using English was what gives the school a cutting-edge over other competing private schools. Anne mentioned that in the city each private school has its own niche. One specializes in Science. Another boasts of its excellent Mathematics education. And for her, her school has capitalized on its reputation for excellence in English to be able to compete with those other schools as a good number of parents would really want their children to have sharp English communication skills. Still on competition, the policy was also formulated to keep up with another school which already has an English-only policy in place. Anne was inside the premises of another school falling in line to pay her niece’s tuition fee. Two things caught her attention. First, she saw a very large banner which says “Speak English”. Second, while falling in line at the cashier, she was fascinated by a high school student who transacted with the cashier in plain English. The cashier also talked with the student in pure English. These observations were shared by Anne to her colleagues during a meeting of the English department. She said that if this school already has a SEZ policy considering that that school is not of the same level with her school, there really was no reason for the school not to implement its own SEZ. “After all, it is our trademark”, she added during the meeting.   

            The fourth reason seems to be the most immediate concern of the school at the time before the formulation of the policy. The policy was an answer to the recommendation of an accrediting body.   Sometime in 2007, the school was surveyed by the Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges, and Universities (PAASCU), “a service organization that accredits academic programs which meet standards of quality education” among private schools in the country (http://paascu.org.ph/home/?p=7). A survey is one of the mechanisms of the organization to see whether a member institution lives up to the standards it sets for itself. After the survey, PAASCU observed that some of the teachers lack the facility of the English language. And so, the English department initiated the policy to be able to reflect in their records that the school is taking concrete steps to satisfy the recommendations in the time of the next survey of the accrediting body.

Analyzing the assumptions embedded in each of the reasons discussed below is a task that goes beyond the scope of this paper. However, I will attempt to underscore two major global discourses alongside the three local discourses that I found prominent in the crafting and implementation of the SEZ in the research context.

The first discourse is on the belief that “the use or prohibition of the L1 is often framed in purely pedagogical terms” (Auerbach, 1995, p. 2) and constant practice in using pure English leads to proficiency. The English department of the school believes that language use should be pure and that codeswitching and mixing are undesirable language behavior while in reality most of the time “the languages in the everyday lives of students and teachers both inside and outside of the classrooms do not exist in neat, discrete categories but in fact are used in fluid, creative, intertwined ways” (Lin and Martin, 2005, p. 10). This has been apparent in the way Anne explains the policy to her students.

Insisting on using English in the ESL classroom does not only result to low self-esteem of students but also slower pace of second language acquisition (Auerbach, 1995). More importantly, the policy and its proponents conceptualize language acquisition as just a matter of practice, habit formation, cognition, and affect while ignoring “the personal background of the learner” and “the larger social and political contexts which it [learning] is situated” (Canagarajah, 1999, p. 15). Auerbach (1995) believes that language use in the classroom is very much an ideological issue, a notion that is also manifested , in this case, even outside the classroom.    

The second discourse is the strong desire for English as a linguistic capital for success. This has been apparent in the way the English Department explains the policy to the students and the teachers. They tell students that once they master the English language they will not find it hard to transact to the real world where the language is used as medium of communication, say when transacting offices and being interviewed for a job. Meanwhile, they also tell the teaching and non-teaching staff that once they decide to seek for better opportunities in other private or public high schools (which mirror the vulnerable state of workforce in some private schools) and even outside the country they will need the English language to have a fighting chance to be employed.  Lin calls this ‘the postcolonial puzzle’ describing the “postcolonial governments and local communities in many postcolonial contexts today seem to desire for English with such renewed and unashamed enthusiasm” (2005, p. 5). The perception that English is an indispensable resource is “infused with a strong desire for . . . future successful participation in the new global economic order” (p. 3). This has been observed in many postcolonial countries such as Hong Kong and Singapore and Malaysia which have recognized the need for English under new forces of globalization.   

But the most interesting part of the data is the fact that some reasons of the implementation of the SEZ entail local concerns. The policy was not just an endeavor of the school to equip its students and staff with English for the workforce but also to strengthen its trademark for excellence in English proficiency, to compete with other local private schools which are also known to have their own niche, and to simply comply with recommendations from an accrediting body.

