Mapping english linguistic capital the case of filipino domestic workers in singapore

MAPPING ENGLISH LINGUISTIC CAPITAL: THE CASE OF FILIPINO DOMESTIC WORKERS IN SINGAPORE BEATRIZ PAREDES LORENTE M.A.. viii Acronyms...ix 1 English Voices in an Unequal World System...1

MAPPING ENGLISH LINGUISTIC CAPITAL:

THE CASE OF FILIPINO DOMESTIC WORKERS

IN SINGAPORE

BEATRIZ PAREDES LORENTE

(M.A Literature, Ateneo de Manila University;

M.A Linguistics, Ohio University)

A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

AND LITERATURE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

i

Acknowledgements

When I started this dissertation, I did not know where my questions would take me My thanks go to the institutions and people who have been my oases, lighthouses and travelling companions

First and foremost, I am grateful to the women who participated in this study who shared their time and their stories with me, and who constantly asked why I was researching about English when there were more dramatic things I could write about I am thankful to them, to my students at the Bayanihan Centre and to the volunteers of the Filipino Overseas Workers of Singapore (FOWS) skills training program for keeping me grounded in the everyday realities of using English

My supervisor, Anne Pakir, believed in what I had to say before I found the words to talk and write about my topic coherently She patiently and constantly challenged me to clarify my thoughts and unstintingly supported me through more than six years of writer’s block, life changes and new work demands

My thanks go to friends and former colleagues at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, especially the Asian migrations cluster who exposed me to research on transnational migration My thanks also go to colleagues at the Language and Communication Centre of

Nanyang Technological University I owe adobo to Francesco Cavallaro, Ng

Bee Chin and Tan Ying Ying I am also grateful to Chan Ling Ling and Lee

Acknowledgements

ii

iiHwee Hoon who found ways to help me manage my full teaching load and my writing between January to March 2007

Friends read early versions of some of my chapters and discussed the issues in this dissertation with me at various times I am particularly grateful

to Shanthini Pillai, Noorashikin Abdul Rahman, and T Ruanni F Tupas for being critical readers and wonderful traveling companions

This dissertation would not have been completed without a supportive family I am grateful to my mother, Amelia P Lorente, for believing in my work and my sister, Lora Frances P Lorente, for help in inputting and organizing data and keeping me sane

Finally, I am especially grateful to my husband, Bruno Trezzini, who read through and critically commented on drafts of my dissertation and who took care of everything else so I could concentrate on writing Thank you for everything

This dissertation is dedicated to my late father, Felino L Lorente, a teacher, writer and scholar, who showed me just how rewarding asking questions could be

iii

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements i

Table of Contents iii

Summary vi

List of Tables and Figures viii

Acronyms ix

1 English Voices in an Unequal World System 1

English as a site and means of symbolic struggle 2

English in an unequal world system 4

Voices in English 7

The case study: English-speaking Filipino domestic workers in Singapore 7

Research questions 10

Relevance of the study 11

Outline of the study 15

2 Linguistic Capital in Transnational Arenas 17

Language and globalization 17

Theorizing voice 21

Revisiting linguistic capital 22

Inequalities in the world system 28

The world system 28

Transnational arenas 30

Agency and negotiated identites 32

Agency 32

Negotiated identities 35

Remapping linguistic capital 38

The macro-level of analysis 39

The micro-level of analysis 41

Summary 43

3 Listening to Voices: Methodology and Data Collection 44

The Bayanihan Centre 46

Secondary data sources 49

Class cards 49

Self-selection bias 50

Statistical profile of FDWs who attended English classes 51

In-depth interviews with Filipino domestic workers 53

The in-depth interviews 54

The interview participants 61

Attitudinal survey 65

Additional data sources 68

Table of Contents iv

4 In the Grip of English: The Philippine State and the Making of

Overseas Filipino Workers 70

The Philippines as a labor-sending state 70

History of labor migration from the Philippines 73

Patterns of labor migration from the Philippines 77

The feminization of migrant Filipino labor 81

The grip of English 86

The history of English in the Philippines 89

The making of English-speaking overseas Filipino workers 93

English in shifting indexicalities 98

Re-indexing competitiveness 101

Re-indexing nationalism 106

Summary 114

5 The Script of Servitude: Maid Agencies in Singapore and the Positioning of English-speaking Products 115

Maid agencies as mediating and centering institutions 116

The mediating and centering functions of transnational labor brokers 117

Maid Agencies in Singapore 120

Positioning English-speaking products 129

Representations of Filipino domestic workers in Singapore 129

The relative values of English linguistic capital 135

Styling the domestic worker 139

Performing the script of servitude 143

Displaying servitude 153

Summary 160

6 Translating Selves: Filipino Domestic Workers in Singapore and the Trajectories of English 162

Trajectories of English 163

Translating selves 164

English in the Philippines 164

English in Singapore 168

“I have lost my English” 168

“You’re the one who adjusts, not them, right?” 173

“’Yung madam/Madonna ko” 177

“Pa-English-English” in the Philippines 185

“Lord, help me to English my tongue” 189

Summary 191

7 Mapping Voices: Filipino Domestic Workers in Singapore and the Symbolic Values of “Good English” 192

The symbolic values of “good English” 192

Good English is “puro Ingles” 193

Singlish is not “good English” 195

Mapping voices 201

Positioning employers 201

Table of Contents v

Employers who speak Singlish and/or who are not fluent in

‘standard’ English 202

Expatriate employers and Singaporean employers who speak ‘standard’ English 207

A hierarchy of desirable employers? 210

Positioning domestic workers 213

More than just a maid 213

Indonesian domestic workers 217

Locating belonging 222

Accents of non-belonging 222

In-group codes and offstage identities 224

Summary 227

8 Conclusion: Towards Conditions of Possibility 228

English linguistic capital and symbolic struggles 229

Inequalities and English 231

Mobilizing English 233

Enabling conditions of possibility 235

Appendix 1: Sample of a “Maid Test” 239

Appendix 2: Sample Biodata of a Domestic Worker 243

Appendix 3: Questionnaire (English Translation) 244

Bibliography 248

vi

Summary

Current studies of global English have been criticized for being caught between dichotomies – between arguments about homogeneity or heterogeneity, linguistic imperialism or linguistic hybridity – which do not allow for sufficiently complex understandings of what is currently happening

to English and to the communities, groups and individuals who are appropriating it

