A computer monitor supplies a third screen, not a means of active engage-
ment but an additional viewing mechanism, appearing to make transparent
the workings of the piece via an overall 'timeline'. The technology used to
create the work and control different devices (two DVD players and a CD
player, 'switching each one on and off, locating specific sections within a disk
to create a dialogue with the different elements of the work'), is sophisticated
yet unable to 'converse' with seamless jumps: 'It takes a couple of seconds to
"locate" and "trigger" the next bit of footage. As it jumps, there is a break in
transmission' (Tan and Willmoth, 2002).
Digital media is utilized in extrapolation of video's
potential to become a conceptual technology, one that can look at the
history of the image, of sound/sense articulation in language and
speech, and of narrative through a refiguration of space and a multiple
mapping of time. (Turim, 1990: 342).
On closer inspection, the timeline reveals itself to be something of a
comforting 'ruse', its structure artificial, its simplifications belying
discrepancies and lapses in timing between the representation and
encounter of image/sound events. Like the contents of an accompanying
'research book', presented without 'beginning or ending or index' (Tan and
Willmoth, 2002), supplementing, coinciding with, and distracting from other
parts of the work, this third screen offers only an illusory unifying meta-
narrative: far from transparent, the black background, at once flat and
fathomless, simply conceals and swallows the excesses.
Is it a coincidence that we name the most inventive, innovative and
homely uses of language as pidgin? (Papastergiadis, 2002)
From 'pidgin' to 'pigeon' and back again - the slippage suggests the latter as
metaphor for the former, language as carrier, bearer or messenger of
meanings picked up and dropped intact, a mode of delivery. However, the
recurrence of ruptured speech-acts and indeterminate sounds evokes
language as an always already interrupted transmission, dispossessed of its
source. Tensions between such formulations are intimated in the
juxtaposition of 'carriers' - carrier pigeons, aircraft carriers, carrier waves.
Unlike pigeons and aircraft, which may be prescribed routes and
destinations, the electromagnetic waves modulated to carry a signal in, for example, radio transmission, guarantee no single, final point of arrival. Birds
take off, planes come in, compelled or instructed by a necessity to 'home', to
return to/from a/loft. Contrasting predetermined schedules of departure and
return, sounds diffuse in multiple directions, after in(de)finite, indeed
infinite courses. As meanings slide, deferred with each reverberation, the
notion of language as 'true' carrier is countered by an associated potential as
harbinger of disease, infection, pollution and corruption, and simultaneously
undone by its homonym - for 'pigeon' can also mean a decoy. [8]
Preoccupations with precursors and beginnings pervade dictionary
definitions of 'pidgin'. Peppered with firsts, chief, secondary, minor,
denigrated as 'trivial' and 'derivative' (Steiner, 1975: 44), its very name is
thought to be a 'corruption', a Chinese mispronunciation of 'business'
(Sebba, 1997: 26). In their ever-increasing proliferations, pidgins deflect and
defer questions of origins, attesting rather to relations of trade and power
concomitant with contexts and processes of colonization and globalization,
as suggested by the non-exhaustive or exclusive classifications or 'broad
types' proffered by linguists:
1. Military and police pidgins
2. Seafaring and trade pidgins and creoles
3. Plantation pidgins and creoles
4. Mine and construction pidgins
5. Immigrants' pidgins
6. Tourist pidgins
7. Urban contact vernaculars (Sebba, 1997: 27)
The earliest known European pidgin ('Sabir' or 'Lingua Franca') is of military
origin, thought to have emerged after the late 11th century with the Crusades
(Sebba, 1997). Its retrospective designation arises however out of the
'mispronunciation' classifying one of the oldest varieties of English-lexicon,
non-native secondary or auxiliary 'makeshift' languages, necessitated by and
historically intertwined with economic relations between European colonial
and Chinese imperial powers. In turn, with possible roots in an earlier
Portuguese pidgin used around the Macau from the mid 16th century,
Chinese Pidgin English, or CPE, emerged and developed into a regional
'lingua franca' (Welsh, 1997: 46). [9]From the establishment of a trading station
in Canton (Guangzhou) in 1664 to the opening of several treaty ports to
foreign trade following the Opium War around 1843, CPE - comprising 'a
vocabulary of English, Chinese, Portuguese and Anglo-Indian words arranged
according to Cantonese syntax' (Welsh, 1997) - came to serve as a 'socially
neutral' common language, facilitating communication between Europeans
and Chinese 'at arm's length'. [10]
As a 'contact zone' between not two but, here, at least four languages, pidgin
may entail the appropriation and transformation not of a single 'dominant'
tongue, but of several coterminous languages. Rather than taking 'first' and
'primary' as designations of some untainted a priori original, such terms
maybe read as impositions indicative of hierarchical economic and political relations between synchronic cultures, whose diachronic ranking hazardously disregards the at least two-way traffic already jamming the proverbial streets.
