Capital is accumulated and profitable force that transforms for reproduction and enables individuals to obtain social energy (Bourdieu 1986). Thus, patterns of capital
5.2 A CCOMMODATION : E NGLISH IN P UBLIC C ONTEXTS
English has been popularly identified as the lingua franca, a mutual code in intercultural communication when speakers do not have a shared language. The term
English as a lingua franca is criticized for its entailment of symmetrical
communication and overgeneralization of the complexity in interlingual communication (Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson 2010; Ammon 2010). Symmetrical communication refers to the adoption of English by speakers who do not speak English natively. The choice of English is neutral in symmetrical communication. On the other hand, asymmetrical communication refers to the situations in which one party is native speakers of English. Asymmetrical communication thus involves imbalanced power relation.It is found that the notion of English being the lingua franca is internalized as something conventional and neutral. Both English users and non-English users burden themselves with the responsibility for carrying out a successful English conversation whenever and wherever they run into foreigners. Both English users and non-English users may either initiate the conversation in English or direct the conversation to English when foreigners speak to them in accented Chinese. By speaking English in intercultural communication, individuals are also assuming that foreigners whom they encounter also speak English. Instead of accommodating to repertoires and styles of addressees, individuals are accommodating to language choice at the macro and global level.
Categorizing accommodation to English as language ideology revealed through less controlled and semi-directed exchanges in interviews is somehow debatable.
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Informants were directly inquired to reflect on their encounters with foreigners, so the accommodation to English somehow directly responded the interview questions. Yet, there are several reasons why the accommodation to English is categorized as language ideology in less interviewer-controlled exchanges. First of all, the responses by interviewees to the questions concerning their experiences in talking to foreigners varied to a certain extent. Some informants gave positive answers to the question without providing more information. Some depicted the entire events with details such as language choice and contexts. Still some elaborated only when they were pushed to. Therefore, it seems less appropriate to label accommodation to English in either category without a gray area in between due to the lack of conformity in responses. Besides, the responses were mostly in narration. Data in narrations are contextualized. Narrations contain rich inferences which may not be found in responses directly elicited by interview questions.
5.2.1 Accommodation to English by non-English users
Most non-English users had encountered foreigners asking for directions. Some of the non-English users recalled their struggle to speak English. Remarkably, non-English users insisted on their responsibility for speaking English to foreigners even when they themselves are not used to speaking English. It has to be noted that accommodation to English may be steered by social concerns rather than the communication. Put differently, individuals may think that English could keep the conversation going. Yet, in fact, the choice of English may reveal more social significances than linguistic ones. That is, the choice of English when talking to foreigners is socially and culturally shaped. Communication may not be the only and chief reason why non-English users reported themselves to speak as much English as
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they possibly can when a foreigner comes up asking for directions.
Excerpt (22) is a Facebook message which has been discussed in Introduction. myself. A foreigner asked me to translate what she said to a clerk. Why did she turn to me? Because he accidentally cut in line in front of me. I said, smiling, that it was ok and gestured her to order first. She probably misunderstood that I spoke good English. Then she started babbling about how she hated it when clerks placed their hands on cup lids brewing her coffee. I thought she was just trying to banter with me, so I didn’t pay too much attention to what she was saying. And then, she asked me to translate what she said to the clerk. I was caught off guard totally, asking her to repeat. But I was simply too nervous. I didn’t realize that I missed the points entirely until I left. Gosh. I want to strangle myself. I disgraced my school and myself. Do you know that there was a long line after us? Gosh. I can’t believe that I only realized that I completely missed out the most important part.
Ophelia was narrating that the foreign female accidentally cut in line in front of her at a café. Ophelia gestured the foreign female that it was OK. The female mistook her as an English user so she initiated a conversation with Ophelia. The foreign female asked Ophelia to tell the clerks not to place their hands on the cup lid. Yet, Ophelia was so nervous that she missed the point. The entire message was filled with her self-condemnation.