This study examines how, as linguistic capital, English is both a resource for and a domain of symbolic struggles in transnational social fields

or arenas This is contextualized by remapping English in macro- and micro- levels of analysis to account for how it is embedded in structural inequalities and how it is mobilized in the immediate struggles of individuals In this regard, this study draws from the case of Filipino domestic workers in Singapore The case presents a unique opportunity to explore how the inequalities of the world system and the acts of English identification of individuals are configured in the context of the flows of migrant women between the Philippines and Singapore, two post-colonial states in contrasting stages of development, that had and that continue to have a historical and cultural formation negotiated in or mediated by English

To unpack the different dimensions of the case, the study focuses on how macro- and micro-level social actors in the transnational arena of domestic work appropriate English and what the effects of these appropriations may be, at their levels These social actors are the Philippine

Summary viistate, transnational maid agencies in Singapore and the Filipino domestic workers in Singapore themselves In particular, the study describes how, in the transnational field, English is appropriated by: (1) the Philippine state in its discourse about the competitiveness of its migrant workers; (2) maid agencies

in Singapore, in their script of servitude for Filipino domestic workers; and (3) the Filipino domestic workers in Singapore in how they negotiate the everyday realities of their marginalized position in Singapore society

This study argues that English is embedded in multiple interconnected sites of symbolic struggle The appropriations of English at different levels and their effectiveness at generating uptake are contingent on the space-specific distribution of valuable material and symbolic resources This has particular implications for marginalized groups such as the Filipino domestic workers who mobilize English in their immediate struggles to reconstitute the everyday impositions of structural power on their lives An understanding of the interactions between structural inequalities engendered by English and agentive appropriations of English should inform strategic interventions

viii

List of Tables and Figures

Table 1: General biographical profile of interview participants at time of

interview 57 Table 2: Profile of interview participants: education, previous work

experience and reasons for coming to Singapore 58 Table 3: Annual deployment of overseas Filipino workers, 1984-June

2005 78 Table 4: Top 10 destinations of overseas Filipinos, as of December 2004 79 Table 5: Top 10 destinations of landbased overseas Filipino workers

(rehires and new hires), 2004 and 2005 80 Table 6: Skill category, selected years (in %) 81 Table 7: Deployed overseas Filipino workers (new hires, top 10

occupational groups by sex), 2005 82 Table 8: Annual deployment of new hires by skill category (female

percentage in brackets), 1992-2002 83 Table 9: Top 10 destinations of overseas Filipino workers and percent

female in OFW population, 2002 85 Table 10: Estimated stock of transnational domestic workers in

Singapore, 1986-2004 122 Table 11: Generalized levels of English proficiency among transnational

domestic workers in Singapore 130 Table 12: Prevailing stereotypes of Filipino, Indonesian and Sri Lankan

transnational domestic workers in Singapore 131 Table 13: Prevailing stereotypes of foreign domestic workers in Canada 137 Table 14: Forms of address/reference: Domestic workers for employers 179 Table 15: Preferred forms of reference: Employers for domestic workers 181 Table 16: Forms of address/reference: Domestic workers for their

employers’ children 182 Table 17: Preferred forms of reference: Employers’ children for domestic

workers 183 Table 18: Words used to refer to (a) employers and experiences with

domestic work and (b) activities, etc on their days off 226

Figure 1: Posters on the glass door of a maid agency in Lucky Plaza 124 Figure 2: Rules posted on a glass door of a maid agency in Lucky Plaza 155

BSP Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas

DepEd Department of Education

DOLE Department of Labor and Employment

DOLOP DOLE Labor Opportunities Program

EOI Export-oriented industrialization

FDI Foreign direct investment

FDW Filipino domestic worker

FOWS Filipino Overseas Workers in Singapore

FUSE Foundation for Upgrading the Standard of Education

GDP Gross domestic product

HSW Household service worker

LCP Live-in Caregiver Program

MOI Medium of instruction

MOM Ministry of Manpower

NC2 National Certificate II

NSO National Statistics Office

OFW Overseas Filipino worker

OPA Overseas performing artist

OWWA Overseas Workers Welfare Administration

POEA Philippine Overseas Employment Administration

SWS Social Weather Station

TESDA Technical Education and Skills Development Authority

UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women

1

1 English Voices in an Unequal World System

Just as, at the level of the relations between groups, a language is worth what those who speak it are worth, so too, at the level of interactions between individuals, speech always owes a major part of its value to the value of the person who utters it

(Bourdieu, 1977, p 252)

This study is about mapping the appropriations of English linguistic capital in transnational contexts, particularly in the case of Filipino domestic workers (FDWs) in Singapore Threading through this study are three interrelated themes: the centrality of language as a resource for and a site of symbolic struggles, the structural inequalities of the world system and the conditioned agency of language users

Firstly, as observed by Heller (2001a), “language is both a key domain

of struggle over difference and inequality, and a means of conducting that struggle” (p 120) Language is a field where what is considered legitimate and hence culturally valuable, in the form of the ‘authentic’ accent or the

‘standard’ variety, is contested by different social groups At the same time, language is also a resource On the one hand, it is a central element for regulating access to valuable symbolic and material capital On the other hand, speakers can mobilize linguistic resources – accents, varieties, registers – to semiotically position themselves in various social spaces Secondly, contemporary linguistic and cultural contacts are mediated by the structural inequalities engendered by the economic and political forces of globalization

Chapter 1 2

In this regard, it must be emphasized that language interacts in a variable fashion with other systems of inequality Thirdly, people’s functional and indexical appropriations of language are determined, constrained and conditioned by such systems of inequality This emphasizes the importance of examining people’s multiple investments into their linguistic acts, desires and performances (Pennycook, 2007b) as they exercise their conditioned agency

English as a site and means of symbolic struggle

In a letter to the Forum section of The Straits Times, a frustrated Singaporean

whose parents had been unsuccessful in hiring a foreign domestic worker questioned the rationale behind the written test which first-time foreign domestic workers in Singapore have to pass before they can be employed:

Is it not sufficient [for maids] to just understand some simple

words for conversation? Is it really necessary for the maids to

be able to read a lot of English words? So long as they are able

to converse in English, why do they even need to read up that

much? […] Are maids here to work as maids or as clerks?

