English Language Hierarchy

“I didn’t come to this conference to speak Chinese. I came to speak English and solve issues. The application clearly stated that the primary language would be in English, so why are we even having this discussion?!” An Indian-American delegate said angrily.

I raised my hand and the facilitator called on me. “This point of this exercise,” I said, looking straight at him, “is to understand that language hierarchy exists, and demonstrate how some voices are silenced by language barriers, while others thrive in them. We’re in Taiwan for goodness sake, and the Taiwanese delegates are speaking English on our behalf. They’ve worked three times as hard so that they can speak to us in our mother tongue. That’s the whole point of the conference.”

I was fuming. The fact that the other American delegate in the Taiwan America Student Conference didn’t understand that this debrief session, held in Chinese, was an anomaly from all the others we had had in English filled me with a passionate rage.

To me, the exercise was simple: Americans needed to understand that there was a language hierarchy, where English trumps all, and how easy it is for Americans to converse with our international friends because they work so hard to meet us at our native level of proficiency in their second or third language.

Why couldn’t he see that when the language of the debrief session changed to Chinese, more Taiwanese girls raised their hands and spoke passionately on the topic of independent media in Taiwan and Hong Kong? I understood his need to speak up and share his thoughts and his desire to want to be a part of the discussion, but by isolating him in his own language barrier, the frustration that bubbled over was how I’m sure so many others felt when trying to express themselves in English.

This entire exercise was a great lesson. It stuck a nerve into the core of the English language supremacy and humbled the international relations. What happens when Mandarin Chinese dominates and the voices that speak only English are tuned out?

At the time, my level of Chinese was at a beginner level. The other delegate had arrived in Taiwan to participate in the conference with no Mandarin skills whatsoever. He felt comforted by the small print that said, “English will be the primary language,” so when that sense of security was stripped away from him, he lost it.

And while I couldn’t participate in the robust discussion — I could tell it was robust from the number of people speaking, the speed and passion in which they spoke, the number of new voices I heard rise up and add to the dialogue — I was the one that had instigated it.

As the lead cross-cultural facilitator of a student-led cross-cultural conference, I was in charge of facilitating the challenging cultural conversations between the American and Taiwanese delegates on religion, identity, politics, dignity, and relationships.

I saw how some voices, like the gentleman I described, dominated the discussions when they were in English. He was loud, passionate, argumentative for the sake of furthering the dialogue and fleshing out ideas, but his style was jarring to the Taiwanese delegates. I could tell.

Standing at the front of the long traveler’s bus, where I could see the facial expression of every delegate sitting in the little orange seats, I noticed that when he spoke very fast in English, some of the Taiwanese delegates looked checked out, as if they couldn’t keep up with his words, then translate it to Chinese, and then conjure up a response and then translate back into English to add to the discussion.

It was too fast of a turnaround, so they simply sat there with their hands folded neatly on their laps or looked out of the windows at the passing scenery.

I always asked for new voices to speak, called on delegates that hadn’t said anything to encourage them to share their thoughts when I realized that several of them did not understand what a debrief was, let alone what they were supposed to share.

My responsibility was to facilitate the discussion and get everyone to feel confident in sharing their opinions. Not to be silenced by the cultural or language barriers, but to feel emboldened and empowered by them — my job as a facilitator was to eliminate those barriers and bring people together.

So I suggested that we hold one debrief session in Mandarin Chinese, just to see what would happen, in the hopes that the voices once silenced by fast English could be set free in their native Chinese.

And my hypothesis was right. Those voices came out, loud and strong, passionate and fierce, in tones and with facial expressions that were the complete opposite from what I had seen.

So when the American delegate expressed his feelings at the end of the session, when the group reverted back to English to debrief having a session in Chinese, I was upset that he couldn’t see the point of the exercise. I then realized that in my passionate retort, I had not set the expectations clearly enough for him to understand the objectives of the exercise.

For the Taiwanese students, I hoped more delegates would share their opinions, especially many of the female ones. I knew they were thinking and they were alert and aware of what was going on, but for some reason, they wouldn’t share as often.

As the facilitator, I wished for them to feel confident in their words and statements and feel empowered in adding to the dialogue, a notion I knew they wanted too, because of the numerous conversations we’d one-on-one after every group debrief session was over. They wanted to participate, they wanted to understand, but the pace was too fast for them to keep up.

For the Americans, I hoped they would become humbled by the language barrier present, experience what it was like to listen to a language that was not 100% their own, try to quickly translate the rapid Mandarin phrases into English, generate a response and then contribute their thoughts to the discussion using Mandarin.

Through the experience, I wished for them to understand the struggle with language in the hopes that it would humble some of the loud voices and allow for the delegates to understand one another, and their respective experiences of frustration, relief, expression and listening, all together.

What I learned from this experience was that expectations must be made clear from the onset and fit the cultural parameters of understanding that each person has.

I also learned that what I see as humbling and important is what others may perceive to be losing face and disorienting. The sensation of taking away a person’s voice by merely switching the language evoked strong emotions of anger.

While the exercise caused tension in the group, it enabled each delegate to experience a different set of emotions, and when we all regrouped an hour later to discuss what had happened, after heads and hearts had cooled, many grew a deeper understanding of what the true purpose of facilitation was. They sat next to the people they disagreed with and talked through their issues and clarified what they had felt and what was said.

The purpose of facilitation is to create a safe space of learning, where individuals can respectfully disagree or at the very least understand one another’s ideas. I don’t believe in complete happily ever afters, but I do believe having tough conversations can bring out deeper understanding and respect for the diversity of thoughts, backgrounds and cultures among us all. So after three weeks, that’s what we were able to accomplish.