“Grey area In- between”: Translingual practice and monolingual ideologies
I remembered the embarrassment when I received the short message “ You guys were the shit! So glad to see you at songfest!” from our orientation group leader. My eyes automatically ignored the second sentence and the first sentence shocked me. I did not know what she meant and what to reply. When the word “ shit” appears, it seems that the whole sentence must relate to some bad words. I felt so embarrassed to ask what she really meant by this sentence and did not reply. And the other day, I asked a classmate during the discussion. She laughed and told me” Yeah, I don’t know why we say that but it means good thing there.” I felt released at first but then the question mark started to haunt in my head. Why does our teacher never teach us daily expression Americans use? How can a word be explained in extremely opposite way in different situations? This experience fires the passion in me to learn what native speakers would say or write instead the Chinglish. Then I started my literacy narrative with my confusion about the language gap between English native speakers speak and the Chinglish we learn in China and my desire to master the language like native speakers do.
It seems that I am among the “we” people described in Canagarajah’s work: “We believe that for communication to be efficient and successful we should employ a common language with shared norms. These norms typically come from the native speaker’s use of the language” (Page1, Translingual Practice, Canagarajah) Unlike me who strongly desire to speak English like native speakers do, Canagarajah emphasizes the importance and charming part of translingual. For him, translingual is “codemeshing for multilinguals” which contains code mixing and codeswitching. Chinglish can be considered as kind of transligual because it mix English and Chinese these two languages intrinsically. In Chinglish, we put Chinese logic and grammar into English speaking. As I illustrated in the literacy narrative of my experience of learning English, for example, we think “Playground” means the word “Field”. Because we think “Playground” represents a place where people have big events on and play sports on. In another word, “ Playground” means a “ground” to “play” on. “Playground” means exactly the same even on the dictionaries for Chinese and English translating. What’s more, in our opinions, the sentence contains “Shit” which is showed above is totally bad words and we should never say that to anyone. But it can means “ you guys are amazing” as well. These kind of extremely opposite meanings expressed by the same sentence seldom appears in Chinese. In Chinese, good is good while bad is bad. These two opposite and separate meanings won’t be represented by exactly the same sentence. In this way, Chinglish can really cause trouble in my understanding of native speakers.
Unlikely, Canagarajah holds an opinion that translingual exists everywhere in our daily lives and plays important role in our communication with others. It causes no trouble when the communication contains translingualism. He comes up with an example of David Block and concludes that “the conversation was so smooth that Block emphasizes that ‘there was very little need for repair or repetition.’ ”(Page4, Translingual Practice, Canagarajah). He also says that “As speakers bring their diverse varieties of English (e.g., Indian or Sri Lankan English) to the interaction, they are developing conversational strategies to communicate with each other without shifting to a shared variety.”(Page6, Translingual Practice, Canagarajah) This conclusion is not convincing for me. I won’t deny that sometimes native speakers can understand my disorder sentence because they can get what I am talking about when I am using right words. But I need them to repeat or they need me to repeat my sentences. For instances, when they said “ The concert will be held on the field tonight.” I can’t get it. I asked “Sorry, where?” “Ummm, I said on the field.” They frowned and repeated again. Unfortunately, I got more nervous but still didn’t get where the place was. Then they said again “ On McDonough Field.” The name of the field reminded me where the concert would be on. But then we both smiled embarrassingly. The conversation ended because of the embarrassing atmosphere. Thinking back to that situation,if they use the word “Playground” I can understand as soon as I hear that word. The same things happen when the situation is inverse. If I say “Playground”, the places for little kids play with toys and slide will first come across their minds. I remembered that I repeated the word “playground” for three times and my hall mates still didn’t get which place I mean and they even asked “ I never know that we have a playground on campus.” Because the situation happens, I can’t agree with that “translingual” causes no trouble in communicating with each other in all conditions. Then as some my friends who are native speakers say “ It’s not easy to understand international students sometimes. It just takes more time and patience.” , translingualism can be an obstacle to understand each other during communication and causes the conversation can’t be smooth.
