Monday, June 11, 2007

秋意 / Autumn Scenery

千年檀香逼祠堂, 悄悄偷到槭樹旁。
遠地童謠隨落葉, 普天金麥耀夕陽;
中秋綠草留根幹, 往南白鵝再起航。
看到烏雲山背後, 雷轟雨打那邊藏?

Smoke from ancient offerings fills the ancestral temple;
Quietly I steal my way to a maple tree’s side.
Afar, the children’s songs follow the falling leaves,
And the golden wheat reflects the setting sun.
In mid-autumn, green grass retains its blades and roots
While white geese flies again for the south.
I see the dark clouds behind the distant mountains:
When the thunder rocks and the rain falls, where do I hide?

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Villanelle

At the cross-road of memory and desire,
secrets and dreams were summarized by ash;
the phoenix of my heart was spent by fire.


Your gentle laughter brought the immortal flyer
passing all space and time in a single flash
to the cross-road of memory and desire;


There, unintentionally, you built a pyre,
made out of a blend of thoughts and words, some mash
for the phoenix of my heart, a stranger to fire.


Unknowingly, you ignited the wire –
first a candlelight, and then a white splash
at the cross-road of memory and desire.


The odour of the flesh was rising higher;
yet you were unaware of the smoking gash:
the phoenix of my heart had caught on fire.


Soon nothing but ash remained for you to admire;
your breath had blown away the lifeless trash…
At the cross-road of memory and desire,
the phoenix of my heart was spent by fire.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

The Politics of Accents: a transcription of two interviews

The following interviews are done with two of my neighbours. Queenie is a Taiwan-born young lady currently studying at SFU; she came to Canada with her family when she was eight. Kenji is her visiting friend; he is born in Hong Kong and has been in Canada for 6 years. The person whom I call “Uncle” would rather not have his name revealed; he immigrated to Canada in 1989 from Hong Kong and has lived in Richmond since. These two interviews were both originally much longer, covering various topics and issues. The topic of accents, however, really stands out in my mind, so I have decided to excerpt the parts of the interviews that discussed this issue.

There has been much critical writings and creative works that described the problems that the visibility of skin colour creates in a multicultural society. The visibility of skin colour makes a group of people especially vulnerable, since by virtue of appearance they can be identified as different, and from that difference the process of exclusion and othering can take place. And while skin colour is something that is biological, the same thing can be said about accents: accents also mark out a group of people from the norm, and they too can put that group of people into a position of vulnerability; on the other hand, certain accents can also allow their speakers to rise over other people. But it is intriguing that so many writings have been focused on the politics of the visual / visible, and few on accents.

And not without reason: after all, it is easy to document visual descriptions and their effects, but how is one supposed to record accents? Phonetic transcriptions are simply confusing and intelligible to many readers; more over, speech is much more dynamic and malleable than writing; accents – never mind the way people perceives accents – themselves are constantly changing, making it tremendously difficult to document and make very detailed studies. In fact, the medium of writing itself becomes questionable when we are dealing with the politics of accents.

Nonetheless, we must try. We must try to delve into the problems of accents: what does it do? Why does it do what it does? How do we remedy their effects? These two interviews are not intended to give complete answers to these questions; rather, they are starting points to further discussions. And these are discussions not just for the academics: accents are real problems. The interviewees are people who have to live their everyday lives dealing with the problems of accents.

The two interviews are quite contrasting: the first one seems to have an optimistic idea of accents in Canada; in other words, the first interview in general does not see accents as something bad for Chinese-Canadians, whether they are speaking their own brand of Chinese or English. The second interview, however, is more pessimistic about accents and how accents in fact reduce the chances of Chinese-Canadians to participate in mainstream culture. My uncle in fact points out the distinction (here rearticulated by me) between speaking in an accent and speaking with an accent. If one is speaking in an accent, the politics are reduced, since it almost assumes that that accent is the norm, that one is immerse in a world of that accent. Speaking with an accent, however, makes one different and marks one as an other. This distinction, though unarticulated in these terms during the interview, is perhaps the backbone of the entire issue.

