Scene 1: Restaurant entrance

Nabeel arrives at a Graduate Student Social event.
Organizer greets him.

Greeter:           Hi. Welcome to the Graduate Student Social. Do you mind wearing a name tag?
Nabeel:            Sure.
Greeter:           Grab a drink if you like, and sit wherever you like. The games are going to be starting real soon.
Nabeel:            Thank you so much.
Greeter:           Yeah! Have fun!

Scene 2: Event room

Ayesha and Camila are in the event room.

Ayesha:           Oh, hi, Nabeel! It’s so good to see you!

Nabeel:            Hey Ayesha, Hey Camila, Sorry I’m late, I just finished talking to my boss about applying for a position in her lab. [sigh or other sound of frustration] And anyway, it all took longer than I thought.

Camila:           You look angry. What happened?

Nabeel:            Well, the thing is, I’ve been in Canada for 9 years and so I’m on my third degree in English – Oh, it’s so frustrating. I've been working as a lab assistant for too long, so I’ve been trying to apply for a new leadership position.  But I’m always turned down or not even considered for interviews. And so today my boss was telling me why she’s not inviting me for an interview for a higher position, but do you know what she says at the end of our talk? … ‘But your English is so good.’

Camila:           Are you serious? That’s so ridiculous.

Nabeel:            Ya. I told her I speak three languages, and she’s like ‘Oh yeah, but your English is so wonderful.’ Like, [sarcastically] Thank you so much [laughs] … It’s such a paper-cut microaggression. I come to apply for a leadership position and she’s telling me ‘Your English is good.’

Camila:           I know exactly what you mean, I’ve had so many people compliment my English and I keep thinking…Why are you saying that? Why do you feel the need to compliment my language skills? What are you really trying to say, right? …

Ayesha:           Yeah, that’s exactly it, Camila. The same kind of thing has happened to me too. Like, over the past two years, I’ve sent my supervisor lots of papers that I thought could work towards my thesis. And he was always like, ‘that’s well written,’ and he never gave me any other feedback. … But suddenly, you know what, last week when I sent him my thesis proposal, he was like, ‘You know what? This is poorly written.’ I was so angry because the proposal was made up of the papers that I had sent him before. The message I hear is ‘You know what, your English isn’t good enough for academic writing but, don’t worry, your English is still GOOD.’ Like okay, so how does that help me?

Camila:           [sigh or other sound of frustration] Unbelievable! People in my department say everybody’s language is good and everybody’s English is beautiful, but it just covers over what people are thinking underneath the surface. I remember this visiting scholar from China… Soon after arriving, she introduced herself in a meeting saying ‘My English is not very good, but I’m working on it. If you can help me that’d be great’ or something along those lines.  I think she was trying to make a joke out of it. … What happened instead was that all these people came running to her saying ‘Your English is FINE, it’s BEAUTIFUL, it’s OKAY’.

Nabeel:            I know, I know! It sounds like nice compliments, right?  But why do they think we need these encouragements?  People can make a lot of assumptions what they think we need. I’ve been fighting for a long time to not let others define who I am.  I often want to say…This is the language and the syntax that I want to use. Yes, sometimes there are mistakes, but this is not a mistake, this is a conscious CHOICE.’ …,

Ayesha:           Yeah, I hear you, Nabeel. Like, I’ve had so many of my papers corrected by others. ‘Oh, you should use this word but not this word,’ and sometimes, you know what, I just want to yell back “But that’s not what I wanted to say.’ … Their expectation is that everyone should speak the same way they do.  Sometimes I feel like I’ve been put in a box. Like a cartoonish version of who people think I am. And when they interact me, they realize I’m a real human who doesn’t fit into that box and they don’t know what to do with it. … ‘Oh my god, what are we going to do with you? You’re not fitting the=’[1]

Nabeel:             =mold that they want you to fit in, right?! [laughs]

Camila:           (laughs too) Exactly. I’ve had people come up and start talking to me in a language from India, so I have to say, ‘Sorry I don’t speak Indian,’ and they get mad at me, because I don’t reply in their language. And so, I have to say something like ‘Okay, I know I look Indian, but that’s because I’m mixed race, we’re very mixed in Latin America’ … There’s such a pressure to fit in that box…  sometimes I feel nervous about just introducing myself.

Nabeel:            Ya, introductions can be so awkward. Like, colleagues will often suggest to me that I use a Western nickname that people will be more familiar with. They say ‘You’ll have a better chance of getting hired’ or ‘It’ll be easier to meet people,’ like that.  But I don’t want to change my name to a nickname just because it’s easier to find a job or because it’s easier it’s easier to connect with people. If they want to get connected with me, they should learn how to pronounce my name just like I should learn how to pronounce their names, right?

Camila:           Yeah. Actually, that reminds me of how my friend did this experiment once while looking for a job. At first, she used her, real name, Leticia. It’s hard to pronounce and didn’t have much luck. So then after a few months, she changed her name to Lia and suddenly, you know what happened, magically she started getting more calls.

Ayesha:           Huh, that’s funny because I had kind of the reverse experience. Years ago, I was in a class and introduced myself as ‘Anne’ and the teacher said, ‘Why do you use an English name and not your ethnic name? Everybody else I have taught from your country uses their real name, so I’m confused why you are not using it…’  I didn’t really know what to say.

Nabeel:            It should always be our choice, though, right?; I had this amazing teacher who really shifted my perspective. He said, ‘Please feel comfortable to use either name, … We’ll take the time to learn your names and how to say it right.’ This was an important moment for me, it was the first time that  anyone had given me permission to use my real name. It made me feel stronger.