(Loh, 2006)

Introduced by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) in 2005 as part of a package

of measures1 to raise the quality of first-time foreign domestic workers, the multiple choice test is supposed to help ensure that would-be domestic workers possess the basic numeracy and literacy skills to perform household tasks and adapt to life in Singapore (Tan, 2006) The assessment of these basic numeracy and literacy skills is conducted in ‘simple English’, suggesting that foreign domestic workers should be able to read and understand the language

in order to work in Singapore For the letter writer though, the communicative

1

A sample of part of the test is in Appendix 1 The requirements introduced by the MOM in

2005 are described in Chapter 5

Chapter 1 3 skills of domestic workers need not be tested by a written examination as

“maids” just need to “understand some simple words for conversation” and they do not need to be “able to read a lot of English words” nor to “read up that much” For him, this limited repertoire indexes domestic work, distinguishing “maids” from “clerks”

The letter writer’s notions about the functions and values of English in domestic work are a marked contrast to Myrna’s2 views about her competence

in English Myrna, a Filipino domestic worker (FDW)3 who had been working

in Singapore for 11 years at the time I interviewed her, told me she had “better English” than her first Singaporean Chinese employer:

MYRNA: My female Chinese employer, she was even the one

who criticized me The one who is not good is the one who

criticizes! She thought she was good (BL: What was your

reaction when she criticized you?) I didn’t react because I knew

I was better than her I just told her that our Englishes were

different: theirs is British English, ours is American English.4

(’Yung amo kong Chinese na babae, siya pa ’yung namimintas

Kung sino pa ’yung di marunong, siya pa ’yung namimintas

Feeling niya, siya ’yung magaling (BL: Ano ’yung reaction mo

pag pinipintasan ka niya?) Wala e alam ko namang mas

magaling ako sa kanya Sinasabi ko na lang sa kanya na

magkaiba ’yung English namin: ’yung sa kanila British

English, ’yung atin American English.)

4

All the translations from Filipino or Ilocano to English are mine “BL” refers to the author,

“…” indicates a pause in speech and “[…]” indicates ellipsis

Chapter 1 4

In Myrna’s short narrative, one can see the imprint of the asymmetrical relationship between FDWs and their employers in Singapore Myrna was unable to assert that she had “better English” than her former employer whenever the latter criticized her However, she was able to claim that their Englishes were just “different” by associating her employer’s English with British English, and her own English with American English For Myrna, English is obviously more than just a lingua franca through which she and her employer can communicate; it is more than just a medium through which she can understand instructions and participate in conversations For Myrna, these distinctions between her English (“better English” and “American English”) and that of her former employer’s (“not good” and “British English”) may very well enhance – however momentarily – her social position vis-à-vis her former employer

English in an unequal world system

The differences between the letter writer’s and Myrna’s views about the English of foreign domestic workers in Singapore challenge the popular notion that English is a neutral global lingua franca with homogenous and predictable functions, values and meanings They also challenge the dichotomies – homogeneity or heterogeneity, liberal accommodation or resistance, linguistic imperialism or linguistic hybridity – which current studies of global English seem to be mired in These dichotomies may no longer allow for sufficiently complex understandings of what is currently happening to English and to the

individuals, groups and communities who are appropriating, using and doing

English (Pennycook, 2003)

Chapter 1 5

The case of Myrna and the letter writer highlights how ‘English’ is

mobilized by various speakers in symbolic struggles over the distribution of valuable material and symbolic resources That ‘English’ can be mobilized in

different ways by various speakers indicates that it is not a unitary construct

English is a social, ideological, historical and discursive

construction, the product of ritualized social performatives that

become sedimented into temporary subsystems…That is to say,

the temporary sedimentation of English subsystems is a result

of agentive acts, particular moves to identify, to use and adapt

available semiotic resources for a variety of goals (Pennycook,

2007b, p 169)

In order to begin to overcome such dichotomies and to examine how

‘English’ is a social performative rooted in particular configurations of power between speakers in specific social domains and spaces, it is necessary to move beyond understandings of language that are framed by paradigms of bounded nations and stationary speakers Such paradigms which are tied to an earlier era of nation-building still seem to be the dominant frameworks used in studies of global English and of language in society in general These frameworks seem to be durable even as the deterritorialization, hyper-mobility and intensive interconnectedness of the current era of globalization have already destabilized them As an important step in moving beyond such paradigms, it is necessary to locate the functions, values and meanings of English and the symbolic struggles over them in the world system (Wallerstein, 2004) As Blommaert (2005) rightly argues:

In an era of globalization, the threshold of contextualization in

discourse analysis or sociolinguistics can no longer be a single

society (or even less a single event) but needs to include the

relationships between different societies and the effect of these

Chapter 1 6

relationships on repertoires of language users and their

potential to construct voice (p 15)

On a fundamental level, taking the world system as the “threshold of contextualization” for English means affirming that the world in which English has the status of the global lingua franca is not a uniform space The ubiquity of English and its use in linguistic and cultural contact zones are engendered and organized by inequality Furthermore, the framework of the world system (Wallerstein, 2004) highlights the interconnectedness of these different scales such that “what occurs in a particular sovereign state can and must be explained by reference to state-level dynamics, but needs to be set simultaneously against the background of substate and superstate dynamics” (Blommaert, 2003, p 612)

Thus, for example, to contextualize the letter writer’s and Myrna’s views about the functions, values and meanings of English, it would no longer

be enough to examine the asymmetrical relationship between a domestic worker and her employer The relationships between the different societies that are coming into contact in the transnational field of domestic work would need to be considered In the case of the letter writer and Myrna, this would

mean, among other things, examining the mechanisms of and processes involved in the labor flows between the Philippines and Singapore, two