The first interview, between Kenji, Queenie and I, is conducted in mandarin. The interview itself was interesting: Queenie is native Mandarin speaker; Kenji knows mandarin very well, while my mandarin, not only is it lacking in vocabulary, it also has a slight Cantonese accent. This, of course, even if I had transcribed the interview into Chinese, would have been impossible to represent in writing. The second interview, with my Uncle, as I called him, was done in Cantonese. Accents in that interview were not an issue, but there is another issue: that Cantonese itself is a kind of dialect of mandarin – some would go as far as to argue that Cantonese is its own language. Transcription would be intelligible to many Chinese readers simply because there is no systematized written form of Cantonese. Hong Kong Cantonese, for that matter, is also a kind of accent; it is different from Canton Cantonese. In Hong Kong Cantonese, a lot more English or at least Cantonesized English words (e.g. taxi is “dick-see” in Hong Kong Cantonese, whereas in Mandarin or Canton Cantonese it is “ji cheng che”, which means calculating-distance car) are used, making the transcription even more difficult to understand to the non-Cantonese reader. It is for these reasons that I have decided to directly translate the interview from tape to English, thus avoiding all of these problems. Readers, however, should keep these problems in mind as they read through the interview. These problems are also part of the problem of accents.

Johnson: What is the difference between the Chinese culture in Richmond and the Chinese culture in Asia?

Kenji: I think the biggest difference is language. If you are in Taiwan and you speak Cantonese, there really might be no one who can understand what you’re saying. If you’re in Hong Kong and if you speak Mandarin, you might be considered as a Mainlander. When I was young, I was able to speak a little mandarin, and every time I said it, people said “oh you’re from Mainland China!” At that time, we had rather negative ideas about people from Mainland China. Canada, on the other hand, is much more accepting: whether you’re from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore, everyone is capable of mixing with each other. Each person can have their own different background, yet everyone can be friends. I think that is Canada’s virtue, or perhaps this is something we can only experience in the West and not in our home country.

Johnson: Accent is a big issue. I think that in Canada, accent [when one is speaking Chinese] is not a big concern, since everyone is Chinese. But once you go back to Asia, once people can hear your accent, you can be immediately identified as this or that. Their subsequent behaviour towards you alters.

Queenie: I think accents go both ways. It can be positive or negative. For example, in Taiwan, if you have a Western accent people would feel “wow, you are very smart!”, and they will pay their respect to you. But of course there is the flip side: if you have an accent from another province, it will have a negative impact. Yet I think this is a problem in any country. Here, for example, if you have an accent when you speak English while you do a presentation, you will give a negative impression.

Johnson: What do you think the term “Chinese-Canadian” means?

Queenie: I don’t have any special feelings for it. I think that whether the term is Chinese or Chinese-Canadian, regardless Canada is supposed to be a multicultural country.

Kenji: And actually I feel that the term “Chinese-Canadian” is a little strong. It matters only because there is a great difference between Chinese-Canadian and Canada-born-Chinese.

Queenie: It matters because when you go look for a job, employers think that Canada-born-Chinese can speak better English, and so the difference is there even for a person who moved here when he was one-year old.

Kenji: So this causes some people to intentionally cover up the fact that they know how to speak, write and read Chinese. They would intentionally create that impression that they are localized, Canada-born Chinese. For example, I have a student; he came to Canada when he was grade 5, but he intentionally avoids speaking Chinese. Even when he’s at home, speaking to his parents, he uses English to communicate. Maybe in Richmond, where there is a more concentrated Chinese population, this is not an issue; but if you live farther away, like in Surrey or Langley, or even Abbotsford, within a high school setting, Chinese speakers occupy a small percentage. In these circumstances, things are different.

* * *

Johnson: As for you, what was your experience with language difficulties in your every life in Canada? How often did you have to use English? Would there be problems because you didn’t know enough English? Or was this simply a non-issue, since whether you went to work or stayed at home, you spoke Chinese anyway?

Uncle: For many people, their English actually got worse. Many people on the radio said so. Why? In Hong Kong, everyone speaks in the same accent, and you don’t feel that what you’re saying is any different; but it’s different when you come to Canada. Even if your English skills are actually better than before, you would feel, “wow, I’m totally different”. You feel very helpless in that you can never speak as well as the locals. So for many people, they felt very bad. It’s like “ah-chaunt” (a term used in Hong Kong to make fun of the “uncivilized” character of Mainlanders back in the early 90s) in Hong Kong: your English – even for Raymond Chan – will always indicate you as “ah-chaunt”. So it depends on how you see things: some people think that this is no big deal; some feel that it’s better not to speak, since they don’t fit in. So, if you want to do well in mainstream, unless you have power and wealth; if you don’t have power and wealth, and you want to use your Hong Kong English to impress others and to be given the chance to become some kind of successful leader…it’s impossible to climb.

