Changing english studies in culture and education multiple classrooms of life english, ideology and sparkle moments

Multiple Classrooms of Life: English, Ideology and ‘Sparkle’ Moments Phan Le Haa,band Bao Datc a Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei; b D

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Studies in Culture and Education

ISSN: 1358-684X (Print) 1469-3585 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccen20

Multiple Classrooms of Life: English, Ideology and

‘Sparkle’ Moments

Phan Le Ha & Bao Dat

To cite this article: Phan Le Ha & Bao Dat (2019) Multiple Classrooms of Life: English, Ideology and ‘Sparkle’ Moments, Changing English, 26:3, 238-251, DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2019.1590686

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2019.1590686

Published online: 11 Jul 2019.

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Multiple Classrooms of Life: English, Ideology and ‘Sparkle’ Moments

Phan Le Haa,band Bao Datc

a Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei; b Department of Educational Foundations, College of Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hawaii, USA; c Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia

ABSTRACT

This essay comprises multiple sets of dialogues between us as

colleagues and friends as we revisit the question of the status of

English as a global language Through the metaphor ‘multiple

class-rooms of life’, we share reflections and narratives arising out of our

experiences with English that are embedded in our professional

work, scholarship, pedagogy and creative interests Our discussion

encompasses a range of artefacts, including excerpts from our

diaries, poems, vignettes, visuals, letters, songs and anecdotes.

This amalgam of materials represents our personal engagement

with English, as distinct from treating the spread of English simply

as a metanarrative played out at a remove from personal

experi-ence We reconstruct ‘sparkle moments’ arising from personal

encounters and social interactions that have caused us to reflect

on the role of English in our lives We thus focus on ideology as

personally felt and lived from within and through inter-personal

interactions.

KEYWORDS

English; ideology; power; Vološinov; narrative; creativity; cultural politics of language; language ideology; translanguaging; English as a global language; language empowerment

Introduction

In this essay we revisit the concept of ‘ideology’ and the status of English as a global language, as well as reconstructing what we call ‘sparkle moments’ that have prompted

us to reflect critically on our experiences with English These experiences constitute what we call multiple classrooms of life that shape all that we do, our scholarship, pedagogy and creative pursuits While we take on a critical applied linguistic perspec-tive, we have consciously adopted a literary style that might do justice to the way our thoughts and feelings have been bound up with English, seeking inspiration from songs and poems that we have written The result is writing that diverges from the conven-tions usually associated with scholarly journals We draw on our own diaries, poetry, songs, short stories, cartoons and reflections crafted at different moments in our life – a data feast of melodies, sounds and colours Within this mix of materials, you may encounter odd and clumsy words, phrases and expressions You may also encounter

‘foreign’ names and characters, and hear sounds jammed by unnamed instruments

CONTACT Phan Le Ha halephan@hawaii.edu

2019, VOL 26, NO 3, 238–251

https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2019.1590686

from far-away lands These discrepant materials comprise the ‘sparkle moments’ that have illuminated our work and lives as individuals, scholars and language educators Our basic contention is that despite the apparent consensus about the power of English as evidenced by its geographical spread, its historical durability and statistics about speaker populations (Barnawi 2018; Crystal 2003; Hall and Eggington 2000; Pennycook1998,2017; Rapatahana and Bunce2012), there is always a need to explore how this language manifests itself in quite personal ways, using artistic and literary means to represent how it has been thought and experienced by people in their everyday lives This is to reflect on how English has affected individuals, how it has been felt by them at a deeply personal level, rather than treating it as some kind of grand historical development that unfolds at a remove from ordinary people With respect to this grand metanarrative, the ‘sparkle moments’ that we have experienced might be characterised as moments of weakness or vulnerability – they certainly have little to do with the empowerment agenda often linked to the global status of English Our aim is nonetheless to show the importance of those moments vis-à-vis the metanarrative of global English and the economic and social development that suppo-sedly accompanies it

Our multiple classrooms of life have prompted us to interrogate this normative view of the power of English, to reconceptualise what we might mean when we talk about language and power Our ‘sparkle moments’ show that a powerful language is one that enriches both the inner and social life of individuals as much as it serves as an instrument for economic development Those moments will expose a range of social, cultural, political and educa-tional dimensions of our experience of the English language They will delve into the tensions and complementarity between the dynamics of English as a world-wide social and economic phenomenon, and our everyday experiences as we have used English for various purposes They will both challenge the complacent assumption that global English is inherently beneficial, exposing disjunctions and contradictions with respect to the impact that English has had on diverse communities around the world, as well as opening up the enriching character of English within our lives

