Linguistic bullying: How we assert cultural superiority through our use of English

How many times have we looked down upon Americans because they drop the u from favour and colour, or reverse the re in centre and metre, not to mention their complete bastardization of manoeuvre and cheque. In my formative years, it was common for English teachers to take an occasional swipe at Americans for their corruption of our mother tongue, to ensure that we proper Canadians adhered to our British roots and not be influenced by the degradation of our language as perpetrated by the US media.

Interestingly, though, the same teachers who smugly admonished the Americans for their labors and theaters also blithely ignored the UK spellings of pedeatrics, aeroplane, tyre, ageing, travelling – not to mention all those -ise suffixes that unwittingly became -ize. So much for our proud British linguistic heritage. Seems the Americans got some things right, but that would be very un-Canadian to admit.

In Singapore, I found myself on the opposite end of the linguistic taunting.

In one of my first editing gigs, I found our writers were consistently writing "speak to" or "talk to" rather than "speak with" or "talk with". The introduction of an interview would read something like, "I sat down with the artist over coffee to talk to him about his work," or "I spoke to the British High Commissioner about his new posting."

Now, there’s nothing egregiously wrong with speak to. In many cases it can be interchangeable with speak with. In these specific cases, though, I often changed to to with because speak with implies a dialogue, while speak to implies one person doing most of the talking, usually in admonishment.

My senior editor noticed my changes and had a talk to me about it. "I’ve noticed you keep changing 'speak to' to 'speak with'. I don't understand why."

I gave my explanation. And I assured her that if she didn’t want me to make those changes in her articles, if she said that it was her personal style, I would have been fine with it. It’s not the kind of matter that the average reader would notice, anyway; editors are far more sensitive to tone.

But it went one huge step further. "The British never say speak with or talk with. You Canadians have been too influenced by those lazy Americans."

Now, wait a minute. Someone just asserted some kind of cultural superiority here and just disparaged two other nationalities in the process.

This wasn't the first time I experienced something like this in one of my overseas offices. Here I was in British-influenced Singapore, dealing with British-educated South African editors -- basically facing the prestige of British English as fixed upon three continents -- and, well, I, the puny, Ahmercunized Canadian was trampled and shushed pretty damn quick in any debate over language usage.

"Seriously?" I shouldn’t have challenged her, but I was dumbfounded by what I was hearing. "Why would the Brits never say they spoke with somebody? How can that possibly be incorrect?" Perhaps it could be confused with the concept of speaking with a characteristic – "He spoke with confidence." Then again, you can walk with a person and walk with confidence at the same time, so...

No clear explanation emerged. Her only retort was, “It would make any British person bristle to hear that.” And thus, speak with was banished from our magazine, permanently.

I thought this might have been the peculiar wont of this particular editor, but no. Friends of mine who were educated by the British in Singapore and China, I discovered, were taught the same nonsensical rule, all in the name of the Brits holding a monopoly on proper English; anyone who speaks differently surely must have been influenced by a lesser culture. (And to digress, the British habit of referring to a sports team, musical group or corporation in plural – “Microsoft are a large company” – is another pet peeve of mine. It’s the kind of adulteration I’d expect from, well, Americans.)

When my editor informed me of this apparently age-old rule of Most Proper British English, I just had to look it up for myself. Apparently, though, from my research, the British authors of some of the English language’s finest literature couldn't agree less:

Charles Dickens

The Mystery of Edwin Drood: I have never yet had the courage to say to you, sir, what in full openness I ought to have said when you first talked with me on this subject.

The Old Curiosity Shop: “You are better?” said the child, stopping to speak with him.

William Shakespeare

Troilus and Cressida: We come to speak with him; and you shall not sin.

Coriolanus: Men. I am an officer of state, and come to speak with Coriolanus.

Twelfth Night: I told him you were sick; he takes on him to understand so much, and therefore comes to speak with you.

Oscar Wilde, Salome

SALOME: What a strange voice. I would speak with him.

FIRST SOLDIER. I fear it may not be, Princess. The Tetrarch does not suffer any one to speak with him. He has even forbidden the high priest to speak with him.

SALOME: I desire to speak with him.

Christopher Marlowe

Faustus: I’ll speak with him now, or I’ll break his glass windows about his ears.