Johnson: Because just by virtue of speaking, people already –

Uncle: Exactly, you are already excluded by mainstream society. For example, in Hong Kong, if you can’t speak Cantonese well, would people follow you? They won’t, unless you have power and wealth. But how do you climb up to that powerful position in the first place? Would people allow you? Your chance is pretty much zero. If you want to express yourself, people are already frustrated with your accent, and they won’t listen to you. If you can’t speak, they would rather have you stand aside. But Hong Kong is different; when Donald Tsang (current leader of the Hong Kong SAR government) speaks English, we have gotten used to his accent, and we don’t take his accent as anything serious. But it’s different if you come to another country. The moment you speak, you already sound different. I think that is very difficult to be successful.

Johnson: So it must be very difficult for Chinese-Canadians to become politically active. They need to be locally born?

Uncle: If they are supported by the Chinese community, then it’s not too difficult.

Johnson: But if ethnic differences are to become non-issues, then it’s very difficult.

Uncle: That’s right.

Johnson: Because your skin colour already shows your ethnicity.

Uncle: And if your language is not well spoken, then it’s just impossible. I have a very smart friend; he was the doctor of Terry Fox. Back in the days you can often see him on TV or on the radio. Before he left, he had this to say on the radio about Canada: “even though it believes in beauty, but it is not my soil, so how can I stay for long?” So even though this is a beautiful place, it does not feel like home, and it is not worth my time staying here. He understood this very well; he does a lot for the Children’s Hospital, but still he felt the need to back to Hong Kong to become a doctor. Living here, if our mentality is that we are just passing as visitors, that we are not thinking about settling down; if we are just retiring from the world, or studying hard, then Canada is a great place. But if you want to struggle, if you have any kind of grand goals, it is not that you won’t have chances; they are just rare and difficult. If you look at Dr. Tsui Lap-Chee; he is certainly very prominent; but when Hong Kong University asks him to become their vice-chancellor, he simply takes off. So if people like him are going back, you can imagine the kind of discrimination and pressure that they are feeling here, and I don’t think it is something that White people can understand...There is already exclusion in typical human interactions, and if your skin colour is different, your experience is going to be worse…like I said, “there exist differences between the related and the unfamiliar” – and if your skin colour is different, others are going to eliminate you first…

Johnson: And what about second generations here? I know lots of classmates, their parents, they have the intention of staying here and bringing up the next generations, so that they can be locally produced Chinese-Canadians. For them, will they continue to have these problems?

Uncle: It depends on what kind of mentality you have in approaching this problem. There isn’t much to argue about in terms of getting into mainstream or becoming very successful: human lives are very multifaceted. For example, if you think that you have found your home – “my life here is low-key, and I don’t need to compete with others” – if you think you can live with that, then you don’t have any problems. But if you (as a Chinese Canadian) need to get into mainstream, you need to climb up the social ladder, or whatever, then you might want to consider this carefully…In Canada, if you don’t need to do anything great, the country suits you. Just as I said, whether you make $2000 or $5000, the difference is not great. Your lifestyle may improve a little, but there is no big difference. So if you are in Canada, you should accept living out a very quiet life. Hong Kong people, however, will not look up to you; I think, however, it’s just a personality thing: if I am like that, then I am like that. So it depends on how you see things; some think that “you’re so stupid, you’re always cleaning the road”; many people look down on street cleaners. But if you think you’re happy, then it’s perfectly fine.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Are we in an age of Post-Feminism? Hardly!

The twenty-first century seems to have certified the death of all kinds of –isms. Last time I checked, we are now post-feminism, meaning moving towards a critical study in not just the female sex, but also other sexes and genders. I am not here to disagree with the validity of critical studies of sexuality as a discipline: I would fight and yell until I am out of breath to assert it as a legitimate field of study (theory) and action (practice). On the other hand, one ought to not yet certify the death of feminism: as much as some of us might not like it, we still need feminism, whatever that might entail.

