Each year, we celebrate Buwan ng Wika or (National) Language Month in the Philippines. Formerly focused only on the Filipino national language, the month-long celebration has evolved into a multilingual celebration seeking to raise awareness also of other Philippine languages, including Filipino Sign Language and indigenous tongues and writing systems. But, of course, we are free to celebrate languages any other time of the year.

At the University of Santo Tomas (UST), the oldest university in Asia, Buwan ng Wika was auspiciously extended with three events spotlighting language this year.

First, during the first week of October, new street signs were installed around the Manila campus of UST. Quite distinctive, the new signages had the familiar campus street names transliterated in Baybayin, an old Tagalog writing system largely used in the northern part of the country before the Spanish rule from 1565 to 1898. Along with other initiatives by Filipino scholars to revive this pre-colonial script, the project enriched the university’s linguistic landscape. Notwithstanding criticisms about the weak translation of an earlier version of these signs, the move reflects an appreciation for languages that are less visible.

Second, not long after this multilingual campus update, precisely on October 10, 2024, language scholars across the Philippines were rattled by the ratification of Republic Act No. 12027. This new law discontinues the mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTBMLE) policy enacted in 2013. While the MTBMLE implementation had important challenges such as limited instructional materials, among others, there was palpable panic and disappointment from groups of language teachers and scholars over the legislative imperative to repeal the language-in-education policy that advocated the use of mother tongues as medium of instruction in basic education classrooms.

The Multilingualism and Multilingual Education class under the English Language Studies Program of the UST Graduate School was not going to stand silent. Our small cohort of six (five PhD candidates and course facilitator, Dr. Pia Tenedero) responded to this issue by raising three important questions that problematize the seemingly reactive, government decision to withdraw its support of mother tongue-based instruction. We believe that, given a better fighting chance, the MTBMLE could work wonders as it did in East Timor. Our formal response and appeal (posted in the UST Department of English Facebook page) is pictured here.

Whether this and other official statements released by various universities and professional groups will or can make a difference remains to be seen. But putting forward a position statement allowed us to engage with the real-life implication of the theories we have been discussing in class since the term began in August.

Third, our class had another special opportunity to extend our appreciation of multilingualism in education contexts. On 26 October 2024, Dr. Loy Lising of Macquarie University and Language on the Move, spoke to our group in an exclusive online learning session. Anchored on the theme “The Future of Language Learning: Moving Toward a Multilingual Mindset in Education System,” the two-hour conversation was attended by about 50 language undergraduate and graduate students and teachers from UST, Mariano Marcos State University Baguio, and De La Salle College of Saint Benilde, Antipolo. Dr. Lising shared reflectively on the theme, grounded on two important, recent publications—the “Multilingual Mindset” (Lising, 2024) and the book Life in a New Language (Piller et al., 2024).

Dr. Loy Lising and the Multilingualism and Multilingual Education class of UST

Two key concepts framed the interactive discussion: linguistic hierarchies and multilingual mindset. Reflecting on linguistic hierarchies, we acknowledge the differential social value of languages (based on Ingrid Piller’s (2016) award-winning book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice). To drive this point, Dr. Lising asked us how many languages we have and whether we and the places where we use them value these languages equally.

Multilingual mindset, which Dr. Lising defined in her article, recognizes disparities in language proficiencies, repertoires, and practices. It is “a way of thinking about language that is mindful and expectant of these variations,” which, in fact, characterize every human interaction, but are particularly salient in migration contexts. This disposition or way of seeing presents an important alternative (even, antidote) to the pervasive “monolingual mindset,” which sees the world only in terms of one language – English (Clyne, 2008).

Capping the month with a conversation that explored challenges and hopes of multilinguals based in the Philippines, we came out of it feeling more certain about the importance of language mindfulness and energized to do our part as language teachers and researchers to grow the multilingual mindset in our homes, classrooms, research sites, places of worship, holiday destinations, and everyday interactions.

This time of the year certainly taught us several ways to grow in our mindfulness of multilingualism beyond the traditional Buwan ng Wika. Afterall, languages ought to be celebrated every day of the year!

References

Clyne, M. (2008). The monolingual mindset as an impediment to the development of plurilingual potential in Australia. Sociolinguistic Studies, 2(3). 347–366.
Lising, L. (2024). Multilingual mindset: A necessary concept for fostering inclusive multilingualism in migrant societies. AILA Review, 37 (1), 35–53.
Piller, I. (2016). Linguistic diversity and social justice. Oxford University Press.
Piller, I., Butorac, D., Farrell, E., Lising, L., Motaghi-Tabari, S., & Williams-Tetteh, V. (2024). Life in a new language. Oxford University Press.

Dr Pia Tenedero, Prof Ingrid Gogolin, and Ana Bruzon (ltr.) during the NGL network conference

“Do not ask for free drinking water in Germany!”

This was a travel tip I received from a friend who had recently returned to Manila from Europe. As a first-time traveler to this continent, I was easily impressed by lessons learned by those who had been there before. So, where and how to get enough water to drink was part of my anxiety coming to Hamburg to attend the Next Generation Literacies Network Conference on January 11 to 12, 2024.

Held at the University of Hamburg, the Next Generation Literacies Network Conference was attended by network members from the three partner institutions – Universität Hamburg, Macquarie University, and Fudan University, as well as scholars from other places.

