The triumph of tagalog and the dominance of the discourse on english language politics in the philippines during the american colonial period 7

CHAPTER SEVEN IN DEFENSE OF TAGALOG, IN ENGLISH Though it probably had began earlier, the story of the Filipino language campaign carried out in English will begin here in 1916 This is the year of the passing of the historic Jones Law in the American legislature It was the law that granted the Philippines its autonomy, formally and officially committed the United States to Philippine independence, and set into place the Filipinization of the Philippine bureaucracy The story begins in October of 1916 Manuel Quezon had just returned from America, having been there for several years as the resident commissioner campaigning for the passage of the Jones Act Quezon returned a hero in October of that year having successfully secured a promise of Philippine independence through the Jones Law He was met by hordes of people; the crowd, described by Quezon himself was a throng made up of “old and young alike, including children [who] stood for hours, waiting to cheer me when I landed.”485 Meetings, banquets, and parades were held to mark the historic occasion and celebrate Quezon’s success In one such banquet, held at the Hotel de France, on October 28, 1916, Jorge Bocobo, a professor at the University of the Philippines, possibly in reaction to a speech Quezon made where he had declared his support for the English policy but toyed with the possibility of using the Philippine language as the medium of instruction, outlined his own position on the language issue In his speech, Bocobo warns about the dangers of Filipino children losing their identity in the tidal wave of American thought Unlike most who were lauding the passage of the Jones Law, Bocobo was wary of it, fearing that Filipinos would be complacent with mere autonomy “It would deaden the aspirations for national freedom in our children and dull the edge of love of country if their meat and drink shall be the English language and American thought,”486 he argued His solution to this was the scrapping of the policy of English as the medium of 485 Manuel Luis Quezon, The Good Fight, (New York: Appleton-Century, 1946), 132 Quoted in Cecilia Bocobo Olivar, “Jorge Bocobo—His Life and Ideas as Educator and Jurist” (Ph.D diss., University of the Philippines, 1975), 669 486 187 instruction and in its place the use of “the local dialects” as the basis for instruction in primary schools Bocobo’s position was not the majority position among the Spanish speaking and English proficient power elite—the lawmakers and government leaders, the professionals, businessmen and university professors Neither was his position a completely radical and alien one Less than ten years before, the Corrales bill487, which provided for the use of the local languages as the medium of instruction, was passed by the Philippine Assembly (a body of elected officials working as the lower house) but then vetoed by the Philippine Commission (a small body of officials appointed by the American colonial government and which functioned as the upper house) Many from the older generation who had participated in the revolution had, from the outset, called for Tagalog as the medium of instruction By 1916, however, English would have many supporters among the Filipinos Quezon, who, in 1916 was seen as the one who would lead the Philippines to independence, was ambivalent about the language policy and would change his position several times over the next few years For this new generation who had been educated in English under the American public school system (many, Bocobo included, had even been educated in America itself) and who would use English as their primary medium of expression, 1916 would be the turning point at which they could more confidently articulate their understanding of the Philippine nation and the role of the different languages in it Bocobo’s testimony would be among the first rendered in English that would give its support to the Philippine languages With Woodrow Wilson’s election to the presidency of the United States in 1913, the mood in the Philippines shifted with the feeling that independence was just around the corner Wilson was a Democrat and had always been liberal regarding his views on the Philippines 487 Many sources that mention this bill mention it as being filed by Manuel Corrales In 1907, the Philippine Assembly had two representatives from Misamis, Manuel Corrales and Carlos Corrales; they were brothers The Diario de Sesiones de la Primera Asemblea Filipina (November 6, 1907, page 104), however, reports that it was Carlos and not Manuel who filed this all-important and historic bill The title of the bill is: “Ley que reforma al articulo 14 de la Ley No 74 de la Comision de Filipinas, ser le de 1901, en el sentido de que, juntamente la enseñanza del idioma ingles se de tambien en la Escuelas Publicas Primrias la enseñanza en la dialectos mas mas generalizado en la region pertenezcan; autorizado el Director de Bureau de Instruccion Publica para que invierta, de los fondos destinados a este Bureau, la cantidad necessaria a los efectos se esta ley, y sobre otros extremos.” 188 Wilson’s new appointee as governor general of the Philippines was Francis Burton Harrison who, upon his arrival in the Philippines, read Wilson’s message to the Filipino people that independence was to be their prime concern: “Every step we take will be taken with a view to the ultimate independence if the Islands and as a preparation for that independence.”488 Thus, with a democratic government in place, the Jones Act was passed into law in August of 1916 Without designating a date, the Jones Law officially proclaimed the Unites States’ intention to grant the Philippines its independence The central feature of the Law was the provision for a Philippine Senate (to replace the Philippine Commission) thus allowing for a full Philippine legislature The new Philippine Senate was also going to be able to appoint virtually all the heads of the executive offices While the Jones Law provided for the beginnings of Philippine control of its own laws, it still had the imprint of American control especially with regard to trade tariffs, timber and mining lands and public education America still held the right to appoint its governor general and its vice governor general who, according to section 23 of the Law, “shall be the head of the executive department known as the department of public instruction, which shall include the bureau of education and the bureau of health.”489 The American colonial government was still unwilling for Filipinos to set their policies regarding public instruction It is evident that for them the English policy was non-negotiable This would be proven, confirmed, and “carved in stone” twenty years later when, written into the law that would finally give Filipinos their independence was the imperative that the Philippine constitution stipulate English as the medium of instruction in public schools In 1934, the Americans would promise to finally grant the Philippines their freedom within ten years but it was not granting the Filipinos the freedom to decide what language Filipino school children would receive instruction, In 1916, however, the medium of instruction policy, though under the control still of the United States, was technically not yet “carved in stone.” Thus, this period between 1916 and 1934 saw some of the most exciting debates regarding language 1916 itself was a decisive moment when Filipinos felt that they were