And here we do not need to talk about all the fine details as to what “feminism” really is. I would like to take this idea as generally as possible: it is to assert the e-quality of females in our society that is saturated with the male gaze; it is to treat all sexes and genders with the same sense of respect. That, to me, is essentially what feminism is: let us not (yet) worry about the fine details, for it hardly makes a difference to the public outside of the academy. You see, disrespect for females within our culture is so prevalent that I don’t even think arguing within the different schools of feminism would help to turn the situation around.

I am inspired to write this brief article after reading a piece of news from Mingpao (the local Chinese newspaper). In Hong Kong, a certain lecturer spoke at a talk in front of 2000 high school students of tips to take the Hong Kong secondary school public examination. Among the many tips and clarifications that this lecturer gives, some of his examples are outrageously sexist. Here is an example (in translation):

“I once received from a female student an essay. Her essay is very beautifully written. She writes that the reason she is late for school is because she was pulled to a back lane and was raped; she then writes about how her clothes were ripped apart, showing her snow-white…[this is a blank to be filled in by the audience] But students should not write like that.”

Other examples include explaining a Chinese character in terms of how to pick up girls and one that puns on “balls”, which, in Cantonese, doubtlessly conjures up the imagine of boobs. I don’t know about you, but I was entirely disturbed by these examples. But apparently, according to at least one student, the lecturer “was not being over the line, since his expressions are closer to that of teenagers’; at least his lecturers are not as boring as our school teachers’.

What does this tell us about Hong Kong’s society? Feminism still has some work to do in order to make up for the lack of respect that mainstream seems to have in general for the other sex. For one thing, I don’t think it is funny to pun on picking up girls, as if picking up girls is just a joke. I don’t think that rape is funny either. Moreover, what is up with the boobs? I don’t think conjuring up the image of groping something is funny either. How can anyone with any sense of justice, decency and respect even conceive any of these lines as “not being over the line”?

But the fault is not in the student’s acceptance; nor is it really in the lecturer’s choice of words. The fault is on the system, on the society, of continuing to allow these things to happen, and for continuing to think the same, old, disrespectful ways about women.

And don’t think that this is strictly a Hong Kong problem. Canada is not really doing any better. All you have to do is look around you: at bus and TV advertisements, in the various kinds of mass media being mass produced and mass consumed. Outside the academy, I am not entire sure how far we have come to in terms of respecting females: the male gaze has always been there, and it is still there. If we do not do anything about it, it will continue on to be there.

Friday, February 02, 2007

The Morning Bus Ride: A Reflective Piece

Walking from my home to the bus stop for the morning 480 bus takes about 10 minutes. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning I would walk along Francis Road towards No. 3 Road, and every morning I would encounter the same middle-age Caucasian lady and her dog. I must confess I can never quite understand why anyone would walk their dog in the freezing cold of a January morning; perhaps it is for the morning freshness of a dream or quiet solitude of a still half-slumbering city.

At the bus stop. The usual people standing at their usual waiting spots. There is a strangeness in this kind of regularity: everyone seems to know their spot, and everyone is unwilling to move away from their spot, not as if they each own a particular location, but as if they are afraid to break the inaudible purse of morning life. The regularity, I suppose, is almost ritual: we are all priests performing the same deed hoping for the same result – the punctual arrival of the bus. And as I stand facing the on coming traffic, I search for those dim lights that gradually shine though my cloud of breathe: 480 UBC. A 98 B-line passes by, carrying those who are off to work. I look at my watch and find that it is 7:31. The bus should be within sight in the next 30 seconds. Others begin to shuffle their feet, take out their U-passes, turn on their ipods.

The bus opens the door and reveals a tired bus driver. Mechanically he mutters “good morning”, which nobody hears anyway. I slip my U-pass into the machine, making that awful “dud” sound, and make my way to the back to the bus. Eyes scan around, hoping to find a familiar face, but also to find that familiar place: an empty space. By the time the bus gets to my stop, the bus usually is almost full. Often there is one odd seat beside two napping students, and I go and join the slumbering party, each with their own stream of broken thoughts and dreams. The bus echoes nothing but the sound of the engine: human chatter is minimal, although the occasional conversation does flourish in the midst of a general fatigue: for those who can only pretend to sleep, eavesdropping is the next best activity on the bus. In the morning, topics of conversations can vary: from the weather and the exam, to the gossip and the news. The most interesting conversation I’ve heard is about elephants and the zoo; the most profound, the nature of death in our post-modern world; the most stupid, my own internal dialogue about what makes stupidity stupid (thank goodness no one can eavesdrop into that).

