Critical Perspectives on Language and Discourse in the New World Order [Unabridged] 1847183409, 9781847183408

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Critical Perspectives on Language and Discourse in the New World Order

Critical Perspectives on Language and Discourse in the New World Order

Edited by

Faiz Sathi Abdullah, Mardziah Hayati Abdullah and Tan Bee Hoon

CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS PUBLISHING

Critical Perspectives on Language and Discourse in the New World Order, edited by Faiz Sathi Abdullah, Mardziah Hayati Abdullah and Tan Bee Hoon This book first published 2008 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2008 by Faiz Sathi Abdullah, Mardziah Hayati Abdullah and Tan Bee Hoon and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN 1-84718-340-9; ISBN 13: 9781847183408

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ....................................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................ ix Part I: Theoretical Perspectives Chapter One................................................................................................. 1 Language and the New Imperial Order: Africa in a Global Context Alamin M. Mazrui Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 23 Linguistic Imperialism, the Ideological Foundations of Modern Linguistic Thought and the Study of Asian Languages Gerry Knowles and Zuraidah Mohd Don Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 38 Paradoxes of the “Glocal” Self in the New World (Dis)Order: The National Identity Project Faiz Sathi Abdullah Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 71 Power, Gender and Ethnicity in Workplace Discourse: A Critical Perspective Janet Holmes Part II: Applied Studies Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 100 The Politics of “Othering” in the New World Order Annita Lazar and Michelle M. Lazar Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 111 Through Western Eyes: Covering Islam after September 11 Shakila Abdul Manan

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Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 134 Diplomatic Culture and Communication: Crossings from the Self to the Other Hafriza Burhanudeen Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 150 The Quest for a New Civic and Linguistic Identity: Mandarin and English Encroachment upon the Taiwanese Language Johan Gijsen and Liu Yu-Chang Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 167 Language Shift and Ethnic Identity Lokasundari Vijaya Sankar and Rajeswary Sargunan Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 182 “Normal” and “Ageing” Bodies: The Commodified Female Body in a Consumer Culture Zuraidah Mohd Don and Gerry Knowles Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 202 Voices of Malaysia: A Discourse Representation of Aids Lean Mei Li and Rosaline Prasana Fernandez Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 216 “Us” And “Them” in Different Times and Space Ramesh Nair Chapter Thirteen...................................................................................... 232 Women’s Language Styles: Strategic Manipulation of Leadership and Power Jariah Mohd Jan Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 252 Test Innovation and Implementation: A Critical Examination of the MUET Impact Wong Bee Eng and Chan Swee Heng Contributors............................................................................................. 275 Index........................................................................................................ 280

PREFACE

The papers in Critical Perspectives on Language and Discourse in the New World Order were originally presented at the 4th Malaysia International Conference on Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (MICOLLAC 2005) that was held from 23 to 25 April, 2005, at the Holiday Villa Subang Hotel, Kuala Lumpur. Each of the papers in the present volume expands on the above theme by exploring language use in a broad range of discourse fields. The volume begins with four papers that provide theoretical perspectives on global orientations to social, political and economic transformations in the “New World Order”, and extends these with studies of the impacts of such transformations at the local, national, regional and global levels. The publication of this book would not have been possible without the sustained effort and commitment of various parties within and without the university. First, we would like to thank Noritah Omar, the Chair of MICOLLAC 2005, who helped establish communication with Cambridge Scholars Publishing (CSP), UK. We wish to express our sincere appreciation too to Amanda Millar, Andy Nercessian and Carol Koulikourdi of CSP for their professional work with the manuscript and their patience throughout the project. We also take this opportunity to extend our thanks to the Dean of the Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia, for making available the necessary funds for the editorial work, and Emiliza Markun for editorial assistance. Our final note of gratitude goes to the many enthusiastic followers and excellent paper contributors of MICOLLAC. Your interest, inspiration and passion for debate and discussion will continue to drive the biennial conference forward with engaging themes and issues that address the changing realities of a globalising world.

INTRODUCTION

It has been argued that the New World Order (henceforth, NWO) is a neoliberal, capitalist project (it is a project because it is not yet complete) (Bourdieu 1997; Chomsky 1998; Fairclough 2000), a putative discoursal macro-representation of the world by its hegemonic players. The fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent end of the Cold War apparently marked a new era of glasnost and perestroika: “Out of these troubled times, our objective–a new world order–can emerge. Today, that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we have known” (Former US President, George H. Bush, September 11, 1990). The coinage of the term and the attendant global discourse, particularly of US foreign policy, has had profound implications for geopolitical relations and balance of power. As Chomsky (1991) has noted of the rhetoric that underscores increasing US hegemony and its unilateral role in determining how the United Nations conducts its affairs: For the first time the United Nations, which has undergone a wondrous sea change, the press tells us, for the first time the United Nations will be able to seriously undertake its peace-keeping role, but now that the Cold War is over it's no longer impeded by the automatic Russian veto and the psychotic behavior of various Third World hysterics. (Emphasis added.)

Hence, buttressed by the military might of the sole superpower, particularly post-September 11 2001, and economic and cultural “globalisation” of the world’s affairs orchestrated in the main by its chief Anglophone actors, the USA and Britain, NWO discourses attempt to (re)produce geo-political relations of power in bipolar rather than multipolar terms: “You are either with us or against us” (US President George W. Bush 2001). Since all discourses by their intertextual and interdiscursive nature are also historical, how do global/local actors seek meaning in the discourses of globalisation and the NWO? To what extent do globalisation and militarisation legitimate recolonisation of the hearts and minds of the subaltern via appropriation of language and discourse? Are nations losing their relevance in the metanarrative of the “brave new world”? How do these predominantly macro issues impact social relations of power and how may global and/or local instantiations of related

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discourses be analysed? And at a more micro level, how are forms of language realised in a range of discourse “fields” given the assumed “postmodern turn” in sociocultural practice? One of the aims of this collection of papers is to help address questions such as these by first highlighting theoretical viewpoints that use data to support rather than constitute them, and then presenting critical analyses of discoursal events that seek to draw conclusions applicable mainly to those events. Towards this end, a brief overview of salient aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth, CDA) is attempted at this point in the Introduction to establish, as it were, some basic parameters in the field of inquiry in question. It is generally acknowledged that “discourse” is primarily concerned with language use in social contexts, and in particular with the dialectical relationship between language and society, and with the interactive or dialogic properties of everyday communication both in the written and/or spoken modes. Although discourse potentially engages a variety of semiotic resources besides language (e.g. multimedia texts and related multimodal discursive practices on the Internet), language is the main, and probably the most complex, semiotic modality in the process of situated meaning-making (“semiosis”) in social contexts (Halliday 1978). Simply put, discourse is language (linguistic text) in context and refers to expressing ourselves using words in ubiquitous ways of knowing, valuing, and experiencing the world. As theory and research in systemic functional linguistics have shown, linguistic forms can be systematically associated with social and ideological functions (Halliday 1994). Hence, discourses (or for that matter, “Discourse” i.e. with a capital “D” after Gee 1997) can be symbolically used for the (re)production of systemic power relations and knowledge, and dominance or hegemony (e.g., the unmitigated influence of one social institution, group or nation over another). Perhaps, more importantly, discourses can also be used to resist and critique such assertions of power, knowledge and dominance with a view towards transforming them into more egalitarian constructions of reality, and thereby empowering the individual in society towards instituting social change. Given the symbolic power of the spoken/written word and the notion of transformative empowerment mentioned above, the study of discourse, or more commonly known as discourse analysis, as a broad field of inquiry, is related to the study of textual meaning beyond the clause/sentence via a range of multidisciplinary approaches such as conversation analysis, ethnography of communication, interactional sociolinguistics and discursive psychology (Jaworski and Coupland 1999).

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CDA is a relatively new field that has been germane in describing, interpreting, analysing and critiquing social life as it is reflected in language use as discourse (Luke 1997). It stems primarily from Jürgen Habermas’ critical theory and related espousals of the “critical” in the work of Louis Althusser, Mikhail Bakhtin, and the neo-Marxist tradition of Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School. Michel Foucault’s views on power and “orders of discourse” are acknowledged in the approach of CDA’s principal exponents such as Norman Fairclough whose work is related to Michael Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics as well as to the critical linguistics of Roger Fowler, Tony Trew, Gunther Kress and Bob Hodge. An alternative approach to CDA, though not exclusively so, may also be discerned in the literature, i.e., the sociocognitive approach of Teun van Dijk and Ruth Wodak (Titcher et al. 2000, 144). Wodak also calls her approach the “discourse-historical method” in as much as it particularly serves to address the discursive construction of national identity, in her case, Austrian national identity as the emergent, imagined sense of nationhood in the post-World War II era, using three closely interwoven analytical dimensions of thematic content, discursive strategy, and linguistic means and forms of realisation that shape representative discourses of identity (Wodak et al. 1999). In a somewhat similar fashion, Fairclough (2001) in his sociocritical approach postulates that discourse is shaped and constrained by social structure (class, status, age, ethnic identity and gender) and culture, and the three central tenets of CDA: (a) language, i.e., the actual text that serves as cues to or traces of the discourse; (b) context of interaction that produces the discursive practices; and (c) social structure, which is the larger social context that bears upon the discourse. He determines the relationship between these three dimensions of a given discourse and its interdiscursivity with other discourse moments via three interrelated levels of analysis, namely, description, interpretation and explanation, to systematically explore and uncover often opaque relationships between ideologically invested discursive practices. Hence, critical discourse analysts study written texts and spoken language, including forms of visual language such as graphic text in media discourse (Fairclough 1995a) to reveal hidden ideological assumptions and related discursive sources as well as formations of power, dominance, inequality and bias, and how these sources are initiated, maintained, reproduced and transformed within specific social, economic, political and historical contexts (van Dijk 1998). Needless to say, the practical techniques of CDA are derived from various disciplinary fields, including discourse pragmatics, narratology, speech act theory, and more recently,

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genre theory within a social constructionist framework that argues that texts are forms of social action which occur in complex social contexts. As McGregor (2003) notes, CDA “tries to illuminate ways in which the dominant forces in a society construct versions of reality that favour their interests” and to unmask such practices “to support the victims of such oppression and encourage them to resist and transform their lives”. This is because language and discourse can be used by the power-holders in society, particularly the state and/or those who control the mass media, to make unequal power relations and representations of social groups appear to be “common sense”, “normal”, and “natural” when in fact there is inherent prejudice, injustice and social inequity. Using “legitimate language”, purveyors of social power or those seeking it are able to mislead us so that our concerns about persistent, larger systemic issues of class, gender, age, religion and culture seem petty or non-existent. Thus, CDA provides a framework to deconstruct their discourse and demystify their words, as it were, so that we avoid being “misled and duped into embracing the dominant worldview (ideology) at our expense and their gain” (McGregor 2003). The present theme is prompted by the debate in language and discourse studies surrounding ideological representations of the current geopolitical scenario that challenge our economic, social and cultural perceptions of global as well as local realities vis-à-vis the NWO. The lives of people are gradually being shaped by two superordinate but conflicting trends of global and local identities, respectively (Castells 1997), against a backdrop of globally networked economic “restructuring” and “rescaling” powered in the main by the information technology revolution of the neoliberal globalisation project. Much of the transformation is taking place through the English language as the “language of modernisation, democracy and freedom”, and hence is discourse-driven, as Fairclough (2004) notes, to involve “‘restructuring’ of relations among the economic, political, and social domains… and the ‘rescaling’ of relations among different scales of social life—the global, the regional (e.g. the European Union), the national, and the local” (103). National governments (read: the ruling body politic or state) across a wide range of politico-ideological persuasions are embracing, and appropriating, as it were, these neo-liberal, neo-capitalist discourses of change to commodify and marketise fields such as education (particularly language planning and policy), science and technology, mass media, commerce and nation building, which are all subject to the market logic of the global order. Nevertheless, despite “all the talk of a borderless world, nation-states remain significant” (Hall 2001, cited in Hewison 2002, 4) even if only to

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maintain local dominance and reproduce the status quo by aligning their nations with the global superpower in the name of “national security” in the post-September 11 2001 world (cf. “Either you’re with us or against us” that is attributed to US President George W. Bush 2001). Such strategic positioning as “pro-NWO”, not to mention “pro-globalisation”, in the pax Americana mould by nation-states, while ostensibly deemed “natural” in view of the unequal power relations, may be expected to assume a broader range of experiential and relational values in most spheres of the sociopolitical discursive space of countries such as Muslimdominant but “moderate” Malaysia (Faiz Abdullah 2004). Therefore, language in its semiotic instantiation as discourse has an increasingly important role to play in determining the direction as well as the complexity of contemporary socioeconomic changes than it has had in the past (the linguistic turn in the postmodern world?). Fairclough (2004) advocates a textual analysis of associated discourses using the systemic functional linguistics model as the linguistic framework while adopting a critical perspective on relations of power, and on the difference between text as a linguistic unit and discourse as “a representation of some area of social life from a particular perspective” (111). CDA thereby becomes an interdiscursive analysis of text in the way it integrates social and linguistic analyses and to the extent that social practices are networked. Some of these dimensions are explored in the papers in this collection to focus on theoretical perspectives and insights from applied studies. A preview of these papers now follows.

Theoretical Perspectives In the opening paper of this first of two sections of the book, Alamin M. Mazrui interrogates the roles played by an imperial language and mother tongues in the “conveyability” of African ideas and values. In his paper, “Language and the New Imperial Order: Africa in a Global Context”, he examines how imperial powers appropriate relativistic arguments and strategies to promote a “universalistic” global agenda of domination and control, and how African languages, while being mobilised in the struggle against imperial domination, have also been transmuted into instruments of domination. He argues that “counter-discourse” cannot be restricted to the generation of alternative meanings, but that it has to involve linguistic transgression in challenging the social rules and cultural politics that govern language use, that determine who says what to whom, how, when and where.

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While Mazrui examines the impact of discursively constructed universalism on African languages, in “Linguistic Imperialism, the Ideological Foundations of Modern Linguistic Thought, and the Study of Asian Languages”, Gerry Knowles and Zuraidah Mohd Don address three main issues of whether linguistics is a science or a scholastic system, whether global English represents a threat to other languages or is an opportunity for their development, and whether Asian languages are really just like European languages or have identities of their own. Drawing support from corpus linguistics research, they conclude that national languages such as Malay will continue to flourish provided that languagebased technologies continue to grow in the 21st century, and that a more scientific approach to linguistics is adopted as the study of language becomes more interdisciplinary and collaborative. In “Paradoxes of the Glocal Self in the New World (Dis)order: The National Identity Project”, Faiz Sathi Abdullah examines how “glocal” identities are constructed for the self to mitigate “endist” arguments about the effects of global pressures on economic autonomy; privacy; and the nation-state with reference to its democracy, sovereignty, national language, culture, ideology and identity/difference. Saying that the resultant multiple identities “are at best essentially reflective of the contestation of the ‘third space’ as the globalisation project moves inexorably forward in the dominant bipolar discourses of pax Americana, the putative ‘coalition of the willing’ and the coterminous formation, renewal and realignment of geopolitical allegiances” (cf. Fairclough’s [2004] reference to the rescaling of social life at global and local levels above) , Faiz uses a broad critical discourse analysis framework to explore a range of issues related to identity politics and the discourses of globalisation and world order. Subsequently, he presents descriptive hypotheses about the paradoxical nature of hybridised identities and illustrates the related dialectics of identity construction via the interdiscursive analysis of a sample text within the ambit of the historical Malaysian national identity project and the salience of Bangsa Malaysia (Lit. “Malaysian Nation”). In the final paper of the section, alluding to the Foucauldian notion of systemic power in her paper “Power, Gender and Ethnicity in Workplace Discourse: A Critical Perspective”, Janet Holmes explores how social power is discursively constructed and reinforced in “everyday, unremarkable workplace interactions” to enable dominant groups to determine meaning and how this impacts definition for minority groups. Thus, in contrast with Faiz Abdullah above, she deals with power and dominance at the “micro” level. Drawing on the extensive database of the

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Wellington Language in the Workplace project, she illustrates the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which systemic power relations are constructed and reinforced through the discourse fabric of New Zealand workplace interaction.

Applied Studies This section opens with the paper “The Politics of ‘Othering’ in the New World Order” by Annita Lazar and Michelle Lazar who conduct an intertextual analysis of the NWO discourses of three US presidents. They examine how “orientalisation” is used as an ostensibly effective discursive strategy within the rhetoric of Othering to reproduce “as the ‘core’ a universalised western moral order while expelling to the ‘periphery’ those strange and aberrant to it”. By “outcasting” the Arab/Muslim oriental in this way, the strategy serves to reinforce racist stereotypes of the “disorderly Other” and morally justifies American control and containment. In the next paper, Shakila Abdul Manan takes up the demonisation of Muslims/Islam issue. She avers, in “Through Western Eyes: Covering Islam after September 11”, that the rhetoric of “Othering” Islam in the mass media as the religion of terror, evil, violence, fundamentalism, oppression, primitiveness, atavism and religious hysteria, particularly after the September 11 2001, is xenophobic and threatens the establishment of a “true” new world order of justice and peace. She supports this stand with data procured from Newsweek and Time. Hafriza Burhanudeen’s paper, titled “Diplomatic Culture and Communication: Crossings from the Self to the Other”, discusses how diplomatic culture, communication and disposition enable the Self to assume the role of the Other in the pursuit of regional and international cooperation. The paper also looks at how diplomacy and diplomatic language act as a bridge for the Self to cross borders to the Other in political negotiations. Johan Gijsen and Yu-Chang Liu examine the changing sociolinguistic environment in Taiwan in their paper, “The Quest for a New Civic and Linguistic Identity: Mandarin and English Encroachment upon the Taiwanese Language”. Using results from previous and ongoing research sponsored by Taiwan’s National Science Council, the authors argue that Taiwanese youngsters are becoming increasingly monolingual, and survey data illustrate the encroachment of more dominant languages, particularly English, upon Taiwanese. There is no growth in community support for the mother tongue, and the Taiwanese public does not seem to

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be aware that their vernacular is endangered. The paper compares results from the authors’ research with identical surveys done in Japan, Belgium, Germany and Morocco. In “Language Shift and Ethnic Identity”, Lokasundari V. Sankar and Rajeswary Sargunan discuss the connection between language shift and the part that ethnic identity plays in the maintenance and/or shift of the mother tongue. A study was conducted on the Malaysian Iyers, a minority group of Tamils living in Malaysia, in order to find out if they had shifted from their mother tongue of Tamil to include other languages in their daily linguistic repertoire. The study elicited data on their language use in four domains: domestic, social, religious and formal education. The findings showed that the Malaysian Iyers have moved away from Tamil in the home as well as social and educational domains. English and Malay have been incorporated into their linguistic repertoire to a very large extent. However, the language shift from Tamil to English and Malay has not resulted in a loss of ethnic identity as various factors such as traditional and cultural beliefs and practices, caste, religion and food still provide them with an identity. The next three chapters cover aspects of news media discourse. In “‘Normal’ and ‘Ageing’ Bodies: The Commodified Female Body in a Consumer Culture”, Zuraidah Mohd Don and Gerry Knowles address the question of how advertisements contribute to the commodification of youthful facial skin. In particular, they bring into focus the strategies used in skincare advertisements in order to sell their anti-ageing products. They highlight the ideological assumption that the female body is only “desirable” when it conforms to the “ideal body image”, and so media texts place responsibility upon women to counteract signs of imperfection and ageing. The writers assert that social practices and consumer culture have created women’s self-identity which is equated with bodily appearance and in which image is paramount. Lean Mei Li and Rosaline Prasana Fernandez, in their paper on “Voices of Malaysia: A Discourse Representation of AIDS Discourse”, examine newspaper articles on AIDS published in Malaysia. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach as employed by Fairclough (1995a, 1995b), the intertextual analysis looks particularly at the various voices that are given space in the text and how they are woven together textually, how they are recontextualised (i.e., as direct quotes, indirect discourse, free indirect discourse, and narrative report of speech act) in the new context and how they are framed in relation to each other and in relation to the writer’s voice. The results from the analysis reveal the

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manifestations of voices from various quarters, denoting unequal power relations. Ramesh Nair, in his article “‘Us’ and ‘Them’ in Different Times and Space”, examines the exclusionist discursive strategy of Us vs. Them in a Malaysian mainstream newspaper that constructs favourable subject positions for Malaysians in relation to out-groups of post-Tsunami sufferers and illegal immigrants in neighbouring countries. He uses Fairclough’s (2001) three-dimensional model of discourse as text, interaction and context to uncover ideological assumptions that underlie time-space distantiated representations of “them” as inferior to “us”. In her article entitled “Women’s Language Styles: Strategic Manipulation of Leadership and Power”, Jariah Mohd Jan draws on Holmes’ earlier work on “tentative language” and uses it within a Conversation Analysis (CA) framework to examine how language style shapes and is shaped by leadership discourse and the inherent power relations between men and women. By raising awareness about gendered language styles of women in power, she seeks to advance women’s position via informed training processes. In “Test Innovation and Implementation: A Critical Examination of the MUET Impact”, Wong Bee Eng and Chan Swee Heng maintain that the power of tests lies not only in determining pass-fail status, providing certification or standards for programme entry, but also in its connections to and implications for the political, social, educational and economic contexts of use. They maintain that any language test innovation or implementation therefore invariably becomes “a de facto language policy”. They conduct an assessment of the Malaysian University English Test (MUET), which was implemented at a critical juncture to complement national efforts towards creating new standards in language competence among Malaysian pre-tertiary students. The authors’ assessment is aimed at providing “a timely and critical assessment of [MUET’s] role and power in playing out political and social agendas”.

Concluding Remarks The papers in this volume highlight and illustrate current concerns among academics and political commentators about the potential social impact of representations of the NWO in language and discourse. The present work, we believe, is important in raising social consciousness towards the central role that language and discourse play in cultural, political, economic and religious transformations and the social issues that arise thereof, as well the construction of shifting/multiple identities at the global, national and

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local levels. In this way, the role of critical discourse analysis and indeed that of the analysts themselves becomes an emancipative and socially transformative one. The value of such consciousness-raising for potential social action in language user empowerment terms cannot be overstressed, particularly given the ascendant position of the English language in the NWO. We hope that this collection is also a significant contribution to the ongoing critical discussion on global order discourse. True to the acknowledged nature of all discourse, the present work on critical discourse is expected to help shape the ways in which we perceive our world in as much as the discourse is undoubtedly constitutive of and shaped by our perceptions. The Editors August 2008

References Bourdieu, P. 1997. A Reasoned Utopia and Economic Fatalism. New Left Review, 227: 125-130. Bush, G. H. 1990. “Transcript of President’s Address to Joint Session of Congress”. New York Times, September 12, 1990. Bush, G. W. 2001. Transcript of President Bush’s Speech from the Islamic Centre. September 17, 2001. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics. (accessed March 28, 2005) Chomsky, N. 1991. “The New World Order”. Transcript of a speech given at a benefit for the Middle East Children's Alliance, University of California at Berkeley, March 16, 1991. http://cyberspacei.com /jesusi/authors/chomsky/interviews/9103-berkeley.html. (accessed March 28, 2005). —. 1998. “Whose World Order: Conflicting Visions”. http://aidc.org.za/archives/chomsky_04.html (accessed September 22, 1998). Fairclough, N. 1995a. Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold. —. 1995b. Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman. —. 2000. “Language in the New Capitalism”. http://www.uoc.es /humfil/nlc /LNC-ENG/Inc-eng.html (accessed June 19, 2000). —. 2001. Language and power (2nd Ed.). New York: Longman. —. 2004. “Critical Discourse Analysis in Researching Language in the New Capitalism: Overdetermination, Transdisciplinarity, and Textual

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Analysis”. In Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis: Studies in Social Change, eds. Young, L. and C. Harrison: 103-122. London: Continuum Publishers. Faiz S. Abdullah. 2004. “Prolegomena to a Discursive Model of Malaysian National Identity”. In Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis: Studies in Social Change, eds. Young, L. and C. Harrison: 123-138. London: Continuum Publishers. Gee, J. P. 1999. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. London: Routledge. Halliday, M. A. K. 1978. Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London: Edward Arnold. —. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 2nd ed. London: Edward Arnold. Hewison, K. 2001. “Globalization: Post 9/11 Challenges for Liberals”. In September 11 and Political Freedom: Asian Perspectives, eds. Johannen, U., A. Smith and J. Gomez: 2-29. Singapore: Select Books. Jaworski, A. and N. Coupland. eds. 1999. The Discourse Reader. London: Routledge. Luke, A. 1997. “Theory and Practice in Critical Science Discourse”. In International Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Education, ed. Saha, L. http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/Luke/SAHA6.html. (accessed October 20, 2005). McGregor, S. L. T. “Critical Discourse Analysis—A Primer”. http://www.kon.org/ archives /forum/15-1/mcgregorcda.html (accessed October 20, 2005). Titscher, S., M. Meyer, R. Wodak and E. Vetter. 2000. Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE Publications. Wodak, R., R. de Cillia, M. Reisigl and K. Liebhart. eds. 1999. The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. van Dijk, T. A. 1998. Ideology. London: SAGE Publications.

CHAPTER ONE LANGUAGE AND THE NEW IMPERIAL ORDER: AFRICA IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT ALAMIN M. MAZRUI, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Language has been an important and integral part of control and domination. Exactly how that imperial mission has been accomplished, however, has been a subject of much intellectual contestation in Africa as elsewhere in the so-called third World. Relativists, in particular, have assumed that the imposition of the imperial language itself on the subject “Other” has been crucial to the exercise of imperial rule. Drawing on the policies and practices of the USA, in the aftermath of the Cold War, this paper demonstrates that, like the earlier experiences of European colonialism in Africa, imperial responses to language as an engine of imperial hegemony have been varied, often entailing a complex interplay between universalistic and relativistic considerations.

Introduction In January 2000, writers and scholars from around the world gathered at an international conference in Asmara, Eritrea, to examine the state of African languages in various domains of society in relation to the “new global order.” At the conclusion of this historic event suggestively titled “Against All Odds”, the participants released the Asmara Declaration on African Languages and Literatures. Noting that “Colonialism created some of the most serious obstacles against African languages… [which] still haunt independent Africa and continue to block the mind of the continent,” the Declaration concludes that “African languages are essential for the decolonization of African minds and for the African Renaissance.” This position, of course, is one that is widely held in African intellectual circles and has sometimes led to the conclusion that the

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“domination of a people’s language by languages of the colonizing nations was critical to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized” (Ngugi 1986, 16). And the post-colonial hold that languages of European origin have continued to have on African nations is seen as a continuation of this imperial legacy. For some of these nationalists, in fact, the language and what it expresses are one. Peter Mwaura, once director of the School of Journalism of the University of Nairobi, has argued that “…if the communication media [in Africa] are to be part of our culture as indeed all effective and meaningful communication should be – then they must use the local language[s] of our culture” (1980, 27). Mwaura’s reasoning derived from the idea that: Language influences the way in which we perceive reality, evaluate it and conduct ourselves with respect to it. Speakers of different languages and cultures see the universe differently, evaluate it differently, and behave towards its reality differently. Language controls thought and action and speakers of different languages do not have the same world view or perceive the same reality unless they have a similar culture or background.

(1980, 27) Mwaura then concludes that there is a real sense in which “the medium of communication is also the message" (1980, 27). A central objective of this essay is to interrogate the terms of this relativist position–especially the idea that the imperial order relies more or less exclusively on the imposition of an imperial language–drawing examples from the old European empires as well as from the new empire of a globalising world under the hegemony of the USA.1 Of course, the difference between the “old” European empires and the “new” American imperium is not only in political geography; some of the differences are more systemic.2 Whatever the case, the general thrust of my argument is that it is not at all unusual for the imperial power to appropriate relativistic arguments and strategies to promote its own “universalistic” (Eurocentric?) global agenda of domination and control. To that extent, “relativism” and “universalism” can sometimes serve as two sides of the same imperial coin.

Between Relativism and Universalism This African debate is, of course, part of a wider contest of ideas that has taken place within linguistics between advocates of relativism and those of universalism. As Alidou and Mazrui (1999) have argued, the contestation between relativism and universalism can be associated with the ideas of

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Benjamin Lee Whorf and Noam Chomsky, respectively. Whorf’s views were influenced by those of his predecessor, Edward Sapir, and their contribution to linguistic relativism came to be popularly known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Sapir was not entirely consistent in his views about the relationship between language, culture and cognition. In his earlier writings, he did not posit any particular correlation between linguistic form and cultural content. “When it comes to linguistic form,” he declared, “Plato walks with the Macedonian swineherd, Confucius with the head-hunting savage of Assam” (1921, 134). Later, however, in his well-known article on the status of linguistics as a science, he took a deterministic turn, arguing that “Human beings are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society…The fact of the matter is that the “real world” is to a large extent built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality” (1929, 209). Whorf was an even more enthusiastic proponent of linguistic relativism than Sapir, for he claimed that a person’s basic ontology or worldview is structured or determined or organised by language. Specifically, he argues that grammar embodies the nascent form of a cultural metaphysics. According to him, each language is encoded with a particular mode of thought, a metaphysics that affects the speaker’s experience at the level of perception. For this reason he concludes that speakers of different languages will map the world in different ways; the linguist’s task is to work out the fragments of a notional grammar (for example, categories of time, space and gender) and, to determine the semantic associations by means of which it is translated into a cultural worldview. Like Sapir, Whorf later modified his views and acknowledged that “the importance of language cannot…be taken to mean necessarily that nothing is back of it of the nature of what has traditionally been called “mind.” My own studies suggest to me that language, for all its kingly role, is in some sense a superficial embroidery upon deeper processes of consciousness which are necessary before any communication, signalling, or symbolism whatsoever can occur” (1949, 239). Relativism thus subsumes a broad spectrum of opinions that range from a strong, deterministic claim that language actually controls thought in a culturally specific manner to a rather weak suggestion that there is a loose correlation between language and cultural metaphysics. In spite of these vacillations of relativists such as Sapir and Whorf, however, their rejection of a hierarchical ordering of

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language and their insistence upon the equality of cultures remained constant. In contrast to them Chomsky stressed the common human features of language and played down the “surface” features that characterise individual languages. Specifically, he declares: “It is plausible to suppose that apart from pathology (potentially an important area of inquiry), such variation as there may be is marginal and can safely be ignored across a broad range of linguistic investigation” (1986, 18). Superimposed on this human linguistic uniformity is the assumption that the language faculty itself is an innate human characteristic. Chomsky views it as a genetically pre-determined, organised property of the mind and not an acquisition that is obtained from outside the individual by means of socio-psychological or cultural conditioning. “Knowledge of language is normally attained through brief exposure, and the character of the acquired knowledge may be largely predetermined. One would expect that human language should directly reflect the characteristics of human intellectual capacities, that language should be a direct mirror of mind in ways in which other systems of knowledge and belief cannot” (1968, ix-x). Chomsky thus supports one of the Enlightenment’s most cherished ideals–universal human identity. From the psycholinguistic point, there is little hard evidence to support either of these two hypotheses in their extreme forms. Chomsky’s universalism tends to be anti-empiricist, having originated in a speculative intellectual tradition that continues to shape its doctrine. Modest attempts have been made to adduce evidence of the universality of human language from natural language, child language and language acquisition, speech errors, speech pathology, foreigner talk, pidgins and creoles; but none of this evidence provides any concrete proof about the inner workings of Chomsky’s “mental faculty of language”. As for the relativist hypothesis, it has repeatedly been attacked on the basis of empirical evidence. Several scholars have called into question the research data that supposedly supports the notion of a causal relationship among language, culture and cognition. By the mid-1960s Burling regarded the entire paradigm of linguistic relativism as having fallen into disrepute (Burling 1964, 26), even though more recently there have been attempts by cognitive linguists to rehabilitate Whorf and Sapir. But what about at the more political level of the debate? Does the African experience lend greater credibility to one hypothesis over the other? Let us begin with the colonial period during which the imposition of European languages is often seen to have been an inextricable feature of colonial engineering to dominate the colonised.

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Language under the “Old” Empire The African colonial experience, especially as it relates to the mass media, provides numerous examples that contradict a monolithic reading of European colonial language policy. While newspapers like Muigwithania (1925) in Kenya and Sauti ya Tanu (1957) demonstrate how nationalists made use of African language media to protest against colonialism, there are numerous examples of the so-called vernacular papers that were launched with the specific objective of furthering the ends of colonialism. A good early example of colonial use of African language media can be drawn from what was then Tanganyika under German colonial rule. Prior to the revolutionary eruption of Maji Maji, an important section of the German colonial establishment regarded Kiswahili as a reservoir of an Islamic spirit and a potential agent of inter-ethnic African unity against German rule. According to one colonial ideologue of the time, H. Hansen, Islam and Kiswahili together constituted not only the mortal adversaries of Christianity, “but also, in Africa, the unrepentant enemies of colonial politics” (quoted by Pike 1986, 231). The existence of El-Najah, a Kiswahili journalistic venture using the Arabic script openly agitating against German colonial rule was seen as a vindication of Hansen’s position. On the other hand, Carl Meinhof, a prominent German linguist of that time who saw the adoption of Kiswahili as a very practical aid to German administration in Tanganyika, suggested that Kiswahili could be disIslamized. Towards this end he proposed the replacement of the Arabic script (which had been used for centuries in writing Kiswahili) with the Roman script and Arabo-Islamic loan words with Germanic ones (Pike 1985, 224). This linguistic strategy, it was argued, would purge Kiswahili of its Islamism to render it a more suitable instrument of colonial consolidation. It was in this political climate that German Christian missions (both Protestant and Catholic) began producing Kiswahili newspapers with the explicit aim of promoting the cultural foundations of German colonialism. These Kiswahili journalistic ventures of the late 1800s included Msimulizi, Habari za Mwezi, Pwani na Bara, and Rafiki (Mazrui and Mazrui 1999, 58). To further the ends of colonialism, then, the German colonial establishment did not consider it imperative to impose their own language, German. Rather it was able to appropriate Kiswahili and make it the language of its media propaganda. Another relevant example is that of Southern Africa where in 1931 the Bantu Press was formed with the explicit intention of diverting Africans

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away from political engagement to other pursuits at a time when socialistic ideas were gaining currency in the region. When it eventually expanded its operation to what was then Southern Rhodesia in 1944, it began to produce Ndebele and Lozi versions of the Bantu Mirror and Shona and Chinyanja editions of its African Weekly. The Bantu Press was itself a project of the South African Argus Group, disproportionately controlled in its share-holdings by Cecil Rhodes who insisted on a conservative, pro-colonial approach to political reporting (Bourgault 1995, 160). Similar colonial ventures in print media can be found elsewhere in Africa. It is in the electronic media and especially the radio, however, that we find even more compelling examples of colonial uses of African languages for colonial ends. And this is to be expected since the radio has been one of the most powerful instruments of electronic communication due to its relative affordability, its accessibility to both literate and non-literate audiences and the scope of its demographic reach. The use of local languages in radio transmission was, of course, quite legion in British colonies. France, on the other hand, with its policy of (linguistic and cultural) assimilation, tied its French radio services in its African colonies directly to France. In fact the French regarded radio broadcasting in the French language as an inexpensive means of counteracting “the discussions of educated Africans turning rapidly to subversive and antigovernmental ideas” (Tudesq 1983, 15). The average citizens of French colonies, however, soon learnt to turn to the radio broadcasts in local languages coming from neighbouring countries under British rule. People in the West African French colony of Niger, for example, would listen to radio broadcasts in Hausa from neighbouring British-controlled Nigeria. In an attempt to counteract the influence of these radio services in African languages from across the border and provide its own point of view, the French began providing indigenous language broadcasts to Africans in its own colonies (Bourgault 1995, 71). Even a staunchly assimilationist France that had a deliberate policy banning the use of African languages in formal domains, was ultimately compelled to resort to African languages in its media campaign when political circumstances made it expedient to do so. A similar change of colonial language policy in relation to the media took place in African colonies of the Portuguese. Like the French, the Portuguese too pursued an assimilationist policy whose objective, according to a document from the colonial Service For Psycho-Social Action was to teach the Portuguese language so as to “instil [in the native] the desire to learn Portuguese so they will speak of it as ‘our language’”

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(quoted by Ferreira 1974, 159). As a result, before the beginning of the armed struggle for independence, broadcasts in Portuguese colonies were exclusively in the Portuguese language. However, once the war for liberation broke out, the Portuguese colonial administration found it necessary to broadcast programs in African languages in order to communicate their propaganda in languages that the colonised majority could understand. The political psychology behind this strategy was explained in the following terms: The simple fact that our advice and suggestions are being transmitted by an authoritative voice that contacts the people in their own language is for the more retarded a guarantee of authenticity, omniscience and infallibility. As he who has been taught to read piously believes in the printed letter, the native believes in the voice that speaks to him in his language over the air. (quoted by Ferreira 1974, 159)

Thus the oral potency of radio transmission convinced the Portuguese that, at that particular juncture of anti-colonial history, its colonial mission could be fulfilled best by mobilising African languages in the media. In addition, as much as the coloniser came to appreciate the value of African languages in colonial propaganda, Africans too soon learnt that at times anti-colonial ends could also be served by the complementary use of the languages of their colonial oppressors. This is amply demonstrated by the Algerian struggle against French colonialism. In the earlier phases of the struggle, national resistance and identity was pegged exclusively to Arabic, and the use of French, the language of the coloniser, was virtually regarded as an act of cultural treason. Later, however, confronted with the reality of combat on a day-to-day basis with international ramifications, the Arabic language came to be stripped of “its sacred character, and the French language of its negative connotations” (Fanon 1967, 92-93) whereby its adoption was now no longer seen as an act of self-abnegation or of slavish identification with the new oppressor. Very instrumental in this process of “acquisition of new values by the French language,” was the creation of a radio transmission of the anticolonial combatants under the name of Voice of Fighting Algeria. The broadcasting in French of the programs of the Voice of Fighting Algeria, we are told: …was to liberate the enemy language from its historic meanings. The same message transmitted in three different languages [Arabic, Berber and French] unified the experience and gave it a universal dimension. The French language lost its accursed character, revealing itself to be capable also of transmitting, for the benefit of the nation, the messages of truth that

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And when the French occupiers realized what was becoming of their own language in the hands of the revolutionary forces of Algeria through the power of a revolutionary media outlet, it expectedly threw them into a state of confusion and disorder about the full implications of their policy of linguistic assimilation.

Language and the New Empire As we know, the USA did not begin to take much interest in African languages until the concluding years of European colonisation in Africa. When it finally did, the policy was partly related to superpower rivalry. Area studies in the American academy (including African Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, East Asian Studies etc), and under whose ambit comes the study of African and “other” languages, developed in the USA partly in response to the Cold War. It was one of the academic foundations that the US government erected in its bid to lay claim to certain regions of the world and “protect” them from the Communist threat, or to penetrate regions that had already come under Soviet influence. In the process, the US government invested heavily in the Voice of America to maintain a wide range of multilingual radio transmissions as well as in the study of African among other “Third World” languages. Expectedly, then, the end of the Cold War turned area studies (and African languages) into an engagement of relatively low priority in the US government’s agenda on foreign relations, as the decreasing funding for international education and cultural exchange programs demonstrates (Chronicle of Higher Education, October 13, 1995, A 43). The needs of capital in light of new technological advances, however, combined, later in the aftermath of the Cold War, with the unfolding of new political conditions, gradually stimulated a new kind of interest–part economic and part political—in the languages of the other. It is on this latter development that I would like to focus for the remainder of this discussion. The momentous changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union which were just beginning to unravel in the late 1980s led Francis Fukuyama to advance his controversial thesis that the world as a whole was increasingly moving towards a liberal democratic capitalist system that was destined to be the final sociopolitical paradigm of all human

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evolution (1992). While Fukuyama’s conception of the finality of world history is itself ahistorical, he is not altogether wrong in his view that politico-economic developments in the world are postured towards a hegemonic world culture. Being the only super-power in the post-Cold War period, the USA has naturally become central in this globalisation process. As one observer has put it, “Americanization in its current form is a synonym for globalization, a synonym that recognizes that globalization is not a neutral process in which Washington and Dakar participate equally” (Readings 1996, 2). In time, post-Cold War globalisation has compromised the sovereignty of nation-states in Africa and elsewhere (Readings 1996, 47), neutralising protectionist state-nationalist ideologies in the process. One of the results of this declining sovereignty has been the momentum for privatisation (often imposed by World Bank and IMF) in a way that no longer questions the domination of African electronic and cyber spaces in general by foreign interests (including the CNN and the African Virtual University). In the process, the new imperial centre came to have unfettered access to the African public, with computer-based technology making particularly important linguistic strides. There is little doubt today that the computer, the World Wide Web and the Internet are increasingly dominating the global network of communication, serving as relatively new engines of empire building and the creation of a homogenised transnational consumerist capitalism.. It is not a coincidence that in his address to the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairperson and CEO, used the term “penetration” to describe the advance of computer-based technology and communication to the rest of the world. “Over the next five or six years…you will get a very high penetration, even in Africa, where [connecting] is quite challenging,” he said (Microsoft, 1999). Capturing the essence of Gate’s words and seeing the commercial Internet in the world as predominantly an American enterprise, Tom Watson compares Internet globalisation (of which he is an ardent advocate) to imperial expansion of old. “In many ways,” he says, “it is a bit like the old East India colonial days—but without the guns and ships and, hopefully, without the exploitation [How, one wonders!]” (1999, 1).3 Of course, Watson’s claim was made before the American military invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. For a long time, computer-based communication was regarded as the domain of the English language beginning, in fact, with American English.4 More recently, however, this linguistic pattern seems to be shifting towards a multilingual configuration as American businesses begin to see great capitalist value in more direct linguistic links with the

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market (Biggs 1999, 52). As a result, a whole new industry, the so-called “localisation industry” has emerged seeking to adapt products and services to languages and cultures of target audiences in distant lands.5 When it comes to computer-based communication then it is becoming increasingly clear that the forces of economic globalisation have developed great interest in penetrating world markets through local languages and are working to transform these languages into commodified instruments of economic and cultural domination. In spite of the fact that economic globalisation continues to spur the spread of English globally— sometimes accompanied by a deliberate policy of cultural Americanization6—there is the centrifugal effect which creates new avenues for the advancement of certain African languages in the service of that same economic globalisation. The recent Microsoft project to make available its windows office in Swahili and a select number of other African languages (The East African Standard, Nairobi, October 29, 2004) must be seen as part of this computer technological trend towards a new global equation in the ranking and relationships between different languages of the world. In the colonial period some African languages were privileged and selected for standardisation and codification to serve imperial ends. As Johannes Fabian (1986) and others have demonstrated, African languages became part of the colonial project of command and control. In this era of the new empire we are again witnessing a selective process, controlled from the imperial centre, whereby some languages will get “technologised” and pushed to new positions in the global constellation of languages to better feed the imperial machine. The American invasion of Iraq, using the 11 September, 2001 bombing of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon as a pretext, on the other hand, provides a good example of a new understanding of the role of language in American television in particular. As you may remember, it was at this time that the term “embedded journalism” was coined to refer specifically to the arrangement whereby American journalists wishing to cover developments in the war front could do so only under the cover of the American military, ultimately having access only to events, sites and people that the military made available to them. But the term “embedded” can also be used metaphorically to describe the extent to which the American media at home sees itself as an extension of the American government. It is not at all unusual, for example, to hear American journalists making use of the inclusive “we” in reference to US government actions in Iraq. Consider the following statements:

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‘If he [Saddam] uses those air defenses against us, don’t we automatically target them and take them out’ (Anchorman Matt Laurer of NBC Television in Today show, September 2, 1999 in an interview with Perry Smith). ‘I don’t think the Iraqis are going to reverse themselves [by making concessions on the inspection of WMDs], and I do not believe that we should believe them if they said they would.’ (Loren Jenkins, Senior Foreign Editor of NPR during NPR’s Talk of the Nation, December 16, 1998).

Statements such as these abound in the American media, constantly reinforcing the now well-known Bushism that “You are either with or against us.” The American media is constantly feeding its “captive” public–to use Ginsberg’s term (1986)—with semantic mutations of English words, getting it to understand that “occupation” (when carried out by America) is actually a form of “liberation”, that the strugglers who resist the occupation are but terrorist insurgents who hate the idea of “freedom” (that Americans enjoy), and that the wanton destruction of the innocent lives of the “Other” is mere collateral damage. The construction of the new empire, in other words, is not simply a matter of political and economic domination. It is also a matter of informational, intellectual and epistemological control, with the media sharing platforms with education to constantly (re)shape the lenses, the categories and terms of reference, through which we perceive and understand the world we share. While this disinformation in the English language is primarily intended for the American audience, its geographic reach is quite global. It may be true that, in print media, American newspapers like New York Times and Washington Post have less influence in Africa than the British Financial Times and the Manchester Guardian; but American magazines like Time and Newsweek are not only widely read but widely imitated by other magazines. Similarly, in the electronic media, British English is probably heard more widely on radio, in Africa and in the rest of the world, than American English–not just from BBC but also from almost all European broadcasting channels using English. When we look at television, however, it is American English that is more dominant globally than British English. Worldwide American television occupies a disproportionate share of the electronic space. In spite of the global tentacles of American television, however, the reality of the resistance in Iraq forced the American government to reconsider its exclusive reliance on the English language. American attempts to change Arab image of the American empire, in particular, led

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to the launching, on 14 February, 2004, of the Arabic-language television, Al-Hurra (The Free), so named, ironically, at a time when Iraq was still fully under American occupation. With a first year budget of some 62 million US dollars, Al-Hurra is operated by The Middle East Television Network, a corporation funded by the US Congress through the Broadcasting Board of Governors that oversees all government-sponsored international broadcasting. Transmitted from Springfield, Virginia, and targeted at about twenty-two Arab-speaking countries in North Africa and the Middle East, the new American television project has recruited some of the “best” Arab journalists to launch an ambitious media campaign to win the “hearts and minds” of the Arabic-speaking world.7 Al-Hurra has been projected as an answer, an antidote to Al-Jazeera, another Arabic-language station that the founders of Al-Hurra consider to be unduly anti-American. In this self-contrast with Al-Jazeera, the channel claims full custody of “truth” – not to a truth, but like the Bible and the Qur’an, to the truth–implying, of course, that Al-Jazeera operates in the realm of falsehood. Whatever the case, there is no doubt the US government’s decision to launch an Arabic-media television channel was ultimately prompted by the need to market its own truth, to give legitimacy to its own ideology of the new empire. The global reach of English was deemed insufficient for this broader mission and the USA was forced to break out of its traditional linguistic insularity. The new realisation that, in fact, Pax Americana needs the languages of the “Other” to prevent it from plunging into a crisis of legitimacy has led to a new emphasis in area studies and foreign (including African) language study in the American academy. This change of academic course is well captured by the International Studies in Higher Education Bill (HR 3077) that was passed by the US Congress on 21 October, 2003 (though later revised). According to the summary of the bill: America’s international interests and national security concerns have taken on new importance in the post-9/11 era. Whether in business and industry, education, politics, trade and commerce, or national and international security, America’s interests are tied to…a group of programs at colleges and universities which work to advance knowledge of world regions, encourage the study of foreign languages, and train Americans to have the international expertise and understanding to fulfill pressing national security needs.

And as we now well know, the fulfilment of these “pressing national security needs” has included “gunboat democracy” with the self-censoring American mass media as an important ideological arsenal. In time the

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academic emphasis shifted from the study of languages once connected with Cold War politics to languages of the Muslim world, especially Arabic. There is even evidence that the USA cut its services to Eastern Europe–the former communist bloc–because American emphasis of broadcasting funding has been diverted to the Muslim world (Clandestine Radio Watch 147, 30 November, 2003). After all, as John Woods, the esteemed professor of Middle Eastern history at Chicago University once remarked, “Almost immediately after the collapse of Communism, Islam emerged as the new evil force” in the American imagination (The New York Times, 28 August, 1995).8 The design of the International Studies in Higher Education Bill (before its revision) relied on the views of several American scholars, but none more prominently than Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. On 19 June, 2003, Kurtz presented a statement of testimony on area studies before the US House of Representatives’ Sub-Committee on Select Education. The primary problem of area studies in the American academy, according to Kurtz, is its domination by advocates of post-colonial theory– singling out for attack the late Edward Said and his “followers”–whose core premise, allegedly, is that “it is immoral for a scholar to put his knowledge of foreign languages and cultures at the service of American power.” For Kurtz, then,–who clearly mirrors the policy of the Bush administration–foreign language study in the USA must be canalised to serve the interests, not of national security, but of American (imperial?) power!9 In his testimony, Kurtz was particularly incensed against African Studies Programs in American universities that had boycotted funding from another US federal government program, the National Security Education Program (NSEP). Noting how knowledge of Arabic among members of the American intelligence service might have averted the tragedy of September 11, Kurtz considers this boycott of NSEP by African Studies Programs in the USA as a blatant act of treachery that undermines the power and foreign policy concerns of the USA). The National Security Education Program (NSEP) provides grants to American institutions of higher learning to promote the study of foreign languages and cultures. Yet, from its inception, NSEP has been lodged in the military and intelligence services of the USA. Its own publicity material indicates that the program’s “policies and directions are provided by the Secretary of Defence in consultation with the 13 member National Security Education Board” drawn disproportionately from representatives of federal agencies (including the CIA). When African Studies Centres

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decided to boycott NSEP funds, therefore, it was out of the fear that the type of clandestine work experienced in Africa during the Cold War probably continues in the post-Cold War dispensation and most certainly in the aftermath of September 11, 2001.10 In addition to the space for covert action opened up by this American policy towards the study of foreign languages, however, there is the attendant concern that the languages of the Other themselves may be invested with the discourse terms of reference of the new empire, especially through the power of the media. Will the Swahili language of the East African media be reconfigured in the image of the English of American hegemony? The US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, has launched a new journalistic project in Swahili Maisha Amerika, Uislamu Amerika (Life in America, Islam in America), with precisely that goal of making Swahili in East Africa the bearer of the new imperial ideology. It is true, of course, that in spite of the expansive geographical presence of American television, its actual reach is limited to a small proportion of the population of the “Third World”. CNN, for example, appears on the television screens of virtually every African country; but the service itself does not extend beyond the urban middle and upper class homes, constituting a small fraction of the respective national populations. Similarly, most people in the Arabic-speaking world who see Al-Hurra at all see it as a mere propaganda organ of the American government and are unlikely to place much value on its programmes. But combined with other media sources–print, electronic and computer–there has been such a powerful domino effect of the American imperial ideology as to make it truly hegemonic globally, capable of reproducing itself repeatedly across languages. Furthermore, this re-shaping of language takes place not only in what is said, but also in what is not said. As the only super-power, the USA tries to be the memory of the entire world, seeking to dictate what we should remember and what we must forget in human history. Thus in NBC’s morning program of 11 March, 2002, Katie Couric could describe September 11 “as the worst terrorist act in history”–not in American history, not even in recent history, but in history. Yet, as Noam Chomsky observes, the US terrorist bombing of Sudan’s Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in August 1998 may have been more devastating to the Sudan –in both actual and silent death toll and on the socio-economic well-being of the society at large–than September 11 has been to the USA (Chomsky 2001, 45-49).

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By Way of a Conclusion It is evident from the above discussion, then, that while African languages have indeed been mobilized in the struggle against imperial domination, there are many instances, then and now, where they have been transmuted into instruments of domination. Relativism and universalism often feed on each other. It is also true that in both the old and the new empires, European languages have served the ends of imperialism, but they have not necessarily done so as a consequence of imperial imposition. In Apartheid South Africa, for example, the language of the dominating class was deemed to serve the interests of domination best by being made inaccessible to the African. Here, the Apartheid regime explicitly invoked the relativist argument. Supposedly designed to keep Africans “African” and European power unchallenged, Apartheid officialdom introduced the so-called “Bantu Education”. Justifying it as an exercise in separate but equal development, the Boers attempted to restrict Africans to African tongues, allowing them access to Afrikaans only at a much later stage in the educational pyramid. As we know, the language Afrikaans has its roots in 17th century Dutch and was enriched by several languages, including that of the Malay, a term used to refer to that section of the Muslim community in South Africa whose ancestors were sent there as indentured labour by the Dutch in the 17th and 18th century.11 The Malay came mainly from Java and the Indonesian islands (especially Bali), with the first group arriving as early as 1667. Unlike the enslaved Africans in the Americas who lost their preenslavement religions (both Traditional and Islamic), descendants of indentured Malayans managed to cling to Islam right to the present day. But like the enslaved Africans in the Americas, they too lost their language. In the process of this linguistic loss, however, they made a significant linguistic contribution to the evolution of Afrikaans. It has even been suggested that the first written texts in Afrikaans language were in the Arab-Malay script at a time when Afrikaans was still primarily as an oral medium. Though about fifty percent of its native speakers are people of colour, including the Malayans, Afrikaans was subsequently promoted alongside Afrikaner nationalism, assuming an important role in minority white rule officially known as Apartheid. When Africans finally rebelled in the socalled Soweto riots of 1976, it was in protest not in favour of indigenous African language(s), but ironically of English, another Germanic language which had come to be seen by the educated as a potential instrument of African liberation. At the same time, however, the edifice of Bantu

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Education represents yet another instance of the potential use of African languages for the ends of domination. The lessons and conclusions reached so far do not imply, of course, that African languages have no special roles in the advancement of Africa’s interests and its struggle for genuine independence. They certainly do. Some of these are clearly identified in the Asmara Declaration, many seeking to break the chains of intellectual dependency on the North. They also express the idea that African languages are vital for the development of democracy in Africa. In this regard Ngugi wa Thiong’o has pointed out that “…as long as the ideas are available in African languages [to those who have no competence in the Eurolanguages], even anti-African ideas, the people will start developing them in ways that may not always be in accordance with the needs of the national middle classes and their international allies” (Ngugi 1998, 97-98). Ngugi here is raising the question of class struggle over meanings of ideas and concepts in African languages and the possibility of their semantic transformation in the quest for a counter-discourse and a new order.12 This is a sentiment that informs the general thrust of the Asmara Declaration; that the envoicement of Africa and the construction of an independent discourse can only emerge from the re-centring of African languages. The existence of counter-hegemonic ideas and concepts in a language is, of course, one important facet; conveying those ideas to the public, on the other hand, is quite another. The mere existence of ideas does not imply, in every case, their conveyability. The one depends on a language’s own resources and capacity for expansion; the other, on the social rules on how language is to be used. That is why some women writers regard European languages in Africa as both a blessing and a curse, as potential instruments of liberation on the one plane and malleable vehicles of domination on the other. For Assia Djebar, for example, the French language provided her with the space for “self-unveiling,” to do with the language what her Arab patriarchal society of Algeria considered taboo for women to do in the Arabic language. But she understood, at the same time, the gravity of dependency that results from a national capitulation to a Western tongue (Lionnet 1996, 331-333). The bottom-line of Assia Djebar’s experience is that counterdiscourse cannot be restricted to the generation of alternative meanings. Often it has to involve a certain degree of linguistic transgression, challenging the social rules and cultural politics that govern language use, that determine who says what to whom, how, when and where. Furthermore, the quest for a counter-hegemonic discourse cannot be confined to the nation-state. It has to be linked to global struggles for a

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more just order precisely because hegemonic discourse itself is a global monster cutting across languages. For example, following the tragedy of September 11, Kenya was on the verge of becoming Africa’s Pakistan. Pakistan had served as the launching pad for America’s invasion of Afghanistan. For a while Kenya was poised to play a similar role with regard to its neighbours, Somalia which was regarded by the USA as a terrorist haven of sorts. In the process, the Manichaean logic of George Bush, framed in the English language, now migrated to the Swahili of the then president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi, with all the attendant violations of rights, freedoms and justice that it implied. If local articulations of hegemonic discourses betray more global configurations of power, then, the local struggles over meanings must, at some level, be cognisant of more global contestations.13 In this linguistic revolution, a special challenge confronts African translators of world news. News in English from syndicates in the USA, for example, repeatedly reproduces the discourse of domination. At the same time that it conquers new regions, new people and new cultures, the English medium of the American media carries with it a neoliberal ideology that seeks to legitimise the market philosophy of “profit over people”, the unequal power relations between north and south and the ongoing construction of global apartheid (Chomsky 1999), precluding any imaginable possibility of an alternative system or a credible path of revolutionary action. If African media translators are to avoid reinforcing the globalisation of this neo-liberal ideology, then, they must be creatively bold to install new categories of meaning in the contested space of political semantics that will play a counter-discursive role against the logic of the new imperialism. In the final analysis, what is at issue here is not only the imperative of Africa, the South, speaking in its own voice, but also the question of what gets voiced in that act of speaking. And part of the linguistic struggle over meanings and over ways of speaking is ultimately also a struggle to reclaim Africa’s history, the South’s history, and its appropriate inscription in the global tapestry of human diversity.

Acknowledgement I am highly indebted to Professor Ali A. Mazrui and Dr. Alwi Shatry for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this essay.

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References Alidou, O. and A. Mazrui. 1999. “The Language of Africa-Centered Knowledge in South Africa: Universalism, Relativism and Dependency”. In National Identity and Democracy in South Africa, ed. Palmberg, M.:101-118. Human Science Research Council, Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute and Cape Town: Mayibuye Center. Biggs, M. 1999. Globalization Issues Force to the Front Lines by Changing Online Demographics, InfoWorld, 21 (36): 52. Burling, R. 1964. Cognitive and Componential Analysis: God’s Truth or Hocus-Pocus? American Anthropologist, 66: 20-28. Bourgault, L. M.1995. Mass Media in Sub-Saharan Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Chomsky, N. 2001. 9-11. New York: Seven Seas Press. —. 1999. Profit over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order. New York: Seven Seas Press. —. 1986. Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use. New York: Praeger. —. 1968. Language and Mind. New York: Harcourt. Fabian, J. 1986. Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo: 1880-1938. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fanon, F. 1967. A Dying Colonialism. New York: Grove Press. Ferreira, E. S. 1974. Portuguese Colonialism in Africa: The End of an Era. Paris: Unesco. Fukuyama, F. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York and Toronto: Free Press & Maxwell MacMillan Canada. Ginsberg, B. 1986. The Captive Public: How Mass Opinion Promotes State Power. New York: Basic Books Inc. Publishers. Jordan, T. 2001. Measuring the Internet: Home Counts Versus Business Plans, Information, Communication & Society, 4 (1): 34-53. Lal, V. 2002. Empire of Knowledge: Culture and Plurality in the Global Economy. London: Pluto Press. Lionnet, F. 1996. “Logiques metisses: Cultural Appropriation and Postcolonial Representations”. In Postcolonial Subjects: Francophone Women Writers, eds. Green, M.J., K. Gould, M. Rice-Maximin, K.L. Walker and J.A. Yeager: 321-344. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mazrui, A. A. and A. M. Mazrui. 1999. Political Culture of Language: Swahili, Society and the State. Binghamton, NY: IGCS, Binghamton University.

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Mchombo, S. 1998. National Identity, Democracy and the Politics of Language in Malawi and Tanzania. Journal of African Policy Studies, 4(1): 33-46. Microsoft News, Gates Talks about PCs, Internet and Globalization at the World Economic Forum. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/02-01davos.asp. 1999. (accessed April 25, 2005). Mwaura, P. 1980. Communication Policies in Kenya. Paris: UNESCO. Nelson, L. 1989. Literary Translation. Translation Review, 28: 17-30. Ngugi wa Thiong’o. 1998. Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: Towards a Critical Theory of the Arts and the State in Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press. —. 1986. Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: Heinemann. Perrault, A. H. and V. l. Gregory. 2000. Think Global, Act Local: The Challenges of Taking the Website Global. INSPEL, 34: 227-237. Readings, B. 1996. The University in Ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Said, E. 1997. Covering Islam. Revised ed. New York: Vintage Books. Sapir, E. 1929. The Status of Linguistics as a Science. Language, 5: 20714. —. 1921. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt. Searle, C. 1983. A Common Language. Race and Class, 25 (2): 65-74. Shakespeare, J. 1963. Julius Caeser. Trans. Julius Nyerere. Nairobi: Oxford University Press. Tudesq, A. 1983. La Radio en Afrique Noire. Paris: Editions A. Pedone Watson, T. Companies Redefine National Borders: Why Internet Globalization is Local. www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/251451. (accessed April 25, 2005) Whorf, B. L. Language, Mind and Reality. 1949. Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. ed. Carroll, J. B.: 246-270. Cambridge: MIT Press.

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Notes 1

I use the term ‘new empire’ to designate the so-called ‘new world order’ whose logic is framed …not by an explicit contrast between the colonizers and the colonized, superior and inferior races, but rather in the language of laws, the injunction to be moral, the apparent concern for lives (there must be no American casualties, in any case), and the ethic of caring. The imperative to punish and kill is now derived by designating entire states as rogue or outlaw formations, who invite retribution by having stepped outside the pale of law of what American politicians call international community. (Lal 2002, 10) 2 According to Ali Mazrui–personal correspondence, April 10, 2005–some of these differences include the following: European Empires a. Territorial occupation (e.g. Pax Britannica) b. Polycentric imperialism (London, Paris, etc) c. Imperial competition (scramble for Africa) d. Multilingual expansion (English, French, etc) e. Language transfer through formal schools

f. Governance with economy of force g. Imperialism as monopoly-stage of warfare h. Southern vulnerability alongside northern security (London and Paris were militarily safe from anticolonial wars) i. Imperial legitimation by the yardstick of comparative standards of ‘democracy.’

American Imperium a. Hegemonic control (e.g. Pax Americana) b. Unicentric imperialism (Washington D.C.) c. Imperial monopoly (single superpower) d. Monolingual spread (American English) e. Language transfer through informal impact: a) Demonstration effect b) Foreign aid and trade c) the media d) Cinema, song and entertainment f. Governance through massive military force g. Imperialism as monopoly stage of weapons of mass destruction h. North-South reciprocal vulnerability (Washington and New York are no longer safe from southern terrorist retaliation) i. Imperial legitmation by the yardstick of comparative standards of ‘civilisation.’

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j. European sovereignty in the colonies carried accountability for colonial warfare k. Eurocentric international economy l. Engine of the forces of westernisation and globalisation (political, economic, technological and cultural) 3

21

j. American power in the dependencies carries legal impunity k. Americocentric world economy l. Engine of the forces of (political, economic, electronic and informational)

Some years ago Gerald L Baliles, then Governor of Virginia and the chairman of the National Governor’s Association, made a strong plea for the teaching of foreign languages to US students as a way of opening up overseas markets to American businesses (Chronicle of Higher Education, March 1, 1989, A 19). 4 A survey on Internet linguistic diversity conducted by Ao Benjamin of First Byte (a speech technology company in California) and posted on a list-serve entitled the Linguist on November 14 1995 provides ample evidence of the Anglocentricty of the Internet. By the year 2000, over eighty percent of Internet hosts were located in countries that speak English as a first language (Jordan 2001). 5 This industry has now become “a source of employment for foreign language majors and native speakers of foreign languages alike who are being urged to learn translation technology. Vendors are emerging with software that helps manage multilingual website development and workflow” (Perrault and Gregory 2000, 231). 6 Some Indian computer software and services exporting companies, for example, regard it as insufficient that the top level of its employees is fluent in English. The employees must also be trained to acquire certain cultural Americanisms relevant to the business world. They must not only sound American; they must also act American (See the article by Saritha Rai, “Indian Companies are Adding Western Flavor,” New York Times, August 19, 2003). 7 Another US government sponsored electronic media in Arabic is Radio Sawa which features pop music interspersed with frequent newscasts. This radio transmission targets the disenchanted youth who are considered to be ready recruits for Al-Qaeda. 8 Edward Said made a similar observation that “With the end of the Cold War…Islam has come to represent America’s major foreign devil” (1997, 7). 9 As an alternative to the current funding structure for area studies in the American academy, Kurtz suggests the following: “…Congress can insure that our defense and intelligence agencies have access to well-trained linguists by redirecting the twenty million dollar post-9/11 increase in Title VI funding to the Defense Language Institute. The Defense Language Institute would then be in a position to fund scholarships for college students to do advanced language training, leading to full time jobs in our defense and intelligence agencies.” http://edworkforce.house.gov/108th/sed/titlevi61903/kurtz.htm (accessed on April 25, 2005)

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According to one report, “The CIA is revitalizing programs of covert action that once helped win the Cold War, targeting Islamic media, religious leaders and political parties” (US News and World Report, USNews.com, April 25, 2005). 11 This history raises the question of whether the Malay language (Bahasa Malaysia) under the British is different from the Malay language under the Dutch (Bahasa Indonesia) in sociolinguistic experience. How did the two European colonisers affect the destiny of the Malay language under the new empire? 12 Bourgault has made the observation that a healthy trend in recent years has been “the growth of groups founded in the Southern Hemisphere, assemblages of persons promoting communitarian politics, grass roots awareness, feminist consciousness of peace and equality, and environmental stewardship, all within an ethical or religious framework. African groups have also participated in this process, many in connection with the flowering of democracy movements” (Bourgault 1995, 247). With these grass roots initiatives, there has also emerged a communitarian model of the media, especially in electronic media. This development not only favours the use of African languages, but provides excellent opportunities for the inscription of alternative and independent ideas and discourses outside the confines of the epistemological empire imposed by the West.

CHAPTER TWO LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM, THE IDEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN LINGUISTIC THOUGHT, AND THE STUDY OF ASIAN LANGUAGES GERRY KNOWLES, LANCASTER UNIVERSITY, UK AND ZURAIDAH MOHD DON, UNIVERSITI MALAYA

This paper discusses three issues which on the surface are very different: the status of research in linguistics, the relationship between global English and other languages, and the study of an Asian language like Malay. In the case of the first, we argue that there is a need for a scientific approach to the study of language, and for the second, that we need to take an objective approach to languages differing in levels of power. The third issue brings these two together. In order to study an Asian language like Malay effectively we need to take scientific approach which presupposes an objective understanding of the relationship between Malay and English. The issues are clouded in each case by beliefs that can be traced to an ideology. Ironically, the ideology belongs to a world that has long since passed away. There is nothing to be gained by making an unscientific and imprecise study of linguistic form using inadequately defined categories. Global English is an important issue in the modern world, and cannot be comprehended by conventional beliefs about the relationships among languages. Malay cannot be analysed by treating it as a variety of English. It is to nobody’s disadvantage to subject traditional beliefs to critical examination and to replace them with beliefs that belong to the modern world as we know it in the early twenty-first century. The need for language-based technologies will continue to grow in the twenty-first century, and this will require a more scientific approach

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to linguistics, and the study of language will become more interdisciplinary and collaborative.