Ideology and power as lived and felt

The rationale for privileging English as a means of global communication needs to be confronted To do so requires sensitivity to the multiple contexts in which English is used and the various purposes that it serves rather than treating English as a universal whole We would like to toy with the idea of peeling off the layers of power of English We argue that there are two main kinds of power that are brought about by the English language The first kind derives from the widely accepted metanarrative about the spread of English as a global language, as something that can be sold and used around the world (Crystal 2003; Jenkins2014; Pennycook1998,2017; Phan 2017) The English language

is an instrument for obtaining jobs, building power and achieving wealth It is used authoritatively to request, command, persuade, control, influence and discriminate; it is

a vehicle for socialising, networking, seeking consent, making decisions and gaining approval, for discussing intentions, acquiring data and exchanging news With these widely recognised functionalities, English boasts the status of a commodity in which people would be mad not to invest, for example, profitable textbooks that sell around

the globe, granting customers the means of representing their power, hopes, skills and capabilities In this sense, the language can be controlling, aggressive and dominant These meanings associated with English represent and embody, perhaps, the most common understanding of its power – the kind of power which largely points to systemic top-down ideological dominance and control (Jenkins 2014; Motha 2014; Phillipson 1992; Tupas2015)

The second kind of power has more to do with the individual and inter-individual ideology We are more interested in engaging with this aspect of power and ideology in this article, arguing that it offers a different lens to engage with the very concept of ideology – ideology as meaning making, which is individually lived and felt and inter-individually shaped at the same time, while also arising from the immediate, contem-porary global context in which individualsfind themselves

Vološinov ([1929]1973, [1929/2017; cf Feshchenko2009; Parrington 1997; Tolman

1998) is perhaps the scholar whose theory of language and ideology is closest to what

we are trying to do here In his Marxist theorisation of the philosophy of language, he coined the terms ‘science of ideologies’ and ‘ideological creativity’ which resonates with

us as we are writing this article

Language is ideological and a social phenomenon that resides in signs, as Vološinov ([1929]1973)argued Vološinov saw language as ‘an ever-flowing stream of speech acts

in which nothing remains fixed and identical to itself’ (Vološinov [1929]1973, 52; [1929] 1986) Meanings given to signs are socially constructed and mediated by various contexts No speech acts and utterances are free from judgement, either Language is always communicational, dialogical, interactive and inter-personal According to Vološinov ([1929]2017), meanings reside neither in words nor in speakers’ and listen-ers’ souls/inner selves Meanings, instead, are the effects of interactions between speak-ers and listenspeak-ers based on a certain mixture of sound materials (cf Ngo and Ngo2011; Vološinov1929/2017) For Vološinov, ideology and power are lived and felt, integral to the processes of living and feeling, which are social, inter-personal and inter-individual

He viewed the individual psyche as having a social origin, and as such one’s inner voice

is never detached from the social individual The inner voice, the individual and the inter-individual interact and communicate through signs whose meanings are shaped

by multiple and changing contexts

Signs are fundamental to ideology, according to Vološinov ([1929]1973, [1929/2017),

as without signs, ideology does not exist In other words, ideology resides in signs that individuals draw on and devise to make meanings as they communicate To understand ideology means understanding the meanings carried by signs Vološinov insisted that

‘signs can arise only in interindividual territory’, the very space where ‘consciousness is shaped’ (1929, 12, cited in Tolman1998, 15)

The individual consciousness is nurtured on signs; it derives its growth from them; it reflects their logic and laws The logic of consciousness is the logic of ideological communication, of the semiotic interaction of a social group If we deprive consciousness of its semiotic, ideological content, it would have absolutely nothing left (Vološinov 1929, 13, cited in Tolman1998, 15)

Vološinov does not deny the role and existence of the private inner self of conscious-ness, although he insisted on the primacy of an ‘interpersonal location’ instead of the individual consciousness:

Although the reality of the word, as is true of any sign, resides between individuals, a word,

at the same time, is produced by the individual organism’s own means without recourse to any equipment of any other kinds of extracorporeal materials This has determined the word

as the semiotic material of inner life – of consciousness (inner speech) Indeed, the con-sciousness could have developed only by having at its disposal material that was pliable and expressible by bodily means And the word was exactly that kind of material The word is available as the sign for, so to speak, inner employment (Vološinov 1929, 14, cited in Tolman1998, 15)

It can also be inferred that language for the individual is bound up with experience and emotion, that an individual’s consciousness of language always combines thoughts and feeling