There are two things that can be said about this observation. First, this reflects the local social realities of the school. Competition is really tight among private high schools in the Philippines, not to mention the competition with public schools with relatively cheap tuition fees if not for free. Among private schools, competition is really tight. For these academic institutions, banking on what they offer to parents and to students is one of the best ways to go to sustain their operations in the face of anemic private donations and rising costs of operations. For this particular school, their trademark in giving quality English language instruction seems to be a potent magnet to entice their clients to enroll their children to school, thus, keeping up with the competition. Complying with accreditation recommendations also has to do with competition. Apart from relying on trademarks, private schools also bank on the status and the rating that accrediting bodies give to them to improve their marketability as high status and rating means improving their chances of getting prestige, thereby, enticing new clients and giving assurance to their current clients. Central to accomplishing these aims is the SEZ policy.    

The second thing about this is that, although these concerns are local ones, they also contain traces of the discourses that go beyond the local. After all, schools compete over students’ enrollment and over parents’ trust and confidence because they know that these parents want the best skills for their children to ultimately prepare them for employment and economic success in the national and global market.

The Language Policy-Making Practices of the local

            Given the “need” to improve the English language proficiency of students and teachers, the English Department needed to think of ways to respond to these problems. At the forefront of the genesis of the Speaking-English Zones, the department conducted series of meetings where narratives above are shared and decided to craft and implement the policy.  The policy easily earned the nod of the administration since it aims at responding to the problems of the school. The policy and its aims were then explained and rationalized to the students and parents during orientation program and to the teaching and non-teaching staff assemblies.

                 

            The school mobilized its resources and utilized avenues which can convey discourses that support the implementation of the policy. The use of orientation program as a potent avenue seems to be a powerful strategy for the school to accomplish this. The orientation program is the first encounter of the incoming students and their parents to the school. It is where the school’s vision-mission were spelled out so they know what values, principles, and visions the school has. Integrating the rationalization of the SEZ in the orientation programs makes it appear that the school indoctrinates the students and parents that English language proficiency is indeed a reasonable expectation of the students. It is natural for the school to demand this from the students if the school has to be faithful to its tradition and if the student is to be made worthy to be a part of the school community.  

            At this point, it should be noted here that the English department of the school was key to the crafting and implementation of the SEZ policy. The department really took the initiative to propose the policy to the administration which the latter readily approved as the policy is consistent with its interests. The department also spearheaded with explaining to the students and to the teaching and non-teaching staff the validity if the policy to gather support and secure their consent. Therefore, what we have is a focused look at the language policy processes inside a school where interactions among the English department, the administration, and the students and staff unfold.

            It is interesting to note that the way the school creates language policies is a departure from, or better yet, an extension to the pre-existing theoretical frameworks on language policy. Because the policy originated from the local context itself, Hornberger and Ricento’s (1996) ‘Language Policy and Planning (LPP) Onion’  is watered down  as the framework already assumes that all language policies are from the national level down to the individual. What the local practice shows is that the English department, an agency which is not necessarily from the top, started the whole LPP process and became the forerunner in the implementation of the policy. McCarthy’s (2011) macro, meso, micro levels of LPP is also insufficient to explain this. Although the meso level accounts for the local communities of practice, it does not provide the frames to look closely at how schools as a local community of practice go through the process of language policy making. At this point, we need more research that look into specific LPP practices of local communities and generate framework that would explain the complex nature of the LPP process.        

Conclusion

Although the language policy-making practices of the school might be far from ideal, there is still a value in investigating how a language policy comes about and for what reasons they are implemented. It is in this local grounding of the Speaking-English Zone (SEZ) policy that the school’s decision to implement the policy is socially situated given the balancing act that it needs to do with the global and the local pressures and realities it has to confront.   

References

Auerbach, E. (2003). The politics of the ESL classroom: Issues of power in pedagogical choices. In Medium of instruction policies: which agenda? Whose agenda? Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Publishers.

Canagarajah, A.S. (Ed.). (2005). Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum publishers.

Lin, A., & Martin, P.W. (Eds.). (2005). Decolonisation, globalisation: language-in-education policy and practice. Clevedon; Buffalo; Toronto: Multilingual Matters.

Ricento, T., & Hornberger, N. (1996). Unpeeling the onion: language planning and policy and the ELT professional. TESOL Quarterly, 30 (3), 401-427.

                                                           

---

[i]  Prior to the Speak-English policy, the English department already has mechanism in place to improve practice in using the English language namely posting of information sheets of grammar points and interesting trivia about English on a bulletin board on a weekly basis. The staffs of the school are also given free English grammar review lessons. Thus, the policy is seen as a reinforcement.