Southeast Asian countries in contrasting stages of development, two colonial states that had and that continue to have a historical and cultural formation negotiated in and mediated by English (Pakir, 2003a)

post-Chapter 1 7

Voices in English

Contextualizing English in the world system does not mean denying the creativity individuals, groups and communities exercise when they

appropriate, use and do English; it actually brings such voices into sharper

focus (Blommaert, 2005) Pennycook (1994) defines voice as “a site of struggle where the subjectivity of the language-user confronts the conditions

of possibility formulated between language and discourse” (p 296) Pennycook’s definition highlights how voice is conditioned agency To listen

to it, one needs to examine what and how social positions, identities and subjectivities emerge when social actors use language, alongside other material and symbolic resources, to reconstitute conditions of possibility in their own everyday lives, and in the groups and communities which they are a part of

Thus, for example, the voices of the letter writer and of Myrna emerge from their appropriation and use of English to affirm, negotiate and reconstruct their social positions in the transnational context of domestic work

in Singapore This notion of voice also raises other questions: How do globally marginalized groups like FDWs find voices in English? How are we to contextualize these voices in English in the inequalities of the world system? What are the conditions of possibility that shape their voice? These are some

of the questions this study explores

The case study: English-speaking Filipino domestic workers in Singapore

To develop the aforementioned themes, this study draws from the case of FDWs in Singapore Migrant Filipino women have come to occupy a niche as

Chapter 1 8 domestic workers in many countries (Asis, 2005).5 Among these countries is Singapore where, as of 2004, there were an estimated 60,000-70,000 FDWs, almost half of the 140,000-150,000 foreign domestic workers in the city-state (Rahman, Yeoh, & Huang, 2005).6 Their entry into domestic work in Singapore is facilitated by the country’s Foreign Maid Scheme which was introduced in 1978 to enable local women to enter into or continue participating in the labor force so that the urgent labor shortage in the rapidly industrializing country could be ameliorated (Wong, 1996) Under this scheme, FDWs are considered to be low-skilled ‘foreign workers’ and the state consistently maintains a tight policy of keeping their immigration in check and ensuring their transient and temporary status as contract migrant workers (Rahman et al., 2005, p 238)

In choosing FDWs in Singapore as a case study, this study analytically considers the case’s specific context and how its different parts are configured

More specifically, this study examines how the world system and “acts of English identification” (Pennycook, 2007b) are configured in the flows of migrant Filipino women into the labor market of domestic work in Singapore

As case studies help researchers connect the micro-level, or the actions of individual people, to the macro-level, or large scale social structures and

processes (Neuman, 2000), this study considers how macro- and micro-level

5

As of 2002, the top 10 destinations of migrant Filipino women were Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Singapore, Kuwait, Italy, United Kingdom and Brunei (Asis, 2005)

6

The MOM does not release official figures of foreign nationals working in the country, only ballpark estimates The figures were based on various sources: local media, academic publications and personal communications with representatives of the embassies of Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, the major source countries of foreign domestic workers in Singapore

Chapter 1 9

social actors in the arena of transnational domestic work discursively appropriate English, and what the effects of these appropriations may be at these levels These social actors are the Philippine state, the transnational maid

agencies in Singapore and the FDWs in Singapore

It must be noted that this is not a comparative study or a multi-sited ethnography in the traditional sense However, it is argued that the FDWs in Singapore represent an exceptional case, a “special (perhaps unique) set of circumstances or phenomena that warrant intensive study” (Bradshaw & Wallace, 1991, p 154) It is also argued that while this study does not compare transnational FDWs across locales, it does look at the multiple sites and scales where the appropriation of English plays a significant role in the constitution

of the identities of FDWs in Singapore

Furthermore, there are a number of reasons why FDWs, in general, represent a unique case FDWs are, as Parreñas (2001) puts it, “servants of globalization” Located at the margins of the global division of reproductive labor and regulated as a temporary and disposable workforce in Singapore, they are, in many ways, at the losing end of globalization They are a globally mobile group and can be found in developed countries such as Canada and Italy, newly developed countries such as Taiwan and Singapore, and the oil-rich countries in the Middle East.7 FDWs are transmigrants and their travels are marked by multiple departures, returns and detours A migrant Filipino

7

Filipino women are not the only transnational domestic workers There are also increasing numbers of transnational Indonesian domestic workers in the Middle East, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan Transnational Sri Lankan domestic workers can be found in the Middle East and in Singapore Women from Latin America and the Caribbean also migrate to work as domestic workers in the USA and Canada FDWs though are unparalleled in their global scope

Chapter 1 10 woman may head first to Singapore, then to Hong Kong to work as a domestic worker With sufficient capital, she may apply to work as a caregiver in Canada with the goal of eventually settling there or getting a work visa for the United States In between and during her stints in these various countries, she may travel back to the Philippines to visit her family for a few weeks or to rest for a few months What is most striking about FDWs though is the fact that they are ‘English-speaking’, having finished at least 10 years of schooling in the Philippine bilingual education system where English is, at least in theory, one of the main mediums of instruction While no external yardsticks have been used to measure their language ability in Singapore (Yeoh & Huang, 1998a), their competence in English has been variously cited by maid agencies

as the reason why they are paid more than their Indonesian and Sri Lankan counterparts and why they are “suitable” for taking care of young children who, presumably, would be in the process of acquiring and learning English at home and in school The FDWs competence in English is striking because this would mean that they, a marginalized social group, possess linguistic capital that is central in the world system and highly valuable in the linguistic economy of Singapore

Research questions

In this light, the research questions which this study seeks to answer are: What are the effects of appropriations of English in transnational arenas or social fields structured by the unequal world system? To what extent do these appropriations reconstitute and destabilize the structuring conditions in which they are embedded? The answers to these research questions are explored

Chapter 1 11 through a case study where I look at the discursive appropriations of English

at different levels More specifically, I examine how centering institutions,

namely the Philippine state and the maid agencies in Singapore appropriate

English to construct the identities and index the social positions of FDWs I also look at how FDWs in Singapore themselves appropriate English in their acts of English identification

