Philippine English: Linguistic and Literary Perspectives

John Benjamins Publishing Company

This is a contribution from English World-Wide 33:2 © 2012. John Benjamins Publishing Company This electronic file may not be altered in any way. The author(s) of this article is/are permitted to use this PDF file to generate printed copies to be used by way of offprints, for their personal use only. Permission is granted by the publishers to post this file on a closed server which is accessible to members (students and staff) only of the author’s/s’ institute, it is not permitted to post this PDF on the open internet. For any other use of this material prior written permission should be obtained from the publishers or through the Copyright Clearance Center (for USA: www.copyright.com). Please contact [email protected] or consult our website: www.benjamins.com Tables of Contents, abstracts and guidelines are available at www.benjamins.com

Maria Lourdes S. Bautista and Kingsley Bolton, eds. 2008. Philippine English: Linguistic and Literary Perspectives. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. 424 pp. HKD 395.00 / USD 49.50 (hb; ISBN 978-962-209-947-0). Reviewed by James D’Angelo This book provides a comprehensive treatment of Philippine English (PhilE). An issue of World Englishes was devoted to the subject in 2004, and a book on PhilE by Thompson in the John Benjamins VEAW series, but this volume stands as the authoritative source, with contributions from many leading scholars. PhilE is controversial, due to the complex linguistic ecology, 400 years of successive colonization, and nationalist fervor of the 1960s / 70s. This volume, devoting 19 chapters to contrasting voices, helps one to work through the complexity and synthesize a common thread. Part I includes six chapters on the sociolinguistic context. Chapter 1 is by Andrew Gonzalez, to whose memory the volume is dedicated. While Spanish was spoken by only 2% to 3% of Filipinos during 300 years of colonization, English found a favorable climate from its introduction in 1898, to the training of local teachers by the 523 U.S. teachers who arrived aboard the Thomas in 1901. Soon the majority of teachers were locals, and by 1918, 8.7% of the population spoke English. Methods changed with time: UCLA introduced Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) in the 1960s, followed by the bilingual education program mandated in 1974. Gonzalez also provides a discussion of linguistic features, with the “immediate impression” (p. 19) that PhilE is syllable-timed. There is great creativity in geographical, formal, and less formal code-switching “lects”, such as Taglish. Prior to nationalism, English became the dominant language of educated Filipinos, and even with domains reduced in favor of Filipino, “a new variety of English has become a permanent feature of the communicative repertoire and culture of the Filipino” (p. 23). Chapter 2, by Allan B. I. Bernardo, asks: “English in Philippine education: solution or problem?”. The answer depends on how stakeholders “construct and reconstruct the role of English in schools” (p. 44). Since 1900, when McKinley ordered English to be used as the Medium of Instruction (MOI) at all levels of education, the policy has been “criticized, upheld, denounced, and debated” (p. 29). English’s use for social integration, difficulties in shifting away from it, and its usefulness in economic / intellectual domains support its retention, while its oppression and harmful effects on students’ learning support rejection. English World-Wide 33:2 (2012), 225–230. doi 10.1075/eww.33.2.09dan issn 0172–8865 / e-issn 1569–9730 © John Benjamins Publishing Company

