But, this topic has visited my mind a few times the past few days.
In Singapore, one of the reasons why the english language cannot become a mother tongue is that it happens to be a socio-economic resource. With such value ascribed to the language, assigning it to any particular ethnic group may be seen as an advantaging of that group.
A (perhaps largely misinformed) belief in the "native speaker" ideology may be responsible to why "owning" the english language constitutes an unfair advantage. Are AngMohs snapping up our jobs? Is it only because they speak better english? No wait... do they even speak better english?
My experience staying in angsana tells me: no.
But anyway, just how does english function as a socio-economic resource? Is it because it is the language of administration? But that doesn't take you far. Is it because the rich are english and hence it english is necessary for transactions with them? Is it about western MNCs?
I don't think so. From my personal experience, I think that it exists in us an extremely misinformed impression that a person's intellect is tied to his/her ability to speak good english.
Sometime ago I attended an AIESEC conference in SIM. The speakers were a mix of professional public speakers as well as... professional money makers. As you can already tell from my distinction, some of them, though successful, were awful at public speaking. Most memorable of all, the speaker for Rich Dad (a very irritating name btw, rich dad? please).
And so I can say that he had little persuasion on me. In fact, everything he said sounded like nonsense, hard sell, shitty motivational cliche crap that my ears could not find space for.
Well it would all be nonsense if not for the fact that (if he is honest and truthful) the things he shared were the very methods he took to make millions.
It could have been the poor command of english... or the obvious, fragile front of confidence plastered over someone who was obviously quite an introvert. Maybe it was more than the language, it was the fractured experience.
For now, I do admit that I judge a person's intellect by their wit in manipulating the language. I'll also freely admit that this is poor judgment on my part.
I still maintain, however, that this assessment exists in majority of the population.
It's just like how everyone gets hyped over an angmoh lecturer... only to have it, at times, torn down by listening carefully and realising that it's the language and not the content that we're all over.
Take Ris Low for example. Ever heard her interview in Chinese? I haven't, though I've heard people's reaction to it.
They realised that she wasn't so stupid after all.
Her fluent chinese totally bought them over, many were relieved when they found that they can attribute her stupid appearance to a poor command of the english language.
But if you think about it... if you cling to the content...
Some things remain stupid even when fluently conveyed.
If I were to revise the statement "the english language is a socio economic factor because it injects credence by creating an impression of intelligence"
it would be
"the english language is a socio economic factor because it capitalises on the phenomenon where people derive too much value from it."
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