Relevance of the study

This study contributes to three main areas of inquiry: (1) language and migration in the broader context of the emerging field of language and globalization; (2) global English; and (3) Philippine migration

Firstly, this study contributes to studies of language and migration, in

the context of current understandings of and debates about globalization There is an increasing awareness of the need to incorporate globalization in sociolinguistic analysis (Coupland, 2003) This is especially true of sociolinguistic studies of migration where the focus has tended to be on permanent departures and issues of uprooting and settlement Such a focus has meant that:

Most authors have tended to address the role of language and

sociolinguistic domination within the context of single

nation-states, discussing the fate of speakers of “dominated” languages

within a single “dominant” society Relatively little has been

said about the meanings and uses of migrants’ languages in

more than one national context (Koven, 2004, p 270)

This is not to say that such studies are no longer relevant; there are still many migrants for whom, by force or by choice, physical departure is permanent However, with modern technologies of communication and travel, it is now

Chapter 1 12 more likely that such departures are “transient and complex, ridden with disruptions and detours, and based on translocal interconnections between places and multiple chains of movement” (Yeoh, Piper, Shen, & Lorente,

2005, p 1)

Contemporary migrations8 no longer seem to be permanent departures Migrants can take a diversity of trajectories They can be temporary labor migrants, highly skilled and business migrants, irregular migrants (also known

as undocumented or illegal migrants), refugees, asylum-seekers, forced migrants, family members (also known as family reunion or family reunification migrants), and return migrants (Castles, 2000) Crucially, these trajectories are not uni-directional Intense cross-border social relations facilitated in part by modern communication technology enable migrants to operate transnationally, that is, they are able to participate in the activities of daily life in at least two nations.9 The migrant Filipino women in my study for example, are part of transnational households They work as foreign domestic workers in Singapore but they also actively maintain relationships with their

Chapter 1 13 families back in the Philippines by still playing the roles of wife, mother or sister from afar While remittances were perhaps their most tangible link to their families back home, the women I spoke to also told me of how they would SMS their children to remind them to do their homework or to say good night They participated in family decisions (e.g whether or not a pregnant sibling should get married, the school a niece or nephew should attend, etc.) via long-distance calls, letters and/or by withholding or sending remittances There is a need, in the fields of migration studies and sociolinguistic studies of migration to account for how transnationals such as the FDWs manage their languages, identities and statuses in the contexts of both sending and receiving countries (Koven, 2004)

Thus, this study departs from the traditional focus on permanent migrants by examining the case of FDWs in Singapore who are considered to

be temporary migrants As a transient labor force, they are geographically

mobile and they may move from destination to destination but they are explicitly never incorporated in their host societies, such as Singapore.10 This study also looks at migration outside of American and Western European contexts which are already vastly represented in literature Instead, its broad context is the feminized flows between the Philippines and Singapore

In addressing the need to look at the “precise movements people (and their symbolic attributes) make through different environments […] and […] the larger frames within which such moves are possible, get enabled, get

10

This also raises questions with regard to conceptions of linguistic human rights and minority language rights The FDWs are a minority in so far as they occupy marginalized positions in their host societies but they seem most able to publicly exercise their human rights and contest their marginalized positions in their host societies through the medium of English

Chapter 1 14 denied, and have effects” (Blommaert, Collins, & Slembrouck, 2005, p 199), this study hopes to contribute towards building sociolinguistic understandings

of language use and language users that go beyond current assumptions about bounded nations and sedentary subjects

Secondly, this research contributes to the study of global Englishes English is widely considered to be the language of globalization As the

supposed international language (in discourses of English as an International Language or EIL), it is regarded as the global lingua franca which according to House (2003) often functions in a utilitarian and neutral manner among speakers who share no other language code; such speakers collaborate in English for local and restricted purposes, without any identity loading or cultural investment in the language As has been pointed out earlier, studies of global English have tended to focus on linguistic descriptions of varieties of English and on dichotomous debates about the implications of the global spread and scope of English However:

We need to understand how English is involved in global flows

of culture and knowledge, how English is used and appropriated by users of English round the world, how English

colludes with multiple domains of globalization, from popular

culture to unpopular politics, from international capital to local

transaction, from ostensible diplomacy to purported

peace-keeping, from religious proselytizing to secular resistance

(Pennycook, 2007b, p 159)

The foci of this study then are not on descriptions of English but rather on interpretations of English, that is, on the indexicalities that are assigned to English varieties, repertoires and specific forms, and mobilized by social

actors at the macro- and micro-levels This study builds on the argument that

Chapter 1 15 English and for that matter, “good English is not a clearly definable object It

is however, a powerful social fact” (Urciuoli, 1996, p 107) This means a focus on ‘English effects’: on how conceptions of English shape the “orders of indexicality” (Blommaert, 2005), that is, the hierarchies of values and meanings, which institutions produce and on how everyday appropriations of English may impact the biographies of FDWs In this regard:

The question then becomes not whether some monolithic thing

called English is imperialistic or an escape from poverty, nor

how many varieties there may be of this thing called English,

but rather what kind of mobilizations underlie acts of English

use or learning (Pennycook, 2007b, p 171)

Finally, this study contributes a sociolinguistic perspective to the already rich

literature on the Filipino diaspora There is a dearth of sociolinguistic studies

on the Filipino diaspora despite there being more than eight million Filipinos overseas and despite the fact that overseas Filipino workers (henceforth

“OFWs”) are working in more than 180 countries around the world (Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, 2006a) All of these migrant Filipinos would know English and they would provide an altogether new dimension to what the term “global English” signifies This study is, to

my knowledge, the only sociolinguistic study so far that is entirely focused on labor migration from the Philippines in general, and FDWs in Singapore in particular

Outline of the study

In the next chapter, I discuss the theoretical underpinnings of the study I describe my data collection methods in Chapter 3 Chapters 4 to 7 discuss different dimensions of the case study In Chapters 4 and 5, I analyze