now finally taking the reigns of nation building 488 Francis Burton Harrison, The Corner-stone of Philippine Independence, 50 Philippines Free Press Supplement, “The Jones Act: Full Text of the Act Which Gave the Filipino People the Senate Whose Inauguration was Celebrated Last Monday,” 21 October 1916, VII 489 189 Harrison says of this time: Anyone who was present in the Philippines during those days will forever remember the outburst of wild enthusiasm of the people In every possible way, demonstration was made of their pride, satisfaction and gratitude for the self-government granted.”490 Writers, linguists, educators, politicians, and public intellectuals, all had a position on the language question and since many of the positions were contending, the debates were lively, sustained, and compelling The positions made between 1903 and 1907 in the Muling Pagsilang essays were not part of a debate They were statements of identity, cries of desperation, and sometimes a call to arms However, maybe because as Chapter Four tried to show, during the first decade of the century, the language debates were focused more on whether it was English or Spanish that was going to become the lingua franca No one was openly engaging the Muling Pagsilang writers in a debate over the worth of the local languages It was as though the Muling Pagsilang writers were speaking to and among themselves and were mostly agreeing with each other In 1916, however, Filipinos who were schooled under the American public school system and were therefore more exposed to American values and rhetoric were now the leaders of Philippine society Even the “old guards” of the revolution were taking on positions within the establishment Now, there was to be real debates about language even if the debates were ultimately to be made moot by the uncompromising colonial language policy The Bocobo-Osias Debate The Bocobo-Osias debate on language is mentioned in a number of linguistic histories as an important event in Philippine linguistic history.491 Not one of these studies, however, reveal 490 Harrison, The Corner-stone ., 195 491 See Cecilia Bocobo Olivar, “Jorge Bocobo—His Life and Ideas .,” 669-670 Olivar takes this information from an article written by Jorge Bocobo himself which appeared in The Manila Times in 1953 She quotes him as saying “Way back in 1916, Senator Osias and I had a friendly debate in a series of articles in the Manila Press over the question of whether or not the local vernacular should be used as the medium of instruction.” The name of the publication and the exact dates of publication are not mentioned This information is repeated in Emma J Fonacier Bernabe, Language Policy Formation, Programming, Implementation and Evaluation in Philippine Education (1565-1974), (Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines, 1987), 38 Bernabe cites Olivar as the source of this information It is also repeated in Pamfilo D Catacataca and Clemencia C Espiritu, Wikang Filipino: Kasaysayan at Pag-unlad, (Manila: Rex Book 190 the precise bibliographical information for the debates nor describe the contents of the debate much less offer an analysis.492 The debates are a manifestation, not so much of new and unique ideas about language and its relation to the nascent nation as much as it is an expression of the new discourses that were present during this period It is the manner of the telling much more than what is actually said that reveals far more about the politics of language during this moment in history It is no small coincidence that this debate started in 1916, the year the Jones Law was passed The debate was triggered by an editorial written by Bocobo in October of 1916 for the Philippine Columbian Notes, of which Bocobo was editor The October edition of the Philippine Colombian Notes was focused on the passage of the Jones Act and Quezon’s return to Manila and in fact, the banquet held at the Hotel de France for Quezon was sponsored by the Philippine Colombian Association In the brief editorial, Bocobo calls for the use of “the local dialects” as a medium of instruction as students could not properly absorb the subjects taught because of a lack of proficiency in English “Common sense and pedagogical principles,” Bocobo argued would lead one to see that English was not suitable as the medium of instruction in Philippine schools He criticized the current system for making English the ends and not the means of education.493 After a series of very polite letters494 between Camilo Osias who was then Division Superintendent of Schools and Bocobo that contained a proposal (by Osias) and an acceptance (by Bocobo) of a debate, the first article appeared in the Manila Daily Bulletin on December 27, 1916 The principal question of the debate, stated by Osias in this first article was “What Store, 2005), 21 Catacataca and Espiritu cite no one for this information It is interesting to note, though admittedly maybe only for the purposes of accuracy, how small factual errors are transmitted and perpetuated through these studies Bocobo himself, recounting the incident forty years later, wrongly states that his position in these debates was that even English was to be taught in the local languages Although this was to be his position later, in these debates his proposal is that all subject except English be taught in the vernacular languages Bernabe wrongly names Bocobo as the Dean of the College of Law Bocobo was, in 1916 only a Professor and was to become Dean in the 30s This error is repeated in Catacataca and Espiritu 492 I found copies of the debate first by looking through Osias papers at the National Library Among his papers, I found some of the typscripts of his side of the debate They were, however, untitled and undated but reading through them I realized what they were The typescripts contained a single reference to the newspaper that carried the debates, The Manila Daily Bulletin, and a single date From this information, I was able to find copy of the full debate, which ran from December, 1916 to March, 1917 493 Editorial, Philippine Columbian Notes, October 1916, 18-19 494 The letters are among the Camilo Osias papers at the Philippine National Library 191 language should be the basis of instruction in the primary schools, the local dialects or English?”495 The debate ran in several issues through the months of December, 1916 and January, February and March of 1917, with Osias turning out eight articles and Bocobo turning out three What is really striking about these articles is how very little, maybe only ten or fifteen percent, of what is said in these articles actually directly addresses the question of language Most of it is made up of demonstrations of debating flair, the identification of poor reasoning in the opponent, exhibitions of a mannered civility that was probably characteristic of its time, remonstrations about misconstruing what was really meant and about taking words out of context and lots and lots of discussions around rather than about the issue What is actually said about language can be briefly summarized in a paragraph Bocobo reasserts the points he raises in the Philippine Colombian Notes editorial asserting that children would profit a great deal more if instruction were in the native dialects and arguing that it was common sense and good pedagogy that made it so To explain his assertion of “common sense,” Bocobo merely states that it is “axiomatic.’ To explain his assertion of “good pedagogy” he goes a little further by saying that the most important objective in primary education is to generate interest in the subject matter and that this was virtually impossible to in a foreign language 496 Osias, on the other hand, focuses on answering sub-issues raised, denying accusations made by Bocobo or charging Bocobo with some breach in logical argument The meat of his arguments, which focus on the administrative nightmare of having an education system based on several languages (textbooks in several languages, the central teacher’s college staffed according not to expertise but by regional languages, etc.), is reserved only for the last two of the eight articles An example of the quibbling rhetoric in this debate may be seen in the issue of the Philippine legislature’s support of the English policy In the January issue, Bocobo answers a point Osias previously makes by saying that the Philippine legislature regularly approves funding for the education program only because it has not seen any studies about the effectiveness of the system Osias answers on January 10 by quoting an unnamed legislator throwing his support for 495 Camilo Osias, “The Importance of the Language Question,” Manila Daily Bulletin, 27 December 1916, 496 Jorge Bocobo, “The Two Systems Further Compared,” Manila Daily Bulletin, 192 the English language policy Bocobo writes in his February article about the impropriety of quoting someone without identifying who they are Osias counters in his February 27 article that the source and the essay from which the quoted lines were taken were also published in the Bulletin Nothing in this exchange actually talks about the worth of either position and yet it took up paragraph upon paragraph of these articles It is both in what they don’t say about the language issue and in the flair of what they say that illustrates to us not just how far Filipinos had gone in a matter of just ten years Bocobo’s and Osias’ rhetorical flair point to us the stark difference of where they were in 1916 from the writers of ten years before What Jorge Bocobo and Camilo Osias say about language is only mildly interesting How they carry out their debate, however, tells us more about how they saw language and its place in nation building It reveals to us a generation of English speakers and writers who were, at worst, writers who were interested in the polemics of the debate rather than the issues themselves or, at best, committed to pedagogical principles rather than to a particular language and culture In the end, both Bocobo and Osias were committed to efficiency rather than to a particular culture and history At no point in these pages and pages of arguments is there a mention of that which is the principal concern of the Muling Pagsilang writers: that language, and particularly Tagalog, was the soul of the race and the nation and was tied to our history of resisting the foreign colonizers In this debate, Osias is ever more the good colonial who buys into American rhetoric about the English policy His chief argument for retaining the English system rests principally on a belief in the wisdom and goodness of those who institute it: “The men who have occupied the position of secretary of public instruction or who have acted in that capacity did not revolutionize the system all the directors of education, all the superintendents, have up to this time labored not to revolutionize the system but to carry it on.”497 For Osias, the word of American directors of education, both past and present, about the merits of the English system is proof enough for him 497 Camilo Osias, “Should the Present System Be Condemned?” Manila Daily Bulletin, January 1917, 14 193 and he quotes them in tedious length498 as though their explanations for the English policy were, to use Bocobo’s own term, “axiomatic.” When Bocobo points this out to him—that colonial officials have motives other than efficiency and that modern nations desire to have “’their language spoken in a strange land [and] their customs and institutions acknowledged as superior by other races’”499—Osias cries fowl He calls for the “putting aside all sentimentalism as much as possible and trying to inject nothing that tends to provoke any prejudice, racial or sectional.”500 Osias will suffer no moves to link the language issue to any political, economic, or military motives For him, the language issue is autonomous of other considerations and must be judged solely on what will work most efficiently in running the educational bureaucracy Finally, Osias exposes himself as the good colonial in his central argument (regarding the administrative impossibility of using several languages as the medium of instruction) This argument was invented soon after the commencement of American occupation and was repeated over and over in the many justifications put out by the American colonial officials for the English policy The more interesting debater of the two is Bocobo who demonstrates a more sophisticated flair for debating in the English language He deftly uses sarcasm (“the statement does not come in good grace from the pen of so progressive and enlightened a gentleman as Mr Osias.”501), eruditely references Shakespeare with such ease (“I wish to tell him, in the words of Jacque to Orlando: ‘You have a nimble wit: I think ‘twas made of Atalanta’s heel.”502), and confidently, almost arrogantly calls out errors in logic (“He has not only evaded the central point of this controversy, that is, whether English is a better medium of instruction than the local dialects but he has made a scarecrow, then knocked it down to show what he can Bravo!”503) Beneath all this glibness, one inferred that Bocobo’s “end” was really not that different from Osias’s Efficient education was what they were both aiming for—that the students learn 498 Camilo Osias, “s the Adoption of English a Serious Blunder?” Manila Daily Bulletin, 25 January 1917, 499 Bocobo, “The Two Systems .,” 500 Camilo Osias, “Is Instruction in English Justified?,” Manila Daily Bulletin, 10 January 1917, 501 Bocobo, “The Two Systems .,” 502 Jorge Bocobo, “Is Instruction in English Justified?,” Manila Daily Bulletin, February 1917, 503 Ibid 194 their hygiene, math, geography, civics as efficiently as possible The content of what it is that these students learned was not, at least in these debates, a relevant point Though Bocobo charged the English policy and Osias with seeing English itself as an end; Bocobo and Osias were actually quite similar in the end they envisioned for the new Philippine nation: a citizenry equipped with a modern education They had their eye on the same prize, though the positions from which they viewed it, one conservative and one liberal, were different If Osias looks to the education directors as the final word and the ultimate source of wisdom, Bocobo looks to American pedagogists In the most substantial section of his argument, where he argues that generating interest is the most important task of a teacher (and that the use of the local languages will help to generate interest), he quotes from four different American textbooks on education If this concern for what interests a child is made parallel to the concern of ten years before for what was important to the identity of Filipinos, we find, in Bocobo that the meter stick for assessing relevance has become, not Philippine history, but Western scholarship The source of this dramatic paradigm shift, these antipodean perspectives between ten years was, of course, American education itself Both Bocobo and Osias were educated in the United States.504 Bocobo, in particular, was part of the first batch of pensionados—promising, young men who were