Emily Bronte

Shirley: I talked with the other ladies as well as I could, but still I looked at her.

The Professor: But whether she read to me, or talked with me; whether she teased…

Agatha Christie

The Mysterious Mr. Quin: “It is such a long time since I have talked with anyone…”

Death on the Nile: “Will you come and speak with Mr. Doyle, please, Monsieur Poirot...”

P.D. James

The Lighthouse: Dalgliesh said, “I shall, of course, need to speak with everyone individually, apart from meeting them all in the library.”

Innocent Blood: It was time he took a day off, time too that he walked and talked with another human being.

D.H. Lawrence

Women in Love: Halliday went out into the corridor to speak with him.

Sons and Lovers: My brother will be awfully pleased to talk with you.

The Story of Marraige: and that night he talked with Frieda for a long time

Harold Pinter

The Homecoming: where she had met Kyogo Moriya for the first time and talked with him

All I can conclude is that someone at some point in time self-invented a new rule and called it British just so that expatriates could go forth into the world with yet one more example of how every other nation gets English wrong.

But I don’t mean to pound on the Brits. As I pointed out earlier, Canadians can be just as guilty of this habit. When you look deeper into the origins of these linguistic rules, the root is not always in the culture, but in organizations (such as influential school boards and publishers) that have had one or two people enforce their own preference as an in-house rule that then filters through the culture at large.

This article from the New York Times gives one of the best demonstrations of just how this happens: Beware of Grammarians Who Rule by Whim (NYT, Dec 2008)

Singapore: It's All Good News

I wrote this in March, 2009, for what I intended as the first post in a blog about Singapore life. I didn't start the blog because I realized that much of what I had to say about Singapore was in this disparaging vein, and I didn't feel like pissing off my friends, my employer, or the ministry that granted my work permit (this is the kind of writing that finds foreigners suddenly not getting their visas renewed for unexplained reasons). I could have posted it anonymously, but given how much I knocked others for being critics without faces or guts, I didn't want to be one myself. In the end, I succumbed to the same self-censorship that I lambasted in this piece. In retrospect, I wish I had done more writing like this and posted it while in Singapore, but an additional disincentive was some kind of intellectual anaesthetic in the city's air that made me too docile and content. There are, of course, lots of happy topics to blog about in Singapore, but they'd been covered to death by expats. I didn't want to be the 4,009th amateur to blog about food, sunshine, and shopping malls.

Singapore: It's All Good News

A populace that allows itself to be too tightly controlled finds itself drained of creative significance.

Despite having worked in the Singapore media market for almost two years, I still start my day reading the Canadian news. The Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail are my first daily ports of call. Vancouver's Georgia Straight is still my "local" paper. I also frequently hit The Guardian and CNN. Sometimes I watch CBC's The National online. Never do I pick up a paper in Singapore. Sure, The Straits Times is usually lying around the office, but once I've scanned the headlines, I've consumed all I need to know for the day about my adopted home.

Why? Singapore is an ostensibly free country with an ostensibly free press. Compared with media owned and controlled by authoritarian states -- China's for example -- the major papers of Singapore have the gloss and texture of the most informative American or European periodical. But Singapore's major papers and TV networks are, ultimately, owned and controlled, not without interference, by the government. Unlike in China, the media here are not required to submit their works to government censors before publication or broadcast. Anyone is free to publish whatever they wish, so long as they are willing to suffer the repercussions when the government or the courts are offended. It is then that publishing licenses are known to be suspended or withdrawn, or writers put at risk of demotions or terminations, with causes never specified. Fear of the government's wrath guarantees an uncritical press offering a daily string of "good news" headlines and one-sided stories. Newspapers from neighbouring Malaysia are banned to protect the delicate population from being exposed to potential criticism of Singapore's undertakings.

My first job in Singapore was with a current affairs periodical that was relatively new to the market, a blend of The New Yorker and GQ with a dash of The Economist. Such a publication had been rare up to now, for reasons that are as much political as cultural. Analysis and opinion of issues related to local governance risks attracting unwanted attention from officials. On the rare occasion when that boundary is breached, citizens don't lap it up; instead they feel embarrassed for the poor sods who just put their careers on the line. When I have questioned this thinking with acquaintances, suggesting that they should be grateful for the occasional offering of free thought, they give me a gentle reminder: "You're not in the West. Respect our Asian values." In other words, it's okay to have an opinion, as long as you keep it to yourself. Though, I suspect this value is not particularly Asian, as you’d find many Japanese, Taiwanese, or Thai (to name but a few) being unafraid to take political stances.