Introduction In this paper we make a critical appraisal of established customs and practices in linguistics, including a self-critical look at our own procedures. We also report on some research which is currently underway, and which has been designed in the light of a critical appraisal, and in this way show how a critical approach can directly affect the way research in linguistics is undertaken. We address three main issues, whether linguistics is a science or a scholastic system, whether global English offers a threat to other languages or an opportunity for their development, and whether Asian languages are really just like European languages or have an Asian identity of their own. What links these three issues together is of course not the logical surface of linguistics, but a belief system which we shall regard as the “common sense” of modern linguistics. Taking a critical approach does not mean that we set out to find fault with anything and everything, but that we intend to look beneath the surface of things to identify their true nature. Language is political by nature, and when languages are used as instruments of power, as they inevitably are when they are adopted as national languages or as languages of scholarship, beliefs about language and languages typically reflect the unequal distribution of power (Baldauf and Kaplan 2003). The term “critical” is used most frequently with reference to discourse analysis, and tracing the use of language to construct meanings which are often contentious and linked to implicit ideological beliefs, the very use of which demonstrates the reality of power (Fairclough 1989, 1992, 2001, Zuraidah Mohd Don 2003). But language could not be used in this way in a vacuum. In order for contentious meanings to be created and to be effective, they have to be supported by social practices and beliefs about language that incorporate what society accepts as common sense (see Caldas-Coulthard and Coulthard 1996, Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999, Van Dijk 2006). In this paper, we are not concerned directly with discourse analysis as such, but with the wider context of language and ideology.

Linguistics as a science The question has long been discussed whether or not linguistics can rightly be regarded as a science. Linguists began to think of their subject

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as a science in the 1870s, when they discovered regular laws that governed sound change in the Indo-European languages. The systematic study of linguistic form–phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics–now structures the subject like a science or at least like mathematics, while the thorough investigation of the role of language in society undertaken by sociolinguists adds the attributes of a social science. However, as soon as we ask critical questions, the scientific status of linguistics begins to look shaky. The sciences and mathematics have a natural progression from the simpler to the more complex parts of the subject, and a student of mathematics will tackle sum and difference before Z-scores or y = ex. Linguistics has no natural beginning, and students begin with highly complex concepts such as “parts of speech”, phonemes and syntactic structure. This is reflected in the use of technical terms. In mathematics, a useful concept (such as the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter) is first identified and then given a name (in this case pi). Linguists begin with a technical term–sentence, word, phoneme, stress, or fluency–and then look for a suitable definition. This is why so many basic linguistic technical terms are used in a bewildering variety of senses. A third important criterion is falsifiability. It is possible to falsify the belief that the sun goes round the earth or that 5 + 3 = 7. It is more difficult to falsify the claims of metrical phonology or the claim that an indirect object marked with a preposition belongs to the core of the clause. That is because linguistic truths are determined not by the facts of spoken and written language, but by the beliefs of authoritative figures in the subject. Making a theoretical advance is more akin to refuting Aristotle than drawing inferences from experimental research. There have certainly been periods when linguists attempted to adopt scientific methods, not only in the 1870s but also in the middle third of the last century, when linguistics was dominated by the American structuralists. But since the 1960s, linguistics has been dominated by a scholastic research paradigm, and not by a scientific one. An important test is whether the “common sense” of the subject, that is, the set of beliefs and assumptions that are so taken for granted that they are never or rarely examined, actually conform to reality. Many traditional ideas and practices derive not from the study of language in the modern world but from the medieval teaching of Latin. For example, nearly all linguistic enquiry concentrates on that subset of language output that conforms to beliefs about “correct” language. Of course, some linguists study non-standard forms, but the fact that these are the exceptions proves the rule. Secondly, nearly all linguistic enquiry focuses on the written

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form of language, to the extent that when linguists claim to work on “spoken” texts, what they typically mean is that they work on orthographic transcripts of speech. So deeply ingrained is this scholastic view of speech that even a high-profile project like the British National Corpus collected ten million words of speech, and provided only orthographic transcripts to the research community. This automatic conversion of speech to written language affects linguistic theory in fundamental ways, because linguistic concepts such as sentence and word are defined according to orthographic norms. The notion of the syllable reflects Western alphabetic writing systems, and yet is assumed to be a universal property of speech. Even the kind of sentences linguists invent as data–such as Jack built a house–are clearly based on written rather than spoken models, and the notion of a typical text is based on Classical literary precedents rather than modern practices such as e-mail or text messaging. Now there is clearly no advantage whatever to be gained for Asian linguistics by following the Western ideology, and indeed, the stultifying effects of this ideology are everywhere apparent in the study of Asian languages. This situation may be seen as a threat, something that makes Asian linguistics much more difficult, but it can also be seen as an opportunity to develop a new kind of linguistics based on the realities of the language situations in Asian countries. This opportunity has been seized by the MALEX project, which as the name (“MALay LEXicon”) implies, began with the aim of setting up an annotated lexicon for Malay, but which has since gone on to develop an integrated computerised model of Malay. The aim of MALEX is not just to produce a theoretical model for its own sake, but also to do useful things in the real world. For example, in the next few years (whether we like it or not) the real world is going to be using talking kitchen appliances, and call centres are going to replace human operators with machines. Malaysians (whether they like it or not) have the choice of developing their own technologies for Malay, or of paying others for the privilege of using their own language on the computer. MALEX is intended to provide the language model for these new technologies. There is no room in this brave new world for the irrational beliefs of a bygone era. MALEX takes a corpus-based approach, that is, it begins with large amounts of naturally produced data (Knowles and Zuraidah 2006, 2007). In the initial stages, written data was used as it is so much easier to acquire, and it was used in the development of those parts of the model which apply equally to speech and writing. More recently, work has begun on spoken data, and this means starting with speech events in the waveform. Waveforms have to be systematically annotated, and the

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information extracted has to be organised and stored in a speech database. The linguistic description is entirely data driven in the light of a precise theoretical framework, and builds up an integrated model of the language structure. In conventional linguistics, the different components of the language– such as phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexis–are typically studied independently, and only afterwards (if at all) is the question raised of how they all fit together. In MALEX, they are studied together from the beginning, and the links between them are never lost. As a result, they may fit together in rather novel ways. For example, the phonology is partly encoded in a spelling-to-phoneme algorithm that generates a pronouncing dictionary from a table of morphologically analysed words, but it is also involved in interpreting phonetic events in the waveform, and in analysing new words encountered in corpus texts. In conventional linguistics, linguistic knowledge is hidden away inside people’s heads where it remains inaccessible to direct examination. In MALEX all the linguistic information is organised systematically and made fully explicit, and it is routinely examined (and checked and tested) as the system is used and expanded. In some cases, the information is stored in database tables (e.g. a table of lexical items or a pronouncing dictionary), while in others linguistic theory is encoded in the form of text processing tools such as a tagger, or an automatic parser. The system is organised in a logical progression, so that one part of the system tests those parts on which it depends, e.g. the parser tests the grammatical tagger. The point is that a parser depends on a valid theory of grammatical class, and if words are tagged in an inappropriate way, a parser simply will not work. Finally, the different parts of the system have to work together efficiently in order to provide linguistic information for applications. For example, for the purposes of speech synthesis, the output from the parser has to be correctly integrated with information about the pronunciation of words which comes from the pronouncing dictionary. For speech recognition, it is essential not only to have a valid language model, but also to have access to quantitative information on the frequency of linguistic items, and how frequently different items occur together in texts. Applications in speech technology cannot succeed without a working model of a language in which the components are theoretically sound and fully integrated. The answer to the question whether or not linguistics is a science is that there is no reason in principle why linguistics should not be a science on par with computer science. Some ideological baggage needs to be

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identified and left behind, e.g. the belief that language description can be based on intuition and invented data, but the opportunities offered by modern computer technology make it possible to develop a new kind of scientific linguistics for the twenty-first century (Knowles and Zuraidah Mohd Don 2007).

Global English as a Threat or an Opportunity Global English can be likened to a mighty juggernaut crushing languages and injuring many more as it pursues its relentless path to world domination (see Chew 1999). In Britain itself, the Celtic languages–once spoken from beyond the Alps to the North of Scotland–were almost obliterated in the twentieth century, and countless languages disappeared entirely from all parts of the world. Those that survived had to find an accommodation with English, taking on English words and even modifying their grammatical structures to make them more like English (see Phillipson 2003). In Asia, one is likely to find words of English origin in everyday use for key terms in modern culture, including “telephone”, “television”, “computer” and even “coffee”. At the same time, countries all over the world have set up English Language Teaching programmes so that their people can obtain a better command of English. In India, it was discovered long ago that English was ideally suited to enable people of different linguistic backgrounds to talk to each other, and at the same time enable India to speak to the rest of the world. English has much the same role in Malaysia, where English is associated with national development, and has been re-introduced in the education system as the language to be used in the teaching of maths and science. In this respect, English offers a major opportunity for the future. There are clearly two ideological strands here that have to be disentangled. To begin with, we have to make a distinction between logical contradictions and emotional contradictions. Statements which are logically contradictory cannot be simultaneously asserted, e.g. it is not possible to assert that 2+2=4 and that 2+2=5, or that Elvis Presley died many years ago and that Elvis Presley is still alive. However, emotional contradictions can be entertained simultaneously. A shopper may wish to own something and at the same time keep the money required to buy it, or someone with weight problems may wish to indulge in food and not eat anything at all. In the same way, there must be many people round the world who resent the status of English, or who in some way feel uncomfortable about the increasing association of English with global power, but who at the same time ensure that their command of English is

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developed as far as possible, and may even spend their careers contributing towards the international spread of English. The fact is that languages of power have been ousting local languages from the beginning of history (see Biong 1995, Phillipson 2003). Perhaps the earliest case is that of Sanskrit in India; as it began to split into the modern languages of Northern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, it must have replaced many (probably Dravidian) languages. Arabic spread north of the Gulf, where it replaced the very closely related Aramaic, which had been in use over a wide area for many centuries. As Latin spread throughout much of Europe, it replaced closely related languages in Italy, the more distantly related Celtic language of what is now France, and an unknown number of the aboriginal languages of Europe, of which only Basque survives, and of which we have further surviving records only for Etruscan. Dominated languages are able to survive by taking over the advantages of the dominant language. In the fourteenth century, English was a despised vernacular, dominated not only by Latin but also by French, and following the first linguistic conference held at Oxford University in 1401, it was officially regarded as rude, vile and barbarous. English was “improved” by borrowing huge numbers of words and expressions from French, and this was followed in the sixteenth century by wholesale borrowing from Latin. As a result, by the time English was thrust into an international role by the imperial expansion that began in the seventeenth century, it was beginning to be as fitted for the role as either Latin or French. The orthography was fixed, and scholars produced grammars and dictionaries, and English successfully played the role of the language of the British Empire in the nineteenth century. And since the shift of power from Britain to America after 1945 did not involve a change of language, the path was set for English to become the global language. Burchfield (1985, 60) comments on this global reach of English, and goes as far as to equate ignorance of English with linguistic deprivation: English has become a lingua franca to the point that any literate educated person is in a very real sense deprived if he does not know English, Poverty, famine, and disease are instantly recognized as the cruellest and least excusable forms of deprivation. Linguistic deprivation is a less easily noticed condition, but one nevertheless of great significance.

Malaysian language policy has closely followed European precedents with spectacular success. Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, roughly equivalent to a European language academy, was set up in 1956, just before independence, and established a fixed orthography, and produced

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dictionaries and grammars. As a result, half a century later, Malay is a fully developed national language at a global level, in use for literature and textbooks, in the media and on the internet. This could not have been foreseen in 1956, and as a prediction it might have seemed somewhat optimistic. What also could not have been foreseen was just how quickly the international language situation was about to change. For most of recorded history, local languages have been used alongside Europe were able to assert their own national languages on the international scene. This period came to a natural end with the decline of the nation states, and the rise of the United States and the European Union. The usual situation then returned, and by an accident of modern political history it was English that assumed the international role. What makes English fit for the role of global language is not the grammar and lexis it inherited from its Anglo-Saxon origins, but what it took from French and Latin. The important borrowings are not words for French cheeses or Roman articles of clothing, but words for concepts which transcend localised cultures on the one hand and on the other, ways of writing texts of international scholarship. The ability to produce works of scholarship had been developed in Latin over a long period, and had to some extent been copied in French; by borrowing from French and Latin, English too became a language of scholarship. In some special cases, as in music or mathematics, a special international notation can be used, but in most cases knowledge has to be expressed in language, and that means a specific language has to be used. But as the case of English makes clear, any language can be modified to make it a suitable vehicle for the transmission of knowledge. In fact, several languages have been used over the centuries for this purpose. English took over the role from Latin, and Latin in turn took it from Greek. The Greeks are usually assumed to have thought of everything for themselves, but this is most unlikely, as their settlements extended round the Mediterranean coast as far as Alexandria, and these brought them into contact with all the civilisations of the ancient world, from Mesopotamia and Iran to Egypt. In this way languages of power have been the vehicles for the transmission of human knowledge over the centuries. What people all over the world want from English is not any special properties of the English language itself, but the general human inheritance for which English happens to be the present vehicle. When Malays use words like demokrasi or haipotenus, they are superficially borrowing from English, but these words are typically borrowed in the first place into English from some former language of power.

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In order to understand the relationship between English and national languages, we have to get away from irrational stereotypes, and make an objective assessment. This can be done by examining the language practices of the former Malaysian Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Over 1700 speeches delivered by Dr Mahathir between 1981 and 2003 were made available on the government website, from where they were downloaded (with permission) for use in the study reported here. Some of these were in English, others in Malay, and many in a mixture of the two languages. The study concentrated on code-switching, and in particular on the different roles of the two languages. For this kind of work, random sampling is essential so that the results will be as representative as possible. Hand-picked samples prove nothing, because the researchers could–whether intentionally or not–have picked texts that seem to prove the case. The texts were first subjected to a procedure which automatically identified the language of each paragraph by estimating the proportion of words stored in an English lexicon and in a Malay lexicon. A second procedure used random numbers to select a sample of 12 “English” speeches containing at least one Malay paragraph, and 12 “Malay” speeches containing at least one English paragraph. The selected speeches were then studied manually. It was found that in the English speeches, Dr Mahathir switched mainly at paragraph level, with just a small number of individual words and traditional Malay sayings creeping into the text at a lower level. He would often begin a speech in Malay, to thank the organisers, address the audience, or otherwise bond with the audience. He would also often end the speech in Malay, to thank the audience or undertake some other activity such as opening an exhibition. The point is that the switches into Malay did not in general form part of the main speech. In the Malay speeches, by contrast, the switches into English were very much part of the main speech, and were everywhere associated with the global context and contemporary global issues, such as AIDS orphans, or the caring society. Even switches consisting of short phrases such as local content or supporting industry would be used to link the Malaysian economy to the global situation. English is also used for self criticism, e.g. in the use of inferiority complex, or the assertion that we are our own worst enemy. A particularly interesting use of paragraphs in English in the middle of a Malay speech would be to present informal statements of government policy for international consumption. These would sometimes be marked off with an introductory Ladies and Gentlemen with switch back to Malay marked with the corresponding Malay phrase Tuan-tuan dan puan-puan.

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Dr Mahathir is a particularly effective speaker, and the appreciation of his use of English alongside Malay requires a systematic and objective study. To suggest that English is doing some kind of damage would be entirely irrational, and carry as much conviction as the notion that Shakespeare’s language is damaged by the considerable use he made of Latin and French.

English and Asian Languages Among the irrational beliefs that surround a language of power is that it has special properties that make it intrinsically superior to ordinary languages, and among the notions frequently heard is that it is particularly “pure”, logical, or even beautiful. Faced with an allegedly superior language, writers inevitably attempt to “improve” ordinary languages in order to make them more like their betters, and even linguists describe languages to make them more like the languages given high prestige in their society. In view of the extensive re-modelling of English on Latin, we actually have no real idea of what the earliest English was like, and English has always been described using categories more appropriate for Latin. For example, the system of “parts of speech” is well designed for languages like Latin and Ancient Greek, but has not suited English very well for hundreds of years. Latin has clearly separate categories of noun and verb, but since medieval times, English has had a large and growing class of words including walk, talk, bin, promise, and scream which can fill syntactic positions normally occupied by either nouns or verbs. This is a well known problem in corpus linguistics, but not one given much prominence in “theoretical” discussions of English grammar. The problem of Latin-based grammar was perfectly well understood by the American structural linguists in the middle third of the last century. These linguists also deconstructed much of the traditional language ideology of Europe, including the belief in the purity of the standard language, a notion which had been transplanted uncritically across the Atlantic. In view of their zeal to make objective descriptions of languages hitherto unknown to linguists, it might be said that the structuralists lost sight of what different human languages as a whole have in common. But this is the wisdom of hindsight, and it is obvious that a large number of languages have to be described independently before it is possible to distinguish rare and common features, let alone set up “universals” of human language. It was the misfortune of the structuralists to be swept aside by the so-called Chomskyan revolution, which allowed the return of much of the old ideology, with the result that the pendulum swung back

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too far the other way. It is an accident of history that the linguistic revolution caught the wind of change that gave independence to many countries in Africa and Asia: Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures appeared in 1957, which was also the year of Malaysian independence1. It was perhaps inevitable that it was the old European language ideology rather than the more scientific methods of the American structuralists that was to dominate Asian linguistics for the rest of the century. While Malay has been successfully established as the national language of Malaysia, the formal description of the language has not been so successful. Malay has a popular but misleading reputation as a “simple” language. It is historically one of the most successful lingua francas the world has seen, and it is not surprising that some of its structures should superficially appear to be simple. But simplicity in one part of the language system may be complemented by complexity somewhere else. For example, if one starts with the writing system, the phonology of Malay may seem to be simple; but the abstract vowels and consonants given in a pronouncing dictionary entry can prove to be extremely elusive when one looks for them in the speech waveform. The syntax may appear to be simple, but that means that the language is highly complicated at the pragmatic level when syntactic structures have to be analysed and interpreted. The irony is that this allegedly simple language refuses to give up its secrets to the kind of conventional linguistic analysis to which it has been subjected. Part of the problem, of course, is the inappropriate assertion of the traditional European language ideology. Some of its manifestations obviously do not apply in Malaysia at all. For example, a broad association can be assumed between nationality and language, so that the French speak French, the Germans speak German, and the Italians speak Italian. A similar association can be assumed for some Asian countries, such as China, Korea, or Japan, but obviously not for others such as India or Malaysia. A slightly more subtle point applies to the notion of “mother tongue”: in the predominantly monolingual societies of Europe, it makes sense to assume that everybody has a mother tongue. In Malaysia, as elsewhere in Asia, many people will use different languages for different purposes, to the extent that assigning one of them the status of mother tongue is arbitrary and probably meaningless. The reasons why European language models cannot be applied directly to Malay have been discussed in detail elsewhere (Knowles and Zuraidah 2006) in the case of adverbs, and two further cases can be discussed here, namely parts of speech and stress. There is nothing to stop the linguist using the English parts of speech to label the words of Malay, so that

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orang “person” can be called a noun, makan “eat” a verb, baru “new” an adjective and so on. This procedure will work for a large number of words, and will appear superficially to be free of problems. The difficulty arises when we try to use these categories to explain the syntax. The category of “noun” still seems to apply for the most part, as to a lesser extent does that of “verbs”; but “adjectives” are not straight forward except when used as noun modifiers in a phrase such as kereta baru itu “that new car”. One source of difficulty is that an “adjective” can follow a noun phase to complete a sentence, as in kereta itu baru “that car is new”, and to explain this we need a rule deleting a potential copula verb corresponding to English BE. The sentence Ali adalah guru “Ali is a teacher” actually has the alternative form Ali guru, which suggests that Malay has an optional rule deleting the copula adalah “is”. That being so, we might argue that kereta itu baru derives from *kereta itu adalah baru by the obligatory deletion of the copula. An “adjective” can also immediately follow a verb as in sungai mengalir deras “the river flows swiftly”, and in this case there is an alternative structure sungai mengalir dengan deras in which the “adjective” is used with the preposition dengan “with”. Here we seem to have a rule which optionally deletes dengan from an adverbial phrase of manner. The difficulty is that that having started off with the belief that Malay is like English in this part of the grammar, we have to keep inventing ad hoc explanations to patch up the increasingly obvious differences. Any individual ad hoc explanation may be reasonable enough on its own, but the set of ad hoc explanations seriously distorts the grammar of Malay. Suffice it to say that an understanding of Malay “adjectives” is not to be achieved by translating Malay expressions into English, and requires a systematic study of the predicator system and the verb modification system of Malay. The case for stress in Malay words is backed up by an authoritative literature going back to at least 1948 (Adam and Butler 1948). There are thousands of words in Malay that when produced in isolation have a peak of pitch on the penultimate syllable. The pitch rises to a peak and then immediately falls to low. Some of these words, such as kenapa “why” or kelapa “coconut” have the vowel [ԥ] in the first and last syllables (at least in standard Malay pronunciation), which gives them a prosodic pattern almost exactly like that of English professor. If this pattern is caused by stress in English, then surely Malay has a very similar stress pattern. Moreover, in a two-syllable word like terus [tԥrus] “continue”, the shwa in the first syllable cannot take the stress, so the stress shifts to the last syllable, exactly as in an English word such as police. If we now examine these words acoustically, we find that the fundamental frequency (which is

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the acoustic correlate of perceived pitch) follows exactly the expected pattern, and peaks consistently on the stressed syllable. Surely this constitutes cast-iron scientific proof for word stress in Malay, and there can be no room for doubt or misinterpretation. In fact, this so-called stress pattern is an artefact created when Malay words are read aloud out of any communicative context. The “stress” actually consists of two independent parts which are normally separated in longer phrases. The rise to the peak marks the beginning of a prosodic phrase, and the fall to low marks the end. It just so happens that when the utterance consists of a single word, both rise and fall have to fit on to the same word. To an English ear, the resulting pattern may sound like a stress, but the way English speakers happen to perceive Malay is not a relevant criterion in the analysis of the structure of Malay. Malay no more has stress like English than tones like Chinese. Both in culture and in structure, Malay is so far removed from English and other Western languages that the linguist has to be extremely careful in applying Western linguistic notions unmodified to Malay. Of course it is interesting when English and Malay are found to share the common characteristics of human language, but the linguist has to be critically aware of the problems, and describe Malay on its own terms when it manifestly differs from the conventional Western models.

Conclusions In this paper we have discussed three issues which on the surface are very different: the status of research in linguistics, the relationship between global English and other languages, and the study of an Asian language like Malay. In the case of the first, we argued that there is a need for a scientific approach to the study of language, and for the second, that we need to take an objective approach to languages differing in levels of power. The third issue brings these two together. In order to study an Asian language like Malay effectively we need to take a scientific approach which presupposes an objective understanding of the relationship between Malay and English. The issues are clouded in each case by beliefs that can be traced to an ideology. Ironically, the ideology belongs to a world that has long since passed away. There is nothing to be gained by making an unscientific and imprecise study of linguistic form using inadequately defined categories. Global English is an important issue in the modern world, and cannot be comprehended by conventional beliefs about the relationships among languages. Malay cannot be analysed by treating it as a variety of English.

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It is to nobody’s disadvantage to subject traditional beliefs to critical examination and to replace them with beliefs that belong to the modern world as we know it in the early twenty first century. The need for language based technologies will continue to grow in the twenty first century, and this will require a more scientific approach to linguistics, and the study of language will become more interdisciplinary and collaborative (see Yousif El-Imam and Zuraidah Mohd Don 2000, 2005). National languages like Malay will continue to flourish alongside English or whatever language replaces English in its global capacity, and the scientific approach will include an understanding of the relationship between the two. Understanding this relationship is in turn the key to the investigation of an Asian language like Malay.

References Adam, T. and Butler, J. P. 1948. Grammar of the Malay Language. New York: Roskin Photo Offset Corp. Baldauf, R. B. and Kaplan, R. B. 2003. “Language Policy Decisions and Power: Who Are the Actors?” In Language: Issues and Inequality, ed. Ryan, P.M and R. Terborg: 19-20. México: Universidada Nacional Autonoma de México. Biong, J. 1995. Language Choice and Cultural Imperialism: A Nigerian Perspective. ELT Journal, 49(2):122-132. Burchfield, R. 1985. The English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Caldas-Coulthard, C. and M. Coulthard. 1996. Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge. Chew, P. G-L. 1999. Linguistic Imperialism, Globalism and the English Language. AILA Review, 13: 37-47. Chouliaraki, L. and N. Fairclough. 1999. Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Fairclough, N. 1989. Language and Power. London: Longman. —. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Oxford: Polity Press. —. 2001. Language and Power. 2nd ed. London: Longman. Knowles, G. and Zuraidah Mohd Don. 2006. Word Class in Malay: A Corpus-based Approach. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Knowles, G. and Zuraidah Mohd Don. 2007. Natural Data in Linguistics Description: The Case of Adverbs and Adverbials in Malay. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Putaka.

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Phillipson, R. 2003. Linguistic Imperialism. 6th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. 2003. “Voice in Global English: Unherad Chords in Crystal Loud and Clear”. In Controversies in Linguistics, ed. Seidlhofer, B: 51-62. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van Dijk, T. 2006. Discourse and Manipulation. Discourse and Society, 17(3): 359-383. London: Sage Publications. Yousif A. El-Imam and Zuraidah Mohd Don. 2000. Text to Speech Conversion of Standard Malay. International Journal of Speech Technology, 3(2): 129 -146. Yousif, A. El-Imam and Zuraidah Mohd Don. 2005. Rules and Algorithms for Phonetic Transcription of Standard Malay. IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems E88-D(10): 2354-2372. Zuraidah Mohd Don. 2003. “The Beauty Mystique: Language and Gender Inequality”. In Language: Issues and Inequality, ed. Ryan, P. M and R. Terborg: 259-278. Mexico: Universidada Nacional Autonoma de México.

Notes 1

By an interesting coincidence, these words were written on Malaysian Independence Day, 31 August 2005.

CHAPTER THREE PARADOXES OF THE “GLOCAL” SELF IN THE NEW WORLD (DIS)ORDER: THE NATIONAL IDENTITY PROJECT FAIZ SATHI ABDULLAH, UNIVERSITI PUTRA MALAYSIA

Contemporary identity politics concerns the considerable dynamics that are inherent in much of the socio-political activity and theorising based on the lived and shared realities of social groups in the “era of globalisation” and the “New World Order”. “Glocalisation”, quite obviously a hybridised term from economics, refers to the production of goods or services intended for the global market but which are (re) packaged for a local culture. Hence, discourses on “glocal” identities tender the construction to mitigate “endist” arguments about the effects of global pressures on economic autonomy, privacy, democracy, and the sovereignty of the nation-state, its national language, culture, ideology and most certainly, its identity. Given the centrality of language in neocapitalist discourse, emergent terms in the new lexicon (e.g. “fragmegration” as a conflation of “fragmentation” and “integration”) are at best essentially reflective of the contestation of the “third space” as the globalisation project moves inexorably forward in the dominant bipolar discourse of pax Americana, its putative “coalition of the willing” and the coterminous formation, renewal and realignment of geopolitical allegiances. Hence, whither goes national identity? How do the national collective and the citizens thereof seek meaning as social actors in the new epoch? Using a broad critical discourse analysis framework, this paper explores a range of issues related to identity politics and the discourses of globalisation and world order to present descriptive hypotheses about the paradoxical nature of hybridised identities within the ambit of the historic Malaysian national identity project and the salience of “Bangsa

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Malaysia” (Lit. “Malaysian Nation”) as the Vision 2020 ideal. An interdiscursive analysis of a sample text is incorporated to explicate the related dialectics of identity construction such as identity/difference, localisation/globalisation, colonisation/appropriation and narrative/ metanarrative.

Introduction Since every search for identity includes differentiating oneself from what one is not. …identity politics is always and necessarily a politics of the creation of difference. One is a Bosnian Serb to the degree to which one is not a Bosnian Moslem or a Croat. … What is shocking about these developments is not the inevitable dialectic of identity/difference that they display but rather the atavistic belief that identities can be maintained and secured only by eliminating difference and otherness. The negotiation of identity/difference… is the political problem facing democracies on a global scale. (Seyla Benhabib 1996, 3f, cited in Wodak et al. 1999, 2-3).

Contemporary identity politics concerns the considerable dynamics that are inherent in a wide range of socio-political activity and theorising based on the lived and shared realities of social groups in the “era of globalisation” and the “New World Order”. The term “identity” here may be taken, in its broadest sense, to mean “how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future (Norton 2000, 5), and collectively, as “[a] people’s source of meaning and experience” (Castells 1997, 6). Since different people see the world differently through diverse socio-cultural lenses and identify with it in equally different ways, it is not difficult to see that identity is essentially about being different from “the Other”. Consequently, as Benhabib (1996) posits above, the politics of identity is about creating differences, and is a central political problem that is dominated by the hegemonic nature of power relations between the ruler and the ruled in a mediated world. Indeed, if politics is “the art of the possible” (commonly attributed to Bismarck 1867: see Craig 1958) and dominant political discourse is in turn vested with the power to decide who gets what, then identity politics becomes the privileged domain of the political elite which controls the meaning of “who we are” in society, and by extension, “who gets recognised” and on what basis, and for our concerns in this paper, in particular relation to constructed imaginings of “nation” and “nationhood”.

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As a matter of fact, Bourdieu (1994) in his essay Rethinking the State describes how the state’s political project for the shaping and generation of “national identity”: Through classificatory systems … inscribed in law, through bureaucratic procedures, educational structures and social rituals … the state molds mental structures and imposes common principles of vision and division …And it thereby contributes to the construction of what is commonly designated as national identity (or, in a more traditional language, national character). (7f, cited in Wodak et al. 1999, 29)

The state expects that this “nurturing of identity” through a common language, national culture and national ideology will include the disposition of individuals to display loyalty toward it and especially to protect it when it is perceived to be under some kind of threat, as in “Right or wrong, my country!” (Wodak et al. 1999, 29). From the perspective of the self as well as social groups within a country, however, Giesen (1993, in Kaunismaa 1995) defines national identity as a three-sided complex of contextual everyday-life understanding, historical processes of interaction, and symbolic or discursive codes. People interpret their everyday lives and processes of interaction with the aid of discursive codes which help reduce the complexity of social reality. This type of componential definition, Kaunismaa (ibid) adds, lends itself to a “minimalistic” empirical approach to studying the complex process of identification in that “the researcher does not have to ask what some nation's national identity “really” is… [but rather] studies national identity as claims and expressions that people have produced about themselves”. Further, since contestations of the nation evolve over time, national identity may be evinced as a fluid, dynamic complex which comprises similar socialised beliefs and/or opinions as well as common emotional attitudes and behavioural dispositions, “including inclusive, solidarity oriented and exclusive, distinguishing dispositions and also in many cases linguistic dispositions” (Wodak et al. 1999, 28). These postulations would mean that despite any ongoing identity project of the nation, the construct of the “imagined community” (Andersen 1983) needs to be viewed across the whole spectrum of imaginings by its subjects. Perhaps this is as best a juncture as any to ask the burning questions, to foreground the issues from the outset, as it were, concerning the Malaysian identity project in question here and to provide an overview of the paper. Hence, to start with, if “being Malaysian”, what I shall provisionally call a “macro” identity for the nascent nation-state i.e. the desired state of the individual citizens, social collectives as well as the

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body politic, what is the nature of this hitherto elusive1 entity? As Benhabib (1996) alludes to above, is it about the state’s machinations in the contested site to eliminate differences (i.e. to homogenise) and to cobble together a contrived, uniform sense of national sameness/uniqueness? Or does it emerge from the individual’s standpoint to relativise a sense of “oneness” that acknowledges differences with reference to the generalized, constitutive Other, as it should perhaps be rightly so? And given the globalising effects of “new world order” Discourse (after Gee 1999, 6-7), whither go “third space” identities such as the glocal Malaysian (or for that matter, glocal anything else that is essentially local) as these are touted by some politicians and transnational companies alike? In attempting to address questions as these in paradoxical terms in the main, I think it is necessary to see the world as a multipolar one comprising legitimising, project and resistant identity formations, respectively (Castells 1997) despite the hegemonic bipolar project identities that the globalisation movement seeks to ostensibly construct and promote for the local self as well as the collective vis-à-vis the global Other. Having said that, I follow this brief introduction with theoretical deliberations and perspectives on identity politics, the discourse of the new world “(dis)order”, and the emergence of what have been termed glocal identities. I then proceed with a brief account of the Malaysian sociohistoric context with special reference to the country’s Vision politics before presenting an interdiscursive analysis of an excerpt from Dr. Mahathir’s speech on globalisation as an example of national identityconstituting rhetoric. A set of concluding remarks ends the paper.

The Politics of Identity Formations It is argued that the governing majority of a state positions its national subjects socio-politically on the basis of an ideologically constructed Gramscian complex of ruler and the ruled. Constructions of race2, class, gender and politico-religious identity/difference, among others, complete the identity and politics nexus. This perspective on the role of the dominant institutions of the state “also fits with various theories of nationalism” (Castells 1997, 8; see also Anderson 1983, Gellner 1983), including “ethnic nationalisms” that insist on homogeneity as a nationalist ideology “in the attempt to bring about cultural standards for national unity and identity” (Eriksen 1991; original emphasis). Castells characterises forms of identity construction emerging from the above hegemonic process as “legitimising identities” and “project identities”

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(Castells 1997). On the flip side of the coin, as it were, discourses of marginalised minorities within the larger social context often point to their shared experiences of injustice vis-à-vis recognition (or the lack of it). Here, identity politics concerns the liberation of specific “counterhegemonic” communities whose members “assert or reclaim ways of understanding their distinctiveness that challenge dominant oppressive characterizations, with the goal of greater self-determination” (Benhabib 2002). Again, in Castells’ (1997) parlance, these latter discursive enactments would refer to the formation of “resistance identities”: generated by those actors that are in positions /conditions devalued and/or stigmatized by the logic of domination, thus building trenches of resistance and survival on the basis of principles different from or opposed to , those permeating the institutions of society (Castells 1997, 8).

An important corollary to theorising sociohistoric identity formations in this way is that resistance identities may over time generate project identities that ultimately become dominant over time to produce legitimising identities “to rationalise their domination” in the institutions of society. Thus, Castells (1997, 9) posits, resistance identities that ultimately produce “communes”, or “communities” are probably the most important type of identity-building in that they represent collective resistance against oppression, usually based on and defined by historical, geographical, or biological identity which “essentialize the boundaries of resistance”. He cites ethnic nationalism as a case in point, after Scheff (1994) who proposes that this type of nationalism often “arises out of a sense of alienation, on the one hand, and resentment against unfair exclusion, whether political, economic or social” (281, cited in Castells 1997, 9). Other forms of resistance, what Castells calls “the exclusion of the excluders by the excluded”, are “[R]eligious fundamentalism, territorial communities, nationalist self-affirmation, or even the pride of self-denigration, inverting the terms of oppressive discourse” (ibid). Castells’ notion of project identity together with its rationalisation of political dominance as legitimising identity to produce civil society in Antonio Gramsci’s terms (1997, 8) has important implications for collective “subjects” as well as the individual self that constitutes them. Given that project identity creates subjects and “subject positions” in the identity discourse, the subject as either “agent” or “affected” is “qualified to act through being constrained – ‘subjected’ – to an institutional frame” (Fairclough 1995, 39)3. Here, Touraine’s view (1995, 29-30, cited in Castells 1997, 9-10) about subject is germane:

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I name the subject the desire of being an individual, of creating a personal history, of giving meaning to the whole realm of experiences of individual life … the transformation of individuals into subjects results from the necessary combination of two affirmations: that of individuals against communities, and that of individuals against the market. (Castells’ translation)

Consequently, subjects are “the collective social actor” through which individuals build “their self-identity as a project of a different life … expanding towards the transformation of society” (Castells 1997, 10) and realised differentially at varying levels of abstraction, and perhaps concurrently as various forms of identity as, among others, national identity, ethnic identity, women’s identity, and religious identity. For example, the answer to the questions “What makes me a Malaysian?” and “How am I different from the citizens of Country XYZ?” may be discursively constructed as hegemonic project identity with certain predetermined parameters at the national/supranational levels (e.g. “united / multicultural / prosperous / sovereign nation-state”) and which is also legitimising in terms of the “legitimate language” that dominant groups appropriate to promote it. Alternatively, though by no means exclusively, such a national identity may be recontextualised as resistant identity at the national/sub-national levels by non-dominant groups that struggle to retain their cultural character and language (cf. Castells’ “imagined communities/communal images” dialectic with respect to nations and nationalisms [1997, 27]). Put differently, whether one constructs the nation as “imagined community” or “communal haven” would depend very much on the discoursal level (i.e. international, national or sub-national) of ideological positioning on the part of the nation’s social actors relative to type of particular social encounter or occasion (cf. Goffman’s [1969] “front region” and “back region”, cited in Giddens 2001, 94-5) as well as discourse “field” and the “symbolic power” that is available to access it (Bourdieu 1991; see also Fairclough 2001 on “orders of discourse”, “power in discourse” and “power behind discourse”). The apparent dichotomy in construction of multiple and overlapping identities outlined above, in somewhat paradoxical fashion involving the self, in-group, out-group and the state, which is clearly an essential feature of multicultural societies (Cogan and Derricott 1998, 3), can be explained in terms of a globalisation/localisation dialectic “that is played out as part of relations of struggle between globally dominant states and organisations, and not only national or local communities but particular groups within them” (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999, 95). In other

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words, social struggles for identity within these communities are concurrently mapped onto struggles on an international and global level. While globalisation as an ideologically dominant force strives ostensibly through techno-economic forces to deregulate capital and social movement towards a “borderless world”, there has been a powerful surge of expressions of collective identity of social groups (national, territorial, ethnic, religious, gender, socio-biological) including entire nation-states that challenge the globalisation project to retain control over their lives and their environment (Castells 1997, 2). Again, with respect to the dilemma of the self as the site of social struggle4 to manage self-presentation vis-à-vis the role played by dominant social institutions towards shaping the overall process, Giddens (1991) asks: “What to do? How to act? Who to be?” and adds that these are the “focal questions … of late modernity–and ones which, on some level or another, all of us answer, either discursively or through day-to-day social behaviour” (70). Hence, for Giddens, self-identification has become a reflexive project as the individual strives to sustain “coherent, yet continuously revised, biographical narratives” (70) in the process of continuously making a series of choices about one’s self and one’s lifestyle through the selective incorporation of mediated social experience. However, the significant dynamics in the logic and spread of the network society of late or post- modernity would appear to call into question the sustainability of a coherent narrative of self-reflexive identity, particularly on the part of “global” citizens in the geopolitical periphery. Put differently, the emergent globally networked society: is based on the systemic disjunction between the local and the global for most individuals and social groups … [and] by the separation in different time-space frames between power and experience …Therefore, reflexive life–planning becomes impossible, except for the elite in inhabiting the timeless space of flows of global networks and their ancillary locales. And the building of intimacy on the basis of trust requires a redefinition of identity fully autonomous vis-à-vis the networking logic of dominant institutions and organizations. (Castells 1997, 11)

The disjunctive nature of different “time-space frames” is mirrored in critical social theory as categories of “space-time” (i.e. an “indissoluble link” between space and time: Harvey 1996, cited in Fairclough 2004, 117) to describe people in modern societies who “simultaneously inhabit different space-times: their own localities (“places”); sub-national region; nation-states; and international space-times…, the global space time”, and to argue that these space-times are socially constructed as are the

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problematic relationships of equivalence/difference among different groups and classes of people (Fairclough 2004). As a result of the changing, and new, conditions, Castells further opines, civil societies (that traditionally orientate towards democratic social change) shrink and become disjointed because of the gaps and/or problems in continuously connecting with the “logic of power making in the global network” from the vantage of local societies/cultures and their respective logic of association and representation (cf. Giddens’ [1991] postulation of coherent, continuous narratives above). Needless to say, then, the search for identity moves along resistant, communal paths, and “subjects, if and when constructed, are not built on the basis of civil societies… but as prolongation of communal resistance” to show up, depending on specific contexts, in the “new primacy of identity politics in the network society” as “religious fundamentalism, nationalism, ethnic identity, and territorial identity” (Castells 1997, 11-12; original italics). In sum, given that there are “mundane and banal ways in which relationships among different space-times are lived and experienced in people’s daily lives”, they seek new meanings in an emergent social order of “universalist national and international agendas for social emancipation” (Fairclough 2004, 117). Admittedly, the construction of different types of identity cannot be addressed in general, abstract terms but rather as identity politics in a specific social context that is historically-situated, and as I argue in this paper, from a sociorhetoric perspective as well on national identity discourse in what has come to be known as the “New World Order” (hereafter, NWO) and the related site of contestation called glocalisation, to which we now turn.

Discourses of the New World Order To start with, the politics of identity/difference has emerged as a (or perhaps the) most significant development in geopolitical affairs since the 1980s, and with it the clash between multiple identities, the ensuing changing of allegiances and the inevitable fragmentation of identities (Benhabib 1994), not to mention the disintegration of the Soviet Union and nation-states in Eastern Europe. Not surprisingly, much of these have happened more or less in tandem with the period of glasnost and perestroika that marked the end of Cold War hostilities and the beginning of the “new world order” (Chomsky 1998), a phrase coined by George Bush, Sr. in his 1990 post-Gulf War speech before the US Congress:

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CHAPTER THREE Out of these troubled times, our-objective—a new world order—can emerge. Today, that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we have known (Former US President George Bush, September 11, 1990, cited in Chomsky, 1998).

Although it was not patently clear at that time as to how the world would be different, the “New World Order” has been used as a catch phrase almost synonymously with “globalisation” to materialise anew as a US foreign policy mantra since then: [F]ew people actually agree on what… [it] really means. It has been used to describe such diverse contemporary issues/problems as the post-Cold War balance of power, economic interdependence, fragmentation and the rise of nationalism, and technology advancement and integration— basically any issue that appears new and different. (Kessler 1997, 1)

Hence, the general feeling was (and I think it still is) that while elusive, the senior Bush’s “world of intent” in question was significant towards describing aspects of the post-Cold War international scenario. This is because the term “world order” in a neutral sense i.e. sans its current hegemonic connotations, would ordinarily be used to describe stable distribution of power among the major world states within the context of order emanating from universal values of democracy and human rights as well as from international law and institutions such as the United Nations (Nye 1992; Freedman 1992). However, despite such egalitarian concerns, NWO and its sister term, globalisation, have become the buzzwords of the “neo-something” (“neo-liberal”, “neo-capitalist”, “neo-cold war”, “neoconservative”, “neo-global”, etc.) to signal “a strengthening… [of] the dominance of a world capitalist economic system, supplanting the primacy of the nation state by transnational corporations and organizations, and eroding local cultures and traditions through a global culture” (Kellner 1997). The globalisation project (it is a project because it is not yet complete – Fairclough 2000a) and its concomitant master discourses of “transparency”, “democratisation”, “flexibility”, “modernisation” and “freedom” continue to be hyped as a chain of equivalences powered in the main by the globally- and digitally-networked economy characterised by “space-time” distantiation in language use (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999). Incidentally, the inherent digital revolution of the globalisation project has triggered a series of Internet-inspired neo-logic exhortations such as “e-commerce”, “e-economy”, “e-office”, “k-society”, and “keconomy”5. From a critical discourse analytical viewpoint, these words/phrases are more than a mere vocabulary that characterises our

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time, but rather texts and interactions in the “new planetary vulgate” that is “endowed with performative power to bring into being the very realities it claims to describe” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, 3, cited in Fairclough 2004, 104). Thus, the neo-liberal project may be said to be discourse-driven as it strives to remove “the obstacles to the new economic order” (Fairclough 2004, 104) via the appropriation of linguistic resources in social practice. Rather tragically though, the NWO period has since witnessed two major Gulf Wars, the murderous attacks of “911” (September 11, 2001) and the subsequent “pre-emptive strikes on terror” and “counter-terror” (read: aggression and resistance, respectively) within the ambit of the discursively entified “War on Terror” (i.e. ambivalently so—How do you wage war on a noun?) by pax Americana and to a lesser extent, if I may add, pax neo-Britannia. Apparently, the English language has become even richer with the addition of “collateral language” by the perpetrators of war to “shape attitudes and opinions and induce conformity and subordination” (Chomsky 2003); hence, the technologising of discourse has been labelled in engagingly “natural” terms to manufacture consent and to market (unjust) war as in “regime change”, “Operation Desert Storm”, “Operation Enduring Freedom”, “Operation Iraqi Freedom” (we wonder why “Operation Iraqi Liberation”—OIL—was not used), and the sundry WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction)-related “collateral damage”, “neutralising targets”, “smart bombs”, “surgical strikes”, “shock and awe”, “daisy cutters” and “embedded journalists” (perhaps this last one is better labelled “WMI” – “Weapons of Mass Instruction”?). To date, thousands of people have died, and are still dying, in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf states, and to a lesser extent in other disputed territories of the world as a result of intervention, either directly or by proxy, by the world’s sole superpower, its “policeman”. Well, brave or not, the new world certainly seems to engender much more disorder? Be that as it may, it has been argued that globalisation as a neocapitalist project for a “free, borderless world” questions the continuing relevance of the nation-state as the site of geopolitical contestation of identity (Bourdieu 1997, Fairclough 2001). This is because globalisation by its very nature is supposed to sound the death knell or at least the beginning of the end, of nations as separate, sovereign communal images of nationalistic statehood, perhaps even culminating in a “clash of civilisations” (Huntington 1993). However, this state of affairs may be moot because 911 and the equally tragic events that followed it, both “acts of terror” by the hegemon and those of “counter-terror” by the subaltern, have changed all that as the impact of the “war on terror” on nation-

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centeredness and national security in terms of political rather than civilisational determinism as well as on the erosion of civil liberties continue to be felt: “[F]or all the talk of a borderless world, states remain significant” (Hall 2001, cited in Hewison 2001, 4) Indeed, the new, postmodern world appears to share many paradoxes with that of Dickens’ cosmos of the French revolution: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” (1987, 1), only that this time people’s lives are slowly but surely being shaped by the two great, but conflicting trends of global and local identities (Castells 1997) against a backdrop of globally networked economic restructuring and rescaling powered in the main by the information technology revolution under the lure of “the end of ideology” or, more recently, “the end of history”6” (Bourdieu 1997, 126). Further, at the level of the nation-state, both the ongoing dominant, homogenising discourses of “national unity”, “sovereignty” and “resilience” (in the face of global forces) as well as the resistant minority discourses of marginalisation and subalternity would seem to be undergoing significant transformations with the advent of global neocapitalism and its closely associated discourses of the emergent world order in geopolitical relations. This is because, in the main the socioeconomic gap between the North and South appears to be widening with economic globalisation “working to further marginalize women, ethnic or indigenous minorities, and the disabled in the so-called Third and Fourth Worlds” (Benhabib 2002) and to further fuel speculation that “international integration”, far from being a process that is natural and egalitarian, is actually “a very specific form of international economic integration” (Chomsky and Mandic 2005), one with a direct, debilitating impact on the different aspects of social life: uneven distribution of wealth, foreclosure of radical alternatives in the economic, political and the social spheres, and a general “closure of public debate and weakening of democracy” (Fairclough 2004, 104). Quite obviously, the perspective on globalisation and NWO discourse this far has been largely a social critical one. However, taking cognisance of the Janus-faced nature of identity politics that is intrinsic in the interaction between the global and the local, it would perhaps be imprudent to view neo-liberal forces as being entirely deterministic in the way social orders are structured and corresponding discourses are reproduced. At the risk of stating the obvious, local communities may not be entirely disempowered in the ways people act and interact to resist/embrace global dictates. The support for a relative, “middle space” comes from a social and cultural sciences view that globalisation is about a whole spectrum of processes and effects from the “homogenization”

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pole to the “polarization” pole with a process of “syncretism” (or “hybridisation”) mediating between the two extremes (Wischermann 2004, 7). With that, we proceed to look at what might be termed as “glocal identities” and their associated discourses.

Glocal Identities in the “Third Space” Although it has been argued that the overarching aim of the globalisation project is to homogenise social orders and practices in that when material forces cross boundaries, it is to transform rather than to relate or integrate, Robertson (1997) counters by postulating that globalisation also “relativises” social life: the term “relativize” is absolutely essential… Because I think that a lot of what we have been talking about with respect to “indigenization” comes about because virtually every tradition in the contemporary world feels itself in some way to be threatened, to be “relativized.” Relativized, broadly speaking, of course, means to be made one among an increasingly large number of different world views, of different traditions and so on. (1997. Original emphasis)

Robertson terms this relativisation of indigenous cultures as “glocalisation” (indeed, a term often attributed to him)7 to mean “the simultaneity—the co-presence—of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies” of sociocultural elements that globalisation creates as “conditions for localization”, that is, attempts to generate from the local level “bounded entities—countries (nationalism or separatism), faith systems (religious revitalization), cultures (linguistic or cultural movements) or interest groups (ethnicity)” (Eriksen 1999, 8). Perhaps a note on what is meant by “global” and “local” is imperative here to put the terms in perspective: In some cases, the local may refer to a classroom; in others, to a minority group within a country or a whole community in the geopolitical periphery. Similarly, the global can refer to something large as the dominant discourses and institutions of the western hemisphere or, more particularly, to the nation-state in relation to the various subcultures and communities constituting it. (Canagarajah 2004, xvi)

Granted that these terms are relative to different contexts and that the glocal scenario comprises large scale global shifts and inherent contradictions, identity politics has tended to adopt a local focus in that

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“Structures of oppression may operate at macro-levels, but their consequences for the lived experience of those whose self-determination they undermine are myriad” (Benhabib 2002). Hence, also taking into account the fact that glocalisation, quite obviously a hybridized term from economics, refers to the production of goods or services intended for the global market but which are (re) packaged for a local culture, discourses on “glocal” identities tender the construction to mitigate “endist” arguments about the effects of global pressures on economic autonomy, privacy, democracy, and the sovereignty of the nation-state, its national language, culture, ideology and most certainly identity. Not surprisingly, given the centrality of language in neo-capitalist discourse, emergent terms in the new lexicon (cf. “fragmegration” as a conflation of “fragmentation” and “integration”) are at best essentially reflective of the contestation of the “third space” as the globalisation project moves inexorably forward in the dominant bipolar discourse of pax Americana (“You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror,” announced George W. Bush in a post-911 speech on October 6, 2001: War on Terror: CNN), its putative “coalition of the willing” and the coterminous formation, renewal and realignment of geopolitical allegiances. New terms such as fragmegration above, which is used to describe the simultaneous disintegrative and integrative causal links between global challenges and local problems (Rosenau 1998), have profound implications for the dynamics of social change and concomitant identity construction. Words such as “infotainment” (information + entertainment), “smog” (smoke + fog), “brunch” (breakfast + lunch), “edutainment” (education + entertainment), “stagflation” (stagnation + inflation), “advertorial” (advertisement + editorial), “governator” (governor + terminator, in engineering i.e.—not one California governor who sometimes goes by this film character name!), “Bollywood” (Bombay + Hollywood), and some “Englishisation” outcomes that include “Singlish” (Singaporean English), “Manglish” (Malaysian English?), Spanglish (Spanish English) and even “offlish” (office English) may be morphological oddities in strictly linguistic terms (Hamans 2006, 98-100); but in a sociohistoric sense, they are signs of our contemporary social life that signify the shifting identities and emergent realities in the discourses that we live by, mainly as a result of increasing local diversity and global connectedness. As Cope and Kalantzis (2000) say: [S]omething paradoxical is happening to English. At the same time as it is becoming a lingua mundi, a world language, and a lingua franca, a common language of global commerce, media and politics, English is also

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breaking into multiple and increasingly differentiated Englishes, marked by accent, national origin, subcultural style and professional or technical communities. Increasingly, the name of the game in English is crossing linguistic boundaries. (6)

Indeed, as English crosses national and subnational borders as the global language, hybridised words as well other texts at higher levels of linguistic/pragmatic sophistication (e.g. “Think Global, Act Local”, “HSBC, the World’s Local Bank” and Bahasa Inggeris untuk Globalisasi Bahasa Melayu untuk Jatidiri Lit. “English for Globalisation, Malay for Self-identification”) “carry sociorhetorical force” to function as “potent tools of persuasion or as textual performatives” (Prior 1998, 142) as discourses and genres move from “one social practice to another within a network of social practices” (Fairclough and Chouliaraki 1999, 93) to produce hybridity and issues of power relations as the colonisation/appropriation dialectic plays out (Cf. the globalisation/localisation dialectic which is actually one form of that mentioned here). Such movement of a discourse/genre from one practice to another “entails its recontextualisation within the latter i.e. a new articulation of elements into which it is incorporated, a new hybridity” (ibid). Perhaps the greater issue here is, on the one hand, the colonisation of the “lifeworld” (Habermas’s Lebenswelt i.e. lived realities) by the practices of (hegemonic) social systems “with a structural focus on subjection, positioning, including positioning in discourse” (e.g. the way certain social groups such as women or Arabs are represented in the press), and on the other, the “unsettling of identities” of individuals or collectives in the discourse (ibid, 96). Hence, the identity/difference dialectic that is definitive of late modernity: Struggles over identity are also struggles over difference—for instance, discourse which uses we, the first person plural, to construct a universal subject, ‘humankind’, is for Lyotard part of the tyranny of the universal— it constitutes an identity which represses difference … Finding ways to dialogue across difference—while also transcending it—is now widely seen as crucial to the survival of democracy (ibid).

To illustrate with a more grounded example, we should perhaps look no further than Hobsbawm (1996, 39): No wonder people said: 'Berliners know they're Berliners, Parisians know they are Parisians, but, who are we?' Or, to quote another interview, 'I come from Lorraine, my culture is German, my nationality is French and I

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Consequently, how do such multiple, and evolving, identities constitute, and in turn are constituted by, the macro ideological matrix of glocal identity politics, particularly within the context of nations and nationalisms? Eriksen (1999) provides seven parameters for “individual and international identities” in such a context for our common reflection: 1) competition over scarce resources, 2) actualised differences and conflicts, 3) equality overruled by ideological similarity and homogeneity of the in-group, 4) invocation of past suffering and injustice, 5) “firstcomers” contrasted with “invaders”, 6) social complexity reduced to simple contrast and internal differences downplayed, and perhaps most importantly, 7) personal experiences invoked via political symbolism and rhetoric (1). Clearly, these are times of “intense struggles to preserve and enhance national identities” by individuals and groups to construct “identities in terms of religion, ethnicity, and region against former national identities … highly mediated by collective forces” (Kellner 1995, 258; see also Parker 2005). Hence, whither goes national identity? How do individual citizens and the national collectives thereof seek meaning as global/local/glocal social actors in the new epoch? Discursive responses to questions such as these emanate from a broad view of language (“text”) as constitutive of (and constituted by) its social context with reference to “its ‘genres’ (the ways peoples act and interact), its ‘discourses’ (ways of representing), and ‘styles’ (ways of being)” (Fairclough 2000a). Further, these three aspects of social practice, Genres/Action, Discourse/Representation and Styles/Identification, are not discrete but are in dialectical relationship. Styles in particular “are the discoursal aspect of ways of being, identities” and refer to how people identify themselves and are identified by others. Social agents, though constrained to varying degrees (cf. notions of “structure” and “agency”; Fairclough 2003, 162) act via genres to “texture texts” i.e. “they set up relations between elements of texts” (ibid, 22), a process by which “discourses are inculcated in identities” (ibid, 159). Styles are closely associated with “frames” and “voices” in the text, both the author’s as well as those of others, and these are dealt with in the section on the ideological framing model below, that is, after a brief sociohistoric overview of the Malaysian nation and its identity project.

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The Malaysian National Identity Project A Sociohistoric Brief Prior (1998) invokes a Bakhtinian perspective based on the dialogic nature of language in historical discourse to posit that “[S]ociological and sociohistoric theory … alike emphasize the role of dominant individuals, whether they are referred to as elites or authoritative voices, in the establishment, maintenance, and transformation of social formations” (193), an approach shared by current theories of genre in sociorhetorical contexts (ibid, 67; see Miller 1984, Swales 1990). To date, Malaysia has had five prime ministers and I adapt from Cheah (2002) to list them below in chronological order with each statesman’s commonly known name among the populace accompanied by his identity-constituting policy and/or contribution to the nation. Note that this essentially political personage perspective is prefaced by Cheah’s indications of the formal genesis of Malay ethnic nationalism and its continued contestation to, if I may add, the present tenure of Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (and endearingly known as Pak Lah; Lit. “Father Abdullah”): x x x x x x x

1945–57 Malay Dominance and the Making of a “Malay” Nation-State 1957–2001 the “bargain” and Contesting Nationalisms 1957–70 “pluralism” in Nation-Building During the Tunku's Administration 1970–76 Malay Dominance, Economic Integration and National Unity Under Tun Razak 1976–81 National Unity and Islamic Fundamentalism Under Hussein Onn 1981–2001 [stepped down in 2003] the Changing Face of Mahathir's Nationalism and Nation-Building [the Vision 2020 project] 2003–present Legitimising the Vision Ideal via “Civilisational Islam” under Pak Lah (Cheah 2002, contents page; Updated and emphases added)

Arguably, it is the fourth prime minister of Malaysia, her longestserving (23 years) and the most controversial to date, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad (henceforth, Mahathir) is known for his “ultra-nationalism” visà-vis The Malay Dilemma (1970) and his “single-mindedness and commitment to advancing the prosperity of the Malays” (Cheah 2002, 186). His long tenure saw the emergence of his brainchild, the national project of “Vision 2020”, an overarching ideology of socioeconomic

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growth which surpasses even the extant Rukunegara (Lit. “National Ideology”) (Hilley 2001, 4) and potentially phasing out the National Culture Policy of 1970 that decreed Malay culture as the “pivotal culture” of a common national identity. As a populist call to more inclusive nationalism, common social community development, and the “new” ideal of a Bangsa Malaysia (Lit. “[One] Malaysian Nation”), Vision 2020 has since been actively promoted in the mass media, promotional discourses (particularly under the theme, “Malaysia: Truly Asia” (Tourism Development Corporation of Malaysia 2002), and other officially mediated discursive practices. These discourses employ constructed symbols of national unity and resilience e.g. Malaysia Boleh! (Lit. “Malaysia Can [Do It]!”), and correspondingly, the then record-breaking Petronas twin towers “as a celebratory statement of national achievement…[and] more appropriately, the sense of duality with the West” (Hilley 2001, 3). Given the national/nationalist flavour of Mahathir’s political discourse, both of Mahathir the man and of “Mahathirism” the ideology, the Vision 2020 ideal was/is not without its paradoxes, as Khoo Boo Teik (1995, 9-10) succinctly points out: survival of Malays/end of “Malayness”, “ultra” Malay nationalist/new Malaysian nationalist, ideologue of state-sponsored protection/advocate of capitalist competition, “Look East”/catch up with West, work-oriented Islam/Islamoriented work, and frankness/populism. Taken together, Mahathir’s policies succeeded to some extent by providing “a common “chain of equivalences” … between progress, development, modernization, economic advancement, self-determination, national sovereignty and modernist Islam” and by eliminating or confronting the counter values of the “Constitutive Other” such as “Western” liberalism, communism, traditionalism, obscurantism, religious fundamentalism, and militancy (Farish Noor 2001). In terms of lived realities of the people, however, the exact “content” of the evolving allencompassing identity ideal called Bangsa Malaysia would seem at best to remain contested “as a flexible, elastic concept” (Derichs 2002, 244), necessitating strategic, discursive means within the context of civil society as opposed to coercive measures such as the Internal Security Act (ISA) which, although readily available, are not without limitations as a legitimation strategy option in Vision development (Hilley 2001, 7). To put it differently, with the advent of the Bangsa Malaysia concept, it would appear that “the time was ostensibly ripe for an egalitarian, multicultural approach towards addressing the nation-building dilemma” (Faiz 2004, 128), but arguments emanating essentially from the equally

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ostensible relevance of the interethnic “social contract” continue to challenge the ideal: The “historic bargain” [Malay political dominance in return for non-Malay right to citizenship] was initially regarded only as a compromise to accommodate the interests of the ethnic groups in government policies, but after the 13 May 1969 riots it was elevated to a binding and cast-iron “social contract” which became sacrosanct to control or prevent communal differences. (Cheah 2002, 51)

With the post-NEC (National Economic Policy) realignment of the Malay/non-Malay and Bumiputera/non-Bumiputera (the term “bumiputera” literally glossed here as “sons of the soil” i.e. Malay; see Shamsul 1997, 243n) as well as the Muslim/non-Muslim dichotomies8, the invocation of this social contract between “indigene” and “immigrant” seems to have given rise to an enduring dualism in the discourses contesting the “nation” as the site of ideological struggle. The resultant dichotomy in overall identification of nationhood may be realised in sociohistoric terms as “competing nationalisms” (Cheah 2002) or different versions of “nations of intent” among both Malays and non-Malays albeit in “a state of stable tension” (Shamsul 2001, 5). Thus, according to Abdul Rahman Embong “we see schisms in the body politic expressed…among the various stakeholders … not merely different notions but competing notions” (2004, 346; original emphasis) of nationhood. Hence, for example, Abdul Ghani Othman, the leader of Johor UMNO, has been recently reported on the front page of a national daily to reject the Bangsa Malaysia concept because “it meant a rojak (mishmash) of races” and to add that “even if the term Bangsa Malaysia is to be used, it must only be applied in the context of … Malaysia as the pivotal race” (The New Straits Times, November 6, 2006). Therefore, in the Malaysian case, as probably in similar sociopolitical contexts elsewhere, promotional genres dominate the public sphere to sell “framings” of the nation as project identity. Related discourses of national identity are manifest in the state-controlled mainstream mass media that promote both a “nationalist” and a “national” culture (Faiz 2004), depending on whether relatively assimilative “melting-pot” or integrative “salad-bowl” (or “mosaic”) metaphors, respectively, are given prominence in the mediated discourse that seek to engage the diverse imaginings of the multicultural populace. Generally, nationalist ideologies, and hence, identities, that draw interdiscursively from the majority ethnocultural Malay in-group would seem to enjoy prominence particularly on stateowned national television, exceptions being during major ethno-religious

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festivals, the National/Independence (Merdeka) Day celebration, and also in the run-up to the General Elections when the discourse assumes a multiethnic, populist tenor. Commemorative speeches, and official addresses to mark specific state-sponsored events as “subtle forms of persuasive, identity-constituting rhetoric” (Wodak et al 1999, 71), however, enact multiple identities for the nation at the various global, national, and intranational levels and to varying degrees depending on context and occasion. Again, the exception to this macro level of identity construction, given Malaysia’s consociational polity, are the discourses of political party conventions (particularly of the main monoethnic UMNO, MCA and MIC9 political parties in the ruling National Front coalition, as well as the largely Malay/Muslim-based PAS), which tend to be skewed towards inter-ethnic inequities, often invoking the so-called “victims’ thesis” (Wodak et al 1999, 59). Even here, however, the open exhortations of “who we are/ought to be” tend to be tempered by relations of power and hegemony inherent in the coalition as well as the “unseen hand” (see paragraph below) with the resultant strategic framing of identity paradoxes and hybridities relative to extant sociopolitical issues of the time. Overall, then, in the public arena the ideological complex of national identity as “Discourse” (Gee 1999; or “semiosis”, to include language use as “orders of discourse” and forms of signification via visual images, Fairclough 2003, 24) may be theorised as comprising genres, discourses, and styles that social subjects are colonised by, and which they in turn appropriate, to (re)produce different forms of identification with the nation. Further, taking cognisance of the country’s multicultural constitution, three corollaries may be hypothesised to explain this way of identifying the imagined community whether individually and/or collectively: 1) the “rhetoric versus reality” divide that characterises much of the master discourse of the state (see Fairclough 2000b), 2) “the unseen hand” that is often manifest as the reluctance to speak openly about “sensitive issues” of race, religion, royalty, etc., and 3) the classic us and them dichotomy as a discourse of threat rationalisation internally within the country vis-à-vis the “in-group” and “out-group”, respectively, and externally with respect to the perceived or real threat of the forces of globalisation to national security and identity (Faiz 2004, 128). Faiz (2004) provides an analysis of a range of discourses on both sides of the nationalist/national identity discursive divide that forms the basis of his ideological framing model, the exemplars having been procured mainly from Mahathir’s Vision 2020 project era which the present prime minister says he supports and which he expects to extend via the present 9th Malaysia 5-year development plan (“PM Hopes Delegates Will Focus

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On Efforts To Realise Vision 2020”, Bernama News Agency, November 12, 2006). Hence, having given a brief sociohistorical perspective on the young nation and an outline of the principles underpinning the sociorhetorical process of its glocal identity dynamics, particularly from a Mahathirist worldview, I will now focus on a single text from the above era to explore related issues via an interdiscursive analysis that mediates between social and linguistic analyses and thereby integrates them (Fairclough 2004, 112). I attempt this in the next section.

The Malaysian Glocal Paradox: Analysis of a Text I should add that when analysing the text of political speeches, the politician who delivers a speech is not only the “animator” (Goffman 1981, cited in Wodak et al 1999, 71; i.e. highly likely that the speech was written by someone else) but also the “principal” of his/her statements “because the person who delivers the speech is solely responsible for its contents” (ibid). Table 1 presents the initial paragraphs of such a text reproduced from Mahathir’s speech at the Asian Global Leadership Forum held in West Malaysia on September 8, 2002. It is probably a fitting start to the analysis of the Mahathir text to note that it comprises the very beginning of the first speech, a “foreword” of sorts, of a series of speeches compiled as a book titled Globalisation and the New Realities that identifies his overall position in relation to the globalisation construct. In fact, commentators would term his threat rationalisation stand as “vintage Mahathir”, an attitudinal disposition and made particularly profound in the subscript to the title of the volume: “The fact that globalisation has come does not mean we should just sit by and watch as the predators destroy us” (Mahathir Mohamad 2002b, cover). As we shall see in the text analysis below, this critical stand is taken via a “texturing of the relationship between the ‘global’ and the national”, a generic neoliberal feature that may be discerned in most contemporary texts not only in politics and government but also in education (Fairclough 2004, 106). Texturing or “textual work” entails a working up of the relationship between “globalisation” (mentioned nine times in the text exemplar, including four times in Paragraph 1) as well as its concomitantly equivalent terms of “global village”, “democracy” and “(global) marketplace” on the one hand, and Malaysia (“our puny market” and “we”) on the other. In the text, I have highlighted the “global” terms in bold and have underlined “local”. Whether the personal pronoun “we” in the Paragraph 1 is an inclusive one may be moot since Mahathir

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presumably delivered his speech largely on behalf of Malaysians at an Asian forum, and given the interactive character of a forum, he also wanted to sound populist with his Asian counterparts. However, the anaphoric reference in the short first sentence of Para. 8, “Malaysia knows all these” would seem to imply an exclusive “we” i.e. Malaysia, in a retrospective sense throughout the text. Table 1: Text by Mahathir Mohamad (2002b, 13-15) Para.

Text

1

Globalisation is an idea whose time has come. Like all ideas, ideologies, and concepts, globalisation lends itself to many interpretations. While we all accept and agree on globalisation, I am afraid we differ and differ widely on the interpretation of globalisation.

