Unequal translingual Englishes in the Asian peripheries

Asian Englishes

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Unequal translingual Englishes in the Asian peripheries Sender Dovchin, Shaila Sultana & Alastair Pennycook To cite this article: Sender Dovchin, Shaila Sultana & Alastair Pennycook (2016): Unequal translingual Englishes in the Asian peripheries, Asian Englishes, DOI: 10.1080/13488678.2016.1171673 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13488678.2016.1171673

Published online: 26 May 2016.

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Date: 26 May 2016, At: 21:21

Asian Englishes, 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13488678.2016.1171673

Unequal translingual Englishes in the Asian peripheries Sender Dovchina, Shaila Sultanaa,b and Alastair Pennycookc a

Downloaded by [University of Technology Sydney] at 21:21 26 May 2016

Adult Learning and Applied Linguistics Program, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia; bDepartment of English Language, Institute of Modern Languages, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh; cAdult Learning and Applied Linguistics Program, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to expand the current discussions on the notion of ‘translingual Englishes’ by incorporating the idea of ‘unequal Englishes’ as a way of understanding the role of English in relation to understudied Asian peripheral contexts such as Mongolia and Bangladesh. It is clear that young speakers in these Asian countries are creatively involved with ‘translingual Englishes’, in which various English and other linguistic and cultural resources are in constant interplay. Yet there are also particular local constraints that either limit or expand their usage of English. Translingual Englishes may be creative and playful but they are also associated with differences in one’s unequal social class, wealth and power.

ARTICLE HISTORY

Received 8 February 2016 Accepted 17 March 2016 KEYWORDS

translingual Englishes; unequal Englishes; Asian peripheries; Mongolia; Bangladesh

Introduction While studies of the global spread of English have both critical and pluralistic traditions (Pennycook, 2000), recent interests in hybridity and mixed language practices have tended to shift the focus from issues of socio-economic inequalities towards a concentration on the local agency of speakers. As Kubota (2015) suggests, the varied modern pluralistic approaches towards English draw attention away from questions of power, politics, access and socio-economic background, a pattern that Block (2014, 2015) argues is part of a wider picture of erasure of social class in applied linguistics when dealing with the issues of language and identity in social life. In a recent edited volume on Unequal Englishes, Tupas and Rubdy (2015, p. 2) reiterate that ‘Certain inequalities resulting from the dominance of English in societies around the world may have existed, but instead of being confronted, these inequalities are brushed aside in the theorization of the nature of English language use today’. Put simply, new pluralist approaches towards English overlook ‘inequalities that mediate relations between Englishes, English users, and other languages’, since they have been ‘seduced into celebrating [their] victories over English but forgetting the massive inequities sustained and perpetuated by the unbridled dominance of English today’ (Tupas and

CONTACT Sender Dovchin

[email protected]

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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Rubdy, 2015, pp. 2–7) . This article takes up these critical challenges, seeking to expand the discussion of ‘unequal Englishes’ in the linguistically mixed practices of speakers in late modernity. The point, then, is not to focus away from the mixed, translingual practices of young people in favour of a broad analysis of language and class, but rather to bring these two perspectives into alignment with each other and to ask: how are the mixed translingual practices of young people related to questions of access, distribution and social class?


The sociolinguistic background of Mongolia and Bangladesh To shed light on the issues of unequal Englishes within the mixed linguistic practices of young adults, we focus on two different contexts – Mongolia and Bangladesh – addressing not only the lack of postcolonial English research on such peripheral Asian contexts, but also the need to understand the different ways in which the issues of ‘unequal Englishes’ occur. Despite its image as a remote and grassy land peopled by semi-nomadic animal herders, Mongolia and particularly the capital, Ulaanbaatar, has witnessed a major shift in lifestyle since 1990. Mongolia has changed rapidly since its days as a satellite of the former Soviet Union when it peacefully transformed itself from a socialist to a democratic society with a free market economy. While aspects of the Soviet era still remain (e.g. Cyrillic has replaced the old Mongolian ‘Uyghur’ script), and Russian linguistic and cultural elements are not uncommon, young urban Mongolians are actively involved with learning English with all its multiple implications and dimensions (Dovchin, 2011, 2015). Meanwhile, despite its popular image as a densely-populated third-world country beset by problems of flood, famine and poverty, many young urban Bangladeshis are very much active users of English. Once the language of the British colonizer, English is now the language of development, globalization, education and commerce with other South Asian neighbours, a language of great socio-cultural significance (Sultana, 2014a, 2014b). In both Mongolia and Bangladesh, English is the most important foreign language, taught in schools, colleges and universities as a compulsory subject. It is the dominant language of academic discourse in higher education, as textbooks are mostly available only in English. English has also become an instrument for economic advantage and improved life chances for many. Public and private institutions prefer to employ university graduates with a higher level of proficiency in English, legitimizing its intrinsic and extrinsic values. English is also gaining much popularity outside educational and institutional contexts in both nations, as many young Mongolians and Bangladeshis use English for varied leisure and entertainment activities (Dovchin, Sultana, & Pennycook, 2015; Sultana, 2014a, 2014b; Sultana, Dovchin, & Pennycook, 2013, 2015). Yet current studies into the spread and role of global English have to date had little to say about peripheral countries in Asia such as Mongolia and Bangladesh. A majority of research on English in youth culture and identity in the Asian continent has so far concentrated on post-industrial youth contexts such as South Korea (Lee, 2004, 2010), Hong Kong (Benson & Chik, 2012; Chan, 2012; Lin, 2012) and Japan (Moody, 2006; Moody & Matsumoto, 2003; Pennycook, 2007). Much less attention has been paid to the role of English among young adults in peripheral Asian countries at different stages of economic and social development. As Bucholtz (2002, p. 539) points out, research on youth style and identity must look not only to ‘the post-industrial societies for evidence of youth cultural practice, but also to young people’s cultural innovations in other locations around the world’.

