A conversation with Marlon Ariyasinghe about gates and gatekeepers
There was a rare literary event at the University of Peradeniya last
week. Dubbed 'SLAM 2010', it consisted of writers reading from
published, to-be-published and perhaps 'unpublishable' work and a couple
of panel discussions, one on 'post-war literature' and one on the
publishing industry. Vihanga Perera, poet, novelist, academic and
event-organizer, quipped that the proceedings would have given me enough
material for 30 articles. A few, I responded.
There are a lot of things to say but I shall leave event-review for
another day. I will limit comment here to a thought-provoking poem read
by Marlon Ariyasinghe, who was classed as a 'budding poet' in what was
possibly a careless moment when titling the programme. Among the six
'budding' poets featured were 3 who have published collections and three
whose work was by no means inferior to the 'non-budding' or 'budded and
flowered/flowering' writers.
Marlon read from a collection that's going to be published in
January, titled 'froteztology'. The 'word' comes from the poem so here
goes:
I is wanting to Frotezt
I is wanting to frotezt,
Againzt theeze mad men
Who appear radically
But think and live ideally
And strain us linguistically
I is very worry
"To think that thinking men
Should think so wrongly"
Imagination is stunted
Creativity: not allowed!
We are brainwashed out of our
Vulgar un-linguistic ways
And reformed or forced to reform
To be radicals with no faze
Say special with a IS
And face with a Z
Protest with a F
And F*** with a P
Say it proudly.
So puck opp n let we be.
Ok, the asterisks were inserted by me and that has nothing to do with
any issue I may have with the content of the poem; just editorial
necessity that is far less pernicious than the straight-jacketing the
poet refers to, especially given the fact that the restrictions come,
according to him, from self-appointed authorities on
language-liberation.
This is a poem that need to be read out loud to capture the play on
the politics of language standard, for example those surrounding the 'o'
sound, i.e. the 'Yakko-O' (as opposed to the 'Snooty-O'). Print doesn't
do it and apologies on this account. I had a question, which I asked
then: 'Isn't it because you can say 'f*** off' that you can say 'puck
opp'? Marlon conceded that there was some logic in my proposition. We
had a conversation over email subsequently which might illustrate some
of the issues pertaining to language standards and I believe reproducing
the gist would be better (and perhaps more entertaining) than
commentary.
I just asked him to send me the poem and he said, 'This poem is aimed
at those at the university who promote academic writing but at the same
time say that we need to broaden linguistic barriers.' Marlon is not a
big fan of 'English Our Way', by the way.
I responded, 'Those who rubbish language standards don't say puck-orp
and don't use such 'language' when they themselves write. They only use
it in the dialogues they insert, though, and this only affirms language
hierarchies.'
Marlon agreed: 'Exactly. They only criticize it in theory and they
themselves speak in an RP accent (RP, he told me later, was 'Queen's
English' or 'Received Pronunciation'). They may as you say bend language
boundaries in speech, but this is also a "made-up" effort.' He pointed
out that it is fashionable to say there's nothing wrong in bending, but
that in reality such bending-advocates do not dream of doing it,
especially in writing.
I tossed my two-cents' worth.
'I think that language standards don't have any defensible theoretical
foundation.
Having said that I am acutely aware, as you are, that it is a class
instrument that is mercilessly employed. We can take one of two
approaches. We can say 'f*** it, it is not ours' or we can learn it so
that we can meet sword with sword and not butter-knife. It's a simple
mechanism taken from the realities of combat.'
I think there are 4 categories of people who talk about this issue.
There are the puritans, who think there's only one family of Englishes,
the RP Family.
There are the sour-grapers, who dismiss English as para bhashawa
(foreign language), tag it to the colonial enterprise and all kinds of
discriminations and marginalizations consequent to it and advocate a
'Mother Tongue Only' approach to language. That's a dying breed these
days as more and more people realize the disservice that S.W.R.D.
Bandaranaike did to those who were not RP-privileged. Then there are
those who Marlon takes issue with, that is, the class of
academics/writers who promote anything-goes English as a progressive and
even anti-colonial or anti-establishment instrument but are suspiciously
reluctant to put those words where there mouths are, literally and
metaphorically.
Then there are those who take cognizance of the politics pertaining
to language, language standards as well as the relevant hierarchies,
especially the hands-off aspect of promoting Yakkho-English in order to
keep the riff-raff off their 'traditional homeland' called
Snooty-English.
It is not clear in the poem where Marlon stands, the third or the
fourth of the above categories or in a fifth, perhaps, i.e. located
somewhere between the two. I told him I was of the view that I feel the
third category considers people like Vihanga Perera a threat because
they (those like Vihanga) know this standard business is crap but are
not lacking in weapons of any 'standard'-class, from the supiri-snooty
to the yakma-yakkho.
Marlon located himself: 'The only way to criticize or even break the
standard is to know the standard (you have to know your enemy).
Mispronunciation and bad grammar are "radical" only when we know the
correct standard.'
He still had a question, and one which I had too: 'But don't you
think that once we learn and use the standard we have already lost the
battle. Since knowing it means that we are a part of it; that we
ourselves become one of those "gate keepers". This is my dilemma. What
do you think? Is there any way out of this predicament? To say f... the
standard and not learn it will only be a disadvantage because we will
not be taken seriously. The second approach makes us a part of the
system.
'Mispronunciation and bad grammar are "radical" only when we know the
standard'. A great line, I thought. Here's my response: 'We can choose
to be gatekeepers or we can be gate-openers; make sure we do everything
possible to erase the gate, i.e irrelevance the gate. It has to be
conscious. We got to pick and choose method and hope like hell we get it
right, given that our ignorance is infinite.'
I think there's a radical politics in English 'Standarding' and that
what passes off as 'radical' right now is complicit in the elite
project, i.e. the entrenching of Snooty-English. I think those who
organized 'SLAM 2010' have got it right.
The poetry that was read, Marlon's 'I is wanting to Frotezt' was not
the only poem that consciously articulated this radicalism, bodes well
for an informed intervention in this regard. Something good to look
forwards to in the little dingy backroom of the literature archives of
Sri Lanka where Englishes languish, I felt.
And since Marlon brought up the terms 'gate-keeper', the following
would be a good puck-opp flourish to end this comment. Eric Alterman a
professor of English and journalism at the City University of New York,
writing about Wikileaks disclosures ('Do you want to know a (top)
secret?') and claiming that mainstream editors and reporters may be
forgiven for wondering just how long they can remain central (in dramas
such as the one generated by the revelations), asks, 'when the gate's
been toppled, how long does the keeper keep a job?'
It is not about the gatekeeper. It is about the gate. Maybe. Let's
meditate on this.
Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who can be reached at
[email protected]
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