2

Therein lies the problem.

3

Globalisation is the natural consequence of a world that has shrunk and is still shrinking rapidly. The process began as soon as man acquired the ability to move from place to place faster than his two feet could carry him. With his continually improving mobility the world appeared to be bigger than the immediate area he was able to cover walking on his two feet.

4

But faster than his speed of travel is the speed of sound and visual communication. They have now become instant and transmissible in real time. The world has indeed become physically a village. And a village being the smallest unit of community cannot be divided into smaller units. The global village can only be one village. Consequently, globalisation is an idea which cannot be denied.

5

But even villages need to be administered and to have rules and laws. Rules and laws must, of course, be for the general good. In these days of democracy, equitability is an imperative. The will of the majority must be respected. And the will of the majority must be for the common good.

6

But globalisation at the moment is not about egalitarian sharing, about common good. Presently, globalisation is about competition of the marketplace. It is about the dominance of the most efficient. Ostensibly, it is about the efficient giving of the best at the lowest cost. But in reality it is about establishing the monopoly of the strongest and the biggest.

7

The most important thing about globalisation as presently interpreted is the freedom of capital to move about unhampered by rules and restrictions. It is really not a bad thing. There are many places in the world parched of capital while in other places there is a surfeit of capital. If the places with excess capital were to transfer their capital to the parched regions then no one would be without capital; everyone would be able to gain the benefit that capital brings. The world, the global village, would in fact become more equitable because of the sharing of capital.

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8

Along with the capital would come the technology, management expertise and the marketing skills.

9

Malaysia knows all these. Right from the time we gained independence 45 years ago we rejected the idea of keeping our puny market to ourselves. We had always been a trading country. There is evidence that 1,800 years ago the people of the peninsula had collected jungle products to exchange for silk, gold ornaments, lacquer ware and others. Under the British we produced rubber and tin for the world market. And so when we became independent we bucked the trend towards nationalisation and keeping out the foreigners. Instead we invited foreigners to take part in the Malaysian economy. It was largely their capital and know-how which transformed Malaysia from an agricultural country to an industrial country.

Thus, taking into account what Fairclough (2004) and Castells (1997) have said about space-time earlier in the paper, we see an interweaving of representations of “global space-time” and “national space-time” in the text by the speaker to frame his political discourse (representation) in what I call glocal terms. Further, to foreground closely related aspects, the speech genre (action) here is doing “political work” i.e. promoting a particular (geo)political worldview of the speaker as the leader of a relatively small country, and the speaker’s style (being) is signifying the identity of a leader, in this case, his position (and his subjects’) for/against the logic of globalisation. We will come to these latter issues a little later; first, I will use Halliday’s transitivity model (1994) to analyse Para. 1 in some detail and relate it to subsequent paragraphs to set the stage, as it were, to describe, interpret and explain the whole text in terms of the speaker’s ideological position and characteristic views about globalisation. Para. 1 begins by setting up the term “globalisation”, a nominalisation, and hence, an abstraction, as an ideology that is open to question. The first of the two clauses in the first sentence represents an intensive relational process of “being” in which “globalisation” as the participant, albeit an inanimate one, connects with its attribute (“idea”) via the process verb (copula) in the simple present tense, the “’timeless present’, representing an indeterminate stretch of time which includes but pre-dates and postdates the present” (Fairclough 2004, 107-108). The relativised second clause represents an event process comprising an inanimate actor (“globalisation’s time”) and a process verb in the present perfect tense. The clause in the second sentence, however, embodies a material process with the verb serving the “abstract actor” (globalisation) to reify/adapt itself in more material, concrete terms i.e. “many interpretations” in the global space-time (such interpretations may apply anywhere in the world). Grammatically, Mahathir’s third sentence has a hypotactic construction in that the thematic relative clause constitutes a concession to seek some consensus before the main clause follows to state his contention vis-à-vis

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the globalisation problematic which, incidentally, constitutes the existential process of the clause in the sole sentence of Para. 2. In this way, these two sentences combine the global and national space-times to highlight “our problem” with globalisation. In the first sentence of Para.3, global space-time is represented once again in the main clause using “globalisation”, a nominalised process, as carrier in a relational process and an attributive nominal group that includes embedded, equivalent event processes (“that has shrunk and is still shrinking”). While the timeless present in the main clause is typical of representation of global time, it is interesting to note that the present perfect and present continuous as event verbs in the embedded clauses carry additional assertive meaning (process is actual and real) and iterative meaning (further signalled by the adverb “still”, the process is incomplete and going on), respectively. Such statements, Fairclough notes (ibid, 108) represent “some of the truisms of the age” and “bring covert predictions…of an irrealis future into the representations of global spacetime as realis present (reference).” The second sentence of the paragraph begins with an event process with a verb in the simple past tense to frame the historical origins of globalisation, and by way of elaboration in terms of national space (often “represented as a place”: ibid) two material processes and a mental process (“appeared bigger”) with predominantly human participants (“man” and the co-hyponyms, “his two feet”, “he”, etc) follow “in contrast to the global space-time” (ibid, 109). This general shift from the global to the local may be discerned throughout the text, as in the initial sentences of Para. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Besides giving this pattern of communicative moves a list-like quality, it enables the speaker to negotiate discursively an intermediary position, albeit a patently resistant one, to rationalise the threats (and benefits) of global forces mainly to the Malaysian economy. Having seen how the global space-time is systemically textured into a relationship with the national space-time in the text, we might say that the latter has been colonised “by the entified and spatialized processes of neoliberal representations of the ‘global economy’ (‘flexibility’, ‘enterprise’, ‘innovation’, ‘partnerships’, etc.)” (ibid, 111) which in our case are somewhat negatively evaluated (see particularly Para. 6) and then appropriated (e.g. “It is really not a bad thing”, Para. 7). In fact, the overall semantic or rhetorical structure of the text may be analysed using Hoey’s (1983) “problem-solution” pattern (cf. Faiz [2004, 110] where another Mahathir text, a poem, is similarly analysed as pedagogic discourse to address his Malay race agenda). In other words, the relationship that has been textured is one of “between ‘is’ and ‘must’, reality and necessity,

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which precludes real policy options” (Fairclough ibid, 110; see also the “rhetoric vs. reality” divide mentioned at the end of the preceding section above), that is, given that “globalisation is an idea that cannot be denied” (Para. 4), “Rules and laws must…be for the common good” as must be “the will of the majority” (Para. 5). In the later paragraphs of the Mahathir text, part of the evaluation of the solution to the globalisation problem is the creation of relations of equivalence between “capital”, “technology”, “management expertise” and “marketing skills” (Para. 8). This set of relations is implicit in the outline of Malaysia’s historic economic performance that follows in the final paragraph of the unfolding discourse with a characteristic preponderance of material processes and human actors. Again, as Fairclough (ibid, 111) observes, such texturing of equivalence, while being typical of similar contemporary texts, is “a potentially negative aspect” in that by making equivalent words/phrases drawn from different discourses “that are historically associated with different domains of social life” (read: different actors, genres, representations and styles/identities), it tends to subvert, even eliminate, prior differences among these discourses which may still exist. For our set of equivalent expressions or cohyponyms above, the areas of social practice may be designated as economy, science, business administration, and commerce, respectively, which in a multicultural context embody a complex gamut of ethnic, religious and class differences, among others, and some of which may prove both immutable and intractable in striving towards the forging of a common destiny solely via political dictate (Faiz 2004). Thus, Mahathir’s present discourse of colonisation/appropriation vis-à-vis the master discourse of the neo-liberal order may be seen as reminiscent of the “Third Way” of Britain’s New Labour (Fairclough 2000b) that potentially subverts the prior “social democratic discourse of ‘old Labour’” (Fairclough 2004, 111). Earlier in this section, before I embarked on a textual analysis of Mahathir’s representational discourse in the main, I briefly mentioned that the speech genre is a form of political action and is related to Mahathir’s leadership identity via his style. Approaching the text now at a higher multifunctional level of interdiscursive analysis, we can view the entire speech and its relations of equivalence/difference in terms of a general property of such texts in their language aspect, that is, they hybridise discourses, genres and styles in constituting correspondingly “new” discourses, genres and styles (ibid, 112) which function dialectically in the text (each “flows” into the other; Fairclough 2000a, 2003). The principle of multifunctionality here is therefore the same as that in Hallidayan

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systemic functional linguistics with respect to the ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions of language (Halliday 1994). That said, given the historical process of nation-building within which the Mahathir’s text is positioned and the temporary nature of the irrealis national space-time, the genre as part of the speaker’s political action may be viewed as “political discourse [that] deals in imaginaries: it projects ways of acting and ways of being” (Fairclough 2004, 113) for his subjects. Put differently, the rhetoric, which is often echoed (appropriated) in the speaker’s Vision 2020 discourse10, merely presents possibilities that are contingent upon new genres and styles that enact real ways of acting, interacting and being “before the dialectics of discourse take effect”(ibid) for rhetoric to become reality. Finally, when we talk about Mahathir’s political style, as evident in this speech text, we refer to the general process of self-identification that includes both his social identity and personal identity without reducing each to the other and regarding the latter as also comprising non-semiotic aspects of his personality. Both types of identity are socially constructed (cf. Khoo Boo Teik’s [1995] “paradoxes of Mahathirism” thesis above), instantiating a style or “voice” that requires the concept of recontextualisation to enable us to understand the dynamics involved. As noted in the above paragraph, Mahathir’s present text is also positioned in complex networks or chains of texts “with which it contracts intertextual relations, both ‘retrospective’ and ‘prospective’” (Fairclough 2004, 114) i.e. with “prior texts” and “future texts”, recontextualisation concerns the “dynamic reformulation of arguments and topoi” (Wodak 1999, 187) as well as “the appropriation of elements of one social practice within another, placing the former within the context of the latter, and transforming it in particular ways in the process” (Fairclough 2003, 32; see also the related concepts of “framing” and “classification” in Bernstein’s “pedagogic discourse” [1980], cited in Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999, 118-119). Needless to say, illustrating the salience of this process in Mahathir’s style with some measure of generalisability would entail the analysis of a representative sample of texts; hence, suffice to say for now on the basis of a single text that Mahathir’s statements for/against the globalisation phenomenon are constitutive of a voice of global transformation (“a new globalisation in a New World Order”: Mahathir Mohamad 2002b, 124), however irrealis it may be as a prediction for his local nation-of-intent.

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Concluding Remarks In this paper, I have attempted to explore a range of theoretical issues concerned with the dynamics of social identity construction from the perspective of identity politics, particularly at the level of the nation-state, and the associated formation of identity “types” (they are also processes of identification) in the presumably new era of globalisation and world order. On another level, I have endeavoured to frame global changes from a social critical viewpoint as hegemonic transformations of neo-liberal capitalism within a digitally-networked and discourse-driven society that is rendered in the discourse in bipolar terms, the “global” and “the local”. Hence, discourses of national identity, whether of project, legitimising or resistant identities given the realpolitik of power relations in a multipolar world, are contestations of the third space in the globalisation/localisation dialectic to enact hybridised, glocal identities. In the Malaysian case, I further argue, such instantiations of “who we are” constitute discursive framings on an ideological cline between the inclusive national (“global”) and the exclusive nationalist (“local”). The national identity project, being a hegemonic political project of the state like that of the global counterpart, colonises the discursive space of the constitutive Other by constructing chains of equivalences and/or eliminating differences among social subjects to promote ideals of solidarity and a common destiny. These colonising discourses may also be appropriated by other national groups to produce alternative imaginings, as it were, but this has not been the main plank of argument in this paper. The interdiscursive analysis of the Mahathir text on globalisation is clearly modelled after Fairclough’s (2004) multifunctional examination of a comparable text. In my analysis, I have sought to engage the above descriptive hypotheses in the interpretation and explanation of the Malaysian ex-prime minister’s texturing of global/local relationships to (re)articulate not only his identity of threat rationalisation but also that of appropriating global economics for his country to emerge politically stable, competitive, resilient and developed through his Vision 2020 project: “We want to become a developed nation in our own mould” (Mahathir 2002a, 154; My emphasis). Besides this economic content at the “global” level, the Vision ideal also encompasses democratic principles for the creation of an egalitarian, civil society “to allow every Malaysian to live a life of managed destiny and dignity” (ibid). As I noted earlier, this rhetoric, achieved by the cobbling together of an irrealis future with the realis present and via the dialectical interplay between genres, discourses and styles, paradoxically creates equivalences while concealing the large

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and significant social differences that exist in real time which are also appropriated as a chain of equivalences i.e. “a multicultural, multilingual and multiethnic environment” conducive to “stable economic growth” (ibid, 175). Admittedly, I did not explore evidence of intertextuality and the related concept of dialogicality in the Mahathir text (or rather the lack of it, which would point to an autocratic leadership style) for the simple reason that to have done so on the basis of a single, short text would go beyond fair comment. Therefore, a similar analysis of other contemporary texts is clearly imperative. In sum, despite the ideals of the Vision project, Malaysian national identity continues to evolve around essentialised concepts of ethnicity, race, religion, and language amid constantly shifting positions about who “we” are in the face of globalisation and increasingly scarce economic resources for equitable distribution to everyone (and who decides?). Indeed, from a project identity point of view, it seems that “so little is common to each group to use as a basis for a national identity” (MorrisHale 1997, 180). But we are also reminded by the nineteenth century French theorist on nation and nationhood, Ernest Renan, that “[a] nation's existence is…a daily plebiscite, just as an individual's existence is a perpetual affirmation of life” (1996, 42). And whether or not history is written by the winners: Man is the slave neither of his race, nor his language, nor his religion, nor of the windings of his rivers and mountain ranges. . . . To forget, to get one's history wrong, are essential factors in the making of a nation” (cited

in ibid). Like Mahathir (2002a, 154; see note 9 below), I too want to ask, how can we do it?

References Abdul Rahman Embong. 2004. “Language, Nationhood and Globalisation.” In Globalisation Culture and Inequalities, ed. Abdul Rahman Embong: 337-351. Bangi: UKM Press. Abraham, S. J. 1999. “National Identity and Ethnicity: Malaysian Perspectives.” http://phuakl.tripod.com/pssm/conference/SheilaAbraham.htm (accessed March 20, 2001). Andaya, B. W. and L.Y. Andaya. 2000. A History of Malaysia. Hong Kong: Macmillan Press.

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Anderson, B. 1983.Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso (read in the revised 2nd edition, 1991: 5-7). Asmah Omar. 1995. “Verbal and Non-verbal Symbols: An Investigation into Their Role in Self and Group Identification in Malaysia.” http://hometown.aol.com/wignesh/7asmahomar.htm (accessed March 20, 2000). Benhabib, S. 1994. “From Identity Politics to Social Feminism: A Plea for the Nineties.” http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook/94_docs /BENHABIB.HTM (accessed April 6, 2005). Benhabib, S. 2002. “Identity Politics.” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics) (accessed April 6, 2005). Bourdieu, P. 1991. “Language and Symbolic Power.” In The Discourse Reader, ed. Jaworski, A. and N. Coupland: 502-513. London: Routledge. —. 1997. A Reasoned Utopia and Economic Fatalism. New Left Review, 227: 125-30. Canagarajah, S. 2004. “Introduction”. In Reclaiming the Local in Language Policy and Practice, ed. Canagarajah, A. S.: xiii-xxix. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Castells, M. 1997. The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Cheah, B. K. 2002. Malaysia: The Making of a Nation. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Chomsky, N. and D. Mandic. 2005. “On Globalization, Iraq, and Middle East Studies: Princeton Progressive Review and Dollars & Sins.” http://www.zmag.org/content/itemID=7548§ionID=11) (accessed April 17, 2005). Chomsky, N. 1998. “Whose World Order: Conflicting Visions.” http://aidc.org.za/ archives/chomsky_04.html (accessed September 22, 1998). —. 2003. “Collateral Language.” Z Magazine Online, 16(7/8). http://www.zmag.org (accessed April 17, 2005). Chouliaraki, L. and N. Fairclough. 1999. Discourses in Late Modernity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Cogan, J. J. and R. Derricott. 1998. Citizenship for The 21st Century: An International Perspective on Education. London: Kogan Page. Cope, B. and M. Kalantzis. 2000. Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London: Routledge. Craig, G. A. 1958. From Bismarck to Adenauer: Aspects of German Statecraft. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.

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—. 2002a. “Inventing Our Common Future.” In Mahathir Mohamad: A Visionary and His Vision of Malaysia’s K-Economy, ed. Ng, T. C.: 153-162. Subang Jaya, Malaysia: Pelanduk Publications. —. 2002b. “Building and Shaping Prosperity: Giving a Human Dimension to Globalisation.” In Globalisation and the New Realities: Selected Speeches of Mahathir Mohamad, ed. Hashim Makaruddin: 13-24. Subang Jaya, Malaysia: Pelanduk Publications. Martinez, P. 2006. “Malaysian Muslims: Living with Diversity.” Malaysiakini, August 25, 2006. http://www.malaysiakini.com/ opinionsfeatures/55899) (accessed August 27, 2006). Miller, C. R. 1984. Genre as Social Action. Quarterly Journal of Speech 70: 151-167. Norton, B. 2000. Identity and Language Learning: Gender, Ethnicity and Educational Change. New York: Longman. Nye, J. S. “What New World Order?” Foreign Affairs, Spring 1992. Parker, R. D. 2005. Five Theses on Identity Politics. Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 29(1): 53-60. Prior, P. A. 1998. Writing / Disciplinarity: A Sociohistoric Account of Literate Activity in the Academy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Renan, E. 1996. “What is a Nation?” In Becoming National: A Reader, ed. Eley, G. and R. G. Suny: 41-55. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robertson, R. 1997. “Comments on the ‘Global Triad’ and ‘Glocalization’”. In Globalization and Indigenous Culture, ed. Nobutaka, Inoue. Published online by Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University, Japan. http://www2.kokugakuin.ac.jp/ijcc/wp/global/15robertson.html) (accessed October 10, 2005). Rosenau, J. N. 1998. “The Challenges and Tensions of Globalized Space.” Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research. http://www.toda.org/ Default.aspx?PageID=252 (accessed April 8, 2005). Shamsul A. B. 1997. The Economic Dimension of Malay Nationalism— the Socio-historical Roots of the New Economic Policy and its Contemporary Implications. Developing Economies, XXXV(3): 240– 61. —. 2001. A History of an Identity, an Identity of a History: The Idea and Practice of ‘Malayness’ in Malaysia. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 32 (3): 355-366. Swales, J. M. 1990. Genre Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Wischermann, J. 2004. “Asian Modernity–Globalization Processes and their Cultural and Political Localization. Documentation of a workshop of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, July 6, 2004 in Berlin: 7-17. http://www.boell.de /downloads/global/AsianModernity.pdf (accessed ctober 4, 2004). Wodak, R., R. de Cillia, M. Reisigl and K. Liebhart, eds. 1999. The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Wodak, R. 1999. Critical Discourse Analysis at the End of the 20th Century. Research on Language and Social Interaction 32(1-2): 185193.

Notes 1

Various local surveys point to rather disproportionately low assertions of “being Malaysian” first in relation to competing categories of ethnic, and religious forms of identification (Asmah Omar 1995; Abraham 1999; Faiz Abdullah 2002; and Martinez 2006) “thus effectively making the Malaysian a minority in his/her own country!” (Faiz Abdullah 2004, 130) 2 The term “race” here is intended as a sociopolitical construction rather than ethnic or biological category. 3 Bourdieu’s (1991) notion of “habitus” as identity comprising both agency and structure, which Fairclough seems to allude to when he refers to “social subjects” and “institutional subjects”, respectively, the latter occupying subject positions in various institutional discourse types, and maintains, after Gramsci (1971), that “It is the hegemonic control of the dominant class over the institutions of civil society (education, family, work, family, leisure, etc.) within the ‘outer defences’ of the repressive state apparatus that makes revolutionary transformation of modern capitalist societies so difficult” (1995, 93). Indeed, the national identity project may be seen as being largely shaped by the hegemonic “ideological state apparatus” of the ruling class. 4 Cf. the structure vs. agency dichotomy inherent in the notion of “habitus” (Bourdieu 1991) that guides the (re)production of social structures and/or to resist them. 5 Quite obviously, the “e” and “k” prefixes in these terms stand for “electronics” and “knowledge”, respectively. 6 Fukuyama’s (1992) “end of history” thesis states that liberal democracy may constitute the "end point of mankind's ideological evolution" and the “final form of human government”, and as such, constitutes the "end of history". 7 Robertson (1997) intimates that his use of the term “glocalisation” is based on the concept of dochakuka used by Japanese economists writing since the 1980s. 8 Consider also the fact that the Malaysian Constitution conflates Malay and Muslim identity for the purpose of defining the former to the extent that “to become Moslem, it was said, was to masuk Melayu (Lit. become Malay)” (Andaya

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and Andaya 2000, 55), which further complicates the already considerable overlap across these dichotomies. 9 UMNO: United Malay National Organisation; MCA: Malaysian Chinese Association; and MIC: Malaysian Indian Congress 10 See e.g. “We have a clear vision for Malaysia called Vision 2020, the purpose of which is to attain developed-nation status by the year 2020. We want to become a developed nation in our own mould. …[W]e mean a community which is selfregulating and empowered through the use of knowledge, skills and values inculcated within the people. Such a society will allow every Malaysian to live a life of managed destiny and dignity, not just in the here and now, but also in the future. The million-dollar question is, of course, how can we achieve it (sic).” (Mahathir Mohamad 2002a, 154).

CHAPTER FOUR POWER, GENDER AND ETHNICITY IN WORKPLACE DISCOURSE: A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE JANET HOLMES, VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON

This paper uses a broadly Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach to examine the ways in which power is manifested in workplace interaction, and especially in workplace meetings. CDA provides a framework to explore how systemic power is constructed and reinforced in interaction, and to identify how the dominant group determines meaning and the implications of that definition for minority groups. Drawing on the extensive database of the Wellington Language in the Workplace project, the paper illustrates the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which power relations are constructed and reinforced through the discourse fabric of New Zealand workplace interaction.

Introduction1 Taking account of the overwhelming evidence from language and gender research over more than three decades, there is no doubt that the interactional resources on which the team leader draws in Example 1 below are the masculinist, institutionalised, majority group norms which predominate in most workplaces in New Zealand and perhaps in the western commercial world more generally. Consequently, without further evidence many readers will assume that G is male. In fact, Ginette is a Samoan woman who leads a multicultural factory team and makes use of a wide range of discursive resources, including gendered resources to do her job effectively. Here she dominates the floor despite background heckling

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and noise, issues a string of instructions in imperative form, the most direct form available, repeats her message to ensure people have no excuse for not remembering it, and uses not a single attenuating hedge or softening device. Our workplace data also provides examples of professional, majority group women similarly doing power and authority at work using uncompromisingly and stereotypically masculinist discourse strategies (see Holmes, fc a). Example 12 Context: Team manager giving instructions at an early morning team meeting: 1.

G:

the very last twenty five cases that you take off that line

2.

I want them put aside

3.

the very last twenty five cases put them on a pallet

4.

get them stretch wrapped

5.

they're going to be a memento for everybody

6.

so make sure you er remember that…..

7.

so just remember the last the very last twenty five cases

8.

put them on a pallet

9.

get them stretch wrapped

10.

put them aside for X …

11.

send them through with no glue

Have women and Polynesian3 people succeeded in slipping through the glass ceiling, then, simply by turning themselves into white male soundalikes? Or do alternative interactional norms sometimes prevail in workplace contexts? What effect, if any, has an increase in the proportions of women and MƗori in New Zealand workplaces had on the way meetings are managed, or the ways that people interact with others in the workplace? Do women at work make use of different discursive resources when talking to other women as opposed to in mixed gender groupings? Do MƗori in PƗkehƗ organisations conform to majority group meeting norms, or do they adopt and adapt MƗori ways of interacting to new contexts?

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In this paper, I use a CDA framework in order to identify some of the taken-for-granted norms concerning appropriate ways of interacting at work. Viewing workplace interaction through minority group members’ spectacles offers the possibility of uncovering ways in which power is covertly instantiated in everyday verbal encounters. Adopting a feminist perspective on what is going on at work helps identify the dominance of masculinist interactional norms, as well as evidence of subversive feminist contestation. Similarly, an ethnically sympathetic set of lenses often constructs minority group interactional patterns rather differently from the way they are perceived by majority group members. “Effective” interaction in a business context generally entails achieving organisational objectives, but there are always a number of alternative routes to reaching them. Those in positions of power in the workplace (assume the right to) decide which ways of proceeding are acceptable. CDA offers a way of making explicit alternative routes which may not be perceived positively by all, even though they may have greater potential for maintaining good relations among minority group employees than the traditional, typically masculinist, majority group highway which runs through many organisations. This paper explores and exemplifies some of these alternative routes.

CDA and Power in the workplace Critical discourse analysts describe the ways in which power and dominance are produced and reproduced in social practice through the discourse structures of everyday interactions. Because of this “overtly political agenda” (Kress 1990, 84-85), CDA provides an interesting and stimulating framework for analysing workplace interaction. The great majority of workplaces are intrinsically hierarchical in structure; power relationships are constantly constructed and reconstructed in the everyday interactions which constitute the “business” of organisations. A CDA approach encourages the analyst to look beneath the surface of the discourse strategies used in workplace interactions to identify systemic reasons for participants’ use of particular strategies in particular contexts. In what follows, I focus on the relevance of gender and ethnicity in the analysis of alternative ways of constructing power at work. The definition of “power” adopted in this paper is post-structural. Rather than defining power in traditional terms as the ability of one person to influence the behaviour of another (e.g. Brown and Levinson 1987, 77, Galbraith 1983, 2,), power is treated as “a systemic characteristic” (Fletcher 1999, 16), a transformative and non-static feature of interaction

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(Wodak 1996, 1999). It is this systemic power which determines what is regarded as normal and expected in workplace interaction, what are the “proper” and “correct” ways of treating colleagues, running meetings, dealing with complaints, and so on. In the discussion below I point to discursive evidence for the covert, systemic exercise of power, by identifying some of the unobtrusive, “naturalised” ways of interacting at work, “rules” for talking appropriately through which power relations are constructed and reinforced in everyday, unremarkable, workplace interactions (cf. Fairclough 1989, 1992). Systemic power typically goes unquestioned because it is firmly based in conventional wisdom; its incontestable status is simply one of the taken-for-granted, self-evident truths or background assumptions of our everyday talk in which it is constantly instantiated. As Fletcher (1999, 17) says, “The locus of power... is…in systems of shared meaning that reinforce mainstream ideas and silence alternatives”. If a basic one-at-atime (OAAT) set of speaking rules is assumed in a workplace meeting, then those who overlap, interrupt, or murmur while someone is speaking will be regarded as rude, subversive or provocative. If interaction is typically fast, direct and competitive, then those who prefer a less hectic style and more indirect means of conveying a point may be regarded as slow and obscure. CDA provides a framework to explore ways in which systemic power is constructed and reinforced in interaction, to identify how the dominant group determines meaning, and, more specifically, to describe the often subtle processes by which the more powerful person in an interaction typically gets to define the purpose or significance of the interaction and influences the direction in which it develops. CDA also provides a means of interpreting the significance of subversive or contestive discourse aimed at challenging the taken-forgranted underlying systemic patterns in particular contexts: e.g. feminist attempts to share the floor in a predominantly OAAT context (Graddol and Swann 1989). As Tannen (1987, 5) points out, in any particular interaction different participants may have different kinds of power which they exercise in different ways. In other words, she suggests that it is impossible to identify the power in a situation. Rather, power is dynamically constructed and exercised, both implicitly and explicitly, in different aspects of a specific interaction; different participants manifest power in diverse ways as they construct their own identities and roles in response to the behaviour of others. Davis (1988, 99) similarly argues that power relations “are always and everywhere contextual…Power, along with structures of domination, is implicated in concrete situated social practice”. Hence, knowledge of te reo MƗori or significant kinship links

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may confer status on particular individuals in meetings where MƗori people are involved, regardless of their position in the dominant PƗkehƗ hierarchy. A CDA approach also provides a means of accounting for misunderstandings which derive from a clash of norms, where minority groups unconsciously slip into culturally distinctive patters of interacting in contexts where majority group norms predominate: e.g. MƗori people’s so-called “muttering” while someone is speaking (Metge and Kinloch, 1978).4 In situations where MƗori hold influential positions, or where MƗori participants predominate, there is potential for re-defining the interactional norms. In sum, while it is sometimes overtly manifested in the workplace, power may also be constructed in more subtle and complex ways. In the analysis below, I draw on research undertaken by the Wellington Language in the Workplace project team to illustrate how power interacts with gender and with ethnicity in different workplace contexts, and, in particular, the ways in which dominant underlying systemic assumptions may play out in the New Zealand workplace, often to the disadvantage of female and MƗori employees.5 To explore these points, I will focus on three aspects of workplace interaction: 1. Meeting openings; 2. Turn-taking in meetings; and 3. Conveying negative messages at work. First, however, I present a very brief description of the database on which I draw.

Database The interactions analysed in this paper are drawn from the database of the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project (LWP). LWP researchers have been investigating spoken communication in New Zealand workplaces since 1996, with the aim of identifying characteristics of effective communication, diagnosing possible causes of miscommunication, and exploring possible applications of the findings (see Holmes and Stubbe 2003 for a more detailed description of the project). The objective of the methodological design has consistently been to record data which is as close to normal workplace interaction as possible. The result is a large corpus (currently comprising approximately 2500 interactions from 500 participants in 21 workplaces) of naturally-occurring interactions representing a wide range of workplace talk, including interactions involving Polynesian and PƗkehƗ participants.

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1. Opening meetings6 Meeting openings are highly structured, and thus prime sites for both enacting and contesting power (e.g. Boden 1994, Dwyer 1993, Marra 1998, Sollitt-Morris 1996, McLaughlin 1984).7 The amount of time allowed for people to gather and chat before the start of a meeting was very variable in different workplaces, and depended on a number of factors such as the scheduled length of the meeting, the purpose of the meeting, and even the relevance of the topics of the pre-meeting talk to official, ratified business. For meetings with long and diverse agendas, pre-meeting talk time might extend up to fifteen minutes after the scheduled start-time – especially if participants were talking “shop”. Nevertheless, there was less tolerance of large amounts of pre-meeting small talk after the scheduled starting time in male-dominated, masculinist, PƗkehƗ workplaces. Starting the meeting as close to the appointed time as possible, and cutting off small talk relatively abruptly were very overt ways of doing power in such communities of practice.8 By contrast, extended pre-meeting social talk, involving both men and women, and a later-than-scheduled start to the meeting were much more typical in more feminine communities of practice. In addition, the meeting openings contrasted in different workplaces. The typical majority group style of opening a meeting involved using one or more of a number of relatively explicit strategies for attracting attention, followed by a pause, and then a statement that the meeting was starting. The patterns we identified were remarkably similar, regardless of the size of the meeting. Examples 2 and 3 illustrate openings in relatively large and formal meetings. Example 2 Context: Large meeting of eighteen high level managers in a government department 1. Hayden: okay well formally let me open the meeting. Example 3 Context: Meeting of mixed gender team of twelve people in commercial organisation 1. Clara: [rising volume]: okay + thank you ++ stop talking now + 2. we're going to start ++ In smaller meetings, though not quite so formal or explicit, the opening moves were very similar, involving utterances such as well let’s get

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started shall we, okay let’s get underway, right let’s go, okay we’ll start. We have many, many examples which illustrate this pattern. Example 4 Context: Regular reporting meeting of two men and two women in government department 1. Jan: okay + um shall we just start with our agenda ++ Example 5 Context: Meeting of senior management group of four men and four women in private organisation 1. Pen: okay well now we'll start properly + Example 6 Context: Regular weekly meeting of a project team in a commercial organization. 1. Clara: okay + well we might just start Whether formal or informal, these opening moves are all very brief, and the discursive resources employed to attract attention in achieving the opening are relatively informal strategies including discourse markers such as okay, right, often followed by a pause (marked +), and a “standard marker” (Turner 1972, 373, Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris 1997) such as we might as well start; time we got underway. By contrast, in the MƗori workplaces in which we have collected data, meeting openings are typically more extended and more formal. They sometimes involved a karakia (prayer), and they always involved a mihi (welcome). Example 7 illustrates this. Example 7 MƗori meeting Context: Formal meeting of seven MƗori women in a government organisation. Hera is the section manager. Aroha is chairing the meeting. 1. Hera: okay [MƗori]: kia ora kia ora taatou: [‘kia ora (i.e. greeting) kia ora to us all] 2. Ripe: [MƗori]: (kia ora): 3. Trac: [MƗori]: (kia ora): 4 Aroh: [MƗori]: kia ora ano taatou + [‘kia ora again to us all’] 5. e huihui mai nei i teenei ata um + [‘who have met here this morning’] 6. kia maumahara taatou teenei

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7.

teenei te raa o te reo MƗori nee: [“let’s remember this is MƗori language day isn’t it”] …. [MƗori]: ae: [“yes”] um [MƗori]: kia maumahara hoki taatou i o taatou whaanau i o taatou hoa mahi i i roto i te hohipera e ai ki te koorero a [name] tino mauiui a /[name]\: [“lets remember also our families, our workmates/ colleagues who are in hospital according to [name] [name] is very sick”] /[MƗori]: ae:\ [“yes”] [MƗori]: nee: [“really”] [MƗori]: ae i te: i c u [“yes in the intensive care unit”] [MƗori]: no reira hoatu whakaaro aroha ki a ia: [“therefore send her your love/ keep her in your thoughts”] [MƗori]: kia ora: [MƗori]: ma wai e timata: [“who is going to begin”] management issues + ( )

8.-10. 11. ALL: 12. Aroh: 13. 14. 15.

16. Ripe: 17. Aroh: 18. 19. 20. Ripe: 21. Aroh: 22.

In stark contrast with the PƗkehƗ meeting openings, the MƗori meeting opens with a relatively formal MƗori greeting which serves as a welcome, an obligatory component of formal MƗori speech events, even workplace meetings within PƗkehƗ institutions. The mihi includes a number of culturally significant components. Following Hera’s very brief greeting which also functions as a call to order, Aroha opens the formal mihi at line 4 with the phrase kia ora, which can here be translated as “greeting”. Using a standard MƗori discourse pattern, she repeats Hera’s initial phrase, including the inclusive pronoun taatou “greeting to us all”. Ripeka’s and Tracey’s utterances kia ora (lines 2-3) are standard responses to Hera’s greeting, the predictable second component of an adjacency pair (Duranti 1997, Laver 1981, Levinson 1983). The second component of the greeting is a formally expressed reference to MƗori language day (lines 6-7), a significant day for those who wish to revitalise te reo MƗori. The third component refers first to family and then to specific colleagues who are sick (lines 12-15,17-19). The formulaic phrase kia maumahara “let’s remember” marks this as a component of the greeting. Ripeka overlaps with an affirmatory ae “yes”

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(line 16), and then responds again kia ora (line 20) at the end of the mihi; in this position, the phrase signals affirmation. Nearly 30 years ago, Metge and Kinloch (1978) commented on the fact that for Polynesian people the PƗkehƗ tendency to “dispense with formalities” could cause offence. In MƗori culture omitting a welcome or mihi (greeting) is not an option, even for a relatively informal meeting between people who work together regularly and know each other well. Here is one obvious source of discomfort for MƗori people in the predominantly PƗkehƗ workplace. The elaboration and complexity of the meeting opening in example 7 starkly contrasts with the minimalist strategies used for opening meetings in PƗkehƗ workplaces. Viewed through PƗkehƗ eyes, the MƗori openings are over-elaborate and “fussy”. From a MƗori perspective, the PƗkehƗ openings are inappropriately abrupt and leave people feeling adrift and unwelcome. Since PƗkehƗ definitions dominate, it is typically their views which “count”.

2. Floor management in meetings A second area where taken-for-granted ways of doing things are particularly evident is in the patterns of turn-taking which predominate in larger workplace meetings. In general, there is little doubt that the OAAT pattern of contributions to discussion prevails in most PƗkehƗ workplaces. The “round robin” or “round-turning” is a particularly clear example of this where people report to the group on their activities since the last meeting. This was a pattern identified in some form or other in every workplace in which we recorded. It is also a pattern which is very familiar to MƗori since it is the predominant pattern in MƗori formal speech events on the marae, where speakers whaikǀrero in strict order (an order determined by tribal custom and status). In addition, the less formal interaction in the meeting house also typically begins with a “round” where people talk in order, and without disruptive interruption. Despite these apparently shared norms, however, there are a number of aspects of floor management which seem to differ to some extent between groups and which may lead to misunderstanding and possibly disadvantage for some participants (see Kell, Holmes, Marra and Vine fc). One such aspect is the overall “conversationalisation” of the discourse in meetings in our data which are conducted by MƗori compared to PƗkehƗ. Based on preliminary analyses, it seems that workplace meetings among MƗori participants tend to be less formal and more interactive than meetings of a similar size and with similar functions involving PƗkehƗ, especially PƗkehƗ men.

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A continuum of formality could be proposed for investigation based on our analyses of meetings where the participants are predominantly MƗori or PƗkehƗ, and the meetings run along corresponding ethnic lines. (We don’t have meetings in our database consisting of a majority of MƗori men, so this is an area where the hypothesis is clearly in need of research.) ? PƗkehƗ men ----- PƗkehƗ women ----- [MƗori men] ----- MƗori women To illustrate briefly, the following excerpt from a large formal meeting of PƗkehƗ participants in a government department.9 Example 8 Context: Meeting of a senior management team in a government department 1. Guy: um let's go to the learning (5)… 2. Ter: well my last learning from last time was to insure that 3. I put the dates that I (can) do the learning into my diary 4. because I got taken aback last time and and um 5. so I did that and it worked very well 6. Guy: mm 7. Ter: um so I've been able to worry about it all weekend 8. ( ) rather than just in the last fifteen minutes 9. XM: [clears throat] 10. Ter: I went on a + short budget process course last 11. er oh about two weeks ago + and er [clears throat] 12. because it was a sort of a er a experiential learning type course 13. er one of the things they did was to challenge us 14. to have a look at er some aspect that er of of our work 15. or the budget um that that we thought + 16. we could get some more efficiency out of 17. cos that is something that er central agencies 18. er will want to do and er er and it just so happened 19. that it was er a few days after er [name] report 20. on er information that we gave to the minister 21. XM: [clears throat] 22. Ter: and and the day after I had just finished doing the input 23. my input to the financial report which goes to the minister 24. and there it is In this brief excerpt, Guy hands the floor to Terence and Terence then speaks uninterrupted until he indicates he has completed his contribution

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and there it is. The only other noise is someone quietly coughing or clearing their throat in the background. This is Terence’s floor until he is ready to hand it over to someone else. This is classic one-at-a-time (OAAT) turn-taking. Our analyses indicate that this kind of OAAT, relatively “tightly organized” floor (Jones and Thornborrow 2004, 403) which is typical of PƗkehƗ formal meetings, is not so common in MƗori workplace meetings. A detailed comparison of one MƗori and one PƗkehƗ meeting with the same agenda, for example, indicated that the style of interaction characterizing the MƗori meeting was much less formal and more collaborative. Both meetings involved only women, they were held in the same workplace, a government organization, and they discussed the same agenda. Nevertheless, the MƗori meeting was characterized by much more overlapping talk, explicit verbal feedback, and collaborative all-togethernow (ATN) interaction than the PƗkehƗ meeting. Obviously, such different ways of conducting meetings could result in misunderstanding or misinterpretation by the predominantly PƗkehƗ management of the “seriousness” of the interaction or its effectiveness. PƗkehƗ listening to the interaction in MƗori meetings often feel that the audience is not demonstrating sufficient attention. Throughout the speaker’s turn there is often low-level murmuring, chatter and movement (Metge and Kinloch 1978). In a MƗori context, noise up to a certain level while someone is speaking indicates support for the speaker. This often takes the form of affirmatory expressions or verbal feedback (e.g. ae, kia ora, choice, mm). This is an identifiable MƗori strategy for expressing attentiveness and positive politeness, which is well understood by MƗori participants. Silence from the listeners while someone is speaking, which is normal and expected by PƗkehƗ in formal contexts (cf. Jaworski 1993, Spencer-Oatey 2000), is usually considered rude or a signal of disapproval in MƗori contexts.10 The “looser” (Jones and Thornborrow 2004) or more collaborative floor which often develops in workplace meetings with mainly MƗori participants also contributes to the impression that the MƗori meetings are less formal than apparently parallel PƗkehƗ meetings. In many sections of the MƗori meeting referred to above, for instance, there are more extended contributions to the floor from participants other than the designated speaker, even when that person has clearly not finished their contribution. In such sections, supportive and often overlapping contributions are comfortably integrated into the discussion. This is illustrated in example 9. The group is discussing policy development in relation to the revision of the law regarding matrimonial property rights. The contentious issue is

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how the scope of the law might be increased to include people in same-sex and de facto relationships. Aroha (in the chair) initiated the discussion on this topic but Hera then joins in to elaborate and explain what has been happening. Others also make contributions and the floor develops into a shared floor, as it does regularly during this meeting. This is just a snippet from a much more extended collaborative floor which sounds very different from the basically OAAT turn-taking in a parallel Pakeha meeting. Example 9 Context: Formal meeting of seven MƗori women in a government organisation. Hera is the section manager. Aroha is chairing the meeting and introduced this item. 1. Her: at the moment … the issue of de facto alone is quite political 2. in that um [minister] initially said no he wasn’t going to support that 3. he’s since he he appears to have changed his mind 4. but he also he sees it as undermining marriage 5. XF: mm 6. Her: so that’s why it’s been um the idea is being see it separately 7. but he has come out and said that he would look at it 8. he would look at it and um 9. Ell: ( ) forty five percent of all marriages end in divorce anyway 10. XF1: ( ) 11. XF2: [laughs] 12. Gen: there’s also a significant amount amount of people who never get married 13. Her: it’s also very very high amongst Maori women /Maori women\ 14. Ell: /(that’s right)\ 15. Her: have a far higher rate of living in de facto relationships 16. /than they do\ 17. XF: /( )\ 18. Her: /in married relationships which is interesting\ and also of course 19. Aro: /( )\ 20. XF: yeah 21. Her: /a very high percentage of of\ of sole um parenthood 22. Tra: /that’s all of us isn’t it apart from you\ 23. XF1: mm 24. XF2: mm 25. Her: anyway so now they’ve got the um de facto policy 26. de facto property /policy\ which is being considered

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27. XF: 28. Her: 29. Gen: 30. 31. Her: 32. Gen: 33. Her: 34. Tra: 35. Her: 36. Gen: 37. Her: 38. 39. XF: 40. Aro: 41. Tra: 42. Her: 43. 44. 45. Gen: 46. 47. Her: 48. Aro: 49. Her: 50. Gen:

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/( )\ and that’s they’re being considered at the same time matrimonial oh so they’ve decided to go with having two separate or look at having two separate and it’s at its very early stages acts at the moment well er er that’s still not sure yeah that’s right so they’ve /( )\ /but they what they’ve done is\ they’ve separated them out into /two policy issues\ /( )\ policy issues yeah two papers and whether it comes together at some stage later or it stays remains a separate or whether instead of de facto it becomes other relationships property /or non mat-\ /but it’s but it’s part\ but it’s part of a suite of papers considered under the review of matrimonial yep property act because that’s one of the major issues that came out mm

Ella, Genevieve, Aroha and Tracey all raise and discuss related issues. Hera explains why the issue is sensitive or political (lines 1-4), due to the Minister’s attitude, and then indicates his current position (lines 6-8). At this point Ella contributes a comment, forty five percent of all marriages end in divorce anyway (line 9) and the floor rapidly develops into an ATN floor (lines 12-22), with rapid, overlapping contributions from Genevieve, Hera, Ella and Aroha throughout the next section. These contributions are oriented to the same content and supportive in overall effect. Hera’s comments, for instance about the percentage of Maori women in de facto relationships (lines 13, 16, 21) relate Genevieve’s comment there’s also a significant amount amount of people who never get married (line 12) to the focus of this group’s interest in the issue. Hera then brings them back to the agenda item with the canonical discourse particle used for this purpose, anyway (line 25). However, a clarification question from Genevieve (line 29-30, 32) initiates another

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interactive stretch of talk (lines 31-50) involving mutually supportive contributions from Tracy, Genevieve, Aroha, and Hera. For instance, Genevieve contributes a substantial comment but it’s part of a suite of papers considered under the review of matrimonial (lines 45-46) and her phrase is completed by Aroha property act (line 48), and affirmed by Hera yup (line 47). Such neat and cooperative latching of utterances between contributors characterises maximally collaborative talk. This example thus illustrates well the sections of collaboratively shared floor as well as the constant verbal feedback which typify meetings between Maori participants who know each other well and work together regularly. Contributions often overlap, and they could be misinterpreted as disruptive attempts to take over the floor by those who adhere to the more tightly constructed floor typical of many PƗkehƗ formal meetings. This example illustrates briefly what could be regarded as the “conversationalisation” by MƗori participants of relatively formal meeting contexts (cf. Fairclough and Mauranen 1998). Using the kind of jointly constructed, overlapping, supportive talk, associated with informal conversations between women, in particular (Coates 1996, 2003), the participants establish a relatively friendly and informal tone to their discussion within the formal PƗkehƗ workplace setting. By PƗkehƗ standards, and by contrast with the relatively “tight floor”, characterised by predominantly OAAT turn-taking, this kind of talk may seem disorganised and unfocussed. Moreover, to those unfamiliar with this approach in large workplace meetings contexts, there is a danger it might also be judged as less productive. As we have noted elsewhere, “A PƗkehƗ observer of the MƗori meeting might misinterpret the level of effectiveness with which the MƗori meeting produces a range of highquality work-related outcomes” (Kell et al. fc). It is difficult to perceive without extensive exposure how the deeper level processes of egalitarian discussion and inclusion, and the fostering of a collaborative and involved style of discussion both unites and educates the group by creating jointlyconstructed knowledge for everyone to share (Kell et al. fc).

3. Conveying negative messages at work People in management positions often have the task of providing negative feedback to others, giving them instructions to do things they may not want to do, criticising their work or behaviour, and refusing their requests. These negatively affective speech acts can be accomplished in a range of different ways. At the normatively masculine end of the spectrum, the message is direct and unmitigated; at the stereotypically feminine end, it is

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indirect, hedged, and attenuated. Of course, men and women in the workplace draw on a wide range of discourse resources to achieve their ends, including markedly more masculine or more feminine resources as appropriate to the context. Our analyses suggest, however, that in many workplaces it is masculine or “masculinist” (Baxter 2003) norms which prevail. Example 10 illustrates this in a male-dominated New Zealand government department.11 The section manager, Nahum, and his subordinate, Kevin, are working together to solve an IT problem. Nahum takes the opportunity to give feedback to Kevin on the ways in which he should operate in order to enhance and extend his learning on the job. Nahum’s approach is normatively masculine, direct and authoritative. He does power very explicitly. Example 10 Context: IT manager and team member in government organisation working together on a problem 1. Nah: archive security's ( ) isn't it 2. Kev: I'm not sure 3. Nah: my gosh what do you mean you're not sure 4. Kev: well Gar- Gary and Robert are the ones 5. that are involved with sending off tapes 6. and bringing them back so 7. Nah: well if they weren't here what would you do ++ 8. Kev: I would most probably find their notes that don't exist 9. Nah: okay that's quite surprising you don't know that + 10. it's quite a critical one don't you think 11. Kev: yeah Nahum, Kevin’s manager, expresses astonishment that Kevin cannot confidently answer one of his questions in an area in which Kevin is expected to be developing expertise, my gosh what do you mean you're not sure (line 3). Nahum’s question is extremely challenging and facethreatening in form, since it is boosted by the intensifying pragmatic device what do you mean (cf. the much less face-threatening unmodified question aren’t you sure?) and by the exclamation my gosh. When Kevin defends himself by indicating that the relevant knowledge is related to tasks that others are responsible for (lines 4-5), Nahum ask another challenging question well if they weren't here what would you do (line 7). When Kevin replies semi-facetiously and defensively that he would have to find notes that don’t exist (line 8), Nahum does not respond to his

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attempt at humour. Rather he makes an explicitly critical comment that's quite surprising you don't know that (line 9), followed up with the challenging it's quite a critical one don’t you think (line 10). A tag such as don’t you think typically has the effect of softening a critical comment, but in this context, it clearly serves to confront Kevin and to force - rather than invite - him to respond. Nahum’s approach is unmarked in this workplace, where masculine norms prevail. It is easy to understand, however, that women (and men) who prefer a less confrontational style of interaction might find such an approach uncomfortable. Some evidence to support this can be found by examining interactions involving women leaders in male-dominated workplaces. Example 11 involves Clara, a very effective, senior manager in a multinational commercial organization. Within this larger masculine institutional culture, Clara headed a client-oriented section of around fifty personnel concerned with communication and client relations. As a community of practice, Clara’s team had some characteristics which placed them towards the feminine end of the spectrum, and others which were distinctly and stereotypically masculine (see Holmes fc a: Chapter 2). In particular, while they operated within a very hierarchical workplace structure, and accepted that Clara had ultimate decision-making power, there was sometimes evidence of discomfort when she expressed her authority too explicitly or baldly, as in Example 11. The team is discussing how best to provide instructions to other members of their organisation about a specialised computer process. The discussion revolves around a request to allow people to print off material from the computer screen (i.e. to “screendump”). Example 1112 Context: Regular weekly meeting of project team in multinational white collar commercial organisation 1. Har: look's like there's been actually a request for screendumps 2. I know it was outside of the scope 3. but people will be pretty worried about it 4. Cla: no screendumps 5. Matt: we6. Cla: no screendumps 7. Peg: [sarcastically]: thank you Clara: 8. Cla: /no screendumps\ 9. Matt: /we know\ we know you didn't want them and we um er /we've\

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10. Cla: 11. Cla: 12. San: 13. Cla: 14. San: 15. Cla: 16. Peg:

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/that does not\ meet the criteria\ [several reasons provided why screendumps should be allowed] thanks for looking at that though so that's a clear well maybe no it's a no it's a no a royal no did people feel disempowered by that decision [sarcastically]: no:

Clara gives a very clear directive that under no circumstances will people be allowed to print material from their screens. She states her position unambiguously: i.e. no screendumps. Moreover, she does so three times (lines 4,6,8) without modification, thus conveying her message in very strong terms indeed. Moreover, when Matt suggests this is simply a matter of what she wants, we know you didn't want them (line 9), she follows up with an explicit reference to the previously agreed and ratified criteria (line 10). In other words, Clara here uses an authoritative and stereotypically “masculine” strategy of simply stating what is to happen, a way of operating which is consistent with the larger, masculinist, organisational culture in which she operates. Interestingly, Clara’s close-knit team had developed ways of “managing” the inherent contradictions of responding to someone who is both authoritative and female (see Holmes fc a). One very valuable resource when things get tense, as in Example 11, is humour. Team members skilfully respond to Clara’s peremptory veto in a way that preserves good working relations. Peggy’s sarcastic thank you Clara (line 7) provides an initial tension-breaker. However, the sub-team members proceed to provide further reasons for allowing screendumps, leading Clara to respond (line 11) with a more conventionally polite dismissal of their suggestions thanks for looking at that though. Sandy’s internally contradictory suggestion that Clara may be wavering so that's a clear well maybe no (line 12) is deliberately humorous, but it leads Clara to restate her position quite explicitly it's a no (line 13). Again Sandy defuses the tension with a humorous hyperbolic comment it's a no a royal no (line 14), an echoic allusion to an earlier humorous episode in which Clara's high status and dignified manner were sent up by a reference to her as Queen Clara. Finally, Clara too contributes a tongue-in-cheek comment which draws explicit attention to feelings which people usually conceal in a business context did people feel disempowered by that decision (line 15). Thus, by using humour as an attenuating strategy, Clara and her team

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manage a situation where she draws on masculinist, workplace interactional norms in an explicitly authoritative demonstration of power. The fact that it needs managing is an implicit recognition that the dominant masculinist ways of doing things are not always comfortable for participants in a workplace, and perhaps that this is especially apparent when the person instantiating those norms is female. Example 12 is a similar example from a very different workplace. Ginette is the factory team leader who featured in Example 1. In this example, in a one-to-one interaction, she uses humour to mitigate a criticism. The contrast with Nahum’s style in Example 10 is very obvious. Example 1213 Context: Factory packing line. Ginette has noticed that Sam is not doing the required visual check on the boxes of soap powder as they come off the line, and she stops to demonstrate the correct procedure. 1. Gin: [picks up a box and pats it] 2. you know when you check these right 3. you’re supposed to look at the carton 4. to make sure it’s not leaking 5. not like this [pats box and looks away] 6. Sam: oh that’s that’s good checking 7. Gin: /you’re not going to see anything if you’re like this\ 8. Sam: /that’s all right that’s all right\ that’s all right 9. Gin: oh my gosh [smiles] 10. Sam: [laughs] ++ [picks up a box and gives it a thorough shake] 11. Gin: and what’s with the gloves 12. Sam: [smiling] don’t want to get my hands dirty 13. Gin: don’t want to ruin your manicure Ginette here tells Sam that he is not checking the boxes correctly you’re supposed to look at the carton to make sure it’s not leaking (lines 3-4), demonstrating explicitly what he is doing wrong not like this (line 5), and underlining why what he is doing is not acceptable you’re not going to see anything if you’re like this (line 7). Sam accepts the criticism that’s all right that’s all right that’s all right (line 8), and demonstrates he has got the message. Ginette then goes on to soften her direct criticism with some teasing humour, the basic currency of this team (see Stubbe 1999, Holmes and Stubbe 2003). The banter over Sam’s wearing gloves (lines 11-13) indicates that there are no hard feelings and good rapport prevails. The authoritative and direct style appropriate to this masculine community of

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practice is thus tempered by humour, again perhaps an indication of discomfort with the dominant workplace norms. There are many other such examples in this workplace where humour provides a much-used resource for handling negatively affective speech acts such as criticisms and complaints. Ginette’s early morning briefing meetings, for instance, are conducted amid a barrage of verbal riposte and loud, “joshing” comments from those she is addressing. And she responds in kind (see Holmes and Stubbe 2003, 117,129). As mentioned in discussing Example 1, Ginette is Samoan and many of her team members are Polynesian. The Polynesian norm described above of constant verbal feedback while someone speaks is evident in these meetings too. Gendered norms and ethnic norms interact in many New Zealand work contexts. My final example illustrates a negatively affective speech act expressed in a very ethnically distinctive style. In a regular staff meeting, in a MƗori workplace, one of the participants takes the floor to make a complaint. The complaint is embedded in an extended and very amusing performance. The humour is typical of the interactional style in this workplace where critical messages are frequently conveyed very indirectly. In particular, no individual is identified for criticism in such a public context; the comments are directed to the group as a whole, an ethnically acceptable strategy for conveying such a message. Example 13 Context: Formal weekly meeting of all members of a MƗori organisation. Quentin has been talking about what the division has been doing. He allocates the floor to Rangi to report on an award ceremony in which the company has been involved. 1. Que: and the last thing that we have 2. is just something that’s hot off the press 3. Dav: /Rangi\ 4. Que: /+\ late award it wasn’t we didn’t have time for it 5. on the awards ceremony [name] stole the show Constant laughter, feedback and applause throughout next section at points indicated by /\ 6. Rang: [laughter throughout his speech] ae kia ora koutou 7. but before we /start\ this is my magic box + 8. ngaru iti ngaru meaning wave iti meaning in this context microwave 9. /+ yes\ it’s twelve o’clock by crikey I’m hungry 10. I think I’ll shoot down the kitchen and make myself a /kai +\

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11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. XF:

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grab the plate fill it up put it in the microwave close the lid ring ring ring the bloody phone I’ll have to duck down and answer the damn thing ring ring ring ring ring ring pick it up the bugger’s gone hang it up in comes a mate yackety yack /yackety yack yackety yack yackety yack\ ooh my kai i’ll race down to the ( ) kitchen open the door bugger me days the damn thing’s exploded /+ doesn’t matter i’ll clean it later [sings]: i kai away i go:\ poor old Yvonne comes down the stairs open the microwave and someone’s spewed inside + so [in funny voice]: please team when it happens clean it out straight away: + /oh\ it’s ten o’clock I’ll duck downstairs and have a cuppa /+\ open the cupboard grab the cup open the drawer grab a spoon where has David hidden the coffee bugger me days it’s behind the honey /+ pull it out in it goes open the fridge grab the milk\ stir stir stir hot water in [whispers]: now: the easiest trick in the world tap on spoon under /rinse\ [in MƗori]: mukumuku maroke: /back in the drawer close the drawer [shouts]: spoons for the rest of the day: ++\ oh bugger /(6)\ [in MƗori]: mihini horoi mea paru: /+ (dishwasher)\ ( eat my kai) + plate on the bench walk out the door some other bugger /will put it inside easy trick open the door\ slide it in close the door [in MƗori] haere ra /well done\ ae

This long example illustrates many different points. Perhaps most important here is the skilful use of humour to convey the critical message effectively. This is typical in this workplace where good-natured humour plays a significant part in interactions, especially in staff meetings. Rangi’s performance (note that he begins by referring to his magic box, suggesting he is a magician) will be remembered for some time. Rangi plays the part of the person who forgets he has left the microwave on with food in it. This “persona” is redolent of the much-loved dumb, hick persona created by the late MƗori comedian Billy T. James.

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The use of an exaggerated stereotype as a source of entertainment is a well-attested feature of minority group humour (Ziv 1988, Davies 1982, 1990). Here Rangi manages to construct a convincing persona and reenact 3 plausible hypothetical episodes which skilfully avoid pointing the finger at any particular individual, while getting his message across. Leaving the micro-wave in a mess, and leaving spoons and plates unwashed is socially unacceptable behaviour. Interestingly, he not only lampoons the unacceptable behaviour but also models the preferred behaviour (e.g. for washing spoons). There are many features of Rangi’s presentation which mark it as MƗori and also as appropriate to this community of practice, in particular. He begins with a MƗori greeting kia ora koutou, ends with a traditional closing phrase haere ra, and uses the familar MƗori lexical item kai (lines 10, 20). He also teaches at nicely spaced intervals, three less familiar MƗori phrases ngaru iti for “micro-wave” (line 8), mukumuku maroke for “rinse” (line 32), and mihimi horoi mea paru for “dishwasher” (lines 3536); this is a common feature in this workplace where mutual learning and jointly constructed knowledge are the bread and butter of everyday interactions. He uses reporting devices which have been identified as typifying MƗori narratives (Holmes 1998, 2005): e.g. the use of direct speech with no explicit quotative signals for immediacy: e.g. by crikey I’m hungry I think I’ll shoot down the kitchen and make myself a kai (lines 910). He uses a good deal of subject elision (e.g. lines 11-12, 25-26, 29, 3233, 37), emphasising the informality, along with informal lexical items such as the damn thing (line 13), bugger (lines 14, 28, 35, 38), bugger me days (line 18), yackety-yack (line 16), spewed (line 22). Furthermore, the whole monologue is delivered with a steady rhythmic beat which greatly enhances its performance quality, along with his use of special effects such as a whispering voice (line 30), a funny voice (lines 22-23), and high volume and stress at various points (lines 18-19, 30, 34, 39), and further boosted, of course, by the audience applause and laughter throughout. One other point worth mentioning is the implicit, indirectly expressed respect for Yvonne, the company director, which is apparent in the reference to her finding a disgusting mess in the microwave (line 20). MƗori people are generally very sensitive to status differences, and, unlike PƗkehƗ, who typically deliberately play down differences of rank, MƗori often expressly indicate respect for superiors. Here Rangi’s reference to Yvonne is a subtle reminder of her position, which usefully serves to underline his message.

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This example thus illustrates some key features of typical MƗori ways of doing things which contrast with normatively PƗkehƗ workplace behaviours. Complaining about the state of the kitchen is a common speech act in many workplaces, but it is usually accomplished by a written reminder from an administrative assistant. Here Rangi, handed the floor to make a substantial contribution to workplace business, takes a fair amount of time out to make this point. His use of the MƗori language, his use of anti-heroic humour, his teaching strategies, and his concern for protecting people’s face are all features which are consistent with MƗori ways of doing things, ways which are very acceptable in this workplace, despite the company’s overall business orientation within the wider PƗkehƗ society.

Conclusion This paper has identified some of the more subtle ways in which power relations are constructed and reinforced through the discourse fabric of New Zealand workplace interaction. Examples of the way minority groups interact in meetings have highlighted the taken-for-granted norms of PƗkehƗ, and male-dominated, business contexts. Polynesian norms surface when Polynesian participants predominate. Viewed through PƗkehƗ spectacles, the interactional patterns often seem unusual, and thus highlight society-wide assumptions about “normal” ways of interacting at work. Focussing on three aspects of workplace discourse, namely, ways of opening meetings, turn-taking rules in meetings, and ways of conveying negative messages, I have provided examples to suggest the kinds of cultural and gendered norms and taken-for-granted assumptions that underlie much workplace discourse. The “masculine” discourse patterns of powerful males in workplace interactions have been well documented, as have the supportive, facilitative and positively polite discourse strategies typically associated with women in the workplace (e.g. Aries 1996, Coates 1996, Tannen 1994, Holmes 1995, fc a). These gendered discourse patterns typically emphasise the power of the male, and underline the supportive role of the female in workplace interaction. The weight of these well-established and widely documented patterns thus operates in the background of any specific workplace interaction, indicating its normality, or less often, its abnormality. Similarly, ways of doing things associated with the dominant culture form an unquestioned, taken-for-granted basis for assessment in New Zealand society. PƗkehƗ ways of running meetings and of doing

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power are the assumed norm. Other groups are marginalised and their ways of doing things perceived as odd, marked or deviant. I have discussed elsewhere (Holmes 2005b) possible reasons for the tendency for women to “do power” authoritatively, and then follow up with a humorous comment or anecdote, sometimes even a self-deprecating remark, attenuating the effect of their “masculine” behaviour (see Holmes 2000, Holmes, Marra and Burns 2001, Holmes and Stubbe 2003 for further examples). It seems, then, that while it is officially acceptable for women to “do power” explicitly in the workplace, there is an underlying pressure to counter or neutralise the effects of the authoritative and “masculine” strategies entailed in doing so with more “feminine”, supportive and collegial or self-deprecating behaviours. This is interesting evidence that societal assumptions about women's behaviour continue to operate and impose restrictions and constraints, even when women have apparently broken through the glass ceiling. Our observations of the ways in which MƗori people interact in the relatively few workplaces or workplace contexts where MƗori norms may be used is equally useful in suggesting areas where PƗkehƗ norms may be experienced as repressive. In most workplaces, PƗkehƗ brief and, from a MƗori perspective, brusque ways of opening meeting predominate; PƗkehƗ and masculinist turn-taking rules determine who can hold the floor in formal meetings, and background chatter is unacceptable; PƗkehƗ and masculine, very direct ways of criticising, giving instructions and making complaints are regarded as acceptable, and people are not expected to take offence when they are used. From this perspective, MƗori meetings appear lengthy, overly concerned with ritual, and sometimes unstructured and messy; MƗori ways of criticising seem unhelpfully indirect, circuitous and unfocussed. From a MƗori perspective, as illustrated in more detail in Kell, et al. (fc), MƗori meetings can be seen as highly functional occasions, within which a collaborative, egalitarian style of discussion unites, supports and educates the group, and where a collaborative process creates jointlyconstructed knowledge for everyone to share. Failure by PƗkehƗ to perceive what is going on in MƗori meetings may lead to an underestimation of the value of the process used, and in its outcomes. I am not suggesting, of course, that these patterns are universal in New Zealand workplaces, or that there are not men who prefer more feminine styles of interacting and PƗkehƗ who prefer normatively MƗori ways of doing things at some times and in some contexts. Moreover, there are some MƗori who are very comfortable with PƗkehƗ ways of interacting at work. Indeed, our analyses provide plenty of support for these points.

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Rather, I have attempted to identify points where the underlying norms may cause discomfort or impose constraints on some workplace participants. Using a CDA approach to uncover some of the underlying systemic expectations in New Zealand workplaces, I have tried to demonstrate how (male) gender and (majority group) ethnicity are covertly relevant as important systemic characteristics of workplace interaction, unobtrusively influencing people's unconscious interpretations of what is considered appropriate in workplace interaction.

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Appendix Transcription conventions yes [laughs] : : + (3) ... /......\ ... ... /.......\ ... (hello) ? …… and=

Underlining indicates emphatic stress Paralinguistic features in square brackets colons indicate start/finish Pause of up to one second Pause of specified number of seconds Simultaneous speech

Transcriber's best guess at an unclear utterance Rising or question intonation Incomplete or cut-off utterance Section of transcript omitted Latching of speech between speakers or between lines for same =then speaker XM/XF Unidentified Male/Female [edit] Editorial comments italicized in square brackets All names used in examples are pseudonyms.

References Aries, E. 1996. Men and Women in Interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and J. H. Sandra 1997. Managing Language: The Discourse of Corporate Meetings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Baxter, J. 2003. Positioning Gender in Discourse: A Feminist Methodology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Boden, D. 1994. The Business of Talk: Organizations in Action. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Brown, P. and S. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chan, A. forthcoming. Small Talk in Business Meetings in Hong Kong and New Zealand. Unpublished PhD thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand. Coates, J. 1996. Women Talk. Oxford: Blackwell. —. 2003. Men Talk. Oxford: Blackwell. Davies, C. 1982. Ethnic jokes, Moral Values and Social Boundaries. British Journal of Sociology, 33(3): 383-403.

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—. 1990. Ethnic Humor around the World. Bloomington Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Davis, K. 1988. Power Under the Microscope. Dordrecht: Foris Holland. Duranti, A. 1997. Universal and Culture-specific Properties of Greetings. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 7: 63-97. Dwyer, J. 1993. The Business Communication Handbook. New York: Prentice Hall. Eckert, P. and S. McConnell-Ginet. 1992. “Communities of Practice: Where Language, Gender and Power All Live”. In Locating Power: Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference, Berkeley, April 1992. eds. Hall, K., M. Bucholtz and B. Moonwoman: 89-99. Berkeley, University of California: Berkeley Women and Language Group. Fairclough, N. 1989. Language and Power. London: Longman. —. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fairclough, N. and A. Mauranen. 1998. “The Conversationalisation of Political Discourse: A Comparative View”. In Political Linguistics, eds. Blommaert, J. and C. Bulcaen: 89-120. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fletcher, J. K. 1999. Disappearing Acts. Gender, Power, and Relational Practice at Work. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Galbraith, J. K. 1983. The Anatomy of Power. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Graddol, D and J. Swann. 1989. Gender Voices. Oxford: Blackwell. Holmes, J. 1995. Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman. —. 1998. Why Tell Stories? Contrasting Themes and Identities in the Narratives of Maori and Pakeha Women and Men. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 8(1): 1-29. —. 2000. Women at Work: Analysing Women's Talk in New Zealand Workplaces. Australian Association of Applied Linguistics, 22(2): 117. —. 2005a. “Why Tell Stories? Contrasting Themes and Identities in the Narratives of Maori and Pakeha Women and Men.” In Intercultural Discourse and Communication: The Essential Readings, eds. Kiesling, S and C. B. Paulston: 110-134. Oxford: Blackwell. (Abridged and reprinted from paper in Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 8(1): 1-29.) —. 2005b. “Power and Discourse at Work: Is Gender Relevant?” In Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. Lazar, M.: 31-60. London: Palgrave. —. fc a. Gendered Discourse in the Workplace. Oxford: Blackwell.