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This article therefore focuses on the socio-cultural dynamics of English in the post-socialist context of Mongolia and the postcolonial context of Bangladesh, two countries very much under-represented in the discussion of global Englishes. A comparison of these two contexts also sheds light on several factors. On the one hand, young adults in these peripheral Asian contexts are similarly heavily engaged in linguistically mixed practices involving a range of English linguistic and cultural resources; on the other, while certain mixed language forms overlap, the diversity of forms is also unequally distributed amongst the speakers in these two contexts as a result of different levels of economic, technological and cultural access to forms of English and their integration into different media.


Conceptual frameworks: ‘translingual Englishes’ and ‘unequal Englishes’ We look at the role and spread of English from the postcolonial perspective of ‘translingual Englishes’ (Blommaert, 2010; Canagarajah, 2013; Pennycook, 2007; Dovchin, 2016a, 2016b). According to this tradition, English moves beyond linguistic, cultural, ethnic and social boundaries, whilst being taken up, refashioned and relocalized into new and mixed forms. This approach envisions English in terms of transcultural flows of resources, in which ‘cultural forms move, change and are reused to fashion new identities in diverse contexts’ (Pennycook, 2007, p. 6). Transcultural flows of English refer not simply, as Pennycook (2007, p. 6) notes, to ‘the spread of particular forms of culture across boundaries, or the existence of supercultural commonalities (cultural forms that transcend locality), but rather to the processes of borrowing, blending, remaking and returning, to processes of alternative cultural production’. English is also viewed as ‘translocal’ since different forms of locality are transported into other contexts of locality such that these ‘localities do not necessarily become more “global” or “deterritorialized” because of such patterns of translocalization’ (Blommaert, 2010, p. 79). In short, ‘meanings are primarily imported into local systems of meaningfulness’ and ‘they remain as local as before’ (Blommaert, 2010, p. 79). As Leppänen, Pitkänen-Huhta, Piirainen-Marsh, Nikula, and Peuronen suggest: The skilled use of the new media together with the use of English form a powerful combination providing local actors access to translocal activity spaces and communities of practice where young [people] can create discourse that is appropriate and meaningful within their particular contexts and normative frameworks. (2009, p. 1081)

Canagarajah (2013) suggests that translingual English is about how individuals mobilize different semiotic resources and adopt different negotiation strategies to make meanings across linguistic boundaries rather than focusing on fixed grammar, forms and discrete language systems. Overall, as Dovchin (2015, p. 442) suggests, ‘the common ethos of [translingual] approaches implies that language is organically organized around miscellaneous semiotic resources, whilst operating in a discursively integrative universe’. Translingual English in mixed language practices, Dovchin adds, is: not seen as separate linguistic codes according to particular language systems, since the users are actively involved with the fusion of linguistic codes, modes, genres, repertoires and styles, i.e. the semiotic reconstructions that are becoming the lingua franca of the speakers’ daily interaction. (2015, p. 442)

Meanwhile, Kubota (2015, p. 33) argues that the intellectual tradition of the postcolonial translingual approach towards English is important in understanding the role and spread


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of English in local contexts because of its sophisticated transcendence of the linguistic and cultural boundaries to create local identities, agencies and expressions. This approach has made a significant contribution to understanding English in the complexities of its pluralized linguistic forms and practices. At the same time, however, this tradition seems to [...] ‘romanticize the multiplicity of local language use without sufficiently interrogating inequalities and injustices involving race, gender, class and so on’ (2015, p. 33). As Kubota (2015, p. 33) asks, ‘Can all English users regardless of their racial, gender, socioeconomic, and other background equally transgress linguistic boundaries and engage in hybrid and fluid linguistic practices?’. Block (2015) reminds us that it is almost impossible to develop a thorough analysis of people’s apparent linguistic choices and practices without acknowledging how ongoing communication is always associated with the material and socio-economic realities of those making these choices. From this point of view, the analytic potential of the translingual Englishes movement can further be enhanced through a stronger focus on ‘unequal Englishes’ – a way to understand ‘the unequal ways and situations in which Englishes are arranged, configured, and contested’ (Tupas & Rubdy, 2015, p. 3). For Pan (2015), the notion of ‘unequal Englishes’ refers to ways in which English becomes disproportionately relocated in local contexts across people and institutions with different access to symbolic and material resources of capital and cosmopolitanism. This relocation of English may be transformed into different manifestations of English mainly due to local people’s unequal access to linguistic resources. The relocation of English here points to the unequal spread of the language rooted in particular cultural, political and socio-economic circumstances. Central to Salonga’s (2015) idea of ‘unequal Englishes’ is the argument that English proficiency, or at least retaining the ability to switch between appropriate or acceptable Englishes, is determined by the speakers’ socio-economic and class-induced subject positions. Speakers of privileged socio-economic status may have direct access to English and are able to enjoy English in all its diverse dimensions (Sharma, 2012; Sultana, 2014a, 2014b). Following these lines of thought, we seek to understand the translingual English practices of young speakers in Mongolia and Bangladesh in relation to processes of ‘segregation’ of elites from non-elites (Friedman, 2003, pp. 749–751). English is unequally distributed within the translingual practices of young speakers who have different access and use of linguistic resources according to their cultural, regional and socio-economic backgrounds. The question we pursue in this conceptual framework is thus how and to what extent different interlocutors’ socio-economic class and access to linguistic resources shape their different linguistic repertoires whilst creating their own translingual practices.

