DILEMMAS ASSOCIATED WITH USING CANTONESE
المؤلف:
Tara Goldstein
المصدر:
Teaching and Learning in a Multilingual School
الجزء والصفحة:
P18-C2
2025-09-23
233
DILEMMAS ASSOCIATED WITH USING CANTONESE
Choosing to only use Cantonese with other Cantonese speakers at Northside was problematic for some of the students. These students told us that although working and socializing almost exclusively in Cantonese provided them with friends and helped them succeed in their courses, it did not provide them with many opportunities to "practice" English. Mirroring the results of the Hong Kong survey discussed earlier, these students talked about the educational and socioeconomic benefits, and the cultural and economic capital associated with being able to use English well. English was not only the legitimate language of instruction and evaluation at Northside, but the legitimate language at the universities they wanted to attend. Strong proficiency in English provided students with access to a wider range of programs and courses at a university. The students also suggested that strong English skills were required in many of the local labor markets and in such high-status and high-influence professions as law, politics, and upper management positions in both the private and public sector.1 The dilemma for these students was how to find opportunities to practice English (which would benefit them in the long term) at the same time as they used Cantonese to achieve immediate social and academic success at Northside. One of the challenges for teachers at Northside, then, was finding ways to assist Cantonese-speaking students in developing their spoken English language skills without forcing them to assume the social and academic risks associated with showing off and breaking the sociocultural, sociolinguistic norms of their linguistic community. Several teachers at Northside took on this challenge.
A second dilemma associated with using Cantonese at school was that many of the teachers and students didn't like hearing it in the classrooms and hallways. The teachers who believed that students' academic success depended on English monolingualism in the classroom contested the school board's effort to legitimize student multilingualism and promoted the use of English in a number of ways. Some experimented with classroom English-only rules or policies while others discussed their preferences with students at the beginning of their courses and reminded them to "speak English, please" whenever they heard another language being used. Often, these teachers' preference for English was related to the fact that some students in their class reported that they felt excluded or "left out" when other students used languages they didn't understand; students also worried that others were talking negatively about them. These feelings of being excluded and talked about often reflected the teachers' own feelings.
Students who spoke Cantonese (or other languages) in classrooms where teachers had made their preference for English clear risked their teachers' displeasure and disapproval. Students overheard using Cantonese in classrooms with English-only rules or policies risked being punished or disciplined. In all classrooms, students who spoke Cantonese risked the anger and resentment of classmates who felt excluded from their conversation. Yet, as discussed earlier, using English with Cantonese speakers was also costly. In the following interview excerpt, Frank Li described the dilemma this way:
Tara: ... so is it correct to say you use both English and Cantonese during the day, here at Northside?
Frank: Well, mostly I use English, 'cause even though [I am] with Chinese people, I, I sort of avoid talking in Cantonese because most of the time I'm, I'm with some Chinese people and then around there's someone who cannot speak, couldn't understand Cantonese. I, I always think it's not nice, to, to, to speak Cantonese in front of people that don't understand it. That's why. But [when] I, I talk with some Chinese people I still use Can—English in [some cases], but if they don't understand English that's another story.
Tara: Okay, then you'll use Cantonese.
Frank: Yeah.
Tara: Let me ask you about teachers in Northside. Do you have any teachers who have rules about using Cantonese in the classroom?
Frank: Well, me, I don't, but I've heard of other people that have [teachers who have rules]... [One teacher] says, a nickel or a dime, every time that you speak Chinese and, but, for me I think, well, I try my best not to speak Chinese in class .... But, you know, sometimes it's really hard because when my Chinese friends are talking in Chinese, you know, that, that's, it's not polite [to speak in English]. 'Cause like, okay, [it's like] I was trying to show off or whatever. That, that, you know, in that case, I'll, I will speak in Cantonese, but maybe just a few words.... Well, you know, trying my best not to [speak in Cantonese]. Sometimes it just happens. Okay, [if] they ask, they ask me a question in Chinese, [then] I should answer in Chinese, that's what I should do.
[Frank Li, Interview, February 19, 1997]
There were a number of ways Cantonese-speaking students tried to work through this linguistic dilemma at Northside. Some, like Frank, tried to accommodate the language preferences of their English-speaking classmates whenever it was possible, censoring their use of Cantonese. Others chose to use Cantonese despite the anger of other students, while still others code-switched from Cantonese to English and from English to Cantonese in an effort to accommodate both English and Cantonese speakers and work across linguistic differences in their classrooms.
In this introduction I have written about some of the ways students from Hong Kong experienced Cantonese-English bilingual life at Northside and the academic and linguistic dilemmas that emerged in their bilingual community. I explore the ways teachers and students responded to and negotiated these dilemmas in their classrooms. As mentioned in the Preface, I look at dilemmas of speech and silence whereas in Part II explore dilemmas of discrimination. The commentaries and pedagogical are not intended to provide an authoritative reading or interpretation of the dilemmas being dis cussed. Rather, they are presented as ideas that may confirm, challenge, or build on readers' own understandings of schooling in multilingual communities and create opportunities for further reflection and discussion.
1 See Maclear (1994) for a discussion on the need for the Canadian school system to ensure that the English language abilities of Asian high-school students are developed on an equal basis as other students.
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