Job Discussion Forums

[Dave Kessel]

Have you noticed that if and when you start teaching English and learning another language while overseas, the things that people say in that language about non-mainstream people sound absolutely horrible. If they were uttered in English and in the US, people would lose their jobs on the spot or get beaten up.

When they transfer their non-PC sentences into English saying terrible racist, sexist, ageist things, how do you deal with it?

While the PC concept is a strong aspect of the modern English -speaking culture and maybe , a bit of the French or Spanish culture, it is still not developed in other languages to any significant degree. With 5000 + languages on this planet, heaven only knows what words people use in their local tongues to describe women or other tribes or people of other cultures/religions, etc.

Have you noticed that while there would be few Westerners sticking fingers at foreigners and calling them by starnge names, in other parts of the world people do it all the time? Parents themselves sometimes point foreigners out to their children and are not even aware that they are offending. "Look son, here comes a "White Devil". Say " Hello"!

Any thoughts on the matter? Do you think we are importing the PC concept into the countries where we teach and are combatting these things?

[leeroy]

A long time ago, I wrote...

[Wolf]

Oh, you should have been there to see my reaction the first time a Japanese used the English word "half" to describe someone of mixed racial parentage.

Nowadays, I'm a bit more mellow about it. I SHOULD NOT BY A LONG SHOT be the FIRST person in my students' ENTIRE LIVES to tell them that certain phrases should not be used in the company of others. But I am. I mean, if no one told you not to stick your chopsticks vertically into a bowl of rice while in Japan, then it would be cruel to chew you out for it. So my students nowadays get firm but gentle reminders:

"In most English speaking countries such words/phrases are considered rude. If you are going to deal with foreigners in your future life, then you should take care not to say such things."

Something like that is what I say nowadays.

[J-Pop]

[shmooj]

Another issue that I think colours all this is the extent (of lack of it) to which we cover pragmatics in the classroom. THere are different ways of showing politeness, making requests, apologising etc in different languages and, unless we make it an overt topic in the classroom, we are likely to see students simply transfer their approach from one language to another substituting different vocabulary. Pragmatic transfer is usually the cause of most failure by my students to seem "polite" or "PC".

Also, there are plenty of us who feel that PC has gone a bit too far (though perhaps not on this forum ). I would venture to suggest that PC has its origins in the postmodernist culture that was born out of western approaches to philosophy that came to fruition in the mid 20th century. Bearing that in mind, other cultures may not have been influenced by these ideas as much as, say, British culture, and so lack the need for PC.

This raises some interesting arguments. Do we have any more right to insist on PC from our students as it is a cultural borrowing and therefore arguably not valid say when a Japanese is talking, in English, to an Indian for example? Is PC not simply another cultural concept similar to individualism, materialism, democracy, Christianity etc? If so, how far would any of us get on these forums insisting that if a Japanese, for example, is going to communicate in English, then they need to be behave in a way that is sympathetic to Judeo-Christian ideals. Hmmmmm

Thoughts please.

[Wolf]

[J-Pop]

[shmooj]

[Seth]

I think some of it has to do with national identity. In most countries your nationality is also your race. A Japanese national is Japanese/East Asian, a Romanian national is white/slavic, a Saudi national is Arab, etc. In some Western countries, especially Canada or the US, being of that nationality isn't so much to do with race. In Japan it would extremely odd to run across, say, a white person who was born in Japan and could only speak Japanese. To find the inverse where I live in more than common. I recently heard on NPR that nearly 20% of US homes are bilingual, the 3 largest languages being Spanish, Chinese and Russian, in that order.

Basically most countries, especially those in East Asia, have mostly homogenous societies and aren't used to having to watch their tongue on such sensitive issues and sometimes don't understand why they should.

I remember sitting at a small dinner with my Chinese headmasters with the other foreign teachers. One FT was Nigerian and one was black American. The headmaster looks at both of them and says 'you're both black but you look different.' He didn't mean anything offensive by it, but it's obviously something inappropriate to say to someone.

[shmooj]

[Seth]

That's why I always say 'most' or 'sometimes'...leaves just enough ambiguity to avoid generalising arguments.

I didn't ask them what they thought, as nobody really made a big deal about it. I'm not sure they were even listening.

There was another case where all the teachers were on a school bus and a high school student said to the African American 'You look like a monkey.' I about died on the spot, but I honestly don't think the student knew how insulting that comment was. She knew she was being cheeky, yes, but insulting on such a level, probably not. He took it well, though, and just huffed and said 'Well, you look like a fish!' He lived in Japan 7 years prior to China so maybe he was used to such odd comments.