The description by Ophelia reveals the beliefs that failing English conversation is distressing and derogatory. In fact, she paid little attention to the incident alone.
Rather, a greater emphasis was placed on her self-deprecation (line 1) and condemnation of disgracing herself and her school (lines 10 and 11), indicating that
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implications of failing the conversation were way more distressing than the collapse of conversation itself. At the communication level, the incident was purely a failure of information transmission. Yet, at the social level, her agony over the failure of the conversation shows that English carries social significance. English is symbolic and indexical to other social attributes, and that the inability to carry out an English conversation simultaneously refers to denial of these social attributes.
Ophelia would have told the foreigner that she could not do what the foreigner had asked her to, but she did not. On the other hand, the foreigner, based on Ophelia’s narration, did not bother to check whether Ophelia spoke English or not. According to Ophelia, the foreigner probably mistook her as a good English user simply due to the fixed expression “That’s OK” she said (lines 3 and 4). Since it is a fixed expression which is so frequently used, it jumps to conclusion to state that it is the expression that was misleading. Rather, the situation is not as simple and linear as Ophelia described in the message.
First, Ophelia believed that the foreigner misrecognized her as a good English user owing to the fixed expression “That’s OK” in lines 3 to 5. Nonetheless, fixed expressions in adjacency pairs are effortless to pick up by users at all proficiency levels. The expression was thus less likely to imply much in terms of speakers’
competence level. Hence Ophelia’s rationalization of being mistaken as a good English speaker was less tangible. A possible account is that the foreigner also regarded the language choice as a norm, not taking into much consideration if Ophelia actually spoke English or not.
Ophelia instinctively initiated the conversation in English when the foreigner cut in line (line 4). The language choice of English already revealed her ideology that speaking English in intercultural communication is obligatory even though she may not think that she was capable of. Therefore, English was justified to be the language
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spoken in this context. The unidirectional accommodation from local languages to English by nonnative English users suggests that we are not accommodating to the repertoire of the interlocutors. Specifically, we are accommodating to norms in intercultural communication.
English becomes the uncontestable language choice in interlingual communication. Based on (22), it is found that English is identified as the uncontestable language choice in interlingual communication.
5.2.2 Accommodation to English by English-users
Non-English users usually consider themselves responsible for speaking English to foreigners in spite of the fact that they may not be used to speaking English on a daily basis. It has been suggested that English may be an uncontestable language choice in intercultural communication. On the other hand, English users feel even more obligated to help out foreigners looking for directions.
Both in their mid-twenties, Gill and Mandy were inquired about whether they had talked to other people in English. The discussion was soon directed toward an interesting experience. Mandy first described an incident about her being approached by a male stranger at her age. The stranger was very eager to know Mandy. Mandy was seriously irritated by the male. It turned out that the person was wishing to make friends with English majors so as to ask for help for his English exams. Mandy specifically asked not to present the transcripts of the incident, so it was briefly summarized without further analysis. Yet, the incident would be worth some explorations. Then Gill reflected on how some taxi drivers would talk to her in English in order to practice their English. Gill then elaborated how she initiated speaking English to foreigners who asked for directions at the train station, as (23)
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presents.
(23)
1 GILL 他都會 (.) 譬如說 (.) 因為我比較常在車站遇到
‘I usually ran into (foreigners) at the train station.’
2 然後他們都會先 (.) Excuse me
‘They would usually approach you first with an “Excuse me”,’
3 然後 (.) 就開始問 (.) 開始問
‘and proceed with asking for directions.’
4 他會先用 (.) 他會用那個中文 (.) 先講
‘Or some would approach you with Chinese,’
5 就是用 (.) 很 (.) 奇怪的中文
‘eccentric Chinese.’
6 可能想說先問一下 (.) 問路 (.) 怎麼那個
‘They may want to ask for directions.’
