On Hiatus

This blog will remain as it is for the foreseeable future.
I’m working on my next book, and not feeling given to dreaming up short snippets of thought to publish right this second.

The reader is directed to any of these posts of interest:

• A History of English Language Teaching
• Fringe cases of English language learning 1 2 3
• Language and Tourism in Thomas Pynchon
• The slippage of words in contemporary China
• A collection of expat-branded nonsense
• Reviews of Mo Yan and Chan Koonchung
• Song Yang’s art
• Tres Ataúdes Blancos by Antonio Ungar (eng) (esp)

This blog was also to promote my first two novels, hopefully one day to be published. You read a little about them here:

• Fight the Landlord
• International School

And I can be contacted at fightthelandlord at gmail dot com

I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of page views in the last week, mostly looking at my two pages mentioning Mo Yan:

A review of Garlic Ballads

With reference to the London Book Fair

Some reading by better-informed commentators can be found at the following places:

Packaging Mo Yan for the Masses

Is Mo Yan a Stooge for the Chinese Government?

as well as: Jokes/ Online Comment

And to smooth it all out

“The UK Border Agency has disclosed that it is working on plans for fast-track passport lanes for rich travellers at Heathrow and other British airports so it can avoid a repeat of the two-hour queues witnessed this year. Brian Moore, the departing head of the UK Border Force, told MPs that “high-value” people who were considered valuable passengers by the airlines or valuable to the British economy would be given priority treatment at immigration control under the plans.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/18/high-value-fasttrack-passport-checks

Although… Jump it! Fly!

More on School and Travel

Dublinesque

Dublinesca, by Enrique Vila-Matas

This book was recently published in English as Dublinesque.

I didn’t think much of this book, and the only reason I’m going to write about it a little is that certain comments about the role of the English language in the main character’s imagination (and in Spanish intellectual circles more generally, maybe) caught my attention.

The main character is obsessed with making ‘el salto inglés’, an “English leap” or perhaps leap into the English language. He cannot speak a word of English, we are reminded about a dozen times. And yet, he begins to see a translation of himself into a new place and tongue as his chance for redemption, now that his career as a literary editor has juddered to a halt.

There is no mention of Catalan or Irish, surprisingly for a book that takes place in Barcelona and Dublin only. The assembled editors and writers at one point take offence at a Spanish waiter in Ireland who speaks English with too natural an accent.

Later on in the book, Riba (the main character) dreams an encounter with a ghost:

— If you’re there, knock three times.

Enter Ghost. Maybe this obsession only began as a way for him to feel closer to the first person, to this initial good man who stayed hidden behind his own backlist.

Of course we are all aware that ghosts belong only to our memories, they almost never arrive from far-off lands or outer space. They are our lodgers.

— The red suitcase?

— Me, I don’t travel, says the ghost. — I’m just trying to get born. And to learn English, that’s the thing I need.

I won’t give too much explanation for the other parts, but this tongue-in-cheek staging of a lack of a language occurs repeatedly in the course of the novel.

On the other hand, the author clearly likes to show that he is adept in English, quoting Ulysses and other books whenever necessary (e.g. when nothing interesting is happening in the actual story). I wondered a bit about the morality of this, what impression it gives of the narrative voice, which is at other times using the fact that Riba is so much less able with English as a stick to beat him with, or at least gently prod.

To me at least, it made a bad impression, but also it made me consider to what extent I’ve been responsible for similar mocking or patronising code-switches in my own writing.

This book, then, is a solid testament (for all that it tries not to take itself too seriously) to the Barcelona love affair with France coming round to London and New York and fluency in English, something that has certainly fuelled my employment history recently.

Below the line I’m going to criticise the book some more, but it won’t be about the role of the English language, just general grumblings.         

Reasons to hate the Olympics, 5: An orgy of advertising

Much more has been written about this elsewhere (I’m going to link to some relevant articles), but some points are worth reiterating and compiling:

The Olympic Games are an advertiser’s wet dream, because:

1. The Olympic Act makes provision for the so-called ‘right of forced entry’ – that police and private security companies will be allowed to enter into houses or other buildings without warrants – not only on the grounds of security but to remove anything that could be seen as ambush marketing or unauthorised protest, such as banners, images, posters.

I’m sure we can rely on private security companies to exercise due restraint.

2. There is a Brand Exclusion Zone around all Olympic areas, which in effect means that non-affiliated companies will be banned from selling and advertising in certain areas, for example disallowing payment with any other card than a Visa. It goes as far as logos on hairdryers and urinals.

