LANGUAGE

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LANGUAGE CULTURE ISSUES IN ASIAN
ENGLISH-MEDIUM UNIVERSITIES

• Joseph Lo Bianco
• Prof. Language and Literacy Education
• The University of Melbourne

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OUTLINE OF PAPER

• i) Settings history variations deeply
  shaping
• ii) English and global communication
• iii) Identity National Personal
• iv) Positions
• a) Accept improve
• b) Challenge problematise.

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i) UNESCO 1953

• Iconic declaration post-colonial context
• The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education
• It is axiomatic that the best medium for
  teaching a child is his MT
• Psychologically ... meaningful signs, expression
  understanding
• Sociologically...means of identification with
  community
• Educationally...efficiency of knowledge gain.
• Recommended MT be used to as late in education
  as possible, beginning as early as possible

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i) UNESCO 2003

• 3 PRINCIPLES
• MT instruction for improving educational
  quality by building on knowledge experience
  of learners teachers
• Bi-lingual or multi-lingual education at all
  levels for promoting social gender equality
• Mother tongue an essential component of
  inter-cultural education connected to
  understanding between different population
  groups respect for fundamental rights.

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i) DUAL ROLE OF TEACHER INPUT

• In content programs lecturers linguistic input
  to learners (lesson classroom talk) serves three
  roles
• it is the
• ..model of English that learners acquire (TL
  model)
• vehicle for content (message-conveying talk)
• .. content-constituting register for knowledge.

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i) OBJECT AND MEDIUM

• OBJECT
• Lecturer teaches
• ENGLISH through English
• Talk is about English, (grammar, communication,
  expressions etc)

• MEDIUM
• Lecturer teaches
• SUBJECT through English
• Talk is about subject matter, (geography,
  maths, history)

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i) ROYAL UNIVERSITY OF PHNOM PENH

• Teaching Languages Since 13 January 1960
• 1960s mostly French
• 1970s mostly French, gradual Khmerisation
• 1975-1978 closure killings
• 1980s initially Russian later also Vietnamese
  still later also Khmer
• Late 80s early 90s first French then English,
  some Khmer
• Early 2000s, largely Khmer, booming English,
  residual French

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i) SRI LANKA

• LANGUAGE POLICY PHASES
• in
• TraditionalgtColonialgtModern Education
• Official English
• Official Sinhala
• Restoration of Tamil
• Restoration of English

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i) KOREA

• CONTEXT OFFICIAL ENGLISH DEBATESgt PRIVATE
  SECTOR FINANCING, DISCOURSE OF UNIS SCHOOLS
  DONT DELIVER
• School students, Undergraduates, Business People
  and Public Officials, Military
• ENGLISH AS LOCAL SOCIAL MEDIUM
• Based on communicative, task-specified, intensity
  and frequency

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i) MALAYSIA

• FIRST OCCASION FOR BM
• Razak Education Commission 1956 gtNational
  Education Policy stipulated BM as MOI, ?
  educational inequalities ? national unity,
  remove association of English with privilege
  (Asmah 1997). 1958 primary school BM as MOI by
  1983 transition to University achieved
• SECOND OCCASION FOR ENGLISH
• Employers perception of ? English proficiency,
  also government academics (Asmah 1987, Gill
  1993, 1999)gt international marketplace English
  medium credentials
• gt Education Development Plan 2001-2010
  (Blueprint for the Future, 2001) Higher Education
  for human resource needs to meet national
  industrialisation goals, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir
  Mohamad announced meritocracy instead of ethnic
  quotas, from 2002. ltltltNew identity for English,
  new national identity through Englishgtgtgt

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i) CORPUS ISSUES

• Terminology research translation efforts of
  Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka effective but rapid pace
  of new knowledge required students to read
  English issues of international economic
  competitiveness
• Asmah H. O. (1994) Nationalism exoglossia
  English in Malaysia, pp 65-85 in H. Abdullah, ed,
  Language planning in SE Asia. KL Dewan Bahasa
  dan Pustaka Ministry of Education.

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ii) ENGLISH ASLINGUA MUNDI

• 2 billion people 1/3 of human race learning
  English by 2010-2015.
• .the world is about to be hit by a tidal wave
  of English and that as many as 3 billion
  people or 1/2 worlds population could be
  speaking the language .
• By 2050
• English learners ? to a mere 500 million
  ceasing to be a languagegt a basic skill,
  English as transactional.

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ii) ENGLISH AND SUCCESSION

• English only lingua franca in history to have
  been maintained though a global power succession
  in which one dominant world power succeeded
  another but both used the same language.
• Umberto Eco (1997)

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ii) COMMUNICATION FUTURES

• EU/COE
• expectation of plurilingual individuals
• comprising gt
• Languages of Identity National Languages
• LWC English (-es)
• multiple, partial and temporary language
  competencies
• Multiple Literacies

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ii) PRAGUE MANIFESTO

• DemocracyEffective educationMultilingualism
  Language RightsLanguage diversity Human
  Emancipation
• see how English is positioned in identity termsgtgt
• Esperanto promotes Global education unlike
  ethnic languages (such as English)b/c Esperanto
  not bound to cultures nations a language
  without borders

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ii) CAPITAL THEORISATIONS

• i Physical Capital Language Irrelevant
• ii Human Capital (embodied market) trade,
  exchange or investment
• iii Social Capital Bridging and Building Links
• iv Cultural Capital Central quality, eloquence,
  position, discursive
• UNESCO-UNICEFgtHuman Rights (cultural capital)
• OECD/WB/IMFgtHuman Capital (embodied economic)
  Capital

