Job Discussion Forums

[Seth]

Chinasyndrome and Roger said nothing of race, although this thread has turned into a China thread and what they said won't apply to most other countries. China is definately a strange place, and it's obvious that CS and Roger have spent a lot of time there and know the Chinese well. Hongkongese and Taiwanese are Chinese as well, and although I've never been to either, I'm sure they don't have Mainland attitudes.

Chinese attitudes won't exist in most parts of the world as a result of their, as Roger put it, paranoid outlook on the world for the past 500 years or so. Temper this with a hermetic communist government slowly peeking out from the shroud of secrecy and the Cold War. I've also heard Chinese say many times that they must learn English to 'make China strong' and I've heard a few times 'I can't wait until China rules the world.'

It's very much like an inferiority complex. In their view, poor China has been picked on by Japan and the Western powers for hundreds of years (which isn't entirely untrue, obviously), only to leave them to wallow in poverty. Add to this 50 years of communist propaganda and isolation and it's bound to be a dysfunctional society. The more I stayed in China and the more I learned and studied the language, the more I realized just how much they think of themselves and how little they think of all other countries, not just the USA or Japan. Children, especially, say some pretty candid things. The arrogance you can feel off of a group of males walking past you on the sidewalk is tangible. It's not a personal arrogance but rather a collective one. They're just waiting for the day when China can stick it to Japan and English is the medium to do so. It may take 50 years but they can wait.

There are three things every Chinese absolutely loves to talk about: How much they hate Japan; how they love their 5000 year old history and culture; and how China's 'getting stronger' and will become the next superpower.

[Glenski]

Just thought I'd add my 2 cents worth. Don't worry, folks, this won't be a long posting.

If any business, even a language school business, didn't have buyers, it wouldn't hold in a location. So, if people in other countries didn't think English was worthwhile, schools and programs that offer it wouldn't survive.

The article displayed by aaronschwartz is interesting. I didn't know, for example, that the business world used words like "psychic". The writers probably meant "psychological", but maybe I'm just nitpicking. Also, I think one of the "westerns" in the following sentence should have been replaced with eastern, but I'm not sure. The sentence itself doesn't make sense to me.

[Glenski]

Scratch what I wrote about the following quote from aaronschwartz's article. I got it now.

[oreyade]

..........................

(the fish aren't biting today it seems...)

[Cobra]

Check this out -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/GWeekly/Story/0,3939,475284,00.html

some quotes -

EU languages permeate the ongoing processes of creating a "union" of EU states, a new supra-national economic and political entity. Language is a sensitive political issue, as it is a profound symbol of national and personal identity. As language, culture and education are in principle matters for individual member states rather than the Union, language policy at the supra-national level is largely implicit and covert. As some languages are more "international" than others the equality of the 11 languages has in fact always been a myth.

[Cleopatra]

There was an articel in a Saudi newspaper recently about how applicants for British visas in the consulate in Jeddah had to complete an application form in English. No Arabic translation was offered. Imagine if the Saudi embassy in London insisted all visa applications had to be completed in Arabic only ...
Something of that thinking was behind Ghaddafi's insistence that all foreigners visiting Libya have to have their passports translated into Arabic. OK, I know the Colenel isn't always that sound of mind, but I must say I do agree with him on this one.

[voodikon]

so, rather unfashionably of me, i realize, i ran a search to see if this topic had been discussed, and lo and behold! it has--to some extent. but it did not satisfy the debate that's been in my mind (sometimes more and sometimes less prominently) since i first thought about teaching english overseas.

at that time, realizing that i was unable (financially and time-wise) to study abroad, i figured teaching abroad would be a good alternative, and i looked into the peace corps. after talking to people and asking their opinions on this issue (one person with peace-corps experience replied, "it's not imperialistic because the countries ASK for english teachers."), i decided peace corps was certainly not the right route for me.

so here i am at a software company (sort of) teaching english and justifying it to myself with a myriad of admittedly half-baked reasons: they're professional adults choosing to come to class; it's a practical application of english to further their individual careers; and so on. yet i still must confess: i feel bad, in many ways, that i've used "teaching english" as a ticket to experience another country. on the other hand, isn't it worse to sit in my comfortable american lifestyle for my entire life and never have this experience? does the world stand more to gain from the latter?

i don't buy the arguments here about "and we can look for other jobs" since idealism rarely coincides with reality, or the one analogizing english-speakers studying french to chinese/japanese/etc.-speakers learning english--because we know full well that the purpose of the former is very different from the purpose of the latter.