I pass by the same faces and the same streets every morning, yet upon recollection I do not believe I can recall any one of them (obviously except those whom I have already met before and are my friends). Yet if I am a brave sort of person, I would like to meet every one of them and get to know who they are, not just their names, ages and majors, but also what is their kind of pies, what they think of yoga and yogurt, or what would they do if they found out that a spider is crawling down their pants. Or these places along the route, the Starbucks and Macdonald’s, as well as that market on 41st in Kerisdale, or the bookstore at Dunbar: who is in there when the bus passes by, and what are they doing (that is, if the store is even opened!)? Sometimes, when miraculously I feel awake, I look around and see the occasional keener reading his economics textbook or reviewing her biology notes. If they are beside me, I like turn and look at their notes, to see the different kinds of handwritings: chicken scratches, artistic (which, according to my friend, are really the same thing), Victorian, or (rather dully) typed. Yet I have to say, by the end of the ride, half of the bus is asleep; the other half, falling asleep, and these curiosities fly away like the fleeting dream.

I think I have ridden the bus for many times that with my eyes closed I can predict the exact location of the bus. With the 480, northbound, starting from where I usually get onto the bus, there are one full right turn, 2 half right turns, 2 circular right turns and 3 full left turns; the engine sounds different right when it reaches the junction of 41st and Marine Drive. When people begin to rub clear of the window of the dew, I know the bus has made its second last left turn (onto Westbrook Mall), and that it has arrived proper on UBC land. And of course, before the arrival at the final station, there is always one or two people who cannot get off the bus and yells “back-door please!”. Whether they get off or not, that depends on the mood of the bus driver.

Nearing the last stop. Everyone slowly wakes up, packs their bags and wrap up the cords for their ipods. There is generally nothing to look at, so one looks at the advertisements. Here’s one with a girl and her legs – shoes; there’s one with a tree – colleges. Often times I see the fill in the blanks one for safe sex; and more touching is the one with the ragged doll – awareness of street-workers. Remember that one where a cell-phone shape is cut out of a girl’s chest, and you can see her cleavage? That one is no longer there, near the emergency exit on the roof at the back of the bus. I miss that ad: I wonder if her boobs are real.

But everyone else who is left will get out at the last stop. We have come together for a brief hour, and then we are each off doing our own things. Though we never speak to each other, or even dared to meet each other eye-to-eye, I must say, we are, however odd this seems, a kind of and a kind community.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Sonnet

For Elizabeth

Naked she stands before the edge of a
waterfall cascading; the blacken clouds
unleash their fury: bolts tearing the sky
apart, roars amplifying the crashing pour,

and raindrops diluting the salty tears;
downward she fearfully gazes to find
foaming and fuming the face of a lake
that is battered by frailty and fear.

Then spreading out her arms, resigned, she dives
and drowns in that chaotic lake, resolved
to give up life in order to live again;

and in her final thoughts she finds the deep
captivating, without captivity –
her bones are with the treasures of the lake.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Sonnet

For Elizabeth

Newton has taught that force and gravity
exist between all things that take up space:
the heavier one mass is for its surroundings,
the more things would be trapped in paralyzed path;

and doesn't the same law hold for the graver mind,
that heavy thoughts and uncertain desires,
dreams of the past, the present and the future,
revolve around the confused consciousness?

Above the floor lies things freshly unpacked,
each with its meaning and its potential;
each a victim of the gravity of the mind...

Though gravity is a universal fact,
yet look to the floor to reach for the sky,
and may ascending Fortune fall on you.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

On the Relevance of Literary Theory and Practical Equity

There are moments when I question myself as a literary critic as to just what in the world am I doing dealing with literary texts by dead white guys when there are so many other problems out there in the world that I should be spending my time on. Sometimes the same question comes from other of my more practical friends. And I think it is a fair question: if one is cynical about it, one can easily dismiss the literary critic as someone who is full of theory but not caring enough to practice the theory; the literary critic can be seen as part of the capitalist system whose function (if we want to be Marxist about it) is to deflect attentions from the real problem by having some of the smartest people within the system to think about something it is in fact entirely useless. Literary criticism is in fact part of the superstructure that covers over the base of labour relations and class distinctions.

