The dynamics of literary representation and interpretation in a multilingual environment a study of selected malaysian and singaporean novels in english

THE DYNAMICS OF LITERARY REPRESENTATION AND INTERPRETATION IN A MULTILINGUAL ENVIRONMENT: A STUDY OF SELECTED MALAYSIAN AND SINGAPORE NOVELS IN ENGLISH ROSALY JOSEPH PUTHUCHEARY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2005 THE DYNAMICS OF LITERARY REPRESENTATION AND INTERPRETATION IN A MULTILINGUAL ENVIRONMENT: A STUDY OF SELECTED MALAYSIAN AND SINGAPORE NOVELS IN ENGLISH ROSALY JOSEPH PUTHUCHEARY (M.A, in English Literature NUS) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE & LITERATURE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2005 Content Page No. Acknowledgment ………………………………………………………………… i Summary …………………………………………………………………………. ii Introduction …………………………………………………………………… .1–26 Chapter One: Flowers in the Sky (1981) ……………………………………27–43 Chapter Two: The Return (1981) …………………………… …………… 44–60 Chapter Three: Rice Bowl (1984) ….………………….……….….………… 61–77 Chapter Four: A Candle or the Sun (1991) .……………… …………… 78–94 Chapter Five: The Shrimp People (1991) ………………….….………… .95–109 Chapter Six: The Crocodile Fury (1992) …………………….………….110–127 Chapter Seven: Green is the Colour (1993) ……………………………….128–142 Chapter Eight: The Road to Chandibole (1994) ………………….……….143–158 Chapter Nine: Abraham’s Promise (1995) ……………………………….159–173 Chapter Ten: Perhaps in Paradise (1997) …………………………… 174–189 Chapter Eleven: Playing Madame Mao (2000) …………………………… 190–204 Chapter Twelve: Shadow Theatre (2002) ……….…………………………. 205–220 Conclusion ……………………………… ………………………………… 221–231 Works Cited …………………………….…………………………………… 232–241 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am most grateful for the support and encouragement given to me by Dr. Ismail Talib and the invaluable assistance provided by the NUS Library staff and my son Sanjay. I would also like to thank my examiners for their constructive criticisms which made this work more comprehensive. R. J. Puthucheary i Summary The aim of this study is to make a close reading of the selected novels about region and proceed from there to evaluating the thematic connection to the methods of language appropriation, employed for the literary representation of the multilingual environment. It tries to establish the degree of artistic success each writer achieves to construct a multilingual environment using the strategies like lexical borrowings, odeswitching, code-mixing, mimetic translation, vernacular transcriptions and the use of different levels of Singapore-Malayan English. The introduction provides the rationale for the selecting of novels and the theoretical basis for the discussion of the text. A brief historical background for the formation of the linguistic communities and the development of creative-writing in English in Malaysia and Singapore is also given. I also discuss the challenges posed by the multilingual environment and the strategies available for literary representation of this region. Chapter One examines the strategies used by Lee Kok Liang in Flowers in the Sky to develop the parallel theme of spirituality and sexuality with the theme of communication. Chapter Two looks at the strategies used by K.S. Maniam in The Return, to explore the theme of alienation. Chapter Three examines the strategies used by Suchen Christine Lim in Rice Bowl, to dramatize the tension between the Mandarin-educated Chinese and the English-educated Chinese. ii Chapter Four looks at the strategies used by Gopal Baratham in A Candle or the Sun to explore the theme of betrayal and the dynamics of writing fiction. Chapter Five examines the strategies used by Rex Shelley in The Shrimp People to develop the theme of patriotism and portray the variety of English used by Portuguese Eurasians. Chapter Six looks at the strategies used by Beth Yahp in The Crocodile Fury to develop the theme of physical abuse and oppression. Chapter Seven examines the strategies used by Lloyd Fernando in Green is the Colour to develop the theme of racial hatred and religious intolerance. Chapter Eight looks at the strategies used by Marie Gerrina Louis in The Road to Chandibole to dramatize the theme of the marginalized women. Chapter Nine examines the strategies employed by Philip Jeyaretnam in Abraham’s Promise to develop the theme of identity crisis. Chapter Ten looks at the strategies used by Ellina binti Abdul Majid in Perhaps in Paradise to dramatize the theme of a girl in the process of becoming woman. Chapter Eleven examines Playing Madame Mao to evaluate the strategies used by Lau Siew Mei to explore the theme of freedom of speech and censorship. Chapter Twelve evaluate the strategies used by Fiona Cheong to develop the theme of child abuse in Shadow Theatre. The study of the selected novels reveal that the strategies of lexical borrowings, code-switching, code-mixing and the use of different levels of SingaporeMalayan English have gradually replaced vernacular transcriptions. What makes a characteristically Singapore or Malaysian novel is the use of any of these