sent to the United States as government scholars as part of a grooming for leadership His early life and education is an example of how his generation, the most visibly influential of the period leading up to independence, would be set on a course that will lead them to a new and different understanding of nationhood and identity Bocobo, born in 1886, was too young to participate in the revolution, though he was witness to it He was ten when open combat began between the Filipino revolutionaries and the Spanish in his native Tarlac town and over the next two years would always be part of the throng that would greet any of the heroes of the revolution who would go through his town His participation in the Philippine-American war as a young boy of thirteen or fourteen was as innocent as it could possibly have been for a boy in a time of war He was made to gather the 504 Osias has an LL.D, degree from Oberlin College in Ohio and Bocobo has an LL.B from Indiana University and an LL.D honoris causa from the University of Southern California 195 thorny plants that were used as raw materials for gunpowder for the bullets being manufactured for the Philippine soldiers.505 With the American pacification campaign, Bocobo’s education became an illustration of the very essence of education for pacification First, he was educated by an U.S Army sergeant and then a year later by a Thomasite couple In the provincial high school one of his teachers was Frank White who would later become the director of the Bureau of Education It was White who recommended Bocobo for the pensionado program and by 1904 Bocobo was off to the United States to start his law degree.506 In Indiana, Bocobo distinguished himself as an orator and debater and won several prizes at oratorical contest In one contest in particular, Bocobo won a prize for pleading his case for Philippine Independence 507 Bocobo may have had the seeds of his political education planted while he was still in Tarlac but it was honed and nurtured in America under American democratic ideals and the American tradition of the two party-system His biography tells us about his political education and involement while in the United States: Throughout those three years, 1904-1907, in Indiana University, the four Filipino pensionados508 advocated Philippine independence in conversation with fellow students and their professors They belonged to the Jackson Club (Democratic), the opponent of the Lincoln Club (Republican), because the Democratic Party was for Philippine independence but the Republican Party was against it At a political rally in Bedford, Indiana in 1904, the Filipino students spoke eloquently in favor of Philippine independence while awaiting William Jennings Bryan, an ardent advocate of Philippine independence.509 In Indiana, Bocobo learned to comprehend phenomena (even the self and nationhood) using principally one’s rational faculties There he also learned to engage the colonial power in its own language and within its political worldview of two positions: liberal and conservative He was educated in the logic of American democratic ideals and the ideas of progress and, as was expected of him as a scholar of the American government, was poised to transmit all this to Philippine society Bocobo’s biographer tells us of Bocobo’s own eagerness to become an agent 505 Cecilia Bocobo Olivar, Aristocracy of the Mind: A Biography of Jorge Bocobo, (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1981), 506 Ibid, 7-8 507 Ibid, 13 508 About a hundred Filipinos went to the United States as pensionados in 1904 but they were placed in various universities through the U.S Only four Filipinos were sent to Indiana University 509 Olivar, “Jorge Bocobo—His Life and Ideas .,” 53 196 circumstances been ideal (at least one American teacher per school, more money for education, more Americans in the Philippines) then English would also have been the ideal language to use as the medium of instruction even for the primary grades As such, however, Saleeby saw the only practical, just and democratic alternative to be primary education in the vernaculars A year after the publication of Saleeby’s book, Cecilio Lopez, a lingustics professor at the University of the Philippines, published an article in the Philippines Herald that echoed Saleeby’s position but presented the issue in a more technical and scholarly fashion In his article, Lopez makes it clear that the issue of the national language and the medium of instruction are two separate issues and that he would tackle only the issue of the medium of instruction In this article Lopez adopts Saleeby’s position (he quotes Saleeby twice) regarding the use of the vernaculars in primary schools and regarding the important part English still plays in Philippine education The creation of a competent citizenry is also his objective and the use of the vernaculars, he believes, is the best way to “combat ignorance and abolish illiteracy.” He asks, rhetorically: “How can the plain rural Filipino villagers live, vote and function as free citizens if they cannot use their native dialects?”563 Lopez’s expertise as a linguist is best seen however in his discussion of the language policies of other colonial states (Netherlands India or Indonesia and British Ceylon) and in his citation of various linguists It is also seen in his technical explanation of the vast difference between English and the local languages that will make it extremely difficult, if not impossible for Filipinos to learn in English The morphology and the grammatical structure of the two languages are different; Filipino languages, unlike English possess no gender (which is a cause of infinite confusion to Filipinos trying to speak English); and whereas English is an “inflected language,” Philippine languages are “agglutinative in nature.” This last difference may have been understood by the lay reader had Lopez explained his terminology but he does not and the terms “inflected” and “agglutinative” are left undefined as though they were self-evident 563 Cecilio Lopez, “Proposed Solution of P.I Language Tangle.” Philippines Herald, March 1925, 16 211 A few years after Lopez’s article appeared, Eulogio Rodriguez, one of the officials of the Philippine National Library (then called the Philippine Library and Museum) would also publish his stand on the language issue in a small book entitled What Should Be the National Language of the Filipinos while Gabriel Bernardo, Head of the Department of Library Science at the University of the Philippines would also publish his stand in an article entitled “Is Tagalog Richer as a Language than English?” Both these essays exhibit the support of their authors for Tagalog as the national language Although the title of Rodriguez’s work makes it appear that his essay will be a strong position paper, it is actually more a history of the linguistic studies undertaken by the Spanish and the Americans in the Philippines and it is also brief history of Philippine literature By page 21, he delivers his position on the language issue but this comes to the reader almost as a surprise as Rodriguez does not set up the premises of his argument nor remind us of the positions that challenge his own His position is for Tagalog as the national language He offers three reasons for it: because it is the language of the capital; because of its rich potential as a vehicle of expression and thought; and because it already is functioning as a lingua franca.564 Like Lopez, Rodriguez offers a number of examples regarding how other nations (France, Belgium, Germany) settled