Naoko Akai-Dennis, PhD

Assistant Professor, English Department
Facilitator, One Book Program
Bunker Hill Community College

ABSTRACT

In 1974, the Conference on College Composition and Communication declared a resolution titled (and upholding) Students’ Right to Their Own Language.  In 2019, forty-five years later, at an opening session of the conference of the same organization, Asao Inoue had to title his chair’s address How Do We Language So People Stop Killing Each Other, or What Do We Do About White Language Supremacy? Students’ rights to their own language are yet to be claimed.  According to Inoue, “The key to fighting White language supremacy is in changing the structures, cutting the steel bars, altering the ecology, in which our biases function in our classrooms and communities.”   This article is part of this larger conversation. 

This article analyzes detrimental effects of monolingualism and discusses features of ELLs written products as translanguaging.  Further, the author of this article revisits, reflects on, and re-envisions her feedback to one former student’s draft, applying the idea of “relocalized listening.”  The author frames this article into one form of qualitative research, autobiography as inquiry, and therefore gives an account of her experiences as a language user.    

Dear Amy Tan 

Dear Amy Tan,

I often have my students write an open letter to authors of texts we read.  Asking questions, sharing their experiences, throwing out their thoughts, etc. without thinking about an organization helps them relate to the text, I think.  Just practicing quoting and paraphrasing does not really get them engaged in a text.  By the way, I am a teacher.  I am a teacher of writing, but I’m not a teacher of English (see Akai-Dennis, 2021, p. 58). 

So, now I feel like I want to write to you, knowing that you will not read this open letter, because I want to gather my thoughts about language, or mother tongue, which you delineated in “Mother-Tongue” (Tan, 1990).  This work is loved by a lot of teachers of English, for some reason.  They might love it because it is a “minority’s” story.  They love “minority’s” stories, right?   

I remember reading Joy Luck Club back in Japan when I was at a graduate school to study American literature. I was writing something really infantile about William Faulkner’s “Sanctuary”, about a young white female in the South.  Why Faulkner?  I related to this girl, Temple, a super-spoiled white girl.  I was also a spoiled brat like her.  I was full of myself.  On the other hand, I was not able to relate to any of Asian women in that novel, honestly.  It might sound ridiculous to some folks, but I didn’t see myself as an Asian at all when I was in Japan.  But I do remember I wondered what it is like to live in the U.S. and speak English as an Asian, like your mother. 

Now I am in the U.S. Since I came here, I obsessively ponder on some sort of relation between language and me, especially the language I did not grow up with, the language which did not shape the world around me, like color, smell, sound, taste, and touch.  Other people’s language.

In the short story, you describe your mother’s English.  You say the mother-tongue is your “language of intimacy” (Tan, 2019, p. 7).  Of course, it is.  Isn’t that why we have the expression, “mother tongue.”  Also, you said you were not happy that some of your friends described your mother’s English as “broken” and “fractured” (Tan, p. 7).  The language has shaped the ways we see the world.  If the language is broken, then that means your world is broken.  How should we take that?  Or at other times, you explain how your mother’s English nurtures your imagination, which can’t be measured by those standardized tests.  You seem to perceive your mother’s English well.  Of course, you do.  You are a writer, and so a master of the language, English without the article “the” or possessive pronoun “my.”   

However, at one point, you called your mother’s English “simple.”  That made me raise my eyebrows a little bit.   Yes, you said it with much hesitation, but for me, that just implies that you see your mother’s English from the dominant discourse of language which hierarchizes different versions of English.  Sophisticated or civilized English, through so-so English, and down to simple, or primitive one.  Maybe, maybe, you call it “simple,” since the intimate relationship with your mother is simple.  Yet, again, this portrayal as simple is trapped within binaries, like body and mind, nature and culture, primitive and civilized, and so on. 

Any of your rendering of your mother’s English does not even illustrate how SHE might feel about English.  At one point, you write “My mother has long realized the limitation of her English as well” (Tan, p.7).  That was wrong.  That was your limited perception of her relation to the language.  That seems to me to reveal your lack of imagination about any relation to language in general.  Your relation to language might sabotage you from even imagining how one feels about a language which they were not born with/in. 

Of course, I don’t and can’t speak for your mom.  But I’d like to give you a little glimpse of how one, actually me, perceives a relation to English, in which they did not grow up. 

Years, years ago, I wrote this piece “On the Shore” as a conference paper.   

I am on the shore.  Waves ebb and flow.  I sometimes walk into the ocean with the receding waves or against the breaking waves.  I sometimes go back to the shore, and the waves come after and with me, and pass me; but sometimes they recede further away from me.  I can’t tell if I am on the shore or in the ocean.  When am I crossing a line?  I am on the shore, without belonging, but longing for something (Akai, 2008).  

This still sounds true to me in the sense that I don’t know where I am in relation to the two languages.   People say, “I write in English.”  I’d ask myself, “In English?  Can I be IN English?”  I’d rather say, “I write with English.”  But, I know, this does not make sense to you.  But whose sense is that, anyways? 