Our magazine set about to engage Singaporeans on a broad range of subjects and heighten tolerance for open discourse. During a relaxed office party one night, I made a modest proposal to the general manager. "Wouldn't it be great," I said, "if we could get this magazine into bookstores in some other major cities -- Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, LA, New York." The idea being, if I can pick up The New Yorker or The Economist here, and if we're in their leagues, shouldn't we be available in the same cities as their readership? The GM was dismissive. "Err, you don't understand, there's no point. It's not our market." I pressed the argument that it could be vital to establish our title as a leading voice on affairs in Asia-Pacific, given the breadth of regional issues we covered. Alas, I was "too idealistic."

But, I learned, Singapore has no voice on its own affairs, let alone the world's -- and it doesn't want one. As I carefully observed past editions of the monthly, it became apparent that they had fallen into the trap that the government set for all local media: Print only flattering stories about Singapore, don't comment too much on the local government, and emphasize the discord and instability of surrounding Southeast Asian countries. The content tended to portray Singapore's neighbours as third-world backwaters run by crackpots. The intent was not to make Singapore look flawless in comparison, but that was the result of the self-censorship. So, the GM was right after all. Our magazine fell just short of measuring up to the substance of the international magazines that inspired us. Alas, the magazine lasted about one year and the company folded.

This perversion of open dialogue is the country's greatest deficiency. The result is that Singapore, a beautiful city with one of the most livable environments you'll find anywhere, is the world's proverbial dumb blonde -- she's the seductive woman every man desires, but take her out to dinner and she has nothing intelligent to say.

The list of newspapers and media outlets that have been sued -- libel-chilled into silence -- by founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and his family is exhaustive and includes the Asian Wall Street Journal, Time, The International Herald Tribune, BusinessWeek, The Financial Times and Bloomberg. The Far Eastern Economic Review was ordered to fork over damages so grand that the magazine was unable to pay and thus stopped publishing in Singapore -- an effective ban for the misdeed of quoting an opposition member. In 2004, The Economist paid damages to the prime minister and his family for using the word "nepotism" in an editorial to describe his family's record of receiving prominent government appointments. No media outlet has ever won a case overseen by Singapore's ruling-party-appointed judiciary.

It's also worth noting that the Singapore constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech and assembly has so many conditions attached as to make the freedom redundant. Any gathering of more than five people without a police-issued permit is illegal. While the authorities ignore family barbecues, beach volleyball and pro-government gatherings, permits to assemble in public have been withheld from the opposition, and small gatherings in private spaces to discuss political affairs or screen critical documentaries are often broken up when discovered.

Singapore's ambassador to the USA, Chan Heng Chee, gave this defense of Singapore's heavy-handed approach last year to The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt: "On an aircraft carrier [America], you can be playing soccer in one corner and have jets taking off in another, and the carrier remains stable. In a rowboat [Singapore], it makes sense for everyone to row in the same direction."

That metaphor must be greatly offensive to the Singaporean people, who are highly educated and have no desire to see their country destabilized. Nor do they view their homeland, one of the world's most lucrative economies, as a shoddy rowboat. The fact is, if the opposition were free to air their grievances without fear of persecution or imprisonment (the opposition leader has been jailed twice for stating that the judiciary is not independent), Singaporeans would continue to re-elect the ruling party by wide margins. The people here are proud of the accomplishments of the ruling People’s Action Party and their sound governance. They are not going to be swayed by a cantankerous opposition who are in no shape to govern. [2012 note: the opposition parties have become less cantankerous, more credible, and better admired since I wrote this.]

But let's assume that the Singapore government is justified in limiting its critics and forcing the local media to self-censor. What's the harm, when pretty much the entire population is well looked after and is offered a high quality of life?