Research methodology The data used in this article derive from two larger ethnographic research projects that looked into the linguistic practices of young people in Ulaanbaatar (conducted between July and November 2010; and between April and June 2011) and Dhaka (conducted between May and September 2011). Overall 65 students from various social backgrounds aged between 17 and 29 from the National University of Mongolia and the University of Excellence, Dhaka, volunteered to participate in the research. Their socio-economic and regional backgrounds were diverse, varying from affluent to poor and from rural to urban, before they gained admission to the universities.


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Firstly, casual conversations among students were recorded during breaks in places such as classrooms, libraries, lecture halls and university coffee shops. Participants were provided with digital recorders and recorded their own conversations in their own terms whenever they spent time with their friends during their class breaks. Recorded conversations used specifically in this article are drawn from over 35 hours of recorded conversations, with each conversation lasting between 15 and 60 minutes. We have particularly selected two voice data extracts for this article, with the primary aim of introducing the continuum of translingual practices that our research participants make use of by combining variable English and other linguistic and cultural resources. In order to make the excerpts more readable, transcription conventions are presented in Appendix 1 and language guides are provided at the beginning of the data analysis sections. All data texts in Mongolian and Bangla are Romanized in order to make it possible for non-Mongolian and Bangla speakers to read the Cyrillic Mongolian and Bangla texts. Both Mongolian and Bangla texts used in two extracts have been translated from Mongolian and Bangla into English by the authors. The real names and institutions of our research participants in the extracts are pseudonyms to protect anonymity. Secondly, these participants were not only observed in extended ethnographic field studies, but also in online social networking websites such as Facebook (FB) using ‘netnography’ (Kozinets, 2002), an ethnographic analytic framework which specifically looks at the behaviours of online users, employing a natural and unobtrusive manner (see also Dovchin et al., 2015). We sent FB friend requests to the research participants and added them to our FB accounts as soon as they decided to become part of research project. FB data collection started from the moment the friendship was established. Two FB extracts have been chosen for this article out of hundreds of pages of data collected from FB profiles of our participants in order to show the main discussion of socio-economic background, unequal translingual Englishes and online access amongst our research participants. FB profile names in the extracts are pseudonyms to protect anonymity. FB profile pictures are also removed to protect the real identities. The FB examples presented in the data extracts have been copied from FB and pasted into a MS Word document and embedded in the table accompanied with English translations to prevent FB copyright issues. All FB data texts are translated from Mongolian and Bangla into English by the authors. Language guides are provided in each extract examples. Finally, the research participants were invited for interviews and casual discussions in terms of their own metalinguistic interpretations. They also provided some insights about their sociolinguistic biographies, social and cultural backgrounds, issues and tensions about their language use and self-identifications.

Unequal translingual Englishes in Mongolia Extract 1 Language guide: Mongolian – regular font; English – bold; Russian – italicized; Chinese – italicized bold

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Transcript 1. Naidan: …Minii bodloor bol Geegiin duunuud iluu amidrald oirkhon yum shigee. Bold bol YOU KNOW ((pause)) jishee ni zugeer yamaa shig gunshaa khooloigoor oriloool aimar REKLAMNAYA PAUZA shuudee, you know ((Giggles)). 2. Dolgormaa: ((YOOY!)) Chi neeren YOU KNOW YOU KNOW gekhee boli tekhuu!!! Aimar teneg sonsogdokhiin. 3. Naidan: Yu genee? ((pause)) Chamaig l duuraij yarijii:shd. YOU KNOW:! 4. Dolgormaa: KHUUSH! Bi khezee tegj yarij baisiiin? Naadakh chini khotsrogdsiishdee odoo ((Laughs)). Aimar teneg sonsogdjiishd. NE:VER! 5. Naidan: ((Pause)) ((PAAH!)) Chi neeren aimar demii yumand sanaa zovokh yumaa. Argagui l neg paa:lantai jorlon, paar:tai baishingiin khuukhed munduu: mun…

Translation In my opinion, Gee’s songs are more practical. Bold is, you know, ((pause)) for example, just screams like a goat with his nasal voice. He is such a ‘commercial break’ [referring to ‘he is such a show-off’], you know ((Giggles)). ((Gosh!)) Can you please stop saying ‘you know’ ’you know’? Sounds really lame. What? ((pause)) I’m actually trying to be like you. ‘You know!’. Hey! When did I talk like that? That’s really outdated nowadays ((Laughs)). Sounds really stupid. Never! ((Pause)) ((Wow!)) You worry too much about nothing. You’re really a spoilt kid living in an apartment with an ‘enamel toilet’ and ‘central heating system’.