Vološinov’s theorisation of language and ideology has prompted us to review our experi-ence with English and the mixed resonances, responses and affects that we have experienced when using this language in many contexts It has highlighted for us the importance of paying more attention to ideology as lived, felt, articulated and enacted by the individual, rather than conceiving it as something that exists outside us This insight obviously applies to the metanarrative of the globalisation of English and the ideology that underpins its spread Another way to explain our shift in focus is to say that we are cultivating an artistic consciousness that is sensitive to the experiences that arise unexpectedly through our encounters with English, moments that both directly and indirectly involve English (or indeed moments when we have been conscious of being ‘outside’ English), moments that are mundane, regular, special – but all uniquely personal

It is through becoming aware of such a socially individualised consciousness that you have the freedom to express yourself more personally, exploring imaginative and creative dimensions of the experience of using English You can invent a playful word, stumble across a novel mode of combining ideas, or an innovative style of naming things, or communicating emotions – you can use English to personalise your identity through your own peculiar lens When you use language in such a self-conscious way, not only English but any language, you experience a sense of renewal through the choices you make It is at this point that English, by choice, no longer looms over you as a dominant power that governs what you and everyone else do but becomes more humanising and conducive to equity and a holistic and organic being Ideology is still bound up with the use of English, but it takes the form of a politics of the self, much of which can be expressed through artistic means, as we will show in the following sections

Each of the anecdotes presented below could be read as a lesson in which we found ourselves shifting into a different mode of interpreting the world we were in We would like to signify such dynamics through a set of metaphors including shifting language, shifting emotion, shifting power and shifting focus In the process of moving, we learn from such sparkling moments how English changes in its significance and ideology Many of these sparkling moments are indeed weak or vulnerable moments, as we elaborate subsequently For us, such changes constitute a series of learning experiences

or multiple classrooms of life

Shifting languages: when language choice is an expression of freedom

A Begging Poem Being student from a faraway land I’ve come to be your fan

My guru, please pour knowledge

to fill up this empty storage that has long delayed in the dark

Quench my thirst, light my heart Why ignore, can you hear me?

My parents paid tuition fee Isn’t that worth showing your care more than just pulling your hair over matters about your chair?

(Bao and Phan2017, 63)

These impromptu verses were borne out of one afternoon’s gathering by the warmth of

an electric heater in an office during a Melbourne winter, through laughter and a fair amount of empathy for one of our current international student cohorts whom we felt deserved more We were working at one of the most internationalised and internatio-nalising universities in Australia and, perhaps, globally The number of international students attending the university was recorded as being the highest in the nation At the same time, Australia had often been (and is still) referred to as leading the commercia-lisation of higher education through internationacommercia-lisation, in which international stu-dents are often seen as a target source of income for the country and its universities Coupled with this practice are worries and concerns that international students are not well looked after and respected as intellectual beings (for instance, see Chowdhury and Phan 2014; Tran and Gomes 2017; Marginson and Sawir 2011) We often interacted with international students and were aware of many unpleasant experiences that they underwent ‘What is promised is way more than what is delivered’ was what many students said

Although our regular conversations with each other used to take place in our mother tongue, Vietnamese, that day we happened to blurt out those lines in a second language For a split second, we stared blankly at the poem, wondering why we did it in English There was hardly any immediate answer, but when we showed this writing to a friend, she gave this as a possible explanation: ‘Every time I feel angry or disturbed, every time

I feel the need to be assertive, English words would come out of my mouth, as a way of fending off an unfair situation!’

For some, English is best described not as a language, but as a gadget for articulating the rights and freedom which they are not entitled to when operating within their own language and cultural sphere During the same discussion on social behaviour, another friend elaborated:

There is no way I can argue out loud with my parents or teachers You would get a slap in the face, as that is neither allowed nor expected, but once I resorted to English with my teachers, everything changes We can argue much more freely as any sense of hierarchy seemed to disappear

We, like many other users of English, have used English as a way of expressing disturbed emotions, or as a way to break free At one level, in retrospect, the poem we wrote together that day might have carried our intention to speak up about the accumulated frustration and empathy for our international students Perhaps deep down inside, we felt a poem in English would also symbolise a statement of freedom

of expression A poetic statement would still be powerful without it being too direct and confrontational At another level, this seemingly self-driven act of using English to express disturbed emotions has a strong social character, precisely because the dis-turbed emotions have been caused and conditioned by certain social interactions, discourses and real-life observations That is why we tend to feel that using English

in that way would often lessen power distance or make the power distance less visible and less significant As such, a sense of fairness and equity can be ideologically achieved In many cases, when dissatisfaction and frustration are liberally vented, you might be in a position to demand changes And if well-articulated frustration can become the cause of changing a situation, much of this is owing to the creativity that one exercises via the means of English, as in the above anecdote