strategies to iii represent the speech of a character. The artistic success that each of the writer achieves to construct a multilingual environment is through the selective use of these strategies. iv Introduction The last decade of the twentieth century witnessed a marked increase in novels written with a setting in Malaysia and Singapore by those who have grown-up in this region, some of whom have either migrated to other countries or are now living abroad. I have selected novels written about this region by non-European writers that offer possibilities for discussion. As my objective is to reveal the underlying relationship of the represented speech of the speaking person in a multilingual environment to the theme, I have selected novels that suggest multiple meanings are possible. In other words, the choice of the text depends very much on the dialogic quality of its language. The theoretical basis for the discussion of the text will be the notion of heteroglossia postulated by Mikhail M. Bakhtin and the inter-animation of languages through the speaking person. Bakhtin says that the novel “orchestrates all its themes, the totality of the world objects and ideas depicted and expressed in it, by means of the social diversity of speech types and by the differing individual voices that flourish under such conditions” (The Dialogic Imagination, 263). Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia gives an appropriate framework for analyzing the novels I have selected, because he sees the novel “as a diversity of social speech types (sometimes even diversity of languages) and a diversity of individual voices, artistically organised” (262). Bakhtin sees the “distinctive links and interrelationships between utterances and languages, this movement of the theme through different languages and speech types” (263) as the basic distinguishing feature of the stylistics of the novel. I will be looking at the methods of language appropriation in postcolonial novels, discussed in The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial Literatures, such as the use of untranslated words and code-switching and those discussed in The Language of Postcolonial Literatures, like code-mixing and speech presentation, since they play a dominant role in the literary representation of the different varieties of English. Appropriation is “the process by which the language is taken and made to ‘bear the burden’ of one’s own cultural experience” (Ashcroft et al. 39). Bakhtin’s insistence on the speaking person as the central dynamic of the narrative (332), offers a challenge to the multilingual speech communities, like Malaysia and Singapore, because of the linguistic composition of these societies. Formation of Speech Communities The formation of the multilingual speech communities in Malaysia and Singapore was an accident of history. Although Indian influence started some 1,700 years ago (Andaya & Andaya, 14) and contact with China from the fifteenth century (40) onwards, the “development of large and diverse speech communities in the Malay Peninsula took place in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century” (Platt & Weber 2), mainly because of the establishment of British Settlements at Penang, Singapore and Malacca. Immigrants were from different speech communities from India, China and the Malay Archipelago. And “large scale immigration continued into the twentieth century, due partly to the development of tin mining and, later on, to the rapid growth of the rubber industry” (Platt & Weber 2). The composition of each major ethnic group will indicate the complex nature of the speech communities. Tamils, Malayalees, Telugus, Bengalis, Punjabis, Gujaratis and Sindhis, each with a distinct spoken and written language, are classified as Indians. Hakka, Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew and Hainanese, each with a different dialect, come under the heading of Chinese. However they have a common written script, Mandarin. The people from the Malay Archipelago were mainly Bugis, Boyanese, Achenese, Javanese, Sulawesis and Minangkabaus from Sumatra. They spoke different varieties of Malay. Munshi Abdullah in his travel accounts contrasts the ‘pure Malay language’ (Andaya & Andaya 119) spoken in the state of Johore with the dialects of Kedah, Kelantan and Trengganu. However, the Colonial Government’s identification of each ethnic group with “a specific economic role, affected early colonial policy towards education” (Andaya & Andaya 222) bringing about further divisions in the speech communities. “Only a small local elite” was “given the privilege of an English education”, in order “to equip them for clerical duties within the colonial government bureaucracy or in Europeancontrolled companies” (Andaya & Andaya 222). For this purpose, the first Englishmedium schools, Penang Free School in 1816, followed by Raffles Institution in Singapore in 1823, were opened. About fifty years later in 1893, Victoria Institution was opened in Kuala Lumpur, followed by King Edward VII School in Taiping and St. Paul’s School in Seramban. And