its problem of a lingua franca His call, similar to the one made twenty years before by the Kapulungan ng Wikang Tagalog, is for the development of Tagalog and (unlike the Kapulungan) for the study of our “literary treasures.” This should be done in order “to show that the Filipino language is highly developed, to show the advanced state of Filipino culture, and to prove that Filipino literary expression compares favorably with the literary products of other nations of the world.”565 This concern for “proving” is significant and will be evident also in the essay of Gabriel Bernardo Bernardo’s essay is humorous (without necessarily intending to be) in that he pits 19th Century Tagalog writer Modesto de Castro against education directors Fred Atkins and W.W 564 Eulogio Rodriguez, What Should Be the National Language of the Filipinos, (Manila: Philippine Education Company, 1926), 21-23 565 Ibid, 27 212 Marquardt.566 He goes about “proving” the richness of Tagalog through the “scientific evidence” of the dominance of loan words within a language He counts the number of loan words in a quote by de Castro and counts the number of loan words as well in a quote from both Atkinson and Marquardt and then, finding that Tagalog has fewer, concludes that Tagalog is as rich (if not richer) than English because it allows its users to fully express themselves without resorting to loan words Lopez, on the one hand and Rodriguez and Bernardo on the other represent the two principal (but as yet separate) concerns in language Lopez’s goal in advocating the use of the vernaculars as the medium of instruction was the achievement of a learned and informed citizenry that would contribute toward creating a nation worthy of independence Rodriguez and Bernardo were intent on establishing the richness of Tagalog and how the Filipinos had become an advanced civilization through it (much the same way that Luz, de los Santos and Guerrero argued for Spanish) The Philippine Revolution makes a brief appearance in the essays of Rodriguez and Bernardo as they both reference Epifanio de los Santos who enlists the memory of the revolution: “If the national sentiment produced the miracle of the adoption of a national language in 1896, and especially in 1898, that sentiment has now been revived more dramatically, and what was temporary then, may now become permanent.”567 On the whole, however, the concerns within these essays seem distant from the idea of language and its connection to a lived culture and to a history of resistance Instead, these three essays are similar in their use of a scholarly and scientific methodology that is very technical and in some cases even arcane It is clear who these writers are in dialogue with Their discourse is based on the same premises of the American discourse for the English policy: the attainment of progress, the spread of democracy, and the development of civilization Liwayway, 1922 566 Gabriel Bernanrdo, “Is Tagalog Richer as a Language than English?,” The Sunday Tribune, 10 November 1929, 2, 567 Ibid, These lines are actually part of the introduction written by de los Santos for Eulogio Rodriguez’s book 213 Earlier, the question was asked: Is a particular language complicit in a particular perspective about language itself and in a perspective about nationalism and culture? If the ideas about language and the nation as expressed in English by writers such as Bocobo, Osias, Lopez, Rodriguez, and Bernardo appeared to be similar in their inclination toward a scholarly discussion and in the view that language be of use to progress, would the ideas about language and the nation as expressed by writers of roughly the same time using Tagalog be any different? In 1922, the same year when a flurry of bills regarding language were filed in the Philippine legislature, a weekly magazine, Liwayway was launched Liwayway has been running consistently since 1922 and thus it is currently the longest running Philippine magazine As the magazine had been revamped (the former magazine was a trilingual weekly called Photo News), the editorial of its maiden issue carried an explanation about why they had changed into a fully Tagalog magazine The change, they claimed, was done with the hope that they could help the nation (“hangad na sa ganitong paraan ay lalo kaming mapapanuto sa paglingkod sa bayan.”568) It may seem strange that an entertainment magazine delivering to the common folk the weekly dose of humor, romance, drama, and intrigue should have such a lofty vision The editorial goes on to say that recent events had shown that even people outside of the Tagalog region were interested in seeing Tagalog become the national language (“Mga huling pangyayari ang nagpapatunay na hindi lamang mga taong tubo ng katagalugan ang nagmamalasakit upang ang wikang ito’y siyang maging pangbansa.”569) The idea, then was to align the vision of being a popular entertainment magazine delivering comics, serialized novels, poems, popular news items, with the vision of making Tagalog the national language Through this popular and national publication, Tagalog would spread and become even more popular The writers and editors of Liwayway seemed very much aware of who made up their audience This, in turn, was reflected in their understanding of Tagalog as the language of the people Liwayway would, in a matter of just a few month, become an all-entertainment magazine but in the first few months of its start, it carried a few articles discussing national language issues 568 569 Liwayway, “Kung Bakit Kami Nagbago,” 18 November 1922, Ibid 214 The writers for Liwayway, saw the language issue as holistically as did the writers of Muling Pagsilang of almost twenty years before For them, language was to be inderstood as a total human phenomenon that involved mind, body, heart, and soul In one essay, “Inang Wika570” (Mother Language) Teo E Gener uses the common motif of the mother as the Muling Pagsilang writers had done before Inang Wika, is not an abstract concept here Instead, Gener provides the reader with a detailed physical description of a woman on bended knee (tikloptuhod), with loosened hair (lugay ang buhok), with her left hand supporting her weight (sapo ng kaliwang palad) The woman is not Mother Language but is Pilipinas, crying out for Mother Language and sorrowful about her condition The word “sorrowful” does not convey the depth of sadness that Pilipinas feel The woman is “drenched in tears” (“natitigmak sa luha”) and her “forehead is clouded by a sad thought” (“noong nauulap ng malungkot na guniguni”) Her eyes are “surrounded by bitter tears” (“binabalungan ng mapait na luha”), her face is “extremely saddened by severe pain and despair” (“pinakalungkot ng matinding sakit at panimdim”) In her face you will see her heart, which is “decaying in indescribable disappointment and distress” (“inaagnas ng di masukat sabihing himutok at dalamhati”) Pilipinas takes a deep breath (“bugtonghininga malalim”) and this mirrors the resentment in her broken heart (literally, her cracked-chest) (“hinanakit sa kanyang nabibiyak na dibdib”) It appears that Tagalog writers could not imagine the condition of Tagalog in just practical or political terms The state and condition of Tagalog was for these Tagalog writers a personal matter and thus, they had to imagine it in personal and emotional terms The writer populates his description with a surfeit of words related to sadness and, as if the emotion in these words were not enough to approximate the desperate emotion that needed to be expressed, emotions are heightening even more by