Not Another Solitude: Third-Language Media Matter Notes for an Address to Language Matters: Policy Research Seminar on Language Acquisition and Newcomer Integration for Metropolis Panel on Heritage Languages, Integration and Globalization Ottawa: Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington Street, Ottawa By Dr. Catherine Murray Chair, Women’s Studies, SFU and Co-Director, Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities (www.cultureandcommunities.ca/)
[email protected] +1-778-782-5518 October 22, 2009 (Check against delivery) Abstract Starting from a multicultural communication model of the community, this paper uses media analyses and interviews in four language groups in BC to challenge some conventional thinking about third-language ethnic media. It suggests that government communications/media relations strategy, communication and language policy should be rethought in a rapidly pluralising culture, and explores the ways ethical expectations of intercultural competence and citizen engagement are changing in Canadian media discourse. Examining newcomers and second- and third-generation ethnocultural media practices suggests neither basis for despair over separate enclaves nor celebration over a myth of conjoined cultures. A new pragmatism and entrepreneurialism are emerging, with rapid turnover among ethnic media, and significant innovation and adaptation. The rate of change suggests serious challenges for language training, skill development and venture capital among cultural workers and professionals. It also underlines a growing need for new intercultural communication mechanisms for civic education, managing conflict and reaching reconciliation. Author’s Profile Catherine Murray is Professor and Chair of Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University, the first such department in Canada, established September 1, 2009. She is co-author of the BC Ethnic Media Study (www.bcethnicmedia.ca/), a study of Korean Canadian BC Media in Canadian Ethnic Studies, and served as an expert advisor on the Canadian position on the Instrument of Diversity of Cultural Expressions. She has taught in Communication from 1992 to 009 and is also Co-Director of the Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities. See www.cultureandcommunities.ca/
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Introduction The global financial crunch underlined the need for agile labour markets, new business start-ups and wise use of state spending powers to adapt to crises around the world. Forces of economic protectionism threaten constantly, and the pendulum of globalization in flows of people, ideas and money is apparently swinging back. With this swing comes reappraisal of the forces shaping cultural ethnoscapes. Will the taps of immigration policy be tightened? Will receiving countries have less social or economic incentive to provide integration services to immigrants? Is the theoretical framework of welcoming nations and welcoming communities under attack? Is Canada’s incentive for fostering a multilingual workforce to export diminishing? These are major cultural questions tied to our collective economic well-being, global competitiveness, innovation and productivity. Unfortunately, they are rarely addressed in our political or national media, among elite columnists or in the blogosphere. They are nonetheless absolutely crucial environmental determinants of language matters. My goal today is to sketch from communication theory some of the key ideas shaping our understanding of language matters in newcomer integration. Let me begin with an historical perspective. It is commonplace to assert that linguistic policy in Canada is overlaid with legacy and organic small C conservative heritage politics. We integrate the Founding Peoples Myth with our official language policy, and bilingualism has adapted to the need to recognize aboriginal right to linguistic non-extinction. These are givens, and they are storied ones. Many of the official discourses tied to federalism, competing nation-claims, cultural recognition and autonomy are based on this bilingualism-plus-one thesis.1 But as the balance of electoral power fractured in federal politics, shifting some power to the west, the pragmatics of institutional bilingualism emerged. Federal service delivery was asymmetrical. Beyond the commitment to minority language education and employment in the federal service, positive obligations to provide local access to services in security, justice, health and other areas were recognized according to sliding thresholds of population demand. 2 Institutional schizophrenia resulted: the Department of Canadian Heritage, for example, recently set seven priorities to promote bilingual community development, none of which explicitly involve cultural content. 3
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The Regulations concerning “significant demand” include provisions based on the most recent decennial census data on the size of the minorities (either absolute size, or number and proportion, whichever is appropriate) and, where local demographic data are not relevant, provisions based on the volume of demand in the minority language. The Regulations on the “nature of the office” apply to specific federal services, regardless of level of demand, and include provisions on health and safety signage, national parks, embassies, the main federal offices located in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, and popular national or international exhibitions. http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/prbpubs/938-e.htm 3
