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Poetry Moves and Talks - Exploring Language and Identity Through Verse
- 1. Poetry Moves and Talks I S I T Y O U M O V I N G A N D T A L K I N G ? O R S O M E T H I N G E L S E ? LITERATURE FOR SEC 4s For the purpose of MEL924: World Literature Ang Wee Jin (Hong Weiren) / NIE
- 2. Let’s try a short game here Get into groups of fours. This is a point system. Each question answered will cause you to add points or deduct points from the total group score. Assign one person to keep track of the points. TUNING IN
- 3. LET’s GO!
- 4. Question 1 How many languages can you speak in total, among your group members? For each language, add 1 point You need to at least hold a decent conversation to count. Dialects are counted. No, Singlish is not counted, unfortunately and neither are vulgarities.
- 5. Question 2 How many languages do you have to deal with every day? For each language, award a point.
- 6. Question 3 How many languages do you have issues with, in your everyday life? For each language, award a point.
- 7. Question 4 What language to do you think in? For English, add one point. For non-English languages, add two points. Be honest here. You may add more points for each additional language.
- 8. How many points do you have?
- 9. Results 1 to 20 Your group lives in a rather monolingual world. You are pretty much the language that you are familiar with, and while there is depth, it will be good if you can explore the different tongues. 21 to 40 Your group seems pretty mired in a monolingual world but inflected with a language presumably as an appendage and most likely for functional or work purposes. Either you are a beginner or you do not really need the language other than for work. 41 and above Your group likes to explore languages and often more than two. You live in a multilingual world and gets exposed to the vibrancy of the different linguistic forms, making your world an exciting yet likely confusing linguistic world.
- 10. ACCESS the introduction TO THIS LESSON now https://worldlitmusings.blogspot.com/2023/02/world-literature-and- globalisation.html Then Read the poems ALOUD
- 11. Language and Identity – Search Let’s look at Sujata Bhatt’s Search for My Tongue now. What does she mean when she says she had ‘two tongues in your mouth’? Do we as Singaporeans hold two tongues effectively? What are you predisposed to? Is it English? Or Singlish? Which one is Bhatt’s foreign tongue, which one is her mother tongue? Is there a good reason why she does not write in rhyming verses? Which sentence do you resonate strongly with? Why?
- 12. Language and Identity – Search Why does Bhatt lapse into non-English verses nearing the end? Structure and Form Why does Bhatt use ‘you’? What are the literary devices employed to render the poem more effectively?
- 13. Language and Identity – Lost Let’s look at Esther Vincent’s poem, Lost Tongue now. Is there a resemblance in the title of the poem to Bhatt’s? Why so? Which poem is more promising, more upbeat? How do you know? What does this tell us about the two poets’ character? What are the literary devices employed to render the poem more effectively?
- 14. Language and Identity – Lost Are there similarities in the structure and form between the two poems? How do the various poets we have seen so far position themselves in the context of the shifting linguistic junctions they are physically in, based on their metaphors?
- 15. Language and Identity – Search (your Own identity) Over to You Who do you identify with more? Bhatt or Vincent?
- 16. Language and Identity – Lost and Found How do you use language to identify yourself? Do you stick to one language or do you mix languages to express yourself? Do you feel it as an affront when people accuse you of not being able to speak your mother tongue?
- 18. Language and Identity – Medusa, the Beast within Let’s look at Carol Ann Duffy’s Medusa now. Duffy is obviously describing the Medusa, but to what can it be alluded to now? She too, addresses a ‘you’ like Bhatt, so who is the ‘you’ now? Why is this poem relevant to our discussion on language and identity?
- 19. Language and Identity – Medusa, the Beast within What are the literary devices employed to accentuate the slant and meaning of the poem? How does it lend itself to a richer interpretation of the poem?
- 20. Mr Brown’s Republic of Singlish Air Force
- 21. Points of Discussion How do you feel when you hear Singlish being used like this? Should Singlish be recognized? How do you feel when we have Singlish words imprinted on souvenirs for tourists? Do you think you will teach foreigners how to speak Singlish?
- 22. End Take the time to ponder what we have discussed. Link back to the title of the slides. Is it really you moving and talking? Or is it your choice of language when you express yourself? Lastly, do you think you are able to craft a simple poem on your language and your identity?