This extract concerns two classmates (Naidan, age 19, male and Dolgormaa, age 18, female) whose conversation took place during a classroom break. The speakers are sharing their opinions on some Mongolian popular music artists. Naidan’s use of varied semiotic resources derives mainly from his engagement with media resources (line 1): the usage of the hip hop genre-specific term ‘Geegiin’ [‘Gee’s’], combining the Mongolian hip-hop artist’s English-inspired name ‘Gee’ with the Mongolian suffix ‘-giin’ [possessive: Gee’s]. The voice of a Russian television host is also introduced (Naidan’s parody has a distinctive Russian pronunciation), announcing the next commercial break with the phrase ‘reklamnaya pauza’ [‘time for a commercial break’]. Now commonly used and relocalized among young Mongolians, the phrase has come to suggest drawing attention to oneself, and refers to narcissistic people obsessed with ‘showing-off ’ as commercial breaks are often associated with the idea of showing off the particular products in varied ways to attract the consumers. In line 2, Naidan’s interlocutor Dolgormaa clearly objects to his use of ‘you know’, labelling it as outdated and old-fashioned. Naidan responds in line 3, tongue in cheek, that using ‘you know’ repeatedly in his own speech is a parody of Dolgormaa’s style of speech, simultaneously teasing her extensive English mixing practices in her daily linguistic repertoire. This proposition is strongly rejected by Dolgormaa in line 4 on the grounds that it is outdated and a lame style of speaking. She emphasizes her point with the distinctively British ‘Never!’ [‘nevə’], rather than an American-sounding version [‘nevər’], because she aligns herself with British English due to her previous extensive travels to the United Kingdom. The use of English in the translingual practices of these two speakers should be understood through both speakers’ socio-economic status. Since its democratic revolution from the communist regime in 1990, Mongolia opened its internal market to the rest of the world, allowing economic liberalization, complemented by the free flow of goods, money and capital into the country (Dovchin, 2011). Like many former socialist regimes, however, this has also led to increased economic disparities. As Marsh puts it: The ‘classless’ society that was said to exist during the socialist era is now increasingly divided between the relatively rich and poor sectors of society. While there are many who are benefiting from the new opportunities in the Mongolian economy, particularly entrepreneurs and the highly educated, there are many more, such as those in the public sector, who clearly are not. (2010, p. 349)


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That is to say, the gap between rich and poor has started to widen, resulting in obvious uneven social class positions in society, as ‘[t]he richest 20 percent of the population consumes five times the amount consumed by the poorest 20 percent of the population’ (Mongolian Economy Journal, 2013, pp. 2–3). This increasing inequality divides the current households in Ulaanbaatar (UB) as ‘wealthy’, ‘average’ and ‘poor’. Dolgormaa comes from a family with adequate income, living in a centrally located apartment in the city. She is known in the classroom as a top student, whose English language skill is highly valued (she lived for about one year in the United Kingdom as an exchange student). For a girl who speaks good English like Dolgormaa, and has good access to media and technology, using simple English ‘you know’ no longer works. This also shows that ‘the use of features or “languages” by specific speakers may be deemed improper by some speakers who believe themselves specially entitled to grant rights of use’ (Ag & Jørgensen, 2012, p. 527; original emphasis). As her metalinguistic interpretation suggests, there is another linguistic norm within her own circle of friends, where they use ‘more sophisticated and cool [English] expressions’.1 This interpretation should also be located in terms of the ideology of ‘transnational cool’ (Shin, 2012) through the mixture of English with local languages. As Blommaert (2015, pp. 17–18; original emphasis) reminds us, ‘English, in many places in the world, is an emblem of globalization itself and of the values and imagination that come with it: it is “cool”, a source of distinction […]’ and ‘[…] an indexical category, a meaning phenomenon […], with considerable “emic” value; sociolinguistic realism cannot afford to dismiss […]’. While ‘you know’ was considered quite ‘cool’ in earlier times amongst young Mongolians, it is now perceived as ‘outdated’ by many speakers of privileged background, because it sounds, according to Dolgormaa, ‘khuduuniikh yum shig’ [‘countrysidish’], ‘modon Angli khel’ [‘Frozen English’] and ‘fake’. This idea of keeping it ‘unfake’ is also in line with the idea of ‘the global spread of authenticity’ amongst transnational youth speakers (Pennycook, 2007, p. 98), where many young speakers seek to claim forms of authenticity through an alignment with particular ways of speaking. Dolgormaa’s rejection of Naidan’s parody (line 5) further causes Naidan to make a sarcastic reference to her comfortable lifestyle, suggesting she has nothing to worry about because she lives in a comfortable apartment with ‘paartai baishin’ [house with central heating system] and ‘paalantai jorlon’ [enamel flush toilet]. ‘Paartai baishin’ derives from the Russian term ‘Пapoвoй бaшня’ [‘House with a heater’], with the addition of the Mongolian prepositional suffix, ‘-tai’ [‘with’], while ‘paalantai jorlon’ combines a Chinese stem ‘falang’ [‘paalan’] ‘珐琅’ [‘enamel’] with a Mongolian term ‘jorlon’ [‘toilet’] (Nadmid, 2011, p. 46) and the same suffix ‘-tai’. Commonly used since the Soviet era, these terms not only point to Dolgormaa’s privileged background but also index a particular socialist era discourse. At the same time, Naidan refers to his financially and socially marginalized background, where he lives in the ‘ger district’2 without a central heating system, using their own coal stoves and outdoor wooden toilets pitched on dug pits. Naidan was born and raised in Yarmag on the outskirts of UB. His mother is a single parent, raising five younger children. He has never travelled abroad, and his access to media/technology is very limited: ‘I have a very busy lifestyle. I have too many daily chores to deal with and I don’t even have time to watch TV’. Naidan’s ‘busy lifestyle’ is associated with his life in the ger district, where he is involved with numerous subsistence activities such as collecting fresh water from water


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trucks, picking up coal and other fuels for heating, looking after his siblings and so on. He is reliant on the government’s higher education loan system. The parody of ‘you know’ by Naidan in this context therefore directly relates to his financially marginal position and his vision of his privileged classmate’s speech style. This also signals the popularity of heavy borrowing from various linguistic resources by more financially and socially privileged youth, so much so that Naidan is creating his own parody to tease his interlocutor. Even though Dolgormaa has rejected Naidan’s parody, she nevertheless accepts the fact that the use of English among her peers (i.e., privileged youth) is a norm, suggesting even more complex linguistic resources moving beyond the use of simple ‘you know’. This brief exchange reveals the unequal translingual Englishes within which the speakers and their linguistic resources are located. While Naidan’s apparently greater use of a diversity of resources (English, Chinese, Russian, Mongolian) might at first sight suggest greater access to multiple resources, his limited access to terms beyond ‘you know’ and his subsequent recourse to discourses around privilege that are more salient here. The translingual practices in which they participate cannot be taken in isolation from their socio-economic backgrounds and access to linguistic resources. This can further be seen in their different uses of FB. Extract 2 Language guide: Mongolian – regular font; English – bold Facebook text