Whether one 'begins' with English, Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish or
Arabic, the to-and-fro translation of pidgin intimates the incessant and mutual
susceptibility and capacity for invention and 'adulteration'. [11]
Chinglish Pinyin Engrish
CPE is said to have completed a 300-year 'life cycle', falling out of use from
about 1900 (Sebba, 1997: 67). It might be argued, however, that the increasingly widespread teaching of Standard English in mainland China over the
last century has ironically brought about a certain revitalization of CPE in the
form of 'Chinglish', the poor English translations found in many public
places, whose erroneous vocabulary and grammar arise in part from combinations of careless spelling, out-of-date textbooks and literal translations of
Chinese colloquialisms and idioms. A cause of amusement for foreigners and
embarrassment to the Beijing government (who a month after their confirmation in 2002 as host for the 2008 Olympics Games, launched a campaign
to eradicate Chinglish by this date), [12] its prevalence is apparent not only as a
means of communication between locals and foreigners, but also between
locals and peoples from other regions in China (whose dialects may be
mutually unintelligible) as a lingua franca.
If 'standard' or 'print' languages come to hierarchically distinguish
geographies and subjects, economically and politically empowered or disem-
powered according to their ability, or otherwise, to speak the 'standard', they
also succeed in rendering other dialects (a social rather than linguistic
distinction) inferior (Anderson, 1991). Like 'Standard English', the notion of
'Standard Chinese' serves nation- and economy-building interests, belying a
multiplicity of ethnicities and language. [13]
China ... is not a simple, homogeneous nation, and the Chinese
language has a complex political relationship to the notion of 'China.'
Within China there is not just one language, but a multiplicity of
languages, ranging from Tibetan and Mongolian to the majority Han
language. Even in the Han language, the spoken form has hundreds of
different varieties, many of them as different as Spanish from Italian.
The official language, 'Mandarin,' or putonghua, serves the same
political function as English once did in the British Isles, to integrate
the nation, or as English did for the old 'British Empire.' Like English
across the empire, even putonghua, the standard language, is spoken
in different ways in different parts of mainland China, which have
immediate political readings and effects. And then there are Taiwan and
Hong Kong, with their form of the standard language existing alongside
other forms of Chinese or other languages. (Hodge and Kam, 1998: 9)
Language is the mate of empire. (Manuel de Nebrija) [14]
A friend performs an interesting slippage, repeatedly referring to PIDGIN as
PINYIN - in a sense, pidgin's 'other'. For whereas pinyin denotes a
Romanized transliteration of written Chinese characters, authorized in the
late 1950s in a drive to standardize Chinese in translation, pidgin (here in its
Chinglish variations), by contrast, may be said to arise out of unauthorized
translations and ad hoc improvisations, occupying a fluid orality between
written standards. [15] Where pinyin serves alongside Mandarin or Putonghua
(literally, 'common speech') as a means of homogenizing and solidifying
Chinese against the dominance of English (and by extension against
numerous other Chinese 'dialects'), pidgin neither favours nor fears the
supremacy of any language, sited as it is in the perforated borders in-
between.
Since the 1984 signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong's
future, contestations over language as a site of power, authority and identity
have been particularly evident in controversies surrounding the official
medium of instruction in Hong Kong's schools. In spite of the dominance of
Anglo-Chinese schools during colonial rule, in which English was designated
as the official language of instruction, the government continuously faced
issues over the competency of usage and pervasiveness of Chinglish in the
teaching-learning process. Concurrently, recommendations regarding the
learning of Putonghua have seen a shift from optional extracurricular activity
to a core curriculum subject, and as post-reunification trade with China
continues to expand, so speculations increase that it will eventually supplant
English and Cantonese as the language of instruction, power, government
(Postiglione, 1996: 98-123).
Such trends have been met with resistance from those who regard
Cantonese, and even Chinglish, as Hong Kong's mother tongue, whose
idiosyncracies are seen as crucial to its cultural identity. As Kwai-Cheung Lo
(2000) writes:
... the vitality of Hong Kong's language, many believe, lies precisely in
its intractability to the taming by standard Chinese.
The language of Hong Kong . . . is a schizophrenic contextual
combination of the vernacular Cantonese, the written form of Chinese,
and verbal, written, and broken English. Many cultural critics of Hong
Kong are proud of this hybrid language, and they see in this linguistic
predicament as a positive opportunity both for constructing a critical
discourse against pure Chinese national tradition and for problema-
tizing the classic binary opposition between East and West. (pp. 185-6,
original emphasis)