Revisiting this piece, I find myself having meandered and roamed as if I looked for a door to move from one place to another.  But now I know there is no door between the two languages.  Even if there is, -- actually there is; otherwise, why do the gatekeepers exist? --the door is so porous.  Probably in those days, I might have felt I was more “in” Japanese and so struggled to get “out of” the language and immerse myself into English.  Now, I still see myself on the shore, without belonging, without knowing where I am in relation to English.  I am with/in both languages, which sometimes elude me.

Can you hear me?  Can you feel this? 

Sincerely

Naoko

If this open letter makes you feel confused or uneasy, I think I am successful in achieving one of my purposes of this article, inquiring into a translingual approach, which I am going to examine later.  This open letter also gives a glimpse of what I mean by one’s relation to language, which is the foundation of the discussion that I am going to unfold here in terms of engaging with English language learners through equity-mindedness. 

Most professors of the English language come to realize that a deficit model in which ELLs are seen as lacking some linguistic knowledge has not benefited them.  Instead, some of them employ an asset-based model which recognizes, values, and utilizes students’ abundant capital or wealth, such as linguistic and cultural, thereby promoting their learning of English.  That is wonderful. 

And yet.  As Watson and Shapiro (2018) contend, inviting and valuing linguistic differences as cultural wealth in the classroom and in writing is useful, but it is far from sufficient in order to combat the monolingual ideology, which has oppressed, marginalized, and even damaged not only ELLs but also the speakers who do not speak a certain version of English, or a legitimized English, if you like.  The monolingual ideology permeates every single stage of the writing process and assessment as well.  So, along with endeavoring to implement an asset-based pedagogy, we need to start a conversation about ways in which we teachers re-imagine our roles and involve ourselves as “readers” at some stages in the writing process, or in other words, ways in which we give feedback to students on their drafts in English, or in their Englishes.  At those stages, we might be complicit in perpetuating the ideology of monolingualism with a “correcting gaze” (Watson & Shapiro, 2018, para. 56).  Even if our curriculum values ELL’s cultural wealth, we might be complicit in perpetuating the ideology, not knowing that is what we do.  That will never bring them equity. 

Thus, this article focuses on multifaceted impacts that the dominant discourse of English, or English language education and products, have on us teachers, which dictates how we read, respond, and engage with ELL products. This conversation should foremost start with and even demand our understanding of the nature(s) of their writing and recognition that their Englishes do not interfere with meaning, but rather display their cultural wealth.  The natures of writing in their Englishes reflect a relation to language that they want to acquire and absorb in their “system,” body and mind.  Therefore, in order to start this conversation and examine the dominant discourse, the monolingual ideology, it is imperative to shed light on the relation between one and language, a visceral and corporeal relation, first.   

As a matter of fact, you already got a partial glance of a relation to language in my open letter to Amy Tan.  I say “partial” because the relation I describe is my story, my felt relation, and my experience, which are always incomplete as anyone’s story is incomplete (Miller, 2004).  Jhumpa Lahiri (2016) and Jacque Derrida’s (1996) renditions of their relation to language give some in-depth insight into the relation to language I delineated in the opening missive. 

Before I take you into Lahiri and Derrida’s relations to language, though, I’ll briefly explain how this article is theoretically framed.  I am persuaded by Patti Lather’s (2004) conceptualization of qualitative research as “a critical ‘counter science’ that troubles what we take for granted as the good in fostering understanding, reflection and action ” (p. 765).  The concept of science is reified by political apparatus that determines a particular form of science (Denzin 2009).  For instance, the qualitative research methodology grounded in simplified neoliberalism as a doctrine of market and economics almost equates “scientific” research as “evidence-based” (Flick, 2019).  Pati Lather (2014), Norman Denzin (2009), and Yvonne Lincoln (2018) question this kind of qualitative inquiry methodology that originated from the post-positivist trend, and instead argue for the need of qualitative research that hinges on different versions of data. 

One strand within this concept of qualitative research, autobiography as a form of inquiry (Gourmet 1980; Pinar 1994; Miller 2004; Butler 2005), allows me to investigate my experiences and my feelings in terms of the issues of monolingualism, translingual orientation, and translanguaging because these are also legitimate data, which could shed another light or another qualitative layer to the issues when discourses that construct my experiences and feelings are revealed and investigated.  Although some mainstream qualitative researchers criticize autobiographical approach as a solipsistic monologue, I do not talk about my experiences with English to pity myself or gain some sympathy from the reader.  Neither do I talk about my teaching practices as a “success” story.  Instead, I constantly interrogate my practices in the classroom since they might reflect my own internalization of the monolingual ideology to a certain extent.  Additionally, the slogan of the second-wave feminist movement in the 1960’s, “The personal is political,” is still valid.  The investigation of experiences and feelings illuminate injustice and inequality in the world we live in (Butler, 2005; Braidotti, 2013).  In its logical extension, the interrogation of my experiences, feelings, and practices of operating myself in English, “other peoples’ language” (Young, 2014) will help me to decolonize myself and so critically look to the ways to combat the ideology more rigorously. 

