Week 4: Writing in the Context of Global Englishes

In “Chinese White-Collar Workers and Multilingual Creativity in the Diaspora” Xiaoye You presents the role of creativity in expanding circle countries. The place of English in their identity is especially interesting given You’s description of them as having experienced diaspora, and if diaspora is viewed as a type of consciousness and a mode of cultural production, the forum users  spatial displacement  is pacified by the play with language and culture. Stepping outside of the print context, it is evident in the bilingual creativity of the white-collar workers that they make use of American sayings and evoke Christianity in their discourse. It did not occur to me prior to reading this article that referring to the Christian concept of God when discussing their personal journeys does not mean they are Christian. The use of language to play with values and ideas associated with the English language is especially interesting with the reference to the “no pain no gain” motto. On the forum, the line is questioned when the diaspora proves to be pain without gain, which interrogates not only this particular line but the entire culture that employs it to reflect on hard work and achievement. Questioning values expressed in English and therefore associated with the English speaking world appears even stronger when the deconstruction takes place in English. This is perhaps because the use of English of these particular workers is a gesture of stepping into the English or American culture, a way of testing it, or finding a comfortable space within it. Considering that the English language is interwoven with the experience of the diaspora, it is also fascinating that when forum users choose English to express and sooth themselves using the language that granted them the opportunity to step into the same city-space that isolates them.  The language that is part of the stressful and lonely life is the language in which they share stories of their hometown memories and traditions. It is also not only the language or the topics discussed that appear to bring comfort to the posters on the forum, it is also some of the ways in which their use of the language is not standard. For example, when You says that the syntax makes a forum user sound like she is speaking Chinese, we observe that English is used to communicate at a certain comfort level that still indirectly references first languages, without compromising the fluidity with which their stories are told.