the use of superlatives such as “pinaka” (the most), “matinding” (severe), “di masukat sabihin” (idescribable) Though the description of Pilipinas here can be describes as melodramatic, it would not be quite accurate to describe it as such “Melodrama” as used in Western literary parlance has a 570 Teo E Gener, “Inang Wika,” Liwayway, December 1922, 215 derogatory connotation because of an over emphasis on self-indulgent and personal emotion (usually romantic) It is not within Western literary tradition (and therefore would be difficult to understand) that so much emotion is used in describing such cerebral matters as the condition of a language or the connection of a language to a people The explanation for this divergence of epistemological approach lies in two things: the alienation among English-speaking cultures from the experience of the annihilation of a native language and the Tagalog language itself, which carries with it its own epistemic order This experience of a divergence of meanings can be encountered once again in the word “nationalist” or “nationalism.” Of late, the term has been used in a derogatory sense and to allude to (especially in scholarship) one who blindly and with great disregard for the facts always trumpet the greatness of the nation Whereas this connotation may be true for scholars of colonizing powers who project the nation in triumphalist or even Wagnarian terms, the same cannot be said for colonized nations A nationalist scholar or writer is one who has plugged into the epistemic formations that were the result of, among other things, the experience of colonialism The experience of the nation is an experience of struggle, of the threat of annihilation of one’s culture, one’s being, one’s meanings and identity In struggle, in erasure, in forcible forgetting, one fiercely protects the whole being: body, mind, heart, spirit, as a mother would a child The epistemic formations that come out of this experience, of which language is one of the best witnesses and personifications, are formations that are strongly felt, palpable even, imbued emotion Thus, when Teo Gener describes Pilipinas as having a “nabibiyak na dibdib,” he does not just mean “cracked-open chest” because “nabibayak” (especially in the context of Pilipinas and “dibdib”) is a deeply felt tactile, auditory, and visual experience and “dibdib” (with the verbalization, “dinidibdib,” literally meaning “you are chesting it,” but which more closely means “you take it to heart, intensely”) is physical term that can easily turn into a term whose physical and emotional meanings become inextricable from each other It would be grossly unfair to call Teo Gener’s “style” melodramatic As most of these Tagalog writers writing about Tagalog waxed emotional, one can argue that it is not so much a style as a real way of looking at Tagalog and the nation 216 In another essay, Julian Balboa recommends the creation of a “Diksyonaryong Pilipino’t Tagalog” in order to achieve the “honorable objective” (“dakilang layunin”) of making Tagalog the national language His call, which includes one of the most moving and poetic descriptions of the Tagalog language, is made even more stirring by its allusion to both Philippine revolutionary history and Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere Akayin natin sa patag na landas na tungong “tagumpay” ang wikang Tagalog— wikang idinuyan at inawitan ng taghoy at panambitan ng mga naiwan ng ating mga bayaning ‘nangabulid sa dilim’ at bininyagan sa dagat-dagatang dugo ng nangasawing bayaning Pilipino!571 Let us support Tagalog on the straight path toward victory—the language that was cradled and lullabyed with songs of sorrow and poems of our heroes who “fell in the darkness” and was baptized in a sea of blood of our martyred Filipino heroes! The depiction here is one of the Tagalog language as a child who was born out of the pain of war and revolution but who will be lovingly cared for by the Filipinos The careful selection of certain words, easily recreates in the reader the experience of loving care “Akayin” is translated here as “support” but is a word that is primarily refers to physical support The word somehow always includes within it the connotation of the one who is need of the support as being a week individual with little strength to walk “Idinuyan” is translated here as “cradled” but a “duyan,” one of the most tender words in Tagalog, is more precisely as swinging cradle Whereas a cradle is just a bed where a child is left to sleep, a duyan works only because the mother does not leave the child and gently sways the cradle till the child falls asleep The duyan is of course always twinned with the lullaby and this of course recalls one of the most beloved and famous traditional Tagalog song “Sa Ugoy ng Duyan”572 (“In the Lulling of the Duyan”) whose melody so effectively evokes a mother’s tender care The lullaby in this essay however, is not a quiet, calming song but a song of suffering and of a “sea of blood.” The quote “nangabulid sa dilim” is an allusion to the last speech of Elias, the peasant hero in the Noli Me Tangere, who asks that Filipinos not forget those who fell in the night A third 571 Julian Balboa, “Ang Kahalagahan ng Isang Diksionaryong Pilipino.” Liwayway, December 1922, 572 Although the song was written during the Second World War, Filipinos today cannot think of the duyan and the lullaby without thinking of this song 217 essay, one by Victorino O Lorico, also references the revolution and explains the inseparable connection of Tagalog to it Lorico argues that if the time ever comes that the government will need to call on its citizens to defend the nation, this call will be made in Tagalog This he says, was proven during the revolution when the Katipunan used Tagalog Deep emotion and cool detachment come together in these essays Lorico’s essay, in particular, is remarkable for its attempt to both assume and subvert the discourse of a scholarly paper The author, unlike his predecessors at Muling Pagsilang, approaches the language issue with a strong notion of what is required of a scholarly discussion: he lines up the opposing arguments and engages them; he quotes numerous (mostly Western) linguistic experts to support his assertions Yet, he rejects the demand of objectivity and for a distance from the subject matter by being livid with what he perceives of as the enemies of Tagalog He describes English, for example, as a foreign language that masks our heritage, shackles our spirit and heart at hinders the development of the true Filipino nation (“wikang banyaga na ngayo’y bumabalatkayo sa ating lahi, tumatanikala sa ating diwa at puso, at nagpapaungtol sa paglago ng tunay na pagkabansang Pilipino.”573) He calls those who not care to learn Tagalog and have a keen interest in learning English “traitors” (“taksil”) The questions of who uses Tagalog, who it represents and what it conveys are very important to these writers Gener asks that the government understand the true feelings of the people, which are expressed in their own language Lorico, likewise, believes that Tagalog truly represents the people and practically all their feelings, opinions, attitudes, hopes and that if a foreign language is used then thinking will be enslaved by foreign thought (“Sa wika nakikilala ang halos lahat nating damdamin, pagwawari, ugali, hangarin, at kung gumamit tayo ng wikang dayuhan ay tulad sa ipinaalipin natin ang ating kaisipan sa kaisipan ng iba.”574 ) His answer to the question of who uses Tagalog and who it represents hints at a vision of the nation and