what i find most disturbing is not the inevitable death of languages (mandarin will soon wipe out local dialects in china, surely--faster than english will), but china's readiness to embrace anything "western" without the ability/willingness to foresee the problems that come along with it--the very problems the u.s. faces. case in point: during a conversation with my (college-educated) adult students, i prodded them about the implications of the rapid spread of mcdonald's, kfc, and other fast-food restaurants. yes, they said, they can remember a china without them, so yes, they've been spreading quickly. yes, they're good because they raise the standards of other, local restaurants. no, they don't eat at them often, but yes, kids today seem to like them. but no, even though people in america are fat, they don't think china will ever reach that state. it won't be a problem. when i pushed them to take the chain of thoughts further, they simply said, "we don't know. we can't say."

this is inconclusive, surely, but i'll end with two other possibly related issues that i've thought about lately:

1-this company self-identifies as an outsourcing company--with pride. does this somehow subvert the possibility of imperialism? am i not only prescribing the english language, i'm also supporting those who, if you listen to americans, do the devil's work. then again, does that just intensify the degree of imperialism with which i'm working?

2-in a discussion with my roommate, a local, i learned that the chinese don't consider companies like nike the evil empires that many americans do. rather, they're ok because they provide jobs (ok jobs--not great, but certainly not terrible). sure they make a big profit, but that's what companies are supposed to do. (this is a point i've heard iterated by asian-americans as well, interestingly.) so are the supposed "progressives" just spouting philosophy of which they actually know very little? or what?

[Nauczyciel]

The article by Niu Chiang and Martin Wolff was thoroughly analyzed by Roger and I couldn�t agree with him more. I�ll add that the authors, praising the EU for allowing countries to use national languages, reveal how little they know about what actually things are like in Europe. It�s true that all EU languages are treated equally in terms of translations of the proceedings on the decision-making level etc. However, that does not at all mean that a Hungarian businessman would be wise to go to England to do business there without any command of English whatsoever, nor that a prime minister of Slovakia can expect his counterpart of Spain to address him in fluent Slovakian! English, French and German count, that�s a fact.

It's a laughable idea to me that (the way I understand it) learning from others harms you. I�m sure that the Chinese can (and should) learn something from the West, and vice versa. Knowledge is bound to influence the one who�s gained it, that�s the whole point of learning! Briefly put, I won�t harm my foreign students by teaching them English, nor will they harm me showing me the way things are in their country � quite the opposite. Imperialism, colonialism etc. have nothing to do with it.

As to Mandarin being the language of 1/4 of the world�s population and for this reason the true yet neglected leader, it sounds convincing at first sight. If you bear in mind though that the majority of its speakers is confined within the borders of one country and English is spread all over the world, it doesn�t hold the water any longer.

[Atlas]

It's not imperialism, it's globalism. There's a difference. For instance, the fact that learning/adopting English is not compulsory for any nation. It's a convenience, not like an enforced religious practice or official Party platform.

Nike sucks, McD's sucks, but in fact the amount of companies like these give us a lot too.

How many people curse Bill Gates every day? How many people use his technology every day? How many people pat him on the back and say "thanks"? I curse him all the time but damn, look what he gave us!

Countries stilll stricken with poverty realize the real benefit of manufacturers like Nike. When what stands between you and life-saving medicine is a measly $75 USD, and you are living on less than that a year, you and your hinterland community quickly embrace the manufacturing plant even at reduced income rates compared with the west. You are talking about jobs and survival.

If you want to make a difference, look for a way to address greed and blind profiteering to mitigate our decisions. For example, cloning humans is largely illegal, but not in Britain. Somebody somewhere is always working on exploiting technological developments. How can profiteering steer this course for the benefit of living beings?

[Roger]

Ah, this old, ancient thread...

I can only add that if China is getting westernised - very superficially, really, only in terms of materialism and consumerism - then this is because its own cultural traditions have been done away with.
The Chinese "socialists" have been waging a war against "superstitions", Confucianism and many things which they considered "unscientific".
I personally see the CHinese form of "socialism" as at odds with sciences in general - after all, this is not "socialism" per se but "socialism" with Chinese characteristics.

This means that the CHinese only obey their own urges, intuition, guts. There is no dialogue taking place - neither between educated Chinese and the country's leaders, nor between the country's elite and the world's freethinkers.

Chinese socialism is not exportable because it's too idiosyncratic.

Therefore, the powers-that-be will in this country adopt this imported idea and that imported concept if and when they suit their survival tactics. It's a muddling-through that inevitably leads to the eadoption of the very nefarious and egregious trends the Chinese communists thought they could avoid - elite stratification and the concomitant social repercussions; consumerism and the resultant destruction of social fabrics and society at large; materialism and, as a consequence of this, huge swathes of the nation falling back to pre-revolutionary poverty levels.

Maybe they are "learning" English so the rich can emigrate in time before the next social explosion!