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Regarding global competitiveness: there are benefits to English proficiency, but it must be viewed critically, not to be “the wedge that separates Filipinos from their past and … educated Filipinos from the masses of their countrymen” (p. 31). In Chapter 3, Danilo T. Dayag describes PhilE media. On television, two private networks dominate Mega Manila and have the widest national presence. While late night news is in English, local TV is in Filipino or Taglish to gain mass appeal. This is contrasted with cable, concentrated in urban areas, with most programming in English. Radio is primarily FM, with most programming in Filipino. English newspaper broadsheets target the upper and middle classes, while Filipino tabloids target lower socio-economic strata. Magazines are popular and often in English. He concludes that print media are more English-oriented than broadcast, and are vital in spreading new coinages, and that it is necessary to conduct research into syntactic / discourse patterns of PhilE. In Chapter 4, T. Ruanni F. Tupas undertakes a critique of the World Englishes (WEs) paradigm. He credits WEs for recognition of PhilE and the shifting locus of norms from the Inner Circle, but challenges the claim that WEs is a “non-political” reality: WEs “culled” (p. 68) much of its rhetoric from post-colonial theory, but is “much less interested in equally real movements of power” (p. 72) that contribute to sustained classbased polarization. WEs is “dangerously complicit … with neoliberal globalization” (p. 69) and ignores the “Davos Man / Manila Woman” (p. 72) dichotomy fomented by trans-national elites. Tupas’ argument deserves consideration, but fails to address non-linguistic causes of inequality. In Chapter 5, Danilo V. S. Manarpaac outlines limits of the nationalist language policy’s attempt to “dislodge” English from its privileged position. He advocates English — a legitimate vehicle for Philippine visions — as sole official language (p. 87), while maintaining the vernaculars. He questions the need for a national language in a “linguistically plural society whose political unity is the result of colonial machinations” (p. 90). Filipino — essentially Tagalog — risks imposing one indigenous language. The view that Filipino is needed “as a defense against AngloAmerican values … is outmoded” (p. 91). In contrast to Tupas, he adds, “blaming social inequity in the Philippines on English is way too convenient … it absolves Filipinos of their own culpability in the matter” (p. 98). In Chapter 6, Vicente L. Rafael investigates the use of Taglish in Philippine films. He elicits multifarious examples of envy, as with the privileged mestiza girls in Hagedorn’s Dogeaters, who “approach images from the U.S. like devotees facing saintly icons” (p. 102). Since the Spanish colonization, mestizos like Jose Rizal “enjoyed a privileged position associated with … proximity to the sources of colonial power” (p. 103). Most actors are mestizo, and Taglish becomes a language outside the hierarchy, placing Spanish, English and Tagalog as “equally substitutable”. Rafael convincingly describes “anonymous hearing” in which bakya audiences eavesdrop on movie stars,

© 2012. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

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sharing a phantasmal “negotiation of linguistic registers and the social domains they imply” (pp. 122–3). Part II contains five chapters on linguistic forms. Chapter 7 by Curtis D. McFarland discusses linguistic diversity. A scholar of Philippine languages and contact linguistics, he compares features of 14 languages, providing a useful grouping of over 100 languages into six categories. There is no single variety of PhilE, but the idiom varies depending on the speaker’s L1, proficiency level, and the presence of a non-Tagalog speaker. The chapter outlines differing substrate influences on Ilocano English or Cebuano English, but also looks at English borrowings into those substrates. Chapter 8, by Maria Lourdes G. Tayao, describes phonological features of PhilE. Following Llamzon (1997), she takes a sociolectal rather than geographical approach. Llamzon’s (1969) study first posited “Standard Filipino English”, as being “intelligible to not only Filipino speakers … but also to native speakers of Canadian as well as American English” (p. 158). Tayao provides useful in-depth analysis of segmental and supra-segmental features. General American is employed as the norm, and degree of approximation to it as determiner of educated speech, somewhat counter to a WEs view. Such assumptions might be reconsidered, since numerous similarities were found across the lectal ranges. In Chapter 9, Kingsley Bolton and Susan Butler discuss the historical description of the PhilE lexicon, stressing the importance of dictionaries in the legitimation of New Englishes. While the most commonly used Webster’s in the Philippines contains many local items, the majority are flora / fauna, or colonial era terms, with few from contemporary PhilE: such as ambush interview, dirty kitchen (for ‘maids’ everyday use) or comfort room (‘toilet’; (pp. 183–5). Local publisher Anvil, with Australia’s Macquarie, developed the Anvil-Macquarie Dictionary of Philippine English for High School. Though a preliminary step, its scope shows promise for future codification in a fuller dictionary. Sadly, until market demand develops in Outer Circle countries, dictionaries may not emerge. In Chapter 10, Maria Lourdes S. Bautista explores the ICE corpora to confirm grammatical features of PhilE identified in earlier studies. She is well up to the task, having been instrumental in building the ICE-Philippines. She also investigates the possibility that three Outer Circle corpora (ICE-Singapore, ICE-Philippines and ICE-Hong Kong) might be located on a cline in relation to the Inner Circle variety of ICEGreat Britain (ICE-USA is not completed). The study confirms that ICE-Singapore most closely resembles the Inner Circle, but using ICE-Canada may have yielded a different outcome. The author attributes many common features of PhilE to L1 influences, but still defines them as “problems” or “deviations”, a point also observed by Lily Tope (p. 205). By using Quirk’s grammar as the normative yardstick, corpus studies may at times sell short the creativity of their own varieties.