Translation

(1) Naidan:Намрын налгар өдрүүдээ гэж…ккк – feeling wonderful. (2) Dolgormaa: UB-d weather tiim muu bgamuu, flight hoishlogdloo, just wandering around, but saw an Absolute Hunk! Girls! *Wink wink*

Nice autumn day…kkk –

feeling wonderful.

Is the weather that bad in UB? My flight has been delayed, just wandering around, but saw an Absolute Hunk! Girls! *Wink wink*

Extract 2 is associated with Naidan’s (line 1) and Dolgormaa’s online language practices (line 2), both retrieved from their FB wall posts. Note that these FB data extracts are not actual interaction between the two participants, but rather examples from their FB wall updates. Naidan is inactive most of the time on his FB, having limited access to and familiarity with the technology. When he is active, he usually updates his FB wall posts in Mongolian using Cyrillic script. In line 1, his comment on the weather is accompanied by ‘ ’, English ‘feeling wonderful’ and the popular onomatopoeic expression ‘kkk’, widely used by transnational online users as an expression of giggling (not loud laughter like ‘haha’) or a short form for ‘OK–OK–OK–OK’. As Sharma (2012, p. 506) points out, to use ‘English on a Facebook page is to use it in multimodal form by default, because any Facebook page is already multi-semiotic with images, hyperlinks, and other verbal resources’. ‘ feeling wonderful’ is a FB feature: users have the option of choosing certain situated moods by pressing the FB button ‘What are you doing?’ under the section ‘What’s on your mind?’. Although this FB feature is ‘in English’, it is drawn from the regulated repertoire of FB’s default language system used by thousands, if not millions, of other FB consumers (Dovchin, 2016a). Dolgormaa, by contrast, has direct access to new media, since she is very active on her FB, updating her wall posts multiple times daily (line 2). She is more inclined to use English on her FB wall posts, combining the abbreviated version of Ulaanbaatar (‘UB’) with the Mongolian preposition suffix ‘-d’ [‘in’], and English words ‘weather’ and ‘flight’ integrated into a Mongolian sentence, followed by a full English sentence. Here, Dolgormaa refers to


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her flight delay due to bad weather in and around UB, and whilst she is waiting at the airport, she spots and uploads a photograph of ‘Absolut Hunk’, a famously posed nude photograph of actor Jason Lewis (naked on a bed with a bottle of Absolut vodka positioned deliberately between his legs), used in the American television show Sex and the City. Considered one of the ‘hottest’ adverts within the female audiences of this show, Dolgormaa intertextually dedicates the photograph to her FB female friends, adding the expression ‘Wink wink’. This FB post hints not only that she is privileged enough to fly around the world (locating her on the affluent side of transnational movement), but also that she is centrally involved with western popular culture resources, being familiar with the American television show Sex and the City, which is particularly popular across affluent transnational females. These examples show how both speakers use English and other semiotic resources. Naidan’s repertoire, however, draws mainly on Mongolian resources, expanded by genre-specific expressions such as FB defaults. Dolgormaa, by contrast, has a higher usage of English and wider range of cultural, media and linguistic resources at her disposal. Both speakers can access various forms of linguistic and semiotic diversity, although the complexity is shaped by the speakers’ specific socio-economic backgrounds and access to resources.

Unequal translingual Englishes in Bangladesh The following two extracts, like the examples from Mongolia, show the common use of linguistic and cultural resources fashioned by young adults’ engagements with different genres of popular culture, which is again shaped by individual socio-economic background and demographic locations that have influenced the nature of their exposure to popular culture. The participants in Extract 3 study in an expensive private university in a posh area of Dhaka, Bangladesh, but they do not belong to the privileged upper-echelon of the society. Both Nayeem and Ashiq had their earlier education in rural schools, the former in Noakhali, in north-eastern Bangladesh, and the latter in Pabna, in north-western Bangladesh. Shamim was born, brought up and went to school in Chittagong, the second largest city in Bangladesh.3 All three are majoring in Business Administration at the University of Excellence, Dhaka. They are chatting while looking at the students walking past the courtyard, their favourite hang-out place on campus. Extract 3 Language guide: Bangla – regular font; English – bold 1. 2. 3. 4.

Casual conversation ((looking at the female students walking by)) Hey BABES, come on! Shamim ((looking at the girl Nayeem says that he has chosen for himself)) OH MY G-O-D! /ga:d/ Nayeem ((losing sight of the girl)) hai, hai ((sound of pity)), koi galo? dosto, kisu akta koira de! Ashiq ((as if he is trying to draw the attention of the girl Nayeem is looking for)) ((breaks into laughter)).

Ashiq

Translation ((looking at the female students walking by)) Hey BABES, come on! ((looking at the girl Nayeem says that he has chosen for himself)) OH MY G-O-D! /ga:d/ ((losing sight of the girl)) Alas ((sound of pity)) where has she gone? Mate, do something! ((as if he is trying to draw the attention of the girl Nayeem is looking for)) I love you go. I love you go ((in a melodramatic tone)). I love you go. ((breaks into laughter)).