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iii) NATION STATE

• Nation
• horizontal axis
• identity, attachment, sentiment, belonging,
  loyalty etc

• State
• vertical axis
• administration and formal authority etc

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iii) COMPONENTS of NATIONALISM

• Theoretically limitless
• language (code narration)
• the past (incl. dead their continuing life)
• culture (high mass), religion ethnicity

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iii) NATION IDENTITY

• Every nation speaksaccording to the way it
  thinks and thinks according to the way it speaks
  
• Johan Herder 1772

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iii) CULTURE, RELATIVITY,LANGUAGE

• Wilhelm von Humboldts introduction to study of
  Kawi language of Javagt The Heterogeneity of
  Language and its Influence on the Intellectual
  Development of Mankind (Berlin 1836) gt languages
  differ in essential ways gt Sapir-Whorf RELATIVISM
  (weak or strong versions)
• to
• . relativity shifts focus from static concepts
  (language, thought, and culture) to dynamic
  notions (speakers/writers, thinkers, discourse
  communities)

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iii) IDENTITY ENGLISH LEARNING IN CHINA

• identity is a notion that is not self-evident but
  ambiguous
• Asked about cultural identities informants made
  clear and strong claim of Chinese identity, but
  this got broadened and enriched in the process of
  L2 learning (Gao, 2002 15)
• I feel terrific when I find my command of English
  is better than that of others
• English learning has a great impact on my
  self-confidence
• When I have difficulties in English learning, I
  begin to doubt my own ability
• Whenever I have overcome a difficulty in learning
  English, I can feel my own growth (Gao, 2005 45
  
• After learning English, I'm often caught between
  contradicting values and beliefs (Gao, 200546

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iii) IS ENGLISH A POST-IDENTITY LANGUAGE ?

• Hashimoto and others in Korea who show how
  nationalist placation is involved in promoting
  English China Ministry of Education English and
  FLs in separate compartments Tun Mahathir
  reassuring nationalists that Malaysians sense of
  nationality can be realised through more and
  instrumental English

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iii) WORLD CALAMITY

• 1956 All Party Report on Chinese Educationgt
  Singapore's strategy "equal treatment" policy.
  Said the new nations education system was
  unnatural because 85 of children taught in
  English Mandarin neither a MT.
• If because of a world calamity children in
  England were taught Russian and Mandarin but
  continued to speak English at home, the British
  educational system would run into some of (our)
  problems.

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iii) CHINESE VIEWS OF ENGLISHS IDENTITY EFFECTS

• TENTATIVE
• i) Keep Chinese essence separate from English
• ii) Adds needed individuality and
  assertiveness
• iii) Produce an English invested with
  Chineseness
• iv) Identity formed in childhood linguistic
  socialization adult process unclear.

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iii) SUBJECTIVITY IDENTITY

• Writing on identity is often oriented to a
  primary assumption about human subjectivity and
  identity from either an essentialist framework or
  a constructivist alternative grounded in concrete
  settings of language use and behaviour.

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iii) MULTI-FACETED SELVES

• Both essentialist (enduring) and contingent
  (situated) interacting selves and identities
  interact with an endangered self.
• Individuals often overcome cultural divergence
  by separating permanent self and ethnic/language
  identity from locally situated self for
  adjustment purposes
• Enduring selfgt lifelong concept of me deeply
  rooted in language, heritage, memory, educational
  and socio-cultural practices. Situated self
  develops during adjustment to new context without
  harming the enduring self.
• Spindler and Spindler (1992, 1993), Hall (1996),
  Ryan (1999), Norton (2000)

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iii) SEMIOTIC RELATIVITY

• how the use of a symbolic system affects thought

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iii) LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY

• linguistic relativity, or how speakers of
  different languages think differently when
  speaking

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iii) DISCURSIVE RELATIVITY

• how speakers of different discourses (across
  languages or in the same languages) have
  different cultural worldviews

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iv) POSITIONS

• i) ACCEPT IMPROVE
• ii) CHALLENGE PROBLEMATISE

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iv) ACCEPT AND IMPROVE

• Questions which follow from this positiongt
• Pedagogical
• i) How improve effectiveness of content area
  instruction?
• ii) How organise/sequence and assess delivery of
  EAP support?
• iii) Attitude to sociolinguistic context
  communicative norms practices of learners

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iv) ACCEPT AND IMPROVE

• Questions which follow from this positiongt
• Policy and Politics
• i) How to deal w cultural consequences of
  becoming ESL not EFL society?
• ii) How to minimise concerns?
• iii) How to compensate or placate opposition?

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iv) CHALLENGE AND PROBLEMATISE

• Questions which follow from this positiongt
• Social Equity of EMI choice
• i) Class distribution of standard academic
  English
• ii) Ethnicity/regional distribution of
  standard and academic English

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iv) CHALLENGE AND PROBLEMATISE

• Questions which follow from this positiongt
• Cultural and Identity Consequences of EMI choice
• iii) Nationalist discourse of indignity
• iv) Linguistic discourse of National Language
  domain attrition
• v) Personalist discourse of individual learner
  identities

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OUTLINE OF PAPER

• i) Settings history variations deeply
  shaping
• ii) English multiple characterisations
• iii) Identity National Personal
• iv) Positions
• a) Accept Improve
• b) Challenge Problematise.