The above observation allows us to revisit the concept of ideology as well as the role

of English in the contemporary world Engaging with such sparkle moments means

reflecting critically on our narrative accounts of complex, multiple experiences with the language (Albers, Harste, and Holbrook2017; Broad,2017; Doecke, Anwar, and Illesca

2017; Mirhosseini, 2017; Phan,2008) This anecdote is only one of the multiple class-rooms of life that have influenced us and remain embedded in our social, professional, psychological, philosophical and behavioural encounters

Shifting emotions: when language use in the real world confronts the affective self

Some of our travel diary entries reveal unusual incidents when English ceases to be useful and loses its prestige:

When I was once travelling around Japan, it struck me that English meant so little to everyone My fluent English suddenly was rendering me useless, silent, awkward I failed to communicate despite how much I have been proud for knowing this powerful tool through-out my life time For a moment, in my awareness, English represents emptiness and a sort of inferior social complex Feeling helpless, I found a quiet place to sit down and began to create poems in my little notebook, using this weak language as a tool to at least compose some thoughts about how weak I felt:

How speechless

is the travelling me When English fails to set me free How lonely seems my social ivory When every English word acts like a burglary scaring folks away

in fear and anxiety!

(Bao Dat)

It seems that to live fully with all the senses (sensually, artistically, ideologically, and joyfully), one might let go a bit beyond the pre-approved global conditioning of English When you dance Samba, eat sushi, sip Cuban coffee, and enjoy Pho, why do you have to be chatting in English? Why can’t we not say ‘Chido!’ when dancing Samba, ‘itadakimasu’ when sharing sushi, ‘¿Qué volá?’ when catching up for Cuban coffee, and ‘Ngon qua!’ over a bowl of Vietnamese pho? The sounds and nuances of these utterances, which come honestly from under your skin, connect you well with the locals, before some English can join in when needs be

(Bao Dat)

Here I am writing about weak moments My clumsy two cents I feel like writing about me and Mexico, but I am desperately trapped between tongues, unable to express what I feel inside Not poetic enough in English Even crying won’t help Mexico Day 1 My skin suddenly gets so cold though the sun is out so bright Spanish is all around Samba, rumba, salsa music and food and laughs surround me I am sitting on a bench, gazing at hundreds of tiny purple petals falling from endless rows of jacaranda trees around I’ve forgotten English and all the academic speeches locked inside the two giant hotels on the opposite side of Reforma

(Phan Le Ha, diaries,2008, written while in Mexico attending the CIES Conference on decolonisation and South–South relations, day 1)

Warm water is running in my veins, and I am singing my own songs in Vietnamese, smiling

at strangers, and rocking with many couples passing by My English has gotten totally frozen Frightened I’ve realised I may have been numbed in academic English and non-stop ideological wars leading to tensions after tensions expressed in pieces after pieces The free-spirited writer in me is coming back, sparkled with ‘Besame Mucho’ played on someone’s old cassette I see a Cuban cafe as I am making a turn at a corner I am talking to myself in Vietnamese the whole time

(Phan Le Ha, diaries,2008, day 2)

Lost, I am confessing to the romantic me going wild like an unleashed mare Talking about empowerment day in and day out Oh gosh, who is linguistically more miserable, weaker and more uninteresting than me? No one cares about English here Truth Full stop And how long have I been entertaining the idea of English as a global language? I want to curse I seldom curse linguistically, so I curse with tears inside This reminder is a sparkle I entered the Cuban cafe, ordered a beer though I am not a drinker by any definition I wanted to drink away my ignorance, weakness and my linguistic homesickness I am missing Vietnamese, numbed in English, and totally an alien to Spanish Lucky me ‘Besame Mucho’ is now on, and I can at least sing along with the melody I am singing the Vietnamese ‘Besame Mucho’ that musician Pham Duy created I hear mariachi instrumentation and texture; or I am just imagining it and naming anything musical ‘Mexican’ and ‘Spanish’ mariachi

(Phan Le Ha, diaries,2008, day 2)

In the two separate cases of the Japanese and Spanish language contexts evoked above, the affective self in each of us got rocked even though nobody did anything to us Neither did anyone there refuse to communicate with us in English or make us feel less significant because we did not speak their languages We did not even try to commu-nicate at all We instead commucommu-nicated to the inner self that was shaking and confused inside Our inner selves were caught numbed, frustrated, weak, afraid, lonely, and linguistically, socially and culturally deprived We did not realise then that the affective

self was confronted by and reacting to the languages used in the real world around us, the kind of interaction that was only felt from within