The times I have run into such comments I just say it's a very inappropriate thing to say and they risk getting their face rearranged, and that's if they're lucky. They usually don't have the language ability to understand other points of concern being highschoolers. It's nice to be idealistic but I'm not going to change a country of 1.3 billion, nor am I going to pretend to be an expert on the subject. Look how long it took the US to give blacks equal rights...nearly 100 years after the end of slavery.

[Roger]

I suppose PC is a phenomenon developed by oversensitivised people who have the spare time to snoop on other's etiquette.
Of course, I hated the terms Afrikaans and English used descriptively in the R of South Africa, i.e. "*beep*" for persons of mixed race, "Bantu" for native Africans, etc. I hated them precisely because those thus referred to hated them. A kind of solidarity.
The question was: did those with the power to change their own language have the will to change their language? So long as a beleaguered white minority clung to power the will was missing, and the terms became ever more offensive as the awareness grew.
In South-East Asia, I believe most natives are not intellectually advanced yet to reason along such lines as they cannot put themselves in the shoes of outsiders. They are too concerned about their own feelings and face, and often, they fail to accord to others the same rights. Chinese, Japanese, Koreans have extremely strong chauvinistic reflexes, and often a vindictive mindset that dictates that they use derogatory terms in spite of the opprobrium they invite by using them. THis can cvlearly be observed in Hong Kong and Guangdong.

In the end, I doubt PC facilitates social intercourse because it pushes unacceptable thoughts into a taboo zone. As we all know, you can be PC and still enjoy your wickedness. Calling someone a 'dim wit' is publicly inacceptable; people do it in places and under circumstances where the public conscience cannot stop them. The public thought police cannot stop wicked thoughts, but miscreants can always find a PC way of expressing their own true feelings: A mentally-handicapped person...
We can now witness on a world-wide scale what pliticial hyper-correctness means: Most Europeans these days would agree that Israel is a major stumbling-block to a solution to the Near East crisis.
This was recently polled by Gallup. Italy's Senor Berlusconi - famous as a press czar and a right-wing politican - immediately disavowed the findings in a telephone conversation with Israel's PM.
The Israelis didn't fail to denounce "European antisemitism".
As soon as you express your personal belief, you have a problem with some offended minority. I think this shows what a deplorable situation the PC brigade has foisted on all of us!

[cafebleu]

The Japanese person`s point about the language rings true to me. When I speak Japanese I try to be as indirect and polite as I can but it still can come out as sounding less polite than intended. As a non native speaker I don`t have the grasp of nuances and genuinely diverse grammatical forms, nor an uprbringing in Japanese society that would enable me to say what I am saying smoothly and appropriately for all occasions.

For reserved people the Japanese can come across as mighty direct, too direct at times in English. However, I think mostly it is because of the reasons I outlined above. Except of course when the Japanese make blatantly racist statements, which they do at times.

[arioch36]

To be sure, there are the circumstances where something comes out wrong because of lack of knowledge of a language's deeper meanings, etc.

But in China, at least, and what litle I know of Chinese, this is often not the problem. They truly believe that they don't need to treat the foreigner as an equal. And they have great difficulty putting themselves "in the other person's shoes". Maybe it's because they are taught to always assume? I don't know, but i do know when we assume about another person, we usually believe what we want.

They have minorities in China. They have PC. A teacher/leader/student could get in big trouble for saying a bad joke about one of the minorities. Most people are Han. One minority is the Miao (sp?) You would get in trouble for publically calling them smelly. But the same Chinese student would have no trouble saying black people are smeely, even to the teacher's face.

Respect is respect, and disrespect is disrespect, in every country. I like teaching my Chinese students, and I like many Chinese people. But I will say that they are taught, it is ingrained, that they are beter then other people, and that they don't need to treat a foreigner with the same respect. A small part of the problem may in the model that some of the foreign teachers present to students. My students don't call me Chris in the classroom. It is Mr. The movies they watch teach them that disrespect is proper in America. Come on, just about every sitcom is about saying bad things to each other.

Of course, every country has a similar past. In the early 1900's hinese immigrants to America were not treated as fully human, thus it was considered okay to treat them with disrespect. And I think this underlying attitude exists in East Asia/ China about foreigners. I say to a Chinese person, "would you treat another chinese friend/teacher like that?" The answer is usually, No, but..."

[arioch36]

I saw a japanese program, "Breakfast in Tokyo" ??? where all the family members were using the "*beep*" word on each other, and doing a not nice a parody of blacks. If this was ever done in America about Japanese, the Japanese would be protesting quite loudly, I think.