They are early childhood development, health, justice, immigration, economic development, the strengthening of intergovernmental cooperation or partnerships with the provinces and territories, and community living. Later reports under the Conservatives have detailed
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The rhetoric of cultural policy―with official language policy as its centrepiece―differs from the reality. Historical narratives of cultural policy reinforce existing power structures. With low English/French intercultural awareness, separate media ownership patterns, little exchange traffic in bilingual or cross-cultural minority media production or consumption and under-representation of opposite linguistic groups in RadioCanada or CBC, the principal critique of federal cultural policy over many years of Liberal and now Conservative stewardship is its impotence in the face of the two solitudes. Yet bilingualism’s symbolic capital has remained high. So my opening argument is that Hugh MacLennan got it right in his novel, Two Solitudes. Official language policy has been undercut by a complex process of elite accommodation that tolerates a high degree of linguistic enclosure. Since MacLennan’s day, many waves of social change have rocked the tidy world of English-French hegemony. I am sure analysis of aboriginal language policy in this country by others far more expert than me would reveal a similar trickster raven behind the Big Mask of Language Myths of Founding Peoples. Vancouver has the smallest of Canada’s big five officially bilingual urban populations and presents the perfect laboratory for observing how the Founding Peoples myth is coming into contact with new Settling Peoples myths. ―Multi-culturally, we’re world class,‖ claimed the Vancouver Sun about the picture painted by the 2006 census on immigration, citizenship, language and mobility (Bula, 2007). The percentage of foreign-born in Canada was at a level not seen since 1931, and second only to Australia. Metro Vancouver had more foreign-born residents than Miami, Los Angeles or New York City, and the first language of 40% of its residents was neither English nor French. Canadian philosophers made an international splash with theories of multicultural citizenship. More attention was paid to how different minority cultural groups get along, welcome others, live in peace and intervene collectively in multilateral foreign policy (for example, in forging an international criminal court, the responsibility to protect doctrine or the Convention to Protect the Diversity of Cultural Expressions). Political tracts rationalized the extension of Canadian small L liberal values beyond our borders, what I call the Myth of Diversity Embrace. Paradoxes surfaced, however. Despite globalization, Canadian news media have fewer foreign bureaus. More foreign-language TV services were imported but efforts to incorporate them in self-regulation of news culture failed (as with the Arabic Al Jazeera). Despite innovation in third-language multicultural formats, subtitling or cross-cultural program acquisition was prohibited. Despite so-called ―heroic‖ historic progress in symbolic redress for racist incidents such as the Japanese internment or residential schools issues, the third-language media seem to cover little outgroup news of such redress; perhaps they lack the context to do so. Funding councils and other agencies made an effort to redirect public subsidy or make venture capital available to new immigrant and third-language media and cultural producers, but funding lagged behind population growth. A more fundamental problem emerged. This period of cosmopolitan Canadian identity in the late 1990s and early millennium focused on either the individual consumer or the universal citizen. It neglected social solidarity—ties of language, blood, faith and belonging—which conservative philosopher Edmund Burke claimed is the first principle of public affection (Calhoun, 2007). It overlooked the existential paradox: Where do I belong? The flashpoint became the idea of non-exclusive allegiance, what I call the Myth of the Sojourner. Rates of immigrant naturalization were higher in Canada than in many other countries, but incidence of returning immigrant investors or dual citizenship challenged typical concepts of loyalty, commitment or allegiance. Some historians and theorists began to ask: Who are we? Are we failing to assert the symbols, shared objectives and values that defined our common identity for our forebears? Is the best way to do this to retract dual citizenship, to enforce the language of the Founding Peoples? These discourses show that language matters very much indeed. Immigration fundamentally changes the existential and linguistic bargain at the heart of the Founding Peoples myth. Essentially, settlers are admitted to Canada in a deal with the Founding Peoples. You can enter if you speak at least one of the two official languages and meet other economic or civic tests of potential viable citizenship. 3
