THE ACCENTED SPEECH ACT: WHEN ENGLISH MEETS A FOREIGN TONGUE by Tingting Hui Student number: S1425811 APPROVED BY Dr. Y. Horsman, Supervisor Expertise: Literary studies Centre for the Arts in Society, University of Leiden Prof. dr. E. J. van Alphen Expertise: Literary studies, comparative Literature, literary theory Centre for the Arts in Society, University of Leiden August 2014 © 2014 Tingting Hui ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ! ! ii! DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify that I am the sole author of this thesis and that no part of this thesis has been published or submitted for publication. I certify that, to the best of my knowledge, my thesis does not infringe upon anyone’s copyright nor violate any proprietary rights and that any ideas, techniques, quotations, or any other material from the work of other people included in my thesis, published or otherwise, are fully acknowledged in accordance with the standard referencing practices. I declare that this is a true copy of my thesis, and that this thesis has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other University or Institution. Signature Date ! ! iii! ABSTRACT Non-native English accents, imprinted with the organic condition of a foreign tongue, sometimes can trigger harassment and violence from native speakers. Being a ‘scandalous’ linguistic performance of an alien body, non-native accents epitomize how the body demarcates the agency of speech, and at the same time how speech impinges on the bodily domain. To understand accent-related violence and the intertwined relation between body and speech, this paper examines accented speech within a hate speech paradigm, and seeks to add a further degree of nuance to this area by including a close reading of certain scenes depicted in literary texts. Accented English, often labeled as ‘broken’ or ‘fractured,’ determines to a large extent the social relevance of the speaking body. Moreover, accented speech functions not always as a voluntary ‘coming-out;’ in some cases, the accented speaker is not socially sanctioned to remain silent, but is forced to speak out his/her foreignness. However, accented speech does not necessarily point to passivity; it questions the native speaker’s ingrained perception of his/her ‘natural’ bond with the mother tongue, all the while giving rise to a different kind of survivability for the accented speaker. Keywords: accented speech, violence, hate speech, broken English, silence ! ! iv! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the people who have helped and supported me throughout my project. I am deeply grateful to my supervisor Yasco Horsman, who trusted me and gave me enough freedom to develop my own thoughts, all the while kindly reminding me when I failed to write coherently. I wish to thank Tibor Drost, who introduced me to the concept of sharing and listening. Without his enormous love and encouragement, this project would not be as interesting as it is now. I want to give special recognition to Leon Reteig, whose scholarly expertise and insightful comments never failed to inspire me. As a non-native English speaker, his mastery of English, especially his pursuit for accuracy and clarity, impresses me profoundly, and thoroughly subverts the image of the ‘accented’ speaker. A special thanks goes to Mryte Wouterse and Tricia Kehoe, who help me enormously with my English writing. Further thanks to Angelique Bender and Wiechert van Tongeren, who love me and guide me to find my own principles. I am proud to be part of their sweet family. Thanks to my mother and my family in China. My love towards them is beyond words. ! ! v! ! TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration of Originality iii Abstract iv Acknowledgements v Glossary of Terms 1 Introduction 3 I. Unauthorized Intimacy 3 II. Hospitable Hostility 5 III. Reversible Hate Speech 7 Chapter 1. Accent as Gatekeeper 13 I. Say Shibboleth 13 II. Broken English 15 III. Standard English 19 IV. Speak as an Alien 22 Chapter 2. Can One Remain Silent? 26 I. Cut Loose the Stammering Tongue 26 II. From Silence to Brokenness 32 III. When Silence Becomes a Misery 37 Conclusion 44 Works Cited 55 ! ! vi! GLOSSARY OF TERMS Accent Accent is employed primarily in a sociolinguistic sense in this paper. An accent is a distinctive way of speaking in quality of voice, pronunciation, grammar, and distinction of pitch and stress. Body The body discussed in this paper incorporates three dimensions. The first is the physical or biological entity of any living human being. The second aspect is the lived body as experienced by the person. The third dimension is “the surface of the body, the slate upon which is ‘inscribed’ the marks of culture, human coexistence, and social toil” (Schatzki and Natter 5). Hate Speech Hate speech is “a convenient shorthand way of referring to a broad spectrum of extremely negative discourse stretching from hatred and incitement to hatred; to abusive expression and vilification; and arguably also to extreme forms of prejudice and bias ” (McGonagle 4). In this paper, the discussions concerning hate speech are based upon work from Judith Butler. Hate speech does not merely communicate hate or reflect social domination; it constitutes the addressee in an inferior position at the moment of utterance. ! Illocutionary Act “An illocutionary act refers to the type of function a speaker intends to accomplish in the course of producing an utterance. It is an act accomplished in speaking and defined within a system of social conventions” (Huang 148). Linguascapes Linguascapes is a coined expression inspired by Arjun Appadurai’s proposition of “five dimensions of global cultural flows that can be termed (a) ethnoscapes, (b) mediascapes, (c) technoscapes, (d) financescapes, (e) ideoscapes.” With the suffix –scape, I aim to highlight “the fluid, irregular shapes” and the “deeply perspectival constructs” of the!linguistic landscapes (Appadurai 33). Locutionary Act “A concept developed by British Philosopher J. L. Austin for one of the three ! ! 