The set expressions ‘hey’, ‘babe’ or ‘I love you’, commonly found in Indian and western films and songs, point to these participants’ use of popular culture as linguistic resources. In the ethnographic study, they have been found using other English expressions, such as


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‘babe’, ‘oh my god’, ‘I love you’, ‘oh no’, ‘awesome’ or ‘what a lovely [sic]’. In an interview, Nayeem (072611)4 informed the researcher that he has learnt to use the English expression ‘what a lovely [sic]’ from ‘what a lovely shot’ of cricket commentaries. Ashiq and Nayeem repeatedly mention in their metalinguistic interpretations that they lack fluency in spoken English, but they prefer using set expressions in English because they feel ‘cool’, fashionable’, ‘smart’, ‘bold’ and ‘confident’. Similar to the young Mongolian adults, they prefer creating a feel of transnational ‘cool talk’ using English (Blommaert, 2015). These transnational popular expressions also reflect the social ideologies that encourage these young adults to produce these expressions as a vehicle of sophistication and coolness. Ashiq adds a Bangla word ‘go’ at the end of ‘I love you’ in line 4: ‘go’ is usually used for drawing attention as in ‘ogo’ [o you!], ‘ha go’ [Look here!] or in ‘ke go’ [who are you?]. It is also used as a suffix at the end of ma [mother] as in ‘mago’ or Allah [lord] as in ‘Allahgo’ in invocations or lamentations. The co-existence of ‘I love you’ and the Bangla word ‘go’ side by side is unusual and unexpected, but is an example of everyday linguistic creativity (Swann & Maybin, 2007). The pronunciation is exaggerated and enunciated with stress, and Ashiq’s utterance is theatrical, similar to filmic ways of speaking. By bringing English ‘I love you’ and Bangla ‘go’ together, Ashiq strategically draws the attention of passing female students and simultaneously creates the desired dramatic effect amongst his friends. Ashiq and Nayeem may have acquired linguistic and cultural texts from popular culture, but the means by which they realize this performance is linked to their educational and demographic backgrounds. Specifically, the segmental features of these English words give a better understanding of ‘unequal English’ as situated and realized in everyday conversations. The pronunciation of ‘babes’ is distinctly different from English /beib/, sounding more like /beb/ and with a more prominent /b/ than the softer English /b/. The diphthong /ei/ is replaced by a short vowel /e/, as has been observed in other Bangladeshi speakers (Hoque, 2011). Vowel lengthening and similar enunciated pronunciation are observed in ‘god’ in line 2, which approximates the pronunciation of /gad/ in American English. In line 4, the /ʌ/ sound in ‘love’ is replaced with a Bangla vowel sound /a/ and is lengthened. While the vowel lengthening allows Ashiq to express the desired theatricality and the pronunciation of /gad/ indicates his exposure to popular culture, his pronunciation of /beb/ and /lav/ sounds more like banglicized English;5 that is, spoken English that approximates Bangla or regional varieties of Bangla in segmental and supra-segmental features. It is socially stigmatized in an urbanized context like Dhaka, having associations with speakers who have come to the city from rural areas or have had education in rural schools and colleges. By contrast, anglicized Bangla – that is, pronunciation of Bangla with English phonological and prosodic features – suggests affiliation with exclusive English-medium education in urban schools and colleges in Dhaka. Thus, in their use of banglicized English, these young adults become segregated from their urban counterparts. The use of Bangladeshi and Indian inspired cultural resources evokes a range of meanings in relation to the class and social status associations of these participants. For example, the use of formulaic set phrases and songs to address young girls in public places, streets and public transport, commonly known as ‘eve teasing’ – a euphemism used in the South Asian context for the public pestering of women by men – is very popular and regularly shown in Bangladeshi and Indian films. It should be noted here that Bangladeshi commercial films are controversial for their vulgarity, obscenity [oshlilota], and ‘hard-core cinematic pornography’ (Hoek, 2010, pp. 135–137), including inserted ‘cut pieces’ (strips of celluloid featuring


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sexually explicit scenes) after the films have received certification for distribution from the Bangladesh Board of Film Censors. Because of specific generic features, these films are considered aesthetically inappropriate for the urban-centred educated class and the targeted spectators are usually expected to belong to the lower echelon of the society or the young crowd located in the rural setting (Yasmin, 2011). Indian commercial films are also hugely critiqued for their ‘sexual innuendo and scatological swear-words’ and ‘sexual violence against women’ (Ciecko, 2001, p. 127). When Ashiq and his friends engage in translingual English in ‘eve-teasing’, they seem to show their preferences for situated activities as found in the specific genre of films which are again induced by their class and socio-economic and demographic backgrounds. There is no doubt that when Ashiq and his friends are involved with translingual Englishes, that is, they are mobilizing semiotic resources and adopting negotiation strategies rather than focusing on grammar, forms and discrete language systems. In the process, they tend to carve out new facets of identity attributes for themselves that somewhat challenge the condescension, prejudice and discrimination affiliated with ‘banglicized’ English and the ‘hick’ identity attributes associated with it (cf. Sultana, 2014b). This demonstrates that ‘social categories, their linguistic indexes, and the ways individuals fit into categories are not static and predetermined but are negotiated and constructed at the local level’ (Bailey, 2001, p. 214). They are strategic in terms of their use and the kinds of affiliation, disaffiliation, inclusion and exclusion they develop in their language practices. ‘As is evident …, social categories, their linguistic indexes, and the ways individuals fit into categories are not static and predetermined but are negotiated and constructed at the local level’ (Bailey, 2001, p. 214). Their identity is structured and subjective, shifting and fluid, but ideologically infused with social histories, circumstances and individual experiences. Like the young Mongolian adults in Extract 1, these participants negotiate meanings through situating new norms by their use of basic expressions in English, the intertextual references (i.e. the possible appropriation of ‘babe’ for ‘eve-teasing’) and recombination of these English expressions with a filmic way of speaking. Similar to bilingual speakers in other multilingual contexts (Jørgensen, Karrebæk, Madsen, & Møller, 2011), they take advantage of various linguistic and cultural resources to come up with novel expressions and develop their own style of communication. When they find themselves socially or linguistically disadvantaged, they strengthen their positions, constructing urban streetwise ‘cool’ identity attributes. However, the question remains whether they can possibly redefine their social positioning in the process. Their translingual Englishes do reflect their diverse exposure to different social landscapes, from rural/provincial towns to urban space, a transition from the least privileged education system in rural/provincial towns to an English-medium education system at a private university. Their translingual Englishes in fact give a richer understanding of their internal migratory experience from the periphery to the centre and from the rural to the urban, and their different engagement with popular culture, even when they partially reposition themselves in the process. This does not, however, mean that these participants are free agents, ready to perform whatever identity they want through their language practices. They enact different facets of their identification discursively within the broader ideological framework of a society that is stratified by class, language, education and demographic background. Extract 4 is a segment from a FB conversation between Ehsan and his friend, Ayman. Ehsan was born and brought up in an exclusive area in Dhaka and went to an expensive