Ayesha:           Exactly!

Note: This script is drawn from Kubota, R., Corella, M., Lim, K., & Sah, P. (2021). “Your English is so good”: Lives of racialized students and instructors of a Canadian University. Ethnicities. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968211055808

[1] = means latching, little to no pause between intonation units. A’s utterance follows immediately after, almost on, B’s.

Scene 1: Restaurant entrance

 

Emily arrives at a Graduate Student Social event.

Organizer greets her.

 

Greeter:           Hi. Welcome to Graduate Student Social. Do you mind wearing a name tag?

Emily:             Sure.

Greeter:           Great. Grab a drink and sit wherever you like.

Emily:             Thank you.

 

Scene 2: Event room

 

Any and Michael are in the event room.

 

Emily:       Hi Andy, Hi Michael, sorry for being so late…[sigh], parent-teacher night…need I say more.

 

Andy:        No worries, Emily. I get it.

 

Michael:    I’m sure when you went into teaching French in school, it wasn’t for those inspiring parent-teacher conferences. I’m just happy you came out in one piece (laughs)

 

Emily:       (laughs) Well…Barely. So, get this.  I’m sitting there, right, and I have my Eiffel Tower on the corner of my desk, I know it’s cliché, but I want parents to know who I am. But they still keep coming up and asking me ‘Are you the Chinese teacher?’ or ‘Are you the music teacher?’

 

Michael:    (sigh or other sound of disbelief or frustration)

 

Andy:        What?!

 

Emily:       I mean I made it obvious who I was—like my name tag says ‘Madame Chan’ in French, and I was even standing in front of a big Québec flag AND a French flag. But a lot of the parents just can’t seem to accept that I’m the French teacher.

 

Michael:    Oh. So sorry to hear that.  That must be frustrating, Emily. …  But, to be honest, it doesn’t surprise me. Like, my whole life I’ve been dealing with the assumptions people make based on the way I look. I remember when I was a kid, I would do everything I could to not seem Chinese. I didn’t want the teachers to associate me with the kids from China= [1]

 

Emily:       =Yeah= [or other sound of agreement and/or acknowledgement]

 

Michael:    =Cuz otherwise, they’d assume that I didn’t speak English properly and ignore me or even give me a lower mark. So yeah, I did everything to blend in with non-Asian kids.

 

Andy:        Yeah, I can totally relate to that, Michael.  Although, in my case, I often lived between those worlds. I mean, I was actually born in China but immigrated here, to Vancouver, while I was still young enough to learn English without an accent. Actually, I spoke so well that, growing up, people were shocked when they found out I was not from here. They would just assume that I was Canadian. But when they would start saying things like ‘oh, you know those people,’ like referring to Asian immigrants … I was like ‘um, excuse me, I am actually one of those people.’  My accent kind of allowed me to move between those worlds, it allowed me go to into spaces that most of the other Chinese kids couldn’t go.

 

Michael:    But at the same time, I think that speaking English so well is a bit of double-edged sword.  Like sure, it allowed me to integrate more easily with the non-Asian kids, but what about with my Chinese friends and family?  For years I didn’t want to speak Cantonese in public so that I could fit it, then when I was in grade nine, I remember one of my Chinese friends asking me straight up—“Why is your Cantonese so shitty?” That hit me super hard, I didn’t know what to say. I guess until that point, I had taken my Cantonese for granted, and her comment made me realize that I’d better start learning the language.

 

Emily:       Totally, I know what you mean, Michael. Like, I speak Cantonese with an accent from the 1940s [laughs]. No one speaks that way anymore but that was when my family left Asia.  So, we just never picked up the Hong Kong accent or the mainland China accent or any of this new slang. People ask me a lot why I’m speaking so funny.  I find it so frustrating because I can see that they’re trying to pigeonhole me or judge me because I don’t speak Cantonese in the way I’m supposed to.

 

Andy:        Ya, I know what you’re saying but maybe it’s important to recognize that in a certain way we ARE different. Like maybe we have a different role to play specifically because of who we are.

 

Michael:    Ok, Interesting. But what exactly do you mean?

 

Andy:        Well, I often wonder if I’m taking full advantage of the privilege I have as an English speaker by using it to challenge the system.

 

Emily:       Right! Exactly, Andy. Our English abilities give us a certain amount of power and if we don’t use it to push back, aren’t we implicitly supporting the structures that continue to fuel racism and oppression?

 

Michael:   Right. Language is tied up with many other social issues too—white supremacy, heteronormativity, gender, patriarchy. So I think it’s important to always ask ourselves if we are part of a solution or part of a problem. Like for example, as I told you guys before, I’m helping with a program that has lots of international students from China. And many times, I find myself questioning why we’re expected to always speak in English.  I mean, by speaking it, aren’t we continuing to reinforce the cultural hegemony of an official language?

 

Emily:       Yeah, that’s a great point.  So then, how do we apply these ideas in our university? What does change look like when we are talking about education in general?

 

Andy:        I’m not totally sure, but all I know is that we need to do more than simply hiring more racialized people. Like, we need actions that go beyond the surface. A total revamping of the content we teach and the lens we apply to learning languages, especially English.

 

Michael:    Yeah. Am I part of a problem?

 

Emily:       or Am I part of a solution?  (possibly said in Cantonese)

 

 

 

Note: This script is drawn from Kubota, R., Corella, M., Lim, K., & Sah, P. (2021). “Your English is so good”: Lives of racialized students and instructors of a Canadian University. Ethnicities. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968211055808

 

 

[1] = means latching, little to no pause between intonation units. A’s utterance follows immediately after, almost on, B’s.