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—. fc b. Leadership Talk: How Do Leaders “Do Mentoring”, and Is Gender Relevant? Journal of Pragmatics (edited by Karin Aijmer and Anna-Brit Stenstrom.) Holmes, J., M. Marra and L. Burns. 2001. Women's Humour in the Workplace: A Quantitative Analysis. Australian Journal of Communication, 28(1): 83-108. Holmes, J. and M. Miriam. 1999. The Community of Practice: Theories and Methodologies in Language and Gender Research. Language in Society: Special Issue: Communities of Practice in Language and Gender Research, 28(2): 173-183. Holmes, J. and M. Stubbe. 2003. Power and Politeness in the Workplace. London: Pearson. Jaworski, A. 1993. The Power of Silence: Social and Pragmatic Perspectives. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Jones, R. and J.Thornborrow. 2004. Floors, talk and the organization of classroom activities. Language and Society, 33: 399-423. Kell, S., J. Holmes, M. Marra and B. Vine. fc. Ethnic Differences in the Dynamics of Women’s Work Meetings. Kress, G. 1990. Critical Discourse Analysis. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 11: 84-99. Laver, J. 1981. “Linguistic Routines and Politeness in Greeting and Parting”. In Conversational Routine: Explorations in Standardised Communication Situations and Prepatterned Speech, ed. Coulmas, F.: 289-304. The Hague: Mouton. Levinson, S. C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McLaughlin, M. 1984. Conversation: How Talk is Organized. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. Marra, M. 1998. Okay, We’ll Start Now I Think: The Boundaries of Meetings. Opening and Closing Sequences, and Framing Devices. Unpublished MA paper, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand. Metge, J. and P. Kinloch. 1978. Talking Past Each Other: Problems of Cross-Cultural Communication. Wellington: Victoria University Press/Price Milburn. Sollitt-Morris, L. 1996. Language, Gender and Power Relationships: The Enactment of Repressive Discourse in Staff Meeting as of Two Subject Departments in a New Zealand Secondary School. Unpublished PhD thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Spencer-Oatey, H. 2000. “Rapport Management: A Framework for Analysis”. In Culturally Speaking, ed. Spencer-Oatey, H: 3-20. London: Continuum.

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Stubbe, M. 1999. Just Joking and Playing Silly Buggers: Humour and teambuilding on a factory production line. Paper presented at NZ Linguistics Society Conference, Massey, 24-26 November 1999. Stubbe, M. and P. Brown. 2002. Talk at Work: Communication in Successful Factory Teams (a Video and Training Resource Kit). Wellington: Language in the Workplace Project at Victoria University of Wellington. Tannen, D. 1987. “Remarks on Discourse and Power”. In Power through Discourse. ed. Kedar, L.: 3-10. Norwood NJ: Ablex. —. 1994. From Nine to Five. New York: Morrow. Turner, R. 1972. “Some Formal Properties of Therapy Talk”. In Studies in Social Interaction. ed. Sudnow, D.:367-396. New York: Free Press. Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Wodak, R. 1996. Disorders of Discourse. London: Longman. —. 1999. Critical Discourse Analysis at the End of the 20th Century. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32(1-2): 185-193. Ziv, A. 1988. National Styles of Humor. Connecticut, USA: Greenwood Press, Inc.

Notes 1

This paper is based on Holmes (2005) and Kell, Holmes and Marra (fc). The analysis draws on research which has involved collaboration with Meredith Marra throughout, and I hereby express my appreciation of her unfailing support. 2 This example is discussed in Holmes and Stubbe (2003, 33). 3 I use the term Polynesian here to include MƗori people. 4 This point will be further discussed. 5 The Wellington Language in the Workplace Project (LWP) team currently comprises Janet Holmes, Bernadette Vine, Meredith Marra, Research Associates, including Maria Stubbe and Susan Kell, and a number of research assistants. See website for more information: www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/lwp. The project was funded until 2003 by the New Zealand Foundation for Research Science and Technology. It is currently supported by Victoria University of Wellingon University Research Funds. I hereby express appreciation to our funders and to those generous participants in the wide range of workplaces who recorded data for us. 6 The material in this section draws on Holmes (2000) and Holmes (fc a) 7 See also Chan (fc) for a thorough review. 8 For discussion of the notion of communities of practice, see Wenger (1998), Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992), and Holmes and Meyerhoff (1999). 9 See also Holmes and Stubbe (2003, Chapter 4) for further examples. 10 On rare occasions among MƗori, silence can indicate extreme enjoyment; its inherent ambiguity is thus an obvious potential cause of misunderstanding (Metge

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and Kinloch 1978). People also suspend feedback when the speaker pauses to consider their next point–indeed it would usually be considered rude to break into such a silence. 11 This example is adapted from Holmes (fc b) 12 We have used this example many times in earlier publications because it is such a succinct illustration of such a wide range of points. 13 This example appears in Stubbe and Brown (2002) where it is analysed as an example in a training resource kit.

CHAPTER FIVE THE POLITICS OF “OTHERING” IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER ANNITA LAZAR, NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY AND MICHELLE M. LAZAR, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

Taking as the focus the discourse and actions in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, including America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, this paper argues for the need to view these within the larger context of what we call the “Discourse of the New World Order”. The New World Order discourse involves an intertextual analysis of President George W. Bush’s speeches since 9/11 alongside speeches made in earlier periods by the former PostCold War presidents, George H. Bush and Bill Clinton. A central aspect of the discourse is the definition and legitimation of a liberal moral order, the articulation of which depends upon the identification and explication of unruly “Others”. In the Post-Cold War period, the key Others have been Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, with the threat of this being extended to yet others in the international community. In this paper, we show how the “othering” is accomplished through the discursive strategy of “orientalisation”, which maintains as the “core” a universalised western moral order while expelling to the “periphery” those strange and aberrant to it. In line with Said’s (1978) observations, a critical analysis of the discourse reveals four negative stereotypes associated with Arab/Muslim orientals, namely, bellicosity, degeneracy, duplicity and savagery. We argue that orientalisation as a strategy, on the one hand, serves to relegate the oriental outside the American-defined moral order and, on the other hand, provides America the moral justification to control and contain by any means necessary the disorderly Other.

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Introduction Some commentators have described the 9-11 terrorist attacks, and the American response, as inaugurating a new strategic era or a “new stage in world history” (Said 2001). While the attacks were certainly unprecedented in shock-value and audacity of execution, the ensuing discourse of President Bush and his cabinet cannot be said to constitute a rupture in contemporary American and world history. This paper argues that the American statements and actions arising from 9-11 and thereafter (including the attack and occupation of Iraq) need to be viewed as part of a larger discourse of the New World Order (Lazar and Lazar 2004, Lazar and Lazar fc)–a concept that was originally introduced by George H. Bush (or “Bush Senior”). The New World Order we argue has had continued resonance, and was further developed, during Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s administrations, respectively. Viewed historically, the New World Order can be said to be a discourse-in-the-making, with the texts and practices following September 11, 2001 representing an important moment in the fuller working out of this discourse logic. Taking as the primary focus the speeches by President Bush in the present context, an intertextual analysis is undertaken to show how his statements share a common discursive space with Clinton’s and Bush Senior’s earlier speeches. In other words, although three separate American administrations are involved, and each has had to deal with different specific events, and although the governments of Bush Senior and President Bush (on the one hand) and Clinton (on the other) have espoused and/or pursued different political agendas and priorities, the articulation of the New World Order is a point of commonality for the post-Cold War presidencies. The analysis for this paper is based on the speeches made by the three leaders across three important historical moments. The speeches by President Bush deal with the terrorist bombing of America and its aftermath. The Bush Senior data occurs in the context of the 1991 Gulf War, while the Clinton speeches are those made in the contexts of American military action in Afghanistan and Sudan, and Iraq in 1998. The discursive strategies employed in the analysis encompass syntactic, semantic and rhetorical aspects of language (Fairclough 1992, Fowler 1991, Halliday 1994, Lazar and Lazar 2004, van Dijk 1994).

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The Discourse in Context The discourse of the New World Order has emerged as a result of the convergence of a number of factors: (a) the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet threat (i.e. the triumph of liberal ideology); (b) the determination of the United States to retain its superpower status—by emphasising both American military leadership in countering global aggression and the maintenance of a western liberal-democratic internationalism; and (c) the emergence and articulation of “new” threats. With the demise of the Soviet threat, the United States had found its new enemy—the “threat of terror”—according to Bush Senior, in the person of Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait in 1990. During the Clinton administration and at the present time, however, the threat of terror has taken other specific forms. In the Clinton years, religiously motivated political violence, particularly that of Islamic “fundamentalist” groups, was perceived as an escalating threat–with Osama bin Laden heading the “wanted list”, having been indicted for the twin bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. More recently, Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda network have been targeted by the present Bush administration for masterminding the 9-11 attacks, with Saddam Hussein pursued as a connected threat.

Discursive Strategy of Out-casting The New World Order is premised upon a moral order defined and shaped by the US. This paper aims to show how Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have been discursively formulated and conflated as threats to the moral order. This is achieved through a discursive strategy that we term “out-casting”, a process by which individuals and/or groups are systematically marked and set aside as outcasts (Lazar and Lazar 2004). Our use of this term encompasses its sense both as noun and verb. Outcasting, which is based upon the dichotomisation and mutual antagonism of out-groups (Them) and in-groups (Us), is a macro-strategy, and is manifested differently via four specific micro-strategies: (i) enemisation (politically, “They are enemies of freedom and democracy”–values espoused by Us), (ii) criminalisation (in terms of the law, “They are murderous criminals”), (iii) evilification (spiritually, They are evil pure and simple), and (iv) orientalisation (historico-culturally, They are moral degenerates). Here, we will discuss only the last of the micro-strategies, namely orientalisation.

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Orientalisation Orientalisation is a politics of “cultural Othering” which, we argue, is important for defining and maintaining the moral basis of the New World Order. Specifically, it maintains as “core” a unitary western moral order, outcasting the “other” to the “periphery”. Orientalisation is the appropriation into the New World Order discourse a dominant interpretative framework of persistent cultural stereotypes about nonwestern Others, particularly “Arab-Orientals”. Said (1978) famously argued in Orientalism that Arabs and Muslims have been historically constituted by the west as strange, aberrant and inferior, and by implication accentuating the west as normal, virtuous and superior. The caricaturing of the Oriental, he contended, is a reflection of the strength of western cultural discourse—a nexus of knowledge/power—that has repeatedly and enduringly (re)produced the Oriental in much of western consciousness. The political corollary of this, on the one hand, is the relegation of the Oriental to outside the boundaries of the western-defined social and moral order, and on the other hand, the moral justification for the west to control and contain the unruly Other by any means possible (see Lazar and Lazar fc). In regard to the latter, Mazrui’s (1994) observations regarding the use of US conventional forces in the contemporary period invites pause for thought. Mazrui noted that since the end of the Cold War, American conventional capability that was originally targeted at the “Second World” has tended to be disproportionately directed against the so-called “Third World”, and particularly the Islamic world. More than two-thirds of the casualties of US military action since the Vietnam War have been Muslims, amounting to between a quarter and a half million Muslim deaths (Mazrui 1994, 527). There are two points to note about our proposal of the orientalist strategy. Firstly, although we recognise Said’s tendency to paint with broad brushstrokes a unitary picture of western conceptions of the Orient across history (Ahmad 1992, Porter 1983), we argue that certain resilient stereotypes as outlined by him do surface in the US presidential speeches in the contemporary period. This is hardly surprising as the rationality underlying the Discourse of the New World Order, to a great extent, relies on all too simplistic dualisms. Secondly, features of orientalism permeate the other proposed strategies of outcasting as well but, we contend, without any one of these discursive strategies being reduced simply to orientalisation. Below are resonances of four negative stereotypes associated with Arab/Muslim Orientals, which collectively serve both to cast the enemy as peculiar, and to cast the enemy out of the moral order.

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One of these attributes is bellicosity. Invoked in the discourse is the stereotype that Arabs thrive in conflict situations; for whom “strife, not peace, [is] the normal state of affairs” (Said 1978, 49), which, as discussed elsewhere with regards to “enemisation”, is antithetical to America’s expressed value of peace (Lazar and Lazar 2004). The choice of the nominals highlighted below is one indicator of the Arab’s “nature”. x x x

the aggression and brutality of evil men (Bush 12/9/02) tyranny and savage aggression (Bush Senior 29/1/91) These acts of violence against innocents … (Bush 17/9/01)

Another indicator is in the form of references to the enemies’ wanton proclivity for war (see examples below). The orientalist assumption underlying this tendency is the paramount importance of prestige to the Arab, for whom the ability to dominate others translates into the acquisition of prestige, and a failure to do so amounts to being shamed. x x x

Saddam Hussein’s unprovoked invasion, his ruthless, systematic rape of a peaceful neighbour …. (Bush Senior 29/1/91) On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. (Bush 21/9/01) These enemies view the entire world as a battlefield. (Bush 29/1/02)

A second orientalist stereotype in the discourse is moral degeneracy of the Arab Other, namely, as someone who is sadistic and low. Across the presidential speeches, we found an overlexicalisation of sets of synonymous terms—cruelty, ruthlessness, mercilessness, brutality, and absence of conscience and human decency—which sustain this particular ethnocentric imagery. x x x x x x x

… our country was attacked with deliberate and massive cruelty (Bush 13/9/01) The September 11 attacks … revealed the cruelty of our enemies. (Bush 12/9/02) Saddam Hussein started this cruel war against Kuwait. (Bush Senior 16/1/91) … his ruthless, systematic rape of a peaceful neighbour violated everything the community of nations holds dear (Bush Senior 29/1/91) mindless and merciless killing (Bush 11/3/02) the lawless and merciless will not inherit the Earth (Bush 11/9/02) Iraqi tanks, with little warning and even less mercy, rolled across the border ...

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(Bush Senior 26/11/90) … the aggression and brutality of evil men (Bush 12/9/02) Afghanistan’s people have been brutalised … (Bush 21/9/01) …] this brutal dictator will do anything, will use any weapons, will commit any outrage, no matter how many must suffer. (Bush Senior 29/1/91) He subjected the people to unspeakable atrocities …(Bush Senior 16/1/91) Terrorist groups are hungry for these weapons and would use them without a hint of conscience. (Bush 11/3/02) the enemies will not be stopped by a sense of decency or a hint of conscience (Bush 11/9/02) a mockery of human decency; a threat to decency and humanity (Bush Senior 16/1/91; and 29/1/91) … fanatics who feel no shame in murder (Bush 11/9/02)

The moral depravity of the Other is further couched in terms of the irrationality or incomprehensibility of the Other’s actions—yet another stereotype—which implicitly reinforces transgressions against the mores of “normal” society. x x x

… the depth of their hatred is equalled by the madness of the destruction they design. (Bush 29/1/02) mindless and merciless killing (Bush 11/3/02) the murder of innocents cannot be explained, only endured (Bush 11/3/02)

A third orientalist motif is that of the duplicitous Arab. As much as Arabs supposedly are irrational and debased, they are at the same time historically credited with “cleverly devious intrigues” (Said 1978, 287). The choice of the material process (to) plot, with nefarious goals of bringing about death and disruption, in the following examples, is one way this is highlighted. x x x

[The terrorists] are recruited …. They are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot evil and destruction … (Bush 21/9/01) Terrorists and dictators plot against our lives and our liberty … (Bush 11/9/02) They plotted to assassinate the President of Egypt and the Pope … (Clinton 26/8/98)

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A related image is the Arab as dishonest and cunning, which in the present discourse is established through a curious mix of abstraction and concretisation. In the first two cases below, “their” deceptiveness is communicated through rather colourful, literary imagery that describes an abstract quality in dramatically concrete and palpable terms. In the remaining two clauses, the enemies’ duplicitous acts, on the one hand, are rendered abstract through nominalisations that presuppose the acts as known, unquestionable facts about the Other. Yet, on the other hand, as nominals, the acts are made somewhat concrete as participants in processes of waging war and attempting to deceive others. The ability to recognise the Other’s cunning, in all of the examples above, however, suggests that America is even smarter than the “clever enemy”, delegitimises the enemy’s claim to virtue (in the second and fourth examples) and renders “their” “deceitful” efforts futile (see first and fourth examples). x x x x

And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends; in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies. (Bush 21/9/01) … fanatics and killers who wrap murder in the cloak of righteousness …(Clinton 26/8/98) War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. (Bush 13/9/01) We are not deceived by their pretences to piety. (Bush 21/9/01)

Further, the enemies’ duplicity is elaborated through their furtive operations of subterfuge, established below through a semantic field comprising lexical choices pertaining to “hiding”, “seeking “cover” and the “underworld”. The material process of hiding anywhere (“in shadows”) and everywhere (e.g. “in countries around the world”) in particular describes how menacing and pervasive a strategem it is. Yet, ironically, that which makes the enemy sinister simultaneously depicts him as a coward, who “runs for cover” and “tries to hide”. x

x x

The terrorists are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot evil and destruction .... Deliver to United States authorities all leaders of al-Qaeda who hide in your land. (Bush 21/9/01) A terrorist underworld ... operates in remote jungles and deserts, and hides in the centers of large countries. (Bush 29/1/02) This enemy hides in shadows and has no regard for human life. This is an enemy who preys on innocent and unsuspecting people, then runs for cover. ... This is an enemy that tries to hide ... (Bush 13/9/01)

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Finally, present in the discourse, mainly through the deployment of metaphors, is the orientalist motif of the uncivilised Other. This relegates the enemy to the outskirts of the civilised world, and, importantly, makes an easy argument for America, from an assumed position of moral superiority and responsibility to restrain and “tame” the unruly savage. The uncivilised Other is alluded to in the adjectives below, which, whilst in all likelihood are used metaphorically to convey outrage at the enemy, nonetheless are telling lexical choices used to describe the (actions of) the Arab adversary. x x

The United States of America is an enemy of those who aid terrorists and of the barbaric criminals who profane a great religion ... (Bush 8/10/01) tyranny and savage aggression (Bush Senior 29/1/91)

Literal and metaphoric references to “jungle”, for example, in association with the Other also contribute to the negative evaluation of the enemy as untamed and operating in the wild. x x

A terrorist underworld ... operates in remote jungles and deserts ... (Bush 29/1/02) ... a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. (Bush Senior 12/9/90).

Further to this, there are metaphors that represent the enemy as nonhuman, thereby not only casting the enemy out of civilisation but beyond the realm of all humanity. Viewed in this light, the confrontation is no longer between two very different groups of people; instead, invoked is an interspecies order in which humans (i.e. Americans) rank superior to the non-human species (i.e. the Arab enemy). Two sets of non-human metaphors may be discerned in the discourse. One set, invoked by the material processes of action below are mostly predatory, bestial metaphors. x x

x

This is an enemy who preys on innocent and unsuspecting people ... (Bush 13/9/01; Clinton 26/8/98) No peaceful international order is possible if larger states can devour their smaller neighbours. ... An Iraq permitted to swallow Kuwait would have the economic and military power, as well as the arrogance to intimidate and coerce its neighbours. (Bush Senior 12/9/90) Initially the terrorists may burrow deeper into caves and other entrenched hiding places. (Bush 8/10/01)

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The second set involves parasitic organisms, which suggests that the enemy feeds on and threatens the life force of a society. The referent in the first example below probably invokes parasitic animals, whereas in the second example, the verb “grows” might well allude to weeds. The category of parasite (i.e. animal or plant) is not important; what is noteworthy is the antipathy and distancing from the offending non-human organisms—which by definition are intrusive, a nuisance and harmful to the wellbeing of others—making it easy, indeed necessary, for humans to exterminate them. x x

x

terrorist parasites (Bush 11/3/02) ... eliminate the terrorist parasites who threaten their countries and our own (Bush 29/1/02) ... the only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows. (Bush 21/9/01)

Conclusion In this paper, we have shown the establishment of Threat, through one of the micro-strategies of out-casting, namely, orientalisation as a prevailing discursive strategy of Othering. When all four micro-strategies are viewed altogether (i.e. orientalisation, enemisation, criminalisation, and evilification), the result is the hyper-signification of the Other as all that is bad and aberrant, and America as all that is good and virtuous. In its ability to simplify very complex issues, binarism is a useful hegemonic device. First, it establishes as a political fact the existence of clear and specific threats, in this case represented by Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. The dualism, in fact, accommodates the fudging between these different kinds and degrees of threat, to constitute a largely undifferentiated enemy; an easy slippage from “They are different from Us” to “They are all the same”. Second, binarism allows the representation of Them and Us to be sketched in simple, unidimensional lines. In setting up the enemies as hyper-signifiers of all that is bad and immoral, the complex causes of the Other’s actions are left unsaid and unheard. On the other hand, in its self-election to goodness and morality, America’s foreign-policy duplicity is strategically unmentioned. Third, the insistence of marked polarities in the New World Order discourse serves the American purposes in demanding simple and unequivocal allegiances from the international community. As President Bush put this plainly in

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his 2002 State of the Union address, “either you are with America or you are with the terrorists.” Of course, it is noteworthy that the hegemonic American discourse is not without global resistance. Especially Bush’s broadening of the “war on terror” to include Saddam Hussein, and the attack on Iraq and its occupation of Iraq, received mixed international reaction. Ironically, the broad strokes with which the Bush administration painted its enemies as “terrorists” has subsequently been used by anti-war protesters in their descriptions of America and President Bush. Finally, we might ask, “What is new about the discourse of the New World Order?” One thing that has changed is the identification of the enemy. However, what is most strikingly unchanged, in spite of the disappearance of a geopolitically bipolar world, is the maintenance of a discursive bipolarity, which in emphasising difference, perpetuates it and its associated hierarchies.

References Ahmad, A. 1992. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. London: Verso. Bush, G. H. W. 1990. “Transcript of President’s Address to Joint Session of Congress”. New York Times, September 12, 1990. —. 1990. “Why We Are in the Gulf”. Newsweek, November 26, 1990. —. 1991. “Liberation of Kuwait Has Begun”. In The Gulf War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions eds. Sifry, M. L. and C. Cerf: 311-314. United States: Random House. —. 1991. State of the Union Speech. January 29. 1991. United States Information Service (USIS). Bush, G. W. 2001. Transcript of President Bush’s remarks to the Nation. September 11, 2001. Washington: Associated Press. —. 2001. Bush’s Remarks to Cabinet and Advisers. September 13, 2001. New York Times. —. 2001. Transcript of President Bush’s Speech from the Islamic Centre. September 17, 2001. Washingtonpost.com. —. 2001. Text of George Bush’s Speech. (Bush’s address to a joint session of Congress and the American people). September 21, 2001. Guardian Unlimited. http://www.guardian.co.uk (accessed September 22, 2001). —. 2001. What George W. Bush Said. October 8, 2001 (Announcement that US and British forces have begun attacking Afghanistan). http://www.news.com.au (accessed October 8, 2001).

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—. 2002, January 29. Full Text: State of the Union Address. January 29, 2002. BBC News. http://www.bbcnews.co.uk (accessed January 30, 2002). —. 2002. Bush: America Will Not Forget. March 11, 2002. CNN.com. (accessed March, 12 2002) —. 2002. President’s Remarks at Pentagon Ceremony. September 11, 2002. http://www.CNN.com (accessed September 12, 2002) —. 2002. Our Power to Change the World. September 12, 2002. Guardian Unlimited. http://www.guardian.co.uk (accessed September 13, 2002). Clinton, B. 1998. Clinton Statement in Full. August 26, 1998. (On US military strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan) BBC News Online. http://www.bbcnews.co.uk (accessed April 10, 2000). Fairclough, N. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Fowler, R. 1991. Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: Routledge. Halliday, M. A. K. 1994. Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold. Lazar, A. and M. M. Lazar. 2004. The Discourse of the New World Order: ‘Outcasting’ the Double Face of Threat. Discourse & Society, 15(2-3): 223-242. Lazar, A. and M. M. Lazar. (forthcoming). “Enforcing Justice and Justifying Force: America’s Justification of Violence in the New World Order”. In Discourse, War and Terrorism, eds. Hodges, A. and C. Nilep: 45-65. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mazrui, A. 1994. “Global Apartheid? Race and Religion in the New World Order”. In The Gulf War and the New World Order, eds. Ismael, T. Y. and J.S. Ismael: 21-42. Gainsville: University Press of Florida. Porter, D. 1983. Orientalism and its Problems. In The Politics of Theory. Proceedings of the Essex Sociology of Literature Conference, ed. Barker, F.: 55-78. University of Essex: Colchester. Said. 2001. Suicidal Ignorance. Al-Ahram Weekly Online, 560. (accessed November 3, 2001) Said, E. 1978. Orientalism. London: Penguin. Van Dijk, T. A. 1994. Ideological Discourse Analysis. New Courant, 4.

CHAPTER SIX THROUGH WESTERN EYES: COVERING ISLAM AFTER SEPTEMBER 11 SHAKILA ABDUL MANAN, UNIVERSITI SAINS MALAYSIA

Many scholars have argued that the mainstream media in the West play a paramount role in fuelling misconceptions about Islam (and Muslims) by perpetuating “anti-Islamic discourses”, those that tend to demonise and vilify Islam through their simplistic equation of Islam with terrorism, violence, fundamentalism, oppression, primitiveness, atavism and religious hysteria, particularly after the September 11 tragedy. Such discriminatory discourses which are produced and reproduced do not only endorse a decontextualised way of viewing Islam, but they also legitimise military campaigns and acts of aggression against Islamic countries and Muslims in general, apart from maintaining US hegemony globally. This rhetoric of “Othering” has also resulted in Islam being represented in a homogenous and monolithic way with little attempt being made to distinguish between its diverse followers and their beliefs and cultures. Deconstructing these xenophobic discourses is crucial as they could further exacerbate the current global tension and conflict between Islam and the West which, in turn, could threaten the larger project of establishing a “new world order”, one that is premised on the principles of peace and justice. Given this background, using tools derived from the discipline of critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to examine two American magazines, namely, Newsweek and Time, and their narratives of 9/11, to demonstrate how such discriminatory as well as exclusionary practices and religious xenophobia are linguistically and discursively constructed in their texts.

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Introduction Many scholars such as Said (1978, 1997), Karim1 (1997, 2002), Shaheen (1984), and Henzell-Thomas2 (2002) have argued that the mainstream media in the West play a crucial role in fuelling misconceptions about Islam (and Muslims) by perpetuating anti-Islamic discourses, those that tend to demonize and vilify Islam through their conflation of Islam with terrorism, evil, violence, fundamentalism, oppression, primitiveness, atavism and religious hysteria, particularly after the September 11 tragedy. September 11 was a totally “unexpected disaster” (Karim 2002, 101), which numbed and traumatised a whole nation, and in fact the whole world as it watched helplessly footage of airplanes crashing into the global icons of wealth and power and the subsequent catastrophe that was unleashed. In attempting to make a coherent sense of this unusual and unprecedented tragedy, disoriented journalists when reporting on the event utilised pre-existing frames of “violence, terrorism and Islam”, those that have been shaped by “dominant cultural religious worldviews of society” (Karim 2002,102). These frames or cognitive scripts which have generated countless negative and biased portrayals of Islam and Muslims are wellpreserved in the “collective cultural memory”3 of the West since time immemorial and, as Karim succinctly argues, they are based on a specific set of topoi or primary stereotypes of Islam and Muslims (Karim 1997, 153). Karim (1997) further argues that these stereotypes can be retraced to the early narrative descriptions and accounts of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) by “Christian polemicists of medieval Europe” (Karim 1997, 153) for centuries. These stereotypes, which were then propagated, provided the much-needed justification for Europe’s civilising mission and for its subsequent seizure and control of Muslim lands and people (ibid, 154). During the Middle Ages, Arab Muslims were consistently depicted as “war-mongers”, “luxury lovers”, and “sex maniacs” (Karim 2002, 110). These misrepresentations and gross generalisation of Muslims tend to be reproduced today in various kinds of media, in particular popular culture, music, art, and literature. Undefined labels and categorisations such as “Islamic radicals”, “Muslim fundamentalists”, “Islamic terrorists” and “Islamic jihadists” are constantly utilised by the media to portray Muslims the world over in a monolithic and homogenous manner with little attempt being made to distinguish between Islam’s diverse followers, their political orientations, religious beliefs and cultures (Karim 1997, 156). The undefined terms mentioned above are, in the words of Allport (1958), “labels of primary potency” as they function “like shrieking sirens,

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deafening us to all finer discriminations that we might otherwise perceive” (cited in Karim 1997, 155). Violence seems an inherent trait of Muslims, as they are consistently shown as a community of people who are forever engaged in acts of violence or terror against their own kind or against an international audience. By repeatedly reducing Islam to fundamentalism and terrorism, it helps to reinforce the image of Islam as “a deviant cult, and not a worldwide religion” (Karim 1997, 156). Based on research conducted by scholars, it is found that “violence, lust, greed and barbarism” appear to be the core images or topoi of Islam and Muslims (Karim 1997, 157-158). Such negative portrayals do not only facilitate the casting of Muslims in the role of “them”, but they can also be effectively utilised to sway public opinion against Muslims, especially when punitive action is to be taken against countries whose population comprises a Muslim majority (Karim 1997, 154). The various stereotypes which form the core images of Islam and Muslims are manifestations of what van Dijk4 (2005) would term as elite or institutional racism, a form of racism that is “primarily discursive” as it is shaped and disseminated by “politicians, journalists, scholars”, those who hold positions of power in society. Because of their prominent status, their views which are expressed through public discourse such as political debates, news and opinion articles, textbooks, newspapers, magazines, TV programmes, and scholarly works, all of which are owned and “largely controlled by the elites of society” (ibid), are given due respect and legitimacy. These elites, in particular the journalists, who Karim (2002) aptly labels as “integration propagandists”, function to integrate or assimilate readers within “dominant belief systems”, an integration which facilitates the reinforcement of Huntington’s controversial “clash of civilisations” thesis, that there is an inevitable conflict between Islam and the West. This kind of dualist thinking along the paradigm of Islam and the West or the West and the Rest, he further argues, impedes our understanding of the real causes of violence, and terrorism which are reported by the media on a daily basis.5 Deconstructing such stereotypes, discriminatory discourses and exclusionary perspectives of Islam and Muslims is indeed a vital act as, if they are not contested or countered, they can threaten the larger project of establishing a “new world order”, one that is premised on the principles of peace and justice. Given this background, using tools derived from the discipline of critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to examine an issue each of Newsweek and Time and their narratives of Islam and Muslims in the wake of the September 11 tragedy, to demonstrate how such xenophobic representations are linguistically and discursively

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constructed in their texts. Following van Dijk (1998b), this paper sets out to identify and characterise the discursive properties of elite or institutional racism that are validated by these magazines, in particular their utilisation of the “overall strategy of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation”.

Theoretical Framework Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a type of research that aims to examine structures of language in order to determine how they help to enact, reproduce, legitimise or challenge asymmetrical relations of power in a society. Such an enterprise endeavours to posit a connection between “language use and unequal relations of power” (Fairclough 2001, 1) in the hope that it will make people aware of the contribution of language to the subjugation of certain communities of people. Based on work done by scholars (Fairclough 2001, van Dijk 1998a) in the area of CDA, it is observed that their focus is on the issue of power, in particular the social power of certain individuals, groups or institutions. Social power must be seen in relation to control. Certain groups or individuals in a society have greater power than others because they have privileged access to “scarce resources” such as knowledge (specific forms of discourse), information, authority and financial backing. The first three are also examples of “symbolic” resources (van Dijk 1998b). van Dijk (1998a) posits a strong connection between action and the control of people’s minds. If one is able to gain control of people’s minds or perspectives, that is, their knowledge and opinions, one may be in a position to control in an indirect manner some of their actions as well. Since people’s minds are often influenced by language, one finds that discourses may exert some form of control on people’s behaviour and actions. Such influence over the minds and actions of the masses (not everyone, as there are people who would resist such a co-optation) is one strategy that powerful political actors or the elites of a society would normally deploy to remain in power. This strategy is also an illegitimate exercise of power as it may be utilised to demonise or vilify the Other, especially those who are not in line with dominant views and ideas (van Dijk 1998b). van Dijk (1998a, 1998b) defines discursive mind control as the control of the mental models and social representations of other people. Mental models (what van Dijk refers to as a text’s semantic macrostructures) and social representations refer to the knowledge, beliefs, ideologies, opinions, evaluations and interpretations of events and people which are shared by

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those who belong to the same group (1998a, 95). In the context of this paper, these would include the stereotypical ideas and racist assumptions of Islam and Muslims held in the “collective cultural memory” of the West. Stereotypes are “highly crystallised versions of schemata” and they function as “frame(s) for making sense of things” (Deacon, et al. 1999, 169). As scholars such as Said (1978) and Karim (1997, 2002) have pertinently pointed out, it is through language and discourse that such knowledge about Islam and Muslims get produced, reproduced and legitimised in society by the elites of a society. van Dijk (2005) refers to these elites as “symbolic” or “discursive elites” as they wield power and control through text and talk. As intimated earlier, these discursive elites which invariably include politicians, journalists, scholars, etc., express and reproduce their dominant beliefs, ideas, plans, policies, and actions through their speeches and writings and these are then carried by the media for public consumption. The elites’ views are circulated via the media, discussed and sanctioned by society because of their prominent status. This is not to suggest, however, that the media do not provide avenues for an open discussion of important issues, but as Vaughan argues, the elites in power have in their possession the “resources to promote their point of view” (1995, 62). The resources here would mean political, economic and “symbolic” resources. This is an interesting argument indeed as it demonstrates the pivotal role played by the media in enabling the public to acquire social cognitions of important events and news actors. What people generally know about the world is something that they have gleaned from the mass media and the same is true for the opinions and attitudes that they subscribe to which help to form a society’s “collective experiences” and which often become the bases of acts of discrimination, marginalisation and exclusion (van Dijk 2005). Basically, the above discussion provides an understanding of the structures of the mind and what one means by controlling them. However, it is also important to understand how discourse and its structures in texts help to exercise such a control. To do this, there is a need to turn to the methodology suggested by van Dijk (1998b). According to him, all ideological discourses follow a consistent discoursal pattern: they are characterized by an “overall strategy of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation at all levels of text and talk” (1998b; Original emphasis). Positive self-presentation includes a close examination of the strategies of denial or mitigation among the elites, and negative otherpresentation refers to the attempts made to derogate and demonise the enemy. In studying these strategies, the focus is on the use of metaphors,

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imagery, hyperboles, euphemisms, etc.; in short, those respective features of language that help to project a polarised “Us” and “Them” world (van Dijk, 2005).

Methodology This study aims to examine the language used by two foreign magazines, Time and Newsweek, particularly their utilisation of the strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation in their coverage of Islam and Muslims in the wake of the September 11 tragedy. In this regard, the aim of this study is to identify the discursive properties of the elite discourse of racism legitimated by these magazines and, subsequently, to show how they help to endorse certain widely-accepted topoi or core images of Islam and Muslims. I analyse these two magazines as they are owned and controlled by United States-based companies: Time is owned by Time Warner and Newsweek by The Washington Post. The Washington Post, one of the five largest newspaper corporations in the United States, has directors who serve on several corporate companies. Time Warner is a huge media conglomerate and has major holdings in two or more distinct sectors of the media such as broadcasting, book publishing and recorded music. For instance, in the field of broadcasting, it has a controlling interest in cable TV channels, CNN, Headline News, CNN International, Cartoon Network, Court TV, HBO, HBO International, and Cinemax. Incidentally, CNN International is “the dominant global TV news channel” as its broadcasts are conducted in several languages to “some two hundred nations” (McChesney 1999, 91-92). Time Warner also owns the largest U.S. magazine publishing group which is responsible for the production and circulation of magazines such as Time, People, Sports Illustrated and Fortune. Both these magazines, being part and parcel of the U.S. media, form an integral part of the capitalist political economy and this relationship is, indeed, troubling. This is because they would represent the interests of corporate America and, as such, the views and discourses that they promote may be consonant with that of the elites of the country. Consequently, what get relayed to the world’s citizenry are homogenised views and discourses, recycled from the “same, corporate and government-dominated messages”. In this “majority thunder”, it is hard to hear alternative viewpoints or “minority voices” (McChesney 1999, xiv). It is thus crucial to examine the elite discourse espoused by these magazines, more so because they are circulated and distributed internationally. This elite discourse has the

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potential of shaping not just American public policy and public opinion but also the perceptions of the world’s leaders and its ordinary citizens. For the purposes of this small-scale study, I have selected issues of Time and Newsweek that provide ample coverage of Islam and Muslims. In order to make the research manageable, I choose those issues that make consistent references to the following key words/phrases: “Islam”, “Muslims”, “Christians, the West, America, Al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Europe, Jews, The Middle East, The international community, “September 11” and “US-Iraq war”. Since this study requires a detailed investigation of the language used in these magazines, only two issues are examined: the December–February 2003 issue of Newsweek and the September 13, 2004 issue of Time. These texts are analysed using van Dijk’s (2005) framework. First I locate the “strategy of positive selfpresentation” and then the “strategy of negative-other presentation”. In this connection, attempts are also made to analyse the use of metaphors and imagery and their validation of the primary stereotypes of Islam and Muslims.

Analysis Before I begin the analysis proper, it is pertinent first to provide an overall picture and discussion of the selected text corpus mentioned above.

The Corpus The December 2002–February Issue of Newsweek: This issue of Newsweek is a special edition, one whose focus is on “American Power” which is then nicely juxtaposed with reports on “The Islamic World”. Nearly half of this issue is devoted to the discussion of these two main topics. In addition, other topics are also discussed such as America’s search for new oil supplies, how “superpowers” have been wounded by smaller forces since earliest times, the reconstruction of Iraq, and the importance of debate and dissent, especially when a country, a democratic nation at that, decides to go to war. Texts on “American Power” basically project a positive image of America, in particular its President, George W. Bush, and his endeavours at scourging evil from this world and freeing it from the clutches of tyrants and despots, most of whom are claimed to inhabit the Islamic world. In its attempts at positive self-presentation, these texts which are discussed under the sub-headline “America’s Mission” often invoke the word “freedom” and its

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equivalences such as “liberation” and “democracy”. An apt sub-headline indeed, “America’s Mission” makes allusions to America’s “civilising mission” and in this context, it helps to invoke people’s memories of America’s moral duty and responsibility in bringing freedom, democracy and enlightenment to the Islamic world, one which is still being ruled by tyrants and despots. This is an appropriate inference to be made, judging from the photograph that appears on the cover of this special issue. The idea of the Islamic World as the “White Man’s Burden” is clearly depicted in this photograph as it is one of a goateed-American with a top-hat, dressed in an American flag and holding a huge globe on his shoulder. The globe that he shoulders shows the Middle-Eastern side to the reader. The article entitled “Whatever happened to Protest” discusses the importance of debate and dissent amongst its citizenry, especially when a country decides to go to war. In some ways, this piece provides a critique of Bush’s administration, in particular its feeble attempts at providing opportunities for a proper national discussion of its decision to launch a full scale war against “rogue” countries. Discussions on “The Islamic World” concentrate on life in the Middle East after the fall of Saddam Hussain, the tribalistic nature of the Arab world, and America’s public relations efforts at winning over “Muslim public opinion”. The article “The MidEast after Saddam” warns that any kind of military intervention may just unleash disorder and chaos because of long-standing inter-ethnic and religious feuds and conflicts in this part of the world. It further argues that the disorder that results would be hard to control and it may further destabilise the area. This warning serves to demonstrate the dilemmas faced by the Bush administration in its decision to go to war. However, what is more important are the attempts made by this article to reinforce the idea that violence and conflict are endemic to the Middle East. The objectivity and factuality of this proposition are reinforced through the provision of a map, one that is aptly titled “A Tribal Map of the Arab World”. This map functions to show the factional divisions and stratification of Arab society by projecting the various sites, location and demographic details of the different Arab tribes. The September 13, 2004 Issue of Time: In the September 13, 2004 issue of Time, the coverage of Islam and Muslims appears under the headline “Struggle for the Soul of Islam”. This issue examines the conflicts and battles between Muslim extremists and moderates, Islam’s troubling relationship with the West, the question of

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whether the Holy Koran condones acts of killing and terror and the efforts made to reform Islam in America. Interestingly, in the many photographs that appear in this issue, Muslims are either garbed in typical terrorist attire or in traditional Muslim gear. They are either getting ready to go to war or praying in the vast desert lands. Both kinds of depictions function to strike fear in readers as they both represent a rejection of modernity, civilisation and Westernisation. In this issue, a map of Islam around the world is given together with key dates that shaped Islam since the death of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in 632 AD. The aim of the map is to show the world’s Muslim population and of Islam as a rapidly expanding religion. The key dates do not just reflect the ethnic and religious conflicts experienced by the Muslims in the Middle East since 632 AD but the evolvement of differing Muslim sects over time such as the Sunni sect, Sufism, Wahhabism and the Al-Qaeda movement. Although this article highlights the fact that there are differences between radical Islam and moderate Islam, however, it also underscores the growing influence of radicalism amongst Muslims because of US’s support of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians and the US’s military occupation of Iraq. These propositions were mentioned in passing but not discussed in great depth. This said, what is insidious is the attempt made to provide a direct genealogical linkage between the formation of al-Qaeda in 1990 and the death of Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD as they both appear in the same map, the latter, chronologically, before the former. The article “Shaking up Islam in America” discusses the problems and challenges faced by those who make attempts to reform Islam and the Muslim community in America. On the whole, it is found that although there are efforts made by these magazines to provide a critique of Bush’s administration, especially his decision to go to war and to demonstrate the fact that not all Muslims endorse acts of terror as there are moderates amongst them who prefer peaceful means to resolve issues, however, these are limited terrains of contestation as these are views that are discussed in one or two articles only. Few attempts are made to discuss at great length the socio-historical reasons that can help to explain the injustice, anger and fury felt by Muslims as a community over their maltreatment and marginalisation by the West. Consequently, the overall picture that one gets of Islam and Muslims, judging from the language used, images and photographs is one that is quite unflattering, demeaning and corrosive. This is heightened when a stark contrast is made between the West and Islam through the strategies of positive-self presentation and negative-other presentation which this paper aims to reveal in the ensuing sections.

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Positive Self-Presentation One of the most consistent characteristics of the elite discourse of racism is the use of the standard form of positive self presentation or selfglorification. In this regard, both magazines consistently project an admiration for America, its Western-style democracy, culture and socioeconomic achievements (Henzell-Thomas, 2001). Consider how America has been positively labelled and categorised via the following appellations and naming expressions: “The US and its allies” (Time Sept. 13 2004, 53), “Western analysts and intelligence agencies” (ibid, 55), “middle-class neighbourhoods of Western Europe” (ibid, 56), “inalienable goodness of American power”, “the most powerful country in the history of the world” (ibid, 10), “US reshaping the world for good and freedom” (Newsweek Dec. 2002–Feb. 2003, 10), “freeing the world from rogue-controlled weapons of mass destruction”, “force for good”, “superpower” (ibid, 11), etc. In trying to positively present America, the magazines often invoke the word “freedom” and its equivalences “liberation” and “democracy”, although their meaning remains vague and unclear. The following are a sample of utterances which have been selected from the two magazines. x x x

x x

x

Freedom is not America’s gift to the world. It is God’s gift to the world (Bush’s speech reproduced in Newsweek, Dec. 2002–Feb 2003 special issue edition, 10). This nation never conquers, but we liberate. (Newsweek, Dec. 2002– Feb. 2003, 10). The line was Bush’s but it also came straight out of America’s tradition, and had that peculiarly American mix of hubris and humility: America’s going to rescue the world, sometimes with guns blazing, but only so the world will have the freedom to do as it pleases (Newsweek, Dec. 2002– Feb. 2003, 10). (Bush’s) personal beliefs–in the inalienable goodness of American power, in the divine provenance of its values–may be the defining forces in the world today. (Newsweek, Dec. 2002–Feb. 2003, 10). (Bush) now has the imprimatur to carry out his global transformation, perhaps until 2008…That means reshaping the world for good and freedom. It means toppling tyrants. It means achieving, through force, what some of his advisors say cannot be done through treaties: freeing the world from rogue-controlled weapons of mass destruction. (Newsweek, Dec. 2002–Feb. 2003, 10-11). How could anyone possibly object to liberation? (Newsweek, Dec. 2002–Feb. 2003, 11)

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Top US officials like Donald Rumsfield and Condoleeza Rice have appeared on Al-Jazeera to preach the gospel of democracy and freedom. (Newsweek, Dec. 2002-Feb. 2003, 46) Apocalyptic optimists like Joshua Muravchik at the American Enterprise Institute suggest the invasion of Iraq will “unleash a tsunami across the Islamic world”, a tidal wave of democracy and modernization. (Newsweek, Dec. 2002–Feb. 2003, 40). The US can best provide an alternative to radical Islam by projecting military power into the heart of the Islamic world and bringing democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq. (Time, Sept 13 2004, 54).

A number of themes emerge from the sample of utterances. The themes are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Freedom is synonymous with America. The freedom that America preaches is sanctified by God. America represents the “good guys” whilst those who oppose freedom and, thus, America are the “bad guys”. America has the power to reshape and transform the world for good and to bring freedom to this world. The Middle East threatens secular democracy. The Middle East is America’s enemy.

The above themes are part and parcel of Bush’s and America’s political rhetoric and which have, subsequently, been peddled by the two magazines. Their primary aim is to garner support for Bush’s administration and America’s public policy, in particular their support for the war on terrorism and the “continuation of U.S.-dominated economic globalization” (van Alstyne 2002, 79). America is positively represented here, it does not “conquer” but “liberates” nations and it “rescues” and “frees” the world from despots and tyrants. It also brings “democracy” to the Islamic world. In this connection, it sees itself as a powerful nation as it can set free a country from the shackles of oppressive regimes. Notice also the invocations to God, especially the use of the metaphors “preach” and “gospel” as in the utterance “Top US officials like Donald Rumsfield and Condoleeza Rice have appeared on Al-Jazeera to preach the gospel of democracy and freedom” as though these two top officials are emissaries of God and their job is to spread America’s God-blessed version of “freedom” and “democracy” to countries in the Middle East which lack freedom or which, by implication, advocate totalitarianism. More than that, this can also be viewed as an attempt to conflate politics with religion, mainly to gain support from the Christian right who

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were, in the end, partly responsible for ensuring Bush’s retention as President. The freedom that America champions is sanctified by God, hence the whole world should willingly embrace this “freedom”. This is because the “freedom” is not America’s “gift” to this world but “God’s gift to the world”. The “mantra of freedom” (van Alstyne 2002, 79) intoned here is a “vague rhetorical device” as it is used to lend support to America’s “policies that further a conservative agenda” (ibid, 79). What does “freedom” actually mean here? Is its meaning similar to the way in which it was first used? Does Bush and the magazines use the word to mean the enjoyment of basic human rights or civil liberties? If that is the case, how does one explain the “horrific atrocities” committed by the US in its invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, to take some recent examples, and as part of its violent intervention policy, the colossal annihilation of millions of people in Mexico, Hawaii, Philippines, Vietnam in the past, and the countless killings of indigenous peoples throughout the world? (Chomsky 2001, 12) The language that is deployed here is also strategic as it is utilised to help create “an intolerant Other”, the enemy who has dared to threaten America’s “secular democracy” (Silberstein 2002, xiii). In this connection, words such as “rogues”, “tyrants” are used to help legitimise the use of “force” and “military power” on the part of America in carrying out the “invasion” of Afghanistan and Iraq. It is ironical for this magazine to use the wave metaphor “tsunami” in relation to the idea of bringing about “a tidal wave of democracy and modernisation” to Iraq as a “tsunami” will only “unleash” terror, terrible calamities and loss of innocent lives, which is exactly what happened to Iraq when America launched a massive war on Iraq. There is also a tendency to consciously resurrect America’s shared past by using the inclusive “we” pronoun as in “we liberate”, triggering in the process people’s “collective memory” of America’s long struggle towards independence, an independence which most Americans would gladly defend and die for. An interesting strategy this is, as it helps to invoke “fellow citizenry” amongst Americans, united with a common purpose. It is also an attempt to define America as a nation and its peoples—in the words of Benedict Anderson, “an imagined political community” (6). This is the kind of language that will bring the “good guys”, the Americans, together by contrasting them with “rogues” and “tyrants”, the shared enemy, the ones who inhabit the Muslim world. As van Alstyne (2002) argues, words have histories; their meanings never remain fixed, static or unchanging. Hence, it is vital to contextualise these words and to try to understand what they mean and the effects they help to create in their specific situations (9-10). In colluding with the

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elites’ understanding of these vague terms, the American public allows punitive action to be taken against “rogue” Islamic nations and all kinds of repressive acts to be taken within the US. By way of an example, in “protecting freedom” (ibid, 81-82), certain restrictions are imposed on the American public, immigrants, and Muslims in particular. On October 26, President Bush signed the USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act. This bill allows “the investigation and surveillance of wholly innocent Americans” and permits the “racial profiling” of those who are deemed “potential terrorists”. Such a profile has resulted in the “detention of nearly one thousand people” soon after the September 11 tragedy (ibid, 81-82). Other strategies of positive self-presentation include denials, invocations to ignorance and the use of euphemisms. By denying, invoking ignorance and euphemising America’s own defects, they make these defects appear non-existent and “harmless”. In this process, they also help to bolster America’s positive image by stressing its rational and tolerant Self. Below are some examples of such denials, mitigations and invocations to ignorance: x x x x x

x

Bush would be the first to assure everyone he means no harm. (Newsweek Dec. 2002–Feb. 2003, 11). Never has there been a country with so much good will that is perceived in the world with such bad will. (Newsweek Dec. 2002–Feb. 2003, 11). We’re trying to win a war of ideas, in part for the future of the Muslim world. (Newsweek Dec.2002–Feb. 2003, 14). We have no territorial ambitions, we don’t seek an empire. (Newsweek Dec. 2002 – Feb. 2003, 15). America intends to create a “soft” empire – one that doesn’t depend on Roman-style conquest, but is built on common values –then the larger the stick America carries, the more softly it needs to speak. (Newsweek Dec. 2002 – Feb. 2003, 15). Americans have no idea how much animosity there is towards them. (Newsweek Dec. 2002 – Feb. 2003, 11).

Themes that emerge from the sample of utterances above are: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Bush denies that he means any harm. He denies that America harbours any territorial ambitions through global conquest. America is not trying to create a “hard” empire but a “soft” one, the latter of which is built on “common values”. America does not know much it is hated.

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The above themes portray America favourably. Denials and invocations to ignorance in the sample are encoded in the negative premodifiers, verbs and adverbs such as “no”, “never”, “don’t” and “doesn’t”. Euphemisms, in particular, function to downplay the negative or offensive aspects of a particular phenomenon through the use of positive or pleasant expressions. In the magazines examined, such words are used to justify America’s “war on terrorism”, to minimize dissent, and also to manufacture consent from the public. For instance, Bush’s plan to launch a war on terrorism is to be viewed as an attempt to create “a soft empire” in order to reshape “the world for good and freedom”, etc. The use of euphemisms also helps to conceal or obscure the relations of domination that exist between two parties, in this case between America and “rogue” Islamic countries. America is keen to transform the world by promoting its own brand or model of freedom and democracy. Examples of euphemisms to project this idea include: “Global transformation”, “a divine plan” (ibid, 10), “reshaping the world for good and freedom” (Newsweek, Dec. 2002-Feb. 2003, 10), “freeing the world” (ibid, 11), “a national security strategy” (ibid, 12), “a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy and free enterprise” (ibid, 14), etc.

Negative Other Presentation In constructing Islam and Muslims, it is found that efforts are not made to define certain words that are deliberately associated with them, words such as “fundamentalism”, “extremism”, “radicalism”, etc. As Said (1997, xvi) argues, they ensure that “the average reader comes to see Islam and fundamentalism as essentially the same thing”. The following are some of the premodifiers and appellations that are used in the two magazines to characterise Islam and Muslims: “Islamic extremism” (Time Sept 13 2004, 53), “radical Islam” (ibid, 54), “wealthy fundamentalists” (ibid, 55), “hard-core Muslim radicals” (ibid, 56), “toxic intolerant form of Islam”, “virulent Islam”, “militant clerics” (ibid, 56), “Islamic radicals”, “fundamentalist Islam”, “deeply conservative brand of Islam”, “deviant hijackers of Islam” (ibid, 62), “Islamic militants”, “jihadists” (ibid, 63), “tyrants” (Newsweek Dec. 2002-Feb. 2003, 10), “evil-doers” (ibid, 11), “axis of evil” (ibid, 15), rogue states” (ibid, 34), “extremist Muslim threat” (ibid, 14), “enemies of civilisation” (ibid, 34), “conservative Waziri tribesmen” (ibid, 46), etc. These premodifiers and appellations function to portray Islam and its many followers as deviant, volatile, evil and antimodern. Such language helps to further endorse the dominant frames and

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discourses that are normally utilised when reporting about Islam and Muslims. As mentioned earlier, the words “fundamentalism”, “extremism” and “radicalism” are not properly defined by the news magazines in question and when they are used, they are almost always used in a derogatory manner. Fundamentalism, for instance, bears negative connotations in Western society as it is commonly associated with “all that is oppressive, bigoted and anti-modern in religion” (Renold 2002, 104). In Western society, it is often used to refer to a particularly conservative “brand of Christianity”. Hence, when it is used in relation to Islam, the tendency is to make an equation between Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism. This word then becomes “a blanket term” (ibid, 95) for a view of Islam through Western lenses that results in disastrous consequences. Religious differences and ideological debates exist within Muslim societies which, unfortunately, are glossed over by these magazines as the tendency of these magazines is to homogenise or essentialise all Muslims. Attempts are not made to instruct the reading public to view the incongruity of collocating the premodifier “Islamic” with “terrorists” or the premodifier “militant” with “Islam” as acts of terror that are conducted by groups such as the al-Qaeda “do not constitute part of the essential metaphysical, religious or spiritual dimension of the faith” (Karim 2002, 109). What is worse is when stereotypical images of Muslims are shown whenever the word “Islam” is used. For instance, some common images appended are those of large numbers of Muslims in prayer, reciting the Quran, holding guns, waving swords and attired in military or traditional Muslim gear. These help to instil fear in the reading public as these Muslims are seen as forces that have the potential to threaten Western style of living by imposing their will and traditional values through acts of terrorism. As Renold (2002, 95) argues, through these images and the language used, the magazines make the association between fundamentalism and those Muslims who appear dangerous, insidious or backward. People of the Muslim faith are required to accept and embrace the “five fundamental Islamic tenets, the five pillars of faith: belief in the one God and Muhammad as his prophet, the practices of giving alms to the poor, making the journey to Mecca, fasting during the month of Ramadhan, and prayer” (ibid, 99). These are the essentials of Islam and, ironically, by adhering to these principles, “all Muslims could be regarded as fundamentalists” (ibid). This helps to demonstrate the urgent need to unpack the word “fundamentalism” so that readers can understand its

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various shades of meaning and the effect it helps to create when used in a variety of situations. Metaphors and imagery (see Vaughan 1995, 69) are also used to characterise Islam and Muslims negatively. These help to further reify the dominant stereotypes or topoi of Islam and Muslims. The major metaphors and images include: 1. 2. 3.

images of primitivity; images of violence and conflict; and metaphor of evil and animal metaphors.

1. Images of primitivity x x

x x x

Along a stretch of the Pakistani border crawling with Al-Qaeda guerrillas, conservative Waziri tribesmen stop to pray in the direction of Mecca (Time, Sept. 13 2004, 46). But rage is shared by tons of thousands of radicals, estimated conservatively, who span the globe, from the badlands of Pakistan to middle-class neighbourhoods of Western Europe (Time Sept. 13 2004, 56). Islam can accommodate the influence of democratic ideals and Western culture. (Time Sept. 13 2004, 60) (A) Pakistani cleric and Member of Parliament has launched a campaign to shut down cybercafes throughout the country, describing the Internet as a “red-light district. (Time Sept. 13 2004, 63) Osama–a man in a cave outcommunicates the world’s leading communications society. (Newsweek Dec. 2002–Feb. 2003, 44)

The above examples demonstrate that these magazines are inclined to propagate the core images, topoi or primary stereotypes of Islam and Muslims through the use of metaphors and imagery. As a result, they help to reinforce the associations commonly made between Islam and “violence”, “primitiveness”, “atavism”, “evil”, etc. For instance, the primitivity of Islam is reinforced through the use of the noun phrases “conservative Waziri tribesmen” and “Osama–a man in a cave.” Notice the use of the noun “tribe” and not community and the abode of Osama–in a “cave” and not a house. Similarly, Muslims are found in the “badlands of Pakistan” and not in the “middle-class neighbourhoods of Western Europe”. Worse, we are told of the actions of a Muslim cleric trying to outlaw the internet and cybercafes. What is clearly in operation here is the rhetoric of Othering or Orientalism, one which underscores the Other’s lack, especially in terms of culture and civilisation. These are lexical strategies that are used to perpetuate the idea that Muslims are “backward

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and uncivilized” by consigning them to a time that is not the present, to a time that is distant from the European Self. In short, Muslims are perceived to belong to a European past (Mills 1991, 89). 2. Images of violence and conflict x

x

x

x x x x x

The confrontation between the opposing forces of Islam amounts to what Princeton scholar Michael Scott Doran calls a “civil war” within one of the world’s fastest-growing religions–a war so tumultuous and farreaching that, as in Mohammad and Omar’s case, it pits fathers against sons. (Time Sept 13 2004, 53). Islam around the world–A rapidly expanding religion of more than 1 billion believers, it has been shaped by centuries of struggle (a map of the world which depicts a percentage of world Muslim population with key dates of the various battles fought and won by Muslims in their efforts to spread Islam since the death of Prophet Muhammad. (Time Sept. 13 2004, 54). Struggle for the Soul of Islam–Three years after 9/11, an inside look at the ongoing global battle between moderates and hard-liners over the future of a faith—and its relationship with the West. (Time Sept. 13 2004, 47). 656 – Murder of Uthman, the third Caliph, and the First Civil War. A crisis over succession leads to a rift and the creation of two Muslim factions, Sunni and Shiite. (Time Sept. 13 2004, 54). 680 – Second Civil War and the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson Hussein at the Battle of Karbala. (Time Sept. 13 2004, 54). 750 – Overthrow of the Umayyad caliphate by the Abbasids. (Time Sept. 13 2004, 54). Nowhere are the stakes in Islam’s future higher than in the crescent of turmoil that runs from the Persian Gulf states to Pakistan and North Africa (Time Sept. 2004, 56). A Tribal Map of the Arab World–Voices of caution in the Bush administration, including some in the State Department and CIA, warn that the Middle East is like the Balkans, riven by ethnic and religious fault lines (Time Sept. 2004, 42).

The above images project Muslims as a violent and “warring community” as they have been shown to be fighting each other since the death of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Scholars of Islam are invoked to endorse this idea and one particular scholar from Princeton by the name of Michael Scott Doran refers to this in-fighting as a “civil war”, a war that “pits fathers against sons”. An interesting metaphor this is as its main aim is to promote the image of Muslims as a community of people who show no regard for familial ties, in keeping with their construction as the

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uncivilised Other. Images of violence and conflict where Islam and Muslims are further reinforced through the use of nouns and noun phrases such as “battle”, “struggle”, “centuries of struggle”, “crescent of turmoil”, “overthrow”, “murder”, etc. The metaphor “crescent of turmoil” represents an insidious and malicious attempt at “appropriating a symbol of Islam to present the religion as embodying an endemic state of instability” (Karim 1997, 156). Similarly, the metaphor “fault lines” helps to depict the idea that violence and conflict are endemic to the Middle East and that instability is synonymous with it. The above images and metaphors aim to promote the idea that struggles for power in this region are the result of “ancient, tribal, religious or ethnic hatreds” (ibid, 157) and not because of differences in ideological orientations as in the West. Such a view functions to perpetuate prevailing ideas of Islam as a religion that encourages violence and conflict and in doing so, Time and Newsweek gloss over “the existence of structural violence in global society” (Zelizer and Allan 2002, 18). Structural violence, as a concept forwarded by Johan Galtung (1981), is a form of violence that does not involve “direct, physical force” but one that “enables a broader understanding of the larger historical and social contexts of violence” (Karim 2002, 103). Essentially, it is concerned with the denial of basic material needs and wants of society and the deprivation of human rights. Such needs and rights which are taken away are the result of the enforcement of economic embargoes sanctioned by the United States on less developed countries, in particular the so-called “rogue nations” such as Iraq. These have resulted in the loss of thousands of innocent civilian lives. Ironically, where the superpower and the world are concerned, these are not considered as “violent acts” (ibid, 103). 3. Evil and Animal Metaphors x x x

x

…the Administration is looking well beyond the current “axis of evil”, which includes Iran, Iraq and North Korea; this might put countries like Syria in the spotlight (Time Sept. 13 2004, 22). Along a stretch of the Pakistani border crawling with al-Qaeda guerrillas, conservative Waziri tribesmen stop to pray in the direction of Mecca (Time Sept. 2004, 46). Historians like Princeton’s Bernard Lewis argue that such factors as the repressive nature of many Arab governments and the sense of aggrievement that has plagued Muslim societies since the collapse of the Ottoman empire also play a part in fueling virulent Islam. (Time Sept. 13 2004, 56). (Pakistan) remains one of the world’s most fertile breeding grounds for jihadists. (Time Sept. 13 2004, 63).

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The chances that Iraq will resemble that ideal soon are all but gone. The danger now is that control could slip into the hands of the jihadists–as parts of the so-called Sunni triangle already have—intent on establishing their own fundamentalist regime that could become a breeding ground for terrorists (Time Sept. 13 2004, 64). It means toppling tyrants. It means achieving, through force, what some of his advisers say cannot be done through treaties: freeing the world from rogue-controlled weapons of mass destruction. (Newsweek Dec. 2002– Feb. 2003, 10). The evildoers who perpetrated September 11 –the event that is driving all this–have no motivations that can be justified. (Newsweek Dec. 2002– Feb. 2003, 11). They are evil. They will be scourged. (Newsweek Dec 2002–Feb. 2003, 11). Azerbaijan festers restively under the authoritarian rule of elderly President Haidar Aliev (Newsweek Dec. 2002–Feb. 2003, 49).

The selected magazines also make an attempt to invoke the concept of evil by constructing Muslim terrorists as monsters who have to be destroyed. This is one strategy that is used primarily to instil fear in people, to manipulate their attitudes and beliefs, to obtain legitimacy for militaristic action on “rogue” nations in the wake of the September 11 tragedy and to minimize dissent amongst Americans, if a war is to be launched (Rediehs 2002, 65–78). In order to show evil as a potent force, the metaphor “axis of evil” is used, the word “axis” suggesting alliances between a number of “evil” countries, namely “Iran”, “Iraq” and “Korea”, countries which are allegedly considered to be producers of weapons of mass destruction. In using such constructions, they are portrayed as threats to global order and security. Terrorists are labelled as “evildoers” and rogue countries as “tyrants”. Islamic countries are depicted as “fertile breeding grounds for jihadists”, as “crawling with Al-Qaeda guerrillas” and “fester(ing) restively under…authoritarian rule”. These are metaphors that function to reduce Muslims to vermin and insects. Therefore, by dehumanising them in this way, their extermination is not just easily justified but welcomed as well.

Conclusion The polarised narrative of “Us” and “Them” proffered by the Bush administration is reproduced by both Newsweek and Time in an uncritical manner through their utilisation of strategies of positive-self presentation and negative-other presentation. In using these strategies, the magazines concerned glorify America and the West and validate the primary

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stereotypes, topoi or core images of Islam and Muslims by making the association between Islam and violence, primitivism, fundamentalism and atavism. Through these, the elites are given the opportunity to wield global power and control as it is their dominant beliefs, ideas, perceptions, policies and plans that are being endorsed by these magazines and carried through for public consumption. Such organized discursive practices of the elites which are conveyed through text and talk, exemplify the operation of elite or institutional racism, a form of racism whose aim is to reinforce the idea that there are conflicts between Islam and the West which cannot be easily resolved and that punitive action must be taken against countries which comprise a vast Muslim majority, especially “rogue” nations. Such dominant views, if not contested, have the potential of shaping not just American public policy but the perceptions of world leaders and ordinary citizens of the world because these magazines are owned and controlled by huge media conglomerates who have vested interests in book publishing, recorded music and broadcasting. On the whole, these magazines provide limited terrains of contestation as minimal attempts are made to challenge the core images of Muslims. In this connection, the images and photographs of Muslims that accompany the written texts further reinforce these stereotypes. Ironically, although efforts are taken to establish the fact that there are several Muslim sects and that not all Muslims adhere to radical or extremist views, the metaphors and imagery that are used appear to contradict this proposition as they further homogenise and dehumanise the Muslims by painting them in the darkest possible colour. Interestingly, however, these magazines’ black-and-white summation of the West and Islam may paradoxically have the opposite effect of calling up grey areas and ambiguities in the minds of the thinking public. What is the meaning of “fundamentalism” and “jihadism” from a Muslim perspective? Is the deliberate association between Islam and fundamentalism, violence, primitivity and evil too simplistic? What is Islam and what does it truly advocate? What are the socio-historical reasons that can help explain acts of terrorism and the growing dissatisfaction of not only Muslims but the world population towards America’s public and foreign policies? Is any kind of war justified? What about the “structural violence” unleashed by the West, in particular America on Muslim “rogue” nations and other less developed countries? What are the various accomplishments of Islam and Muslims throughout history? What are their global contributions? A monologic account that is provided by these magazines does not square with notions of fairness, objectivity and social responsibility in media coverage. Such journalistic

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tendencies reflect the apathy of magazines which are controlled by huge media conglomerates and their abandonment of all sense of critical enquiry.