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Chapter 11 provides informative research into Call Center / BPO operations in the Philippines by Jane Lockwood, Gail Forey and Helen Price, arguing that the industry “foregrounds” the simultaneous forces of diversity and convergence. “In a WEs paradigm, PhilE is seen as a coherent, dynamic, creative system … that can be seen as functionally native” (p. 225), but nevertheless suffers communication breakdowns with U.S. customers. The authors stress training, and make the invaluable point that rather than focusing on developing “on-shore identity” via accent neutralization and many hours of studying U.S. sitcoms and popular music, time would be better spent developing interactive / sociolinguistic and discourse / strategic competence for these new functional requirements. The study might benefit from comparison to India or Singapore, struggling in the same industry. Chapter 12 is the first of seven, in Part III, on PhilE literature. Isabel Martin discusses the influence of colonial education on Philippine literature in English, with its emphasis on Longfellow, Irving, and Defoe, to instill democratic virtues. Early PhilE literature was criticized by Americans for its slavish imitation, provincialism, lack of confidence, and sentimentalism, prompting Calalang in 1928 to say, “It will profit us to pay particular attention to our surroundings … to write stories that will breathe the heat and passion of the tropics, and bear the distinctive stamp FILIPINO” (p. 255). Yet locals like Hernandez (1936: 5) characterized Philippine writing as being “[o]riental” and lacking native “crispness” and economy of expression. Martin warns: “while education has the power to propel cultures, it also has the power to silence marginal voices” (p. 257). In Chapter 13, Lily R. Tope addresses post-colonialism and nationalism in PhilE literature. Language, as culture, is for Ngugi “the collective memory bank of a people’s experience in history” (1981: 15). English has displaced this connection through “cultural violence”. Yet Tope feels, like Ashcroft, that English can be possessed, decolonized, or “sculpted” to speak for the colonized, to be unhinged from its cultural moorings, “excised” of cultural baggage (p. 262). The idiom is localized, imbued with the local spirit: “I felt like a fish drying in the sun” (p. 266). The chapter is rich with excerpts from PhilE writers and shows English has been appropriated as a “genuine, guiltless, creative mode of self-expression” (p. 276). Chapter 14 is a brilliant exegesis on Filipino English poetry by Gemino H. Abad. He describes the effort to “express humanity as Filipino” (p. 281) as being precisely the occupation of poetry. While Torres expresses the Sapir-Whorfian idea that some things can only be expressed in the vernacular, Abad heartily disagrees. To paraphrase: poets find their own voice and create their own idiom. English had to be naturalized; we had to “inhabit” English (pp. 284, 286). Poets, whether using their native language or English, must reinvent language, must constantly liberate themselves from language and subject. Indeed, as with Ngugi’s “culture as collective memory”, Abad explains the poet Nick Joaquin’s “deep historical