But then a question comes across my mind. Is translingualism the only reason that causes obstacle in communication? For me, my answer would be no. In Canagarajah’s reading, he implies that translingualism can challenge the monolingualism. From my experience, it becomes more clear that the conflict between traslingual practice and monolingual ideologies actually causes the troubles in communication. For example, native speakers hold the monolingual ideologies that “playground” means a place little children play and “field” means the place we play sports and hold big events on. If the words are perceived by someone don’t even know English, the expalination of a “ground” to “play” on can make more sense. Because native speakers think what they say is the right way to say the language, the conflicts appear and cause problems in communicating.
But actually translingual practice has the benefits to present individual’s own identity and cultural differences. Just like what Buthainah says in Canagarajah’s reading, she uses translingual words like “storms of thoughts stampede” and “my literacy development shunt me” in her narrative because “she told me that the objective of her writing was not to merely convey some information about her multilingual literacy development, but to demonstrate or ‘perfor’ it” and “ writing solely in English, and in a variaty that is not hers would be unsuitable for such purposes.” (Page2, Translingual Practice, Canagarajah) We can see that Buthainah uses translingualism to show her unique identity as an Saudi Arabian student and her culture behind the language.On the opposite, monolingual ideologies have benefits to help a person get involved in the native language environment and explore the culture behind it. For example, because communication is not something that can be judged simply by understanding or not. I consider communication as a bridge between people’s personal emotions and thoughts and the foundation of close relationships. Canagarajah suggests after Rajani’s example that “ In this manner, diaspora Tamils are able to bond as a family and enjoy community without a shared single language.” because “ we understand more languages than we can speak.” (Page5, Translingual Practice, Canagarajah) When translingual makes conversation becomes unsmooth, people always need to repeat and explain to me. Unlike Rajani, I don’t have my mother as a translator who is always patient with me. When we are making new friends in another country, it’s become more important to start smooth conversations, respond properly and express our opinions correctly. When I am so excited about the concert held on the field tonight and go to someone and say “Let’s meet at the playground tonight!”, what I want is an approval instead of “ What? Where?”. Situations are same inversely. What they want is my answer but not explain the difference between “playground” and “field” or how can the sentence “ You guys are the shit!” means in a good way. Sure finally we can understand each other after repeating and explaining, but the original purpose of the conversation will be left behind and maybe the interesting part is missed. The situation can become really awkward and embarrassing. While Canagarajah says in his work “ We are all translinguals, not native speakers of a single language in homogeneous environments. In this sense, the binaries‘native/ non-native’ also distort the translingual competence of all people.” (Page8, Translingual Practice, Canagarajah) I admit that translingual sometimes have the charm to represent a culture and let other people who speak different languages understand the meaning of some words without misunderstanding after translation. And all people can understand some other languages. But when we are not in our native language environment, what we want is not just understand and be understood during communication, but also to make friends and exchange ideas and feelings. When it has already taken so long to get to know a culture, the easiness and smoothness of communication makes native speakers feel no trouble talking with non-native speakers and feel just like talking with a friend next door. The more smooth the conversation is , the more we can talk. If we can talk more, we can get to know the culture and the people better and sooner.
As I illustrated in the last paragraph, translingual practice and monolingual ideologies both have benefits. Translingual practice can be “performative” and better help a person to demonstrate his or her individual identity while monolingual ideologies play an important role in getting to know a different language and culture and involve in it. The conflict between translingual practice and monolingual ideologies causes troubles in communications and building relationships. To avoid that problem, we can find a “safe zone” or “grey area” in between.
When we want to illustrate the difference of languages and cultures, we can use translingual to “perform” what we mean. When we want to involve into a new lingual and cultural environment, what we trying to do is clearing up the obstacles during communication and building up friendship started from smooth conversations.. For our own sake, “translingual practice” and “monolingual ideologies” should switch their places according to different situations.