What's lost when people are taught to be quiet and never question is that they lose the capacity for self-examination, a trait that bears much of the creative voice. Count the number of important filmmakers and novelists who have emerged from China, for instance. Even that country, with its repressive, dictatorial government, has bred an intellectual class responsible for internationally renowned works of cinema and literature. Jia Zhangke has been called "the most interesting filmmaker around" by the venerable critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, and acclaimed American director Martin Scorcese says that Jia has "redifined cinema." Lou Ye, despite being officially banned from filmmaking, continues to ply his trade and recently won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes for his Spring Fever. Zhang Yimou is known worldwide for great films such as Raise the Red Lantern and dozens more. Other great films by Chinese-born directors include Yi Yi and The Blue Kite, the latter being a critical portrait of family life during China's transition to Communism, a theme that required the film to be smuggled out of China to screen at festivals. Then there is the prolific Chen Kaige, best known for Farewell My Concubine.

Chinese novelists with works published worldwide are numerous, but let me mention two: Eileen Chang, who wrote Lust, Caution (which became a celebrated film by director Ang Lee), and Ma Jian, author of the recent Beijing Coma, a biting look into Chinese politics and the Tiananmen Square massacre.

All of the above-mentioned works are available in the West and have been reviewed by the world's most discerning critics.

And then there are the internationally recognized painters of the Philippines, whose works are often politically charged. By contrast, Singapore bans politically themed art, which only stifles its relevance on the world stage.

Singapore's novelists, filmmakers and other artists are talented and numerous. But I would challenge any professional critic or festival-goer in the West to name just one. That is not to say the works produced in Singapore are not good, just that virtually none has warranted international recognition. (The "small" population of 4.6 million cannot be a factor; Paris has 2.2 million people and no one would doubt that city's global creative influence.)

When you look at the artists mentioned above, here is the difference: They prove the maxim that the personal is political. Even for the Chinese, who are certainly discouraged against speaking their minds, often with force, they somehow find the courage to do so, and in the process, like Filipino painters and other political artists, tell the world something relevant about their lives and their nation. Singaporeans, on the other hand, are too content to risk the comforts of their first-world standard of living. Their novels and films dutifully refrain from socio-political themes that might offend the sensibilities of their government. Many of these works have individual merit, but end up working collectively and unconsciously as propaganda. Like the local press, their appearance of being free and uncensored is just that -- an appearance -- and the result is an artistic community that does not resonate with the world outside its borders.

Not to say there are no films or other artworks that deserve recognition. Singapore Dreaming, for one, is a film that could easily stand with Yasujirô Ozu’s Tokyo Story as an incisive portrait of family life in a particular place and time. Or a more contemporary comparison could be made with Woody Allen’s Manhattan-centric Hannah and Her Sisters, as it deals with the disintegration of the hopes and cultural expectations of each family member until they are lost (and found) in a an emotional catharsis. The matters dealt with in Singapore Dreaming are unique to its inhabitants, and there’s no reason this work shouldn’t be held up as some sort of defining portrait of the nation’s heart, the same way Yi Yi and A City of Sadness are for Taiwan or To Live is for China. But why was Singapore Dreaming not screened at any of the world’s film festivals nor reviewed by any notable critic (according to release dates and reviews on IMDB)? I would hazard a guess that Singapore’s film community does not feel the hunger or need to connect with international audiences, just as the magazine I worked for saw no use going beyond its constrained borders. Singaporeans have just become so conditioned to not being recognized that when they do produce a great work of art, they have no network or institutional knowledge for finding wider distribution.

Which brings me back to why foreign media is more germane to my life. The dearth of unfettered creative expression in Singapore has left me with little sense of place to connect with. I feel an emotional and personal relationship with the nation, but not an intellectual one. When I visit Borders or Kinokuniya now, when I’m looking for some mental stimulation, I go straight for the magazines I went for at home – The New Yorker and the political pages of Vanity Fair foremost among them. Local media offers nothing comparable. The only magazines that survive in this country are those dedicated to home decor, cars and fashion. 

Artists and journalists raised in an environment with this superficial level of dialogue are also likely to have nothing to say about their country -- and if they do, they keep it to themselves, which is the same as not having an opinion at all.

For the government, that's just the way they like it -- all rowing in the same direction with no destination in mind.