More seriously, this will also place restrictions on what can be worn by visitors.

3. Sponsors get there images plastered over television coverage and newspaper photography (because, as remarked upon before, the media couldn’t possibly turn a blind eye). Everything has been whipped up into such an “event” that apparently running stories analysing companies’ slogans and reproducing their billboard campaigns is a useful service.

This is despite the fact that some of the sponsors are pretty awful companies, such as Dow Chemical, BP, and Cisco, which already has form marketing I.T. infrastructure to China with the explicit intention that it should be used for censorship.

4. New media – Twitter accounts such as spacehijackers have already been threatened for appropriating branding and parodying official announcements. Both Twitter and Facebook seem happy to comply with regulations banning user-posted photos from around the Games – because they want to control the images that come out, as mentioned in the video here regarding the visuals at the development sites.

Expatriate haunts

From this week’s Private Eye (no. 1317)

School Report from Astana

A feature article mildly critical of the British education companies queuing up to accept work from the oil-rich authoritarian regime in Kazakhstan sparked almost a full page of letters in the Times Education Supplement this month, complaining about the “tone” of the piece.

Those grumbling about any suggestion that Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev might be a teeny bit of a despot included Andrew Wigford, MD of Teachers International Consultancy, and Diane Jacoutot, general manager of Teachanywhere, both companies involved in recruiting staff for the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools scheme to set up 20 new elite grammar-style schools in the country, teaching in Kazakh, Russian, and English.

“We should applaud Kazakhstan for its desire to improve its education system,” wrote Jacoutot. “I, for one, am honoured to be part of it.”

But then, in April 2010 teachanywhere advertised for adventurous teachers to work in “one of the most exciting and unique expatriate haunts of the Muslim world” – yes: that was in Gaddafi’s Libya.

If anything, the TES was being kind to Kazakhstan, describing its democracy as “fledgling at best” despite elections being condemned by international monitors in February after opposition parties and candidates were banned from standing. And human rights organisations have called for allegations of torture to be investigated after 34 oil workers and others were jailed this month in relation to the Zhanaozen protests last year in which more than a dozen people died after police opened fire on unarmed strikers (Eye 1310).

………………………

The TES article and its associated comments are here. From that article is a striking image of English teaching existing in the gap between use-value and exchange-value (or perhaps even being created from it, fuelled by petrol):

British teachers are already heading to the landlocked country to work in the first seven of a new network of 20 elite government grammars, set up using wealth generated by large gas and oil reserves. Experienced teachers are being targeted to teach their subjects while mentoring Kazakh teachers and helping to develop the curriculum. About 20 British teachers started work there last September, but the figure is expected to rise to 80 a year from August.

The authorities hope that they will be lured by attractive packages including free accommodation, two free flights a year and wages of between $4,000 and $5,000 a month.

The commentors seem to have taken umbrage at the idea that the schools were not pleasant to work or study in (which is precisely nowhere in the article). Guys, we understand. It’s nice to work in an international school, and to live in an expatriate haunt. Going to one of these schools does get you better results, does make you into a rounded, confident, ambitious person (you’ll fit in well in a large company or governmental body). But that’s not really the problem now, is it?

More on Chai-Na

Seeing as how China is written in Chinese as 中国, (zhongguo, IPA something like /tʂʊ̜ŋ gwɔ/), this means there is the potential for different transcriptions of the Western sounds /ʧaɪnə/ and /ʧi:nɑ/. The ‘proper’ Chinese characters mean ‘middle kingdom’. But there is plenty of scope to pick other characters to make the sound ‘Chai Na’ (or something similar), and give the name a more humorous or satirical connotation.

I posted about the use of 拆 before.

Now Language Log has provided a more expanded account of the wordplay (and the opportunity for cultural commentary within this) associated with transliteration, in the guise of a joke supposedly doing the rounds, based on how different people would render the sounds:

The playboy reads it as qiènǎ 妾哪 = where is my mistress?
The lover reads it as qīnnǎ 亲哪 = where is my darling?
The poor person reads it as qiánnǎ 钱哪 = where is my money?
The doctor reads it as qiènǎ 切哪 = where to cut?
The official reads it as quánnǎ 权哪 = where is my power?
The real estate developer reads it as quānnǎ 圈哪 = where can I encircle?
The dispossessed reads it as qiānnǎ 迁哪 = where should I move to?
The government reads it as chāinǎ 拆哪 = where should we demolish?

Olympics Graffiti

Edit: here’s a nice one from four years back