References Chomsky, N. 2001. 9-11. New York: Seven Stories Press. Collins, J. and G. Ross (eds). 2002. Collateral Language. New York & London: New York University Press. Fairclough, N. 2001. Language and Power. Harlow England: Longman. Henzell-Thomas, J. 2002. The Language of Islamophobia. http://www.masud.co.uk/ ISLAM/misc/phobia.Htm (accessed April 7, 2005) Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence. Canadian Journal of Communication, 27 (1). 2002. http://www.cjconline.ca/viewarticle.php?id=702&layout=html (accessed January 19, 2005) Karim H. K. 1997. “The Historical Resilience of Primary Stereotypes: Core Images of the Muslim Other”. In The Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse. ed. Riggins, S. H.: 153-182. Thousand Oaks, CA.: SAGE Publications. Karim H. Karim. 2002. “Making Sense of the “Islamic Peril: Journalism as Cultural Practice”. In Journalism After September 11, eds. Zelizer, B. and S. Allan: 101–116. London and New York: Routledge. Mills, S. 1991. Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism. London: Routledge. McChesney, R.W. 1999. Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times. New York. The New Press. Rediehs, L. J. 2002. “Evil”. In Collateral Language, eds. Collins, J. and R. Glover: 65–78. New York and London: New York University Press. Renold, L. 2002. “Fundamentalism”. In Collateral Language. eds. Collins, J. and R. Glover: 94-108. New York and London: New York University Press. Riggins, S. H. 1997. The Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse. Thousand Oaks, CA.: SAGE Publications. Said, E. 1997. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. London: Vintage. Schaffner, C. and A. I. Wenden (eds). 1995. Language and Peace. Australia: Harwood Academic Publishers. Silberstein, S. 2002. Language, Politics and 9/11. London and New York: Routledge.

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van Alstyne, A. D. 2002. “Freedom”. In Collateral Language. Eds. Collins, J. and R. Glover: 79-93. New York & London: New York University Press. van Dijk, T. 1998a. Ideology–A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: SAGE Publications. —. 1998b. Critical Discourse Analysis. http:// www.let.uva.nl/~teun /Critical Discourse Analysis.html. (accessed September 17,2000) —. 2005. Elite Discourse and Institutional Racism. http://www.discoursein-society.org/Elite%20discourse%20and%20institutional%20racis (accessed April 7, 2005) Vaughan, C. 1995. “A Comparative Discourse Analysis of Editorials on the Lebanon 1982 Crisis”. In Language and Peace. eds. Schaffner, C. and A. Wenden: 61-74. Aldershot, UK: Harwood Academic Publishers. Zelizer, Barbie and Allan, Stuart (eds). 2002. Journalism After September 11, London & New York: Routledge.

Source Texts Newsweek. December 2002–February 2003 (Special Edition) Time. 13 September 2004

Notes 1

In Karim’s excellent study of “Core Images of the Muslim Other”, he utilises the term North and Northern discourses rather than the West or Western discourses mainly to “describe the geographical ambit of Orientalism” as Orientalism did not just “flourish(ed) in Western Europe, North America, Australasia, and Israel but also has been an integral part of the manner in which Eastern Europe has dealt with regions to its south and east”. See Karim in Riggins (1997) for further details. 2 Henzell-Thomas (2002) has applied van Dijk’s framework in his analysis of the Language of Islamophobia. 3 Following Karim (1997), the term “collective cultural memory”, is to be understood as being “cultural in nature” rather than “psychological”. What this means is that, as far as this paper is concerned, this term is not conceptualised the way in which Jung understands it. See Karim in Riggins (1997) for further details. 4 In his paper, van Dijk (2005) examines the discursive properties of the elite discourse of racism and demonstrates how they are produced and reproduced via the elites and the media.

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This is from a review of Karim H. Karim’s book entitled “Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence” which was published in the Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 27, No. 1 (2002).

CHAPTER SEVEN DIPLOMATIC CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION: CROSSINGS FROM THE SELF TO THE OTHER HAFRIZA BURHANUDEEN, UNIVERSITI KEBANGSAAN MALAYSIA

The notion of the Other in current language studies is frequently juxtaposed against the opposing Self where both entities belong to different sociolinguistic and cultural backgrounds. The researched differences are then regularly used as a backdrop to justify the raison d’etre of the varying norms of social, cultural and linguistic behaviours found in the corpus under study to provide the necessary descriptive and explanatory adequacy. Research in the dominion of international diplomacy, however, suggests an alternate view of the Self and the Other. This paper seeks to offer a different view of the Self and the Other in international diplomacy. In this context, the Self and the Other are two sides of the same coin: the Self shaped by its sociolinguistic, cultural and religious identity and the Other, as the same person, who has to temporarily suspend its Self through subscription to a professional diplomatic culture to achieve the goals of international diplomacy. In this paper, the issue of border crossings to the Other will then be addressed through the exploration of the following two questions. Firstly, what obliges the Self, marked by diversity in religion, ethnicity, politics, history, culture and sociolinguistic norms among members of differing countries, to assume the disposition of the Other, concerned with the pursuit of regional and international cooperation? Secondly, how do researched features of diplomatic communication act as a bridge between the Self and the Other? The paper ends with the belief that the la raison de system in diplomacy will prevail across all other studies in diplomacy, in a place where the Other must dominate over the Self.

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Introduction A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip (Stinnett 1989, cited in Brahm and Aiken 2005, 1). Diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way (Goldberg 2001, cited in Brahm and Aiken 2005, 1). Communication is to diplomacy as blood is to the human body. Whenever communication ceases, the body of international politics, the process of diplomacy, is dead, and the result is violent conflict or atrophy (Tran 1987, 8).

The statements by Stinnett, Goldberg and Tran above attest to the crucial role that communication plays in diplomacy. At the heart of effective diplomatic communication is the construction, in tandem, of a shared positive, cooperative and collaborative disposition among diplomats to sustain not only interpersonal relations but also the sometimes fragile bilateral and multilateral relations between countries that are grappling with issues that can adversely affect regional or international unity in an instant. Thus, so vital is communication that at the heart of effective diplomacy is the careful and deliberate construction of diplomatic language, and this has instigated the emergence of a necessary diplomatic culture and suitable disposition when diplomats communicate with one another to preserve good bilateral or multilateral relations between nations. Central also to the aforesaid is the use of a common code aptly encompassed in Interpretationsgemenscaft, meaning “commonality with respect to interpretation” (Rommetveit 1974, 88). Here, two discoursebased studies of diplomatic language by Hafriza (2003b, 2004) can attest the existence of Interpretationsgemenscaft in diplomatic communication. In Hafriza’s (2003a) research, for example, a common code is couched in various types of diplomatic correspondence where diplomatic communication with regard to suggestions, criticism, compliments, warnings, explanation and advice need to comply with the existence of a complex etiquette to ensure that the message to a foreign interlocutor will not become an undesired offence. Here, situations can range from, for example, a foreign government having to request clearance to use Malaysia’s airspace, granting a foreign warship permission to enter Malaysian waters, taking a neighbouring country to task for reclamation work in what is believed to be Malaysian territorial waters, transboundary

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air or maritime pollution to finally, routine administrative matters between governments. A common code was also strongly suggested in Hafriza’s (2004) study that examines diplomatic communication in speeches of the XII Summit Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the 10th Islamic Summit (OIC) in 2003 in Kuala Lumpur. This common code was also seen in Hafriza’s (2003a) study, that the speakers were expected to communicate in a manner conforming to the desired linguistic style in diplomacy aptly. This style was described by Matos (2004, 283) as a “peace-building, peace-making, and peace-promoting force.” Taken in tandem with the aforementioned, Interpretationsgemenscaft also requires the diplomats to be skilled in “saying both less and more than they mean. Less because their verbal and non-verbal signalling will not immediately convey their meaning and more because their signalling might always convey messages and involve them in sometimes undesirable consequences other than those intended” (Jonsson and Hall 2002, 7). Yet another skill in communication is the use of non-verbal behaviour to send desired messages to multiple audiences while retaining deniability. Such are some of the required pre-knowledge in order to function within the boundaries of the common code. In collaboration with the above, the construction of a “peace-building, peace-making, and peace-promoting force” does not only refer to the language and communicative skills deemed necessary for diplomats but is also in line with the sharing of a professional diplomatic culture–a culture that forces diplomats to communicate amicably despite issues of ethnolinguistic vitality, cross-cultural differences and often sharp differences in opinions between the political leaders of different nations. In this paper, Hofstede’s (2004) concept of professional diplomatic culture is used. According to him (2004, 2): Diplomats share with other diplomats a professional culture, regardless of their country. This culture enables them to see two sides of a problem and to remain on speaking terms with colleagues from very different cultures. It separates them from their country’s politicians, who often rose to their present position by manifesting strong opinions for the home audience and by not minding the opinions of opponents. Resolution of burning international problems demands trust and cooperation between diplomats and politicians which is a precious asset that merits careful conservation.

This paper suggests a different view of the Other by describing border crossings from the Self to the Other in the context of international diplomacy. Here, the Other is defined as a person that temporarily

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suspends his/her Self by subscribing to norms and values inherent in professional diplomatic culture and norms of diplomatic communication to achieve the goals of international diplomacy. In such situations, by crossing to the Other, the Self is obliged to put aside its personal way of thinking about the issue at hand and adopt the consensual point of view decided by the government. The discussion will centre predominantly on highlighting the salient features of the Other through speeches presented in the arena of international diplomacy and diplomatic correspondence in tandem with research providing explanatory power as to why the Other is bound, as with many like him or her, to the norms and values of the Other domain where the Self is obliged to suspend itself. This section of the paper proceeds to highlight relevant library research on professional diplomatic culture and communication as a backdrop to the discussion of border crossings from the Self to the Other. It begins with the documentation of why the Self suspends itself for the Other. The why is then juxtaposed with the how in the section of this paper entitled “Transformational of the Self to the Other”. The dimensions introduced in these sections may act as a modest step towards a greater understanding of the realm of international diplomacy and the speakers thrust into it. To begin with, the idea of professional diplomatic culture and diplomatic communication would need to take heed of the following statement: A world of states whose citizens possessed the consciousness of diplomats would be unrepresentable and a world of states whose diplomats possessed the consciousness of citizens would be unmanageable (Sharp 1999, 14).

A situation that can aptly represent the scenario in the quotation above was the oil field issue between Malaysia and Indonesia over maritime jurisdiction in the Sulawesi Sea. Strong disagreement over the presence of Shell Malaysia in the now disputed oil-rich maritime areas by some Indonesian citizens led to the incident of the burning of the Malaysian flag and demonstrations in front of the Embassy of Malaysia in Jakarta. This was accompanied by belligerent and antagonistic discourse by the demonstrators, rousing the anger of Malaysians across the seas. Emotional tension then between some citizens from both countries remained high and would have led to more damage had it not been for the calm presence of diplomats from both countries pushing for a peaceful resolution to the dispute through negotiations behind the scenes. Had indeed, some diplomats allowed themselves “to be possessed the consciousness of citizens,” the relationship between the two neighbouring countries would have been jeopardised. Surely, among these diplomats existed personal

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disagreement or anger over the oil field issue as private citizens themselves in the Self, but the necessity to operate according to the norms of professional diplomatic culture compelled them to act otherwise in the persona of the Other. The notion of a professional diplomatic culture (Claes 2004, 1; Rana 2004, 3) is consistent with the sense and meaning inherent in the definition given by Hofstede (2004) above. Here, the idea of a professional diplomatic culture is elaborated upon by Sharp (1999, 5) in his statement of the need to go beyond the minimalist conception of diplomats as simply seeking to avoid war or prevent themselves from being a source of further tension. Whether or not states preferred peace, they had to agree upon procedures for communicating with one another and these procedures could be arranged to minimize their potential for becoming a source of unwanted conflict. This has given rise to the positivist conception of peace, la raison de system, in which the international body has its own qualities or even needs which impose a certain logic, practical or prescriptive, on the behaviour of its members.

Indeed, as Sharp (1999, 6) further notes, “shared commitment to peace and saving their respective” leaders “from themselves became hallmarks of the profession, something which diplomats could hold in common to cement their sense of corps and to gain distance from their political leaderships”. Later, Sharp (1999:13) cements the aforesaid by saying that diplomats: see themselves as the steadying influence when others—publics and politicians alike—are carried away by the heat of the moment to demand the satisfaction of national honour with war, or be tempted by fear and selfishness to renounce important international responsibilities when they become dangerous or expansive to uphold.”

Certainly, the task of diplomats today does not seem to have changed much and can still be likened to the prolific Austrian diplomat, Hubner, in Ernest Satow’s (1908, 56-57) study, where Hubner was “compelled to contend for a bad cause” as the most “one can attain by prudence and love of peace is the postponement of the evil day.” Indeed, defusing tension in favour of peaceful negotiations and compromise in the research done by Cohen (1995) on Diplomacy 2000 BC to 2000 AD, and Hamilton and Langhorne’s (1995) work on The Practice of Diplomacy strongly suggest the implied presence of a similar professional diplomatic culture in the diplomatic corps way before the 19th century. These positions can reasonably imply that the crux of diplomatic culture via averting tension

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through peace-building behaviour and discourse has remained relatively unchanged for over a century. Importantly mentioned also in the studies read is the disposition of the diplomat as optimistic, determined, rational rather than emotional, practical, intelligent and tactful in the face of adversity. The stability of the professional diplomatic culture is also dependent upon yet another essential aspect of diplomacy, diplomatic communication. Expanding on the concept of Interpretationsgemenscaft viĨ-a-viĨ a shared common code in diplomacy mentioned earlier in this paper, Matos’ (2004) paper on language and diplomacy provides two understandings of the term “diplomatic communication.” Firstly, Matos highlights Gruber’s (1983) (quoted in Freeman 1997, 49) definition of diplomatic communication which reads, “Communication among diplomats is a two-way street; one cannot expect to obtain much information unless one is able and willing to convey information.” The second understanding of diplomatic communication is Matos’ (2004, 287) notion that “communicating welldiplomatically means communicating for the well-being of diplomatic interlocutors and, more broadly, for the well-thing of mankind.” These two views of diplomatic communication presented aforesaid suggest the role of diplomatic communication to be in sync with the values of professional diplomatic culture; that is, the construction of cooperation over dissent. Several other features of diplomatic communication that consistently suggest the need for diplomatic communication to abide by the positivist conception of peace, la raison de system, in professional diplomatic culture, have been surveyed and identified by Matos (2004, 283-285). The five main features are: x x x x x

Emphasise “what to say” constructively. Avoid “what not to say.” Think of the language you use as a peace-building, peace-making, peace-promoting force Learn to identify and to avoid potentially aggressive, insensitive, offensive, destructive uses of language Communicate both tactfully and tactically Adopt a constructive perspective, for expressing your attitudes, beliefs, and emotions. Educate yourself in identifying “positivisers” in spoken and written texts and encourage yourself to make increasing use of such constructive, human-dignifying adjectives, verbs and nouns.

The features listed above maintain an unwavering message with regard to diplomatic communication; that is, in diplomacy, the kind of language that

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can assist in the goal to maintain cordial relations among countries is the expected norm. The discussion of the primary notions surrounding the idea of professional diplomatic culture and communication can be connected, finally, to a sense of ritualisation in diplomacy. According to Bell (1992, 89), ritualisation is seen to involve the formal modeling of valued relationships so as to promote legitimization and internalization of those relations and their values”. As applied to diplomacy, on the other hand, Jonsson and Hall (2005, 12) state that the term ritualisation reminds us that (a) “saying is doing” and “doing is saying” in diplomatic communication, and (b) that the common diplomatic code facilitates crosscultural communication among members of the profession while rendering communication between professionals and non-professionals difficult. The sense of ritualisation in diplomacy augments the fact that words are the main tools of diplomats. By saying something that the diplomat is doing the action and by doing the action, he has said what needs to be conveyed in a common code shared by those in diplomacy. The sharing of this type of ritual legitimises the presence of a professional diplomatic culture and stabilises the norms of diplomatic communication. This is the domain of the Other. The goal of the preceding section was to highlight why the Self suspends itself for the Other in diplomacy. The aim of the following section, on the other hand, is to demonstrate how the transformation of the Self to the Other is accomplished.

Transformation of the Self to the Other A transformation of the Self to the Other can be seen in the apology by Indonesian Ambassador to Malaysia, Dr. K.P.H. Rusdihardjo, over the flag burning incident in the previously mentioned oil field issue. In his apology which reads “I want to apologize on behalf of Jakarta and hope action can be taken against those who humiliated the national flag of Malaysia” (“Envoy Apologizes to Malaysia”, The Star, March 15, 2005, p.3). The Self crosses into the Other as he apologises for his entire nation and expresses his nation’s hope for a peaceful resolution even though some citizens of his nation have expressed in the Indonesian media that nothing less than a military approach was a solution. Aside from the use of an apology in the example above, the crossing of the Self to the Other can also be seen in yet another statement by Theo L. Sambuaga, Chairman of Commission 1 in Indonesia’s House of Representatives. He said that “Indonesia believes that the republic’s claim over Malaysia’s oil blocks in

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the Sulawesi Sea can be resolved amicably in view of the close relations between Malaysia and Indonesia.” Later, he was quoted to have said “that the best way to resolve the issue would be through diplomatic means, with open discussions” (“Issue Can be Resolved Amicably”, The Star, March 21, 2005, 2). This marks the presence of the positivist conception of peace, la raison de system, in professional diplomatic culture and the presence of the features said by Matos (2004) to be integral to diplomatic communication. Emphasising “what to say” constructively and avoiding “what not to say” also legitimizes ritualisation in diplomacy in tandem with the use of “peace-loving” words and phrases such as “resolved amicably”, “close relations between Malaysia and Indonesia”, “diplomatic means”, and “with open discussions” in the media example above. Sambuaga, reported in the Malaysian media to have been one of the most vocal critic of the presence of Shell Malaysia in the Sulawesi Sea, in the Self crosses to the Other to repair possible damage to bilateral relations between Malaysia and Indonesia. The fact that he takes it unto himself to speak for the nation is, in addition, a characteristic of the Other. In a similar vein, crossings of the Self to the Other through adherence to diplomatic and communication can be also witnessed in the type of language used in speeches during the XII Summit Conference of the NonAligned Movement (NAM) of 2003 in Kuala Lumpur and the 10th Islamic Summit (OIC) of 2003 in Kuala Lumpur. More than 30 countries attended both summits. Despite the sometimes strong disagreement with regard to each other’s form of governance, conformity to norms in diplomacy is sustained. It must be stated here that although the speech is presented by leaders of nations, the text is written by diplomats to ensure the norms of the professional diplomatic culture is maintained. This presents an interesting scenario where the words of the Self cross into the Other through their leaders. In examples 1 and 2 below (Hafriza 2005), the words and phrases used to enact the Other can best be described as “mechanisms of intercommunication” among members of a specific group by the acquisition of “some specific lexis” and possessing “a broadly agreed set of common public goals” (Swales 1990, 29) in the pursuit of creating a harmonious atmosphere in international diplomacy. This kind of expected atmosphere is fulfilled through the equally expected norm of conveying praise for the host country’s leader in addition to the extension of greetings from the people of the speaker’s country. Here, the style and formality inherent in the common code, Interpretationsgemenscaft, in the Other domain is illustrated in examples 1 and 2 below. As seen below, the style of language required by the Other is characterised by long sentences

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together with considerable embedding within the same sentence. The long sentences are accompanied by “positivisers” (examples underlined in texts below) through “the increasing use of constructive, human-dignifying adjectives, verbs and nouns” (Matos 2004). An investigation into other speeches used during OIC and NAM suggest the style described above as one regularly used in all the speeches surveyed. This commonality in language use among members of the professional diplomatic community certainly helps to stabilise the norms and values of diplomatic communication through time. Through conventionalised language use, the Self can cross to the Other with experience, confidence and considerable ease. Example 1. Text by H.E Seyed Mohammad Kahtami, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, during OIC, October 16, 2003. His speech begins with: I avail myself of this opportunity to express my deep satisfaction for attending this August gathering of the Honourable Heads of State and Government of the States Members of the Organizaton of the Islamic Conference and to offer the warm fraternal greetings of the Muslims in Iran to all of you and all Islamic nations. I would like to seize the moment to express our heartfelt felicitations to Datuk Seri Dr. Mathathir Mohamad, distinguished Prime Minister of Malaysia, on his deserved assumption of the chairmanship of the 10th Islamic Summit Conference and wishing him every success in discharging the formidable task ahead.

Example 2. Text by H.E. President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, during OIC, October 17, 2003. His speech begins with: It is a pleasure and an honour to be here in fraternal Malaysia, together with so many great leaders from the Islamic world. Our welcome has been warm and gracious. We express our gratitude to H.E. Prime Minister Mathathir Muhammad, and to the government and people of Malaysia. The enterprise, energy, progress and prosperity achieved by Malaysia under Prime Minister’s sagacious leadership, is an example and beacon for the entire Islamic world.

Part and parcel of diplomatic communication and culture is the emphasis on building mutual cooperation and collaboration to address world issues that have the potential of causing friction among leaders of many nations.

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This is the test-bed of the Other, a situation where the Other must perform successfully despite reservations from the Self; a context where diplomatic communication is at its best, that is, the deliberate use of words and phrases so pregnant with meaning and reflection to achieve the primary purpose of continually enacting mutual goals in diplomacy. With regard to the former, a glimpse of the Other in action is discussed in relation to examples 3 and 4 below. The sections discussed below normally come after greeting formalities as evidenced in examples 1 and 2 presented earlier. Example 3 below provides a section of a speech by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan during the 10th Session Islamic Conference (OIC) on October 17, 2003, and example 4, a section of Thabo Mbeki’s speech at the Non-Aligned Movement Conference, 24 February, 2003. In both examples (Hafriza 2003), the Self takes cognisance of the Other’s pressure to use words and phrases that are constructive, peace-building, and peacemaking by avoiding potentially aggressive, insensitive and offensive uses of language. This includes the use of the following words from the two examples listed: “opportunity”, “quickly and collectively”, “act to keep alive”, “help”, “assist”, “convergence”, “bright image”, “dignity”, “fulfillment”, “aspire”, “confidence”, “justice”, “enlightenment”, “progress”, “revival”, “reform”, “tolerance”, “emancipation”, “human exultation”, “peaceful resolution”, and “challenge into opportunity”. This is followed by inspiring positive images during the call for rapport, cooperation and collaboration as in the use of the following words: “defend”, “reassert”, “peaceful resolution”, “hope”, “reaffirm”, “dialogue”, “like-minded countries”, “cooperation”, “unity”, “solidarity” and “victory”. The presence of the Other is also marked in the heavy use of the pronouns “we” and “our” (please see underlined sections in examples 3 and 4) to construct the collective “we” for the purposes of cooperation, consensus, collaboration and solidarity .The use of language that is positive and constructive is also consistent with Matos’ (2005, 283285) five features of diplomatic communication mentioned earlier. Example 3. Section of text from President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan, during OIC, 2003: We must recognize that, unfortunately, the crisis confronting the Islamic world is not only external, it is also internal. It is rooted in our weaknesses and vulnerability. It flows from our economic, social and human underdevelopment; from our dependencies and vulnerabilities; from the divisions and differences within, and amongst our societies and states....Excellencies, we are at a defining moment in history, we can either

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CHAPTER SEVEN seize the moment and define history or we can let the moment define destiny. We must turn challenge into opportunity. We must reflect and act quickly and collectively---for the sake of our suffering peoples and of our future generations. We must act to keep alive the immutable message of Islam and the glorious legacy of which we are the heirs. We can also help other. Collectively we can, and must, assist the poorest amongst us. ....The time has come to rise above our differences, build on our convergences and create a bright image for our nations. We will give our people the dignity, fulfillment and development that they aspire for. And we will speak to other nations of the world with confidence and ask them to join us in our quest to ensure justice, to wipe out poverty and spread enlightenment.

Example 4. Section of text taken from Thabo Mbeki’s speech at the NonAligned Movement Conference, 24 February, 2003: Our obligation to defend what we stand for requires that we reassert and vigorously defend our commitment to the peaceful resolution of international conflicts. Inherent to this is the absolute necessity that we, who proclaim these positions, must not hesitate to act to ensure such peaceful resolution, even in instances that affect our member states. It demands of us that we do everything we can to protect and advance the principle and practice of multilateralism, against the tendency towards unilateralism. This requires that we fight even harder for the democratisation of the internal system of governance. For us to do all this requires we respect both the decisions we take collectively as well as governments, states and peoples. Our resolution must have greater meaning than the mere fact that we adopted them. Cooperation, unity and solidarity among ourselves as like-minded countries and movements, remain the only way to guarantee the effectiveness of the voice of the developing countries in global affairs.

The discussion with regard to examples 1-4 above has aimed at illustrating how the Self can cross into the Other in the context of speeches as an illustration. The data suggest that in diplomacy, the Other must be competent in expressing the goals of diplomacy. In speeches, this competence can be demonstrated in the language ability of the Other towards wordiness, embedding, and the presence of complex constructions at the phrasal and sentential level in the overriding goal to avoid disagreement, assume common ground or assert reciprocity and mutual cooperation among countries. In so doing, the Self, thus, loses its freedom to comment directly and precisely on thoughts and opinions when crossing

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to the Other. In this paper, a final illustration of the transformation of the Self to the Other can be seen in example 5 below with reference to the “Third-Person note”. The Third-Person note is a regular form of diplomatic correspondence between a host country and a foreign embassy. Issues raised in a ThirdPerson note can range from general requests for information pertaining to new or revised policies and procedures in the host or the foreign country to issues that can potentially affect bilateral relations. This paper will present an issue related to the latter to indicate a more striking instance of the transformation of the Self to the Other. In a genuine case shown in example 5 below (Hafriza 2003a), and where the country and embassy concerned are denoted as “X” for privacy sake in this paper, the writer-diplomat crosses into the Other and voices his government’s concern about the shipment of spent uranium through the Straits of Malacca. Here, as the Other he has the authority to speak for the Government of Malaysia. Likewise, as well, as the Other, he is assured that the receiver would not only pay attention to the message contained in the Third-Person note, but he is also certain of a response to the request from the sender. The diplomat’s transformation to the Other, in example 5 below, however, is still marked by conformity to the diplomatic culture and forms of diplomatic communication akin to earlier discussions with regard to Examples 1 to 4. Example 5. GTS 7/2002. Third-person note from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Malaysia, to the Embassy of X: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs presents its compliments to the Embassy of X and has the honour to refer to the impending shipment of spent uranium through the Straits of Malacca by a X registered vessel. The Ministry has further the honour to convey Malaysia’s grave concern over the threat of nuclear pollution posed to the people and environment of the littoral states in the event of collision in the Straits of Malacca. The Malaysian government wishes to further highlight its deep concern over this transshipment of highly hazardous nuclear waste via an aging singlehulled less seaworthy vessel through the busy Straits of Malacca thereby increasing the likelihood and magnitude of an accident. The Ministry recalls X’s support of the Southeast Asia Nuclear Free Zone and the provisions prohibiting the passage of hazardous nuclear material. In this regard, the Ministry wishes to seek the kind assistance of the Embassy of X in maintaining the non-passage of hazardous nuclear

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In the example above, the Other, empowered with the voice of the government and nation, indicates Malaysia’s displeasure at the possible threat of nuclear pollution to its environment and the littoral states by the passage of an aging vessel through the Straits of Malacca in a manner conventionally indirect, seeking agreement, avoiding disagreement, minimising the imposition, asserting common ground and assuming reciprocity. These strategies enact the la raison de system of diplomacy, in this case, wanting the request to be fulfilled in an amicable manner. Here, by avoiding words that can indicate strong disagreement such as “against the shipment of uranium” or voicing “Malaysia’s displeasure at the impending shipment of uranium” or “Malaysia wishes to register its opposition to the shipment or uranium,” Malaysia expresses its disagreement by expressing “grave concern” about the said shipment and then “further wishes to highlight its deep concern” regarding said shipment. The level of disagreement couched in the words “grave concern” and “deep concern” can be said to be lower than the level registered in the words italicised above. This can also be seen in the implication of “worry” in the word “concern” compared to the implication of strong disapproval in words like “oppose” and “against,” two possible words for the Self but improper for the Other in diplomacy. In the final paragraph of Example 5 above, the Other appeals for cooperation by reminding country X of the Southeast Asia Nuclear Free Zone, where one of its provisions is the non-passage of hazardous nuclear material. By reminding country X of this treaty, the Other seeks to minimise the verbal imposition on Japan in implying that we are not asking you to do this but since you agreed to a treaty that disallows such action then you (country X), like Malaysia, should abide by it. This minimising of imposition is also couched in the statement that “The Ministry wishes to seek the kind assistance of the Embassy of X ...” where the italicised words camouflage Malaysia’s strong desire that country X undertakes the appropriate actions expected by Malaysia. Indeed, the Other’s words are careful and deliberate in the ultimate goal of firmly but tactfully and politely seeking the cooperation of another country to assist in preventing a possible environmental disaster and at the same time fulfilling the tension in diplomacy to maintain good bilateral relations between countries. Knowing of the why and competency in the how of

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diplomatic communication, thus, is a vital ingredient to ensure the stability of the professional diplomatic culture. This, in turn, ensures the pursuit of peaceful solutions to potential problems between countries. In this domain, the Self is threatened while the Other thrives.

Conclusion An exploratory review of literature on the why about diplomatic culture and communication in tandem with research findings on how diplomats communicate in the context of speeches and diplomatic correspondence as an illustration indicate the necessity for the why and how to exist at the same time for effective diplomacy to occur. Within this sphere, the Self, marked by diversity in religion, ethnicity, politics, history, culture and sociolinguistic norms among members of differing countries must suspend itself for the Other to fulfill its obligation to his or her nation. There is still much research that must be done in the process of understanding the complex nature of diplomatic culture, communication and the agents of diplomacy as well as members of the diplomatic corps, and in contexts other than those highlighted in this paper. Assuredly, there would be other ways to explain diplomatic culture and communication. It is my belief, however, that the crux of the findings in this paper, that is, the existence of Interpretationsgemenscaft and the la raison de system in diplomacy will prevail across all other studies in diplomacy, in a place where the Other must dominate over the Self.

References Bell, C. 1992. Ritual theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berridge, G. R. 1995. Diplomacy: Theory and Practice. London: Prentice Hall. Bland, N. 1958. Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice. London: Longman. Brahm, E. and J. Aiken. 2005. “Diplomacy”. Online documents. http://www.intractableconflict.org/ m/Diplomacy-Intro.jsp (accessed March 15, 2005). Claes, M. T. 2004. “The Interaction between Organisational Culture and National Culture”. Paper presented at the Second International Conference on Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy, Malta, 13-15 February, 2004.

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Cohen, R. 1987. The Art of Diplomatic Signalling. London: Longman Press. —. 1995. “Diplomacy 2000 BC to 2000 AD”. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of British International Studies Association, Southampton. Fisher, G. 1980. International Negotiation: A Cross-cultural Perspective. Chicago: Chicago Press. Freeman, C. 1997. The Diplomat’s Dictionary. Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press. Hafriza Burhanudeen. 2003a. Course Materials for Diplomats: Essential Guidelines. In Readings on ELT Materials ed. Jayakaran Mukundan: 32-45. Serdang, Malaysia: UPM Press. —. 2003b. Language of Diplomacy. In Journal of the Materials Development Association (MATSDA), 8(1-2): 32-37. —. 2005. Registers in International Diplomacy: Generalized Stylistic Choices in Speeches. The International Journal of Language, Society and Culture, 15. Hamilton, K. and R. Langhorne. 1995. The Practice of Diplomacy. London: Routledge. Hofstede, G. 2004. “Diplomats as Cultural Bridge Builders”. Paper presented at the Second International Conference on Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy, Malta, February 13-15, 2004. James, A. 1993. Diplomacy and foreign policy. Review of International Studies 19: 91-100. Jonsson, C. and Hall, M. 2002. Communication: An essential aspect of diplomacy. Paper presented at the 43rd Annual ISA Convention, New Orleans, 23-27 March. Matos, F. G. 2004. “Applying the Pedagogy of Positiveness to Diplomatic Communication”. Paper presented at the Second International Conference on Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy, Malta, February 13-15, 2004. Milliken, J. 1999. The Study of Discourse in International Relations. European Journal of International Relations, 5(2): 225-254. Morgenthau, H. J. 1985. Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. New York: McGraw Hill. Mullet, M. E. 1992. The Language of Diplomacy. Cambridge: Variorum. Neumann, I. 2002. Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy. Millennium, 31(3): 627-651. Rana, K. 2004. “Professional Diplomatic Culture and Dialogue with Domestic Stakeholders”. Paper presented at the Second International

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Conference on Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy, Malta, February 13-15, 2004. Rommetveit, R. 1974. On Message Structure: A Framework for the Study of Language and Communication. London: John Wiley. Satow, E. 1908. An Austrian Diplomat in the Fifties. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sharp, P. 1999. For Diplomacy: Representation and the Study of International Relations. International Studies Review, 1(1): 33-57. Swales, J. M. 1990. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tran, V. D. 1987. Communication and Diplomacy in a Changing World. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Speeches Speech by President Seyed Mohammad Khatami (Islamic Republic of Iran) at the 10th Summit Islamic Conference, 11-18 October, 2003, Kuala Lumpur. Speech by President General Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan) at the 10th Summit Islamic Conference, 11-18 October, 2003, Kuala Lumpur. Speech by President Mbeki (South Africa), at the XIII Non-aligned Movement Conference (NAM), 24 February 2003, Kuala Lumpur.

CHAPTER EIGHT THE QUEST FOR A NEW CIVIC AND LINGUISTIC IDENTITY: MANDARIN AND ENGLISH ENCROACHMENT UPON THE TAIWANESE LANGUAGE JOHAN GIJSEN AND YU-CHANG LIU, I-SHOU UNIVERSITY OF KAOHSIUNG

Taiwan’s government is providing financial support to encourage the use of the Taiwanese language (Minnanyu), and this is after four decades of linguistic and cultural repression. Language policy makers in Taiwan believe that English language education is effective in fostering favourable attitudes towards other cultures. Despite the government’s “homeland” education policy, Taiwanese youngsters are becoming increasingly monolingual. Sociolinguistic survey data illustrate the encroachment of more dominant languages upon Taiwanese: there is no growth in community support for the mother tongue, the Taiwanese public does not seem to be aware that their vernacular is endangered, a formal uniform written system for Taiwanese is still being argued over, admiration for and dependence on the United States seems to be increasing drastically, and the government is considering instating English as second official language at the cost of Taiwanese. The dominance of Mandarin over Taiwanese and the growing support for English in Taiwan is a likely indication that the current Mandarin/Taiwanese bilingualism is being replaced by a Mandarin/English one. To support the above claims, the authors discuss results from previous and ongoing research, sponsored by Taiwan’s National Science Council, into the role of language and the significance of language loss in the quest for a “Taiwanese Identity”. We also look at European models in trilingual primary immersion education as an alternative to Taiwan’s current ineffective language policy.

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Introduction After nearly two decades of political and social transformation, the Taiwan public increasingly perceives itself as something other than simply Chinese. Shifts in generations, attitudes and a change in political realities created a new Taiwan nationalism, a potent force for local unity resulting in a potential new Taiwan identity. But the island is equally caught up in conflict between its economic, political, and cultural/linguistic realities. Most Taiwanese seem to wish for not exclusively choosing either the Chinese or Taiwanese identity. In a nationwide survey by Chang (2000, 61), 45% of the respondents considered themselves as “exclusively Taiwanese”, and 40% declared themselves to be “both Taiwanese and Chinese” with the remainder answering “exclusively Chinese” or “uncertain”. Nevertheless, Taiwan’s government is providing strong financial support to encourage education in the local cultures, the use of Taiwanese, and of other indigenous languages. After years of linguistic and cultural suppression in the name of “Chinese nationalism”, there is a clear shift in the education curriculum away from China and toward Taiwan, generally referred to as “homeland education”. At the same time, English is the second target of Taiwan’s educational reforms, with an expanded semiofficial role as a result. The original nationalist educational policy was modelled after European concepts of colonial language policy. The Nationalists (KMT) planned to use Taiwanese to teach Mandarin to Taiwanese people. After strong resistance to this quasi-colonisation of Taiwan (the “28/2 Incident”), the nationalist government concluded that the continued widespread use of the Taiwanese language was irreconcilable with their goal of forging a Chinese identity on Taiwan (Chan 1994, 78). As a result, the original KMT liberal language policy of education in the Taiwanese mother tongue was abandoned, and the “Mandarin-only” policy was adopted. The reality that Taiwanese was the most widely spoken language on the island was ignored. For over four decades, Mandarin was used in all of the island’s official as well as less formal domains, with a warning system in place for those having the audacity to ignore this system, modelled on the one previously applied by the Americans in California (targeting Spanish) and by the Danish in Greenland (targeting Inuit) (Grosjean 1982). The current government (DPP) follows a similar pattern. However, the reality of modern Taiwan is that parents, out of economic and pragmatic considerations, want foreign language education for their children. This

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situation seems inconsistent with the current government’s policy of forging a Taiwanese identity. Their concept for Taiwan calls for the development of a Taiwanese identity through, among other things, a unified and modernized national Taiwanese language. However, while this Taiwanese language (in Taiwan generally referred to as “Taiwanese”) is still the most widely spoken on the island, it has not been modernised in the same way as Mandarin and thus remains a language for use in the lower domains of daily language use. Gijsen et al. (2004a) found that, while 46% of Taiwanese students indicated that they used their mother tongue “at home” and 51% “in the region where I live”, a mere 39% of respondents said they used it “with the general public when travelling in Taiwan”. The respective figures for Mandarin were 54%, 76% and 77% pointing at a bilingual rather than diglossic linguistic landscape for Taiwan, rendering Taiwanese vulnerable to a further language shift to Mandarin (Fishman 1974, 1977). Moreover, a mere six out of ten ethnic Taiwanese students used their language when speaking with Taiwanese people, with over two-thirds preferring to speak Mandarin when talking to other ethnic Taiwanese. Any change in language involving mother tongue education in Taiwan has to take into account an ongoing language shift from Taiwanese to Mandarin. Language loss in the lower domains of Taiwanese (the home and the marketplace), in particular, needs to be addressed in such policy. At stake is the decades-old balance of Taiwanese/Mandarin bilingualism on the island, and therefore the survival of Taiwanese. The current language policy falls short on addressing this issue effectively. In Gijsen, et al’s survey (2004b), over a third of Taiwanese students stated their unwillingness to raise their children in their mother tongue, further emphasising the dire need for a drastic change in the current language policy.

Mandarin, and English Language Threat? Recent Taiwan government announcements have called for more closely regulated English instruction for young children in order to curb what some policy makers perceive as an uncontrolled flourishing of English “Cram Schools” on the island. Some observers believe that such schools, in the long term, may prove an obstacle to the implementation of government language policy. This language policy calls for a seemingly opposite trend to internationalisation: an increased focus on local education by the current government in Taiwan. Parents, on the other hand, eager to let their children become “perfect” bilinguals, are

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increasingly turning to non-public language education to achieve their goals, thereby sidetracking or even avoiding the government’s “homeland” education policy. Thus it appears that Taiwan’s language policy does not appeal to a substantial part of pragmatic-minded parents and students alike (Gijsen et al. 2004b). Chang (2004, 6) argues that Taiwan’s current educational policy is turning the island into an uncertain society with confused values, caught between the pressures of local and international demands. He gives the example of a young pupil called “Chun-chun” who has received the most “diverse” language education: Hakka in the early morning, Taiwanese later the same morning, Mandarin in the afternoon, and English to end off the school day. And as if this was not enough, on Fridays and Saturdays Chun-chun attends Taiwanese and English language classes in a Cram School. An important question, according to Chang, is whether children in the first year of primary school are able to take this all in. The author maintains that some children hate local language classes because they do not want to learn Taiwanese. Even the children’s Taiwanese parents are often unable to understand the new Taiwanese textbooks their children learn from (Chang 2004, 7). According to Chang (2004), confusion arises from an educational policy asking children to use phonetic symbols to learn Mandarin, and romanisation to learn Taiwanese and Hakka. Parents seem to be uninterested in the results, as long as their children do not complain or reject the classes. In contrast, Chang argues, both parents and the Education Ministry agree on the importance of improving English language ability, stressing the dominance of English over local languages in education on the island. Mainly following an international trend of internationalisation, combined with pressure from parents strongly supportive of unofficial English cram school education, Taiwan’s government is widely publicising its intention to raise the profile of English to that of a semi-official language within five years. Gijsen et al.’s survey (2004b) seems to justify the motivation behind such a policy: 83% of the students answered that learning English was a “very high” priority for them, with 69% of the respondents expressing agreement that the language should be introduced “at primary school level or sooner”. The majority of the respondents also expressed the view that the Taiwan government should be involved in promoting the use of English in the workplace (60%), and in local communities (63%). It thus seems that many Taiwanese students, like the majority of parents, have clearly made their choice about the relative importance of localisation (“homeland education”, including the government’s policy of promoting

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Taiwanese), and internationalisation (the importance attached to English, as shown in attitude research by Gijsen et al. 2004a and b). Warden, Lai, and Wu (in Chen and Chang 2003, 3) noted that English in Taiwan is often used as a visual cue to represent stereotypes, especially for young people who are students of English. The authors contend that English in Taiwan has become associated with the “advanced countries”, such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Gijsen et al. (2004b) found support for this view: 65% of Taiwanese respondents indicated that they “admired American culture”, compared to 43% Moroccan, 38% German, 37% Belgian and 29% of Japanese respondents. On the other hand, research results from Chen and Chang (2003) point to the very shallow nature of English learning in Taiwan. The authors argue that, rather than bringing children and students into the richness of cultures associated with the language, English in Taiwan is being adopted as a simple communication tool–nothing more. Likewise, Warden and Lin’s study of motivation for studying English in Taiwan concluded that the main factor was increased financial well-being, an aim reinforced even more by the island’s language policy (2000, 15). The public’s dissatisfaction with the outcome of English educational policy is best reflected in newspaper editorials such as in the Taipei Times, 20 February 2005, magazines (e.g. Sinorama 9/2004) and call-in shows on local television, all criticising the government’s educational policies. According to an editorial in The China Post, 25 March 2005, the national testing centre administering the entrance examination for prospective teachers reported that for 2005, more than 10 percent of the exam candidates received a zero in the composition section of the English test and that 30 percent of the examinees scored a zero in the translation section of the text. The examinees’ low scores were widely seen as a condemnation of the way English, in particular at high-school level, was being taught in Taiwan. These facts prompt the question: by choosing English over their Taiwanese mother tongue, does the Taiwanese public lack a sufficient sense of local consciousness of or identity with their own culture? According to the Taipei Times editorial on 7 June 2003, most people seemed content to consider Taiwanese a “spicy vernacular”, the language of taxi drivers, street vendors and gangsters. The language of literature, it seemed, was Mandarin. The language associated with making a decent living was English. Many Taiwanese seem to feel learning English is all it takes to be international, more successful economically, or that learning English marks the first step on the road to internationalisation. However, does

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internationalisation merely equal being taught in and increasing the use of English? Should informed educators and policy makers not try to convince youngsters that, from another perspective, recognising only English actually weakens international vision? Should English education in Taiwan therefore not become increasingly content-based, rather than being listed as a mere subject in school curricula? Should not a foreign language be offered in such a way that it does not encroach upon mother tongue education? In using outdated teaching methods and implementing an equally outdated language policy, Taiwan might well be on its way to being a mere element of the global mainstream, counterproductive to the acquirement of a proper Taiwanese cultural (and general) identity. Lin Kufang, Dean of the Graduate School of Art Studies at Fo Guang University, has summarized this situation fittingly: When a person is divided into two unrelated parts, as well as increasing the psychological burden, this also serves as an obstacle to identity. People in Taiwan have chosen to search for identity in narrowly defined localism (government policy vis-à-vis language policy, own comments) and abstract internationalism (government policy, parents attitudes vis-à-vis English education, own comments), and not altogether surprisingly they come away empty handed (Chang 2004, 8).

Taiwanese Language: Internal Problems The main problem from a pragmatic viewpoint is that Taiwanese has not been standardised, and some openly frown at the limits to its expressiveness. Over three-quarters of Taiwanese students prefer English and Mandarin above Taiwanese as a language of intellectual expression (Gijsen et al. 2004b). A uniform Taiwanese writing system is still being debated over; the romanised system, although popular with most Taiwanese language researchers (Chiung 2001), does not receive the popular support needed to uplift Taiwanese to a language fully fitted for “intellectual expression”. Therefore, the majority of recent Taiwanese texts still remain a mixture of Mandarin ideograms and romanisation. Lu Guang-cheng, co-editor of the University Taiwanese Reader, states that without a written tradition, a language can easily die out (Bartholomew 2003). He furthermore asserts that Mandarin and Taiwanese share a common written lexicon of about 60 percent, but that finding characters to express the 40 percent unique to Taiwanese remains the challenge for dedicated individuals such as himself.

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In its introduction page, one of the best-known websites in defence of the Taiwanese language presents the following sobering reflection: Unlike many other ethnicities (for instance, the Hakka Chinese), there is no strong cultural identity linking the various Hoklo (i.e. ethnic Taiwanese, own comments) ethnic subgroups. It is not surprising that many Hoklo people themselves do not know they are ethnically Hoklo. In fact, many are not even familiar with the term ‘Hoklo’: a term used by their ancestors to refer to themselves. The history of the Hoklo people may be blurred, but the existence of a linguistic group serves to indicate that this is an identifiable ethnicity, with a common past that is now simply forgotten (Hoklo.org, 2005, 3).

The drive for a more pluralised society seems to cause some people in Taiwan to express themselves virulently on the question of language. Chen argues that some native Taiwanese (with Fujianese ancestry, the large majority in Taiwan) feel that their language should be the official language, a proposal that attracts criticism from other groups: Mainlanders, Hakka, Aborigines, and even from within their own ethnic group (2001, 7). A trip on Taipei’s Mass Rapid Transit System is illustrative of the government’s reaction in so far as language policy in the linguistic “lower” domains is concerned. At each stop, there is an automated announcement telling passengers the station name in Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka and English. Countries as linguistically diversified as Switzerland (four official languages) or Belgium (three official languages) have been able to avoid such a language charade. Gijsen et al. (2004b) found that a mere 29% of Fujianese-Taiwanese students approved of making Taiwanese an official language. In a similar survey (in Chen 2001) conducted by the Formosa Foundation seven years earlier, 61% of Mainlanders opposed this, with Hakkas evenly divided on the question with 40% on either side. In comparison, 74% of the studentrespondents agreed to make English Taiwan’s second official language. More research is needed to establish people’s rapidly changing attitudes towards official language use in Taiwan. Gijsen et al. (2004b) furthermore established that 72% of respondents stated that their “first language” was Mandarin. But only 48% of the respondents felt that “their mother tongue” was Taiwanese. Huang’s comment (1988, 96) is probably still valid in today’s Taiwanese society: people who learned Taiwanese at home from their families came to believe that Mandarin is their mother tongue due to factors of “social psychology”. Relevant research, to establish whether people’s linguistic identification is changing due to the shift in political leverage away from

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Mainland China toward a more pro-Taiwanese-language stance, is overdue.

Defenders of the Taiwanese Language? Though there are many people singing praises for the hidden elegance of Taiwanese, there are very few albeit very sincere people involved in trying to make Taiwanese more functional. At linguistic conferences meant to provide answers to the urgent matter of deciding upon a uniform writing system for Taiwanese (Gijsen et al. 2004b), the most prominent language researchers do not seem capable of refraining from the academic practice of criticising the few sincere people genuinely pre-occupied with the fate of their mother tongue. Some of this criticism might be considered well-founded if one considers, for instance, that much of the largest Taiwanese language journal Tai-bun Thong-sin is unreadable for a native Mandarin speaker, as well as for most Taiwanese speakers. Likewise, at a recent international conference on the Romanisation of Taiwanese in southern Taiwan, proceedings were printed in Mandarin, English and Taiwanese, with hardly any of the participants referring to the latter (Gijsen et al. 2004a). Researchers at Taiwan’s highly esteemed Academic Sinica do not seem immune from being unable to focus on matters most pressing in Taiwan’s language policy. Yu Bo-cyuan, for example (in Chen 2001, 14) did a survey of all teachers in a Taipei high school with the question: “What is more important, classes for teaching English or classes for teaching students their mother tongues?” It is disappointing to see, from a sociolinguistic viewpoint, that some of Taiwan’s academic elite perceive mother tongue education to fall under the same category as learning a foreign language. It is, after all, widely accepted (Mercator-Education 2004) that a child has the right to receive his/her full general education in the mother tongue. Moreover, ongoing language projects in EU-regions with linguistic minorities are successful in their policy of teaching English without endangering mother tongue education. Despite efforts by individual teachers to encourage a natural bilingualism (a term used by Wmffre, 2001) through the use of Taiwanese to provide instruction in, for example, mathematics, survey results by Gijsen, et al. (2004a) show that students in Taiwan are becoming increasingly monolingual. The language shift from Taiwanese to Mandarin (also in Huang 1988, Chan 1994) is continuing, contrary to suggestions by others that Taiwanese is becoming a more dominant language in certain parts of Taiwan (Liao 2000).

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Gijsen et al. further established that few students with Taiwanese as mother tongue show concern about a language shift to Mandarin and English, since everything seems to be proceeding normally in their studies. To the question of what language they judged to be “the best language to use in Taiwan”, over 80% of the students responded with Mandarin, while Taiwanese received only13% support (2004b). As mentioned earlier, some Taiwanese language researchers have announced a revival of Taiwan’s native languages (Liao 2000, Chan et al. 2004). Trivial signs such as the observation that once monolingual politicians are now speaking Taiwanese in public appearances are taken as indications that Taiwanese is gradually becoming a more dominant language in public and private discourses. In Taiwan’s sociolinguistic research, attention is more focused on the demise of Hakka and other aboriginal languages, with the apparent implication that Mandarin as a dominant language is encroaching upon these languages only. The problem of the loss of Taiwanese as mother tongue is avoided by suggesting, for example, the giving of the term “mother tongue” a new interpretation in a “Taiwan context” (Chan et al. 2004, 86, original quotation marks). Some sociolinguistic misperceptions concerning the Taiwanese language might stem from confusing linguistic and political realities. Hong (in Chan et al. 2004, 86) concluded that most Taiwanese “could still survive well” by using Taiwanese in daily life. While such expressions by prominent sociolinguists would require more detailed explanation, Gijsen et al. (2004a, 2004b) have argued that the opposite holds true for the island’s university students: when the researchers asked Taiwanese mother tongue speakers what they judged their language proficiency to be, a mere 22% answered that they possessed “good” language proficiency in Taiwanese, with 47% giving “quite good” as the option. The indicated language proficiency for Mandarin stood at 73% and 22%, respectively, signalling that a language shift from Taiwanese to Mandarin has already taken place among Taiwan’s university students. Chan et al. (2004, 101) have also argued that Taiwanese mother tongue speakers tend to use Mandarin more in high domains (government, education), while the lower domains are predominantly Taiwanese. Gijsen et al. showed that it is exactly the low domain (home and marketplace language used with friends) which is being encroached upon by Mandarin. Moreover, while the higher domains of language use in Taiwan do belong to Mandarin, English is increasingly letting its dominance felt as Taiwan’s lingua franca par excellence; Taiwan’s youngsters prefer to, one day, raise

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their own children in English (67%) rather than Taiwanese (61%) (Gijsen 2004b). Gijsen et al. (2004a, 2004b) have therefore suggested that a double language shift is taking place in Taiwan: in the lower domains from Taiwanese to Mandarin, and in the higher domains from Mandarin to English, the latter with active government and public support. Whether Taiwanese stands to lose out because of the dominance of English deserves further research. But considering that Mandarin and Taiwanese are in a bilingual rather than diglossic linguistic relationship, this situation seems very likely (Fishman 1977). Furthermore, Taiwan’s open admiration of and craze for all things American might even raise the spectre of linguistic and cultural imperialism, possibly resulting in the public’s acceptance of English achieving official status on the island within a decade.

Trilingual Primary Immersion Education for Taiwan? As is the case in Taiwan, a strong trend toward regional awareness is taking hold in most European linguistic communities. This is reflected in the growing attention paid in education to European regional or minority languages. Trilingual primary immersion in Europe started in 1980 (Diwan schools in Brittany, France) and are modelled after the Canadian immersion schooling system. They are currently a growing phenomenon all over Europe. In 2004, fifteen linguistic regions in Europe were involved in elaborating trilingual primary education programmes, among which are Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia, Frisia, Swedish in Finland (immersion education), Northern Germany, Slovenia, and Northern Italy (limited immersion education). Trilingual primary immersion projects are encouraged through ongoing research by the European Commission and financed by private institutions and (partly) by the regional autonomous governments (Mercator 2004). The concept of trilingual immersion education takes advantage of seemingly opposite trends: internationalisation and regionalisation. The point of departure is that attention paid to the English language does not have to be at the cost of the regional or minority language nor the national language, and vice versa. The very principle behind immersion teaching is not to teach the language as a goal in itself, but to use the language as a means of learning in various areas of activity. In other words, the language of instruction can be either the first or second language of the pupils for all the different subjects included in the curriculum, but a subject should not

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be taught solely in this language throughout the whole obligatory education period (Marsh and Lange 2000). English, for instance, could be used to teach the sciences while mathematics and the humanities could be taught in the mother tongue and the official (state) language(s), respectively. Many new trilingual initiatives at primary school level are called for by linguistic minorities in numerous countries, although only minority languages defined as such by the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages are considered in Europe’s trilingual primary immersion projects (Mercator 2004, 5). The definition of a minority language, as applied by the Bureau, is broad and could well apply to the situation in Taiwan, that is: … a language which is not the most used language of the member state. (…) Finally, there are languages which may well be spoken by a minority in a particular member state, but are also the language of the majority in another member state.” (Adapted from Sikma and Gorter 1991)

Trilingual primary immersion education thus pays attention to (a) the region’s own language, (b) the state language and (c) a foreign language, including a foreign language not actively used in daily life (Mercator 2005, 5). With some exceptions, immersion education teaches pupils aged six to eleven three different languages, with each language used as medium of instruction for one or more subjects in the curriculum. In Brittany (with Breton as the minority language), English is only introduced in immersion schools when the pupils have reached the age of eleven. Pupils then receive six hours of instruction a week in English. However, because of the advantages immersion education in French and Breton has given them from grades one to five, pupils are very successful in “catching up” on students from traditional bilingual schools. As is the case in immersion schools elsewhere in Europe, English in the Breton immersion schools is approached as a language for discovery, not as “scholarly material”. While English was to be introduced at the age of eight in 2005 (Eurydice 2001), Breton’s pupils outshone those of traditional French schools in national examinations (Cenoz and Jessner 2000). In the Basque County (Spain), pupils have a choice from three education models, of which the Basque-only and Basque (Euskara)/Spanish bilingual ones are most successful. For kindergartens, 41% and 32% of parents, respectively, opt for these models, while the popularity of the Spanish-only model (26%) is declining rapidly. The growth in the usage of Basque is particularly evident amongst the 5 to 14

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year old age bracket (Mercator 2004). The major difference in education policy between the Basque region and Taiwan is the fact that Basque is the co-official language alongside Spanish, while Taiwanese is a distant third after Mandarin and English. Moreover, kindergartens and primary schools in Taiwan are Mandarin-only, with no classes exclusively taught in Taiwanese (including the weekly Taiwanese language and culture learning period). Yet, the linguistic battle for the revitalisation of Basque is ongoing: the presence of Basque is not uniform across all groups and areas, which prevents one to say that the decline in usage has been fully checked. When comparing Taiwan’s language education system with the one in Catalonia, differences in mother tongue education are quite pronounced. By the time a pupil has finished primary education in Taiwan, he or she has received a total of approximately 80 hours in mother tongue instruction, and about 550 hours in Mandarin. Language classes in Taiwanese are partly content-based: they mainly focus on teaching pupils the language, with limited attention given to “Taiwanese culture” taught in the Taiwanese language. Catalonian immersion schools offer pupils 768 hours of education in both the official (Spanish) and the minority (Catalan) language. English immersion education accounts for 350 hours, with French as the fourth language remaining an option. Foreign and fourth languages are used for different content areas (different subjects) in different schools throughout Catalonia, from mathematics to music, and depending on local conditions as well as parents’ preferences. English in Taiwan primary schools is solely offered to teach the language per se, sometimes by English native language teachers with no knowledge of the local language nor an understanding of the local culture (Mercator 2004). In Galicia, the Galician language enjoys similar language policy guarantees as do Euskara and Catalan. While in the Basque region 81% of people are capable of speaking both official languages, the numbers for Catalan and Galician stand at 68% and 90%, respectively (Mercator 2004). In Taiwan, statistics are similar with 56% of people with Taiwanese as mother tongue and over 75% being able to speak it. One of the main differences between language use in Spain and Taiwan respectively is, however, the linguistic areas covering the languages. Taiwanese is spoken throughout Taiwan while Spain’s official languages apart from Castilian are concentrated in certain territories, and thus are more easily preserved. Efforts for language preservation in Taiwan have the best chance in the south, but because of a false sense of linguistic security not much is being done. Furthermore, research in Galicia has shown that people want more language education in Galician (even those who have Spanish as mother

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tongue), while in Taiwan the public does not deem the esteem of Taiwanese sufficient to make it the language of instruction in kindergartens and primary schools (Gijsen and Liu 2004a, b). Traditional trilingual primary education is found throughout Taiwan since government policy encourages the early introduction of several languages. In accordance with the official language policy for the revised national language curriculum, Taiwanese and other indigenous languages recently became a compulsory part of the island’s primary education (MOE Taiwan). In Taiwan’s primary education, pupils aged seven or eight have an average of 102 hours of instruction in Mandarin, 20 hours in Taiwanese (mainly a language course, often instructed in Mandarin), Hakka, or another aboriginal language. This pattern is basically maintained throughout primary education, with a slight increase in courses taught in Mandarin from the third grade (nine years of age). English is (officially) introduced in fifth grade. However, as mentioned earlier, most parents would have sent their children to English Cram Schools by the time pupils are “introduced” to English in Taiwan’s primary schooling system. A suitable comparison with a north European country would be Finland. In this country’s immersion education (with Swedish as the minority language), the first language, Finnish, is used two hours a week, while English counts for one hour. The rest of the time (17 hours a week) is spent with Swedish as the language of instruction including all subjects which are offered during the first and second grades (handicrafts, mathematics, physical education, arts, music, religion, environmental studies). In the third and fourth grades, Finnish is used seven hours a week; the remaining time (except English) is taken up in the second language (Swedish). For physical education, the language of instruction is different for boys (Swedish) and girls (Finnish), an example of how the curriculum is planned to give it a more individual character. The time used to teach in English merely increases from one hour to two hours a week (grades three through six) with the introduction of a fourth language in fifth grade (Erasmus 2004). With the teaching of English in Taiwan’s primary schools being exclusively language-driven, content-driven programs modelled on those in Europe are not experimented with nor researched. Instead, Taiwan’s official language policy seems to depart from the assumption that, if the child is introduced to English at a sufficiently young age, benefits will follow. Immersion schools in Europe seem to differ accordingly, with Swedish immersion schools in Finland starting to use English with children at the age of five, while in most Catalonian immersion schools,

THE QUEST FOR A NEW CIVIC AND LINGUISTIC IDENTITY: 163 MANDARIN AND ENGLISH ENCROACHMENT UPON THE TAIWANESE LANGUAGE

children start receiving English education at the age of ten. In the latter case, the English teacher teaches three courses in the morning and the Catalan and Spanish teachers split the remaining courses of the day. Catalan is used as a language subject and as language of instruction to teach the social sciences; Spanish is used as a language subject and for mathematics; English is used as a language subject and for the teaching of natural sciences (Mercator 2004).

Conclusion Two potential problem areas for immersion education in Taiwan are a misguided government policy and the lack of public support. Language immersion programmes in Europe were possible through a joint effort of local communities (in particular, parents), local governments (most of which with a high degree of autonomy), and groups of motivated research teams in the respective language minority communities (the Basque Country University, the University of Vaasa in Finland, the Catalan Education Department, and the Frisian Academy in Leeuwarden, among others). With official support for Taiwanese vocal but ineffective and public support low to moderate, the feasibility of Taiwanese immersion language schooling is questionable in the current conditions. It seems that the first stage of making the public in Taiwan aware that their mother tongue is encroached upon by Mandarin and English remains in dire need of attention. Most Taiwanese will still frown upon the suggestion that one day their mother tongue might not be used any longer in daily life. With support and initiatives from the academic community in Taiwan, a meaningful change in language policy in Taiwan can be forthcoming. Research into pupils’ and parents’ attitudes toward immersion language schooling in Europe shows that pupils are excited about learning English as well as their mother tongue, whereas non-immersion pupils sometimes seem to have very low expectations about their own abilities (Bjorklund and Suni 2000; Haagensen 1998). The Taiwanese have a choice: face the loss of their mother tongue within a generation or two, or embark upon a drastic change in the island’s education policy. Taking similar efforts in Europe as their guiding examples will not only increase language proficiency in local as well as foreign languages, but it might also lead to a much desired shaping of a local Taiwanese identity.

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References Bartholomew, I. 2003. Forging ahead with Taiwanese Literature. Taipei Times. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives (accessed March 30, 2005). Bjorklund, S. and I. Suni. 2000. “The Role of English as L3 in a Swedish Immersion Programme in Finland”. In English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language, ed. Cenoz, J. and U. Jessner: 198221. Clevedon, NJ: Multilingual Matters. Cenoz, J. and U. Jessner. 2000. English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Chan, H., H. Yeh and Y. Cheng. 2004. Language Use in Taiwan: Language Proficiency and Domain Analysis. Journal of Taiwan Normal University: Humanities and Social Sciences, 49: 75-108. Chang, C. 2000. Code Mixing of English and Taiwanese in Mandarin Discourse. Unpublished M. A. thesis. National Taiwan Normal University, Taipeh. http://www.ling.sinica.edu.tw/publish/LL4 (accessed April 28, 2005). —. 2004. Between Localization and Internationalization – Primary Education in Modern Taiwan. Sinorama, 11: 3-12. Chang, S. 2005. “Changes are Needed in Language Education” [online]. Taipei Times. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives (accessed April 28, 2005). Chen, J. 2001. Don’t be An LKK! Speak Taiwanese! Sinorama. http://www.sinorama.com.tw/en/1998118711028 (accessed April 28, 2005). Chen, J. and H. T. Chang. 2003. “Is English a Brand: Language of Origin’s Influence on Product Evaluation”. Proceedings of the 2003 Association for Business Communication Annual Convention. http://www.businesscommunication.org/conventions/Proceedings/2003 /PDF/34ABC03.pdf (accessed April 28, 2005). Chiung, W.V. 2001. “Language and Ethnic Identity in Taiwan”. Online documents. Seattle: University of Washington. Seventh North American Taiwan Studies Conference. http://www.twl.ncku.edu.tw/~uibun/english/research/research.htm (accessed April 25, 2005). Eurydice. 2001. Foreign Language Teaching in Schools in Europe. http://www.euridyce.org/Eurybase/Application/contents.asp?chapter=4 (accessed April 28, 2005). Fishman, J. 1977. The Spread of English. Den Haag: Mouton Publishers.

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Fishman, J. and R. L. Cooper. 1974. The Study of Language Attitudes. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 3: 5-19. Gijsen, J. 1995. French and English Language Imperialism in the Light of Gobard’s Tetraglossic Theory of Language Alienation with Special Reference to Afrikaans, Flemish and Walloon Language Identity. Unpublished D. Litt. thesis. University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa. Gijsen, J., Y. Liu and Y. Tsao. 2004a. Language Use in Taiwan, Belgium, Germany, Morroco and Japan: A Comparative Sociolinguistic Study into Language Shift. Project: National Science Council. Taipei, Taiwan. Gijsen, J., Y. Liu and Y. Tsao. 2004b. Language Use in Taiwan and Belgium: A Comparison between Vernacular, Vehicular and Referential Language Shift in the Minnanyu and Flemish Dialects. International Conference on Taiwanese Romanization, National Cheng-kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. Grosjean, F. 1982. Life with Two Languages: An Introduction to Bilingualism. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Haagensen, B. 1998. Främmande Element i Vuxna Språkbadsstuderandes Svenka. In Wilske: Fackspråk Och ėversättningsteori. VAKKI 20th Symposium. Vasa. Helsinki. Hoklo Website. 2005. “Introduction”. http://hoklo.org (accessed April 28, 2005). Huang, S. 1988. A Sociolinguistic Profile of Taipei (1). Journal of Taiwan Normal University: Humanities and Social Sciences, 49: 75-108. Lasagabaster, D. 2003. Attitudes towards English in the Basque Autonomous Community. World Englishes, 22: 585-597. Lee, C. 2004. Taking a Good Look at Teacher Education. Sinorama. http://www.sinorama.com.tw/en/1998118711028 (accessed April 28, 2005). Liao, C. 2000. Changing Dominant Language Use and Ethnic Equality in Taiwan since 1987. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 143: 165-182. Marsh, D. and G. Lange (eds.). 2000. Using Languages to Learn and Learning to Use Languages: An Introduction to Content and Language Integrated Learning for Parents and Young People. UniCOM. University of Jyvaskyla. Finland. Mercator Education. 2004. Trilingual Primary Education in Europe: Inventory of the Provisions for Trilingual Primary Education in Minority Language Communities of the European Union. http://www.mercator-central.org/ (accessed April 28, 2005).

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Romaine, S. and D. Nettle. 2000. Vanishing Voices. Oxford University Press. Romaine, S. 2002. The Impact of Language Policy on Endangered Languages. International Journal on Multicultural Societies, 4:2. Sikma, J. and D. Gorter. 1991. European Lesser Used Languages in Primary Education. Ljouwert/Leeuwarden: Fryske Academy/Mercator. Tsao, F. 1997. Ethnic Language Policies: A Comparison across the Taiwan Strait. Taipei: Crane Publishing Co. Warden, C. A., and H. J. Lin. 2000. Existence of Integrative Motivation in Asian EFL Setting. LT2000-Quality Language Teaching Through Innovation and Reflection Conference. Hong Kong: University of Science and Technology. http://www.yearoflanguages.org/i4a/pages/Index.cfm?pageID=4203 (accessed April 28, 2005). Wmffre, I. 2001. “Is Societal Bilingualism Sustainable? Reflections and Indications from the Celtic Countries”. http://www.jerome.galichon.com/pages.insee (accessed April 28, 2005).

CHAPTER NINE LANGUAGE SHIFT AND ETHNIC IDENTITY LOKASUNDARI VIJAYA SANKAR, TAYLOR’S COLLEGE AND RAJESWARY SARGUNAN, UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA

This paper discusses the connection between language shift and the part that ethnic identity plays in the maintenance and/or shift of the mother tongue. A study was conducted on the Malaysian Iyers, a minority group of Tamils living in Malaysia, in order to attempt to find out if they had shifted from their mother tongue of Tamil to include other languages in their daily linguistic repertoire. The study was conducted on 291 Malaysian Iyers through a questionnaire requiring data on their language use in four domains: home, social, religious and the formal reading and writing areas. In addition, 115 respondents were audio-taped in naturalistic situations to study their linguistic patterns. The questionnaire data was analysed using the SPSS 7.0 program. The data was studied through frequency counts of language used for different purposes. The audio-taped data was analysed using a discourse analysis following the Hymes SPEAKING grid. The findings showed that the Malaysian Iyers had moved away from Tamil in the home, social and formal domains of reading and writing. They had included English and Malay in their linguistic repertoire in the abovementioned domains to a very large extent. Findings further revealed that the language shift from Tamil to English and Malay did not result in a loss of ethnic identity as various factors such as traditional and cultural beliefs and practices, caste, religion and food provided them with an identity. This study revealed that language alone does not necessarily provide identity.