Representing the University of Santo Tomas, Manila, I was one of three delegates from the Philippines. Aimee Joy Bautista (an offshore accountant who participated in my research about language practice and ideology in this work world of numbers) posted about her unique NGL conference experience here. I was also happy to meet another kababayan (co-national), Dan Henry Gonzales from Ateneo de Manila University, who spoke about practices of monolingual English bias in Laguna-based schools.

The nearly 100 attendees in the 2-day conference shared their research related to linguistic diversity, multilingualism, and multiliteracies in diverse settings across the continents of America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. The sharing of discoveries and dreams concluded with a reflection session starting with Ingrid Piller’s reflections about the legacies of Next Generation Literacies Network, which she accurately described as a network of networks.

“Loud” and “quiet” water

In my reflection as a network member, I told the story of how my views of research have evolved over the years since I joined Next Generation Literacies Network. Revisiting the metaphors I mentioned in my presentations during Next Generation Literacies Network events from 2021 to 2023, I recognized with gratitude how the Next Generation Literacies Network research seminars, the mentoring program, and the generously collaborative spirit of the members have helped me grow as an early career researcher.

I pondered on how my views of research have evolved from a journey and a game, to a resource and a voice, to open doors—images of access.

To conclude, I proposed a final metaphor for research—water.

Like the research we dedicate our lives to, water should be accessible.

Thankfully, this was my experience of water in Hamburg, despite my early worries about not having easy access to das Trinkwasser in Europe. Not only was I relieved to find that water was, in fact, abundantly available during the Conference, but I was also impressed to even have the option to have water that is leise (still) or laut (sparkling).

Amazed and happy to have my anxieties proved false and unnecessary, I was reminded in this life-giving conference that water, like research, can look and taste different depending on where I am, who I do it with, and what my purpose is. But, the purpose is always to serve life.

Multilingual responses are common during the special liturgies of Lent

Many people celebrated Easter with chocolate bunny treats and by enjoying the long weekend. But not as many know the religious significance of this celebration, which is regarded in the Catholic faith as even bigger than Christmas!

What makes Easter extra special is the commemoration of Jesus Christ’s resurrection three days after dying in the hands of Roman soldiers and religious leaders over 2,000 years ago. His rising from death gives hope to his followers that they, too, one day will transition to eternal life.

Christians prepared for this great feast for 40 days, the season of Lent. For Catholics, this is an important time of prayer and fasting, somewhat similar to the observance of Ramadan by our Islamic sisters and brothers. An important difference is the reason for the Lenten fast.

Catholics are exhorted to take up some form of sacrifice, like abstaining from meat on Fridays, saving the money they would usually spend on their favorite fast food to give to the poor, or not using Facebook for 40 days and dedicate scrolling time to prayer. These practices of self-restraint, contemplation, and almsgiving are acts of solidarity with the passion and death of Jesus Christ, the central figure of the Christian faith. Jesus Christ’s free choice to embrace an unjust sentence and lay down his own innocent life to free the sinful is the standard of true love that is the centerpiece of the Christian Gospel. This very important season in the Christian tradition culminates in the Sacred Triduum, the three days leading to Easter Sunday, which are called Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Black Saturday.

In places that are deeply Catholic in number and devotion like the Philippines, Vietnam, and Argentina, these three days are very eventful for priests and priests-in-training (seminarians) as they perform various functions to provide more spiritual support to lay Catholics through sacraments and practices of piety. They preside at longer, elaborate liturgical celebrations and hear more confessions from the lay faithful.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle leads the commemoration of the Lord’s Passion at Manila Cathedral (Photo by Maria Tan/Rappler)

As an active Catholic myself, I especially appreciate how the Holy Week liturgies are not only more solemn and musical but also more beautifully multilingual. In my Parish, the celebrations are mainly in English but with a modicum of Greek, Hebrew, and Tagalog. For instance, we say “Kyrie Eleison” where outside of Lent, we would typically say “Lord, have mercy.” Our Parish Priest gives very passionate homilies where he sometimes mentions Hebrew words like “Mashiach” in place of the more familiar “Messiah.” During communion (the most solemn part of the Mass), the choir sings beautiful songs of repentance, like “Maging Akin Muli” [Be Mine Again]. In other churches in Manila, we also hear other Philippine languages, like Cebuano, incorporated in the liturgical responses or songs.

There seems to be something about Lent that loosens the multilingual tongue and opens the sacred space to accommodate linguistic diversity more than we usually do at any other time of the year. Of course, this openness to other languages is not new in the Catholic Church. After the Second Vatican Council, it became more common practice to use the mother tongue of the community for Mass, which traditionally was said in monolingual Latin (Bennett, 2018).

But the story is a bit different for priests and seminarians from non-English speaking backgrounds who celebrate Catholic liturgies in places like the US, the UK, and Australia, which are still largely Anglophone despite the growing multiculturality and multilingualism of the population. In these Global North countries, religious workers from the Global South are expected to speak in English, the assumed heart language of the community. One can only imagine how challenging it must be for this group of adult migrants to deliver profound yet relatable homilies in this second or foreign language before native speakers who look to them for spiritual inspiration and guidance.