But studying language and literature does have a positive impact towards the practice of equity. It is not the same kind of practice as political movements, but it is an individual understanding of the world and equity. In other words, while studying literature may not be a mass political movement, it does promote the same ideals in terms of individual understanding. And individual understanding is one of the goals of practical equity movements, since social changes must be made in many directions, and one of the directions is on the individual level.

In the English department, literary students and critics examine texts. Texts, most evidently, consist of language, or systems of signs. The student’s job is to understand how language works in a certain literary text, what kinds of conflicts are created by language, in language and through language. But is not the “real world” also sets of conflicting systems of signs? When we think about gender troubles or class problems, do they not also manifest themselves in systems of signs, whether these systems are the actual language, or objects surrounding us, or even colours arranged in a certain order? By practicing linguistic analytical skills in English studies, literary students are capable of applying the same skills onto the practical world. Once one realizes that systems of signs are arbitrary and are constructs (of a certain ideological position), one is on the way to deconstruct these systems of signs and to comprehend the fundamental reason as to why equity matters. This, at least, has been my own experience in studying literature.

English, certainly, is not the only academic field where equity is realized. But to dismiss English as a field only for the acquirement of “cultural capital” would be unfair. At the same time, dismissing theory as merely theoretical would also be unfair, since theory is one of the ways in which one can represent one’s understanding of equity and its importance.

Saturday, September 30, 2006

The Origin of the Dictionary and the Rise of English in Foucaultian Terms

Introduction

There is a significance of the English dictionary in the disciplining of the academic field now known as “English”. I would like to suggest that the English dictionary serves as a kind of symbolic central tower in the panoptican of English studies. The dictionary has a kind of invisible power that subjects us to write correctly and, at the same time, gives us our identities as proper English students who can write correctly. With this I have tried to echo Foucault’s theory of power, that it both oppresses and, more importantly, produces us as subjects of a certain system.

I will be doing a little bit of Foucaultian archaelogy, looking at the history and purpose of the English dictionary – culminating on Samuel Johnson’s monumental A Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755 – and how the dictionary has shaped the literary consciousness of English Enlightenment.

History of the Dictionary

Believe it or not, the first ever English dictionary was not published until the year 1604, with Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall. This work has only a measly 2500 headwords and provides nothing more than the most basic definitions and etymologies. Cockeram, in 1623, published The English Dictionarie, which ontains three volumes, arranged according to usual words, vulgar entries and encyclopedic entries. Perhaps the next great dictionary is Thomas Blount’s Glossographia, published in 1656, which has twice as many words as Cockeram’s work. Linguistic authorities in general, however, cite no other great dictionaries in the 17th century.

At the turn of the 18th century, however, there was an explosion of English dictionaries published in the market, beginning with John Kelsey’s Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum in 1708, and ending with John Walker’s A critical pronouncing dictionary and expositor of the English language in 1794. In between is Samuel Johnson’s great dictionary, which went through many editions; Johnson himself was constantly revising the dictionary up until his death. Going through the catalogue of 18th Century online collection, I was able to find at least 40 different English dictionaries published in the 18th century, and all of them went through at least a handful of editions and revisions.

So why is there this great explosion of demands for the dictionary? After all, people have been writing all this time: in the history of English literature we have seen the genius of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, and they did not need dictionaries. In our consideration, perhaps it is best leaving out anytime before the 17th century, since hardly anyone actually knew how to write anyway: writing was a privilege of the elite. But by the time of Milton, the seventeenth century saw a higher and increasing literacy rate, and people were beginning to read and write. But the 17th century did not see the need for a grand dictionary, and indeed, no one attempted to put one together. Perhaps if we consider the purpose of the dictionary at the time, we might be able to gain some insight as to why the grand dictionary was all of a sudden in demand.

