Super-standard English — Migrant Barrier

As Australian culture has become increasingly diverse in its co-cultures over the last century, many inter-cultural exchanges take place as a norm in society, be this in the street, schools, universities or in the workplace. Through the combination of all of these co-cultures, be they Christians, Muslims or Hispanics, a multitude of pragmatic difficulties emerge, especially when they begin to infringe on the lifestyles of these co-cultures if their own linguistic nature differs too greatly from the norm of the dominant culture. These inter-cultural pragma-linguistic difficulties can then lead to discrimination and in turn rising rates of unemployment in particular co-cultures, the focus of this paper being Pakistanis and their pragmatic difficulties relating to employment using fine dining restaurant kitchens within Australia as a study.

These pragmatic difficulties are most prevalent in the co-culture of Pakistanis in Australian society. As worldwide 80% of Muslims live in non Arab-states. 96% of Pakistan’s population being Muslim, they face cross-cultural pragmatic difficulties on a daily basis as expats. As the middle east boasts the highest unemployment rate in the world many men will leave their families in search of jobs. “…moving away from home has become almost a condition of working life” preferential choices for migrants being North America and Australia.

The difficulties of one culture interacting with another have existed for centuries, this interaction has been perpetuated by the globalisation process influencing migration. As greater numbers of migrants arrive in Australia taking on English as a second language (ESL), they try and accomplish this as quickly as possible to develop the means to get out in the work force and start supplying their families with money, this has perpetuated a growing disparity between syntax norms, and has become increasingly more prevalent in day to day inter-cultural discourse. As the way words in the context of their home ‘Arab-nations’ differs in ways to our own, the meaning behind utterances can be misunderstood. ‘Thomas states “there are several levels of ‘speaker meaning’ and in order to fully grasp the force behind an utterance one must be able to “assign sense and reference to the speaker’s words” (level one speaker meaning) and “assign force and value to the speaker’s words” (level two speaker meaning”).

As most ESL students merely learn the semantic rules of English and not the 2nd level pragmatic principles of the speaker meaning, Cutting’s ‘speech act theory’ applies. What individual utterances are intended to do often is not achieved without the deeper level of knowledge in the language. In daily life this can directly affect these ESL co-cultures, particularly in the fine dining restaurant kitchen context.

Pakistani workers are a high percentage of the hiring rate in hospitality. 80% of kitchen-hands hired in the local business ‘Diggies’ hail from Pakistan. This brings on a volatile mix of cultures. As the standard chef/apprentice in Australia is part of the lower middle class socio-economic group , general education as to extra-cultural norms is low. This then propagates an underlying ethno-centricism. This coupled with the migrant’s mediocre grasp on the English language bring on possible inter-cultural difficulties in communication and assimilation.

Studying ELS, students are invariably taught to be ‘hyper-correct’. Teachers overlook the tendency of the student to flout the conventions of English, this super-standard level of discourse is rarely achieved by native speakers. This in turn proves to be problematic as native speakers employ jargon, idioms etc.

The kitchen jargon of “on the pass”; becomes hard for Pakistanis to understand as this cultural argot confuses ESL students. The supposed schema of these situations is grounded in their knowledge of super-standard English, where in reality, jargons, slang and idioms are prevalent in the Australian cultural discourse norms. The difficulties of inter-cultural comprehension ferment growing tension as the speech acts are rarely achieved between the two co-cultures.

The excessive use of profanities promotes misunderstanding in the workplace. E.g. ‘(B)ullshit’ and other seemingly intense profanities. In this particular context these profanities are used in excess and are frequently used directed towards someone, however due to their disproportionate use, they lose their sense of profanity. When directed towards an ESL individual, a socio-pragmatic failure occurs.This is deemed highly inappropriate in their culture. This is due directly to the misunderstanding of speech acts. As the three levels of the act must be achieved for a successful exchange; the first being what is said, the actual profanity; second, the illocutionary force, an expression of urgency through this cultural key word. This stage is critical, as in inter-cultural communication this is where most difficulties arise. The last level, the perlocutionary effect, is the effect on the hearer, the ill-perceived aggression. Cumulatively, this holistic approach shows the breakdown of communication and subsequent tension affected.

A key factor leading to inter-pragmatic difficulties in the workplace is the cross-cultural differences of reality vs. schema. A typical attitude of pakistani workplaces could be seen with “work ethics take a back seat to socializing and personal obligations”. This clash of schema and reality creates a socio-pragmatic failure, the meaning ascribed to the notion of ‘hard work’ is altered between them.

The reflection of one’s frame of mind can be influenced simply in the way in which one utters a word, the perlocutionary effect. Miscommunication is attributed to the prosody of the utterance. A study into prosody in kitchens was undertaken by Gumperz (1989), in comparing the differences of reactions between white kitchen staff serving gravy and Pakistani kitchen staff performing the same task. Gumperz observed a difference in perlocutionary effect. Rising intonation and pitch on the utterance of the question “gravy?” conveyed politeness, whereas when this was asked with differing prosody, the pragmatic meaning came across as a blank statement “gravy, take it or leave it.” This unintentionally confronting utterance is an example of the reason for many pragma-linguistic failures in the workplace.

This concept of differences in prosody can impact on an ESL learner’s outer concept of ‘face’ and face saving’ again without their own knowledge. As in regular discourse, the Australian ‘face saving norms’ would not be seen as being adhered to. As the simple rising intonation and pitch in a question is an Australian norm, most would not consciously consider this in daily communication, it begins to prove an underlying factor in inter-cultural communicative failure. This concept of ‘face saving’ in the workplace would come across differently to Pakistanis as the earlier discussed schemas of the workplace differ.

These slight differences in pragmalinguistic exchanges can influence ones perception on an individual to a large extent. These pragmalinguistic/sociolinguistic intercultural communicative failures become a foggy two way mirror, with much being lost in translation of the same language.