Work Cited Page
I remembered the embarrassment when I received the short message “ You guys were the shit! So glad to see you at songfest!” from our orientation group leader. My eyes automatically ignored the second sentence and the first sentence shocked me. I did not know what she meant and what to reply. When the word “ shit” appears, it seems that the whole sentence must relate to some bad words. I felt so embarrassed to ask what she really meant by this sentence and did not reply. And the other day, I asked a classmate during the discussion. She laughed and told me” Yeah, I don’t know why we say that but it means good thing there.” I felt released at first but then the question mark started to haunt in my head. Why does our teacher never teach us daily expression Americans use? How can a word be explained in extremely opposite way in different situations? This experience fires the passion in me to learn what native speakers would say or write instead the Chinglish. Then I started my literacy narrative with my confusion about the language gap between English native speakers speak and the Chinglish we learn in China and my desire to master the language like native speakers do.
It seems that I am among the “we” people described in Canagarajah’s work: “We believe that for communication to be efficient and successful we should employ a common language with shared norms. These norms typically come from the native speaker’s use of the language” (Page1, Translingual Practice, Canagarajah) Unlike me who strongly desire to speak English like native speakers do, Canagarajah emphasizes the importance and charming part of translingual. For him, translingual is “codemeshing for multilinguals” which contains code mixing and codeswitching. Chinglish can be considered as kind of transligual because it mix English and Chinese these two languages intrinsically. In Chinglish, we put Chinese logic and grammar into English speaking. As I illustrated in the literacy narrative of my experience of learning English, for example, we think “Playground” means the word “Field”. Because we think “Playground” represents a place where people have big events on and play sports on. In another word, “ Playground” means a “ground” to “play” on. “Playground” means exactly the same even on the dictionaries for Chinese and English translating. What’s more, in our opinions, the sentence contains “Shit” which is showed above is totally bad words and we should never say that to anyone. But it can means “ you guys are amazing” as well. These kind of extremely opposite meanings expressed by the same sentence seldom appears in Chinese. In Chinese, good is good while bad is bad. These two opposite and separate meanings won’t be represented by exactly the same sentence. In this way, Chinglish can really cause trouble in my understanding of native speakers.
Unlikely, Canagarajah holds an opinion that translingual exists everywhere in our daily lives and plays important role in our communication with others. It causes no trouble when the communication contains translingualism. He comes up with an example of David Block and concludes that “the conversation was so smooth that Block emphasizes that ‘there was very little need for repair or repetition.’ ”(Page4, Translingual Practice, Canagarajah). He also says that “As speakers bring their diverse varieties of English (e.g., Indian or Sri Lankan English) to the interaction, they are developing conversational strategies to communicate with each other without shifting to a shared variety.”(Page6, Translingual Practice, Canagarajah) This conclusion is not convincing for me. I won’t deny that sometimes native speakers can understand my disorder sentence because they can get what I am talking about when I am using right words. But I need them to repeat or they need me to repeat my sentences. For instances, when they said “ The concert will be held on the field tonight.” I can’t get it. I asked “Sorry, where?” “Ummm, I said on the field.” They frowned and repeated again. Unfortunately, I got more nervous but still didn’t get where the place was. Then they said again “ On McDonough Field.” The name of the field reminded me where the concert would be on. But then we both smiled embarrassingly. The conversation ended because of the embarrassing atmosphere. Thinking back to that situation,if they use the word “Playground” I can understand as soon as I hear that word. The same things happen when the situation is inverse. If I say “Playground”, the places for little kids play with toys and slide will first come across their minds. I remembered that I repeated the word “playground” for three times and my hall mates still didn’t get which place I mean and they even asked “ I never know that we have a playground on campus.” Because the situation happens, I can’t agree with that “translingual” causes no trouble in communicating with each other in all conditions. Then as some my friends who are native speakers say “ It’s not easy to understand international students sometimes. It just takes more time and patience.” , translingualism can be an obstacle to understand each other during communication and causes the conversation can’t be smooth.
