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.