Communication in the adopted country’s language is an important resource for new immigrants. Not having it risks segregation in an urban immigrant underclass. Almost one-fifth of newcomers report problems in integration that stem from language (Frideres, 2006). Non-English-speaking youth are 1½ times as likely to drop out in high school as newcomers who speak English. Economic mobility for recent immigrants is lower than for those who arrived before 1990, despite more choice in international and third-language cultural sources. London, Ontario is not unusual in reporting barriers to urban cultural diversity posed by inadequate geographic access to English as a second language training or long wait lists. So what can we say of the overall communication system, the media infrastructure of immigrants and its role in integration today? For years, a systems approach dominated the study of communication infrastructure, positing that communication within geographic boundaries must surpass that outside the boundaries to be effective in building national identity. It set up the expectation that settlers will transfer their language allegiance in developing a sense of belonging or civic identity. It is based on a hierarchy of rational/cultural value, and assumes that political/civic information or news is probably at the apex of national identity-building. More recently, scholars have developed a contrary hypothesis: that access in the host country to communication in the mother tongue is also integral to integration, that with growing access to transnational messages and foreign content, national identities can remain sustainable amid a new linguistic pluralism. Globalization of the media of communication is changing the evolution of linguistic ties. New technologies that make ubiquity and mobility easy and compress distance enable decentralized media networks and organizations to thrive in the global mediascapes, and offer the means for immigrants to retain their language and customs longer than previous generations did. The decision to come to a particular country or community is driven by economic opportunity, cultural openness, size of the linguistic receiving community and availability of social community groups and other supportive networks that help local pathways of integration. Linguistic links help in building bilateral trade relations, or in the snowballing of immigration in the immigrant investor class. Indeed, the Asia Pacific Foundation is looking at the Canadian diaspora as a national asset and examining how such citizens retain links to Canada. Only now are we able to assess the impact of third-language retention (or newcomer bilingualism) on political identity and cultural integration. We know that almost half of new immigrants function outside of any bilingual news environment—beyond the typical reach of media in Canada’s public sphere. A 2006 syndicated study of 3000 new Canadians in Montreal/Toronto/Vancouver, by Kaan Yigit of Solutions Research Group, Toronto, found almost one in three―31% of Chinese respondents―read only in their own language and 17% did not follow the news in either language. One-third were fully linguistically assimilated, reading only in English, while 19% were bilingual (ChineseEnglish). These data suggest that persistent use of media in other languages may slow political integration, UNB political scientist Paul Howe says in his study, ―The Political Engagement of New Canadians,‖ for the Institute of Research on Public Policy (2007). His findings also suggest a lack of political knowledge and lower election turnout among recent newcomers. Since the media are among the major sources for building such political and cultural capital, attention has turned to the role of Canada’s communication infrastructure for multicultural diversity. A multicultural communication infrastructure model is predicated on three assumptions: that the spatial focus on infrastructure must shift to the city level which provides the first portal in multicultural adaptation; that next to family and personal networks, the infrastructure most important in immigrant adaptation to the adopted country is the depth and breadth of ethnocultural groups and the availability of media in their language of choice; and that access to this multicultural communication infrastructure shapes the potential for political integration (Yu and Murray, 2007; Ahadi and Murray, forthcoming). What interests our team at Simon Fraser’s Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities is the development of spatially-centred community media in third languages. We want to map the links among ethnic associations, immigrant serving groups and other social and economic organizations in dispersed online communities, using newsletters, newspapers, television news and radio, including independent producers who work locally. 4
The links in this multicultural communication infrastructure can be ―thick‖ or ―thin.‖ They help create and disseminate everyday conversations and formal news, opinion and commentary to any ethnocultural or third-language community within a geographical region (Matei, Ball-Rokeach, Wilson, Gibbs & Hoyt, 2000). Deep ties may develop between community and media organizations, acting as conversation starters, assisting grassroots capacitybuilding and making connections between mainstream and ethnic community media by: 1) providing news sources and help in agenda-setting; 2) monitoring media practices and influencing news values by issuing press releases, writing letters to the editor or mobilizing the community to complain; 3) providing members for media advisory councils responsible for review of general practices or advice on news priorities; 4) aggregating ethnic or other markets of buyers; and 5) providing channels for media distribution such as telephone/community directories or free box distribution for newspapers. Ethnic media spring up in the host country out of dissatisfaction with the mainstream media, a vacuum in representation of or lack of consonance with immigrant needs, or desire to launch a business, especially under Canada’s business immigration program. Growth in allophone populations has led to more local media start-ups, especially in the