[Dr.J]

I think I take a romantic view of world history.

It may be that as China becomes more "western" and economically stronger, it's people will naturally become more politically aware and begin to demand things like...democratic elections. And get them too. Not because they've been taken over by the west, but because to desire that level of freedom is a natural and good human trait.

As for languages, if it wasn't English, it would be another language. Think about it. If you put 10 people who spoke different languages on a desert island, then in 10 years they would all be speaking just one language, probably based on just one original form. It's just natural. So as the world becomes smaller, the languages we use will become more and more similar until in a few hundred years we will all be speaking more or less the same thing, with perhaps regional dialects based on our social class/group.

I agree that this will be a loss in some ways, as we lose the concepts that went with certain words and languages, but to artificially preserve these languages seems like preserving the use of windmills because otherwise we lose the culture that went with them.

[OzBurn]

Mandarin itself is an imperial language, imposed on Chinese by a central government (in a tradition that goes back, I believe, well over a thousand years). A similar point applies, in many ways, to the official versions of Italian and German. In Spain, until very recently, official Spanish was imposed on Basques, Catalonians, and others. In the United States, only a few versions of American English are completedly accepted in many elite environments, while southern English, Brooklyn English, south coastal Oregon English, etc. can get the speaker pegged as ignorant. (Never mind Cajun.) As far as Hungarians are concerned, too bad for them: their own program of forcing non-Hungarian speakers to "Magyarize" now blows back in their faces. In Turkey, Kurds have had their language suppressed for generations in favor of the official language. Under the white racist government in South Africa, many blacks resisted learning Afrikaans because it was perceived as the language of the oppressor. The desired alternative was English, which is generally seen by people across the globe as a fairly culturally neutral language. Remember that tribal groups had to have some common language to communicate, and any one tribe's African language would have had the flavor of imperialism by that tribe. English, again, was neutral, or perceived as such.

There is also what you might call reverse prejudice. For example, Latin Americans often despise the lisping accents of official Spanish, and although most Americans find RP impressive and charming, there's another group that considers it effeminate and pretentious. Most American boys can do a facsimile British accent designed to communicate that the imagined character is a pompous ass. And the English themselves affect such accents to mock people they consider upper-class snobs, as do many Australians (who will often forthrightly tell you how they despise the English *en toto*.) The Scots also tend to despise the English and their "official" and "proper" version of the language that all Scots now have as a native tongue.

Most of these attitudes grow out of a history of colonialism and prejudice. Others stem from the desire of the majority of human beings to characterize whatever they and their group do as the "right" way.

In thirty of forty years, when China hs the largest economy in the world and is throwing its weight around the globe and trying to tell every other country what to do, there will be vital concerns other than whether poor China's ancient culture and its later Maoist ethic have been eroded by democracy, individual rights, freedom of speech, and knowledge of computers and evolution.

English no longer represents mainly England and the United States. It is increasingly becoming an international language of communication whose roots in the English diaspora are rapidly eroding. In this sense, if anything is going to be "colonized," it may well be the anglophone world as much as or more than other countries with different languages.

In any case, "colonize" is one of the buzzwords that make many leftists weak at the knees and shuts off their ability to think calmly and reasonably. It should be restricted to its original sense rather than used as a generic put-down by anyone who doesn't like (or pretends not to like) the spread of a particular language, culture, or way of doing things.

[Atlas]

Terrific post Ozburn, it's a shame this isn't the general quality of discussion here at Dave's! It sounds like you have a handle on reality more than just the familiar general complaints against the "establishment". (In all our complaining we might lose something beneficial just because it's not perfect!)

[extoere]

Ozburn, it's not often that someone can be both refreshingly direct and immediately elevating. Thanks.

Atlas, as usual, your posts are like a hammer-on-anvil. As an aetheist, I quite agree that religion has done much for civilization. An apparent paradox that doesn't bother me at all. Regarding China's ability to become a world leader without freedom? Over a few generations, probably easier than we suspect. Particularly, when such an increasing number of its opposition's constituency is in far more fear of discomfort than coercion. Small, but telling example: Not more than three weeks ago, I was having pizza at an upscale mall on the West Side, when three hostile young blacks from a distinctly different neighborhood came through, stopping randomly at tables and helping themselves to white Yuppies' dinner plates. Not a single person in this moderately expensive little bistro uttered a word of protest. They knew they'd be on the floor, bloodied, and couldn't trust any manner of support from surrounding diners. Of course, you could simply write this off as pragmatism. Opportunists love pragmatists! Next time, it'll be their wives and girlfriends, instead of the pasta.

I truly wonder if the West is up to the challenge of the East. Maybe. I suspect we'll find out much sooner than we'd like.

cheers,
ex

[dmb]