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English-medum school. His spoken discourses are predominantly in English. While Ashiq in Extract 3 does not have either a computer/laptop and gets irregular and restricted access to his FB account from his friends’ home computer, Ehsan’s presence on FB is pervasive. Extract 4 Language guide: English – regular fonts 1.

Ehsan:

2. 3. 4.

Aiman: Aiman: Ehsan:

5.

Aiman:

Facebook status GothCard exclusive Bat Credit Card Never leave your cave without it :P

hahah nice, i really need it! one of the most cheesiest moments in movie history…((sic)) Who doesn’t :P Damn, wish shop Hollywood would sell this as a merchandise, oder kache nai, (((they don’t have it))) they only have the “1997 Batman & Robin” Mr. Freeze action figure for sale, 97 production kenner brand toy, still in mint fresh pack. I would pay 5000TK if they have this card.

Ehsan’s presence on FB is intense and his homepage is multimodal, multi-semiotic and vibrant with continual uploads of comments (predominantly in English); photographs of his exclusive possessions, such as a Canon DSLR camera, Fossil watch and action figures in mint condition from Star Wars, Justice League (cartoon superheroes), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Batman and batmobiles; and posting of hyperlinks to his favourite western music videos (mainly heavy metal), animated cartoon series (South Park) and international sports. His status updates include information about and photographs of restaurants he has visited, the food he has eaten and travel experiences, and his FB walls are replete with candid FB conversation with expatriates in Dhaka, and friends and relatives who live either in the United Kingdom or the USA, and his photographs at different landmarks at home and abroad. Similar to our Mongolian participant Dolgormaa in Extract 2, Ehsan is heavily engaged with the western media. In Extract 4, GothCard (line 1), the Batman catch phrase (line 1), the Batman and Robin movie that came out in 1997 (line 4), Mr. Freeze, the super villain in Batman movie (line 4) and the American toy company Kenner Product that produces the original series of Star Wars action figures (line 4) all directly refer to the linguistic and cultural resources from American popular culture. Here, in his status update in line 1, Ehsan adopts the punchline ‘Never leave the Cave without it’ used in the 1997 ‘Batman and Robin’ and referring to the Batman-themed ‘GothCard’ credit card (’Good Thru Forever’) that Batman used in this specific film. Mesmerized by Poison Ivy’s (the super villainess) pheromone powder, he offers $7 million with his credit card to dance with her. In line 2, Aiman identifies this as the ‘most cheesiest’ [sic] and infamous moment of the Batman film history, intertextually referring to the criticism the film has incurred from critics and fans because of Batman’s involvement in the auction of Poison Ivy. In line 4, Ehsan mentions the SRK Hollywood Thematic Shop and Café – the very first authentic Hollywood movie merchandise store and thematic café in Bangladesh, located in Banani – one of the posh areas in Dhaka. The shop sells original and exclusive, and hence expensive, Hollywood merchandise. Ehsan frequently uploads photographs of his collectible action figures such as 8” Lion-O, 4” Thundercats or Rise of Cobra mint-packed figures that he has bought from SRK at a high price. The Café is also popular among young affluent action film lovers for its Batman Bites, Batman-shaped pizzas and Superman pizzas.