- 23. References (ed.) Vincent, E., Ang, A., Poon, A., Loh C.E. (2020) Poetry Moves. Singapore: Ethos Books. Mr Brown. (2015). The mrbrown show: Republic of Singlish Air Force: the movie. Video. Youtube. https://youtu.be/3EjqHxLtwSQ Tropic Monsters. (2019). English vs. Singlish phrases. Video. Youtube. https://youtu.be/uByyHDXlEqM
Editor's Notes
- The whole point of the game is to bring the students’ attention to the intricacies and acrobatics involved subconsciously during our interaction with the linguistic environment around us, especially in multicultural Singapore. This calls on a more conscious effort to decide on which language to engage our listeners and our choice is dependent on many factors, one of which is how we choose to present ourselves and the language we are intimately connected with, which may not be the language in the Home.
- Having two tongues will mean that she speaks two languages, although at the later part of the poem, she thought she had forgotten her Mother tongue and retains only English, her foreign tongue. Yet, it is with English that she writes and speaks more often, and while foreign as contrasted with her Mother tongue, the irony is, the functionalities are reversed, and the foreign tongue becomes native to her. As Singaporeans, we are educated based on the bilingual policy, but the methodology and current practice is such that we tend to be predisposed to English as the unifying and working tongue, and falling short of it, will mean many are stuck with the basilect, the Singlish variant we are now comfortable with due to the mass usage by the general populace. Thus, rhyming verses will mean succumbing to officialdom and paying heed to the formality of the language which Bhatt tries now to veer away from.
- So as the poem moves on, the transition into Gujarati indicates a shift into a crescendo, her latent language now bubbling to the surface via the dream similar to how our hidden desires or fears rise to the surface in dreams, such that she now converses entirely in Gujarati, although alienating the reader in that respect, while we look on as an onlooker, a spectacle to the proud flaunting of an exotic Oriental but heartfelt rendition of what she feels. Bhatt uses ‘you’ throughout, locking the audience into a dialogue with her and reinstating the focus. She accuses, ‘You ask me what I mean, by saying I have lost my tongue’, yet the reader changes all the time and will not be the same person she accuses of. This constant shift of readers inflects it with a flitting character, as though she could not pinpoint who is the original accuser. In so saying, there is no specific face she can locate or shift the blame to. It may very well be her imagining or her own subconscious at work. The Literary devices and its resultant effect Alliteration: Two tongues Repeated emphasis: You had to spit it out I thought I spit it out aakhee jeebh aakhee A certain cadence is introduced to bring in a steady pulse to the accusations brought forward. She is sure of it, no doubt, but so is her rising resistance to that blame. Metaphor: Using the idea of a flower as the tongue, it now grows, with bud opens, blossoms and flourishes when she least expects it, much like how a plant defy all odds to survive and lie dormant until conditions are right for it to germinate.
- The ‘you’ in Bhatt’s poem seem to be directed primarily at Vincent, who responds in kind although referring to her as a third person instead, ‘Just as Sujata Bhatt searched‘, so she grapples with the desire to ‘fill my mouth’ but finds herself floundering with the inadequacies of translation, being situated right in the heart of the foreign language and her mother tongue relegated to the peripheries. Exoticised by the ‘sacredness’, Vincent attempts to understand the curly graphemes, a common trait with Singaporean students especially of Chinese origin who had to make sense of the myriad characters that make up the Chinese language, a linguistic endeavor that bears no significance to their lives since the operating language here is English. In this way, Vincent speaks back to Bhatt, telling her that while the want is there, the reality is, the language of their Mother remains ultimately, foreign, While beautiful, it is in passing and admired from a distance, and while it may seem sorrowful to some, it is merely regretful it cannot be more to Vincent, the lament just a passing wistful nostalgia in Vincent’s case, as compared to Bhatt who rejoices in Gujarati in the end and exults in it. Vincent could only cite an idiom at that and nothing more, a packaged phrase which is transient at best, just like the crane. Vincent titles her poem ‘Lost’and accurately depicts her relationship to the Mother Tongue. Much as she wants to reconnect, she is lost in translation, her inadequacies highlighted by the repeated questioning to ownself, ‘How do I translate…How can I make sense?’Compared to Bhatt who is on the ‘Search’, Vincent has in other words, given up and labels herself as ‘Lost’.
- The use of metaphors and blank verse all combine to conjure a strong imagery for us to anchor onto. The impact of the search and the subsequent loss of the Tongue is intertwined with how each poet perceives the language to be for them. In Bhatt, it is a burgeoning plant, dormant and ready to sprout at the mere detection of water. For Vincent, it is a crane, ready to take flight, a passing fancy reorientalised and nothing more than that. How do the students view their Mother Tongue to be like? What sort of objects would they allude to? Draw out their thoughts on this.