Father Harold Camonias is a missionary priest from the Philippines working in Australia

This untold story is what I set out to uncover in my qualitative study about the English language learning experiences in Australia of Catholic missionaries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. How do they learn English in Australia? What are their struggles as adult language learners? What ideologies do they hold about language learning and languages? (Tenedero, 2023)

These questions were answered thanks to seven Catholic missionaries from non-English speaking backgrounds. Originally from Argentina, Ghana, Madagascar, and Vietnam, these were active members of a big international Catholic missionary society, which sponsored their coming to Australia to complete some English language courses as part of their preparation for missionary work.

Overall, the findings of this new study provide evidence that English language learning Catholic missionaries from the Global South are a distinct Community of Practice. More than the average adult language learner, they are highly invested in learning English fueled by their mostly positive beliefs about English and language learning in general, as well as their imagined future selves. The research also gives a glimpse of how the view of English as language of global affordance has the potential to revise or extend novice missionaries’ vision of themselves as users of English. While learning the language for religious work, they also open themselves to alternative pathways to become global language workers.

This new study demonstrates that language in faith contexts serves evangelical and pastoral purposes, as in multilingual Lenten liturgies. At the same time, language could serve other non-religious aspirations of missionaries. This further demonstrates that while people shape language, it, too, has power to (re)shape us, our practices, the way we see ourselves, and our hopes.

References

Bennett, B. P. (2018). Sacred languages of the world: An introduction. Wiley.
Tenedero, P. P. P. (2023). Learning English for faith work: The Australian experience of non-Anglophone Catholic missionaries. Journal of Language, Identity & Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2023.2181813

This part of their professional identity is largely hidden for at least two reasons. First, most of their communication work is done virtually and, in some cases, from home, as in the experience of home-based offshore accountants. These professionals have been managing the communication challenges (including feelings of isolation) linked to working from home long before the COVID-19 pandemic forced other office workers across the globe to work remotely. Second, the prevailing occupational stereotype tags them as good with numbers but bad with words, along with the stigma of being boring, grey, and introverted to a fault, as popularly depicted in media.

The perennial shaming of accountants’ linguistic competence motivated my linguistic ethnographic study of this occupational group. Using critical discourse analysis and the sociolinguistic lens of performance, I examined how students in top accounting schools in Metro Manila are trained to communicate for the globalized workplace and how they communicate on the job as onshore and offshore accountants. This project offers some novel threads in ongoing discussions about the linguistic experience of workers in the rapidly expanding, highly multicultural and multilingual offshoring industry in Global South countries like India and the Philippines.

My research builds on current understandings of these number-centric workers theoretically and methodologically. In terms of theory, I argue that since ‘good communication’ is a social construct that is rhetorically and interactionally reproduced in academia and the profession, labelling accountants as ‘poor communicators’ should not be treated as fact. Rather, as in other stereotypes tied to different social groups, it should be interrogated. While previous studies have predominantly explored how accountants are ‘poor communicators,’ I take a step back and ask: Where and how is this idea of ‘accountants as poor communicators’ deployed, by whom, and for what reasons? In terms of method, my study demonstrates how examining together (rather than separately) the education and work domains can help provide a big-picture understanding of how language practice and ideologies are (re)produced and (re)shaped across the entire field continuity—from formal education to hiring to employment. This approach has revealed that the echoing of the deficit discourse that highlights curricular and competence gaps of accounting schools and accounting practitioners is a very limited and limiting view of Global South accountants and their globalized work.

I briefly present some of my PhD thesis findings in my 3MT. But for a more detailed and exciting discussion about this special group of language workers, you may check out my new monograph, Communication that Counts: Language Practice and Ideology in Globalized Accounting. It is the latest title in the “Language at Work” series of Multilingual Matters lined up for release in December 2022. You may want to take advantage of the generous discount offered until the end of the year by using the code: CCLPIGA75 when you place your order through the publisher’s website.

About the book

To date, communication research in accounting has largely focused on the competencies that define what constitutes ‘effective communication’. Highly perception-based, skills-focused and Global North-centric, existing research tends to echo the skills deficit discourse which overemphasizes the role of the higher education system in developing students’ work-relevant communication skills. This book investigates dominant views about communication and interrogates what shapes these views in the accounting field from a Global South perspective, exploring the idea of ‘good communication’ in the globalized accounting field. Taking the occupational stereotype of shy employees who are good with numbers but bad with words as its starting point, this book examines language and communication practices and ideologies in accounting education and work in the Philippines. As an emerging global leader in offshore accounting, the Philippines is an ideal context for an exploration of multilingual, multimodal and transnational workplace communication.

What others are saying about the book

This book is a welcome addition to the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) materials in the field of accounting. It explores the way students and professionals in accounting communicate and emphasizes the importance of well-defined relationships and effective communication in globalized accounting work. The volume is one of only a handful of resources ever produced focusing on ESP in accounting and in the context of the Philippines. (Marilu Rañosa-Madrunio, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, The Philippines)

Tenedero comprehensively and carefully traces how ideologies about languages and effective communication are mobilized in the field of globalized accounting – from the Philippine classrooms where communication skills are part of the accounting curriculum to the workplaces where offshore and onshore accounting services are offered. A must read for understanding what counts as communication and how communication counts in work where language is seemingly marginal. (Beatriz P. Lorente, University of Bern, Switzerland)

Reference

Tenedero, Pia Patricia P. (2022). Communication that Counts: Language Practice and Ideology in Globalized Accounting. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

An area under “total lockdown” (Image credit: rappler.com)

Lockdowns everywhere

The lockdown discourse has become ubiquitous, especially in current affairs and social media. In fact, ‘lockdown’ and ‘quarantine’ have been designated word of the year 2020 by Collins and Cambridge dictionaries, respectively.