Lastly, if I did not put forward my subjectivities, I might inadvertently create another danger for ELLs by universalizing or essentializing their needs, their writing, their relations to language, and the unknown.It is one of the responsibilities as researchers/writers to disclose where they speak, including their identities, subjectivities, education, beliefs, and so on.Concealing the position of the researcher, hindrance of “I,” does not make our writing objective, but rather makes it less trustworthy (Denzin, 2009).

RELATION TO LANGUAGE

I start this article with the letter that ends with the “on the shore” piece.  Being on the shore, my felt relation to English, is not peculiar to me.  Jhumpa Lahiri (2016), an author who was born in Britain and grew up in the U.S. with heritage from West Bengali parents, writes about her feelings and perception of the Italian language in “In Other Words.”  She delineates a relation to the language: “For twenty years I studied Italian as if I were swimming along the edge of that lake.  Always next to my dominant language, English.  Always hugging that shore” (p. 5).  Unlike me, she believes that there is a border between her dominant language and Italian, a “foreign” language for her.  The water in the lake sits still, and there is no wave touching and leaving her feet.  She grounds herself in the land without any risk of drowning herself there.  That is why later on she “finds [her]self inside the language” when she had a conversation with two Italians as if she went through an invisible door or climbed over a surmountable wall. In this literacy narrative, however, her perception of relation to the Italian language changes.  In the chapter “Impossibility,” she states:

In that sense the metaphor of the small lake that I wanted to cross, with which I began this series of reflections, is wrong.  Because in fact a language isn’t a small lake but an ocean.  A tremendous, mysterious element, a force of nature that I have to bow before (p. 91)

She ends this chapter about the impossibility of writing in a foreign language with this strong statement: “If it were possible to bridge the distance between me and Italian, I would stop writing in that language” (p. 95).  I echo her.  If this distance were to disappear, why would I write in this language called English about writing in this “other people’s language,” hoping that someday the people who monolingually orient themselves in English listen to me, really listen to me?  And interestingly, I can’t express this thought in my mother-tongue.  But that is another story to grapple with. 

            Can you hear me?  Can you feel this? 

The beloved and simultaneously hated French philosopher, Jacque Derrida (1996), also creates his literacy narrative in “Monolingualism of the Other,” intertwined with theoretical inquiries into this notion of our “own” language and the uncountability of languages.  He unfolds his relationship with the French language as an Algerian Jew, which is the only language he speaks but is not his mother-tongue, because the French language was “interdicted” when he was given French citizenship in Algeria.  He describes his relation to the French language as being “on the unplaceable line of its coast” (p. 2).  Then, he poses a question if “one can love, enjoy oneself [jouir], pray, die from pain, or just die, plain and simple, in another language or without telling anyone about it, without even speaking at all” (p. 2) when they are neither in nor out of the language. 

This description of his relation to the French language and the posed question show us two-folded aspects of the relation between self and language, whether it is native or foreign.  One is that the relation is never stable, even if it can be stabilized.  As Lahiri and I feel, we are in and simultaneously out of language.  In Derrida’s astute delineation, the relation to the language is “inalienable alienation” (p. 57).  The other aspect that Derrida’s rendition indicates is that the relation is visceral and corporeal.  Language cannot be detached from the body. Doesn’t language make it possible for us to love physically and emotionally?  Doesn’t language enable, and disable us to go through pains and sufferings?  When I read students’ essays, I hear their physical voices in my ears.  When one talks about someone’s linguistic ability, don’t they say, “She can speak well.”  The level of mastering a language tends to be measured by this ability to “speak,” which needs vocal cords.  Remember how Amanda Gorman, the national Youth Poet Laureate, recited the inaugural poem in 2021 with hands, as if without them it is impossible to express herself?

            Can you feel this?  Can you hear me?

 Your ear, which has “the edges, the inner walls, the passages” (Derrida, 1985, p. 11)

This relation to language inevitably reflects itself in writing produced by ELLs.   The language that teachers, monolingual or multilingual, read and hear is not necessarily the English they have known.  The words that we read and hear in student products might hold other invisible and inaudible layers that emanate from history, experiences, tears, suffering, bliss.  (Ah, please don’t add “and” before the word “bliss.”  I don’t want it.  The “and” excludes something unknown that can be included.)   Anzaldua (1987) rhetorically questions us, “what recourse is left to them (who don’t speak either formal Spanish nor standard English) but to create their own language?” (p. 35). 

“Their own” language that communicates their realities and values to themselves is understandably something foreign and even alien to teachers/readers who are ensnared into the monolingual ideology.  This “their own” language is considered as interfering or unsuccessfully transferred (Leonard & Nowacek, 2016) and therefore as something that has to be eliminated or has to be “fixed.”   If these layers merged with some standardized forms of English are forcefully severed, that hurts.  That hurts because the purging deprives their languages of their bodies, their feelings, and their identities. 

Can you hear me?  Can you feel this? 

This approach to writing by ELLs for the purpose of making their English “pure” or “recognizable” is rooted in monolingual ideology.