Expat vs. Immigrant

The following article was written at the request of Singapore's daily Today newspaper. One of their section editors contacted me in late 2010 while I had been working at ANZA, asking if I'd be interested in writing about Singapore life from an expatriate perspective. He replied: "I absolutely love the piece. Extremely well written and raising some great points." But later on he said his editor put it on hold, and after that it just died. I can't cite any proof of overt censorship, but my guess is that the paper didn't want to publish anything that would put the wealthy expat population in a bad light. The inability to have this kind of open conversation, I believe, is indicative of an overall problem in Singapore that exists between the local and expat communities. Locals resent expats for a variety of reasons – turning quaint character neighbourhoods into yuppie enclaves, increasing costs of living, using the nation for a few years of quick buck-making while leaving behind nothing but higher rents and shophouses transformed into unaffordable furniture stores. But the establishment media of Singapore seems to have a vested interest in ignoring such divisive issues, while promoting the white culture that is a vital part of bringing money and (sometimes perceived) talent to the island. I thought it was important to have an "ang moh" such as myself touch on the way white people present themselves in Singapore's expat media. Apparently Today didn't find it so vital.

Expat vs. Immigrant

There are few words that I have found as bothersome as the one that labels us whiteys in Singapore – "expat". I intend no offence to expats or those who call themselves such. It is a convenient label that I have taken to using myself on occasion, but the way the phrase is used in Singapore gives me some particular difficulty.

Prior to residing in Singapore, I had no problem with the word. I lived briefly in China and have had six months’ worth of extended stays in Tokyo over the years. In both countries I heard the word "expat" bandied about, but Westerners there also found the word interchangeable with "foreigner" or a host of other terms used to define immigrants.

Yet I wonder why it would be so derogatory to call a Caucasian "foreigner" in Singapore. I suspect there’s still a subconscious tie to the colonial days, and we as a Western community have not entirely accepted the idea that our days of owning the place – and not being foreigners – are over. As such, the word "expat" has taken on myriad connotations relating to race, status and wealth. We must ask why dark-skinned labourers from around the region are "foreign workers" but never expats.

My understanding of "expatriate" is that the emphasis is supposed to be on the "ex". It has always implied, to me, a person who has cut ties with his home country for economic, ideological, or political reasons – and, unlike most Singapore expats, with little intention of returning home. Growing up in Canada during the Vietnam War, my idea of an expatriate was a draft dodger from America who fled his country out of fear or disgust, or a Beatle or Stone who settled abroad to escape UK taxes.

During my experiences in China and Japan, most of the expatriates I met were intellectually curious types who were fed up with the lack of opportunities in their homelands, and had found a new place on the globe that was simply more compatible with their personalities. Many of them had arrived single and settled with a local spouse. In Singapore, though, expats are a more transient bunch than in other Asian countries, often arriving with a family, holding on to property back home, and returning after a few years. There seems to be nothing "ex" about the patriation of most Westerners here.

The way the word "expat" is used in Singapore exemplifies how we use language to convey power, ethnicity and influence, and this is what I find troubling. I was attuned to its usage the first time I saw Expat and Expat Living magazines on the shelves at Borders. With their cover images of affluent white people lazing on tropical beaches and lounging amidst stylish interiors, I had to wonder how these publications made local Singaporeans feel about a certain race coming to their country and demanding nothing less than a life of privilege. I debated if my discomfort was justified or if it was a hang-up I had to get over.

I do not mean to disparage those magazines. I cannot fault them for finding a profitable market and forming legitimate businesses around it. Expat Living is my former employer, and I was once published in Expat, which I found to be a source of some good investigative journalism. At the same time, what does it say about Singapore that such titles don’t exist in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, or Taipei? Certainly those cities have expats, too – it’s just that the word has different connotations in those places. (It may also say something that not enough of us cared for a magazine called Expat to keep it in business; it folded in January.)

On Expat magazine’s still-existing website, it uses the words "affluent", "well-heeled", and "upscale" to describe a typical expat reader. Expat Living’s advertising card says that its consumers have "high disposable incomes". I find it problematic that the Singaporean usage of "expat" makes it sound like a lifestyle choice rather than a common noun that should describe non-local workers of all incomes and races.

It would be amusing to one day find a new magazine on the racks, one with a cover showing a prosperous white couple enjoying drinks on Dempsey Hill, with a simple, neutral title that applies to us all – Immigrant. After all, that is what we call the Asians who settle in our countries. What makes us so different?