Talk about restrictions on travel, curfew, and onsite capacity limits are particularly salient in countries that, unfortunately, continue to battle waves of the modern-day virus that does not even need to be named. The word ‘pandemic’ used in the present context has become synonymous to the still-evolving COVID-19 virus that started plaguing the world in early 2020.

Less straightforward, however, is the nuanced vocabulary that has been created around the notion of lockdown.

What does “lockdown” mean?

Different nation-state governments have developed their own nomenclatures for public health safety protocols.

In the Philippines, the Department of Health introduced the phrase ‘community quarantine’ (CQ) to refer to area-specific mobility restrictions intended to reduce virus transmission.

Depending on the severity of cases in different parts of the archipelagic state, the government may differentially impose four levels of CQ—enhanced CQ, modified enhanced CQ, general CQ, or modified general CQ. The lowest level is termed ‘new normal’ which is defined as the situation where, with significant reduction in the threat of virus transmission, only minimum public health standards will remain enforced. This, however, still involves practicing new routines and habits, such as mask wearing and avoiding large gatherings.

Using these terminologies and understanding what they mean were part of my adjustment since managing to fly back to Manila just when restrictions were beginning to tighten in Sydney.

You need a solid level of English and literacy to understand these lockdown rules and alert levels

The effectiveness of these protocols and their implementation, however, has been questioned in light of the still increasing number of reported new cases of COVID-19 infection (Pajaron & Vasquez, 2021).

The latest response by the Department of Health is to introduce new quarantine vocabulary: ‘granular lockdown’ which refers to micro-level quarantine for critical areas that have a surge in COVID-19 cases.  Beginning September 16, 2021, 57 areas in the National Capital Region were put under granular lockdown. This means individuals staying in houses, residential buildings, streets, blocks, villages, or barangays that have been identified as ‘critical areas’ are forced to strictly stay indoors for 14 consecutive days. As affected households absolutely cannot leave their residence, the local government units and social welfare department are in charge of sending them food, and military officials are stationed in the areas to ensure compliance.

Along with this new quarantine protocol is a new five-level alert system, which provisionally takes the place of the CQs. A description of the activities that are (dis)allowed in each level is provided by explainers circulated in social media. Information campaign tools, like the ones in the image, however, do not necessarily guarantee public comprehension or compliance.

Are Filipinos deliberately breaking the rules?

Indubitably, the construction of such public health protocols and nomenclature is necessary. But it is difficult to perceive their effectiveness in light of the continued spread of the virus.

This persistent problem has been blamed partly on people who allegedly, deliberately ignore the rules. Colloquially labelled pasaway [naughty], this group of delinquents includes those living below the poverty line, who need to fend for themselves on a daily basis in order to survive. Between August 21 and September 15, 2021 alone, the Philippine National Police reported 224,626 violators in Metro Manila and 1,153,833 in the nearby provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal.

These monitored lockdown violations rival the reported statistics of new COVID-19 cases and is publicly chastised with threats of brute force. Such negative, even violent discourse is seen as further enlarging the power wielded by the government over the public that is imagined as uncooperative, irresponsible, and needing more discipline (Hapal, 2021).

An area under granular lockdown (Image credit: Philippine News Agency)

Whether it is true that more than a million Filipinos are deliberate delinquents is highly debatable. But an even more serious question is—What happens to violators? Reports say curfew violators have been arrested, locked up in dog cages, left to suffer the intense heat of the midday sun, and threatened or actually shot dead. The severity of punishment for non-compliance raises questions of human rights—Does violating public health rules justify violation of people’s basic human rights?

At the same time, it raises an important concern on the comprehensibility of regulations because comprehension precedes compliance. In other words, is it right to punish people for not following policies, which they cannot understand in the first place?

The gap between policy and compliance

Without intending to diminish the value of civil obedience, I argue that the problem of ambiguity in pandemic regulations represents a critical gap between policy and compliance.

As Professor Lawrence Solan of Brooklyn Law School explained in the 1^st International Conference on Forensic Linguistics (organized by the University of Santo Tomas – English Department on 18 September 2021), the seemingly simple pattern of reading the law and then obeying it is actually not that simple because it is not always easy to understand what policy requires. This issue presents an argument for the localized translation of public health information.

While multilingual health information materials have been deployed in the Philippines at the beginning of the pandemic, there is less known about the multilingual translation of lockdown policies, which are largely in English, as shown in the sample explainers.

Harsh punishments for non-compliance with lockdown rules (Image credit: Human Rights Watch)

Globally, the effect of linguistic ambiguity in pandemic regulations include what Professor Richard Powell of Nihon University reported as ‘pandemic confusion’ and ‘alert fatigue.’ As also experienced in France, Australia, the US, among others, shifting and ambiguous lockdown rules are successfully engendering confusion, making compliance extra challenging globally.

But with more deliberate and glaring social injustices tied to the discourse of compliance, the current situation of the Philippines demonstrates how policy ambiguity can be (ab)used as a power tool and can reinforce inequalities (Kurnosov & Varfolomeeva, 2020), especially those related to differences in the ability to comprehend constantly changing lockdown names and guidelines.