Chapter 1 16 centering institutions at the macro-level Chapter 4 focuses on how the Philippine state, appropriates English in its construction of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) Chapter 5 looks at the ‘English-based’ mechanisms which transnational maid agencies in Singapore employ to differentiate and style FDWs In Chapters 6 and 7, my analysis is at the micro-level and I focus on the FDWs in Singapore themselves and their acts of English identification Chapter 6 is about the spatial and temporal trajectories of the FDWs’ English Chapter 7 centers on how FDWs define and mobilize the symbolic values of

“good English” In Chapter 8, I revisit the main themes that underpin this study and point to further research

17

2 Linguistic Capital in Transnational Arenas

In this chapter, I lay out the theoretical framework that informs how I contextualize English linguistic capital in the case of FDWs in Singapore I first outline the emerging concerns of a sociolinguistics of globalization I then develop the broad themes that underpin this study so as to highlight: (1) how linguistic capital in transnational arenas is a central resource for and site of symbolic struggles, (2) how it is shaped by the structural inequalities of the world system and (3) how it can be appropriated in agentive acts by which individuals resist and/or reconstitute how they are structurally (dis)located I also delineate the two main levels of analysis I use to structure my analysis of the case study: (1) the macro-level where the focus is on centering institutions and how they (re)allocate the functions, values and meanings of English; and (2) the micro-level where the focus is on individuals and their acts of English identification

Language and globalization

Globalization is a highly contested and contentious phenomenon.11 Broadly defined as the “intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” (Giddens, 1990, p 64), globalization is

11

Much has been written about globalization Coupland (2003) provides a good set of sources

to begin with For a concise survey of globalization, see Block and Cameron (2002a) For an overview of globalization theories and perspectives, see Lechner and Boli (2000) and el-Ojeili and Hayden (2006)

Chapter 2 18 sometimes regarded as Western and in particular, American cultural imperialism in a different guise However, this intensive linking of distant localities is also seen as encouraging productive translocal synergies which forge hybridity and a “global mélange” (Nederveen Pieterse, 2004) The contentiousness of globalization can also be seen in the tensions between the fixed and the fluid, between the boundary-making practices (Lamont & Fournier, 1992; Lamont & Molnar, 2002) and boundary-breaking flows (Appadurai, 1996) which have transformed social, economic and political landscapes These tensions have had a particular impact on understandings of nations and nationalisms as “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1991) While

it has been argued that the penetration of global forces into national political economies and cultures has led to the deterritorialization and ‘unbinding’ of nations (Basch et al., 1994), other scholars have cautioned that despite the changing and even lessening significance of the national, the world has not yet entered a postnational era Sassen (1996), for instance, talks about the

“opposite turns of nationalism” where the denationalization of economies has been accompanied by the renationalization of politics These “opposite turns

of nationalism” are, for example, apparent in international migration where

“the quickening of transnational flows in a globalising world has had the effect

of re-igniting nationalisms in both sending and receiving states” (Yeoh, Huang, & Rahman, 2005, p 6)

The most contentious debates around globalization have centered on the extent it has leveled the playing field for determining and accessing valuable material and symbolic resources On the one hand, cultural hybridity,

Chapter 2 19 border-crossings by marginal “others” and the possibilities presented by multi-positional identities have been celebrated for opening up new possibilities for subversive popular resistance from below (Guarnizo & Smith, 1998, p 5) On the other hand, it has been argued that globalization can be an intensely alienating process It can disenfranchise and dislocate people’s sense of authentic membership in longstanding communities (Coupland, 2003) and it reproduces and exacerbates enduring asymmetries of domination, inequality, racism, sexism, class conflict and uneven development on global and local scales (Guarnizo & Smith, 1998; Perrons, 2004)

There is no doubt that globalization has a profound impact on the functions, values and meanings of languages, and that these effects are also contentious.12 For example, recent work has shown that languages which used

to be considered markers of authenticity and national or ethnic belonging – such as French in Canada and Mandarin in Singapore – are now regarded as commodifiable resources (Heller, 2002, 2003; Wee, 2003) Relatedly, the boundary-breaking flows of globalization have also destabilized long-held beliefs about the foundational relationship between languages and nations Developed Western nations which may idealize the idea of homogenous and monoglot ‘national cultures’ now have to respond to the increasingly complex demands and opportunities of multilingual environments and multilingual

12

There is an increasing body of work in sociolinguistics that explicitly deals with globalization and language Perhaps the most ground-breaking collection in this regard has

been the 2003 special issue of the Journal of Sociolinguistics on sociolinguistics and

globalisation edited by Nikolas Coupland See also Block and Cameron (2002b), Blommaert (2005) and Pennycook (2007a) There is also a collection of articles on multilingualism and

diasporic populations in a 2005 special issue of Language and Communication, edited by James Collins and Stef Slembrouck Fairclough (2006), in a book entitled Language and Globalization, has written about the language in the processes of globalization from a critical

discourse analysis perspective

Chapter 2 20 immigrant populations (Stevenson & Mar-Molinero, 2006) Developing non-Western countries engaged in the project of resisting colonial legacies now face the need to ensure access to translocal opportunities As Canagarajah (2005a) puts it:

While non-Western communities are busy working one project

(decolonization), the carpet has been pulled from under their

feet by another (globalization) It is as if one historical process

was subsumed by another before the process was complete Or

it appears as if one movement was subverted by the other

There are significant differences in the project of both

movements Decolonization typically entails resisting English

and other colonial languages in favor of building an

autonomous nation-state; globalization has made the borders of

the nation-state porous and reinserted the importance of English

language for all communities (p 419)

The contentious effects of globalization on language and language users challenge the critical capacity of sociolinguistics to “[be] accountable to language data in social environments, [pursue] issues of social value in language variation and [critique] the linguistic and discursive bases of social inequality” (Coupland, 2003, pp 465-466) In turn, this has implications on how sociolinguistic data is interpreted and evaluated

Firstly, the nature of globalization changed the frame for contextualizing and interpreting language data from local social environments and the national level to the transnational and global level This means situating micro-level events such as the conversation between a Filipino domestic worker and her Singaporean employer not just within the workings

of the relationships between employers and domestic workers but also in macro-level processes such as the labor flows of migrant women from the Philippines to Singapore, the bifurcated migration policy of the Singapore