- Different people will identify differently with their own sociolinguistic experiences. This slide aims to elicit and draw on the different experiences with bilingualism and multilingualism in Singapore and the education landscape. With the ambivalent views towards our Mother Tongue, it is inevitable that the discussion will draw out issues in learning and questioning the functionalities of the second language. Should bilingualism continue then? What is our identity if we stop the use of our Mother Tongue? Are we less ethnic if we do not speak the original tongue? Get students to share their sentiments.
- How is this understood in multicultural Singapore? In the wake of Postcolonialist Singapore, we are faced with this declining trend in upholding or speaking of the Mother Tongue, giving rise regularly to what they call the banana, yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Similar to Franz Fanon’s Black Skin White Mask situation in France, we too, face a dilemma when caught in a linguistic quagmire of straddling two and more languages with lambasts of not being able to master either. Often substituting Chinese words for English terms, we find ourselves neither here nor there, adopting a cosmopolitan identity since we have none to begin with. If Singapore had intended for globalization to be embraced in order to make economic leaps for the country, we have exceeded ourselves in taking on that globalized identity where we are Earthlings more than any citizen per se. We are indeed a Global Chimera, a Medusa of the Nation’s making, frightening yet beautiful, menacing yet unique.
- Ask students, how do they feel when they hear Singlish being used.
- Are there any references they can make to other texts that bear similar plotlines? Duffy’s Medusa addresses the reader as the male creator, Victor Frankenstein, the one who created the product yet disdains and pushes away in horror the being of his creation. Medusa can be alluded to the hybridized multilingual being called a Singaporean, one who situates his or her identity everywhere and nowhere, among the world denizens yet belonging to no particular country from the languages he or she speaks. As much as the city-state tries to mold us in a fashion that embraces the world and hence the ability to integrate with the economy, we take a life on our own and dispossess the language of our Mothers to fully embrace the colonial tongue. Yet it is with this tongue that we set foot in the world and carve out a name for ourselves in the world‘s image. This is the inherent power we now possess. So while Duffy’s interlocutors in the poem may seem like the traditional white patriarchal male, it can be extended to mean the government of Singapore, and we are the Medusas of the nation. As the poem goes, ‘Love gone bad showed me a Gorgon.’We are long past the mild dewy-eyed citizens, pandering after linguistic campaigns of ‘Speak Good English’ and ‘Speak Mandarin’. Everywhere on the streets, one will hear the economies of Singlish being uttered. And like that dragon, whose ‘fire spewed from the mouth of a mountain’, so too, do we blast out Singlish at an accelerated pace and cadence with ill regard of who is around us.
- Call on the students to identify the sensory experiences in the poem. Sounds are rampant in the poem, a stark contrast to the silence that follows after the petrification of the object. From buzzing bees, to singing birds, shatters of bowls and snuffling pigs, all will give way to an empty silence. Much like how we may very well fall silent if we insist on our Mother Tongue being used, instead of the Colonial language we are now so used to. The imageries of sound is juxtaposed with the poetic rhyming, although each rhyme seems to be depressing and insulting (ground, down, brick, pig, shit). And yet the power is reclaimed at the end, when the narrator invokes a strong imagery of the knight coming to slay the dragon, yet possibly failing to do so. In this way, she changes tack and challenges the interlocutor to bring his weapons and taunts him with his memories of what she had been, to that end, to look into her eyes and possibly turn into stone himself. Continuing the metaphor of the Knight as the Patriarchal, the Official, the Government, ultimately he will fall prey to his beloved creation, calling on his Gaze to ‘Look at me now’, a command absolutely mesmerizing and yet terrifying, a fear amalgamated with lust.
- While Singlish can alienate others in the face of colliding cultures, it is viewed ambivalently among Singaporeans. Like many languages in other countries, the unifying factor of a vernacular uniquely ours instills a nationalistic pride when confronted with globalization. This rallies us and nationalistic emotions come to the fore. Is it good? There is this danger of reorientalism, our basilect being appropriated for flippant reasons, to entertain and to be a laughing point.
- Encourage the students to pen a reflection on what was discussed in class. This may evoke more thoughts on what language means to their identity, and how it presupposes their representation of themselves as a person and the society he is from. To challenge the students, pose them this task of following the footsteps of using blank verse and metaphors or other literary devices they can think of to narrate their struggles with their linguistic experiences.