The above weak moments clearly surprise us and also confront us with the truth of how English has been so deeply entrenched in our consciousness, subconsciousness and emotional lives Even when we feel freed from it, that feeling is somehow troublesome Ideology is lived and felt, and as it is lived and felt, the many broader discourses and meanings and images and experiences associated with English, the constant pressure and self-driven urge to use it, hear it, be surrounded by it, and sound ‘smart’ and

‘educated’ in it, are not rendered invisible in one’s seemingly very private and self-focused corners At the same time, intertwined with our seemingly subconscious choice

to shift between languages is our boredom with English, avoidance of English, rejection

of English, resistance to English and mental exhaustion with English These emotions are communicated and carry their social meanings, expressed through ‘odd’ and ‘ran-dom’ words, phrases and expressions in whatever language and sound that kicks in As Vološinov (1929/2017put it, the very social nature of the self and individual conscious-ness and subconsciousconscious-ness are what makes language and ideology multivoiced and inbuilt with voices of many other social beings We would also add that ideology is at play through multi, at times unexpected, voices of the inner self

Shifting power: when the double standard power of English betrays itself

The cartoon in Figure 1was drafted by one of us, Bao Dat, when we were trying to document a real-life incident During an international conference in a city in East Java that Bao Dat attended, two speakers were sharing the same presentation on a

difficult topic of a controversial nature The discussion gradually became so provo-cative that it failed to satisfy some of the audience, leading to several disagreeable comments and challenging questions Although both presenters were making a tremendous effort to respond, further confrontation occurred involving some of the academic audience At one point, each presenter would let the other address tough questions, yet neither of them could do so in a way that satisfied the questioners In the end, time was running out, and the debate continued to be stressful, when one of the speakers who happened to share the same mother tongue with most of the audience decided to switch from English to Javanese, which miraculously eased the tension As we found out later, it was not the content of the discussion that mattered but the presenter’s culturally appropriate way of hand-ling the discussion that resolved all issues It seemed clear that if English had continued to be employed, participants would have continued to be aggressive and they would have probably gone away very angry The incident demonstrates a meaningful reality: while English works as the vehicle for communicating content,

it is the mother tongue that acts as a cultural site for the resourceful negotiation of interpersonal relations Eventually, it is the mother tongue, rather than English, that demonstrates empowerment that brings out goodwill

Many of us spend our days eating different food, using different languages, wearing

different clothes, thinking different thoughts, behaving differently, adapting to different values Such activities suggest how mobile we all can be on multiple levels English, by the same token, is as changeable as we are No longer trapped within its static

dominancy, the role of English, in our view, is free to rise and fall as naturally should be

so For this reason, it might not be a necessity to prescribe English unfailingly as the common language Yes, it sometimes acts as such but at other times it takes on a less-prevalent role In other words, it might be absurd to manipulate the presence of English across all contexts and cultures as consistently global

Shifting focus

From a large picture to small incidents, we are shifting the focus of discussion about the English language from the enormous debates about global English to an exploration of moments when we have each personally experienced the interface between English and other languages, other settings that resist its globalising reach This idea of shifting is the main thread of the article It opens up a great sense of freedom, allowing the inner self to wander and roam It also represents a shift in modes of expression, as shown in our anecdotes and poems and cartoon, as well as in our style of writing throughout the article This shift was acknowledged and sensed by Brenton Doecke after we had shown him some

of the anecdotes/vignettes that we wanted to bring into the article Brenton wrote back:

The two scenes here – the one in Japan, the other in Mexico – are already rich in meaning I can sense how the richly particular details of each vignette challenge the large generalisations

in which proponents of global English traffic – not just the particularities of each scene, but the complexities of thought and emotion prompted by these encounters, as you reflect on how English words resonate (or fail to resonate) within these settings Rather than resonating externally, they resonate within – an intensely subjective resonance rather than an external

or objective one (Doecke, email exchange, 2018)

The exchange between us and Brenton about changing English and what ideological lens might be used in our essay is a lively example of how the feelings and emotions of each individual when using English can be read, felt, responded to, explained and engaged with In this specific interaction among the three of us, our multiple complex emotions towards English condensed in the vignettes seemed to be felt and sensed by the other At the same time, we have all acknowledged language is ideological and part

of the complex interface among diverse languages and cultural meanings nurtured by social interactions We have all agreed on the need to recognise and push for the shift from treating English as an overall power-related language to one that nurtures and

Figure 1.Cartoon by Bao Dat