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However, the Bat Credit Card is not yet available in the shop. His friend Aiman claims he is ready to pay Taka 5000 for the card (line 5), equivalent to about US$65. This amount is significantly high in the context of Bangladesh where 31.5% (2010 estimate) of the population lives below the national poverty line of US$2 per day (Index Mundi, 2014). Ehsan writes primarily in English with rudimentary expressions from Bangla [oder kache nai, ((they don’t have it))]. His English derives its meaning from the nexus of different modes of communication, such as the photograph of the Bat Credit Card and spoken dialogue from the film itself, ‘Never leave your cave without it’ (line 1). He is also involved in a linguistic performance in which he can display his knowledge and experience of the western popular culture and local cultural reference points, such as Shop Hollywood and artefacts available there (line 4). In the process, transcending the linguistic structures of English, different modalities and his communicative context, here the virtual space, he manages to manifest himself as a ‘translocal’ youth. Ehsan’s pleasurable engagement with western entertainment requires advanced competence in English, which derives in part from his going to one of the oldest, reputed and expensive English-medium schools in Dhaka. Ehsan’s reference to the card also suggests his easy access to resources, such as computers, televisions, DVDs and so on which allows him to learn, synthesize and acquire diverse linguistic and cultural resources. All these linguistic and cultutal resources indicate Ehsan’s affordance of a comfortable lifestyle, mobility through different social landscapes, and deliberate and meterialitic display of a privileged social class. His constant display of mint action figures or the collection of John Lennon sunglasses on FB, which almost verges on ‘a narcissistic fascination with self-display’ (Livingstone, 2008, p. 393), and conversations around these topics with his friends from a similar affluent background indicate that Ehsan intends to constantly show off or look ‘cool’ to his FB friends and be within the flow of transnational youth culture. Thus, using his FB account as a semiotic complex of discursive practices, he subtly and reflexively engages in specific education and class-based identity performances. In addition, Ehsan’s frequent upload of cultural resources, accompanied by extensive use of English, indicates his non-peripherality in world culture, even though his locatedness in a developing Asian country may be simplistically considered as peripheral. By uploading the photograph of the GothCard and referring to the ‘cave’, Ehsan creates an imagery of collective aspirations for the Batman community and they explore possibilities of new selves in the translocal virtual space. In summary, both Ashiq and Nayeem in Extract 3 and Ehsan and Aiman in Extract 4 are entangled with various translingual practices, even though the intensity of their engagement with English is starkly different. The language practices of both groups are closely intertwined with their mobility in space. Ashiq and Nayeem have diverse exposure to different time and space: from rural/provincial towns to urban space and from the least privileged education system in rural/provincial towns to an English-medium education system of the private university. Their movement in space brings them to a radically different space which becomes a source of friction and tension. Their language exhibits the socio-cultural dynamics of Sheng (a combination of English, Swahili and Kenya’s ethnic languages, such as Kikuyu, Luo and Luyha) – the language of the urban youth in Kenya that evolves in the process of youth distancing themselves from the older generations, the rural traditional population and lifestyle, and from upper social classes and the rest of the society, as a way to bridge their ethnic differences in urban spaces (Karanja, 2010). Ashiq and Nayeem, coming as they do from different demographic backgrounds, develop their own stylized Bangla which is fluid

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in terms of accents and lexicalization. By contrast, Ehsan and his friend, who predominantly write in English and display their affective relation with the western popular culture, show their mobility through a different space and time and much privileged life trajectories that allow them to afford access to global cultural artefacts. All of these participants’ English becomes translingual because of linguistic and cultural appropriation and relocalization of English and the diverse strategies for which the English is used, but it is influenced and constrained by the socio-economic realities of their individual life trajectories. Class-based hierarchies are alive and well in late capitalist societies as individuals act on the linguistic resources available to them. Translingual Englishes emerge in the nexus of structure and agency – very much lived and sustained in the moment of dialogic interaction amidst the socio-economic realities of individual life.

Conclusion In this article, we sought to expand the current discussions on the notion of ‘translingual Englishes’ by integrating the idea of ‘unequal Englishes’ as a way of understanding the spread and role of English in relation to Asian peripheral contexts. Regardless of whether these young adults are geographically located in nations deemed peripheral, such as Mongolia and Bangladesh, there is little doubt that these young speakers are linguistically involved in English, with the examples clearly showing how various English and other linguistic and cultural resources are in constant interplay (Dovchin, 2016b). Yet there are also particular local constraints that either limit or expand their usage of English. Translingual Englishes may be creative, playful and performative but they are also embedded in local economies of desire and relations of class. Some of the most important of these divisions are associated with differences in social prestige, wealth and power. The particular socio-economic status of the speaker (often with concomitant access to media and technology) allows some speakers an ease with English resources that they use to relocate themselves in particular ways. They signal the social differences between them by specific features and frequencies of their English usage. The more limited access to media, technology and education for other speakers leads to different kinds of attempts to locate themselves as ‘cool’, which also involve recombinant linguistic and cultural practices despite their limited exposure to foreign languages. This varied socio-economic locatedness of speakers thus helps us to realize that transnational linguistic flows are the outcome of complex uneven and unequal processes through which young adults manage to create their own linguistic and cultural texts in relation to the divisions of a society along lines of socio-economic differences. They differ from one another in the way they speak. This is associated with increasing socio-economic inequality, which has come with the association of postcolonial policies and practices worldwide. Translingual Englishes are by no means limited to merely mixing identifiably different language resources, but rather are better understood through textual relations, in which one’s varied distance and proximity around capital and wealth become particularly important.

Notes 1. Interviews with Dolgormaa and Naidan were conducted on September 30, 2010, UB, Mongolia. The interviews were conducted in Mongolian and translated into English by the authors.

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2. Almost half of the total UB population live in the ‘ger districts’, which are situated in the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, lacking basic access to water, sanitation and infrastructure. Most of the families live in the ger (traditional Mongolian felt dwelling) or small houses. 3. Even though English is taught as a compulsory subject across all levels of education in Bangladesh, the schools and colleges in the rural areas struggle to ensure sound English education because of lack of trained teachers, appropriate pedagogical practices, effective teaching materials, adequate infra-structure support and active engagement of students and teachers in the learning process (Imam, 2005; Sultana, 2014b). 4. 7 correspondences to the month; 26 to the date, and 11 to the year. 5. In other recorded conversations and interviews, Nayeem and Ashiq have often been found to pronounce English words with Bangla phonetic features.

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Appendix 1. Transcription guide : (( )) … CAPS

Elongation Paralinguistic features and situational descriptions Text omitted Loud and emphatic utterances slower pace than the surrounding talk