7 然後 (.) 對 (.) 不好意思之類的
‘And then, right, (they would say) something like buhaoyisi’
8 然後但是我想說他應該是 (.) 講不太出來
‘But I don’t think they are able to phrase their questions in Chinese.’
→ 9 然後我會用英文回他
‘So I would answer them in English.’
As Gill stated in lines 2 and 3, foreigners usually said “excuse me” in English or
buhaoyisi ‘excuse me’ in Mandarin before elaborating on their problems. She later
talked about how some foreigners attempted to ask her in qiguai de zhongwen‘eccentric Mandarin’ (line 5). And accented Mandarin, or ‘eccentric’ Chinese as Gill depicted, motivated her to automatically switch to English in her responses (line 9).
The narration can also be analyzed in different aspects.
Whether foreigners initiated the conversation with an “excuse me” or an accented “buhaoyisi”, the interpretations of the two were identical for Gill. That is, no matter how foreigners started the conversation, as far as Gill was concerned they did not speak English. As an English user who is keenly aware of the role English plays in
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intercultural communication, Gill regarded herself as responsible for directing the conversation to English. In line 8, Gill specified that she considered them less competent speakers of Mandarin owing to their accented buhaoyisi.
In speech accommodation (Giles & Smith 1979), speakers shift their speech styles to those of addressees to avoid undesired connotations such as disapproval. In this case, switching to English is not convergence and therefore may be undesired and interpreted as disapproval. However, standard language ideology of Chinese filters out non-standard Chinese and incapacitates one’s competence. With interlocutors’
competence in her local language being denied, she believed that she should approach the conversation by using English which operates at a global scale. Nonetheless, even if the foreigners were less competent in Chinese, it did not necessarily entail her responsibility for switching to English to keep the conversation going. Remarkably, by switching to English, we are simultaneously assuming that interlocutors could speak English. It can be suggested that English as a lingua franca may be an internalized norm.
The conventionality of opting for English in the presence of non-native Chinese speakers is more apparent in situations where a local domain clashes with a global one.
The language choice between English and local languages is worth the attention. Jodi was talking about an incident between her and a couple of a foreign male and a Taiwanese female. While narrating the background information of the encounter, she described the couple’s language choice, which is English, as something natural and neutral, presented in (24).
(24)
23 JODI 然後 (.) 呃 (.) 那時候 (.) 那一對 couple 是 (.) 一個男的 是外國人
‘The male in that couple is a foreigner.’
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24 ANN 嗯
‘Hmm.’
25 JODI 然後那個女的是台灣人
‘And the female is Taiwanese.’
→ 26 所以他們聊天是用英文聊天
‘So they talk to each other in English’
Jodi used a causal conjunction suoyi ‘so’ in line 26, indicating that she took the choice of English of the cross-national and cross-linguistic couple as an inevitable result. In other words, she held a belief that conforming to English is conventional and that international communication and English are in unquestionably causal relations. It shows that it has been internalized as an unquestionable norm that English is preferably prioritized in intercultural communication.
In fact, what languages foreigners speak and how fluently they speak English are totally uncalled for. It has been emphasized that individuals not only burden themselves with the responsibility for speaking English but also assume that interlocutors also speak English. Put differently, individuals are not accommodating to speech styles or linguistic repertoires of interlocutors. Rather, the preference for English over other languages in intercultural contexts is accommodation to public domains in which English is ideally thought to play an essential role. Remarkably, whether English can indeed fulfill communication demands in particular contexts may not be the chief concern.
The section has discussed the preference for English in public domains through informants’ reflections on their encounters with foreigners. It is found that both English users and non-English users feel the need to speak English in interlingual communication. It has also been presented that speaking English may not necessarily be aimed at fulfilling communication needs. Instead, it can be a choice out of the denial of the local language through standard language ideology. It is also possible
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that individuals are accommodating to the linguistic norms in intercultural communication.