unregulated print sector, and more importation of foreign satellite services authorized by the CRTC. Our Centre set out in 2007 to map Vancouver’s multicultural communication infrastructure. We found the number of print outlets and the independent TV production sector was much larger than official sources estimated: 144 traditional media outlets serving 22 languages, one-third of which had begun since 2000. The sector is extremely volatile: 20 undertakings folded in 2007 while nine started up. Total employment exceeded 1000, significantly more than in the conventional media sector. The social functions of these ethnic media in bridging ―here‖ and ―there‖ are well known. It is generally accepted that, in partnership with international wire agencies or investors, they represent for migrants a means of maintaining and tightening links with their own culture while mediating their integration and recognition within the host country. Ethnic media act as information hubs: facilitating in-group and out-group contacts. They connect: providing a map to what goes on in the community, promoting and reinforcing mobility goals, creating a cultural space in which to enrich lives—information about home ownership, entrepreneurship, education that new immigrants need. Some minority scholars argue that ethnic media ease the pain of cultural emptiness, offering orientation and sense of home. They can also help to cluster markets, establish a promotional culture for ethnic economic enclosures and follow ethnoburb developments (Li, 2003). Among the most competitive of BC media sectors is the Korean, and the main focus of its independent media start-ups is clearly business and trade news to serve the growing professional Korean diaspora. Finally, ethnic media are linked to group aspiration and recognition. They can help promote intercultural awareness in some conditions. Do they serve an integrative role in multicultural cities? Surprisingly few studies explore this question, and the answer seems to be Yes and No. As a social institution, ethnic media reinforce immigrants’ sense of we-ness, so Yes. But if this excludes others and lowers the incentives for individuals to expand their networks to include others, the answer is No. Los Angeles urban geographers have explored the conditions under which media in highly pluralistic cities strengthen or undermine the sense of belonging. Their large-scale survey of LA residents examined time spent with various media, media connectedness, membership in organizations and subjective and objective dimensions of belonging. They found that strong connections to community media targeted to particular ethnic groups or residential areas generally have positive effects on belonging, but placing too much importance on country-of-origin news undermines local attachment. They found a ―major problem with the nature of storytelling being produced by Korean local media in LA.‖ Its international in-group focus displaced community links (Lin and 5
Song, 2006). Our study did not replicate this audience focus, but it did look at the diversity in news to check for availability of information needed for political awareness and action. Our multilingual research team compared 19 ethnic BC newspapers and TV sources in the four largest immigrant language groups—Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean and Punjabi—to seven mainstream outlets over a sample month. We found that geographical focus is definitely translocal in BC ethnic media: 50% of news was international and 40% local. This local content was higher than in the Los Angeles study, suggesting a stronger local communication infrastructure. But the predominant in-group news focus was similar. The absence of a national storytelling agenda in BC ethnic media—indeed, a silence on stories of major national interest like the war in Afghanistan—was surprising. However, the international news agenda in the mainstream English media was too thin, focused almost exclusively on Afghanistan and Canada’s role in NATO. (See www.bcethnicmedia.ca). Story analysis showed very different news priorities across the ethnic linguistic groups, and little inter-ethnic coverage. For example, Asian media offered little exploration of the Air India inquiry, which was concluding at the time. Our findings suggest that Canada has traded twin solitudes for multiple ones in its media worlds. Our work also disclosed Canada’s failure to forge a meaningful intercultural realm in media production and accountability. The precarious financial footing of new third-language ventures means resources for independent investigative reporting are low. Third-language media need access to sources of government advertising revenue to be sustainable. They need tools of market research to effectively sell. Professional training for some of the junior reporters hired is inadequate, and J schools have been slow to diversify their intake. Perhaps most importantly, a creeping kind of allophone institutional bilingualism is at work. Some of that is healthy, but some may be a cause for concern. Some communities with large immigrant groups have fairly well-developed areas of public service delivery in other languages. We see this particularly in health, so translated health advisories are commonplace in news dissemination. Elections Canada is active in information outreach in ridings across the country where newcomers are numerous. There is evidence to suggest proactive government communications in some of the more activist municipal, provincial and federal ministries in providing news releases to third-language media. Information from Fisheries on red