References

Hapal, K. (2021). The Philippines’ COVID-19 response: Securitising the pandemic and disciplining the pasaway. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 40(2), 224-244. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1868103421994261
Kurnosov, D., & Varfolomeeva, A. (2020). Constructing the not-so-new normal: Ambiguity and familiarity in governmental regulations of intimacies during the pandemic. Anthropology in Action, 27(2), 28. doi:https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2020.270204
Pajaron, M. C., & Vasquez, G. N. A. (2021). Re: How effective is community quarantine in the Philippines? A quasi-experimental analysis. Message posted to http://hdl.handle.net/10419/230315

With Sydney in lock-down again, my team mates farewelled me over Zoom

Writing en route to Manila

I am onboard Singapore Airlines as I am writing this, flying back to Manila after being farewelled via Zoom by my Language on the Move team mates after my four-year stay in Sydney. I moved to Sydney as Ms Tenedero and return as Dr Tenedero. I also moved at a time when air travel seemed not so difficult and I return during a global pandemic, which has considerably complicated travel.

At this time, NSW is in a strict lockdown limiting outdoor activities only for a few ‘essential’ reasons like exercise, buying food, and medical purposes, including getting a vaccine. This is in response to the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant. The lock-down comes after Australia had enjoyed greater freedom for most of the pandemic than the rest of the world. Not so long ago, it was cited as a “world leader in containment and management of emerging variants.” And if things in Australia seem bad, they pale in comparison to the 5,000+ new cases reported in the Philippines as of 15 July 2021.

In order to check-in in Sydney, my Philippine tracing app had to be up-to-date

The days of easy travel are gone

In this situation, travelling from Sydney to Manila is no longer as simple as book and go. It now involves complying with more, and frequently changing, travel conditions that vary from port to port. Travelling to the Philippines required me to download the national contact tracing app Traze and filling out an electronic case investigation form (e-CIF) to get a QR code to be presented upon disembarkation in Manila.

I read these requirements about a month before but completely forgot to do them before coming to airport! I had focused on completing my vaccinations, booking a hotel for my seven-day quarantine (down from ten days for those who are not vaccinated), packing four blessed years in Australia into two big boxes, and bringing required documents for leaving Australia (just the passport for non-permanent residents like me). So, it took me 10 minutes of anxious digital compliance work on my smartphone at the check-in counter to get the correct apps and codes. Thankfully, I had arranged to be at the airport two hours before my flight even so I knew there would be no long queues. Still, travelling these days requires more patience and higher literacy, especially digital literacy, to navigate the way out of one country and into another.

“Relax” was the main message on the Departures screen

The linguistic landscape has changed

After successfully checking in, I made my way to the boarding gate and was met by signs that I had not seen when I last traveled in December 2019.

These images show a more heightened control of movement. Signs explicitly restrict where people can sit and stand. QR codes constantly monitor ingress and egress. These surveillance and controls are supported by the discourse of mutual care for everyone’s protection and safety. This discourse, in turn, powerfully mobilizes people into compliance because, naturally, no one wants to be the reason for the number of cases going any higher – or have their journey end before it begins.

Yet alongside this heightened sense of accountability is a sign telling travelers to “relax.” Flight status codes (at least pre-Covid19) typically indicate that a flight is scheduled, active, redirected, landed, diverted, or cancelled. “Relax” is markedly novel because it is a directive, albeit a soft one. On the one hand, this sign could be seen as part of the language of care, a soothing word in a tense environment. On the other hand, it is also a form of policing that seeks to manage even the affect, implying some control of the individual’s inner space.

The in-flight hygiene kit

The double discourse of strict policing and mutual care is also evident onboard

Before entering the aircraft, the 20 passengers manifested on flight SQ212 were asked to take one of the hygiene kits stationed by the door. My guess is all of us had these items in our carry-ons, anyway. But the kit is also an opportunity to spell out new standards of hygiene, explicitly described at the bottom of the bag with instructions for the thoughtful use and disposal of used items.

All in all, these public signs collectively demonstrate at least two things. First, there is increased use of directives, which derive social legitimacy through a discourse of solidarity (Svennevig, 2021). This is done through the explicit linking of the necessity for control and mutual care during the pandemic. Second, international travel requires higher digital literacy and patience, a new condition that further restricts who gets to successfully cross borders these days.

My linguistic observations on the move emphasize the mutual shaping of language and social situation during the constantly evolving Covid-19 pandemic. It makes my return journey seem a bigger step than I had expected it to be.

Reference

Svennevig, J. (2021). How to do things with signs. The formulation of directives on signs in public spaces. Journal of Pragmatics, 175, 165–183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.01.016

After 3 years of hard work, today I hit the “submit” button on my PhD thesis

Today, I’ve submitted my PhD for examination – a major milestone on my PhD journey. Time to take stock of the value of investing three years of my life into this rigorous academic endeavour.

I’m going to do so through a thematic analysis of my research journals. In these notebooks I have scribbled information, reflections, research ideas, questions, and inspirations from lectures, readings, reading group sessions, and supervision meetings with Distinguished Professor Ingrid Piller and Dr. Loy Lising. 10 lessons stand out that helped me not only survive my PhD but thrive and grow as a researcher and person.