Chapter 2 21 state which differentiates between “foreign workers” and “foreign talent” and the overarching global division of labor which organizes such boundary-making regulations and boundary-breaking labor flows This also means re-evaluating and re-conceptualizing fundamental sociolinguistic concepts such

as ethnolinguistic identity, speech community, etc

Secondly, the contentiousness of globalization raises the question of

how sociolinguistics should evaluate it (Coupland, 2003) and its effects on

language use and language users How, for example, should one evaluate the commodification of languages and the re-insertion of the importance of English for all communities? There is, as Coupland (2003) notes, a key moral agenda here for which “no simple judgments are possible” (p 470) It is clear, however, that “it would be nạve to assume that the linguascapes of globalised societies will be less unequal” (p 470) In this light, changing the threshold for interpreting language data would necessitate closely examining the effects of the global on the local functions, values and meanings of languages Fine grained ‘localized’ contextualizations of language practices and language ideologies are necessary because while globalization may have enabled transnational connections, it is still embodied in “specific social relations established between specific people, situated in unequivocal localities, at historically determined times” (Smith & Guarnizo, 1998, p 11)

Theorizing voice

In this section, I discuss the major themes that frame this study, namely, the centrality of language as a resource for and a site of symbolic struggles, the inequality of the world system as a structuring force in the appropriations of

Chapter 2 22 language and the agency of language users as a creative and conditioned practice In developing these themes, I build on emerging theoretical work on

a sociolinguistics of globalization More specifically and in order to make explicit the toolkit I use to unpack the different dimensions of my case study, I recast them in the light of the research questions I outlined in Chapter 1

Revisiting linguistic capital

For re-evaluating and remapping the linguistic and discursive bases of inequality, it is necessary to revisit Bourdieu’s (1977; 1991) powerful notion

of “linguistic capital” As a starting point, linguistic capital can be defined as

“fluency in, and comfort with, a high status … language which is used by groups who possess economic, social and political power and status in local and global society” (Morrison & Lui, 2000, p 473) English, for example, very much fits the profile of a high status, world wide language; therefore, one

is considered to have linguistic capital if one is fluent in, and comfortable with, English This initial definition is useful for highlighting the conditions which need to be met for a language to be considered as linguistic capital and for speakers to be considered as possessing linguistic capital The language that is considered to be linguistic capital is typically associated with the dominant group in society, i.e the groups who possess economic, social and political power and status In turn, for speakers to distinguish themselves as possessors of linguistic capital they must show mastery of this dominant language; they must be fluent in and comfortable with it

Crucially, like the other forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1986), linguistic capital is unevenly distributed and people have differential access to it and to

Chapter 2 23 the possibilities for controlling its production and distribution More specifically, the distribution of linguistic capital is a function of the distribution of other forms of capital – economic capital (wealth, property, income), social capital (social networks), cultural capital (taste, education, manners) and symbolic capital (legitimacy) – which define an individual’s position in society As such, linguistic differences or the different amounts of linguistic capital which speakers may have are the “‘retranslation’ of social differences” (Jenkins, 2002, p 154) Thus, when speakers with different amounts of linguistic capital interact, as when someone who is fluent in the standard variety of a language (e.g Singapore Standard English) interacts with

someone who is fluent only in the ‘low’ variety (e.g Singlish or Singapore

Colloquial English), the interaction is a “situated [encounter] between agents endowed with socially structured resources and competencies […], [it] bears the traces of the social structure that it both expresses and helps to reproduce” (Thompson, 1991, p 2)

This differential access to resources and to the control of these resources takes shape in the process of symbolic struggles – in different social groups maneuvering to impose their visions of social divisions as legitimate (Bourdieu, 1984) – because people have “different sets of interests with respect to maintaining or gaining access to them, or with respect to accepting

or contesting the value assigned to them” (Heller, 2001b, p 214) By linking the value of a language and of linguistic utterances to the unequal distribution

of valuable material and symbolic resources, Bourdieu highlights how:

Chapter 2 24

The relationship between dominant (nationally legitimate) and

dominated (situationally specific) is the same competitive

struggle that takes place with respect to other cultural products

The unequal distribution of linguistic capital […] provides this

struggle with its object, its weapons and its framework […]

Firstly, language use is indexical; it invokes social meanings and carries information about its speaker’s identity and social position (Urciuoli, 1996) Language use can index wealth (economic capital) and authority (symbolic capital) An index may be presupposing, that is, the information it signals is taken for granted in the context in which it is used (Urciuoli, 1996)

In Singapore, for example, it may be taken for granted that a person who does not know English at all is uneducated and is to be treated as such Thus, Indonesian domestic workers who do not know English are positively stereotyped by maid agencies to be simple and homely, and negatively stereotyped to be dim-witted and nạve; their lack of fluency in English is used

at the FDW In using linguistic capital, i.e “straight English”, the FDW is evoking, if not wealth then authority She temporarily subverts the asymmetrical relations between her and her employer and redefines the terms

of their interaction At that particular moment, she is the one with valuable linguistic capital and the Singlish-speaking employer is the one without; she has the authority to speak, the employer does not

This calls attention to the second aspect of symbolic struggles with and over language, namely, that the efficacy of linguistic capital is contingent on its uptake, on its indexicalities being recognized, accepted and granted by others (Blommaert, 2005) In the example above, the FDWs’ deployment of

“straight English” may silence a Singlish-speaking employer who is not fluent

in Singapore Standard English and who recognizes and accepts the symbolic value and power of the ability to speak an ‘unmixed’ English code As such, in this context, the employer is compelled to speak in “straight English”, something that s/he is unable to do The FDWs’ use of “straight English” may

Chapter 2 26 not work in the same way, in the case of employers who can speak (or who think they can speak) Singapore Standard English; the authority which the FDWs’ linguistic capital is supposed to evoke may not be granted, or may not have as much weight, in interactions where employers themselves can counter with an ‘unmixed’ English code The case of Myrna which I examined in detail in Chapter 1 illustrates this Myrna’s employer who thinks she speaks