tide warnings or minimum size of crab catches is well disseminated through Asian print media in Vancouver, for example. Federal political parties appear to be reaching out aggressively in electoral campaign communication in third languages in swing ridings, with brochures for citizens, third-language ads and translated news release services (Yu and Ahadi, 2009). In the 2008 federal election, a content analysis of Korean Canadian and Iranian media revealed a high level of translated pre-election activity by most parties. Not surprisingly, ethnic media showed much higher interest in visible minority candidates and general interest in information about the electoral process. However, specially targeted third-language news conferences by some candidates caused distrust among white mainstream journalists, and have apparently been abandoned. We have no solid audit on how much of this asymmetrical multilingual news dissemination is extended in government communications or partisan communication, but sense that it is growing. What about the integration of a public news culture across the different language media? Again, evidence is mixed. Fairly well-developed regional press councils exist to monitor standards of press coverage, yet none of BC’s print ethnic media belong to the BC Press Council. Name-calling, personalization and similar techniques of expression are tolerated by some ethnic media, yet avenues for citizen complaint are not well developed. Practices in melding news and comment differ, with some (Asian media) preferring a rigorous separation and restricting comment, and others (South Asian) promoting partisan news. Recognition by the English professional media community of highquality journalism in other languages is low. BC’s Jack Webster Foundation, for example, offers awards only for the Chinese press, overlooking some of the fastest growing immigrant groups. A concerted effort to understand the different news cultures, encourage professional dialogue on news standards of intercultural reporting and recognize excellence is needed. Conversations with local community leaders and news professionals convinced us that a 6
professional code on intercultural reporting, development of new training and facilitation of new pools of venture capital to help media start-ups must be a high priority for developing media infrastructure for multiculturalism. The BC ethnic media study confirmed findings elsewhere that mainstream and ethnic media produce quite different news products. Such editorial niche strategy is a civic benefit under some conditions. But I have argued elsewhere that a niche strategy for ethnic media works in conditions of minority but is called into question when third-language populations grow, especially if there is no dual-language media consumption to construct the two parts of the migrant experience or insufficient protection for minority language production (Murray, 2008). I am particularly critical of the CRTC’s policy on ethnic broadcasting, which has inadvertently introduced classes of immigrant specialty satellite services. Early entrants—such as Fairchild or Talentvision—have built thriving enterprises in Canada, successfully adapting their national satellite services to the multicultural realities by negotiating local news inserts from their major Chinese-Canadian markets. Later arrivals like the Asia Pacific Network from Toronto operate under licence conditions that preclude local news inserts from Vancouver, despite its large South Asian population. Clearly, policy on local inserts is crucial for the rise of independent local news and current affairs producers in a healthy communication infrastructure. Finally, our study of BC ethnic media found that the dynamic growth of the market is attracting extensive, unmonitored experimentation in joint language ventures.4 Mergers and takeovers are increasing, as the sale of M channel to Rogers proves. The challenge is for the CRTC to ensure no diminution of editorial diversity. If Statistics Canada is right that half the Canadian population will be visible minorities by 2017, the need to critically examine the communication infrastructure for multiculturalism is evident. I contend that language of ethnic media matters. Although Canada has largely eschewed public subsidy or other means to support media expression by its recent allophones, it has allowed such media to spring up. They are absorbing many of the costs of integration, and now risk having the cream of their audiences skimmed off by the English market leaders. At the very least, it is time to revisit the national policy tools that promote the expression of diversity in this sector, and build the local ties that bind. Government must broaden and diversify its spending on advertising services between elections, which will stabilize ethnic ventures and create incentives to improve editorial investment. Close attention should be paid to the new forms of institutional bilingualism in government and partisan communication practices emerging asymmetrically across the country. A policy review of the multilingual outreach of government communications is needed, to ensure it is not left behind by the partisan spin doctors in reaching out to integrate newcomers. To adapt a metaphor from Keith Banting, Tom Courchene and F. Leslie Seidle in their study, Belonging? Diversity, Recognition and Shared Citizenship in Canada, while there is no need to fear Canada is sleepwalking into segregation, this analysis suggests it is sleepwalking out of segregation in its media infrastructure for multicultural diversity. Canadians do not need another solitude.