1. Listen more. This is the advice my parents gave me on my first day at Macquarie University. It is a reminder that I am a learner, the world is my classroom, and every person and moment that becomes part of it has something to teach me. So, I try to listen for brilliance in formal lectures of experts as well as conversations with 6-year-olds. I also pay more attention to my health now and listen to my body. I don’t check my email on Sunday, I frame each day with prayer, and I cap the year with a silent retreat. These habits of creating more silence around and within me helped me regularly recenter my otherwise easily anxious mind.
2. Go outside your comfort zone. For me this meant being more sociable than I normally am and investing time in building relationships with people whose life and work inspire me to be better. This also meant volunteering, actively seeking out opportunities, and braving the challenge of trying new things (like joining the 3MT!) and exploring new places with new people or, sometimes, by myself.
3. 

   A bit over 3 years ago: first day on campus as a new PhD student with my parents and my new supervisors

   Surround yourself with people who believe in you. This wisdom from Dr. Loy was an important lifeline in moments of self-doubt. In moving out of my comfort zone, I have found new safe spaces, like the Language on the Move reading group that Prof. Ingrid has created for her current and previous PhD supervisees. These like-minded researchers have become my academic family. We support each other by sharing research and life milestones, mentoring each other, and encouraging one another to keep writing and reading.

4. Read good books. The Language on the Move yearly reading challenge has taught me the value of reading beyond my research topic and my usual interest. For instance, I wouldn’t normally read about cyberspace, but I did for my first reading challenge in 2018 and wrote a review about a book on multilingualism on the Internet. Reading widely has stretched my thinking, challenged my own views, and enhanced my writing. Remember to check out our reading challenge for this year!
5. Write every day. This is an advice that worked for Alfredo Roces, a respected Filipino artist and author who wrote a daily column in the Manila Times for 12 years. “Magsulat ka. Gusto mo, ayaw mo, magsulat ka.” (Write. Whether you like it or not, write.) “Write with passion and honesty.” I did my best to do the same, aiming to write at least a few hundred words every day. Of course, it has happened several times that I revised all those words the next day. But no matter, the point is making writing a habit, like brushing your teeth.
6. 

   Members of the Language-on-the-Move team were there to witness my Sunday submission

   Be flexible in a structured way. These words from Livia Gerber, one of my PhD sisters, beautifully captures the attitude and approach that thesis writing (or any kind of purposeful writing) calls for. Planning is always an exciting stage for me, but now, so is re-planning. As Stephen Krashen said, “Rigid outlines are an enemy of creativity. Good writers plan but they’re willing to change their plan.”

7. Reflect. “Reflections on life feed into our research and our research feeds into our life” (Ingrid Piller). Diarizing my plans and thoughts about my progress has helped me stay grounded and cope better with unexpected changes. For example, I learned an important lesson on resilience when the travel restrictions in 2020 cancelled my much-awaited research trip to the US, for which I had received highly competitive funding from Macquarie University. In retrospect, I see how finishing my PhD during the time of pandemic has enriched my research experience in a unique way. Auspiciously, it even extended the relevance of my study, which also looks into work communication practices of offshore accountants working from home, a now-normal situation for many professionals across the globe.
8. Celebrate complexity. One of my early mistakes was trying to paint a simple picture of my data. My supervisors were quick and patient to show me that human beings, the way we use language, and the institutions we shape and that, in turn, shape us are all gloriously complex. The beauty of ethnographic research is that it brings this complexity to light, and it is my duty to be truthful to my findings. My PhD project has been a special opportunity to outgrow my own biases about people and their communication practices and views. Indeed, research has helped widen my understanding of what it means to be human.
9. 

   My supervisor taught me that it takes innumerable carefully placed stitches to create a beautiful whole

   Do one stitch at a time. The PhD is the biggest academic project I have ever undertaken in my life so far. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the idea and to get caught up with the goal of turning in the perfect thesis. But as a wise person once said: there are two kinds of thesis—perfect and submitted. Prof. Ingrid Piller offered different metaphors to capture the sense of steadily working towards completing quality work rather than fixating with the elusive notion of perfection. My favorite metaphor is weaving. Etymologically, the word ‘text’ means ‘something that is woven.’ To produce a big text, the key is to focus on the big idea and to work on one small stitch at a time, steadily chaining the thread, being careful not to drop any stitches, until the idea is finally woven into a whole. Thinking of my work this way helped make it a more manageable and meaningful process.

10. Keep moving. “The PhD is a point on a journey, not the pinnacle of achievement” (Ingrid Piller). Certainly, it is a big milestone. But life goes on after pressing the “submit thesis” button. It is equally essential to anticipate life after PhD. I am grateful to the Macquarie University HDR mentors for organizing a seminar about this and especially to my supervisors, who continue to mentor me as I prepare to go back to my home university in Manila, where I hope to pay it forward.

So should you bother to do a PhD?

For me, it has been a way to become a better version of myself for the world. While not everyone is called to do a PhD, it is a specific path to grow in knowledge of oneself and others, and in virtues of the mind as well as the soul. I am very grateful for this three-year vocation.

Besides meetings, webinars, and classes, another traditionally face-to-face event organized this year via Zoom is the 3-minute thesis (3MT) competition.  This yearly academic contest, which challenges students to explain their thesis in three minutes to a non-specialist audience, was started during one of the worst droughts in the history of Australia. With the current COVID-19 pandemic far from over, the 3MT organizers decided to go virtual this year.