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Introduction This paper discusses the relationship between language shift and ethnic identity among the Malaysian Iyers, a sub-sect within a minority community (Tamil) in Malaysia. Language shift is a phenomenon that is prevalent among ethnic minority communities that live among more dominant linguistic communities. Often this happens among migrant communities who move from their original homelands to a different place where different languages are spoken. The population of Malaysia is ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous. It is made up of Bumiputra (65.1%) of whom the Malays are the majority, Chinese (26%), Indians (7.7%) and other ethnic groups (Table 1). The Malaysian Iyers are a part of the Malaysian Indian community and make up approximately 0.09% of the Indian population in Malaysia. Their mother tongue is Tamil although they speak a variety known as Iyer Tamil (see Bright and Ramanujam 1981, 2; Karunakaran 1981, 59; Varma 1989, 188). Table 1. Ethnic Composition of Malaysia (Source: Dept. of Statistics Official Website, 2000) Ethnicity

Percentage (%)

Total

Bumiputra*

65.1

17,104,823

Chinese

26.0

6,051,419.4

Indians

7.7

1,792,151.3

Others

1.2

279,296.3

Total

100

23,274,690

*Ethnic Malays and other indigenous groups

Research shows that there is a significant shift to English and Malay among minority Indian communities in Malaysia from different linguistic backgrounds such as Tamils (David and Naji 2000), Sindhis (David 1996),

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Punjabis (Kundra 2001), Bengalis (Mukherji 2002) and Malayalis (Govindasamy and Nambiar 2003). In a recent study titled Language Shift and Maintenance of the Malaysian Iyers (Sankar 2004) it was found that the Malaysian Iyers have moved away from the use of their mother tongue (Tamil) in the home, social and formal domains of reading and writing and have included English and Malay in their linguistic repertoire. Tamil is retained in the religious domain for the purpose of prayers. The extensive shift from their ethnic language is probably largely due to external pressures such as government language policies and the influence of English as the language of business. The results also showed that the Iyer identity is not completely dependent on their ethnic language as their identity is expressed more through their cultural practices. The present paper describes the research conducted to better understand the relationship between language shift and ethnic identity.

Methodology A two-pronged emic and etic approach was used so that respondents’ views could be balanced with the researcher’s views. A domain-based questionnaire was administered to 291 respondents to obtain a macro picture of the community’s language shift and language maintenance patterns. However, such an analysis, by itself, will not reveal individual language choice nor can it provide an ethnography of communication perspective. Therefore, the questionnaire content was complemented with micro methods that would reveal actual language maintenance and shift. Intra-community conversations (of 115 respondents) were, therefore, audio-taped and analysed using Hymes’ ethnography of communication framework (Hymes 1977), which helped to investigate in greater detail the ethnography of speaking by investigating speaker rules of interaction and the dominant languages that were actually spoken by respondents. Three generations of Malaysian Iyers were studied in order to gather information for this study: 1. The first generation who were born in India and came to Malaysia to find employment or a better standard of living than that available in India; 2. The second generation which consists of those born in Malaysia but whose parents or one of them was born in India; and 3. The third generation whose parents were both born in Malaysia. Interviews with first generation respondents were conducted to study migration patterns to supplement available information on the early arrival

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and settlement of the Indian community in Malaysia. Visits were made to 50 homes to study the community’s cultural practices and these were complemented with personal observations of community interactions on 17 different occasions. Interviews were also held with leaders of the Malaysian Tamil community to supplement available documented information and in order to provide current background information on the status and maintenance of Tamil in Malaysia.

Language and Identity This section presents the responses from the questionnaire respondents regarding their ethnic identity. The objective of this analysis was to find out if there was an identity crisis among the Iyers, causing or resulting from the language shift from Tamil to English and Malay. Respondents were asked if they felt that speaking the Tamil language gave them the identity of being an Iyer, and what they thought was the force that identified and unified all Iyers. Answers to the question were placed under several categories (see Table 2), although about 5% of the respondents reported that they were unable to say what exactly gave them their identity as Iyers. Table 2. Responses to “Does speaking Tamil give you the identity of being an Iyer?” Yes 52 (18%)

No 235 (81%)

No Response 4 (1%)

Total 291 (100%)

Only a very small percentage (18%) of the questionnaire respondents reported that speaking the Tamil language gave them an ethnic identity (as Iyers); the large majority (81%) said that it did not. If language was not an integral part of identity, then what did give a person his or her identity? The questionnaire also sought answers to this question. It required the respondents to write what they felt gave them their identity as Iyers. The written answers were analysed and quantified into several categories as in Table 3.

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Table 3. Factors Associated with Ethnic Identity Factors associated with ethnic identity

Count

Percentage

Tradition and Culture (such as dress, customary practices)

101

43%

Brahmin Heritage

88

37%

Religion

19

8%

Vegetarianism

9

4%

Brahmin Tamil

7

3%

Unsure

11

5%

235

100%

Total

The above table shows that tradition and culture played a very large role in ethnic identity for many respondents (43%) followed by the Brahmin heritage (37%) i.e. being born into a Brahmin family. These two were the main factors followed by religion, vegetarianism and language variety.

Customs and Traditions As noted above, a considerable proportion (43%) cited tradition and culture as factors that gave them a special identity as Iyers. The common social and cultural practices observed by the Iyers as a community were also factors that contributed to their identity. Tradition was described in terms of cultural and religious practices that were important to the Malaysian Iyer community in terms of rites/rituals that were conducted at marriages, funerals and prayers. One respondent wrote out in Tamil three important aspects of being an Iyer–nadai (manner of conducting oneself), udai (manner of dress), pazhakka vazhakkangal (customs). An important part of the make-up of the Iyers was the importance placed on religion, which is implicit in their “Brahmin heritage” (37%). Approximately 8% of the questionnaire respondents

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thought that being learned in the scriptures or having a greater awareness of religious practices and displaying a good understanding of religious philosophies were an important part of their religious identity. Also important to the Iyer identity albeit to a lesser degree was the practice of vegetarianism as reported by 4% of the questionnaire respondents. The way Iyers dressed, prayed, ate and practised their traditions and customs also gave them their identity. Tamil seemed to hold an emotional attachment for some first generation respondents but many felt that the language was useful only as a means of communication, especially with the elders of the family or the community. As has been reported earlier, the Tamil language was viewed as a part of the tradition of being a Tamil Iyer by 18% of the respondents (though 3% of the respondents felt that speaking Iyer or Brahmin Tamil was essential to an Iyer identity as opposed to “Tamil” per se) while 81% of the questionnaire respondents cited other factors such as customs and traditions as essential to their identity. The Audio-Taped Conversation (ATC) respondents were sometimes questioned about their identity when the researcher found an opportunity to do so. As the ATC comprised free flowing conversations, no forced attempt was made to interfere unless an opportunity presented itself. Pertinent views of respondents are quoted in the paragraphs below. In the excerpts reproduced, “G” refers to generation of the respondent, so “G1” is generation 1 while “G2” is generation 2. In Tapescript 1, when questioned about identity, respondent ‘N’ said that practicing 'the way things are in the teachings of a Brahmin way of life' would give an Iyer his or her identity. According to this respondent, following customs that were seen as inherent in Iyer tradition was an important aspect of being identified as one. Tapescript 1 22 N (G1): 23 P (G1):

If they marry outside the community and don’t follow our customs, you can write them off, but not otherwise. But just because they don’t know the Tamil language, you can’t deny them the identity. We can’t write them off.

From Tapescript 1, it is seen that endogamy was considered an important factor in retaining the Iyer identity. However, the same respondent said that one could not “write off” the younger generation and deny them their identity just because “they don’t know Tamil” or “if they marry outside the community”. He felt that if they “don’t follow our customs” then you could “write them off” as seen in the same

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conversation (Tapescript 1). If an Iyer “practises the values that they are meant to”, then the language “should not be a barrier” to his identity (Tapescript 2). Tapescript 2 25 P (G1):

Provided you practise your values, but still it is an important aspect. If you are proud to call yourself a Tamil Iyer and practice the values you are meant to then the language should not be a barrier but whether they want to retain it or not is another question.

The values expressed by the respondents gave credence to the view that cultural groups differ in the extent to which “they emphasize their mother tongues as core values which act as pivots around which the social and identification system of the group is organized” (Smolicz 1992, 279). The Iyer identity appears to stem from a cultural identity rather than a language identity since “you can be an Iyer without knowing Tamil” (Tapescript 1).

Brahmin Heritage The Iyers are Brahmins by caste, and this appears to be an important part of the Malaysian Iyer identity. The caste system or the social stratification system by which Indian life is organised both socially and economically is one that is overwhelmingly important in the study of Indian society (Hypes 1936). The original philosophy underlying castes was associated with the type of work done by individuals. Today, it is purely of a hereditary nature and does not have very much to do with one’s work or career (Saraswati 1996). The origin of the caste system goes back to The Bagavad Gita, a vedic scripture. It categorised people into four strata. Brahmins were those who strived for knowledge of the scriptures with faith in God and who wished to achieve self realisation, while Kshatriyas were leaders, politicians, rulers or kings. The third category, Vaisyas, dealt with material wealth connected with agriculture, cattle rearing and trade and were vested with the responsibility of ensuring enough food and money for the people, while the fourth category were Sudras or those who performed physical labour for all the preceding castes. Although language was not entirely associated with ethnic identity in this study, the importance of caste identity can be seen in the formation of the Brahmana Samajam Malaysia (which is an Association for Tamil

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Brahmins) and in the formation of a close and densely networked society based on a Brahmin birthright. When conversations were being taped, attempts were always made to discuss the issue of the importance of language, especially mother tongue maintenance. More than a third (37%) of the questionnaire respondents who said that language alone did not give them their identity opined that the Brahmin heritage was an important part of their identity. The Brahmin lineage or link was described in several ways by the questionnaire respondents. The most common were: a. The men should wear a poonal (the sacred thread worn as an important identifying mark of being a Brahmin). b. One should have a Brahmin gothram (the family name inherited from one of the eight original rishis [original gurus] who started the Brahmin clans). c. The women should wear a madisar (a special manner of wearing the traditional sari among the Iyer ladies) especially for weddings and funerals. d. Prayers, customs and religious practices should be conducted in accordance to orthodox Brahmin beliefs. e. The avani avittam (the yearly custom of changing the poonal) should be celebrated. The ATC respondents concurred with the aforementioned findings (from the questionnaire) that class or caste, in Indian terms, could have a strong bearing on cultural or ethnic identity because identity was seen as one that was obtained “at birth”. So, while Tamil was “useful for communication with elders”, it had “limited applications at the present time” (see Tapescript 3). Tapescript 3 35.*R:

If language is a very integral part of our culture and identity, can you then say that a Tamil Iyer who does not speak Tamil or does not speak it well, loses his identity as an Iyer? 36 K(G2): You cannot say that. But it is just that you feel that that person will be handicapped. His identity is obtained at birth, his relationships, etc. Therefore he has his identity, that is there. But he will be handicapped for other things. Communication with elders, religious practices, etc. 40 K (G2): English I would say is useful and can be used for communication irrespective of cultural background and most available information is available in English. Whereas Tamil is concerned with limited applications for the present time. *Researcher

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Tapescript 4 9. *R:

Just now you said that Tamil is a very important part of our culture. So would you say now that it is no longer possible to call your children Tamil Iyers? Because they don’t really speak much Tamil? 50 Mrs.K(G1): No, they are still Tamil Iyers without knowing Tamil. *Researcher

Tapescript 5 52.* R: 53 A(G2):

So are we talking about a bloodline here? Yes, of course. If he is a Tamil Brahmin, by birth, then not speaking the language does not make him a non-Iyer. We can talk to him in English to communicate.

*Researcher

According to Tapescripts 3, 4 and 5, identity was established by the caste “bloodline” and by “birth” because “not speaking the language does not make one a non-Iyer”. Some respondents felt that the ethnic language was an important part of their identity but they also felt that the nonmaintenance of the ethnic language could not deprive a person of his/her identity as an Iyer so long as he/she “is a Tamil Brahmin by birth”. It was possible, according to some, to maintain an Iyer identity because one can be a “Tamil Iyer without knowing Tamil”. A generational shift can be expected when Tamil is only ‘useful for communication with elders’ but otherwise has “limited applications”. Cultural identity is important to ethnic minorities, and efforts are made to retain the “core values” that give the communities their identities (Smolicz 1992, 279). In this study too, it appears that certain values, for example, the traditions and customs practised by this community such as their traditional dress, the holy thread and the Brahmin heritage could give them an identity as Iyers. Many older respondents (G1 and G2) found that caste was an important factor in their identity while younger respondents (especially G3) found that caste was a deterrent to speaking the language as the Iyer or Brahmin variety gave them away as Brahmins, an identity that some younger respondents were not keen on maintaining. The issue of caste affected these people (G3) as seen in Tapescripts 6 and 7 below, but for different reasons from G1 and G2. G1 and G2 accepted the caste identity that their language gave them; G3 did not feel comfortable with an identity based on caste. They felt forced to contend with a caste issue thrust upon them by their dialectal variety. Therefore, if

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friends could make out the difference from the variety of Tamil spoken by the Iyers, then they would stop speaking Tamil. Tapescript 6 30. D(G3): 31. C(G2): 32. D(G3): 35. *R: 36. D(G3): 37 A(G2): 38 D(G3): 39 A(G2): * Researcher

Now, in college I speak a little. They say it sounds so funny because I speak ‘correcter’ Tamil than them. Do they recognize the accent? They don’t know it’s Brahmin Tamil – That’s why I speak it. Do they laugh at your Brahmin Tamil? Not ha-ha making fun. They just think it’s so different and smile. My friends are nice. It gives you away usually. And I don’t like being known a Brahmin. I don’t know why you are shy of who you are.

Tapescript 7 7. A(G3):

8. B(G3):

For me the whole thing is about Brahmin Tamil and non Brahmin Tamil. Like in college now. I am starting to talk Tamil to Indians. I talk one sentence or so in Tamil. That’s only because they don’t know that I’m Brahmin and even if I talk they can’t tell, they think it’s a funny accent. And if they did know I wouldn’t talk to them in Tamil. My Indian friends, many friends are not really Tamil speakers. Their Tamil is accented as well. We all have our eccentricities and it pretty much works out. They think it’s a bit weird.

G3 respondents (Tapescript 8) found that the need for fitting in and getting peer approval without having the issue of caste stand in their way was an important factor for young respondents who attended college, especially since certain solidarity was found among Indians. Younger respondents said that they “don’t really care about the caste system”, and “are not bothered by it” and “just mix with Indians or any other race” because they did not care about caste and found the system outdated in the present context in which they lived. They did not understand the “orthodox behaviour” of the older generation who were always talking of the “do’s and don’ts” of a Brahmin. When they went out with Indian friends they “try not to speak Tamil like an Iyer” because their friends always “figure out from the way you speak that you are an Iyer”. Given the fact that G3 were not formally educated in Tamil (in school) but probably picked up the language informally through relatives, they spoke

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only Iyer Tamil as opposed to standard Tamil. This conscious effort made to stop speaking the language will lead to further erosion of the language in the future. Tapescript 8 2 H(G2): 3 RE(G3):

Not in Malaysia, not where we are now. Maybe in some villages in India or something. Yeah, I don’t see any difference between me and any other Indian. I don’t think that I have any dislikes about being Brahmin itself. But one thing I don’t like is, people – let’s say the older generation – they have certain orthodox behavior. Like, we are the younger generation and we don’t really care about the caste system, we are not bothered about it. We don’t care whether you are Brahmin or from other castes. We just mix with any other Indians or any other races. But some of the people from the older generation – they feel that this is what you should do. For instance, marriage – why are you always getting married to a Brahmin? Then again, let’s say if it’s just Brahmin against Brahmin. Say this girl or this guy marries a non-Brahmin – why do they become out-castes? Why can’t people accept them? There are some things that I don’t like but then again you have to accept it. Everyone around is like talking about your do’s and don’ts- that’s something I don’t like. You’re not allowed to do what you want. So you’re constantly asked, ‘You’re a Brahmin, you know, you should have this or that’. At least, when I go out, I try not to speak Tamil like an Iyer. They always figure out from the way you speak that you’re an Iyer. At least you try to mingle around with them. Being an Iyer, they try to keep you away. They’re really picky. Like you go for dinner and you say you’re an Iyer and they’re gonna say, ‘Okay so we have to be extra cautious, she’s vegetarian’ – and stuff like that. It’s a disadvantage.

Many young male respondents, as seen in Tapescript 9, faced problems associated with caste identity in their day-to-day lives because of wearing the ‘poonal’ the holy thread worn by Brahmin males who had been initiated. Wearing the poonal is an external sign of being Brahmin and this brought them embarrassment because friends might “make jokes out of it”. Others might “look at me and say…or tend to think of me as superior” and might “start making fun” even in the boys’ changing room because they did not like it when people said that “you’re higher, you’re lower”. It really did not matter to these respondents whether anyone was a Brahmin, other races, Hindus or whatever, because everyone was the same.

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Tapescript 9 1.*R: 2.PR(G3): 3. *R: 4.PR(G3):

Do you guys wear your poonal? No, because people see it and they make jokes out of it and fun of it. In the changing room they pull my underwear - things like that. Have you tried explaining to them the significance? I have explained the religious reasons. But they end up joking. Then another reason is about India and its races, the history and they say Brahmins are the highest born. So they look at me and say….tend to think of me as superior and ……..

*Researcher

However, according to some of the respondents (see Tapescript 10 below) the Iyer traditions and culture should be carried on to “differentiate ourselves from others” but since Iyers were no longer involved in Brahmin as a vocation, they should “perhaps not call themselves Brahmins”. There appeared to be a need among respondents to carry on with their customs and traditions, which they have been practising. However, several respondents felt that caste differences should not be practised anymore since the original concept underlying the caste system (according to vocation) no longer applies in the modern context. Tapescript 10 57. *R:

Yeah and only the spiritual leaders were Brahmins, but today accountants, lawyers, doctors are Brahmins. So, do you think that if Brahmins are no longer priests; do you think you are a Brahmin? 58. S(G3): Yes. 59.R: Why? 60. S(S3): Er…because… 61.PR(G3): Through a bond. We should carry on our traditions laid out by our ancestors. Why Chinese are still Chinese? To differentiate ourselves from others. 62.P(G3): So we should still be Iyers. Perhaps not call ourselves Brahmins. We should still be Iyers as different from any other community but not necessarily higher or better than them. *Researcher

Table 2 that was presented earlier shows that the Tamil language was not seen as the single most important factor in the Iyer identity. To many Tamils, the Tamil language stood for solidarity and the Tamil language was a much revered one. However, with this particular community of Tamils, the loss of the Tamil language did not appear to have brought

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about an identity crisis. This perhaps is one reason why there was an extensive shift away from Tamil. It was found that maintenance efforts among the Malaysian Tamil Iyers were not very good although a large majority (80%) of the respondents felt that the Tamil language should be maintained. Therefore, one can assume that while there appeared to be an emotional attachment to the mother tongue, it also seemed very evident that this attachment was not followed aggressively with positive maintenance efforts because their identity was perhaps not necessarily at stake. It seemed also possible that since the respondents had indicated that identity was not completely dependant on language, the urgency for remediation of Tamil language attrition was not felt strongly. Apte (1972) made a study of the Marati people of the Maharashtra region in India when they migrated to Tamil Nadu in South India. Although the single most important factor for a collective identity was language, he found other criteria equally influential in an extended culture contact situation. He studied two groups of Marati people in Tamil Nadu: the Marati Brahmins and Marati tailors (because he identified them as a separate caste group). The Marati Brahmins leaned towards their counterparts, the Tamil Brahmins, at the socio-cultural levels, while the tailors emphasized their caste identity within the framework of pan-Indian social structure and their regional affiliation to their homeland. Apte (1972) suggests that the primary parameters of identity in that situation appeared to be caste, religion and region rather than language. In another Malaysian study of another ethnic Indian community, the Sindhis, it was found that the Malaysian Sindhi identity was based on their religion, customs and culture, kinship and social ties and dense and multiplex networks (David 1998). In this study, too, there is evidence to show that language alone did not provide ethnic identity to the Malaysian Iyers. Other factors such as customs and traditions played a large role in providing identity.

Conclusion In conclusion, from the findings of the above study, it appears that language alone is not an indicator of ethnic identity. Other parameters such as customs and traditions play a role in providing identity to an individual. In the case of the Malaysian Iyer community, even though they have shifted largely to the English language and speak Tamil functionally to retain cultural and religious lexical items, they do not feel that their ethnic identity is lost. They are able to retain their identity through their

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dress, food, rites and rituals and customary practices. Fishman (1989), in a discussion on ethnic identity, says that two factors potentially give identity to people other than language. One is patrimony (cultural practices) and the other is patriarchy (birthright). In the case of the Malaysian Iyers, even though they are in the process of losing their ethnic language, they are able to retain their ethnic identity through their religious and cultural practices.

References David, M. K. 1996. Language Shift among the Sindhis in Malaysia. Unpublished Ph.D thesis. Kuala Lumpur. University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. —. 1998. Language Shift, Cultural Maintenance, and Ethnic Identity: A Study of a Minority Community: The Sindhis of Malaysia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 130: 67-76. —. 2003. The Pakistani Community in Marang, Kelantan: Reasons for Language Shift. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2003(3): 61-70. David, M. K. and M. H. N. Ibtisam. 2000. Do Minorities Have to Abandon Their Languages? A Case Study of Malaysian Tamils. International Scope, 2 (3): 1-16. David, M. K. and Nambiar, M. 2002. “Exogamous Marriages and Out Migration: Language Shift of the Catholic Malayalees in Malaysia”. In Methodological and Analytic Issues in Language Maintenance and Language Shift Studies. ed. David, M: 141-150. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Fishman, J. 1989. Language and Ethnicity in Minority Sociolinguistic Perspective. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Hypes, J. L. 1936. Spotlights on the Culture of India. Storrs: Connecticutt State College. Kundra, K. D. 2001. The Role and Status of English among the Urban Punjabis in Malaysia. Unpublished Master of English as a Second Language thesis. University of Malaya. Nambiar, M. and S. Govindasamy. 2002. “The Construct of Generation: Analytical Implications for LMLS Studies”. In Methodological and Analytical Issues in Language Maintenance and Language Shift Studies, ed. David, M: 21-36. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Sankar, L. V. 2004. Language Shift and Maintenance among the Malaysian Iyers. Thesis submitted to the University of Malaya in consideration for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

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Saraswathy, B. 1996. Srimad Bhagavad Gita. Kuala Lumpur: Academe Art and Printing Services.

CHAPTER TEN “NORMAL” AND “AGEING” BODIES: THE COMMODIFIED FEMALE BODY IN A CONSUMER CULTURE ZURAIDAH MOHD DON, UNIVERSITI MALAYA AND GERRY KNOWLES, UNIVERSITY OF LANCASTER

In this study we examine media representations of the “commodified body” in selected advertisements in Malaysian women’s magazines and the role of body representations in the politics of women’s identity. It is in part influenced by Foucault’s social scientific approach to the body which is characterised by a preoccupation with institutions that control the body and an epistemological view of the body as socially constructed. The assumption that the body is constructed suggests that it is not fixed or static, but socially produced. Through critical discourse analysis of their advertisements and features, we analyse the various representations of the desirable and undesirable images of women by examining how writers use the linguistic and intertextual resources available to them. Consumer culture has created women’s self identity which is equated with bodily appearance and in which image is paramount. The issue is gendered in that women’s symbolic capital is still, to a greater extent than men, derived from their appearance.

Introduction In this paper we apply the techniques of critical discourse analysis to the study of texts concerning ageing and the female body. Whereas the conventional linguist will make an analysis of the text as an end in itself, the critical linguist sees the text as the product of discursive practices and social practices. The ageing of the female body is the topic of a wide range

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of texts, including the print media such as magazines, newspapers, the mass media such as TV, films and the internet, and advertising both in the media and on street hoardings. These discursive practices are in turn embedded in social practices which embody the values of society, in this case putting a high value on youthfulness and on a narrowly defined conception of beauty. Since in the nature of things most women do not conform to these norms, and the conception of beauty is subject to change in any case, what comes to matter is not the reality but the image, or the perception of reality. What really matters is the airbrushed image on the front page, not the real model who sits for the photographer. This gap between reality and image is an important contemporary social issue, and our aim as critical linguists is to analyse our texts in such a way as to reveal the underlying ideology which creates the context in which such texts can be produced and regarded as meaningful. In making this analysis, we have to find a way of handling sensitive moral values. It is a fact in the real world that people’s bodies are less than perfect, and the medical profession seeks to make sick people well again, opticians provide spectacles for people with imperfect eyesight, and plastic surgeons cure defects such as a hair lip or cleft palate, and restore bodies damaged in fires or car accidents. These are valuable services, which are surely morally good. It is quite natural that people do not welcome the signs of ageing, and that personal vanity leads people to dye their hair, or wear false teeth, and this motivates a beauty industry to disguise the effects of time. Hiding reality is not quite so morally good as, for example, curing the sick, but it is still morally positive rather than negative. It is also a fact in the real world that women who are beautiful find it easier to find desirable husbands than those who are not. The social attitudes involved here are not necessarily morally good at all, but since they are based ultimately on biology there is nothing we can do about them. The social practices we are concerned with here turn morality on its head. People who are perfectly well are convinced that they need medical attention and even surgery as a result of pathologising of the body. As people age, they are put under pressure to become young again. Social attitudes surrounding female beauty are taken as a logical premise, and women are put under pressure to build their lives around them. These social practices are themselves to be explained by the dominant values held by society at large, either explicitly or implicitly. In contemporary capitalist society, there seems to be no limit to what can be regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold, so that commodities include not only carrots and cars, but also education and knowledge, and even the ageing of

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the female body. The treatment as commodities of things not normally regarded as something to be bought and sold is referred to as commodification. The present study of the ageing of the female body reflects the increasing interest across a diverse range of disciplines in embodiment as an area of research. The recent focus on explanation rather than on mere description enables the linguist to offer more detailed and empirically grounded studies of discourses of the body. This study is in part influenced by Foucault’s social scientific approach to the body which is characterised by a preoccupation with institutions that control the body and an epistemological view of the body as socially constructed. The assumption that the body is constructed suggests that it is not fixed or static, but socially created. The body is viewed as an entity, an “unfinished” biological and sociological phenomenon requiring further work (Shilling 1993), and this leads to the ideological assumption that the design of our bodies is our own responsibility (see Giddens 1991, 102). Redfern (2001) calls attention to some of the unquestioned assumptions about the female body that our society subscribes to: 1. Something is fundamentally wrong with the female body and it is natural to be unhappy with it; and 2. If we are unhappy about our body, we should change it. And women are changeable creatures. These assumptions are well summarised by Redfern, and they are interesting because they illustrate in miniature some important characteristics of discourses of the body. The assertion that something is wrong may be a fact, e.g. it is wrong to say that the square root of 16 is 3, or it may be an opinion, as in the case of something allegedly being wrong with the female body. Being unhappy with one’s body seems to follow logically, but in fact does not. The use of if…then frames a logical deduction, but the need to change the body does not follow logically from being unhappy with it. And the changeability of women is an unfounded assertion. Many fields of enquiry, including mathematics, begin with a set of assumptions, but these are available for conscious inspection and can be challenged. In this case, the assumptions are normally kept beneath the surface and away from challenge, and regarded as matters of “common sense” (Fairclough 1989). When they are examined, however, their illogical nature becomes apparent. When analysing texts, we have to be aware of irrational sequences of thought that are presented as though they were perfectly logical. The commodification of the body was commented on by Ewen (1976, 47) who regards the body as the “commodity self” where “each portion of

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the body was to be viewed critically, as a potential bauble in a successful assemblage”, and fixing the body has become a way in which people could fashion their selves and identities (Baudrillard 1994; Featherstone and Hepworth 1999). The evidence in such a view can be found in the media focus on body image and the promotion and the preservation of youth and beauty which encourage critical examination of the imperfect and ageing body. Like any other commodity in a capitalist system, the “use value” of the female body is subordinated to its “exchange value.” The female body has value only in terms of the cultural capital, to borrow Bourdieu’s concept that it acquires by conforming to the slender, youthful pro-consumption model provided by the media. The power constraints imposed on body representations have led to the widespread acceptance of a binary split between acceptable and unacceptable body images: slim vs. fat; young vs. old; normal/ideal vs. deviant, healthy vs. pathological; white vs. dark. In her critique of the kind of society that encourages consumerism, Wolf (1991, 184) says that “consumer culture is best supported by markets made up of sexual clones, men who want objects and women who want to be objects, and the object desired ever-changing, disposable and dictated by the market”. Tracing the history of the growth of consumerism and commercialisation, Peiss (1998, 5) comments on the creation of a new identity for women as consumers: Women’s growing interest in beauty products coincided with their new sense of identity as consumers … Women’s magazines and advertisers inducted their female readers into a world of brand-name products and smart shopping, while department stores created a feminine paradise of abundance, pleasure and service.

Women thus occupy a special place within commodity culture. According to Dittmar, Beattie and Friese (1995) women tend to buy symbolic and self-expressive goods which are concerned with appearance and emotional aspects of self, and this makes women excellent potential buyers for cosmetics and beauty products. Consumer culture has created women’s self identity which is equated with bodily appearance and in which image is paramount. The body has become both a site for the display of identity and capitals, and is thus consumption-driven. A growing number of people utilise their body shape and appearance as a means of expressing their individual identity, developing them into social symbols that give messages to others. Peiss (1998) further adds that the beauty industry has been increasingly commodified and become a mass market, and “Cosmetics today seem quintessentially products of a

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consumer culture dominated by large corporations, national advertising and widely circulated images of ideal beauty” (61). These companies would hire celebrities such as well-known actresses, singers and models to endorse their products and present the use of cosmetic and beauty products as part of a culture of femininity.

Objectives and Theoretical Background The aim of the study presented in this article is to bring into focus the strategies used in skincare advertisements in women’s magazines in order to sell their anti-ageing products. It seeks to provide the answer to the question of how these advertisements contribute to the commodification of youthful facial skin, encouraging them to take responsibility to hide or correct the visible signs of ageing. We choose to analyse these advertisements because the face is “the principal determinant in the perception of our individual beauty or ugliness” (Synnot 1993, 73) and is “a prime symbol of the self” (Synnot 1993, 3). The face is that part of the body which is most open to scrutiny and is endowed with semiotic significance. Using a critical discourse analysis framework, our study begins with what we regard as a significant contemporary social issue. Before proceeding with the analysis, we first have to identify and describe the social practices which relate to our chosen issue. The social practices provide the context for the identification of the interdiscursive nature of the text, and ultimately the linguistic features of the texts. In this case, we seek to identify the devices that are used in the construction of the commodified face and the solution in the form of products that can overcome the problem of ageing. By doing this we hope to highlight how contemporary advertisements are involved in shaping and influencing the preferred commodified facial appearance. The analysis explores a discursive practice in a particular site, namely a selected Malaysian women’s magazine, in the light of the spread of consumer culture across contemporary Malaysian society. Following Fairclough (1989, 1995a, b, 1998), analysis of the discursive practice will focus on the interdiscursive character of the selected text, i.e. whether it still maintains the traditional discourse order or is restructured to accommodate other genres and discourses resulting in the emergence of a hybrid. Intertextual analysis is one way of linking discursive practice and processes of text production, consumption and distribution to the text itself (Fairclough 1998, 72). The spread of consumer culture discussed in the

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introduction is the broader social practice that provides the context for the analysis of the actual texts, i.e. selected skincare advertisements.

The Ageing Body in Contemporary Consumer Culture The critical analysis of texts begins with the social practices in which they are embedded. Our concern is not just with the body in general, but more specifically with the ageing of the body. Fear of ageing is part of female culture in our society. In her book entitled Beauty Bound, Freedman (1986) states that as women age they are judged not only to be less beautiful but less feminine. The issue is a matter of gender, since youth is seen as an essential element of femininity. It is difficult for women ageing in the era of hyperimage because the sublime perfection that women see daily in the media contrasts starkly with the face they look at in the mirror. With their blemishes and signs of ageing airbrushed away, ideal women, particularly well-known celebrities, are presented as though in a perpetual state of youth, thus implying that eternal youthfulness is the desired state. It is difficult to assess to what extent such images of eternal youth induce self-consciousness in women, and have the intended effect on the target group. But the increase in cosmetic surgery and liposuction, Botox injections and chemical peels, and preoccupation with diet, exercise and fashion indicates that women are increasingly anxious about the way they look. Fear of ageing fuels the booming of cosmetic surgery business. In an article published in Female October 2004 (on-line version), a woman shared her reasons for undergoing plastic surgery (see Extract 1): Extract 1. I have the kind of face that makes me look tired, even when I’m not. I have bags under my eyes that make me look haggard and I have sagging jaw line… age was catching up. You know laugh lines get more noticeable, and you’re more concerned of your wellbeing and appearance. I mean I felt fine inside, but outwardly my appearance was painting a different picture and it was beginning to bring me down.

In China, a 62-year old woman who had brow-, face- and neck-lifts, upper- and lower-eyelid surgery, liposuction and laser resurfacing to erase wrinkles felt that plastic surgery gave her the chance to be beautiful: “Surgery allowed me to turn back the clock and feel better about myself” (Malaysia Marie Claire, September 2005, 76). Despite the expense and danger, thousands of women submit to the knife in order to preserve the appearance of youth.

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Although such extreme measures may be derided as narcissistic exhibitionism, the decision to undergo surgery may actually seem to be a rational one in a culture where older women are made to disappear either by simple exclusion or by the removal of their imperfections so that they appear as something other than what they really are. Seeking to avoid the inevitable ageing, women spend an estimated US$20 billion worldwide each year on skin-care products that promise to eliminate wrinkles and retard ageing. In Malaysia, in 2003 alone the Malaysian cosmetics and toiletries market recorded sales of approximately US$800 million (STATUSA Market Research Reports). The reasons given for the strong cosmetic markets were increased urbanisation, a rise in the number of women working and aggressive marketing and promotional activities of the retailers. The beauty industry is taking advantage of the mature market which holds huge, untapped potential. Beauty product manufacturers work closely with advertisers and magazine editors to promote the ideology that a woman is only “desirable” when she conforms to the “ideal youthfulness”, and so something must be done to hide or correct signs of ageing. In this way, the beauty industry exploits insecurity associated with the superficial consequences of ageing as a key marketing strategy for their anti-ageing products and cosmetic surgery. Women’s flaws and imperfections are brought into visibility, and they are being told what the visible signs of ageing are, so that they can empower themselves to do something about the problem. According to an advertisement for Olay Total Effects Serum, there are altogether seven signs of ageing: fine lines and wrinkles, surface dryness and dullness, uneven skin tone, blotchiness and dark spots, lack of firmness, enlarged pores and rough skin texture. It not only identifies the signs of ageing but also promises that the product advertised helps fight them and can actually reverse the process “or your money back”. What clearly emerges from discourses of the body in the media, particularly in women’s magazines, is the assertion that ageing is ugly, and that ugliness is a disease for which people in the beauty industry have the solution. Implicit in the advertisement of the Dior-Capture R60/80TM B-Skin Inside (see Extract 2.) is that the decline of the body as it advances through years is inevitable, but with the advancement in modern technology this decline can be halted: Extract 2. LINES BE GONE! Dior-capture R60/80 TM Bi-skin Inside

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gives you a breakthrough technology that promises to fight wrinkles Wrinkles. They crease our foreheads, surround our eyes, ring our mouths and line our cheeks. They serve as a constant reminder that our years are advancing, and the rue of many a woman. So much so that reducing, if not eliminating, has become the devoted pursuit of many cosmetic and dermatology laboratories. In time, wrinkles will become part of our lives, but while some choose the attitude “if you can’t beat it, accept it”, the fact remains that we would love to have fewer lines and lesser crease, especially on our face. Time is the primary cause of wrinkle. As we grow older, our skin loses its elasticity and tautness as the epidermal cells become thinner. We express our emotions by moving our facial muscles and we become older. It takes longer for these muscles to restore to their original state, thus causing fine lines and wrinkles to appear. But is this the end of our faces? Are we destined to fear the signs of ageing, knowing that there’s no way of turning back the clock? Not at all. Simply because we can age gracefully with Dior-capture R60/80TM Bi-skin Inside. (Extract from Malaysia Marie Claire, September 2005, 104-105)

Negative comments about the appearance of ageing focusing on aspects of face and skin are typical of beauty product advertisements. The theme that runs through the advertisement is the characterisation of normal bodily changes as undesirable changes in appearance. What is striking about this advertisement is the blend of information and persuasion telling potential buyers about ageing skin and what they can do about it. It is aimed at the lucrative mature market, women who are placed with the responsibility to overcome the problems associated with ageing such as wrinkles, fine lines, loss of skin elasticity and tautness, etc. The potential buyers are positioned as someone with a problem, yet at the same time empowered because they have a choice either to accept the way they look or to do something about it by using the recommended product. Advertisers purposely contribute to fetishising the products and antiageing cream in particular was assigned magical properties: Lines be gone; It’s like magic! Fine lines and wrinkles instantly disappear before your eyes; New skin in 1 hour?, smooth your wrinkles, release your radiance. The advertisement constructs the buyers as having particular needs and values and the image of the buyers has to harmonise with the product and the manufacturer. The producer of the text who is the manufacturer’s mouthpiece positions himself as the information giver

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mixing the voice of medicine with the voice of the “lifeworld” or ordinary experience. The product is presented as one that is the result of “a breakthrough in technology”. Here the producer, product and potential consumer are brought together as co-participants in a lifestyle, a community of consumption, which the advertisement constructs and stimulates. Anti-ageing is one of the most powerful contemporary marketing devices used by the beauty industry. Essentially, it reinforces insecurity and preys on women’s fear of ageing by asking them to view their faces as an ensemble of discrete parts, each in need of a major overhaul. It is a part of a broader strategy of promoting idealised or enhanced standards as motivation for buying anti-ageing creams. After instilling anxiety and insecurity, the anti-ageing product advertisements imply that buying the products can correct practically any defect, real or imagined. In this way, pathologising the body is central to modern advertising in this area. The “imperfect” and ageing body becomes the pathologised object. The appearance of ageing becomes an undesirable quality. From the analysis of advertisements of beauty products, Coupland (2003, 128) concludes that the two themes that run consistently in the advertisements are first that being old is undesirable and secondly that women “must assume responsibility to stay young-looking, or to disguise their apparent ageing”. Bodies of young beautiful women are used as a symbol of marketing, advertising and to display a particular image. The ideological assumption is that youthful appearance is at a premium and a visible ageing body is “unwatchable”. In an increasingly age-conscious society, the ageing body becomes a problem, and it is no surprise that there is a market among women for beauty products designed to modify appearance in line with the preferred image of femininity. Women’s fear of ageing is not a fear of ageing itself, but of embodying the qualities with which they have been enculturated to associate with ageing.

Women’s Magazines as the Research Site The primary materials for the analysis are drawn from selected skincare advertisements in Female Magazine, reputed to be Malaysia’s “leading fashion and beauty magazine”. Female Magazine offers an ideal research site because more than 50% of its content consists of advertisements, and more than 90% of these advertisements are for beauty-enhancing products. This is understandable given that a high proportion of the revenue for women’s magazines comes from advertising. The contents pages contain four main sections: features, fashion, beauty and lifestyle, and they cover

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diverse lexical domains associated with women including fashion, beauty, relationships, the workplace, lifestyle and contemporary issues. Women’s magazines are important cultural texts in which contemporary notions of femininity are disseminated and marketed, and they serve as educational resources for readers seeking advice on matters pertaining to looks and style. They perpetuate a traditional capitalist-patriarchal view of femininity, and emphasise the aesthetic. Representations of femininity are often linked to the consumption of beauty enhancing goods (e.g. clothes, cosmetics, etc.), sexuality, body image, promotion and the preservation of youth. They are important semiotic constructs, the products of an institution with its own priorities, interests and assumptions, based on a “manufactured” ideology that offers particular discourses on femininity. The following extract from Female Magazine (April 2005, 270-274) entitled “Beauty 101 anti-ageing” embodies the contemporary consumer ideology about the ageing face which has the potential of reaping enormous economic benefits for the product manufacturer. The text is in the form of problem-instruction-prescription (Extract 3.): Extract 3. How fast you’re ageing – your face by face decade horoscope In your 20s This is the decade when you make the transition from teen to adult. Your skin is still making plenty of collagen, which keeps it plump, firm and elastic. As cell turnover slows, skin tone becomes less even. If you are a sun-worshipper, you may develop dark spots. By your late 20s, fine lines may set around the eyes.

Skincare Musts

What you need

x

Estee Lauder Hydra Complete Multi-Level Mositure Eye Gel Crème, RM150; Shu Uemura Resistance Recharging Night Cream, RM220; Lancome Aqua Fusion Continuously Infusing Moisture Fluid, RM145; Nuxe Crème Nirvanesque First Wrinkle Care, price unavailable; La Mer Moisturising Lotion, RM 700; Clinique Repairwear Intensive Eye Cream, RM140.

x

x x

Use the right cleansing products for your skin type and some preventive products Keep skin clean and pores unclogged to avoid breakouts. Always wear sunscreen. Keep the skin around your eyes moisturised with eye cream.

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192 In your 30s This is the great multitasking decade. Career, home, family – you’re trying to have it all. According to beauty guru Bobbi Brown in her book Bobbi Brown Beauty Revolution, “All the bad stuff you did in your 20s – staying out late, not exercising, frying in the sun – really does have an impact”. Your skin becomes drier and pigmentation becomes more uneven. Fine lines appear around the eyes, followed by wrinkles on your forehead and smile lines. In your 40s This is the decade when you first notice you look older than you used to! As the skin’s connective tissue – the dermis – and its fat layers begin to thin, the skin starts to look less plump and youthful. It’s the time when fine lines deepen into wrinkles. ‘Marioneete’ lines, which extend downward from the mouth, begin to appear. In your 50s “At the age of 50, a woman’s face would be her responsibility.” Coco Chanel

x

“It’s all about hydration, both inside and out,” says Brown Wear an SPF of 15 or 30 on your face every day to prevent lines, minimise sun damage and skin ageing. Choose a daily, oil free moisturiser. Use eye cream.

Clains Extra Firming Facial Mask, RM185; L’Occitane Immortelle Precious Cream, RM180; Elizabeth Arden Eyecare Concentrate, RM131; Sisley Global AntiAge, RM1010 (an award-winning formula)

Skincare focus x SPF lotion: It’s still not too late to prevent additional damage. x Eye cream. x Moisturiser: do go for a slightly heavier formula, one that protects skin and helps rebuild collagen.

Dior Prestige Outstanding Skin Perfection Serum Pearl and Crème, RM915; Biotherm Age Fitness 2 Ultra Smoothing Concentrate, RM190; Anna Sui Eye Treatment Cream, RM125; Kose Grandele White Essence Mask, RM165.

Tip! Apply anti-ageing products to freshly cleansed skin. Dirt can keep products from penetrating.

Anti-ageing cosmetic procedures Chemical peels; Botox; Injectibles; Laser

x

x x

Notice the theme that resonates throughout the text: there is a problem, namely the ageing face, and there is a solution to be found in the recommended beauty products and cosmetic procedures (see also Zuraidah Mohd Don 2003). For each age group (i.e. 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s), the text

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gives a description of the condition of the skin and identifies the visible signs of ageing, and this is followed by “expert” advice on how to deal with the identified problem and the products needed to overcome it. The recommended products are categorised as “What you need” implying that there is no longer a choice but a necessity. What is particularly striking is the ideological assumption that for a woman the problem of visible ageing starts as early as in her twenties (“By your late 20s, fine lines may set around the eyes”). Already at a very young age, the reader is constructed as a potential consumer of expensive anti-ageing products such as Clinique Repairwear Intensive Eye Cream, RM140; Nuxe Crème Nirvanesque First Wrinkle Care, price unavailable; La Mer Moisturising Lotion, RM700. By the age of 50, her ageing face “would be her own responsibility” and taking into consideration that what they need are cosmetic procedures rather than products, one can conclude that the signs of damage are so visible that they need something more invasive. The text embodies the ageist notions about bodily change over time. It sends a very clear message that time is against us, and we need to do something to stop the consequences of the natural bodily process of ageing. The activity type sets up subject positions for the information/advice giver (the writer) and information receiver (the reader). The writer is constructed as the source of knowledge and information and the reader a passive recipient of it. The writer adopts a voice of authority when describing the skin conditions and ageing citing authorities in the beauty industry (e.g. Bobbi Brown; Coco Chanel) and when recommending the solutions to the problem in the form of beauty products. Yet at the same time, by addressing the reader as “you”, she stimulates an informal conversation which contributes to a personal relationship between the writer and the reader. The assertions about the skin conditions and problems are presented categorically as facts using the simple present tense (“As cell turnover slows, skin tone becomes less even”; “Your skin becomes drier and pigmentation becomes more uneven”). The use of may (e.g. “If you are a sun-worshipper, you may develop dark spots. By your late 20s, fine lines may set around the eyes”; Emphasis added) suggests that the text producer is making expert assertions about future probabilities. Under the heading “Skincare Musts” the writer instructs what women of various ages should do in the imperative form.

Analysis of text For the examination of the interdiscursive nature of contemporary skincare advertising, we consider a single text, the La Mer advertisement taken

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from the April 2005 issue of Female (216-217). According to Fairclough (2003, 67), elements of interdiscursivity include “semantic, grammatical and lexical (vocabulary) features of the text at various levels of representation”. Unlike the two earlier texts which highlight the ageing skin and the products recommended to halt the ageing process, this text focuses on “a top-secret ingredient” contained in La Mer’s latest “miracle inventions” and the ability of these products to restore youthfulness to skin. The full text of the article, i.e. without the pictures, is given below: TWICE THE LIFT A rare blue algae is the latest La Mer miracle, found in its two-step firming treatment of Lifting Serum and Lifting Intensifier La Mer’s relentless efforts in unveiling the secrets of the sea have led to the creation of many can’t-live-without skincare potions for women. The latest buzz is its new two-step firming treatment – Lifting Face Serum and Lifting Intensifier. As with all other La Mer bounties, these latest inventions are formulated using a top-secret ingredient. But instead of the blue yonder, this time La Mer moves inland to the largest freshwater lake located west of the Rocky Mountains. This isolated area is known for its pristine qualities, fed by glacial waters and underground springs. The mysterious factor this time is a rare blue algae found in the lake, which is nutrient-rich, and has the remarkable power to biologically lift the skin’s appearance. Its exceptional lifting energies come to life as it goes through a meticulous bio-fermentation process, which enhances its efficacy far beyond anything previously imagined. A network of proteins within the Blue Algae Lift ferment stimulates the skin’s own internal building blocks while other proteins help prevent their premature breakdown. The skin’s ability to renew itself is greatly improved. Best of all, the results can be felt immediately upon application of the Lifting Serum. THE POWER OF TWO The Lifting Serum and the Lifting Intensifier are designed to work in synergy immediately and visibly lifting the skin and restoring clarity and brightness. The Serum provides firming and lifting benefits, which are further boosted by the Lifting Intensifier. The latter also teaches the skin to sustain a smooth and resilient and more lifted appearance. This totally new and paired approach restores the skin’s youthfulness and elasticity. SUPER ALGAE Andy Bavacqua, one of La Mer’s leading scientists at Max Huber Research Lab. Explains why the hoo-ha over the precious algae is justified.

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Q: Knowing La Mer’s stellar reputation for harnessing the vital powers of unique marine ingredients, this can’t be an ordinary blue algae. So tell us how this “super algae” translates into super firm skin? A: You’re right. The extraordinary power of this rare algae is its remarkable ability to biologically lift the skin’s appearance. It’s packed with micro-nutrients and we believe it’s the next “big thing” in advanced skincare. The La Mer advantage, from our point of view, is that we can take the power of the blue algae to the nth degree through biofermentation. The unique intricate process is almost an art form that creates a highly-powerful blue algae ferment which no competitor can replicate. Q: Wow, sounds like a lot of work for a plant! How does this two-step system work? A: Each treatment is enhanced by the other. We call it a “paired approach”. The Lifting Serum provides long-term benefits of unprecedented clarity, even tone and superior brightness. It fosters the lifting process by encouraging the natural production of collagen and elastin. Q: And what muscles does the Lifting Intensifier impart? A: The Lifting Intensifier is fortified with Azurite, a crystal formed in sea beds that greatly enhances the skin’s ability to renew itself. It works to create an instant physical lift via a mesh-like matrix that upholds the skin where it needs it most. Q: And when you look in the mirror? A: The first thing you’ll notice is that your skin looks brighter. Skin’s resilience is immediately improved: within weeks it has more “bounce” and more smoothness in the treated areas. HOW TO USE After cleansing and toning, tap several drops of the Lifting Face Serum onto fingertips and sweep over the face and neck. Then use the wand of the Lifting Intensifier to dot the product onto areas where support is needed most. Smooth onto skin with a light patting motion. For best results, follow with Crème de La Mer and the Eye balm where appropriate The Lifting Serum and Lifting Intensifier are available at all la Mer counters.

An important consideration in selecting this particular advertisement is that there is a reason to believe that it is genuine. Instead of making vague attestable claims to add lustre to hair, restore orange-peel skin, or perform magic within seven days, the central claim is that an extract from rare blue algae can lift the skin and restore its smoothness and elasticity. This claim is risky, because it can be formally tested, and if the result were to confirm the null hypothesis that the preparations make no difference at all, the

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manufacturer’s credibility would be destroyed. It is relevant to point out at this stage that the founder of La Mer, Max Huber, was himself a scientist who invented preparations to restore his own skin. The motivation was thus to solve a real problem, in which respect the philosophy of La Mer contrasts with the cosmetics industry at large. The text itself is presented in a significant lay-out and style of organisation. The advertisement covers a two page spread, and on the far left is a picture of two bottles that introduces the theme of duality that recurs as a leitmotiv: the bottles are immediately under the main headline “twice the lift” and they contain two preparations designed to work together in a “totally new and paired approach” described under the subheading “The Power of Two”. The right hand page has a smaller picture of the same two products together with La Mer Cream and a photograph of one of La Mer’s leading scientists at the Max Huber Research lab. It is significant that the illustrations are of bottles and jars, and that the efficacy of the products is authenticated by a named “leading scientist” with a credible affiliation instead of an actor in a white coat or a mere celebrity. Unusually for this kind of advertisement, there is no sexual content whatsoever, and the products are presented in plain jars with a minimum of packaging. These pictures present a non-extravagant but scientific image which is calculated to enhance the credibility of the claims made. The romantic element is provided not by the pictures, but by phrases of purple prose such as “relentless efforts in unveiling the secrets of the sea” and “an isolated area … known for its pristine qualities, fed by glacial waters and underground springs”. This last example requires an understanding of the earth’s drainage system, and so forms a link to scientific expressions such as “a meticulous bio-fermentation process”, “a network of proteins within the blue algae”, “[the] skin’s own internal building blocks”, and “a mesh-like matrix that upholds the skin where it needs it most”. The La Mer promotional text is built around promote-sell relations (for problem-solution relation, see Hoey 2001). The promoted and commodified entity is “young, super-firm skin - smooth, bright and resilient”. The product that can make this possible is the latest La Mer firming treatment: Lifting Face Serum “which provides firming and lifting benefits” and Lifting Intensifier which further boosts the serum and “teaches skin to sustain a smooth, resilient and more lifted appearance”. These descriptions of the products’ properties contain strong commitments to truth. They are statements of facts presenting these properties as facts using the simple present tense: provides, teaches. The implicit ideological assumption here is that: We can have “smooth, bright and super firm skin”

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if we use La Mer’s new two-step firming treatment. The text producer is fulfilling two contradictory roles here: an expert information giver giving advice to a reader (+power vs. –power) and a seller trying to sell to a consumer (-power vs. +power). The chosen text is an example of a hybrid genre. One can clearly see evidence of the colonisation of the advertisement by other genres, giving rise to a new hybrid of promotional text: a magazine article, an interview and an instructional genre. This genre mixing exemplifies an important shift that is going on in beauty product advertising from overt selling to apparently reporting some scientific progress. The advertisement is presented as a magazine article, with the headline and a brief summary, section headers, comment boxes (one quoting from the text located at the bottom left hand page, and the other giving instructions on “how to use” located at the bottom right hand page), and illustrative pictures of the products and the leading scientist. On the surface the text appears to be a report of a new development and to give an explanation of significant discoveries. The text also includes what is presented as an interview in which a member of the public (Q) asks questions of a scientific expert (A). This genre is best exemplified by doctor and patient interviews, but it may be relevant to add here that it is also an ancient method of teaching, going back to Plato, in which the lesson is presented as an imaginary conversation between a teacher and a pupil. In this case, the scientist is apparently induced to share secrets with the interviewer and hence, with the public. Here too, we find a combination of discourse types. The interaction between the expert and interviewer is made to look like a real conversation, e.g. “wow” as the interviewer’s response to the scientist’s explanation. While the interviewer uses the structures of spoken English, the scientist has the remarkable ability to answer questions in flawless scientific English prose (“Each treatment is enhanced by the other …; The Lifting Intensifier is enhanced Azurite, a crystal formed in sea-beds that greatly enhances skin’s ability to renew itself…”; with just a few colloquialisms such as “you’re right” and “the next ‘big thing’ in advanced skincare”. The scientific language is thrown into relief by the pseudo-scientific efforts of the interviewer, e.g. “La Mer’s stellar reputation for harnessing the vital powers of unique marine ingredients”. The interviewer, like the ordinary folks reading the advertisement, is clearly not expected to understand serious scientific matters. The questionand answer sequence is to a certain extent modelled on doctor-patient interviews with the interviewee assuming power to give prognosis. For example, when Q asked, “And when you look in the mirror?” (presumably

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after applying the products), A replied: “The first thing you’ll notice is that your skin looks brighter. Skin’s resilience is immediately improved: within weeks it has more ‘bounce’ and more smoothness in the treated areas”. In the first sentence A makes a categorical prediction using the modal will (“‘ll notice”) suggesting that he is speaking from a position of insider knowledge and that is to be expected of a person in his position, being one of La Mer’s leading scientists. A uses the simple present tense to describe the effects of using the products, thus presenting them as facts rather than opinions. These categorical assertions of the benefits of the products end the interview. The text also contains other discourses which are articulated together with the traditional discourse of advertising to create a complex interdiscursive mix. The basic discourse is that of commodity advertising, and this is reflected in the headline “TWICE THE LIFT” and subheadings “The Power of Two” and “Super Algae”, pictures of products, choice of promotional words such as “can’t-live-without skincare”, “a top-secret ingredient”, “remarkable power”, “the wand of the Lifting Intensifier”, “the Power of Two”, “super algae”, etc. and information about where to get the products (“The Lifting Serum and Lifting Intensifier are available at all la Mer counters”). Elements of scientific discourse, as noted above, are apparent in phrases such as “these latest inventions”, “a network of proteins”, “internal building blocks”, “premature breakdown” and “biofermentation process”. The scientific discourse aims to lend credibility to the claims made about the two-step firming treatment. The article also draws on narrative genre when describing the remarkable effect on the appearance of the skin of the precious blue algae found in the La Mer latest miracle. It also has elements of corporate advertising discourse apparent in the reference to the Max Huber Research Lab and to the leading scientist responsible for the creation of La Mer firming treatment. The scientific discourse is combined in the text with contemporary popular discourse blurring their boundaries, including the phrases “can’tlive-without skincare”, “the latest buzz”, and “[the scientist] explains why the hoo-ha over the precious algae is justified” (which incidentally includes the two presuppositions that “the algae are precious” and “the hoo-ha is justified”). In some cases, the two kinds of discourse are mixed, e.g. “This totally new and paired approach restores skin’s youthful smoothness and elasticity” combines scientific language with the vague promise to restore youth, which is more characteristic of popular advertising styles. In this context, we might consider the scientist’s unusual name Bevacqua which actually means “Drinkwater” but the status of which is unclear. If it belongs to the scientific discourse, it is likely to

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be genuine; but if it is part of the popular discourse, the less trusting mind can be forgiven for suspecting that it could have been translated into an Italian-like form to make it look Southern European. There are two possible assessments of the advertisement as a whole. One is that bogus preparations have been dressed up to make them look scientific, and the other is that the preparations are the outcome of genuine ageing science, but that the findings have to be dumbed down for the readers of a women’s magazine. The general run of beauty advertisements with scientific references gives the former impression, but in this particular case, the linguistic evidence consistently supports the second assessment. This even applies to the purple prose, and the obviously invented question and answer section: those aspects of the language which come across as not genuine belong to the discourse of advertising itself, and not to the presentation of the product being advertised. The popular discourse is ultimately banal, and boils down to just talking about appearance of skin—its clarity, tone and brightness—in a way that an ordinary person can understand, and in so doing brings the science down to an everyday level.

Conclusion In this paper, we began with a real world issue, the ageing of women, and in the light of the relevant social and discursive practices, we have examined advertisements for a skincare product designed to slow down the ageing process. In his examination of the selected advertisements on skincare products, Coupland (2003, 147) concludes that “in the relationship between woman, the body and skincare products there are always issues of control, agency or responsibility involved”. What matters here is who is in control. Taking a pride in one’s appearance is positive and achievable, whereas believing that one’s physical appearance is not good enough is negative and cannot be rectified. In the first case, the woman is empowered and in the second case disempowered by external control. It is very important for women worried about ageing to know whether claims made in advertisements are genuine or not, and an interesting by-product of our analysis is an assessment of the status of the claims made in the advertisement. It is significant that a conventional linguistic analysis would have little of significance to say about the text we have analysed beyond a listing of its grammatical and lexical properties. Of course, any linguist asked to comment on the text can make the points that we have made here. The difficulty is that in going beyond the analysis they can make using their

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special expertise in linguistics, linguists comment not as specialists but as intelligent members of the public. We would argue that by linking our linguistic analysis to discourse and social practices, we are extending our expertise as linguists, and that in commenting on social issues we are able to draw on a kind of expertise that members of the public–and even conventional linguists–do not possess. The significance of critical discourse analysis is that it puts linguistic phenomena in context at different levels, and draws conclusions of social relevance. The aim is not just to describe but also to explain and interpret. The use of will or an imperative in the advertisement are not important in themselves, but they throw light on the relationships constructed in the question and answer session. This genre itself contrasts with others in the advertisement to illustrate the hybrid nature of the discourse, and the hybrid discourse is to be explained by analysing the social practices surrounding the ageing of the female body.

References Altered Images. In Female Magazine, October 2004. http://www.beautiful-holidays.com/page.asp?Languages (accessed September 4, 2005). Baudrillard, J. 1994. Simulcra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Coupland, J. 2003. “Ageist Ideology and Discourses of Control in Skincare Product Marketing”. In Discourse, the Body, and Identity, ed. Coupland, J. and R. Gwyn: 127-150. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Dittmar, H., J. Beattie and S. Friese. 1995. Gender Identity and Material Symbols: Objects and Decision Considerations in Impulse Purchase. Journal of Economic Psychology, 15: 391-511. Ewen, S. 1976, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture. New York: McGraw Hill. Fairclough, N. 1989. Language and Power. London: Longman. —. 1995a. Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman. —. 1995b. Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold. —. 1998. Discourse and Social Change. 5th ed. Oxford: Polity Press. —. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. New York: Routledge. Featherstone, M. and M. Hepworth. 1991. “The Mask of Ageing and the Postmodern Life Course”. In The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, eds. Featherstone, M. H and B. Turner: 371-389. London: Sage Publications.

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Freedman, R. 1986. Beauty Bound. Lexington, MA: Lexington. Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in Late Modern Age. Standord: Stanford University Press. Hoey, M. 2001. Textual Interaction. London: Routledge. Hunston, S. and G. Thompson. 2001. Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peiss, K. L. 1998. Hope in a Jar: the Making of America’s Beauty Culture. New York: Metropolitan Books. Redfern, C. 2001. Teenagers and Cosmetic Surgery. http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2001/04/teenagers_and_cosmetic _surgery (accessed September 4, 2005). Shilling, C. 1993. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage Publications. STAT-USA Market Research Reports. http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/inimrri.nsf/en/grl (accessed September 4, 2007). Synnot, A. 1993. The Body Social: Symbolism, Self and Society. London: Routledge. Wolf, N. (1987). Wolf, N. 1991. The Beauty Myth. New York: William Morrow. Zuraidah Mohd Don. 2003. The Beauty Mystique: Gender and Language Inequality. In Language: Issues of Inequality, eds. Ryan, P.M. and R. Terborg: 261-278. México: Univercidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.

CHAPTER ELEVEN VOICES OF MALAYSIA: A DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION OF AIDS LEAN MEI LI AND PRASANA ROSALINE FERNANDEZ, TAYLOR’S COLLEGE

This paper examines newspaper articles on AIDS published in Malaysia. The investigation of the present study is undertaken using the analytic paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) employed by Fairclough (2003). The analysis looks particularly at the various voices that are given space in the text and how they are woven together textually. This entails examining how they are recontextualised (i.e. as direct discourse, indirect discourse, free indirect discourse, narrative report of speech act) in the new context and how they are framed in relation to each other and in relation to the writer’s voice. The corpus consists of articles published for the past two years in the local dailies, The Star and New Straits Times. The results from the analysis reveal the manifestations of “voices” from various quarters, although not necessarily denoting equal power relations. Analysis of quotation patterns shows whose “voices” are heard or suppressed.

Introduction The media coverage of AIDS has been credited with, and condemned for, a wide variety of constructions, ideologies and effects (Louw 200, 1). Sontag (1991) describes how certain diseases that are not well understood become imbued with negative meanings, and HIV in particular, due largely to its association with undesirable behaviour and its infectiousness, has been imbued with negative connotations. Representations of AIDS draw their authority from many sources. Diverse representations of AIDS in the Third World are obtained from accounts of the AIDS epidemic such as medical reports, patient testimony,

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media observations, investigative journalism, World Health Organisation news bulletins, or government reports. All these accounts are at some level linguistic constructions, and though often covert, the influence of linguistic discourse is powerful and pervasive in establishing and legitimising a given representation (Treichler 1992, 378-9) and accompanying “voices”. This paper analyses the various voices that are given space in two Malaysian newspapers (i.e. The Star and New Straits Times) and how they are woven together textually. This entails analysing how the voices are recontextualised (i.e. as direct quotes, indirect discourse, free indirect discourse, and narrative report of speech act) in the new context, and how they are framed in relation to each other and in relation to the writer’s voice. The corpus consists of articles published for the past two years (2003 - 2005) in the local dailies, The Star and The New Straits Times.

Literature Review Mass media has long been recognised as an important source of the creation and reproduction of meaning (Lupton 1999, 259). There are various approaches to the analysis of media content, notably quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis. The representation of health, illness and medicine in the media has centred heavily on the HIV/AIDS syndrome (Lupton 1999, 260). This attention is the result of how media coverage has often stigmatised homosexuality and People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs) (Lupton 1999, 261). Thus, the media is often a rich battleground between HIV/AIDS critics and activists, as they struggle to present the disease according to their respective paradigms. Perhaps there is no other disease more stigmatised than AIDS. Stigmatizing representations of AIDS victims continue to plague the victims, even up to this point in time, albeit in decreased numbers. However, rather than languish in the negative portrayal by the media and indulge in self pity, PLWHAs have risen to the occasion by making public their seropositive status and fighting for a more just depiction of their predicament. Long (2000), in his study on PLWHAs in America, reveals how this group of people countered the stigma associated with their condition by using the media to renegotiate their marginalised and transgressive identity. Over time, the media’s focus on AIDS began to shift away from generating a sense of “panic” among the public to creating a greater sense of awareness of the disease by publishing articles meant to educate the public on HIV/AIDS. Lynch (2000) conducted a study on the impact of

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time on media’s representation of AIDS. Lynch’s study showed that time is employed as an agent of social control within the realm of public health (2000: 256). Through the use of thirteen photographs, Lynch attempted to evoke a representation of AIDS which is the total opposite of the public’s conventional view of the disease (2000: 264). One of the popular areas of study carried out is on People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs). Crossley (1999: 95) conducted a study on a group of HIV positive individuals who have been living with the diagnosis for an average of nine years. Crossley’s study illustrates how these individuals come to terms with their illness through three predominant discourses: the “normalising” discourse, the “conversion”/”growth” discourse, and the discourse of “loss”. Baumgartner (2002: 44) conducted a similar study on eleven participants to identify how PLWHAs come to terms with their new identity and make meanings out of the disease through transformative learning strategies. Similarly, Persson, Race and Wakeford’s (2003) study foregrounds how patient experiences and understandings of health are complex, socially embedded and often in conflict with medical models. Their study explored how sixteen men (PLWHAs) negotiate their identities by contesting the authority of biomedical definitions (Persson et al. 2003, 397).

Methodology Theoretical Framework The investigation of the present study is undertaken using the analytic paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) employed by Fairclough (2003). The emphasis of the analysis is on three areas: degree of dialogicality, recontextualisation of “voices” (in terms of accessibility and framing), and assumptions and values. First, the level of dialogicality is analysed whereby the “most dialogical option would be to explicitly attribute representations to sources, to ‘voices’” (Fairclough 2003, 46), while the least dialogical option would be assumption. Modalised assertions are ranked second most dialogical option, followed by non-modalised assertions. In other words, the level of dialogicality looks at the degree to which a statement is attributed to a source explicitly. The next step in analysis focuses on the recontextualisation of texts. The study examines the various voices that are given space in the text and the way they are woven together textually. This entails examining how they are recontextualised (i.e. as direct discourse-DD, indirect discourse-

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ID, free indirect discourse-FID, and narrative report of speech act-NRSA) in the new context and how they are framed in relation to each other and in relation to the writer’s voice. The analysis looks at how some voices are included while others are not, and whose voices are significantly included or excluded in the text. In addition, the analysis identifies how framing can cast a group in a favourable or unfavourable light, and how voices can be ordered (i.e. how the different voices are integrated in a text) in relation to each other. At this point, the focus is on the forms of reporting, the representation of the subject or topic or process, the structure of the text, and the linguistic devices (e.g. hedging, sentences connectors) used in the framing of the text. Finally, the analysis encompasses assumption. There are three types of assumptions listed by Fairclough (2003, 55-56): existential assumptions (assumptions about what exists), factual or propositional assumptions (assumptions about what is or can be or will be the case), and value assumptions (assumptions about what is good or desirable). This study concentrates on value assumptions.

