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“English Name” Use Among Chinese and Taiwanese Students at an Australian University

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“English Name” Use Among Chinese and Taiwanese Students at an Australian University NAMING RIGHTS: THE DIALOGIC PRACTICE OF “ENGLISH NAME” USE AMONG CHINESE AND TAIWANESE STUDENTS AT AN AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITY Julian Owen Harris SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS University of Melbourne By the beginning of the 21st century, Australia had become one of the world’s top 5 providers of international education services along with the USA, the UK, Germany and France. Since 2001, China has provided the largest proportion of international students to Australia, a tenfold growth in numbers from 1994 to 2003. The overwhelming majority of Chinese and Taiwanese students studying in Australian universities use what are typically called “English names”. The use of such names differs from the practice in Hong Kong of providing a new born with what might be termed an official English name as part of the full Chinese name that appears on his or her birth certificate and/or passport. By comparison, these English names as used by Chinese and Taiwanese are “unofficial” names that do not appear on the bearer’s passport, birth certificate or university administrative procedurals or degree certificates. Their use is unofficial and largely restricted to spoken interactions. Historically, English names used to be typically given to an individual by their English teacher; such classroom “baptisms” invariably occurred in Chinese or Taiwanese geographical settings. The term ‘baptisms’ and ‘baptismal events’ are drawn from Rymes (1996) and her research towards a theory of naming as practice. Noting that ‘serial mononymy is relatively uncommon in the literature on naming practices, Rymes (1996, p. 240) notes that more frequent are instances of individuals experiencing ‘a series of baptismal events in which [they] acquire and maintain different names for different purposes.’ Noting these cases among the Tewa of Arizona on Tanna in Vanuatu, Rymes (1996, pp. 241-2) observes that in both contexts, the acquired ‘names are traceable to a particular baptismal event.’ Outside the English language classrooms, the names were never used and were unknown to other teachers and fellow students. For the Australian university lecturers interviewed and observed for this research, the practice seemed variously perplexing, fascinating, duplicitous, patronising and misguided. It was characterised by strategies of resistance and reticence by both student users and their lecturers, as this study has chronicled and analysed. Canagarajah (2011, p. 4/5) asserts the need for research to consider the dialogical aspects and interactive nature of what he describes as “translanguaging”, specifically how others might feel about ‘their codes being appropriated’ (p. 5). In other words, Canagarajah (2011, p. 5) comments that little is known of how the interlocutors ‘interpret and respond to these translanguaging displays.’ This research achieves just that in that it documents the resistance among Chinese and Taiwanese students to their lecturers’ attempts to use Chinese names to address the students on the one hand, and on the other hand, the lecturers’ resistance to the students’ attempts to use English names as their preferred forms of spoken address. The study presents and problematises this cross-cultural and translingual tussle over language use and naming practices. It is a tussle, a tug-of-war (or words) between two heteroglossic forces (cf. Bakhtin, 1981) – one largely centrifugal, the other largely centripetal, neither completely homogenous. The two forces are represented, on the one hand, by the Chinese and Taiwanese participants, the vast majority of whom use “English names”, which at times might be characterised (centripetally) as neither English nor indeed as names. On the other hand, the second contrary, more centripetal or reactive force involves the two university lecturer research participants. What transpires is an intercultural dialogism between these two forces, whereby English (as product, as lingua franca) and the heteroglossic nature of naming (fluid versus fixed) emerge and erupt as contested and negotiated practices and phenomena. This is to certify that 1. the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD, 2. due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, 3. the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices _________________________________________ Julian Owen Harris I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to my Principle Supervisor, Professor Timothy McNamara and my second supervisor, Dr Celia Thompson. Without their expertise, patience and understanding, it is unlikely this thesis would have eventuated. I would also like to acknowledge the loving support of my parents, Owen and Beverly Harris. 1. Introduction 1.1 Participants, practices and performances ........................................................................... 4 1.2 Positioning ......................................................................................................................... 10 1.3 Thesis overview and outline .............................................................................................. 14 2. Literature review 2.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 17 2.2 Chinese and Confucian naming conventions and practices from a sociolinguistic perspective ......................................................................................................................... 19 2.2.1 Some differences between Western and Chinese naming practices ................................ 22 2.2.2 A grammar of Chinese relationships .................................................................................. 23 2.2.3 A grammar of Chinese names ............................................................................................ 27 2.2.4 Romanised Chinese names: lost in translation .................................................................. 32 Summary of section 2.2 ................................................................................................................ 34 2.3 Research into practices of English name use among domestic and diasporic Chinese and Taiwanese .......................................................................................................................... 35 2.3.1 On the acquisition and use of English names……………………………………………………………….39 2.3.2 Catering or convenience accounts ..................................................................................... 46 2.3.3 Involvement accounts ........................................................................................................ 48 2.3.4 Processing fluency and discriminatory hiring practices. ................................................... 51 2.3.5 Westernisation, imagined communities, imagined identities and assimilation. .............. 53 2.4 Theoretical framing: dialogised heteroglossia and a sociolinguistics of (relocalised) globalisation…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………59 2.4.1 Sociolinguistics of globalisation ......................................................................................... 61 2.4.2 Language as local and the difference of the same. ........................................................... 67 2.4.3 Conclusion to the Literature Review ................................................................................. 71 1 3. Research design 3.1 Epistemological and theoretical frameworks .................................................................... 76 3.2 Qualitative research methodology and ethnographic methods ....................................... 77 3.3 Research questions ............................................................................................................ 83 3.4 Data collection and participant recruitment ..................................................................... 84 3.5 Transcription, coding and analysis of data ........................................................................ 91 3.6 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 100 4. Findings 4.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 101 4.2 The language practices being undertaken ....................................................................... 102 4.3 Origins and sources .......................................................................................................... 107 4.4 Resistance ........................................................................................................................ 120 4.5 Relationality ..................................................................................................................... 139 4.6 Modality ........................................................................................................................... 143 4.7 Identity ............................................................................................................................. 147 4.8 Heteroglossia ................................................................................................................... 166 4.9 Relocalisation ................................................................................................................... 169 4.10 Summary ........................................................................................................................
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