1! ! types of speech act simultaneously performed by a speaker when he or she says something. A locutionary act has to do with the simple act of a speaker saying something, i.e. the act of producing a meaningful linguistic expression” (Huang 178). Objet Petit a “The concept of the objet petit a is central to Lacan’s theory of desire, which arguably represents his major contribution to psychoanalysis. It is an expression of the lack inherent in human beings, whose incompleteness and early helplessness produce a quest for fulfillment beyond the satisfaction of biological needs. The objet petit a is a fantasy that functions as the cause of desire; as such, it determines whether desire will be expressed within the limits of the pleasure principle or “beyond,” in pursuit of an unlimited jouissance, an impossible and even deadly enjoyment” (Kirshner 83). Perlocutionary Act “A perlocutionary act is an act which produces a certain effect in or exerts a certain influence on the addressee through the uttering of a linguistic expression, such consequences being special to the circumstances of the utterance” (Huang 221). Speech Act Theory “A theory originally proposed by the British philosopher J. L. Austin in the 1930s, and after his death in 1960 refined, systematized, and advanced especially by his Oxford pupil, the American philosopher John Searle, though somewhat foreshadowed by the Australian-born British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s views about language games. The central tenet of speech act theory is that the uttering of a sentence is (part of) an action within the framework of social institutions and conventions. Put in slogan form, saying is (part of) doing, or words are (part of) deeds” (Huang 291). ! ! ! ! ! 2! ! INTRODUCTION I. UNAUTHORIZED INTIMACY No justification is required for the proliferation of syllables, rhythms, and tones regarding the movements of native tongues. With the term ‘native,’ I do not mean a person who is originally born in the milieu of a certain language that shapes his/her intimacy with it, but rather the one that fulfills the social expectation of the ethnic affinity to a corresponding language. No one approaches a speaker, blonde and white, with a strong London accent, and inquires: “Hey, how is it that your English is so good?” In contrast, if you have been bestowed a face that is not obviously or even typically ‘English,’ and yet you happen to speak that language very well, it is highly probable that you may encounter such a question. Even if sometimes people do not ask you directly, you sense their curiosity: suddenly they become interested in where you come from; and if that inquiry fails to elicit any satisfactory explanations, they sometimes give it another try by asking whether you have attended an international school, or whether you have any family members who speak English. In the beginning, you may take such a comment as an enormous compliment. Perhaps you momentarily consider releasing a selection of narratives regarding your origins and history so as to feed their curiosity. Yet the more you trace back, the more you feel insecure. There is no single exhaustive explanation of your mastery of English; once you begin varnishing it in your mind to render an impeccable narrative, you inevitably become uncertain of yourself: “What am I trying to do? I am telling lies. ” It is at this point that you begin to think to yourself: “I am telling lies because I want to hide from people the fact that I am not good at English at all.” You are depressed. Your insatiable desire to render an impeccable explanation haunts you, and makes you sick for your perpetual failure to do so. As a result, you become alienated from your body, your history, and your narrative, ! ! 3! ! none of which, all at once, establishes itself as a given. All of the above point to an uncertainty, craving for justifications. It is in this back-and-forth between estrangement and desire that you are forced to acknowledge the truth: you will never ever gain mastery of English because you are denied the access to it from the very beginning. “Why is your English so good?” (So good but still not quite good enough to let people ignore the incompatibility between your alien tongue and the seemingly natural rendition of English) people keep asking you. Again and again. Until one day the normal inquiry turns into a mild interrogation. Since then, you respond to the question in a manner of confession or defense. Nevertheless, you are bewildered: who is the interrogator? What or who endows him/her with the power of interrogation? What are you trying to defend yourself against? It hurts you with the presupposition implicit in their question: your intimacy with English is unjustified. The repeated inquiry asserts, instantiates, and safeguards an exclusive affinity between English and a corresponding ethnicity. Even if your affection for English is not something illegitimate, it entails further explanations and defenses. To understand what ostracizes you from your desired access to English, you try to put yourself in the shoes of the inquirer—it is from there that you see a body that does not immediately render itself recognizable, a body whose actualization is momentarily delayed, and a body that is in constant need of justifying itself through tracing back into its memory and past. You realize you have a body of inconsistency, unable to be identified with its linguistic reality, and a body of infidelity, betraying the native tongue that makes the body thinkable in the first place. And you sympathize with that in-between body, heading for nowhere but trapped in its own meaningless babble. The inquiry, you therefore notice, accomplishes a kind of inclusive exclusion: it acknowledges your affective association with English, and yet disillusions you from the ultimate intimacy with it. For the inquirer, your body signifies either a lack that requires ! ! 4! !