But then a question comes across my mind. Is translingualism the only reason that causes obstacle in communication? For me, my answer would be no. In Canagarajah’s reading, he implies that translingualism can challenge the monolingualism. From my experience, it becomes more clear that the conflict between traslingual practice and monolingual ideologies actually causes the troubles in communication. For example, native speakers hold the monolingual ideologies that “playground” means a place little children play and “field” means the place we play sports and hold big events on. If the words are perceived by someone don’t even know English, the expalination of a “ground” to “play” on can make more sense. Because native speakers think what they say is the right way to say the language, the conflicts appear and cause problems in communicating.
But actually translingual practice has the benefits to present individual’s own identity and cultural differences. Just like what Buthainah says in Canagarajah’s reading, she uses translingual words like “storms of thoughts stampede” and “my literacy development shunt me” in her narrative because “she told me that the objective of her writing was not to merely convey some information about her multilingual literacy development, but to demonstrate or ‘perfor’ it” and “ writing solely in English, and in a variaty that is not hers would be unsuitable for such purposes.” (Page2, Translingual Practice, Canagarajah) We can see that Buthainah uses translingualism to show her unique identity as an Saudi Arabian student and her culture behind the language.On the opposite, monolingual ideologies have benefits to help a person get involved in the native language environment and explore the culture behind it. For example, because communication is not something that can be judged simply by understanding or not. I consider communication as a bridge between people’s personal emotions and thoughts and the foundation of close relationships. Canagarajah suggests after Rajani’s example that “ In this manner, diaspora Tamils are able to bond as a family and enjoy community without a shared single language.” because “ we understand more languages than we can speak.” (Page5, Translingual Practice, Canagarajah) When translingual makes conversation becomes unsmooth, people always need to repeat and explain to me. Unlike Rajani, I don’t have my mother as a translator who is always patient with me. When we are making new friends in another country, it’s become more important to start smooth conversations, respond properly and express our opinions correctly. When I am so excited about the concert held on the field tonight and go to someone and say “Let’s meet at the playground tonight!”, what I want is an approval instead of “ What? Where?”. Situations are same inversely. What they want is my answer but not explain the difference between “playground” and “field” or how can the sentence “ You guys are the shit!” means in a good way. Sure finally we can understand each other after repeating and explaining, but the original purpose of the conversation will be left behind and maybe the interesting part is missed. The situation can become really awkward and embarrassing. While Canagarajah says in his work “ We are all translinguals, not native speakers of a single language in homogeneous environments. In this sense, the binaries‘native/ non-native’ also distort the translingual competence of all people.” (Page8, Translingual Practice, Canagarajah) I admit that translingual sometimes have the charm to represent a culture and let other people who speak different languages understand the meaning of some words without misunderstanding after translation. And all people can understand some other languages. But when we are not in our native language environment, what we want is not just understand and be understood during communication, but also to make friends and exchange ideas and feelings. When it has already taken so long to get to know a culture, the easiness and smoothness of communication makes native speakers feel no trouble talking with non-native speakers and feel just like talking with a friend next door. The more smooth the conversation is , the more we can talk. If we can talk more, we can get to know the culture and the people better and sooner.
As I illustrated in the last paragraph, translingual practice and monolingual ideologies both have benefits. Translingual practice can be “performative” and better help a person to demonstrate his or her individual identity while monolingual ideologies play an important role in getting to know a different language and culture and involve in it. The conflict between translingual practice and monolingual ideologies causes troubles in communications and building relationships. To avoid that problem, we can find a “safe zone” or “grey area” in between.
When we want to illustrate the difference of languages and cultures, we can use translingual to “perform” what we mean. When we want to involve into a new lingual and cultural environment, what we trying to do is clearing up the obstacles during communication and building up friendship started from smooth conversations.. For our own sake, “translingual practice” and “monolingual ideologies” should switch their places according to different situations.
Work Cited Page
- Translingual Practice, Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan relations, Suresh Canagarajah, 2013 Print
- Pei Yi , Crossing the gap , n.p. web 28 September 2013