On 11 August 2020, the Macquarie University Linguistics Department hosted its first-ever virtual 3MT competition. My contribution, which won the People’s Choice Award, is about the communication practices and ideologies of globalized accountants in the Philippines. Unlike many, they did not start to work remotely during the pandemic but have been doing so for a long time. In my presentation, I highlight the unique challenges of professional communication from home in multilingual, global work contexts. These points are discussed at length in my online lectures on how Global South accountants are prepared to communicate in Global North workplaces and lessons about working from home.

While it is tempting to think that joining a virtual 3MT is faster and easier, my experience is quite the opposite. Surely, the competition proper was a less tensed moment for me and my fellow-participants as we sat and watched our pre-recorded presentations. However, such a small production involves a big investment of time and effort, as faculty members doing online teaching this semester can testify. Even so, a memorable learning experience!

***

“The trend of the future is working from home. The big question is: Are Filipinos ready for this kind of work?” This question was asked by an employer of Filipino virtual accountants providing offshore services to clients overseas during my fieldwork in June 2018. Two years later, office workers all over the world find themselves forced to do just that—work from home—as a social distancing measure in light of the COVID-19 pandemic situation. In Australia alone, 1.6 million reported this significant change in their working conditions.

Unsurprisingly, there are many different reactions to this global shift to remote-work setup—some readily embracing it as the new normal, others taking a more critical stance. In the interim, as working from home continues to be the norm for some occupation groups, the experience of offshore accountants, who are employed to work remotely, pandemic or no pandemic, provides a picture of how this work arrangement works on a permanent basis.

A sociolinguistic analysis of the globalized accountant experience of working from home was the subject of a webinar co-organized on 3 July 2020 by the Linguistic Society of the Philippines (LSP) and the Lasallian Institute for Development and Educational Research.

In this online lecture, I explore how working remotely has shaped communication practices and ideologies in globalized accounting practice in the Philippines. Examining communication in this context is important as the demand for off-shored (including home-based) accounting services is increasing. This trend comes with the positioning of the Philippines as an emerging global provider of knowledge process outsourced services to businesses headquartered overseas. Ethnographic data collected from this work context for my PhD thesis (in progress) is analyzed using the lenses of performance and audit. Findings show that the way accountants communicate has evolved to fit the shape of virtual work environments. Digital solutions are making communication skills more salient and creating new norms and protocols of transparency that contribute to tensions between autonomy and accountability. The lessons highlighted from accountants’ experiences potentially reflect communication challenges and opportunities in other work domains especially during this period of COVID-19 pandemic, when mandatory physical distancing is redefining workplace interactions.

You can watch this virtual presentation uploaded in the LSP YouTube channel.

Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic

Visit here for our full coverage of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis.

As its user population has exploded, however, the Internet’s linguistic repertoire inevitably has expanded, too, and transformed it into a multilingual space.

But how multilingual is the Internet? What languages other than English does it speak? Why these languages?

The development of the Wikipedia logo is a metaphor for the journey from English-monolingual to multilingual Internet (Source: Wikipedia)

These are some of the key questions explored in Internationalizing Internet Studies: Beyond Anglophone Paradigms. Published in 2009, this collection of articles celebrates the non-Western, non-English speaking face of the Internet that is often hidden from academia and the media limelight.

Editors Gerard Goggin and Mark McLelland challenge the tendency of communications and media scholarship to overemphasize the Anglophone-orientedness of online phenomena, taking for granted the multicultural and multilingual realities that persist alongside Western hegemony in virtual spaces. Using this skewed representation of the Internet as take-off point, the articles problematize whether the Internet truly bridges boundaries or, otherwise, creates other forms of division.

One obvious form of division online is the linguistic divide, which pertains to the differential valuing and representation of languages on the Internet. This issue is elaborated in the second part of the book—Language Communities Online. Through case studies of language practices in non-Western online communities, this section foregrounds languages other than English in the Internet and how the online space and these languages mutually shape each other.

In Chapter 5, Nanette Gottlieb presents the case of Japan:

While language use on the web in Japan, in terms of the selection of languages, is conservative overall with a strong monolingual bent, as dictated by national language policy, infrastructure, and cultural considerations, ludic use of the Japanese language itself online is multifaceted and far from conservative. (p. 65)

The scripts on the Wikipedia logo (Source: Wikipedia)

Gottlieb then describes Japanese language play in online messaging, which is exemplified in the use of emoticons as substitutes for verbal emotive expressions. Despite their banality as built-in features in hand-held gadgets and mobile messaging apps, emoticons can be valued as indexes of cultural distinction.

Subsequent chapters discuss the more serious function of the Internet as instrument for linguistic resistance and cultural preservation. Chapter 7 focuses on Welsh-speaking Internet users promoting Cymraeg as language of choice in their websites, forums, blogs, and social networking sites to assert its status as a contemporary language. The author, Daniel Cunliffe, argues that the success of this language movement can be attributed to institutional policy (the Welsh Language Act) and technical backing (software localization). Despite not having the same quality of support, the case of Catalan, articulated in Chapter 8, shows that the Internet can be a potent tool for the propagation of a minoritized language. The authors, Josep Lluis Mico and Pere Masip, partly echo the insights of Professor Josu Amezaga in his lecture about minority and minoritized languages and evinces the power of new media to facilitate the resurgence of languages silenced in traditional media platforms.