Data The data for the study was obtained from newspaper articles published between 2003 and 2005 in two local dailies: The Star and The New Straits Times. A total of 41 issues contained articles on AIDS during that period. The articles covered various aspects of AIDS, ranging from the number of victims to activities organised to raise funds for AIDS victims.

Results and Discussion The results of the analysis show how AIDS is represented in the newspaper articles.

Discrimination and Stigma Discrimination and stigma are closely linked in the AIDS context. Discrimination is achieved through the unobtrusive use of various linguistic strategies (Fowler 1999, 110). The power of discourse in facilitating and maintaining discrimination against members of groups is tremendous (Fowler 1999, 94; Reeves 1996, 141), as evident in Excerpt 1 below.

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GOVERNMENT ACTION KEY TO CHANGE Marina said she hoped the Prime Minister will make HIV/AIDS a priority because the devastation from the disease can be enormous. “We have a caring government and caring society. We cannot afford not to pay attention to HIV,” Marina stressed. “The four-minute video presentation had the women talking about the issues faced by HIV+ women, their hopes and a profile of themselves,” said Nik Fahmee. “They also outlined ways where people could move forward.” On the statement, Nik Fahmee said it was drawn up based on feedback from a focus group comprising HIV+ women, caregivers, other people affected by HIV/AIDS, and young girls. “We decided that the best way to capture all this was by having a video rather than writing their experiences on paper,” he said. “With this, we are hoping people will realize that those who are living with HIV/AIDS are part of our society,” he added. Nik Fahmee also said the MAC was pleased that Abdullah viewed confidentiality and discrimination as important issues. “The Prime Minister seemed intrigued when watching the video presentation. Midway, he said that HIV+ women should not be discriminated, as they were human beings who were living their lives like everyone else,” said Nik Fahmee. “We are very happy that World AIDS Day was marked with advocacy. It was our strategy to mobilize positive women to sit down, come up with the issues and challenges and meet the Prime Minister,” he added. The joint statement identified two core issues that needed to be addressed: lack of basic awareness about HIV/AIDS, and gender inequality. It also noted that 18 years after the first HIV case was detected in this country, prejudice and discrimination were still prevalent even among those who provide financial and medical assistance and families of those who are infected with the virus. (The Sunday Star, 5 December 2004, 30)

Excerpt 1 above shows a high level of dialogicality where many of the statements made are attributed to specific agents: Marina Mahathir (President of Malaysian AIDS Council) and Nik Fahmee Nik Hussin (executive director of Malaysian AIDS Council). The inclusion of “voices” or accessed voices are specific agents, AIDS activists (Marina Mahathir, Nik Fahmee Nik Hussin). However, although this article is about fighting discrimination and stigma against PLWHAs, the voices of HIV/AIDS victims themselves are excluded from the text. The exclusion of voices from PLWHAs seems to accentuate the stigma and discrimination faced by this group of people. Goffman (1963) points

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out that stigma is a social product generated by social interactions in which potentially stigmatising attributes are relevant to either party’s expectations. Thus, the discrepancy between a normal person and the stigmatised person “spoils” the social identity and limits the level of social acceptance (Alonzo and Reynolds 1995). The sick are the subjects in social discourse, which locates them in society, and which “gives them rights and obligations out of which their capacities and opportunities in other spheres of life are expanded or more often curtailed” (Billig et al. 1989, 84). In this instance, the PLWHAs’ rights are curtailed when they are not given a chance to be heard. Instead, their views are heard only through the AIDS activists. In terms of framing, the ordering of voices shows that there are instances of DD (e.g., “‘We have a caring government and caring society. We cannot afford not to pay attention to HIV,’ Marina stressed”), ID (e.g., “…Nik Fahmee said it was drawn up based on feedback from a focus group comprising HIV+ women, caregivers, other people affected by HIV/AIDS, and young girls”), FID (e.g., “It also noted that 18 years after the first HIV case was detected in this country…”), and NRSA (e.g., “The joint statement identified two core issues that needed to be addressed…”). What is of interest here is the presence of a frame within a frame: the Prime Minister’s voice is framed within Nik Fahmee’s voice (i.e. “‘The Prime Minister seemed intrigued when watching the video presentation. Midway, he said that HIV+ women should not be discriminated, as they were human beings who were living their lives like everyone else,’ said Nik Fahmee”). This frame within a frame is important because it creates a sense of ambivalence about the Prime Minister’s exact words. The reader will not know for certain what the Prime Minister said. In terms of assumption of values, it can be observed that the article highlights society’s treatment towards PLWHAs as something undesirable (e.g. “prejudice and discrimination were still prevalent”). What is deemed desirable or positive would be the Prime Minister’s stand towards the cause (e.g., “MAC was pleased that Abdullah viewed confidentiality and discrimination as important issues”).

AIDS and Hope AIDS is usually associated with hopelessness, as the search for a vaccine or cure remains elusive. However, great strides made in the discovery and availability of cheaper antiretroviral drugs (HIV-AIDS drugs) for treating AIDS, as well as financial aid for victims, have raised some hope among

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the victims. Excerpt 2 below is an article on how the sense of hope has increased among the victims in Malaysia. Excerpt 2. HOPE AND HELP Prices of antiretroviral drugs have gradually gone down through the years following price reductions from pharmaceutical companies, and the availability of generic versions late last year. In the late 1990s, however, many HIV+ people died because they could not afford the medicine. MAF initiated the People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) Drug Assistance Scheme in 1998 to help poor HIV+ patients get treatment. For some, treatment had enabled them to continue working and caring for their family for years. Under the scheme, patients receive sponsorship for one antiretroviral drug, and three viral load tests in a year. As of May, the scheme has helped almost 100 patients. It costs MAF about RM480,000 a year to sustain it. Another important scheme supported by MAF is the Paediatric AIDS Scheme. Kamariah received RM80 a month for her four-year-old HIV+ son, Amir, from the scheme. It may not be much to some, but the assistance came as a relief to Kamariah. With two other children, Kamariah said it is difficult to manage on her security guard husband’s salary. “My first husband infected me. After he died, my family forced me to marry Hassan. He only found out that I was HIV+ when Amir was born HIV+. We both get free medicine from the government. At first, he was angry, but the doctors counseled him,” said Kamariah… MAF also sponsors Amir’s transportation cost to access treatment at the hospital, and viral tests every year. Launched in 1996, the scheme helps HIV/AIDS infected and affected children, including AIDS orphans. The scheme has supported 366 children since then. There are now 250 children on the scheme; 68 are HIV+. MAF spent RM5,000 a month in 2000, but the cost of supporting the scheme now has gone up to an average of RM24,000 a month. (The Star, 30 June 2004, p. 5)

The level of dialogicality in Excerpt 2 above is rather low as the excerpt contains mainly non-modalised assertions, where the statements made are taken to be true, with no room for hedging. Also, there are no attributive agents to these assertions. The only visible accessed “voice” belongs to Kamariah, a PLWHAs. Ironically, the “voice” of MAF (Malaysian AIDS Foundation) is excluded from the excerpt. This is considered salient as unlike Excerpt 1, the voice of PLWHAs is heard while the AIDS activists are “heard” through PLWHAs. This is probably a strategy to emphasise the good work that is

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being carried out by MAF, as many advertisers also utilise the strategy of using a celebrity or satisfied client to endorse their product. Thus, by allowing Kamariah, a beneficiary of MAF’s good work, to speak, MAF has succeeded indirectly in demonstrating the success of their good work. In the analysis for framing in terms of ordering of voices, there is evidence of only one DD (“‘My first husband infected me. After he died, my family forced me to marry Hassan. He only found out that I was HIV+ when Amir was born HIV+. We both get free medicine from the government. At first, he was angry, but the doctors counselled him,’ said Kamariah…”) and one ID (e.g. “Kamariah said it is difficult to manage on her security guard husband’s salary”). Both DD and ID are attributed to one specific agent: Kamariah, a HIV+ person. The concept of “hope” is recontextualised and represented to the reader through the many examples of schemes being offered by MAF to people like Kamariah. In addition, Kamariah’s personal account of how MAF’s Paediatric AIDS Scheme helped to ease her burden further stresses the notion of “hope” among the beneficiaries and hopeful beneficiaries. The value assumption from the above excerpt implies that the work being carried out by MAF is deemed desirable (e.g., “the scheme has helped almost 100 patients” and, “Launched in 1996, the scheme helps HIV/AIDS infected and affected children, including AIDS orphans”). What is also deemed undesirable is patients dying because of not being able to afford treatment (e.g., “In the late 1990s, however, many HIV+ people died because they could not afford the medicine”).

Awareness Equals Empowerment Over the years, AIDS has become a disease that many know about. However, many myths surround the disease, and to dispel them, the authorities concerned have sought to raise the level of public awareness towards AIDS. By educating the public, the authorities hope that the public will be empowered to make more informed judgments about the disease. Excerpt 3 below is an article exemplifying such efforts. Excerpt 3. HIV AWARENESS FOR NS TRAINEES Having an awareness programme on HIV/AIDS as a module for national service trainees is being considered by the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN The Ministry’s parliamentary secretary Chew Mei Fun said: “We want to have a more focused awareness programme on the issue. It will be a right move to increase awareness in reproductive health.” She said this yesterday after receiving a survey report from the Malaysia AIDS Council on Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS in conjunction with International Women’s Day. She said the ministry would submit a report to the Cabinet after it had worked with relevant parties like the Health Ministry and the Malaysian AIDS Council to draw up a proposal for such programmes. “We are looking for suggestions from the Malaysian AIDS Council to include this in the Ninth Malaysia Plan as AIDS is one aspect that concerns family health,” Chew said. The survey found that almost 40% of respondents agreed that they would not be at risk of contracting HIV if they stayed faithful to their partners. Some did not know that a woman has the right to refuse to have sex with her partner if she suspects him of engaging in high risk sexual behaviours. Factory workers and unemployed women had the lowest level of knowledge. On the results of the survey, Chew said that people living with HIV/AIDS needed the help of others to build a support system. “Men are also in danger and they need to be aware of the need for a health lifestyle. Women need to be alerted to the wrong perception that they will not be infected if they were faithful,” she added. (The Star, 9 March 2005, 20)

Excerpt 3 above shows a high level of dialogicality and statements being attributed directly to specific agents: Chew Mei Fun (Women, Family and Community Development Ministry’s Parliamentary Secretary) and the survey. Chew and the survey are the two voices heard in the text. The accessed or included voices belong to the political figure, Chew Mei Fun, and a text, namely, a survey report from the Malaysia AIDS Council on Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS. On the other hand, there is a notable exclusion of voices from NS trainees although the article said that the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry was proposing “an awareness programme on HIV/AIDS as a module for national service trainees”. The exclusion thus deprives the NS trainees from making their point of view heard on this proposed module. In framing, the ordering of voices is illustrated in DD (e.g., “We want to have a more focused awareness programme on the issue. It will be a right move to increase awareness in reproductive health.”), ID (e.g., “She said the ministry would submit a report to the Cabinet…”), FID (e.g., “Having an awareness programme on HIV/AIDS as a module for national

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service trainees is being considered by the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry’) and NRSA (e.g., “The survey found that almost 40% of respondents agreed that they would not be at risk of contracting HIV if they stayed faithful to their partners”). The concept of promoting awareness to empower the public is recontextualised and represented to the reader in a favourable light as AIDS is considered a national health issue (e.g., “We want to have a more focused awareness programme on the issue. It will be a right move to increase awareness in reproductive health” and “AIDS is one aspect that concerns family health”) that many are still ignorant about (e.g., “Factory workers and unemployed women had the lowest level of knowledge”). The value assumption underlying the above excerpt is that awareness among the public is desirable (e.g., “It will be a right move to increase awareness in reproductive health”), as is support from society (e.g. PLWHAs need support from society (e.g. “Chew said that people living with HIV/AIDS needed the help of others to build a support system”). The excerpt also suggests that society tends to consider women’s refusal to have sex with partners undesirable (e.g. “Some did not know that a woman has the right to refuse to have sex with her partner if she suspects him of engaging in high risk sexual behaviours. Factory workers and unemployed women had the lowest level of knowledge”). In addition, the excerpt throws aspersions on men’s current lifestyle (e.g. “Men are also in danger and they need to be aware of the need for a health lifestyle”).

People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs): Representation of the Other Many people who are struck by the HIV virus (PLWHAs) have written about the impact of media reporting on their sense of self-worth, hopes for the future, and indeed their own health (Dreuille 1988; Rieder and Ruppelt 1989; Moore 1995; Williams 1999, 69). Research by Hays et al. (1993), reveals that some gay men choose not to disclose their HIV positive status to keep family members from worrying about them, to avoid discriminatory treatment at work, to prevent the disruption of personal relationships, or because there will be little or no benefit in disclosing it. However, more opportunities are now being given to PLWHAs to voice their grievances and opinions on AIDS. Most of the time, their voices are heard in the form of a narrative, as a strategy to make their plight more human. Below (Excerpt 4) is an example of a PLWHA’s narrative on her life.

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212 Excerpt 4.

LIFE GOES ON FOR HIV+ INMATES Emma (not her real name) only found out that she was HIV+ during a routine medical check-up soon after she was jailed for pushing drugs. She knew little about the disease, and was completely distraught when she was told there was not cure for HIV infection. But it was not death she feared most. The tough-looking, short-haired 22-year-old Klang girl was more worried about being rejected by her family. “I thought they’d shun me. Luckily they did not when I informed them on one of their visits. They were sobbing non-stop, yet they cared for me even more dearly. I am so thankful…” She suspects that she was infected while sharing her HIV+ friend’s contaminated needle. Emma shares a prison block with 35 other HIV+ prisoners – known as tawakal. The arrangement is to facilitate their care and treatment. “We share the same plight, so we understand each other well. I could not walk properly during the first few months here due to the fall. Without the friends here, I would not have been able to stand on my own feet again.” HIV+ prisoners are however not isolated from the others. During the day, they mix freely with other inmates. They are usually assigned work with minimal risks of injuries, such as batik painting and ironing clothes. Most HIV+ inmates are assigned cleaning jobs. Being HIV+, said Emma, is “just normal”. All she needed to do was to observe her hygiene, and be careful about wounding herself. HIV+ prisoners go for a medical check-up at a clinic in the compound every Wednesday. They are given symptomatic treatment, but those with more serious complications will be referred to hospitals. Prison officers practise universal precaution when escorting HIV+ patients. They wear gloves to minimise the risk of being infected as some have open wounds and skin diseases. (The Sunday Star, 20 March 2005 p.25)

The level of dialogicality in Excerpt 4 above is quite high. There is a mixture of non-modalised assertions and also statements attributed to a specific agent (i.e., Emma, a HIV+ inmate). The accessed voice belongs to Emma, a HIV+ prison inmate, although the name used has been changed to protect her real identity. This can be seen as a form of pseudo-accessed voice because Emma’s real name cannot be revealed to the reader. Thus, she does not really have access to the media. In addition, her photo is also not shown in the article. The excluded voices are those of the prison officers, Emma’s family members, and also other HIV+ and non-HIV+ inmates. The inclusion and exclusions

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are significant because of several reasons. First, the inclusion of voice belongs to only one person, Emma, and it is not her real name. Second, we hear only Emma’s side of the story without hearing the views of the nonaccessed voices. Thus, the reader is not able to gauge the situation from the point of view of the prison officers or Emma’s family members in reaction to Emma’s condition. Neither do we hear direct testimonials from other HIV+ and non-HIV+ inmates regarding their feelings toward each other. Most statements have been recontextualised in the authorial account. (So… what does this mean?) In terms of framing, the ordering of voices are in DD (e.g. “I thought they’d shun me…”) and NRSA (e.g., “She suspects that she was infected while sharing her HIV+ friend’s contaminated needle”) by Emma. There is also evidence of a frame within a frame, when Emma recounts her family’s reaction towards her HIV+ status (e.g., “I thought they’d shun me. Luckily they did not when I informed them on one of their visits. They were sobbing non-stop, yet they cared for me even more dearly.”). The positive value assumptions that can be made in the excerpt are the supportive reaction of Emma’s family towards her seropositivity, mutual support among HIV+ inmates and also with other non-HIV+ inmates, and the handling of the HIV+ inmates by prison officers according to “universal precaution”. The negative values are being HIV+, sharing of needles and also being HIV+ with open wounds and skin diseases. From the excerpt above, Emma’s account is a typical example of how PLWHAs feel they are being treated by society: ostracized, “pariah”. This feeling has become so “acceptable” that if they were treated differently (as in the case of Emma’s family), then they express surprise and are grateful for this treatment. Otherwise, PLWHAs have come to accept the fact that they are being treated as outsiders, and not part of the society.

Conclusion From the articles analysed above, it is interesting to note that the Malaysian media is actually making efforts to bring awareness to the society by using PLWHAs as a spokesperson in their newspaper article. In other words, the media is allocating space to the PLWHAs to air their views, as opposed to the usual case of just allowing people with authority to have their say. In addition, the incorporation of “an awareness programme on HIV/AIDS as a module for national service trainees” is a progressive step towards educating the future leaders of the country on this disease. This augurs well for the PLWHAs in Malaysia. However, it is

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interesting to note that even though PLWHAs’ voices are heard, their identity is being kept a secret where their names have been changed. Malaysia is trying her best to curb AIDS and also providing cheap treatment to as many PLWHAs as possible. However, it is undeniable that negative sentiments towards PLWHAs still exist as evident in the representation of the disease in the media reports above. To bring about a change is a two-way process between the media and the society and only time will tell if AIDS will eventually be treated as any other disease.

References Alonzo, A. A. and N. R. Reynolds. 1995. Stigma, HIV and AIDS: An Explanation and Elaboration of a Stigma Trajectory. Social Science and Medicine 41: 303-15. Baumgartner, L. M. 2002. Living and Learning with HIV/AIDS: Transformational Tales Continued. Adult Education Quarterly 53 (1): 44-59. Billig, M., S. Condor, D. Edwards, M. Gane, D. Middleton, and A. R. Radley. 1989. Ideological Dilemmas: A Social Psychology of Everyday Thinking. London: Sage. Crossley, M. L. 1999. Making Sense of HIV Infection: Discourse and Adaptation to Life with a Long-term HIV Positive Diagnosis. Health 3(1): 95-119. Dreuille, E. 1988. Mortal Embrace: Living with AIDS. New York: Hill and Wang. Fairclough, N. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. Fowler, R. 1999. Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: Routledge. Goffman, E. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Hays, R. B., L. McKusick, L. Pollack, R. Hilliard, C. Hoff, and T. J. Coates. 1993. Disclosing HIV Seropositivity to Significant Others. AIDS 7: 425-431. Long, T. L. 2000. Plague of Pariahs: AIDS ‘Zines and the Rhetoric of Transgression. Journal of Communication Inquiry 24(4): 401-411. Louw, E. 2001. The Media and Cultural Production. London: Sage. Lupton, D. 1999. Editorial: Health, illness and medicine in the media. Health 3(3): 259-262. Lynch, J. 2000. AIDS Time: Representing AIDS in an age of anxiety. Time & Society 9(2/3): 247-267.

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Moore, O. 27 Sept 1995. AIDS: Redrawing the Battle Line. The Guardian 7. Persson, A., K. Race and E. Wakeford. 2003. HIV health in context: Negotiating medical technology and lived experience. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 7(4): 397-415. Reeves, C. 1996. Language, Rhetoric, and AIDS: The Attitudes and Strategies of Key AID Medical Scientists and Physicians. Written Communication 13(1): 130-57. Rieder, I., and R. Patricia. 1989. Matters of Life and Death: Women Speak About AIDS. London: Virago. Sontag, S. 1991. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors. London: Penguin. Treichler, P. 1992. AIDS and HIV Infection in the Third World: A First World Chronicle. In AIDS: The Making of a Chronic Disease, ed. Fee, E. and D. M. Fox: 377-412. Berkeley: University of California Press. Williams, K. 1999. Dying of Ignorance? Journalists, News Sources and the Media Reporting of HIV/AIDS. In Social Policy, the Media and Misrepresentation, ed. Franklin, B.: 69-86. London: Routledge.

CHAPTER TWELVE “US” AND “THEM” IN DIFFERENT TIMES AND SPACE RAMESH NAIR, UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA, MALAYSIA

Language use in media texts is the result of the linguistic choices made by the producers of these texts. It is for this reason that Fowler (1991, 1) describes language as being “a highly constructive mediator.” When something is reported in a newspaper, the language used reflects choices that are made from different ways of saying the same thing and these differences carry ideological distinctions. Using critical discourse analysis as an approach to uncover the relationship between text structure and issues of power and ideology, I explore the way in which people from neighbouring countries are depicted in two mainstream newspapers in Malaysia. The analysis involves selected articles that position Malaysians in relation to people of these neighbouring countries at two different points in space and time. The first selection of articles reports on the now commonly repeated exercise of deporting illegal immigrant workers from Malaysia while the second set of articles reports on the suffering of people in neighbouring Indonesia in the aftermath of tsunami disaster. At the level of text, I attempt to identify core lexical and grammatical features that appear to favour particular groups of individuals over others. At the level of discourse practice, I focus on how norms of production and interpretation foreground and background different aspects of the social identity of the participants. Finally, at the level of social practice, I explore the stereotypes that are recreated from an already established ideology that reflects “us” as being more superior to “them”.

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Introduction Language use in media texts is the result of the linguistic choices made by the producers of these texts. It is for this reason that Fowler (1991, 1) describes language as being “a highly constructive mediator.” When something is reported in a newspaper, reflects choices that are made from different ways of saying the same thing and these differences carry ideological distinctions. However, the terms “critical”, “discourse” and “ideology” in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as an approach are sometimes understood differently and this has in the past resulted in some debate among practitioners and critics of CDA. Therefore, it is important that I begin this paper by setting boundaries for these terms, and I do so by adopting the definitions provided by other critical discourse analysts. First, I rely on van Dijk’s (2003, 356) definition of “discourse” as the representation of “complex communicative events”, realised through the semiotic modes of text and talk. Access to and control of the context and structures of text and talk determine power, and such determinants of power relations include, among others, “controlling the setting (time, place), ongoing actions, the participants in various communicative, social, or institutional roles, as well as their mental representations: goals, knowledge, opinions, attitudes, and ideologies” (van Dijk 2003, 356). Text and talk therefore do not exist in a vacuum; rather, they are shaped by as well as help shape society. Next, I adopt Fairclough’s definition of “ideology” as “assumptions which are built into practices which sustain relations of domination, usually in a covert way” (2002, 152). These assumptions are often realised through discursive practice, that is, the systematic way of using language that serves as an effective tool given the subtle way by which it is able to transmit ideology. An analysis of media texts, specifically language use in media texts, can therefore reveal both the (common) sense-making practices that already circulate within a society and the sense-making practices that are dictated through media texts. Finally, I view the term “critical” in CDA from two perspectives. CDA is first “critical” in the sense that it aims to reveal societal power operations that more often than not go unnoticed in discourse. The reason they go unnoticed is because such operations are often effectively concealed in and legitimated through language. On this point, Garnsey and Rees (1996, 1049) submit that: …structural inequalities can be encoded in discourse in such a way as to appear natural and unremarkable, so as to become accepted and acceptable in the cognitive schema we use to perceive the world.

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It is for this reason that critical discourse analysts rely upon a linguistic analysis. Fowler (1991, 89) posits that by “using appropriate linguistic tools, and referring to relevant historical and social contexts”, analysts can “bring ideology, normally hidden through the habitualisation of discourse, to the surface for inspection”. Further, the “critical” in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) also implies that the values and beliefs of researchers cannot be divorced from their work; instead, “the researchers’ own interests and knowledge unavoidably shape their research” (Wodak 1999, 186). In this sense, CDA is indeed “politically engaged” and is an approach that one takes to “uncover injustice in discourse” (Blackledge 2003, 337). Acknowledging Wodak’s (1999, 186) point that analysts’ interests and knowledge “unavoidably shape” their research, I need to briefly outline my own values and beliefs with regard to the issue I address in this paper. I have had little personal contact with immigrant workers about whom I write here. I see them around as many Malaysians do and though I do not know them, I have formed certain preconceived notions about them. These notions are predominantly negative. I see them as generally poor, uneducated, even criminal, and in a nutshell, being of “lower status” than myself and for that matter, all Malaysians. After all, they are in this country to do jobs that we Malaysians simply refuse to do. Views such as these are ethno-nationalist in nature and in many ways are located within a racist ideology. Indeed, racism, as van Dijk (1993, 5 cited in Blackledge 2003, 331) argues: …is not the preserve of extremist groups but instead involves the everyday mundane, negative opinions, attitudes and ideologies and the seemingly subtle acts and conditions of discrimination against minorities.

What is of concern, then, is how such ideology is “prepared, promulgated, and legitimated through political, educational, and media discourses” (Wodak and Reisigl 2003, 372).

Shaping ideologies in media discourse Between the months of January 2005 and February 2005, news of yet another “crackdown” on illegal immigrants dominated the local Malaysian newspapers. I realise that much of how I view immigrant workers has been shaped by what I have read in the papers and watched on television. Media discourse is a crucial element of the reproduction of ideologies in contemporary societies in that the mediated discourse is shaped by and helps to shape social structures and relations in a society based on

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inequalities of power and opportunity. Healey (2000, 223) contends that the degrading views some of us have of immigrant workers in Malaysia are, among others, “borne out of letters to the national newspapers, newspaper editorials, and the pronouncements of politicians and other public figures as reported in the media”. Any analysis, therefore, which is aimed at understanding how such an ideology of inequality and discrimination is manifest through language in Malaysian media texts must take into account the critical dimension outlined above. This is because one of the fundamentals of CDA is the premise that textual meaning includes ideological meaning. Accordingly, Jeffries (2003) contends that: …although it would not be possible to fully determine the extent to which producers hold the ideologies of a text as self-evident, or wish the reader to do so, a linguistic and intertextual analysis, can help establish which are the more naturalized ideologies in a text…[and that]…whatever the critical stance of the reader, and however conscious or unconscious the producer’s intention, the stylistic preferences of a body of texts has the potential for forming general ideological meanings and the media has a greater influence because of the generally accepted truth-value of newspaper reporting and the self-proclaimed status of local newspapers as champions of the people (Jeffries 2003, 513-515).

Further, regardless of our opposing views about what we read in media texts, we need to operate through the lens of a “compliant reader” if we are to read effectively; however, the risk in this is that there is a possibility that “consistent textual naturalization” of ideologies may eventually affect our own schema and the construction of our own sense-making processes (Jeffries 2003, 516). Put differently, our everyday experiences with language that involves compliant reader viewpoints together with our personal views may in time “naturalise” and render as “common sense” the very ideologies that we were opposed to initially.

Immigrant workers in the Malaysian media Employing CDA calls for a researcher to analyse texts “within a wider social and cultural context of media practices, including relations of power and ideologies” (Fairclough 1995, 33). In this paper, I look at the construction of illegal immigrant workers from neighbouring countries during the deportation exercise in early 2005 and compare them to the reports of the suffering of the same people during the aftermath of tsunami. To get a sense of how these people are positioned in the

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Malaysian media, it is necessary to be aware of the “discourses that have been circulating in society” and to be aware of “the various institutional practices” that determine the way in which linguistic practices are selected to benefit some while disempowering others (Shakila 2001, 35) I will now attempt to provide an overview of the wider social and cultural context of media practices in Malaysia with respect to the issues at hand. Malaysia has long battled with the problem of illegal immigrant workers. At the time of the publication of the series of reports on illegal immigrants in early 2005, there was a renewed commitment on the part of the Malaysian government to rid the nation of illegal immigrant workers. The Malaysian government often uses the media “to voice its official viewpoints” and with the control of mainstream national dailies by “local conglomerates which have very close links with political parties in the ruling coalition”, it is difficult to find “neutral or alternative points of view” in the mainstream dailies (Healey 2000, 228). With regard to foreign workers, the Malaysian media has often been used to give “ready and consistent expression of public opinions, attitudes and actions, together with government announcements and policy justifications” all with the aim of constructing foreign workers as temporary immigrants (Healey 2000, 228). In recent decades, especially during the 1980s and 1990s, the number of blue-collar immigrant workers in Malaysia increased dramatically as her economy grew strongly, and infrastructure projects mushroomed all over the country. As the presence of foreign workers was being increasingly felt in many areas of Malaysian life, the local media began positioning itself as the voice of an uneasy Malaysian populace and this was evident through the observably “hardening” of the language used when referring to immigrant workers–“from being nominalised as ‘irregular migration’ in 1976, illegal immigrant workers were referred to as ‘illegal immigrants’ [glossed in Malay as pendatang haram] in the 1980s, followed by ‘illegals’ in the mid-1980s and ‘aliens’ by the mid1990s” (Healey 2000, 231).

Linguistic Analysis Picking up from Healey’s (2000) observation on the terms of reference for illegal immigrants in Malaysia, it is important to understand the important role of language in transmitting ideology. Language serves as an ideal tool for covertly transmitting ideological viewpoints and is therefore a powerful tool of the media. In the case of news discourse, for example, Fowler (1991) submits that language essentially constructs reality for the

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public. In highlighting the role of language in encoding political views, Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2) posit that the encoding takes place at two levels, namely, vocabulary and grammatical structures which include choices made between “describing an event as a noun (‘death’) or by making it into a verb (‘kill’)” that then requires the naming of the active subject and the object. Such encoding exemplifies the choices that are constantly made when using language, and what is finally decided upon carries ideological distinctions. Shakila (2001, 34) opines that the linguistic selections that are made to represent events and people are choices that “favour certain ways of seeing and reading.” For the analysis at the level of text, I relied on two frameworks applied widely in CDA: a lexical analysis, and a transitivity analysis, respectively. Both frameworks were employed with the aim of focusing on language used by the newspaper to portray immigrant workers, specifically “the consistent lexical, phrasal and clausal selections employed to endorse or ratify the dominant discourses” (Shakila, 2001, 36). The texts for this study were all taken from two mainstream newspapers. Lexical selections made when labelling a person or describing an event serve as a clue to the “innate ability” humans possess to categorize “our shared theories of the world” (Smith 1994, 8). This ability to categorise, however, may form “a discursive basis for practices of discrimination” Fowler (1991, 93). In this study, I am particularly interested in identifying the ways in which immigrant workers are categorised and if the lexical choices made reflect discriminatory practices. A lexical analysis will, therefore, allow me to identify how representations of the immigrant worker are coded in vocabulary. The corollary to this is, as Shakila (2001, 37) says, how linguistic choices “favour certain ways of seeing and reading while other ways are muzzled or repressed.” A transitivity analysis, on the other hand, probes ideological patterns at a deeper linguistic level and it is at this level that Fairclough (2001) argues ideology transmission works best. The need for a transitivity analysis of text is very much based on the premise that “grammar and discourse cannot be separated” (Stubbs 2002, 102). Halliday (2002, 304) describes grammar as “the powerhouse of a language as it is the source of energy for our semiotic encounters with each other and with our environment.” Every clause, therefore, encodes a “representation of the world” and language used to do this signifies choices that are made to represent the world (Stubbs 2002, 102). The transitivity analysis subsequently allows me to identify how characters are positioned in clauses with respect to other characters. On transitivity, Fairclough (2001, 100) points to the experiential aspects of grammar that have to do with ways in which “the

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grammatical forms of a language code happenings or relationships in the world, and the people or animals or things involved in those happenings or relationships.” He adds that when an action is represented textually, a choice needs to be made from the “different grammatical process and participant types,” and it is this selection process that can be “ideologically significant” (Fairclough 2001, 100). In this paper, I rely on a transitivity analysis to help me identify how participants are ascribed a role (agent, senser, or sayer) that allows them to affect others (affected, target, or phenomenon). A transitivity analysis is grounded in the Hallidayan view that a clause represents “a conception of reality as it consists of ‘goings-on’: of doing, happening, feeling, being” (Halliday 1985, 101). This form of analysis therefore reveals the kinds of predicate or verb that social actors are made participants of. Hence, a transitivity analysis allows for educated interpretations to be made with regard to the nature of the relationship between the participants.

Findings of the Lexical Analysis In the recent articles on the large number of illegal immigrant workers in Malaysia, and the government’s efforts to deport them, the workers were generally referred to as “illegal immigrants” or just simply “illegals”. These terms were, however, used in proximity with other pejorative epithets to characterise them and their presence in the country. Among other terms of reference were: “stubborn”, “hard-headed”, “illegal people”, “aliens”, “troublemakers”, and “defiant immigrants”. In one short article on Filipino immigrant workers in the state of Sabah, pejorative terms were applied repeatedly to drive home the meaning that they were stubborn and hard-headed and therefore, troublemakers: (1) Stubborn Filipinos refuse to go home (2) Some hard-headed Filipinos in Sabah are giving their embassy officials a headache. (3) Some of them are simply hard-headed, said the Philippines Embassy consul-general Antonio Morales.

The word “hardheaded” was used once by a Philippines Embassy official (3). The reporter, however, took this direct quotation and ran it in a report, linking it with the synonym “stubborn”. This is a clear example of a linguistic choice that was made “out of all the available options in the linguistic system” (Shakila 2001, 35).

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Another interesting comparison in lexical choices was found in two articles that appeared one day apart. In the first, it was reported that Kuala Lumpur saw an “alien invasion” as foreigners “took over the city”. The article reveals that foreigners in this context were immigrant labour workers who were taking advantage of the Chinese New Year holidays to visit places in Kuala Lumpur. In contrast, another article the next day reported about Penang (a state in the north of Malaysia) being “jammed with visitors”. In this article, “visitors” were “locals and holiday-makers” and “foreign tourists” visiting the island state during the Chinese New Year holidays. Therefore, in comparison, while immigrant workers “invaded” and “took over” Kuala Lumpur, Malaysians and tourist “jammed” Penang. Clearly, the lexical differences here reflect decisions, conscious or otherwise, that aim to categories “us” and “them” differently. Immigrant workers were also referred to as commodities to be owned when the term “labour” was used to refer to them in the following rhetorical question in a commentary that focused on the plight of the Malaysian government in handling the problem of illegal immigrant workers: (4) Should not Indonesia – and for that matter, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and India and other labour-exporting countries – control the outflow of their labour so that they will not burden the host country?

Within the context of the sentence above, “labour” would refer to immigrant workers whose “outflow” needed to be “controlled” as with any other commodity.

Findings of the Transitivity Analysis Someone or something placed in “the role of Agents/Sensers/Sayers are the ones whose actions can affect the Affected/Phenomenon/Target in clauses and therefore are more powerful” (Shakila 2001, 43). The analysis revealed that the immigrant workers were positioned in roles of Agents/Sensers/Sayers when the aim was apparently to portray them as a threat to Malaysia and her people, as in the following classification of text samples:

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Process

Affected

(5) Foreigners take over (6) The illegal immigrants broke (7) Indonesians, Bangladeshis, swarmed Nepaliese, Vietnamese Indians and Myanmars

KL city the law Suria KLCC and theKota Raya shopping complex area

Senser

Process

Phenomenon

(8) Stubborn Filipinos (9) Thousands of foreign workers

refuse decided

to go home to spend their day off at shopping complexes and leisure parks

Sayer

Process

Target

(not available)

There were no examples available for this verbalisation process because the workers were generally not referred to as individuals and therefore did not have any voice. Zhang (2002, 156) submits that what is unsaid is actually saying a lot: “as in any asymmetrical society where discourse power exists alongside economic and political power,” these immigrants are “devoiced and denied the right to speak, becoming the subjects of what others talk about, and seldom having the opportunity or power to refute or confirm what others say of them.” However, in other instances, when there was a need to show up the more powerful Malaysian authorities in control of the situation, the roles of Agents/Sensers/Sayers were clearly reserved for them: Agent (Doer)

Process

Affected

(10) We (11) The government (12) We

have done (our best) will arrest delayed

(to assist) them. illegal workers. the action [to deport].

Senser

Process

Phenomenon

(13) The Malaysian Employers Federation (14) Malaysia

wants accorded

employers to settle up… humanitarian treatment to immigrants.

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Sayer

Process

Target

(15) The authorities

warned

those caught trying to leave…

(16) The Immigration Enforcement Director

warned

the illegals…

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The examples above clearly reflect the effectiveness of a transitivity analysis in unpacking the underlying hegemonic discourses that are played out in media texts concerning immigrant workers. While reports of the Malaysian government’s efforts to deport illegal immigrant workers were underway, an Indonesian Minister was quoted as saying that Malaysia’s immigration laws, which include whipping and jail for illegal immigrants and their errant employers, were not enforced fairly, with little action taken against employers. The minister then announced that the Indonesian government would be engaging “top Malaysian lawyers” and suing Malaysian employers who were allegedly cheating illegal immigrant workers out of their wages. This issue was then taken up in Malaysian editorial columns. One entitled “There’s no need to bite the hand of friendship” portrayed the Indonesian government’s actions as “unneighbourly and uncalled for”. Even when addressing the wrongdoing of Malaysian employers in not paying their workers, the sentence structure clearly attributed the greater blame to the illegal workers: (17) While it is a violation for employers to hire illegal workers and certainly wrong for some companies to cheat their workers, the illegal immigrants broke the law by smuggling themselves into Malaysia, in the first place.

In sentence (17), notice how the main clause focuses attention on illegal immigrants who broke the law, while the subordinate clause recognises that it is “wrong” for some companies to cheat their workers. A similar structure underlies sentence (18) below where the responsibility of other countries in “controlling” illegal immigrants leaving their shores is clearly highlighted in the main clause. This apportioning of responsibility, and blame, in turn downplays Malaysia’s dependence on immigrant workers for its economic development. (18) While it is true that Malaysia relies on migrant labour to work its plantation and construction sectors, should not Indonesia – and for that matter, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and India and other labour exporting countries – control the outflow of their labour so that they will not burden the host country?

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An interesting development, which resulted from the allegation that Malaysian employers were not paying Indonesian immigrant workers their wages, was the creation of yet another “us” and “them” division. This time, Malaysian employers were positioned as “them”, indicating an effort on the part of the newspapers to distance these employers from the rest of the Malaysians, and more importantly from the Malaysian authorities: (19) It’s up to the police whether to deny bail to employers caught with more than five illegal immigrants during these raids (20) Ishak said the operation to arrest and charge the remaining 400000 illegal workers and their employers would continue until they were all flushed out. (21) Those employers who are taking advantage of the illegals’ predicament are of course doing something very wrong and their irresponsibility has put the country and government in a very bad light with the Indonesian government and its people. (22) Malaysians, too, do not condone such reckless acts by such employers. (23) They are also indirectly sabotaging the government’s efforts to get as many of such illegals as possible to return home voluntarily.

Sentences (19) and (20) clearly position the errant employers in proximity with the illegal immigrants, and in doing so establishes the expanding circle of “them” to include the unscrupulous, irresponsible Malaysian employers. Sentence (21) and (23) position the employers in the more powerful subject position with the government at the receiving end of their actions. Sentence (22) is an example of many other instances where an effort is made to stress that the government’s voice is the unified voice of “all” Malaysians. The issue of legal action by the Indonesian government finally culminated in a report of a meeting between the Malaysian Prime Minister and the Indonesian President. The exchange between the two leaders was reported using a dialogue format, making the exchanges seem almost like the exact conversation that took place between the two leaders: (24) That’s D-day for the remaining 400000 illegal immigrants in the country. This was the message conveyed by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at their bilateral meeting here yesterday. From March 1, the government will arrest illegal workers, charge them in court and deport them to their home countries.

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In response, Susilo thanked Malaysia for giving his countrymen, who make up the bulk of the illegal immigrants here, the opportunity to earn a living and pledged to improve Indonesia’s system to avoid them from entering illegally. Susilo admitted that his government faced problems in stopping Indonesians from entering Malaysia illegally but promised that Jakarta would be fully responsible to ensure that all its citizens came in legally.

In (24), the exchange is almost comical. The Malaysian premier warns of his government’s intention to arrest, charge and deport Indonesians. In response, the Indonesian president thanks Abdullah “for giving his countrymen … the opportunity to earn a living.” The president then goes on to admit flaws in his administration and promises improvements. The intention of the choices made in reporting the meeting between the two leaders is clear–to show that with respect to the deportation of illegal Indonesian immigrant workers, “we” have been right and “they” wrong. Even when it is acknowledged that the Malaysian authorities should share responsibility, the sentence is qualified with a subsequent clause that again asserts the superiority of “us”: (25) Malaysia, like any other country, is concerned about getting rid of illegal immigrants. Lack of enforcement and corruption may have contributed to the problem but it does not need another country to lecture it on what to do.

The examples provided thus far clearly reflect the positioning of the more superior “us” (Malaysians) in relation to “them” (immigrant workers). Malaysia’s decision to come down on illegal immigrant workers was fairly soon after the tsunami tidal waves wreaked havoc in Malaysia, and more devastatingly, in Indonesia. The newspapers in Malaysia were still carrying stories on the tsunami aftermath while reporting the government’s efforts to deport illegal immigrant workers. I was also interested in examining if such an ideology transcended the time and space of the deportation of immigrant workers from Malaysia. For this purpose, I decided to look at articles that appeared in the same mainstream dailies during the first week after the tsunami tidal waves hit Malaysian and Indonesian shores. Although Malaysia had suffered the loss of lives and damage to property together with the displacement of hundreds of people, it was interesting to note that reports on the impact of the tsunami in Indonesia, specifically in Banda Aceh, made it into the “National” news section of the newspapers and not relegated to the “World” news section. And so, space for reporting on the Tsunami disaster in Malaysia was

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reduced. The scale of the disaster in Malaysia was minuscule in comparison to the extent of the tsunami devastation in Banda Aceh. However, considering the fact that reports of the disaster in Banda Aceh made it into the local newspapers’ national news section within the first week after the tragedy, it merits reflection. Malaysians are often reminded of how fortunate they are to have been born in a country blessed with natural resources and attention is often drawn to the fact that unlike other countries in our region, we are not affected by natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and erupting volcanoes. When the tsunami struck on December 26th, this idea of being immune to natural disasters was shattered. Lives were lost and issues of preparedness were beginning to be raised. Questions were being raised as to why countries affected by the tsunami tidal waves did not have an early warning system in place. Questions were also raised on the local front on the quality of local emergency services in dealing with the disaster. Such issues obviously led to questions of accountability. By foregrounding the disaster in Banda Aceh and thereby reducing space for reports on what was happening along Malaysia’s own shorelines, the papers were effectively suppressing news that may have raised questions related to poor management and unpreparedness on the part of the powers-that-be. By focusing on the tragedy in Banda Aceh, attention was instead drawn to the fact that “we” were better off than “them” even though lives were lost and livelihoods were affected in our own country. The articles on Malaysians donating to victims in Banda Aceh appeared daily in our newspapers and electronic media, indicating again that the problem was in Indonesia, not Malaysia. Malaysian journalists reporting from Banda Aceh focused on suffering and loss of life, reporting on efforts of volunteers, not the Indonesian government, in handling the situation. In contrast, the relatively smaller number of reports on the after-effects of the Tsunami in the states of Penang and Kedah focused on government efforts to aid the victims and facilitate the return to normality. Again, the newspapers were consistent in promoting an ethno-nationalist ideology by downplaying the disaster at home and emphasising Malaysia’s efforts in aiding the Acehnese. Attention was drawn to this even in articles reporting on the deportation of immigrant workers. The purpose was to drive home the point of view that the Malaysian government was compassionate: (26) Especially given [that] the last two postponements[to deport] have been extended to all illegal immigrants, even though the ones affected by the tsunami are from Aceh alone. If Malaysia had really wanted to be mean and nitpick [sic], it could have gone after all those Indonesians who were not from Aceh.

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Malaysia is not the enemy. In fact, it was the first to arrive with aid for the tsunami victims. Given its linguistic similarities, other international aid organisations sought Malaysia’s help for translations [sic]. And today, Malaysia wants to help rebuild Banda Aceh, in accordance with the Indonesian government’s architectural preferences. (27) The government, he said, was sympathetic towards the problems faced by Indonesia in the aftermath of the Dec 26 tsunami disaster and was willing to help in whatever way it could.

Zhang (2002, 156) posits that in written texts, personal pronouns are used to establish a particular kind of relationship, forming “us” (the writer and readers) to observe and judge “them” (the people reported about in the article). He adds that personal pronouns serve as “a powerful source of information for us about the nature of our world–not just the physical world, but our social, political, and emotional ‘realities’ too” (Zhang 2002, 156). In an article by a Malaysian journalist in Banda Aceh, the readers are led through the devastated city as she narrates what she saw: (28) It looked like all hell had broken loose. Row and rows of shops and houses were reduced to rubble; some structures remained standing but the insides were totally washed out and windows, doors and walls were broken and some parts had caved in. (29) The chilling part was when I looked at the river below. It was a sea of bodies–of women, children, babies and men.

In (28) and (29), the narrator makes the presence of “I” felt throughout, as she leads readers through the city. As opposed to “them”, the victims, the narrator is a visitor, who is more fortunate than those people in the city and is therefore in some ways superior. By addressing the reader directly, the narrator is implying that “you” the reader or Malaysians in general and “I” are a team that is very different from “them”. Using the linguistic tools that are available, the writer effectively creates distance and in doing so, reinforces the “us” and “them” division.

Conclusion Ideology is most effective when its workings are least visible and this invisibility is achieved when ideologies are transmitted in discourse as “the background assumptions which on the one hand lead the text producer to ‘textualise’ the world in a particular way, and on the other

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hand lead the interpreter to interpret the text in a particular way” (Fairclough 2001, 71). I have attempted to exemplify how background assumptions are established through an analysis of the lexical and transitivity patterns in the selected texts. The texts were analysed within the larger discursive framework of the workings of the Malaysian mass media. The analysis reveals linguistic selections that are rooted in an established socio-political framework aimed at promoting an ethnonationalist ideology. The analysis of texts relating to two different events, the first being the deportation of illegal immigrant workers from Malaysia, and the second, the tsunami tragedy in the first week after it struck, reveals a consistent pattern of intent, that of establishing “us” (Malaysians) as being more superior to “them” (the governments and peoples of neighbouring countries). The presence of this type of discourse in mainstream newspapers is disturbing, to say the least. If anything, it is a sign of a multiracial society that appears to be “reconstituting its national identity along profoundly ethno-nationalist and class-based lines” (Healey 2000, 250) despite ostentatious official pronouncements of the need for equality and harmonious co-existence in the same newspapers.

References Blackledge, A. 2003. Imagining a Monocultural Community: Racialization of Cultural Practice in Educational Discourse. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 2(4): 331-347. Fairclough, N. 1995. Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold. —. 2001. Language and Power. 2nd ed. Essex, England: Pearson Education. —. 2002. “A Reply to Henry Widdowson’s Discourse Analysis: A Critical View”. In Critical Discourse Analysis: Critical Concepts in Linguistics 3, ed. M. Toolan: 148-155. London: Routledge Fowler, R. 1991. Language in the News. London: Routledge. Garnsey, E. and B. Rees. 1996. Discourse and Enactment: Gender Inequality in Text and Context. Human Relations 49, 8: 1041-1064. Halliday, M. A. K. 1985. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold. —. 2002. “On the Grammar of Pain”. In Critical Discourse Analysis: Critical Concepts in Linguistics 3, ed. M. Toolan: 303-330. London: Routledge.

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Healey, L. 2000. Gender, “Aliens”, and the National Imaginary in Contemporary Malaysia. Sojourn 15, 2: 222-254. Jeffries, L. 2003. Not a Drop to Drink: Emerging Meanings in Local Newspaper Reporting of the 1995 Water Crisis in Yorkshire. Text 23(4): 513-538. Korobov, N. 2001. Reconciling Theory with Method: From Conversation Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis to Positioning Analysis. Forum: Qualitative Social Research 2, 3. http://www.qualitativeresearch.net/fqs-texte/3-01/3-01korobov-e.htm (accessed December 11, 2004) Kress, G. and T. van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images. London: Routledge Shakila, M. 2001. Re-reading the Media: A Stylistic Analysis of Malaysian Media Coverage of Anwar and the Reformasi Movement. AsiaPacific MediaEducator, 11 July-Dec 2001: 34-54. Smith, F. 1994. Understanding Reading: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read. 5th ed. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Stubbs, M. 2002. “Human and Inhuman Geography”. In Critical Discourse Analysis: Critical Concepts in Linguistics 3, ed. M. Toolan: 98-130. London: Routledge. van Dijk, T. A. 2003. “Critical Discourse Analysis”. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, eds. Schiffrin, D., D. Tannen, and H.E. Hamilton: 352-371. Boston, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Wodak, R. 1999. Critical Discourse Analysis at the End of the 20th Century. Research on Language and Social Interaction 32(1 & 2): 185-193. Wodak, R. and M. Reisigl. 2003. “Discourse and Racism”. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, eds. Schiffrin, D., D. Tannen, and H.E. Hamilton: 372-3971. Boston, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Zhang, X. L. 2002. “Them” and “Us” in Shanghai Today. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 158: 141-161.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN WOMEN’S LANGUAGE STYLES: STRATEGIC MANIPULATION OF LEADERSHIP AND POWER JARIAH MOHD JAN, UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA

This paper aims to examine the manner in which language styles reflect and affect the conception of leadership and power of women in leadership roles. The theoretical approach adopted for this study is mainly based on Conversational Analysis (CA) as provided by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974) in which the mechanisms that determine people’s use of language in an extended, open conversational setting are explored. Using this approach, the ways in which conversation works between men and women leaders can be described and explained. Holmes’ (1984) work on “tentative” language and Jariah Mohd Jan’s (2006) work on “women and assertiveness” will also be referred to. The findings of this study will particularly raise awareness regarding the language styles prescribed by women in power and in due process such consciousness raising could educate and initiate training processes that advance the position of women.

Introduction General conceptions about women’s roles are now changing. Patriarchal ideology that depicts men as superior to women and in control of the public domain and women as domestic care-takers who hold the family together economically, emotionally and spiritually, is being increasingly challenged. In many countries, women are no longer left out in the decision-making process. In fact, there are currently women in decisionmaking positions who are very successful in their careers. This brings about change in the family structure whereby there are fewer men and

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women who play traditional family roles (Zweigenhaft and Domhoff 1998). In recent years, women have risen above the constraints that have been placed upon them. Their self-identity and increasing dominance change in tandem with the changes in a society. As gender stereotypes change, so has the portrayal of women in non-traditional roles that are becoming more and more acknowledged and accepted. There are specific factors that contribute to the role changes experienced by women. Those factors, as pointed out by Pinto (1998), include prolonged acute economic crisis, the breakdown of the extended family due to many husbands abandoning family home and single motherhood, a high unemployment rate among men, the migration of men or young people or of families to look for work, and the main support of non-governmental organisations for women at risk. All of these are elements that promote social and ideological change regarding the roles of women in our society. According to Diekman and Eagly (2002), women’s roles are changing and they incorporate this social change into their personalities. In their survey of 800 adults on their gendered personality characteristics, they found that women are increasingly exhibiting personality traits that are typically associated with men. Women are beginning to express their repressed inner feelings, and are feeling more recognised, being inspired and encouraged to speak in public, holding leadership roles, and are in due course becoming prominent figures in modern-day society. In other words, the women of today are perceived as having become much more independent, assertive and competitive. They appear to have adopted characteristics that equip them to be breadwinners.

Gendered Communication and Work Styles Women and men, as groups, tend to have different communication and work styles. This has been observed and documented by sociologists, psychologists, and other social observers, despite continued debate about why such differences exist (be they due to nature or nurture) and why typically masculine behaviour tends to be assigned a higher value in the work place (Holmes 2005, Jariah Mohd Jan 2006). Coates (1986, 161) asserts the importance of both the difference and the dominance explanations of the differences observed in women’s and men’s conversational styles. She suggests that to explain patterns of mixed-sex interaction, a model needs to recognise patriarchal power at work. Coates (1986, 161) also claims that it is possible to talk of “women’s style” and “men’s style”. In the context of single-sex groups, women’s

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speech behaviour and men’s speech behaviour are characterised by different linguistic features. Women’s speech in single-sex groups has a relatively high frequency of linguistic features that are supportive of other group members, and minimise conflict. Men’s speech in single-sex groups has a relatively high frequency of features which establish hierarchies within the group, are information-oriented rather than socially oriented, and can be described as competitive in function. Coates’ position on this issue has shifted from that of her early gender and language work. In her 1986 edition of Women, Men and Language, she subscribes to the model of sub-cultural differences based primarily on different gender traits being encouraged in children: It is surely desirable that, as speakers, we all have access to as wide a range of styles as possible. The ideal, androgynous speaker would be able to switch from assertiveness to tentativeness as circumstances required, and would be as good at listening as speaking. (Coates 1986, preface)

This suggests that differences between male and female speakers are just a matter of stylistic choice. Only a slight acknowledgement is made in this preface to the relative positions of women and men in the social hierarchy in that: Linguistic differences are merely a reflection of social differences. And as long as society views men and women as different and – unequal – then differences in the language of men and women will persist. (ibid)

Coates has recently changed her stand on the following: 1) the extent to which power is a variable in style of speech; 2) the extent to which dominance is achieved through speech styles; and 3) the extent to which inequality is produced and maintained in language use, rather than language use merely reflecting social inequality. Hence, in her 1986 work mentioned above she says, “… while not directly responsible for their underachievement, the way girls use language is a contributory factor to their disadvantaged position” (Coates 1986, 160); the 1993 revision, however, reads “[t]he differential usage of interactional resources by teachers, girls and boys inside the classroom is a key element in sustaining male dominance” (Coates 1993, 202). This recent work rightly reveals a conviction that gender differences in language use are an important factor in producing gender-related inequalities (see Acker 1991, Antal 1993 and Holmes 2005). The existence of such gender inequalities is apparent in the workplace environment especially in the unequal encounters between men and women, and is the focus of this study.

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Deborah Tannen’s 1990 best-seller, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, explores the different conversational styles of women and men at length. Based on her research, Tannen concludes that boys’ and girls’ early social lives are so different that they grow up “in what are essentially different cultures.” (ibid, 124) Thus, talk between women and men is, in fact, cross-cultural communication, fraught with as many potential misunderstandings as one might expect in communication between individuals from different countries, ethnic backgrounds, languages, or religious groups. Tannen (1990, 151) has also established that men see themselves as engaged in a hierarchical social order in which they are either “one up or one down” in relation to others. Their communication styles and reactions to others' communications often stress the need to “preserve independence and avoid failure” (ibid, 152). Women, on the other hand, tend to see the world as a “network of connections”, and their communications and interpretations of other people’s communications seek to “preserve intimacy” and avoid isolation (ibid, 153). Given these basic differences in world view and behaviour, it is not surprising to find that the workplace expectations, language and work styles, as well as characteristics of women and men, as groups, also tend to differ. This exploratory study offers a preliminary analysis of women leaders in Malaysia within the context of gender relations and managerial ideology. The primary aim is to examine the manner in which language and workplace styles, typically feminine and masculine styles, reflect and affect the conception of leadership and power of women in leadership roles. This study also seeks to understand the factors that women managers perceive to be contributing to their success as influential organisational players, including their management style and the nature of their work. Because women managers are perceived as “outsiders” in a patriarchal domain (Forisha and Goldman 1981), they must develop sophisticated strategies to hold such posts of power.

Gender Relations and Managerial Ideology Generally, the theoretical premise in this paper is that women’s experiences and identities are constructed in gendered social contexts that are dynamic and interactional (Sheppard 1992), one that is consistent with the gender-organisation-systems approach in the study of women leaders, and which locates an individual’s work and organisational experience within a particular socio-cultural context (Fagenson 1993). The gendered

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nature of power and authority relationships in organisational settings reflects such relationships in the larger society (Acker 1991). The dominance of men in high level organisational positions throughout the world reflects and reinforces social and cultural norms about gender (Antal 1993). Therefore, a major hurdle to women’s advancement in much of the world is male dominance and gendered social norms that create a persistent stereotype associating management with being male (ibid, 1993). Holmes (2005, 1781) further reiterates this notion and claims that “Men’s ways of doing and saying things are strongly associated with authority and leadership” and as such “what counts as leadership, the means of gaining legitimacy in leadership, and so on, are male dominated” (Hearn and Parkin 1989, 27). Traditional ideas about gender roles and relationships inform the prevailing managerial ideology in Malaysia. As in most other countries of the world, Malaysian culture has historically located women in the domestic sphere and men in the public sphere. Malaysian women’s entrance into the public domain of work is often regarded as an extension of their domestic duties as either wife or mother. This results in women working in what are considered “feminine jobs” (Tiano 1994). Their tendency to work in such jobs reflects the general trend of occupational segregation by gender which concentrates women in education, cleaning, nursing, administrative support and other service-related positions (Chant 1991). These positions are less prestigious and lower-paying than are male-dominated occupations. The proportion of women is presently increasing in the labour force; some organisations are changing from the traditional autocratic model to a less hierarchical, more participative model (Kras 1994). There is evidence that traditional managerial ideology may be slowly changing as the influx of multinational corporations proceeds (Stephens and Greer 1995), as women occupy professional positions (Kras 1995), and as women predominate in assembly-line jobs. Such changes signal an opportunity for non-traditional managerial styles and could facilitate the movement of more women into higher-level positions.

Women and Assertiveness in the Workplace: The Malaysian Scenario Today’s workforce has the highest levels of employment participation ever by women. As women become more educated, they work more outside the home. Previous studies report that more women have entered the workforce and moved to higher ranks within their companies. The

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supply of women who are qualified for management jobs continues to increase as more women complete tertiary, management and professional education programmes and accumulate work experience. In other words, women are advancing to management positions. In Malaysia, women’s representation was still at a low 10 per cent in 2003, as pointed out by Margaret Ho, Secretary of the Women and Family Policy Development Division of the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development (Rosliwaty Ramli 2005). Ho noted that women held only 15 percent of the senior positions in the public sector in 2002, and that not many women held influential posts in the corporate sector. In 2004, approximately 10 per cent of members of the board of directors of public listed companies comprised women. Ho also noted that while the percentage of women’s representation at the decision-making level was still below the 30 percent mark, women had made some significant strides, especially in government-linked companies where approximately 14 percent of members of their board of directors were women. Today, as more women secure leadership roles, they find themselves having to live up to the standards put forth for them by a male-dominated society. As their participation in public forums continues to increase, women have improved their behaviour and learnt to communicate more assertively in order to cope with the many conflicting demands that they have to handle while at high-level positions (Campbell 1989). In other words, women are beginning to learn and adopt the art of being assertive while being feminine in order to be accepted especially by the traditionally male management. Indeed, over the past three decades, women have become increasingly prominent in the public sphere. As they become more career-oriented, they have to face challenges when communicating at work or interacting in public, where they are expected to compete with men and be more assertive without being seen as overtly aggressive in order to be successful. Women need to learn to stand up for themselves without violating the basic rights of others and to project a positive public image of themselves as well. Since effective communication does not seem to come naturally for most people, women need to develop an understanding of themselves and learn the necessary skills in order to be assertive. On learning to be assertive, women have to learn to express their preferences, needs, opinions and feelings tactfully, justly, and effectively (Jariah Mohd Jan 2006). In their public deliberations, they need to be direct, honest, and use appropriate expressions confidently in order to enhance their feelings, opinions, delivery, and dialogue skills that, in turn, allow them to communicate their ideas more successfully to their audiences (ibid).

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Assertiveness is an antidote to fear, shyness, passivity, and even anger. Hence, women need to learn and adjust their behaviour to a wide range of situations, be they private or public. Factor analysis of several assertiveness scales (Schimmel 1976) has suggested a range of behaviour “types” and the corresponding language of assertiveness used in public domains (see Table 1).

Methodology The investigative approach used in this study was qualitative. The data for analysis was obtained from three meetings and discussion sessions conducted by three female managers from different ethnic backgrounds, namely, Malay (M), Chinese (C) and Indian (I), who held senior-level management positions in public organisations: education, and government. These women were selected because of their potential to influence organisational behaviour norms and to be role models for working women. They also played a major role in maintaining and preserving order in meetings and discussion sessions, and to ensure that the proceedings of the meetings/sessions were conducted in a proper manner and that the discussion was confined within the scope of the agenda. Table 1. Categories of behaviour and corresponding language of assertiveness used in the public domains (Adapted from Schimmel 1976) Categories/ Scales 1

Behaviour To speak up, make requests, ask for favours and generally insist that one’s rights be respected as a significant, equal human being.

Corresponding Language Use Includes… Statements of requests such as I want..., I need..., I'd like to discuss this in an hour and What time is agreeable to you?

2

To express negative emotions (complaints, resentment, criticism, disagreement, intimidation, the desire to be left alone) and to refuse requests.

"I" statements such as I think..., I feel... and I want....

3

To show positive emotions (joy, pride, liking someone, attraction) and to give compliments.

Accepting compliments such as Thank you and Thank you very much.

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6

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To ask why and question authority or tradition, not to rebel but to assume responsibility for asserting one’s share of control of the situation—and to make things better. To initiate, carry on, change and terminate conversations comfortably. Share one’s personal feelings, opinions and experiences with others.

Statements asserting one’s ideas and at the same time question and challenge his/her listener or audience such as I think... What do you think? I would like this....

To deal with minor irritations before one’s anger builds into intense resentment and explosive aggression.

Statements offering compromise such as What would be an acceptable compromise?, Can we work this out…? What would you like?

Statements referring to personal reference and personal meaning such as This is the way I see it…, In my opinion..., This is how I feel…and This is what it means to me….

The meetings and discussion sessions were audio-recorded and transcribed using Jefferson’s (1978) transcription conventions. The theoretical approach adopted for this study is mainly based on Conversational Analysis (CA) as provided by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974) in which the mechanisms that determine people’s use of language in an extended, open conversational setting are explored. Using this approach, the ways in which conversation works between men and women leaders can be described and explained. In analysing the present research data, women’s use of language that exhibit assertiveness were extracted. These language samples were then analysed according to the assertiveness scales drawn from Schimmel (1976).

Assertiveness at Work Overall, this study showed that the women managers developed a variety of strategies at work. Their strategies demonstrated that they commonly practised assertive behaviours to surmount problems and to improve performance. They asserted themselves in various ways when they interacted with other members in meetings and discussion groups. They exhibited specific verbal skills, which enhanced their style of being

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assertive. Samples of extracts depicting the use of assertions were selected on the basis of categories adapted from Schimmel (1976) and these are presented in the following sections.

Category 1: Asserting Views – Self-Selection In Extract [60], F(M) self-selects in order to point out strongly that the government should be more committed and play a major role in ensuring harmony. Later in her deliberation, she responds to an earlier remark made by her male counterpart and emphasises the need to instil and conserve basic values in society especially with the changing trends and patterns of economic growth. F(M) uses statements of requests such as “I'd like to answer that”, “I’d like to feel”, “I would say”, and “I think”. (1.1) […] [60] F(M): I’d like to answer that / er / in the / in the / in the face of disarmament’s raise / I’d like to feel that the government must be made to be aware that armaments are a must purely for defence / and that people should / government should have commitment / to shared value on peace / and this commitment should not be just by one group of countries / group of communities / but it should be an overall effort / from the community of those very government themselves / as well as those government / so it is not good enough it’s just government to draw policy / and to create priorities of where they should put their monies at / their money is / but is also to show what the people want / and the people want peace / the people want to ensure stability / harmony / that should be reflected so that / if in fact / armaments is still there / it’s for defence purposes … I’d like to / answer the question raised earlier / just now / about / the need to work on these values why / is there necessity because of the fact that we’re in the development pace / we’re at the rampant stage of development / I would say / because with all the changing trends and patterns of economic growth / migration / the / working family / the pressures of work / the pressures of working life / and the influence of cross cultural / factors / the media / I think it is very absolutely necessary that we should conserve the basic values that can keep / things close to us …

In Extract [5], F(I) provides feedback based on an earlier comment by a male participant but uses a different analogy to assert her views.

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(1.2) […] [5] F(I): yes / I agree very much / I’d like to use a different analogy / it’s like a seed / a seed has everything within it / it needs the right conditions to be able to germinate and then blossom in flower / in the same way / within the human spirit / there are the inherent qualities of peace / of love / of truth / within everyone …

Category 2: Asserting Control - Questioning and Challenging Views In another meeting, it is observed that the female manager often questions and challenges her staff and uses statements that begin with I think... What do you think? and I would like this... in order to assume responsibility for asserting her share of control of the situation. For example, in Extract [7], F(M) acknowledges what has been stated earlier by her male member of staff but asserts her share of control of the discourse by insisting that she provides her own definition of “values”. Interestingly, the following exchange illustrates the dominance F(M) has over H1 when she quickly interrupts (#) him and poses the question which he in fact intends to ask. F(M) exhibits authority when she proceeds to give her opinion about promoting good values. (1.3) […] [6] H1: maybe F(M) would like to comment / how / how / do / do would you inculcate values / we have a lot of young people / a lot of 16 / er / year olds / 19 year-olds in the this nation / [7] F(M): o.k. / before I answer that how to inculcate values / first I’d like to / tell what I mean by values / I think values are sets of guiding principles / they are the building blocks of the foundation of life / it is internalised / er / through social processes … [8] H1: and the question / I asked before # [9] F(M): # and how to inculcate? [10] H1: yes [11] F(M): well / first / you will have to want to go for the good values …

In a separate meeting, F(I) points out a crucial issue raised by her male subordinate (H3) in Extract [71] and provides a concrete effect or consequence of externalising religion. In this instance, because of the sensitivity of the topic of discussion, she assumes responsibility for asserting her views and still appears confident in her deliberations.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN (1.2) […] [70] H3: … could explain why / people use religions as a façade or a / or a backdrop to express their political views / and wanting more lands … [71] F(I): You’ve touched on a very critical point / and I think it’s because we externalised religion / only in the sense of dogma and ritual / and theology and philosophy / without looking at the / word religion itself …

Further, Extract [79] illustrates the power of knowledge F(I) has, particularly when she questions the members of staff about the existence of human life without a balance between the spiritual and physical, focusing only on materialism instead. (1.2) […] [78] H3: how can we balance them between the mad / morals and immaterial values? [79] F(I): I think that the whole human being is important / because how can there be human life / unless there’s a balance of spiritual and physical / but problem is more recent that we’ve forgotten the spiritual side and just focus on the material side / and so I don’t think we need to worry about the material side / that’s moving on the machine of materialism as moving very fast / but it is important to spend that time turning inwards / so that then it will enable to balance the external …

Category 3: Asserting Emotions: Expressing Disagreement It is found that the female managers express negative emotions which includes complaints, criticism, disagreement, and to some extend intimidation and refuse requests. They use "I" statements such as I think... , I feel... and I want... . In Extract [63], F(I) expresses her disagreement with an earlier statement regarding the loss of values in society by restating the fact that “every civilisation and every culture has / within itself a vision or a dream / of a reality in which there was a world of values”. She further asserts that every possible effort should be made to uphold those values, which bring “goodness” to those who have them and that it is indeed possible to “move towards that again.” (1.2) […] [62] H3: … / er / concerning lost / er / values [63] F(I): I think every civilisation and every culture has / within itself a vision or a dream / of a reality in which there was a world values / and I think if we move far away from that / that I think what we have to do is to re-emerge that vision and keep it alive and hold it / and it’s possible to

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move towards that again / that every culture has reminded us that there was a world of values and goodness.