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consciousness and Hispanic Catholicism interlaced with folk religion” (p. 287). Just as Singapore has not torn down Raffles’ statue, why deny history? Chapter 15, by Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, discusses the short story: a form where local writers excel due to the tradition of local narrative in oral epics, etc. There are “many readers of English, but not many readers of literature in English” (p. 312). The elite’s novels are written in English, those of the masses in Tagalog. Nevertheless, supported by academia and the international community, Philippine writers in English like N. V. M. Gonzales continue to thrive. Writers were “wellserved” (p. 307) by the resistance to Marcos’ martial law, when their content and style became more Filipino than ever, followed by “an unprecedented flowering” (p. 308) under the Aquino democracy. In future, being prolific in both English and Filipino will be a pragmatic advantage, in an unapologetic attempt to reach a wider local and international audience. In Chapter 16, Caroline S. Hau covers the Filipino novel in English. With Rizal’s Spanish novels such as Noli Me Tangere, “ilustrado” writers from influential families brought about social change and revolution. Today, “the production and reception of Philippine novels in English is limited to a minority of ‘cultural workers’ ”, where selling 1 000 copies is average (p. 321). They have, however, gained circulation due to “[f]irst world postcolonial studies, and entry into the world republic of letters” (p. 322). The novel is crucial to culture, and tells a nation’s “life story”, yet Hau laments the lack of writing in a language in which various social classes can meet on a common ground, and the inability of the current novel to bring about social transformation. Chapter 17 tells the story of Filipino diasporic literature. Alfred A. Yuson feels that although Philippine writers have not reached the level of Rushdie or Ondaatje, after “300 years in a convent followed by 50 years in Hollywood” (p. 339), they now “inhabit the world”, and can look back to the land of their ancestors to “mine” a richer lode of human conflict than Singaporeans or Malays. It is “the gateway to the Far East, the erstwhile pearl of the Orient, where ‘Asia wears a smile’ — indeed, where the happiness index thumbs its crinkling nose at poverty level figures. Song and laughter characterize … the extended Filipino family, whether at home or abroad” (pp. 348–9). Chapter 18 is an interview of Simeon Dumdum and Resil Mojares by Timothy P. Mo. Anglo-Chinese Oxford educated Mo seems repeatedly off-base, complaining that dialogue in Philippine novels “doesn’t sound like Filipinos talking with one another”, or give “the juice and pungency” (p. 360) of Philippine idiom. He adds, “[b]ut actually … I don’t share the universal reverence for Nick Joaquin — he overwrites very amateurishly for me … I don’t think much of Rizal either” (p. 366). Fortunately, Mojares and Dumdum rescue the discussion with poignant stories of their early education in Spanish, a “sonorous and sumptuous medium” (p. 359), to their realization that English, the language of the powerful, was a “benevolent


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stepmother” (p. 357), much wider diffused than in India, and to Dumdum, “I find myself able to write in this language English … to spar with the best of them” (p. 365). The volume concludes with Chapter 19, a rich and thorough bibliography on PhilE by Maria Lourdes S. Bautista, conveniently broken down by subject area. The book reaffirms that while “New Englishes” may progress through Schneider’s phases, or be grouped in Kachruvian circles, the complexity of each context deserves in-depth study. This volume of consistently high scholarship, written in feisty, flavorful language, is perhaps the best testament to PhilE vitality. The preponderance of evidence supports a view common to WEs scholars, that English is not an imperialist monster, but a tool to be harnessed: to express multilingual local identities, offer economic benefits to wider swaths of society, and bring about intercultural understanding.

References Hernandez, Jose M. 1936. “Is a Filipino classic in English impossible?” 1936 Yearbook of the Philippine Council on Education. Manila: PCE, 1–16. Llamazon, Teodoro A. 1969. Standard Filipino English. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. ———. 1997. “The phonology of Philippine English”. In Maria Lourdes S. Bautista, ed. English is an Asian Language: the Philippine Context. Sydney: Macquarie Library, 41–8. Ngugi wa Thiong’o. 1981. Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey.

Reviewer’s address James D’Angelo Department of World Englishes Chukyo University 101–2 Yagoto Honmachi Nagoya 466–8666 Japan [email protected]