The final chapters in this sociolinguistic section focus on the intersection between language use and identity formation. The link between language and identity particularly in the context of migrant experience echoes the theme of the New Finnish Grammar, which was also reviewed for the Language-on-the-Move Reading Challenge. Chapters 9 and 10 talk about how specific groups of migrants use language online to define aspects of their identity, which may be displaced and denied in the “real world” offline.

Urmila Goel examines the Indernet (www.theinder.net), a website that uses German language but which is primarily an Indian space. Through this forum, second generation Indians in Germany, who are othered as neither of India nor of Germany, find a virtual home where their transnational identity is accepted. Meanwhile, Ljilijana Gavrilovic talks about Serbian refugees, for whom “language is the primary element of identification” (p.147) and who use their home language online to assert their pre-refugee identities.

Overall, I found the recognition of the Internet as a beyond-Western phenomenon refreshing. The descriptive articles, whilst not equally engaging, provided information that made me more conscious of what and how languages are used online, by whom, and for what end. Of course, I was silently disappointed that Philippine languages were not mentioned in this conversation, but so were a host of other languages that are certainly represented in some corner or thread of this wide virtual web today. As an introductory reading on multilingual practices in cyberspace, however, the book succeeded in defamiliarizing the English-dominant Internet and inspiring a fresh curiosity for its linguistic repertoire.

The national language is the mother tongue of the vast majority of citizens in most European states (Source: Josu Amezaga, MQ Lecture, 22-11-2017)

Last week, Professor Josu Amezaga from the University of the Basque Country, Spain, visited Macquarie University to speak about minority languages: what they are and why they should be given space in the ongoing conversation about linguistic diversity.

Participating in this seminar was a timely opportunity as I embark on my PhD journey. I realized that it is one thing to read books and theses arguing about different forms of linguistic inequalities and yet another to engage in an academic debate. Coming from the Philippines, which is home to 187 languages, according to Ethnologue, I went into this seminar hoping to better understand the value – or lack of value – of these belittled languages.

Focusing on European languages, Professor Amezaga traced the historical roots of the monolingual paradigm to the French Revolution. The one-language-one-nation ideology that became prominent during that period saw some 28 French languages relegated to the position of patois or minority languages. The French revolutionaries were keen to ensure that all citizens shared a common language. Instead of considering bilingualism or a lingua franca—as is the case in the Philippines—they went about eliminating all competitors of French. This hostile policy towards minority languages was set out in Abbé Grégoire’s 1794 treatise entitled “Rapport sur la nécessité et les moyens d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser la langue française” (“Report on the necessity and means of annihilating the dialects and of making the French Language universal”).

This shows that minority languages are not necessarily the languages of a numerical minority. Rather they are languages that are subject to active processes of minoritization. While the term “minority language” suggests having small numbers of speakers, the term “minoritized language” is more accurate as it draws our attention to processes of language subordination and to the unequal power relationships that often pertain between “minority” and “majority”.

By contrast, citizens of the Philippines have many different mother tongues (Source: http://www.csun.edu/~lan56728/majorlanguages.htm)

In Europe, processes of linguistic suppression were so successful that by the second half of the 20^th century most European nations were highly monolingual, with the vast majority of citizens speaking the national language as their sole mother tongue. However, globalization and migration of recent decades have thrown this high level of state-engineered monolingualism into disarray.

Many European states have reacted to this “linguistic threat” with new efforts at renationalization, as can be seen in the introduction of language testing for citizenship. Between 1998 and 2015, the number of European states requiring a language test from prospective citizens rose from 6 to 25.

Interestingly, this push to test the language proficiency of immigrants further helps to cement the minoritized position of indigenous minority languages: language testing in France, for instance, is done in French rather than in Basque, despite the fact that the latter is today recognized as an official regional minority language of France.

At the same time, globalization and migration have also pushed language ideologies in the opposite direction, contesting the monolingual one-nation-one-language ideology and giving new legitimacy to minoritized languages. Professor Amezaga showed striking evidence of this trend with TV signals: while around 1,000 TV signals from English-speaking countries reach non-English-speaking territories, 900 signals in languages other than English reach the US. The former is evidence that the media are agents of linguistic homogenization and the latter is evidence that the media are agents of linguistic diversification.

Professor Amezaga’s guest lecture focused on minoritized languages in Europe and the global North more generally. Reflecting on how these insights relate to my home country, the Philippines, it may seem that in this highly multilingual country processes of linguistic homogenization have not been an issue. However, that would be misleading. Our own version of the one-language-one-nation ideology could be called “two-languages-one-nation ideology”: English and Filipino are positioned side-by-side as an essential aspect of the bilingual identity of Filipinos. As a result, the Philippines’ other languages are similarly subject to minoritization.

Furthermore, the challenge posed by globalization and migration to the linguistic status quo of the Philippines does not come from immigration but emigration. Going overseas, primarily for work, has become a viable and even desirable option for many Filipinos, who perceive international labor opportunities as an economic panacea. Consequently, over 10 million Filipinos are estimated to be working or living overseas today. This number is nearly 300% more than the first wave of Filipino migrants in the 1970s, when the overseas employment program was launched. With Filipino migrants now gaining more ground as “workers of the world,” it is worth examining the language component of occupations where they are employed to see how their linguistic repertoire – borne out of a two-languages-one-nation ideology and differential valuing of minority languages – intersects with the language ideologies of destination societies.

Reference

The slides from Professor Amezaga’s lecture are available for download here.