Extract [85], however, illustrates the resentment and to some extent intimidation felt by F(M) towards the appalling behaviour of irresponsible teachers who physically harassed school-going girls. She openly states that such teachers should not be allowed to teach and further questions the type of screening that is currently used by the authorities. She also expresses her concern about having such teachers teaching her own child. Such strong emotions are revealed openly to the members of staff and this is going against the norm, especially coming from a Malay woman who is normally perceived to be soft spoken, polite and well mannered in public. (1.3) […] [84] H2: …what sort of protective measures can we take / to ensure that our teachers don’t exploit the situation / so that there’s no physical / demonstrations / so to say F(M)? [85] F(M): if we have teachers who are inclined to do that in school / they shouldn’t be in school / teaching our kids / and if that’s all / that’s going to take to turn them on / and definitely they shouldn’t be there / you have for teachers / in general / in schools / I wouldn’t want anyone like that / near my kid / even if they’re just teaching maths or physics / @

Category 4: Asserting Authority - Sharing Experiences The female managers also from time to time initiate, carry on, change and terminate their conversations with staff members comfortably. They also seem to share their personal feelings, opinions and experiences with others. Statements referring to personal reference and personal meaning such as …the way I see it…, In my opinion..., This is how I feel…and This is what it means to me…are frequently used in their deliberations. The Malay female manager in Extract [87] asserts her partial agreement and, contrary to basic queries about the reasons for the occurrences of the “wars of the world”, she provides her own feelings about resorting to the basics of mere appreciation for human values. Even though she appears to be a woman that exudes power and strength, she does seem to uphold her own cultural values as is apparent in her utterance. (1.1) […] [86] H1:

…do you agree dato’?

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN [87] F(M): Well / I agree to a certain extent / but I believe / the way I see it / that when you ask for the whys / of why / the wars of the world take place is / is is really a thousand and one reason / but it goes down to the basic / er / sense of / er / having an appreciation for human values …

On the other hand, in another meeting, Extract [174] shows the manner in which F(C) takes control of the situation and asserts her authority in the topic of discussion. It shows how F(C) interrupts (#) her male colleague by offering an example based on her own personal experience while she was abroad. She indicates that the example, which she is about to use, is supposedly a part of her presentation in her forthcoming talk but that she feels that it is much needed at that point of discussion (“because I think you need a concrete example to illustrate this”). She also highlights her experience with her students, the compliments which she received, and the things she learned that any textbook could not provide. (1.4) […] [172] H1: … you necessarily must have that first hand experience of actually being there? / [173] H2: I think so / you must see / a / a / another environment another culture which I / I don’t you can get it through internet or through TV / I mean what you get maybe is one aspect of the culture / but I think is nothing like being there / or seeing how it’s done / how other people think / and that would enrich your thinking # [174] F(C): # maybe I can give you an example / now you know that I am going to give a talk at the Fulbright finale / it’s in my talk / but I might share with this audience as well / because I think you need a concrete example to illustrate this / um / the key here is empathy / it’s personal experience / you cannot substitute for that / and when I was in (xxx) teaching / I took my students to many places / we have many activities and projects and we raised money ourselves / so that my students went there / on their really first trip outside of their home town / and I learned / for example / that when I went to the district offices / in those days / we still (…) / and I would go to them and ask permission / or get permission / to get lodgings / free lodgings for my students / in the school hostels and I will ALWAYS remember what one of these district officers said to me / he handed me the paper / for the school hostel lodgings / and he said to me / my / you speak perfect English / wider education can do for you people / and if more people were like you / this country will be alright and in one instant / I learned empathy / for the condition of the world people? I don’t think any textbook or any internet messages / could have taught me that …

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Category 5: Asserting Aggression To deal with minor irritations before one’s anger builds into intense resentment and explosive aggression, statements offering compromise such as What would be an acceptable compromise?, Can we work this out-? and What would you like? may be used. In Extracts [232] to [233], the male staff member highlights to F(I) a question posed by a member of the meeting group. F(I) then exhibits signs of irritation about the entire issue of having irresponsible teachers in the public schools. Despite appearing very calm and polite (“I don’t think / any of us here are in any position to really say what can be done”), one could easily detect anger, which eventually builds into intense resentment and aggression particularly when F(I) strongly proposes the staging of a public outcry. She further suggests that the public should stand up and fight for their rights and in so doing, those delinquents would be ousted. (1.2) […] [232] H3: … we had a question before our coffee break / what do you think / F(I) ? [233] F(I): I don’t think / any of us here are in any position to really say what can be done / but we ought to have a public outcry / and let the public fight for what you want / because if it’s / if it’s going unheeded / if these people are still left in the system / then the public has to stand up for their rights and say / why these people are still there?

Similarly, in Extract [23], F(M) agrees to the importance of inculcating values especially when the objectives of upholding such values teach children to be respectful and tolerant of others. One could sense that there is a slight sense of irritation when she affirms that the values for individuals relates to objectives set by the nation. (1.1) […] [22] H1: Dato’ / do you agree / [23] F(M): I agree because / er / values should be important to everyone / of course the values for individuals / will have to be based on / er the / the objectives of where we’re going / so / if we / like / er / H2 was saying about Malaysia professes to want to be a strong resilient / er / lib / liberated country so / we’re talking about freedom / we’re talking about respectability / we’re talking about strength / we’re talking about dignity / we’re talking about tolerance / we’re talking about unity / so those are / er / things that we should / er / inculcate and those should be inculcated in the schools / and in the community / even in the homes / because we want our children to be tolerant with other people …

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Category 6: Asserting Agreement The data analysis of the female managers’ language samples also shows their ways of exhibiting positive emotions which include joy and pride, and extending compliments. The data also shows the manner in which these women assert agreement and extend compliments to others in the meeting. For example, F(C) reveals her true feelings in Extract [18] when she readily agrees that one of the reasons to healthy living is prevention of sexual transmitted diseases; however, she also asserts that it is reassuring to know that sex education may be made part of learning in the school system. (1.4) […] [17] H2: # but why / why is it so important / aside from / F(M)’s point about aids / [18] F(C): well yes / one point is to stop or prevent / sexual transmitted diseases / but I think it’s good to know as essential part of of your life style / your general health and well being / we educate among other things / why not sex? / as part of life /

Extracts [34] to [40] highlight issues that relate to empowerment of women. There appears to be solidarity between F(C) and F(M) in their discussion of matters pertaining to women and their progress. Furthermore, F(C) shows excitement when she talks about women in decision-making and how changing attitudes and having confidence would help promote more women in high positions. She takes pride in her deliberation and sums up by asserting that there should be positive measures taken to ensure that women are well represented in all fields. (1.4) […] [33] H3: … women in decision making? / you stress on that part? we have two here / women in decision making / one for the state / one for ::: federal / [34] F(C): yes / I think / one of the big issues at the NAM conference / was the empowerment of women / and I think this is one word that / it may SOUND a bit overwhelming / but to me / it / there are two areas that we could work on / one of course is the empowerment / for women from within / the women first have to take a step / whereby we have to / er / positive change attitudes / and the way of thinking / because you can understand that / that if you do not from within understand yourself / and have confidence in yourself / no amount of legal reform or government policies or change / in mechanism is going to help you / so here when we

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talk about decision making / er / it is a fact of course that / has been revealed in NAM / that women are only 11.3 per cent of / of women in the world / are in government and in the legislature / er / in Malaysia I think / we are below = [35] F(M)1: = six [36] F(C): average / in the state / it’s only 6.5 per cent / I keep telling members of / er / and then nation / nationally I think it’s about 8 per cent / so this is one way in which we could / make a bid / to have more women in decision making / er / I like the concept of / not one gender / er / dominating two thirds of any committee / at any level / I think it’s time to have some balance / like what you call in the Chinese concept of the ying and the yang / to balance it / it’s lopsided now / in fact VERY lob sided but # @ [37] H2:

# globally

[38] F(C): ya / but I think @ [39] F(M)2: nationally [40] F(C): let us look even in our country / I don’t see why / right down to district level and local government and even state / that there should be now quite positive / quite positive steps taken / er / to ensure that there are there’s more representation of women / in all these areas / and also / to look at quite seriously at how we could / er / increase this / but first we have to encourage the women to be more politically conscious and to understand that they also have a role to play / because in the political field / it is a vehicle to change …

Clearly, the female participants in the study demonstrated their ability to assert themselves whenever they were challenged. They were also encouraged to state their views directly in pertinent situations and decisions were usually made after much discussion.

Conclusion The women managers who participated in this study represent a generation of young Malaysian women who were well educated and eager to work in challenging careers. They demonstrated that women can draw from individual strength and perseverance to help them overcome challenges

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and move into higher-level positions. These women also possessed the technical skills as well as interpersonal and language competency to demonstrate to their male counterparts, subordinates and/or peers that they were equally competent. It was evident in the data that these female managers were more assertive than their male counterparts and that they expressed their feelings openly in the discussions and staff meetings in the workplace. They put forward their ideas assertively, shared experiences as well as directly related information pertinent to the discussion. As women venture into a world dominated by men, it appears that they are more inclined to modify their speech closer to that of their male counterparts in order to identify more closely with them (Giles and Powesland 1975). In other words, women managers are seen to emulate a style or manner of speaking that indicates assertiveness and as possessing power as evident in this study. Further, the female managers, regardless of race, had a high level of confidence and appeared to be constantly in control of their utterances. They spoke at length, set the agenda for a conversation, staved off interruptions, argued openly, made jokes, laughed at appropriate junctures, influenced, listened, and negotiated so that other members in the meeting or group chose to cooperate willingly. It was also observed that these women were more inclined to make statements and ask questions, more likely to offer solutions or an action plan which amounted to creating a sense of confidence in the group. It was also observed that these highpowered women displayed talk that was “status enhancing” (Holmes 1995) where they were given the opportunity to exhibit what they knew and make effective contributions that had greater potential to increase their status or prestige. Nevertheless, much depended on the purpose of interaction and the different roles they were expected to play. In conclusion, today’s women managers are as good as men and sometimes even better managers as they have better people-skills as well as team skills. They also provide a healthy, varied perspective when it comes to tackling issues within the organisation and this contributes to the diversity of its intellectual capacity (Kam 2004). When these women talk, they communicate more than just information. They communicate images of themselves that they want others to accept as being meaningful within the context of the interaction. Self-image, in certain contexts, is best maintained through distance, whereas in other contexts, it is equally done through intimacy (Jariah Mohd Jan 1999). Interacting with others in an assertive way, as can be seen clearly in this study, can have the effect of increased intimacy and more meaningful, authentic relationships. More

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importantly, behaving and communicating assertively will make it more likely for women to succeed in the public domain. The findings of this study will particularly raise awareness regarding language styles and strategic manipulation of leadership and power prescribed by female leaders and in due process such consciousnessraising could educate and initiate training processes that advance women’s position.

References Acker, J. 1991. “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organisations.” In The Social Construction of Gender, eds. J. Lorber and S. A. Farrell: 162-179. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Antal, A. 1993. “A Global Comparison of Women in Management: Women Managers in their Homelands and As Expatriates”. In Women in Management: Trends, Issues, and Challenges in Managerial Diversity, ed. Fagenson, E.A.: 52-96. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Campbell, K. 1989. Man Cannot Speak for Her: A Critical Study of Early Feminist Rhetoric, Vol. 1. New York: Praeger. Chant, S. 1991. Women and Survival in Mexican Cities: Perspectives on Gender, Labour Markets and Low-income Households. Manchester, England: Manchester University. Coates, J. 1986. Women, Men, and Language. London: Longman. Coates, J. and D. Cameron. 1989. Women in their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language and Sex. London: Longman. Diekman A. B. and A. H. Eagly. 2001. AScribe Newswire. Purdue University. http://www.ascribe.org/livewire.html (accessed March 30, 2005). Fagenson, E. ed. 1993. Women in Management: Trends, Issues and Challenges in Managerial Diversity. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Forisha, B. L. and B. H. Goldman. 1981. Outsiders on the Inside: Women and Organisations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Giles, H. and P. Powesland, P. 1975. Speech Style and Social Evaluation. London: Academic Press. Hearn, J. and P. Parkin 1988. “Women, Men and Leadership: A Critical Review of Assumptions, Practices and Change in the Industrialized Nations.” In Women in Management Worldwide, eds. Adler, N. and N.I. Datna: 17-40. London: M. E. Sharpe. Holmes, J. 1984. Hedging Your Bets and Sitting on the Fence: Some Evidence for Hedges as Support Structures. Te Reo 27: 47-62. —. 1995. Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman.

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—. 2005. Leadership Talk: How Do Leaders ‘Do Mentoring’, and Is Gender Relevant? Journal of Pragmatics 37: 1779-1800. Jariah Mohd Jan. 1999. Malaysian Talk Shows: A Study of Power and Solidarity in Inter-gender Verbal Interaction. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. —. 2006. “On Learning to Be Assertive: Women and Public Discourse”. In Multilingua-Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, ed. David, M. K: 43-58. Monton de Gruyter: Berlin– New York. Vol. 25: 43-58. Jariah Mohd Jan and M. David. 1992. Oral Skills–A Need for Acceptance of L1 Cultural Norms. Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, 4(1):11-19. Jefferson, G. 1978. “A Technique for Inviting Laughter and its Subsequent Acceptance Declination”. In Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology, ed. Psathas, G: 79-96. New York: Irvington Publishers. Kras, E. S. 1994. Modernizing Mexican Management Style. Las Cruces, NM: Editts. —. 1995. Management in two cultures: Bridging the gap between US and Mexican Managers. Revised ed. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press. Kam, P. 2004. Leading the Way, The Star. 16 September. Miller, J.B. 1976. Toward a New Psychology of Women. Boston: Beacon Press. Pinto, C. 1998. Changing Roles of Women in Latin America Society. http://www.lam.org/lae/9810/index.html (accessed April 20, 2005). Rosliwaty Ramli. 2005. Women Still Take Back Seats in Most National and Corporate Scene, Bernama, April 12. Sacks, H., E. Schegloff, and G. Jefferson. 1974. A Simplest Systemics for the Organisation of Turn-Taking for Conversation. Language, 50:4, 696-735. Schimmel, D. 1976. Assertive behavior scales: global or subscale measures. Unpublished paper. http://www.mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chapter13 /chapter13e.htm (accessed April 20, 2005). Sheppard, S. 1992. “Women Manager’s Perceptions of Gender and Organisational Life.” In Gendering Organisational Analysis, eds. A. J. Mills and P. Tancred: 151-166. Newbury Park: Sage. Spenser, R. 2000. A Comparison of Relational Psychologies. Stone Center Work in Progress series #5, 1-29. Wellesley, MA.

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Stephens, G.K. and Greer, C.R. 1995. Doing Business in Mexico: Understanding Cultural Differences. Organisational Dynamics, 24(1): 39-55. Tannen, D. 1990. You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: Ballantine Books. Tiano, S. 1994. Patriarchy on the Line: Women Workers in the Maqiladora, Philadelphia: Temple University. Zweigenhaft, R. L. and G. W. Domhoff. 1998. Diversity in the Power Elite: Have Women and Minorities Reached the Top? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN TEST INNOVATION AND IMPLEMENTATION: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE MUET IMPACT WONG BEE ENG AND CHAN SWEE HENG, UNIVERSITI PUTRA MALAYSIA

The power of tests in the psychometric tradition lies not only in determining pass-fail status but also in providing certification or standards for programme entry. More to the use of tests is its connection with the political, social, educational and economic contexts, which has far-ranging effects on modern societies. In fact, the power of a test can be monitored with regard to its use (or misuse) amidst these concerns. Seen in this respect, any language test innovation or implementation invariably is a policy statement that has multifaceted implications. In fact, Shohamy (2001) calls a language testing policy the de facto language policy. In this context, the Malaysian University English Test (MUET) is examined to provide a timely and critical assessment of its role and power in playing out political and social agendas. It was implemented at a critical juncture to complement national efforts in creating new standards in gauging language competence among Malaysian pre-tertiary students. In this study, students’ expectations and judgments are evaluated through a questionnaire survey and the results are interpreted along the significance of assessing test impact situated in a set of beliefs about the MUET, which is itself directed by competing social forces and ideologies shaped by a modern society.

Introduction The use of language is a social practice through which people express their ideas and attitudes towards certain issues that matter to them. Language is

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used as a medium for conveying the writers’ or an institution’s position in relation to others. Fowler’s (1991) Critical Linguistic Analysis approach and Fairclough’s (1995) Textual Analysis approach share a common trait in centralising language as a means of social construction. The former relies on the systemic functional theory as a basis for its analysis in examining how language, in particular media language, work ideologically, that is, it describes language structures in terms of sociofunctional purposes. In doing so, the linguistic structures reveal the underlying ideological stance. Fairclough’s approach, on the other hand, works on the assumption that language in texts always functions ideationally in the representation of world experience in tandem with the interpersonal as well as the textual aspects. In this way, Fairclough (1995) discusses discursive practices in relation to social and cultural structures which are ideologically shaped. Tests, in particular language tests, constitute texts which are constructed within the context of social practice. In a sense, a test and its washback effects form an instance of social engineering. Social engineering may manifest in curriculum change, certification requirements and public demonstration of achievement as a valued outcome based on test results (for assessment purposes in language programme, see Broadfoot 1987, cited in Chapelle and Brindley 2002, 267). Further, assessment purpose is also connected to the notion of low or high stakes associated with test taking. In a high stake test, decisions made may have a significant impact on test-takers’ lives (McNamara 2000, 268). Due its significance used in decision-making, test validation cannot operate merely within the confines of test administration. On a wider perspective, tests are now seen to encompass larger issues other than those that relate directly to teaching and learning, particularly the social, political, ethical and economic issues that connect to the decision of legitimising a test for public use. At the school level, English language tests are undergoing change depending on policy and curricular management. Change is needed to meet new social and political operations. According to Shohamy (2001), in the preface to her book, The Power of Tests: A Critical Perspective on the Uses of Language Tests, “[v]ery little attention is given to how tests are used, their importance in the lives of test takers and their place in society”. She further acknowledges that there is a current concern about test effects being not just educational but also societal. The educational aspect would be directed at curriculum, teaching methods, learning strategies and materials while societal concerns will address issues of gate keeping, ideology, ethicality, and fairness in test taking. Messick (1989, 251) argues for a

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unified concept of validity where social values would play an important part in the intended or unintended outcomes of test interpretation and use. Appraisal of social consequences of testing plays an integral part in establishing construct validity. Therefore, construct validation is a process of gathering evidence to ensure that the test scores indeed mean what the test makers intend them to mean. This evidence can be interpreted as test impact. Test impact is also seen as part of the washback effect which according to Alderson and Wall (1993, 115-29), deserves attention: …[a] test can influence teaching and learning: what teachers teach, how teachers teach, what learners learn, how learners learn, the rate and sequence of learning, and attitude to the content and methods of teaching and learning.

The study of test impact could also encompass examination of the consequences of test performance and the perceptions of learners to these consequences. Ideally, test validation should be an ongoing process addressing new issues as they arise, especially in the context of language testing research (McNamara 2000, 49).

Impact of the Malaysian University English Test (MUET) Given the multifaceted impact that an English language test can have, the intention of the study was to examine MUET and its critical role in playing out the political (linked to the economic and the educational) and social agendas. Related questions that needed to be answered were: How is the test designed? What are the aims and objectives? How do stakeholders view the test as satisfying personal and societal needs? The questions were answered through an examination of (1) the test syllabus and the test format, and (2) responses from stakeholders (students) that were obtained through a questionnaire survey.

The MUET Syllabus and Format In Malaysia, one of the major changes in language test policy is the implementation of the MUET in 2000. The MUET was mooted and approved by the Ministry with the intention to equip students with an appropriate level of English proficiency so that they are able to perform effectively in their academic pursuits at tertiary level. The former Minister of Education, Dato’ Abdul Najib Razak, who chaired the Higher Education Council, made the public announcement on December 22,

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1998, launching the MUET. The move was seen by many as timely while some had reservations about using the MUET scores for university entry. To understand the MUET implementation and impact, the test environment is extended to educational, political, social and economic contexts for further explication. The Malaysian Examinations Council, entrusted with its implementation, stated clearly that the MUET syllabus seeks to bridge the gap in language needs between secondary and tertiary education. It provides the context for language use that is related to academic experience and also for the enhancement of communicative competence. The MUET is further seen as a means of developing critical thinking skills through the competent use of language skills (Malaysian University English Test: Regulations and Scheme of Test, Syllabus, and Sample Questions, 1999). The syllabus is pitched at the development of necessary skills in the four modes –oral, listening, reading, and writing. Reading skills are considered the most essential. This is followed by writing, listening and speaking skills, respectively. Weighting is given based on extra value assigned to a language component believed to be central to the curriculum or to the concept of proficiency (Alderson, Clapham and Wall 1995, 149). The weighting is shown in Table 1. Table 1. Weighting for the MUET Components Paper 800/1

Skill Listening

Time 30 minutes

Weight 15%

800/2

Speaking

30 minutes

15%

800/3

Reading Comprehension Writing

2 hours

45%

1 hour 30 minutes

25%

888/4

Mode of Test *Centralised: 15 MCQS** Centralised: In groups of 4 Two-level assessment Centralised: 50 MCQS Centralised: One essay and one summary

Score 45 45

135 57

300 AGGREGATED SCORE *Centralised – The MUET is taken as a public examination in which candidates are located at particular centres allocated. **MCQs – Multiple-Choice Questions

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Situating the MUET in Social, Educational, Political and Economic Contexts The English language has occupied a unique role in many of the former British colonies. As a result of history, many of these former colonies have acquired a social system of communication in which English is widely used, especially among the more educated. Like many “new” world countries, Malaysia had similarly experienced a period of colonisation and the “imported” English became quite entrenched in its present use in the country. Aside from its social use, English soon became the medium of instruction in the premier schools, thus further establishing it as the language of the educated during the colonial time. The heyday of British dominance saw the language also as the language for administration and other government and economic matters. For many years, English was learned and used right up to the university level. To enter university, one was expected to obtain a First Grade Secondary School Leaving Certificate which could only be obtained with the prerequisite of a credit pass in English. With the Japanese Occupation of Malaya in 1942, the dominance of the English language receded and it did not regain a similar footing even after the surrender of the Japanese to the British. Political sentiments by then had changed and a new wave of nationalism had emerged and which had a direct bearing on the English language policy and, by default, also the language test policy. The nationalists questioned the place of a colonial language especially in the context of self-determinism which became the new tune for progress. The legality of the language change from the use of English as medium of instruction to that of the Malay language was formalised in the National Language Policy Act in 1970. A period of transition was put into motion to replace English with the national language, Bahasa Melayu. Consequent to this development, the new education policy focused on moulding a national identity with a common language as a unifying tool. The English language was thus relegated to the status of a subject which is taught from primary to secondary school level with a weekly 200-minute exposure in class. In the Malaysian education system, students progress through four major public examinations. In Primary 6, students sit for the Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR), the “Primary School Assessment Test”. The next examination is taken in Secondary 3 (Penilaian Menengah Rendah, the PMR or the “Lower Secondary Assessment”) and another at Upper Secondary 5, the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia or commonly known as the SPM (“Malaysia Certificate of Education”). The final school

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examination is taken if students progress to the Sixth Form, and is known as the Sijil Tinggi Pelajaran Menengah, STPM (the “Higher School Certificate”) which is the examination that would be considered for entry into tertiary education. In the UPSR, PMR and SPM examinations, English is taken as a compulsory subject. However, prior to 2000, a twoyear gap existed at the pre-university stage during which English was not taught at all. English was not seen to be a part of the necessary preparation at this educational stage. However, this curricular decision appears to go against the mainstream development of the English language. The language continues to occupy some status of prestige as it is very much used in business, as reference materials in the university and also used socially in the educated segments of society. Consequently, an educational dilemma also arises as to how best to prepare students for the real “borderless” world in which English remains the undisputed language of communication. In fact, it was and still is an established practice to provide English proficiency classes at tertiary level, especially for students who have not attained a desired level of competence to enable them to cope with the demands of academic life and later work life. The tensions created by the social, economic and educational demands inevitably impact curricular development. The move for change resulted in the Malaysian universities meeting together to discuss the status of their English programmes and also to provide for the learning of English at the STPM level. As mentioned earlier, the discussion led to the birth of a new English language test in 1999–the Malaysian University English Test in the STPM. It became a compulsory English language paper and was fully implemented in the year 2000. It has the value of a subsidiary paper as opposed to the principle papers. To qualify for the Higher School Certificate, a certain number of principal level subjects must be taken while the subsidiary paper does not have a similar status. This overview of the contexts that have a bearing on the introduction of MUET foregrounds the extent to which English is involved in the political, educational, social and economic life of a country. The MUET is clearly a result of past history and present pragmatic considerations. Phillipson (1992) sums up the impact of learning the English language from three angles. The first deals with the ideological as competence in English (often measured by success in a test) is regarded as a gateway for better communication. In addition, the English language is associated with people who are better educated and have a higher standard of living. The economic perspective provides a strong reason to link English to national productivity and income. Finally, English is seen as having a repressive role as the promotion of the language could lead to “linguistic racism”

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whereby minority languages are threatened. In the Malaysian context, English is often viewed as a threat to the mainstream language, which is Bahasa Melayu. Minority languages such as Mandarin and Tamil have their unique place as vernacular languages which are used as medium of instruction at the primary school level.

Methodology The study examined test impact of the MUET from the perspective of the test takers. Impact is aligned to the emphasis given to the learning of the various skills and the sense of achievement in relation to performance on the test in question. A questionnaire was administered to 200 undergraduate students from Universiti Putra Malaysia and sampling was based on convenience and accessibility to respondents who represented past MUET candidates. The questionnaire used was organised into five sections. The first section dealt with general information while the other four sections addressed issues related to the four language skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing). The questions were based on the current test syllabus made available by the Malaysian Examinations Council (MEC). To avoid bias in response, the respondents were selected from both the science (120) and the social sciences (80) faculties. The science faculties included Engineering, Veterinary Medicine, Computer Science and Technology, Science, Food Science and Technology, Agriculture, Forestry; and the social sciences included Design and Architecture, Human Ecology, Economics and Management, Modern Languages and Communication, and Educational Studies. The majority of the respondents had obtained grades 3, 4, and 5 (55.5%) in the SPM examination and 54% of them had achieved Band 4 and below in the MUET (the highest Band being 6). The main objective of using the questionnaire was to deconstruct the world experience of the students in terms of learning the English language and taking the MUET for entrance into university. The items in the questionnaire allowed us to investigate the specific value attached to each of the micro constructs. In other words, we wanted to find out how far short the students’ world experiences fell compared to the ideology attached to each micro construct of the MUET.

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Results and Interpretation of the Stakeholders’ Responses In the first section of the questionnaire, students were asked to rate the importance of English. The importance of English was firmly established with 70% of them stating that English was “very important” with 7.5% rating it as “important”. In terms of the various skills in English, about 50% of them believed that they were good at reading. However, they rated themselves as being only “fair” in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, speaking, listening and writing. Many of them (58.5%) said that their performance in English was “fair” when compared to the other students in the same class. Table 2 summarises the respondents’ opinions about English in general. Most of the respondents (90%) agreed that the English courses taken at the university were adequate to help them in their studies. However, a large proportion of them (53.5%) reported that reading materials in English in the library was not a common practice. Nonetheless, the majority of them (83%) believed that the English courses they took at the university fulfilled a gap in the knowledge of the language that they had learnt at school. Surprisingly, many (87%) stated that they looked forward to English classes at the university. This would mean that generally students were highly motivated with an overwhelming majority (94%) agreeing to the statement that English is an important subject at the university, thereby attesting to the academic value given to English. English was seen as a subject that was not easy to pass with 52.5% supporting the statement. A large majority (74.5%) believed that MUET had motivated better performance at the university. Their high motivation to learn English was reported again when a large majority of them (95%) said that they consciously set goals and aimed to improve their English language skills.

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Table 2. Opinions about English Aspect

Educational The English courses that I take at the university are adequate to help me in my studies. I read materials in English at the library often. The English courses I take at the university fulfil a gap in the knowledge of English that I learned in school. I look forward to English classes at the university. English is a very important subject at the university. An exam in English is easy to pass at the university. The MUET has helped me to perform better academically at the university. I consciously set goals and aims to improve my English language skills. Economic/Social The English courses that I take at the university are

Strongly disagree (%)

Disagree

Agree (%)

Strongly Agree (%)

No Answer (%)

(%)

1

9

60.5

29.5

-

5.5

48

38

8

0.5

1

15

65

18

1

1.5

9.5

66.5

20.5

2

1

5

40

54

-

3

43

45

7.5

1.5

1.5

23.5

53

21.5

0.5

0.5

4.5

49

46

-

2.5

15.5

55

27

-

TEST INNOVATION AND IMPLEMENTATION: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE MUET IMPACT adequate to prepare me for the workplace. English will help me in my future career. Social The MUET is necessary to help me cope as an undergraduate in non-academic matters.

261

0

1.5

28.5

69.5

0.5

2.5

24

56.5

17

-

82% of the students agreed that the English courses at the university were adequate for preparing them for the workplace while 98% were of the opinion that English would help them in their future careers. 73.5% of the respondents also reported that the MUET was necessary to help them cope in non-academic matters, that is, the language was needed for social purposes. In other words, the beliefs about the consequences of MUET were positive, again reinforcing values assigned to the English language as those that enhanced the users both socially and economically. Again, these results collectively indicate that through the years of the importance being placed on English by the authorities and the private sector, the “ideology” that is imparted to the masses by the authorities is that the English language is important not only educationally, but socially and economically as well. Thus, it can be said that this proliferation of certain assumptions about the language is part of some form of social engineering, the result of the language policy implemented by the Malaysian authorities. This is in line with Fairclough’s view (1995) that the multifunctionality of language lies in the systemic functional theory’s assumption that language in texts functions ideationally in the representation of experience of the world. Following the general opinions, summary data are provided for the responses to items about specific language skills. Table 3 provides information about speaking skills in relation to the MUET.

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Table 3. Frequency of Using English for Spoken Interactions with Instructors Interaction with instructors in English

Never (%)

Rarely (%)

Often (%)

Very often (%)

No answer (%)

Educational Asking questions during lectures

7.5

63.5

21

8

-

11.5

54

25.5

8

1

5

49.5

34

11

0.5

Discussing academic matters with instructors Answering questions asked by the instructor

The items in this section emphasise language functions in the educational context. In connection with these functions, it was revealed that the MUET had not been very successful in enabling students to use the language for asking questions (63.5%) or for discussing academic matters (54%) with their instructors in English. A sizable number (49.5%) reported that they were not able to answer questions in English. It is therefore unsurprising that the speaking skills were rated high in the language agenda as a skill that needed attending to. The results reveal a state of affairs of the Malaysian workplace where the ability to communicate in English is highly desired. The next few questions (Table 4) also give emphasis to speaking but are skewed to interactions between peers. Table 4. Frequency of Using English for Spoken Interactions in Class Class/Social interaction Social To participate in pair or group work to complete an assignment To express opinions in a discussion To convince the classmates of my opinions To negotiate meaning during discussion

Never (%)

Rarely (%)

Often (%)

Very often (%)

No answer (%)

5

28.5

48

18.5

6

32.5

45

16.5

6.5

42

43

9

0.5

6

41.5

42

10

0.5

TEST INNOVATION AND IMPLEMENTATION: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE MUET IMPACT To ask questions among each other To make presentations/do demonstrations on a topic related to my field of study I use English more than the other local languages to interact with my friends socially

263

4

32.5

49

13

1.5

3.5

32.5

42.5

21

0.5

12.5

62.5

17

7.5

0.5

Between 52% and 66.5% claimed to use English often to participate in pair or group work in order to complete an assignment, to express opinions in a discussion, to convince classmates of their opinions and to negotiate meaning during discussion. The students also said that they used the language to carry out the tasks of asking questions among themselves (62%), and making presentations and doing demonstrations on a topic related to their field of study (63.5%). On the whole, these tasks had better scores when compared to the earlier ones (see Table 3). The respondents felt that these areas of task accomplishment were relatively better accomplished than those that focused on interaction with the instructors. The respondents (75%) further reported that they hardly used English to interact with their friends socially. Thus it can be said that only 27.5% found that the MUET had contributed to their ability to interact with peers in English for social purposes. From the data, it appears that students were less inhibited in classroom interaction among themselves, compared to situations that required interaction between students and instructors. This points to the likelihood that students had greater inhibitions when speaking to people who are seen to hold positions of power and that this climate for social interaction does not encourage the use of English. This is probably because they were more at ease using either Bahasa Melayu or other languages for this purpose. As such there seems to exist a tension between the idealised language used and the extent to which actual performance is seen to hamper communication. Tables 5 summarises the data on the items for the listening skills.

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Table 5. Frequency of Using English for Listening Purposes Never (%)

Rarely (%)

Often (%)

Very often (%)

No answer (%)

1.5

18

45.5

33.5

1.5

Listen to instructions given by lecturer

0.5

9

45.5

44.5

0.5

Listen to resource materials used in teaching such as video/audio recordings and commentaries Social/Educational Listen to talks

4.5

30.5

29.5

35

0.5

0.5

12.5

71

16

2.5

32.5

35.5

13.5

16

0.5

10

79

10

0.5

Educational Take notes during a lecture

Social Listen to communicate with classmates Listen to recognize speakers’ attitudes, roles and relationships

According to Table 5, a majority of the respondents said that they often did the following in English: take notes during a lecture (79%), listen to instructions given by the lecturer (90%) and listen to resource materials (video/audio recordings and commentaries) (65%). 87% of the students stated that they often listened to talks. It seems that the MUET continues to extend to the honing of their listening ability to understand talks and lectures. It would appear that the MUET has been quite successful in training students to further listen effectively. There must have been ample practice and prior experience for the students to have reached this stage of development, having a relatively high level of confidence in using the listening skills in the tertiary environment. This ability is also well-supported by evidence in the test scores of the examination in which listening scores had always been generally higher in comparison to the scores for the other skills (personal communication with MUET Officer, Malaysian Examinations Syndicate). Seen against the speaking skills, listening skills appeared to be rated as ones that were more highly used. Listening skills are relatively passive skills and the data

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affirms that ESL learners are more competent in this aspect of their performance. However, in social contexts, 49% of the respondents claimed that listening skills in communicative situations with peers were not as frequently exercised. This supports the earlier data about the infrequent use of speaking in English for peer interaction. Most of the students stated that they were quite skilled in recognising speakers’ attitudes, roles and relationships (89%). In this respect, it seems that the students were able to transcend domains of use in the English language from the classroom to the outside world. The respondents’ answers to items on the reading skills are summarised in Table 6. Table 6. Frequency of Reading in English

Educational Read a book chapter quickly to decide whether the information is useful Read a research article quickly to decide whether the information is useful Read to summarise a text orally to fulfill an assignment Read to summarise a text in written form Read a text quickly to find specific information Read to answer comprehension/discussion questions related to a text (during an exam, during class work or for an assignment) Read and interpret data in various forms (graphs, charts, etc.). Read and understand the meaning of unfamiliar words without using a dictionary Read academic texts to do my assignments

Never (%)

Rarely (%)

Often (%)

Very often (%)

No answer (%)

1.5

32.5

45.5

20.5

1.5

40

41.5

16.5

2

40

40.5

17.5

2

27.5

52

16

2.5

0.5

24

52

20.5

3

0.5

16.5

55.5

25.5

2

5

46

37

10

2

3.5

36

42

16

2.5

0

22

46

29.5

2.5

0.5

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Educational/Social Read various texts on a particular issue to form and express my own opinions Read a text and criticize the author’s approach or ideas Read a text and express the author’s ideas in my own words Read notices posted by lecturers

1

38

45.5

13.5

2

5.5

49

34

9

2.5

7

46

32.5

11

3.5

0.5

21

51

25.5

2

0.5

31

48

18.5

2

18.5

40.5

40.5

39

2

Read e-mails

3.5

24

42

28

2.5

Read materials from the Internet for social purposes (e.g. on-line chats, product advertisements)

1.5

31

38.5

27

2

Read widely on topics, issues of current news Read materials from the Internet to complete assignments or to improve general knowledge Social

Most students said that they read in English mainly to answer comprehension or discussion questions related to a text during an examination, during class work or for an assignment (81%). They also claimed to read academic texts to complete their assignments (75.5%). Linked to the earlier information about them not reading much in the library, this particular response lends to the interpretation that students are constrained in some way when reading academic texts, not venturing to greater access of other reading materials. The students claimed to use reading skills quite often to locate specific information in texts (72.5%). To a lesser extent, they also read to summarise a text in written form (68%), and read a book chapter quickly to decide whether the information was useful (66%). Additionally, they read and interpreted data in various forms (e.g. graphs, charts) (47%). In the educational/social contexts, the students indicated that they read materials from the Internet to complete assignments (79.5%). This information is encouraging as the trend is to encourage students to selfaccess information in an online environment to follow discussions and complete assignments. They also read notices in English posted by lecturers quite often (76.5%), and read topics on current issues (66.5%).

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The figures were lower when they responded to the question on whether they read a text to criticize the author’s approach or ideas (43%), and to express the author’s ideas in their own words (43.5%). Socially, the students indulged in e-mailing quite frequently in English (70%). They also read materials from the Internet for social purposes (e.g. on-line chats, product advertisements) (65.5%). Table 7 shows the results obtained from the items on writing skills. In educational contexts, writing was generally used for answering comprehension and discussion questions (77.5%). This was followed by writing reports on group projects (69.5%), writing reports as individual projects (64.0%), writing reports to describe the steps and results of an experiment (59%), and writing to document sources using written conventions (citations, punctuation, etc.) (58%), and writing summaries of articles (56.5%). This set of skills was used for writing letters for official purposes (42.5%) and for synthesising information from a variety of sources (59.5%). Quite obviously, students wrote e-mails in order to communicate with others socially (62.5%). Writing letters for social purposes (36%) was not often done and writing notes to each other was a little more frequent (57%). With the advent of the internet and e-mail, it is not surprising that students spent very little time writing letters for social purposes using pen and paper. However, online social writing often does not mirror formal use of the language. Therefore, writing skills cannot be judged based on such writing. Table 7. Frequency of Writing in English

Educational Write to answer comprehension/discussion questions in an exam Write a report to describe the steps and results of an experiment Write a report as an individual project Write a report on a group project Use the written conventions (citations, punctuation, etc.) to document sources used in writing

Never (%)

Rarely (%)

Often (%)

Very often (%)

No answer (%)

1

20.5

46

31.5

1

3

36.5

40

19

1.5

4

30.5

42.5

21.5

1.5

2

22.5

46

23.5

1

3.5

37

41

17

1.5

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Write a summary of an article

2

40

39

17.5

1.5

3

35

42.5

17

2.5

8.5

47.5

31.5

11

1.5

Social Write notes to each other

4.5

37.5

35.5

21.5

1

Write letters for social purposes

9

53

24

12

2

Write to communicate through emails

5.5

31

40

22.5

1

Educational/Social Write to synthesize information from a variety of sources Write letters for official purposes

Table 8 sums up the responses to the question that is repeatedly asked about the effectiveness of MUET in terms of its contribution to the various language abilities in the different domains. Table 8. Students’ Perception of the MUET’s Effectiveness Skill Speaking (ask questions, discuss academic matters, answer questions in English) Speaking (participate in pair or group work to complete assignments, express opinions, convince, negotiate meaning, ask questions, make presentations and demonstrations) Speaking socially with friends Listening to take notes during a lecture Listening to instructions Listening to resource materials Listening to talks Listening to communicate with classmates Reading Writing

% 46.6 46.0 27.5 73.5 73.5 77.0 69.0 63.5 49.0 46.0

About 46.6% of the students perceived the MUET to have contributed to their ability to perform effectively in asking questions, discussing academic problems with their instructors in English, and answering questions in English. With regard to the skills of participating in pair or group work in order to complete an assignment, to express opinions in a discussion, to convince classmates of their opinions and to negotiate

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meaning during discussion, asking questions among themselves, and making presentations and doing demonstrations on a topic related to their field of study respectively, about 46% perceived that the MUET had contributed to their ability to perform in these tasks. Only about 27.5% of the students perceived the MUET to have contributed to their ability to interact with peers in English for social purposes. Similarly, overall, about 49% perceived the MUET to have contributed to their ability to read effectively and about 46% perceived the MUET to have contributed to their ability to write effectively. The picture is different for the listening skills in which case the students perceived the MUET to have helped to hone language ability in this respect. The results for the breakdown are shown in the table. About 69 % perceived the MUET to have contributed to their ability to listen effectively to talks, and they perceived the MUET to be quite effective in helping them to accomplish the purposes of taking notes during a lecture (73.5%), listening to instructions given by the lecturer (73.5%) and listening to resource materials (77%). The relatively lower figure of 63.5% (perceiving the MUET as being effective in helping students to listen to communicate with classmates) is as expected. Overall, the results show that the respondents did not consider the MUET to have played a very significant role in enhancing their language ability though it appeared to have had an impact towards creating a greater awareness on its use socially, economically and educationally. The MUET, in attaining the political goals, insofar as meeting national needs are concerned, has been indirect. Politically, the test is in place to serve an educational as well as public need. However, the power of the test has not been realised effectively as it is constrained by other factors such as the lack of worth in some communicative tasks and also the inability to define a specific requirement for test use as entry into academic/professional programmes offered by tertiary institutions. The intentions of the MUET have not been shown to be meaningfully assessed in terms of what the candidate could actually do in the language. Much of the test as revealed by the data is focused on academic matters (as indeed is the intention of the test) and has not been shown to extend beyond for real-life communicative purposes. Positive washback effects appear to align with classroom purposes with little effects shown on strategic or social linguistic competences.

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Conclusion The MUET experience appears to have fulfilled the aim of maintaining and enhancing language exposure in the matriculation years. As language is acquired over a period of time, the MUET does not seem to have brought about any dramatic effects in language improvement in terms of the four main components. However, the MUET may be considered useful, firstly, in aiding students in their educational endeavour at the university, and especially in helping them to prepare for the workplace. In this latter respect, the MUET is recognised as a test that would have future economic implications for the students. In fact, the students knew the economic importance attached to the English language as they saw it as being contributive to the gaining of knowledge in content areas. This is seen in the data collected via the first section of the questionnaire, where the importance of English was firmly established. This is a reflection of the status placed on English by the nation and the society. A good command of the English language is needed for a graduate to secure a good job. Ideologically, the potential work force is moulded with the instrumental motivation of being proficient in the language that serves the country internally as well as externally. However, ideationally, the experience of the world for the students falls short of the stated ideology. The responses from the students revealed the belief that they only had a fair command of the language whether in reading, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, speaking, listening and writing. This creates a tension between what is known and what really is. Thus, it is felt that more effort should be expended towards resolving this tension; otherwise, the situation as described by Shohamy (2001) about lack of attention to how a test (the MUET in this case) is used and its importance in the lives of students and the place of the test in society will persist. In addition, the social, educational and political practices have resulted in tertiary students having a less than desired level of competence. Further analysis of the students’ responses revealed that the tension continues to operate in a situation where the importance of English is confirmed (a majority of them attested to the importance of English as a language for the pursuit of knowledge and that they looked forward to attending English language classes). However, there was evidence that there were also less conducive practices such that a majority of them were not oriented towards reading materials in English and believed that English is a subject that is difficult to learn and master. Further questions were directed at the use of English in terms of its interactive functionality. Here, the MUET was not considered to be very

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successful in getting students to ask questions or to discuss academic matters with their instructors in English. However, to be able to speak well was rated as highly desirable. This is strongly linked to the social value of communicating well as indicative of an educated person. This particular social value has time and again manifested itself in other local research on language abilities (see e.g. Chan and Goh 2005, Goh and Chan 1993). It is also noted that English for the purpose of group work, discussions and presentations was not considered to have a high functional value. The respondents reported that the language was hardly used to interact with their friends socially. The MUET as a test had a component that focuses on listening and speaking skills but it would appear that it had contributed little to the use of the language for such purposes. From the reports, it appears that power as perceived to belong to people in position could result in inhibitions in the use of the language on the part of the students. Generally, such a climate for social interaction does not encourage the use of English. The listening component in the MUET was considered to be easy as students obtained high scores in this component. Most of the students claimed that they were highly skilled in recognising speakers’ attitudes, roles and relationships. In this respect, it would seem that the students were able to transcend domains of use in the English language from the classroom to the outside world. Besides listening and speaking, the other two components in the MUET are reading and writing. The MUET syllabus lists reading as the most crucial component (see Table 1). It has a weighting of 45%. This importance is reflected in the students’ experience as tertiary students. They use this skill to accomplish a number of academic tasks as is evident from the data. On the other fronts, they read e-mails and materials on current affairs. In this case, the objective for this skill as stipulated in the test syllabus is played out in terms of the students’ experience as users of the skill. However, their perception of their own ability in this skill is lower than desired. Writing has a weighting of 25%. This score is the second highest, after reading. The learners use this skill mainly for academic purposes. They also write a lot of e-mail but this does not constitute formal writing. Again the students perceive the MUET not to be very effective in promoting their ability in this skill. The reality is, in addition to reading, students need this skill for completing their academic tasks. The responses collectively indicate that the power and status given to English language competence is operative not only educationally, but socially and economically as the value of the competence is enmeshed in society and in the individual tertiary level student. The backwash effects

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of the test is realised through this form of social engineering. The random sampling approach netted students from various ethnic groups and disciplines. It could be surmised, then, that the tertiary students of various backgrounds are subjected to state-driven ideology though they would have to cope with personal realities in terms of their experience. The stated ideology did not totally drive the operations in terms of classroom learning. While there was total concurrence with the importance placed on English language competence, the ground work preparations fell short in realising the objective. This is especially more strongly felt in schools which do not enjoy the same structure or organisation as those found in the urban centres. The rural-urban divide as a social construct would appear to discriminate heavily against the realisation of an ideology that is looked upon with suspicion by some sections of the community as learning English is considered to be a treat to the social and cultural identity of the communities. Generally, the MUET has played out its role as a useful test as the judgement of the MUET so far has been somewhat favourable. The responses indicated that the MUET has a place in the language curriculum for pre-tertiary students. However, the perceptions of its effectiveness point to the need to make the MUET experience more meaningful in terms of achieving language goals, both personal and national. Since the students had evaluated their own language ability to be rather low and had further stated that the MUET had only been somewhat effective in enhancing their ability to carry out the tasks specified, university courses which extend language exposure after the MUET appear to be necessary in order to give the students continuous experience to further improve in their language skills. Politically speaking, the implications of the present study point to the need to re-examine the English language curriculum implementation whereby more hours may be allocated for learning the language in order for the MUET to have a greater impact holistically on the individuals who can contribute to nation building. The perceptions about the MUET have indicated that the test has been most effective for listening improvement. The skills of reading, writing and speaking share quite similar scores in effectiveness with an average of only about 45%. There are specific skills that warrant more attention than the others. For example, the ability to interact with instructors is low and the practice of using the language in social situations is glaringly lacking. Specific performance-based activities that could lead to further language enhancement should be incorporated into the classroom and tested communicatively with a view to extending language use in the real world. Other areas that could be developed further

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are reading more critically about writers’ ideas, students expressing ideas in their own words and reading and interpreting visual data. A severe shortcoming of the MUET reading comprehension component is the lack of open-ended questions. This has the added effect of not enhancing the students’ ability to write for the purpose of showing their understanding of a text. A critical examination of test impact must consider the characteristics of the particular testing situation, that is, the purpose, target language use domain, test takers’ characteristics and construct definition. The test impact should then translate realistically and meaningfully into values that can add prudence to the task of decision-making for the individuals affected, and it also has implications for the educational system, and society at large. Based on the washback effects as shown in the data, it is felt that if the MUET continues to be used in its present format, there is bound to be this discrepancy between what is ideal and what are the political, educational and social realities that influence the outcome of the test. As Alderson and Wall (1993) point out, the study of test impact could also encompass examination of the consequences of test performance and the perceptions of learners about these consequences. Bachman and Palmer (1996, 34) emphasise the importance of realising that test impact is not merely on the individual stakeholders but also has far-reaching implications for the educational system and the society it serves. However, in a less than ideal situation, other factors such as political and economic ones might affect the test validation process. It is in such contexts that a tension often arises and the test makers would have to make judicious judgements against the various constraints imposed but at the same time, realise the needs of the stake-holders at large.

References Alderson, J. C., C. Clapham and D. Wall. 1995. Language Test Construction and Evaluation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alderson, J. C. and D. Wall. 1993. Does Washback Exist? Applied Linguistics, 14 (2): 115-29. Bachman, L. F. and A. S. Palmer. 1996. Language Testing in Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chan, S. H. and B. E. Wong. 2002. The Malaysian English Language Competency Dilemma: Recovering Lost Grounds through MUET. Journal of Pan Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics, 6 (1): 31-42.

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Chan, S. H. and S. S. P. Goh. 2005. “The Unconventional Use of Conventions in Professional Writing: Making Cultural Links”. In Second Language Acquisition: Selected Readings, ed. Wong, B. E.: 93-112. Petaling Jaya: Sasbadi. Chappelle, C. A. and G. Brindley. 2002. “Assessment”. In An Introduction to Applied Linguistics, ed. Schmitt, N.: 267-288. London: Arnold. Fairclough, N. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis. Boston: Addison Wesley. Fowler, R. 1986. Linguistic Criticism. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. 1991. Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: Routledge. Goh, S. S. P. and S. H. Chan. 1993. The Use of English in the Commercial Sector of the Malaysian Economy: Perspectives from Potential Employers and Employees. ESP Malaysia, 1, 2: 128-146. McNamara, T. 2000. Language Testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Messick, S. 1989. “Validity”. In Educational Measurement, ed. Linn, R. L.: 13-103. New York: American Council on Education and Macmillan. Shohamy, E. 2001. The Power of Tests: A Critical Perspective on the Uses of Language Tests. London: Pearson.

CONTRIBUTORS

Faiz Sathi Abdullah is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia. His research interests highlight Critical Discourse Studies and English for Academic Purposes. Notable publications covering themes related to these interests include, “Prolegomena to a Discursive Model of Malaysian National Identity” in L. Young and C. Harrison (Eds.), Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis: Studies in Social Change (London: Continuum, 2004), “At the deep end: Using strategic translation to raise rhetorical awareness in ESAP”, ESP Malaysia (December 2005, pp. 1-25) and “Center or centre? Language choice and ideological framing in academic ESL” in Tan Bee Hoon, Mardziah H. Abdullah, Washima Che Dan, Noritah Omar, Faiz Sathi Abdullah and Rosli Talif. (Eds.), Theoretical and Practical Orientations in Language and Literature Studies (Kuala Lumpur: Pearson/Longman, 2007). Shakila Abdul Manan is Senior Lecturer of English Language Studies, School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Her research interests are in the areas of Stylistics, Critical Discourse Analysis and Feminist Literary Criticism. Her most recent publications include a co-edited book titled Linguistics and English Language Teaching (USM Publishers, 2003) and a book chapter “Reading between the Lines: UMNO, Malay Unity and the Others” in Cheah Boon Kheng (Ed.), The Challenge of Ethnicity: Building a Nation in Malaysia (Marshall Cavendish, Singapore, 2004). Hafriza Burhanudeen is Associate Professor at the School of Language Studies and Linguistics, Faculty of Social Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. She is also currently the Head of the International Student Affairs Unit at the Centre for Graduate Studies of the university. She holds a doctorate in sociolinguistics from Georgetown University, Washington D.C. Her areas of research include language and society issues with particular regard to language and diplomacy and the language of international law. Chan Swee Heng is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti

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Putra Malaysia. She teaches courses on grammar, testing and composition. Her research interests are in areas of assessment, composition writing and discourse studies. Prasana Rosaline Fernandez is a lecturer in the School of Communication at Taylor’s College, Kuala Lumpur. She holds a Master of Marketing degree from the University of Newcastle, Australia. Johan Gijsen has an MA in European Studies from the University of Leuwen, Belgium and a Ph.D in Sociolinguistics (University of Capetown, South Africa). He is currently Professor in the Department of Applied English, I-Shou University, Kaoshiung, Taiwan. Janet Holmes holds a personal Chair in Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, where she teaches sociolinguistics course, specialising in New Zealand English, language in the workplace and language and gender issues. She is Director of the Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English which is now available on CD-ROM, and director of an FRST-funded project on Language in the Workplace. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1994. Her convictions and social concerns have led to research addressing notions of cultures, power, identity and social agency. One of her major publications is An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, now in second edition. She has also published a book of readings titled Sociolinguistics, co-edited with John Pride, and the first book of sociolinguistics and pragmatics articles on New Zealand English, New Zealand Ways of Speaking English, co-edited with Alan Bell. Other books include Women, Men and politeness, a collection of papers, Gendered Speech in Social Context, and the Blackwell handbook of Language and gender, co-edited with Miriam Meyerhoff. Her interest in workplace discourse can be seen in the publication of book chapters and journal articles on speech acts and discourse strategies in the workplace, and in her book Power and Politeness in the Workplace, co-authored with Maria Stubbe. She is currently exploring cultural differences in workplace communication patterns and culturally different patterns of leadership. Her other areas of current research include the investigation of how new knowledge is disseminated through organisations and how e-mail contributes to this process. Gerry Knowles is currently on sabbatical from Lancaster University and consultant to MIMOS (Malaysian Institute of Microelectronic Systems)

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for projects in speech technology. He has developed the MALEX system which is a corpus-based approach to the study of Malay, and is currently working on techniques to extract information on spoken Malay from speech wave forms. Recent publications include articles in international refereed journal and two books in press with Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Annita Lazar is a Lecturer in Political Science at Nanyang Technological University. Her research interests include international security, the politics of the Middle East and US foreign policy. She is currently preparing a book on Gulf Security. Michelle M. Lazar, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore. She has taught both in the United Kingdom and in Singapore. Her research interests are in Critical Discourse Analysis, Multimodality (especially Visual Semiotics), Gender and Feminism, Media Discourse and Political Discourse. She has published widely in all of these areas. She recently completed a funded research project on Advertising and Cultural Values, on which she was the principal investigator. She is on the editorial boards of the international journals Discourse & Society, Visual Communication, and the Journal of Linguistics and Human Sciences. Lean Mei Li, PhD is a lecturer in the School of Communication at Taylor’s College, Kuala Lumpur. Her research interest lies in analysing media discourse. Her doctoral thesis was entitled “The Discursive Construction of AIDS in Print Media: A Critical Discourse Analysis, Universiti Malaya, 2005. Liu Yu-Chang has an MA in Linguistics from the University of Limoges, France. He is currently Professor in the Department of Applied English, IShou University, Kaoshiung, Taiwan. Alamin Mazrui is currently a Professor with the College of Humanities and the Department of African American and African Studies at the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA. He received his PhD in Linguistics from Stanford University in California. He taught at universities in Kenya, Nigeria and the USA and has served as a consultant to non-governmental organisations in Africa such subjects as language and urbanisation and language and the rule of the law. He has a special interest in human rights and civil liberties and has written policy reports on those subjects. A published playwright and poet in Kiswahili, Mazrui has

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written widely on the political sociology of language in Africa and African Diaspora, on the interplay between literature and identity, and on the politics of cultural production in Africa. His publications include, Ucambuzi wa Fasihi (Heinemann, Kenya, 1992), co-authored with Benedict Syambo, The Swahili; Idiom and Identity(Africa World Press, 1994), with Ibrahim Noor Shariff, Political Culture of Language: Swahili, Society and the State (IGCS, Binghamton University, 1996; Second edition, 1999), with Ali A. Mazrui, Power of Babel: Language and Governance in the African Experience (University of Chicago Press, 1998), and also co-authored with Ali A. Mazrui, English in Africa: After the Cold War (Multilingual Matters, 2004). Zuraidah Mohd Don is Professor at the Department of English, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya and Research Fellow at the Department of Linguistics, Lancaster University, UK. Zuraidah has published widely, including books, journal articles and book chapters. Her most recent article appeared in the Journal of Pragmatics and the Internal Journal of Corpus Linguistics, Lancaster University. She is currently involved in several projects among which are a project on speech synthesis and analysis, the Malaysian Corpus of Learner English (MACLE) and Malaysian Spoken English. She has presented at many national and international conferences. She is also the editor of the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health. Jariah Mohd. Jan is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya. She holds a Ph.D in sociolinguistics and currently teaches Language and Gender, and Language and Meaning. She has presented at several international conferences and published research articles in local and international refereed journals on gender and power issues in language, language and cognition, and literacy and literature in ESL. Her article on code-switching and gender was published in Multilingua. Ramesh Nair, PhD is a lecturer at the Academy of Language Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA. His research interests are in the area of Critical Discourse Analysis, specifically the role of language in the construction of identity in media texts. His doctoral thesis was titled “Gender construction in Malaysian Children’s Literature”. He has presented several papers in this area and among his recent publications is a chapter entitled “Reading Visual Language in Children’s Literature” in Understanding Children’s Literature (Sasbadi-MELTA ELT, 2007).

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Lokasundari Vijaya Sankar, PhD is Head of Department at the School of Communication at Taylor’s College, Malaysia where she teaches English. She has been an English language teacher for over 20 years, and is especially interested in research investigating the social factors that influence language use, particularly in minority communities. Her recent publications include “Language Shift and Maintenance among the Malaysian Iyers (Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on Education, 2005), “Is Language Solidarity a Strong Enough Factor to Overcome the Shift to a Language of Status?” in Language and Discourse in the Modern World (RIO AGU Publishers, 2005), “Some Peculiarities of Malaysian Iyer English” in M. K. David (Ed.) (2006), Multilingua, 25 (12), and “Cultural Norms that Govern Mother-Daughter in Law Interactions”, in M. K. David (Ed.), Language Choices and Discourse of Malaysian Families (SIRD, 2006). Rajeswary A. Sargunan is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. She specialises in ESP and Discourse Analysis, and has published in these fields. Notable publications include “Language and the Environment: Empowerment or Disempowerment?” in Language and Empowerment (Modern Language Association/University of Malaya Press, 2003), “Customer-Supplier Relationships in Communications Skills Training: Ironing out the Grey Areas” in the Journal of Communication Practices, 2/1 (January 2005) and “Preparing Interview Schedules for an Ethnographic Study in a Business Community” that appeared in the Jurnal Bahasa Moden, 13 (2000): 45-66. Wong Bee Eng is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia. She teaches linguistics and applied linguistics courses. Her main research interests are syntactic and vocabulary development in SLA and second language assessment. She has published widely in these areas.

INDEX

African languages, xiii, 1, 6, 7–10, 15–16, 22n AIDS discourse, xvi, 202–205, 207 Bangsa Malaysia, 39, 54–55 beauty industry, 183, 185, 188, 190, 193 bilingualism, 150, 157, 165–166 bilingualism in Taiwan, 150, 157 Mandarin/English bilingualism, 150 Mandarin/Taiwanese bilingualism, 150, 152 Brahmin heritage, 171, 174–175 Bush, ix, xiii, xviii, 100–102, 104– 110 class, xi, xii, 41, 61 Clinton, 100–102, 106–107, 110 colonialism, 1, 5, 18 European, 1 French, 7 German, 5 communal images, 43, 47 communal images/imagined communities dialectic, 43 imagined community, 40, 43, 56 consumer culture, xvi, 182, 185, 186–187, 200 core images, 113, 116, 126, 129– 131, 132n critical approach, 24 critical discourse analysis, x, xiv, xvi–xix, 38, 66, 69, 182, 186, 200, 216, 230–231 CDA, x–xiv, 71, 73, 74–75, 94, 114, 202, 204, 217–219, 221 dialogicality, 204, 206, 208, 210, 212 diglossia, 152, 159

diplomacy, xv, 134–139, 141, 143, 144, 146, 148–149 diplomatic communication, 134–137, 139, 140–143, 145, 147–148 diplomatic culture, xv,134–141, 145, 147–148 international diplomacy, 134, 136–137, 141, 148 ethnicity, xiv, 71, 73, 75, 94 Eurocentric (economy), 2, 21n female body, xvi, 182, 184–185, 200 body representations, 182, 185 fundamentalism, xv, 111–113, 124– 125, 129–131 gender, xi–xii, xiv, xvii, 71, 73, 75– 76, 94–97, 182, 187, 200, 233– 236, 247, 249–250 gendered norms, 89, 92 feminine, 76, 84–86, 93 masculine, 84–88, 92–93 global English, xiv, 23–24, 28, 35– 37 globalisation, ix, xiii–xiv, 38–39, 41–44, 47–51, 56–64, 68, globalisation/localisation, 43, 51, 63 localisation/globalisation dialectic, 39 (as) project, xii, xiv, 38, 44, 46– 47, 49–50 glocalisation, 38, 45, 49–50, 69n habitus, 69n hegemony, ix–x, 1–2, 14 HIV/AIDS, 203–215 (and) health, 203–204, 210–211, 214–215 (and) homosexuality, 203

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND DISCOURSE IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER discourse representation of, 202–203, 211, 214 (in the) mass media 202–204, 211–215 stigma of, 203, 205–207, 214 identities, xii, xiv, xvii, 39, 43, 45, 48, 50–52, 55–56, 61, 63, 66 glocal identities, 38, 41, 49, 63 legitimising identities, 41–42, project identities, 41–42, resistance identities, 42 "third space", 41, 49–50 identity, xi, xiv, 4, 7, 38–45, 47, 50– 57, 59, 62, 65––68, 69n cultural identity, 173, 175 ethnic identity, xi, xiv, 43, 46, 167–171, 173–174, 179–180 identity politics, xiv, 38–39, 41– 42, 45, 48–49, 52, 63, 65–68 national identity, xi, xix, 18–21, 38, 40, 41, 43–45, 52, 54–56, 58, 63–64, 66–67, 69, 69n women’s identity, 182 ideology, xii, xiv, 12, 23–24, 26, 32– 33, 35, 38, 50, 53–54, 59, 110, 132, 183, 188, 191,200, 216– 221, 227, 229–230, 253, 258, 261, 270, 272, 274 ethno-nationalist, 228, 230 end of ideology, 48 imperial, 14 national, 40–41 (neo)liberal, 17, 102 racist, 218 patriachal, 232 illegal immigrants, 218, 220, 222, 224–228 imperialism, 15, 17, 20n empire, 2, 5, 8–12, 14, 18, 20n, 22n imperial language, 1–2 imperial order, 1–2 linguistic imperialism, xiii, 23, 36–37 interdiscursivity, xi, 186, 194, 198

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Interpretationsgemenscaft (common code of interpretation), 135–136, 139, 141, 147 Iraq, 100–101, 107, 109 Islam, xv, 111–113, 115–121, 124– 131 Iyer, xvi, 167–181 language, ix–xiv, xvi–xix, 1–5, 8, 14, 16, 18, 20n, 23–28, 32, 35–36, 150–151, 167, 170, 179–180, 216–217, 219–221, 230, 232, 234, 239, 252–254 dominant language, 150, 157– 158, 165 encroachment, 150, 155, 158, 163 policy, 150–157, 161–163, 166, 252, 256, 261 shift, xvi, 152, 157–159, 165, 167–170, 179 styles, xvii, 232, 249 lexical analysis, 221–222 transitivity analysis, 221–223, 225 language education, 153, 161, 164 Basque language education, 160–161, 163, 165 Catalonian language education, 161–163 English, 150 foreign, 151 Galician language education, 161 trilingual primary education, 159, 162, 165 language testing, 252, 254, 273–274 Malaysian University English Test/MUET, 252, 254–264, 268, 270–273 test impact, 252, 254, 258, 273 test implementation, 254–255 test innovation, 252 test policy, 253–254, 256 leadership, xvii, 232–233, 235–237, 249–250 Mahathirism, 54, 62, 66–67,

282 Malay (language), 23, 26, 30–37, 51, 256, Malaysia, xiii–xiv, xvi, 38, 53–68, 69n–70n, 135, 137, 140–142, 145–146, 202, 208, 210, 213– 214, 216, 220, 222–225, 227– 231, 254, 256, Malaysian media, 219–220, 230 Maori, 82–84, 96 mental models, 114 Muslims, xv, 111–113, 115–119, 123–127, 129–130 nationalism, 41–43, 45–46, 49, 52, 53–55, 64, 66, 68 orientalisation, xvi, 100, 102–104, 108 orientalism, 126, 132n Osama bin Laden, 100, 102, 108 Othering, xv, 100, 103, 108 negative other-presentation, 114–116 outcasting, 103, 110 positive self-presentation, 114– 115, 117, 120, 123 rhetoric of Othering, 126 the Other, 105–108, 134, 136– 137, 140, 141–147 pax Americana, xiii–xiv, 12, 20n power, ix–xiv, xvii–xviii, 23–24, 28– 30, 32, 35–36, 39, 43–47, 51–52, 56, 63, 66, 71, 73–76, 85–86, 88, 92, 96–98, 216–217, 219, 224, 230, 232–236, 242–243, 248– 251 doing power, 72, 76, 92–93 global configurations of, 18 imperial, 2 of the media, 8, 14 superpower, 9, 14, symbolic power, x, 43, 65 systemic power, x, xiv, 71, 74 unequal relations of, xii, xiii, xvi, 17

INDEX stereotypes, xv, 112–113, 115, 130 primary stereotypes, 112, 117, 126, 129, 131 race, 41, 55–56, 60, 64, 69n elite discourse of racism, 116, 120, 130, 132n linguistic racism, 257 racism, 113–114, 218, 231 relativism, 2–3, 5, 15, 18 linguistic, 3–4 Saddam Hussein, 100, 102, 104, 108–109 September 11/9-11, ix, xiii, xv, xix, 101–102, 111–113, 116–117, 123, 129, 131–132 Space-time, 44–46, 59–60, 62, symbolic resources, 114–115 Taiwanese (language), xv, 150–152, 155, 157–158, 161 Tamil (language), xvi, 167–179 terrorism, 111–113, 121, 123–125, 130 United States (of America), 102, 106–107 universalism, 2–4, 15, 18 Us and Them, xvii, 221, 223, 226, 229 voices (in discourse), xvi, 202–207, 209–214 women’s magazines, 182, 185–186, 188, 190–191 workplace discourse, xiv, 71, 92–93, 234–236, 248 meetings, 71–72, 74–76, 78–81, 84, 89–90, 92–93, 95, 97 world order, xiv, 38, 46, 48, 63, 65, discourse of the New World Order, 101–103, 109, 110 moral order, 100, 102–103 new world (dis)order, 38, 41 New World Order, ix, xv, xviii, 20n, 38–39, 41, 45–46, 62, 67–68, 111, 113