nationalism He tells us to remember that a large part of the people are laborers who speak only their native language (“isipin na lamang natin na ang malaking bahagi ng ating mamamayan ay 573 Victorino O Lorico, “Kung Paano Maaring Ipagtagumpay ang Banal na Layunin ng mga Alagad ng Wika.” Liwayway December, 1922, 574 Ibid, 218 mangagawa na nagsasalita lamang ng Katutubong wika.”) and to remember that the well being of the majority should rule (“ang karapatan ng marami ay siyang dapat maghari”575) The concern here is not for a nation yet to become or a nation preparing for independence but a nation that is— breathing, working, feeling, thinking The difference between the English essays and these essays are striking Language, for these Tagalog writers is not distant and thus the issue of language is not an issue from which they can be detached For these writers, language (Tagalog) is a body and a meaning that is almost palpable Decisions about its use and its future simply cannot be intellectualized and debated upon Language is life itself and thus the commitment to a language is made not because it is logical or practical; the commitment is simply genetic Cecilio Lopez After Balagtas, Jose Corazon de Jesus is Tagalog’s most popular poet ever His life, was of course, a life lived fully immersed in the Tagalog language Strangely enough, language is also somewhat implicated in his death From the mid-1920s to the 1930s, Jose Corazon de Jesus, whose nickname was Batute, was the star of the Balagtasan, an updated and popular form of the traditional Tagalog poetic jousts (the dupluhan) that one of the Tagalog language groups, the Kapulungang Balagtas, had decided to update and popularize to aid in their Tagalog campaign The Balagtasan jousts were immensely popular and had to be held in big stadiums, as the audience numbers would reach eight to ten thousand.576 The poets would develop cult followings and there are reports of brawls breaking out between fans devoted to rival poets Such was the popularity of these Balagtasan competitions and Jose Corazon de Jesus was often crowned “Hari ng Balagtasan” or King of the Balagtasan It is said that the balagtasan craze captured the national imagination: “[it] took the country by storm, from Batanes to Jolo To out-Batute Batute was the ambition of every poet.”577 575 Ibid, Galileo S Zafra, Balagtasan: Kasaysayan at Antolohiya, (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1999), 13-19 577 Wenceslao Q Vinzons, “The ‘King’ is Dead!,” Philippines Free Press, June 1932, 38 576 219 It was probably because of his huge popularity that he was cast in the first Filipino talkie, Sa Pinto ng Langit The movie was a test case for the practical demands (versus policy efforts) of language use among the common people Although the film was originally filmed using a Tagalog dialogue, questions arose as to the language to be used for its release in other parts of the Philippines—should it be dubbed into English or into the vernacular of the particular area it would be shown in or should it be kept in Tagalog? The Philippines Free Press reported that although “no doubt Tagalog will be given preference,” it also wonders “how about showing their pictures down in the Visayas? And how would the Pampangos like them?”578 The proposal to use English because it is known from “Basco to Bongao” would make it more national in scope If English is used, the editorial observed, and if the actors have to speak in English, then “the picture could hardly be considered a Filipino talking production.” Here then, through the quotidian dilemma of the film industry and the bizarre idea of Philippine romantic heroes and heroines expressing their feelings in English, is contained the problematic relationship between language, nationhood, and cultural production Sa Pinto ng Langgit was to be the death of Jose Corazon de Jesus, or so his wife believed The script of the movie was based on a novel, Gloria, that de Jesus himself had written De Jesus also acted as the lead character, who, in one of the scenes, rescues the heroine who had fallen into the river The scene required de Jesus to be in the water for extended periods and because of this, his wife reports, he caught a cold, had convulsions and violent vomiting He lived to attend the movie’s first screening but died soon after.579 Had he lived and continued on with his career in the movies, his reign as “King” would have been a long and powerful one that would have extended throughout the Philippines The 1930s was the period when Tagalog achieved its highest popularity Never again would there be a time when Tagalog poets would have cult followings and fans in the thousands The relentless efforts of the Tagalog language organizations were paying off: the language issue was being discussed in the legislature and bills were being filed; educators, lawyers and other 578 579 ““First Filipino Talkie Out,” Philippines Free Press, 20 February 1932, Vinzons, “The ‘King’ is Dead!,” 38-39 220 professionals were also constantly debating the language issue; producers of popular culture (magazines, movies) were in on the campaign to make Tagalog the lingua franca and national language; people were captivated by things that were closely identified with Tagalog and Philippine culture such as the Balagtasan jousts These language organizations had created heroes like Jose Corazon de Jesus The temper was such that the idea of Tagalog as the language to be used in schools, to be promoted as the lingua franca and as the national language was the dominant position In a manner of speaking, these Tagalog language groups were winning This is the backdrop upon which Cecilio Lopez, the most respected Filipino linguistics professor of this time, was to come out with a series of articles in the popular press throwing his full support for Tagalog as the national language At the time he wrote these essays, Cecilio Lopez was heading the Department of Oriental Languages at the University of the Philippines He had gotten his doctorate and post-doctorate education at Hamburg, Leiden and Paris some years before as a government scholar His influence during this period is seen for example in a long speech given at the House of Representatives by Manuel Gallego, representative of the first district of Nueva Ecija in 1932.580 Gallego cites numerous American colonial officials like Saleeby and Butte but Lopez is the only Filipino linguists cited, and cited extensively.581 As this speech was given a mere three years before the making of the policy that would declare the institution of a national language based on Tagalog, one surmises that Lopez was one of the if not the most well-respected and influential voices in the area of Philippine languages Lopez’s stand in 1931 was for vernacular education during the first four years of primary school This was his stand as well in 1925, however, in 1931 he also argues for Tagalog as the common and national language His style in these essays was not much different from the essay he had written in 1925 It is still very technical and somewhat difficult for a lay audience His 580 Manuel Gallego, The Language Problem of the Filipinos: A Speech Delivered at the House of Representatives, September and 8, 1932, (Manila: Bureau of Printing 1957.) It is entirely possible that Lopez himself wrote the speech as Gallego’s stand, vernacular education for the first four years of primary school and Tagalog as the national language, is parallel to that of Lopez’s Many of statistics and subpoints are similar to those found in Lopez’s Philippines Herald articles