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Further Sources Ahadi, Daniel and Murray, Catherine. Forthcoming. Urban Mediascapes and Multicultural Flows: Assessing Vancouver’s Communication Infrastructure. In Canadian Journal of Communication. Special Issue edited by Karim Karim and Faiza Hirji. Bula, Frances. 2007. Multiculturally, We’re World Class. Vancouver Sun. December 4. Calhoun, Craig. 2007. Social Solidarity as a Problem for Cosmopolitan Democracy. In Benhabib, Seyla, Shapiro, Ian, Petranovic, Danilo, eds. Identities, Affiliations and Allegiances. London: Cambridge. 285-302. Frideres, J.S. 2006. Cities and Immigrant Integration. Our Diverse Cities. Vol. 2, Summer. Metropolis. Georgiou, M. 2002. Mapping minorities and their media: The national context–The UK. Retrieved March 4, 2007, from www.lse.ac.uk/collections/EMTEL Georgiou, M. 2003. Mapping diasporic media across the E.U.: Addressing cultural exclusion. Retrieved March 4, 2007, from www.lse.ac.uk/collections/EMTEL Howe, Paul. 2007. ―The Political Engagement of New Canadians: A Comparative Perspective‖ in Keith Banting, Thomas J. Courchene, F. Leslie Seidle, eds., Vol III Belonging? Diversity, Recognition and Shared Citizenship in Canada. Montreal. Institute for Research on Public Policy. 611-646. Li, Peter. 2003. Destination Canada: Immigrant Debates and Issues. Don Mills, Ont: Oxford University Press. Lin, W. and Song, H. 2006. Geo-ethnic storytelling: An examination of ethnic media content in contemporary immigration communities. Journalism, 7(3), pp. 362-388. Matei,S., Ball-Rokeach, S., Wilson, M. E., Gibbs, J. and Hoyt, E. G. (2000). Metamorphosis: A field research methodology for studying communication technology and community. Electronic Journal of Communication/La Revue Electronique de Communication [On-line serial], 11(2). Available http://www.cios.org/www/ejcrec2.htm. Murray, Catherine. Forthcoming. Designing Monitoring to Promote Cultural Diversification in TV. In Canadian Journal of Communication, Special Issue edited by Karim Karim and Faiza Hirji. Murray, Catherine, Yu, Sherry and Ahadi, Daniel. 2007. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Media in BC. A report for the Department of Canadian Heritage, Western Region. SFU: Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities. 144pp. Database and report found at www.bcethnicmedia.ca/ Murray, Catherine. 2008. Media Infrastructure for Multicultural Diversity. In Policy Options. Montreal: Institute of Research on Public Policy, Vo.29. No. 4. April. 63-67. Murray, Catherine. 2008. Lost in Translation: there must be a better way to bridge the gap between mainstream and ethnic media. In Media Magazine. Canadian Association of Journalists. (Spring/Summer). 18-19. Yu, Sherry S. & Murray, Catherine A. 2007. Ethnic media under a multicultural policy: The case of Korean media in B.C. In Canadian Ethnic Studies . 39(3), 99-124. Yu, Sherry and Ahadi, Daniel. 2009. Tracing Politics: Canadian 2008 Federal Election Coverage in BC Ethnic Media. Paper presented to the Canadian Political Science Association. 81st annual conference. 28 May.
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