“good English” does not grant authority to Myrna’s linguistic capital Unable

to impose the authority of her linguistic capital, Myrna’s site of struggle (at least in her interaction with her employer) shifts to trying to establish the equal symbolic value of her English and that of her employer’s This, she does, by evoking the equivalent indexicalities of British and American English, both of which are ‘prestige’ varieties

Bourdieu’s approach to language and power has been criticized for equating the institutional domination of a language variety with hegemony (Woolard, 1985) and treating the reproduction of linguistic capital by the state

as being “unhindered by internal contradictions and by the constraints of history” (Haeri, 1997, p 795) A central critique (which has also been a general critique of Bourdieu’s larger theoretical framework13) has been that this approach views language use, i.e the production of linguistic utterances for particular linguistic markets, as reflecting and reproducing the status quo more than anything else (Jenkins, 2002) According to his critics, it does not account nor allow for agency; it fails to show how individuals can intervene to

13

For a critical and well-written introduction to Bourdieu’s work, see Jenkins (2002)

Chapter 2 27 change the processes by which linguistic capital is legitimated and unequally distributed (see Pennycook, 2001)

Bourdieu’s assertion that linguistic capital draws its symbolic power from the authority of dominant social groups can be rightly criticized for being

“premised on the prior existence of forms of power that underlie the power of certain uses of language” (Pennycook, 2001, p 126) This, however, can be addressed by paying detailed attention to the “specific ways in which power and language are interrelated in historically and culturally distinct speech communities” (Stroud, 2002, p 250), and by using “a combination of historiographic and ethnographic investigations of the particular sociolinguistic dynamics in any given society” (Blommaert, 1997, p 806) By specifying the shifting configurations of power in particular spaces and times, one may be better able to examine the roots and routes of symbolic power, that

is, how certain forms and uses of language come to be considered as valuable and legitimate and how what counts as valuable and legitimate changes over space and time Chapters 4 to 8 have been written with this in mind

I now turn to the contextualization of these fundamental assertions about language and linguistic capital in the dynamics of globalization which is the broad frame of reference of my study In particular, I elaborate on Bourdieu’s approach by highlighting how: (1) a transnational framework can enrich our understanding of how language becomes a resource for and a site of symbolic struggles; and (2) a conception of voice as embodied in the negotiations between ‘intended’ and ‘assumed’ indexical meanings may provide an account of agency

Chapter 2 28 Inequalities in the world system

Bourdieu’s (1991) analysis of the workings of language and symbolic power was confined to unified, monoglot symbolic markets in single nation-states However, as has been argued earlier, in an era of globalization, language can

no longer be contextualized in a single society; it needs to shift to the transnational and global level

The world system

Blommaert (2005) has suggested that communication events need to be

conceived of as “ultimately influenced by the structure of the world system”

(p 15, emphasis original) In doing so, he draws from Wallerstein’s systems theory14 which was among the first social theories to move beyond a mononational focus and provide a model for analyzing global interactions and understanding small-scale structures and processes as being influenced by the structure and dynamics of the encompassing system in which they are embedded Wallerstein’s world-systems model is perhaps best known for how

world-it analytically distinguishes between three kinds of spaces (e.g types of states) arising from an asymmetric division of labor within a single “world-system” These structurally different yet interconnected spaces are: the upper stratum of core regions, the middle stratum of semi-peripheral regions and the lower stratum of peripheral regions (Wallerstein, 2000).15 Taking the world system

as the threshold for contextualizing linguistic capital is predicated on the realization that the world is not a uniform space and that the structures and

Chapter 2 29 dynamics of globalization and, in particular, its social processes are organized and engendered by inequality, not uniformity In the case of migration, for example, it has been argued that the capitalist interests embodied in global markets organizes nations into unequal relations, imposing a structure on the geographical movements of people and workers, and creating structural linkages between migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries (Aguilar, 2002) At this world system level, migrants are considered to be “part of the ongoing circulation of resources, both capital and labor, within the boundaries

of a single division of labor, that is, between a dominant core and a dependent periphery” (Friedman-Kasaba as quoted in Parreñas, 2001, p 25)

Blommaert (2005) extends the notion of the world system further by arguing that the processes of inequality in the world system do not just occur

at one level, e.g a global division of labor, rather the interconnectedness of the different spaces of the world system means that “[c]entre-periphery patterns valid at a worldwide scale also occur for instance within a geopolitical region […], within one state […] and even within cities, towns or neighborhoods” (Blommaert et al., 2005, p 202) The world system is polycentric as well as stratified, i.e centers do not have equal scope, range and impact (Blommaert, 2005)

The notion of a polycentric and stratified world system helps explain the space-specific distribution and value of semiotic resources (Collins & Slembrouck, 2005) and concomitantly, how and why the productions and the uptake of the indexicalities of linguistic capital may vary from place to place

It highlights how the functions, values and meanings of linguistic capital are

Chapter 2 30 not unproblematically mobile As they travel across time, space and different

“orders of indexicality – stratified patterns of social meanings often called

‘norms’ or ‘rules’ to which people orient when communicating” (Blommaert,

2005, p 253), they undergo changes And thus, what is considered valuable in

‘peripheral’ environments may be denigrated in ‘core’ or ‘center’ environments and vice versa

Transnational arenas

In the context of language and migration, the transnational quality of the world system needs to be highlighted The structural linkages between dominant cores and dependent peripheries form what social geographers call,

“transnational social fields” (Levitt & Glick Schiller, 2003) or “transnational social spaces” (Faist, 2000) These transnational arenas can thus be conceived

of as integrated social spaces that cut across national boundaries In these

spaces, resources, values and meanings flow unequally between and within

multiple interlocking frameworks of social relationships (Levitt & Glick Schiller, 2003)

There are a number of features of transnational arenas which need to

be underscored First of all, transnational arenas are multi-dimensional; they encompass interactions of different breadths and depths, of different scales, from the macro-level of the world system as a whole and the relationship between labor-sending and labor-receiving countries to the micro-level of, for instance, the relationships between FDWs and their Singaporean employers Secondly, these various scales are interlocked which means that what happens

at the macro-level will have an impact on the micro-level and vice versa