Purpose of the Dictionary

The 17th century dictionary is actually not exactly the dictionary we have in mind. Several major differences can be noted between the 17th and the 18th century dictionaries: Firstly, 17th century dictionaries lack several features of the modern dictionary: they do not teach its user how to pronounce or the word class of the word, nor teach their users how to use the word. Secondly, they define only supposedly difficult words that readers might encounter. The dictionary’s purpose is not to give exact definitions to all words; it only wants to clarify some words. These difficult words are often words that a reader might encounter in the scripture. Thirdly, they are also concerned with borrowed words from other languages that are in the circulation of common English usage, a point which is actually the exact opposite of the goal of the modern English dictionary. Most importantly, the arrangement of the dictionaries is not necessary always alphabetical; there might be some other agendas. Cockeram’s dictionary, for example, is structured in three volumes, curiously arranged this way: the first book has to do with “choicest” words; the second, “vulgar” words; the last, encyclopedic words. By the time we get to Johnson’s dictionary, the major form of a “definition” – which includes the word’s correct spelling, word class, grammatical forms, pronunciation, definition, etymology and usage – is shaped. User of the dictionary can readily look up any aspects of a word as that in his or her writing the word can be used correctly.

Linguistic historians point out that between the seventeenth and the eighteenth century there is a pedagogical shift from the studying of (Latin) grammar to the studying of (English) usage. At the time of Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall, the grammarians dominate the study of language. Specifically, Latin is the main body of knowledge that students (of presumably upper class aristocrats as well as those of the clergy) had to master. By the time of Johnson’s dictionary, he is able to speak of “assist[ing] the students of our language”. The English language, by mid 18th century, has become a language to be studied, and therefore to be used correctly and perfectly.

Indeed, we ought not to be surprised by this indication: it is in the 18th century that we see the rise of the English language into prominence. From an economic view point, the 18th century did see the rise of a certain group of people which many historians termed as the “middle class”: these are people who began to profit from the expanding trade and commercial activities that were for sure on the rise at the turn of the 18th century. The world of commerce spoke not Latin but English. Correct and efficient standardizations of communication are vital for prosperous trades. From a political point of view, the 17th century in general saw the dominance of Louis XIV; the French language and culture were extremely influential. Nearing the end of the 17th century, English was exhausted from decades of civil war, which was more or less put to rest by the Glorious Revolution of 1688, with the installment of William and Mary. Conscious or unconscious, England has a need to unify itself into a National character, and what better way to do it than having a nationally unified language, upheld by the supreme authority of the dictionary? In fact, getting rid of the French influence is the subject of many dictionaries and grammar texts in the 18th century; Samuel Johnson, in the Preface to his dictionary, notes that the dictionary would help English speakers not to “babble a dialect of France.” Finally, socially, the rising middle class needs instruction to acquire the aristocracy’s “culture”; while they might not have a chance to learn Greek in order to read Homer’s Odyssey, why not learn English and read Pope’s heroic translation? Many of these dictionaries are concerned with giving their users the tools to write elegantly, and certainly this is no mere stylistic concern.

Foucaultian Archaeology of the Dictionar

Foucault famously stated that “People know what they do. People also know why they do what they do. What people do not know is what what they do does.” I have talked about what people do (which is to write and use the dictionary); I have also talked about why they do what they do (which are the different reasons for the prominence of the dictionary in the 18th century). Now, as an archeologist, I have to find out what what they do does.

I have suggested that the dictionary is symbolically the central tower of the panopticon. For Foucault this is not a metaphor because the panopticon is literally how power operates. But in order for us to understand how the authority of the dictionary operates, we need to consider the panopticon as a metaphor. If the dictionary is the central tower, then individual cells represent individual learners of the English language. Recall Foucault’s two ways of training subjects: hierarchical observation and normalizing judgment. Without the dictionary, there is no normalizing judgment: English users are a blob of people who all have their own ways of speaking “English”; there are already many different dialects of the language, each with its own little variations. This did not matter in the 17th century, since English was not the necessary language of communication for important issues (such as politics and, more importantly, the scripture). Everyone who dealt with these important issues knew their classical languages. But in the 18th century, when commerce began to be prominent, and a new generation of “middle-class” who did not have classical training began to rise, there emerged a need to standardize the language: there needed to be some kind of normal English, so that people of the entire country can communicate without trouble. Once the dictionary is constructed, how to standardize the language becomes a much simpler task: the vague question of “how to use English correctly?” now can be categorized as how to spell correctly, how to use different forms of verbs, how to use a word correctly, how to pronounce each English word correctly, and so on. In each category the dictionary becomes the objective authority whereby normalizing judgments can be grounded upon.