of the year before 581 Eufronio Alip, however, is cited on matters of Tagalog literature 221 methods of asserting his points include lengthy explanations on a particular linguistic concept (for example, how pronunciation is learned), drawing up detailed hypothetical social conditions in which hypothetical children grow up, creating typologies of the development of language among race-mix cultures, using numerous examples from all parts of the world (Silesian region of Czechoslovakia, Java, ancient Greece, Berlin, London, Poland, etc.), citing linguistic experts His approach to the vernacular languages as to Tagalog seems as distant and removed from the living language itself as much as his approach was in 1925 In one of the essays582 however, he uses an argument that is hardly ever used by any of the writers in English but which the Tagalog writers write moving passages about—that these languages are the languages of the history and culture of the Philippines, that they are life itself In this essay, Lopez tries to explain why a child so easily learns the mother tongue and why a child learns so much in those first few years through the mother tongue Lopez first reviews the current theories that explain why the mother tongue is so easily absorbed: the suppleness of the tongue, Bremer’s theory that a young child’s ear is especially sensitive, Sweet’s idea that it is because a child has nothing to in his first years, and the idea that the mother tongue is hereditary His own belief is that learning the mother tongue is natural and easy simply because there is such an abundance of opportunity to learn it and that the child gets so much exposure to it He further explains that the home and the mother provides natural language lessons; learning the language and learning other life lessons is easier because learning is done within a context and often times with the matching gestures and facial expressions of the relatives who are teaching the child In these discussions, Lopez maintains a sense of scientific detachment and does not speak about the mother tongue as his own For example, his description of a child at about the age of seven who is ready to learn not just from the home but from the larger community, he describes as the stage when the child is “gradually becoming a member of the greater phylogenetic 582 Cecilio Lopez, “Scholar Piles Argument in Favor of Dialect in School,” Philippines Herald, September 1931, 14 222 community.”583 Lopez here comes as close as possible to being moving and expressing the pain one feels when there are attempts to kill one’s mother tongue His discussion, though effective, is never affective This is so probably because his primary impetus for arguing for the vernaculars is not, after all, a sense of pain and outrage as much as it is a desire to see order and effectiveness in the education of the Filipino youth In this same article he rehearses Saleeby’s argument all over again This argument begins with the dismal drop-out rate and how it is therefore more efficient to get children to learn the basics effectively—math, writing, spelling, a notion of the social, political and economic world around them—through their own language English, for Lopez, should remain but should be introduced only in the intermediate grades In a manner of speaking, Lopez’s vision is an affirmation of the status quo It is an improvement on the status quo but an affirmation, nevertheless, of its basic principles: that education exists principally to create a modern nation with every citizen attuned toward the objective of progress and development His recommendations will create a society where English still becomes the language of the elite (learned by the four percent who will go on beyond the fourth grade) but the majority of the poor, the powerless and the marginalized will at least be a literate and somewhat better informed poor, powerless marginalized One might think that Lopez’s argument for Tagalog as the common and national language might contain a more radical vision In another essay he boldly announces that he will “show why Tagalog is best fitted to serve as the basic favored language for the common language of the Philippines and what means ought to be employed for its spread and adoption throughout the entire archipelago.”584 The great irony of this article is that while Lopez describes the conditions needed to make Tagalog the common language, what he actually does is to describe the current state of Tagalog He appears to be talking about the future when he is, in fact, describing the present He lists the conditions through which a language becomes a common language: that it is the language of the center of business, government, and culture; that it is the language used by 583 Ibid Cecilio Lopez, “Diffusion of Tagalog as Common Language At Cost of Other Dialects Urged by Foremost Filipino Student of Linguistics,” Philippines Herald, 26 September 1931, 14 584 223 organizations throughout the country who come together at the city-center for their conventions; that the great writers wrote in that language; that there are big sales of periodicals and continued production of literature in that language; that there is a great amount of entertainment (theater and “cinematograph”) in that language Following his identification of each of these conditions, Lopez describes in great detail (offering statistics, naming organizations, authors) how Tagalog is actually already fulfilling each of these categories He argues for example that “If Tagalog must spread in the Philippine Islands, two factors must be given due consideration; 1) bigger sale of standard works in Tagalog 2) more intensive and extensive literary intercourse.”585 The manner in which he phrases this statement leaves one with the impression that he is offering recommendations (“two factors must be given due consideration”) in order to achieve a goal that is, as yet, unachieved (“If Tagalog must spread”) He then follows this up with a comparative statistic of publications throughout the region and highlights the healthiness of the publication industry in Tagalog: “Tagalog with more than 1500 books and pamphlets and 80 periodicals printed in it; these figures speak for themselves.”586 Although he appears to be urging that Tagalog be used as the common language and proposes to explain how this end can be achieved, in effect what he does in this essay is to explain why Tagalog is already functioning as a common language In 1903, Tagalog writers were first articulating their deeply-felt anxiety over the possible death of Tagalog By 1930, Tagalog was thriving and flourishing with publications, active language organizations, and a much loved and much venerated Tagalog poet “King.” The factors that led to this transformation are overdetermined and yet, though Lopez appears as a johnnycome-lately who champions a cause that has already won, he does offer a glimpse into just how this transformation took place 585 586 Ibid Ibid 224 225 ... result of, among other things, the experience of colonialism The experience of the nation is an experience of struggle, of the threat of annihilation of one’s culture, one’s being, one’s meanings and. .. discussion of the language policies of other colonial states (Netherlands India or Indonesia and British Ceylon) and in his citation of various linguists It is also seen in his technical explanation of. .. cannot think of the duyan and the lullaby without thinking of this song 2 17 essay, one by Victorino O Lorico, also references the revolution and explains the inseparable connection of Tagalog