Not only judgment upon the English language is normalized, it is also hierarchized. This is why many (if not most) of the advertisements of the dictionaries try to sell the dictionaries as tools that will allow writers to write with more elegance. (If you are not upper class, at least you can sound upper class!) For Foucault, where there is a site privileged by a mass of people, there will be differences; where there are differences, there is power. The English language, now a privileged site, now with a normalizing judgment, symbolized by the mighty authority of the dictionary, begins to slot different people into different hierarchal positions according to the value of the differences. A certain range of vocabulary, a certain kind of pronunciation or dialect, a certain kind of sentence structure (“The structure of his sentence is French”), and so on, all contribute to how a certain way of using the English language rank within the hierarchical system. Shakespeare? Sometimes he is too vulgar; Milton? Too Latinated. Pope? Now here’s an English poet! Samuel Johnson? Who does not want to write like him? The dictionary itself does not form any kind of ranking system; but the presence of the dictionary allows people to use it to form arbitrary ranks. The dictionary, then, clearly disciplines the English language.

The dictionary also metaphysically surveys (to play on the word “surveillance”, although the dictionary will most certainly point out my usage error) the users or subjects of the English language; in other words, we have internalized the power matrix opened up by the dictionary: without the dictionary, there would be no authority to judge us; there would not be so many categories in which we as writers are judged by; we would not be thinking that we are constantly judged; we would not automatically go look words up in the dictionary whenever we feel like that we are not writing correctly in English – the notion of “correct English” would not even exist. We literally think that we are constantly being gazed at by a personified dictionary, and that is why we automatically regulate our literary behaviours. We ought not to be surprised to see that at the precise moment of Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language we have truly reached an age in which English emerges as its own language; the 18th century brought to England the climax of English poetic elegance as well as English prosaic prowess – Johnson himself was a brilliant writer of essays and poet of satires.

I must reiterate that power, for Foucault, is both oppressive and productive. We cannot think that power is only oppressive. Power is oppressive because it subjects us to its gaze and its systems of hierarchy; but more importantly, it is also productive because it allows us to become subjects of that system – it gives us an identity we can cling onto and identify ourselves as. Without the dictionary, anyone is just part of a random group of “English speakers”; the dictionary sorts out who we are – it identifies us both positively (“we are capable of spelling latinated words”) and negatively (“we are not those who does not know what latinated words are”). As Foucault writes, “We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’. In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production.” (194)

Monday, September 18, 2006

秋意 / Autumn Mood

秋風奔馬呼聲叫﹐
落葉蝶膀霧影飄﹔
葉靜風停回憶看﹐
秋風再起未來雕。

The autumn wind, like the breath of a sprinting horse, howls,
The falling leaves, like the shadow of the wings of a butterfly in heavy fog, float;
When the leaves are still and the wind is paused, memories are reviewed,
But when the autumn wind rises again it carves the future.

* * *

This is probably my first poem in Chinese in which the meter is actually correct. I finally understand how the meter works, and, I have to say, writing in the Chinese meter is incredibly difficult, especially since I do not have enough Chinese vocabulary.

The Chinese meter depends on the tone of the character. In the Chinese language, the character's pronounciation is a combination of the sound and the tone of the character. Hence two characters may have the same sound (e.g. piao), but one may be in the first tone, and the other in the second (and there are four tones in total). The Chinese meter is determined by the tone of the character. The meter has two parts, called "ping" and "zi". This is kind of like the English "stress" and "not-stressed". In my poem, the meter goes something like this:

ping ping zi zi ping ping zi, (a)
zi zi ping ping zi zi ping; (b)
zi zi ping ping ping zi zi, (c)
ping ping zi zi zi ping ping. (b)

(The letter at the end refers to the rhyming scheme.) With the necessity to fit in the meter, writing parallel structures become a lot more difficult, since many words do not fit in with the meter, even though in terms of parallels they are perfect fit. If this poem seems especially bad, please forgive me. It is the first time I tried with the correct meter. May experience give me better poems!