the first Malay College, an English-medium school, was opened in 1905 at Kuala Kangsar, and only Malay children “of good birth” (Andaya & Andaya 228) and the brightest commoners were admitted. The time difference between the appearance of each school shows the slow growth in government run English Schools. For the vast majority of the local people, the government believed, it was enough that each group be educated in its own language in vernacular schools. What distinguished English-medium from vernacular schools was the provision for advanced education beyond the primary level. Another distinctive feature of English education in the Malay Peninsula was the mixed ethnic composition of the classes. Unlike the vernacular schools, which catered almost exclusively to a particular ethnic This world-view is impossible for Malika to formulate, as she is a servant, with only basic English education. Words like “rationale”, “imagination” and “cognitive” would not be naturally a part of Malika’s English verbal repertoire. Hence, the writer takes meticulous attention to show that Malika is merely recalling in the language Shakilah used for discussion. In order to this, the writer makes the narrator qualify her narration with information within parentheses. By making sure that the vocabulary used by Malika is actually a repetition of words used by Shakilah, a highly educated novelist, the abstract and rather profound idea, of the “rationale of boundaries prescribed between truth and imagination”, gains some validity. It is vital to represent the ideas and the erudition ascribed to a character as authentically as possible. There can be no flow of sympathy between the reader and the character, if the writer does not convincingly demonstrate that the character is capable of such profound thoughts and has the verbal repertoire to think it through. There is also a need to achieve an artistic consistency in the use of the speech of a character for aesthetic purposes. The lack of consistency in the speech of the character, Sundram, in Goh Poh Seng’s A Dance of Moths, makes his portrayal rather weak. During a robbery, Sundram demands, “‘Where you keep money and jewellery?’” (Goh 72). This low variety of English is however not sustained after the initial question. The speech of the robber becomes more of Standard English: “Keep quiet! One shout, you and your woman will feel my knife, understand?” “Now, I’m going to kill your husband unless you tell me where they’re kept. I’ll really it. So don’t lie, or try to fool me. You understand?” (Goh 73) These perfectly enunciated sentences sound like the speech of a well educated man who would not have uttered the initial question. His subsequent speech shows that he can use grammatically correct English and his use of the connective “unless” indicates his command of the language. So why was a low variety used initially? The reader is 227 left to wonder if the writer forgot his strategy. This inconsistency undermines aesthetic appreciation. One of the factors that make Shadow Theatre readable and persuasive is the fact that the writer is very consistent in her portrayal of the speech of each character. Take, for instance, Helena Sim, who speaks in Singapore English. Her speech is aesthetically pleasing, because the writer has selected certain linguistic features from Singapore English and has artistically incorporated them into her speech repertoire. The writer repeats the stylization of the linguistic features throughout her narration. This consistency in the way each character’s speech is stylized makes the portrayal intellectually acceptable. To Bakhtin, “the image of a language created by stylization is the least fraught and most artistically round-off of such images, one that permits the maxinial aestheticism available to novelistic prose” (363). The writer balances Helena Sim’s speech, with the Standard English of some of the narrators and the mesolectal variety of others. Thus the writer achieves an authentic literary representation of how English is spoken throughout Singapore. The inability to depict the various levels of language use in Singapore is the direct result of not having a clear idea what constitutes “Singlish”. In Foreign Bodies, by Hwee Hwee Tan, the narrator says, Singlish is a type of pidgin English where English words are arranged according to the rules of Chinese grammar, and sentences are sprinkled with the occasional Chinese, Malay and Indian words. (Tan 8) If this definition is to be accepted, then, Singlish is mainly spoken by the Chinese Singaporeans who know the “rules of Chinese grammar”. In a magazine article, “No Singlish Please, We Are Singaporean”, the writer says, The linguistic characteristics of Hokkien and Mandarin such as the absence of subject-verb concordance and past or future tenses are reflected in Singlish. … Singlish-speakers are also likely to use standard English in a way that reflects this Chinese linguistic influence. Thus Singlish-speakers commonly dispense with the 228 correct English verb endings, mix subject-verb concordance, use prepositions wrongly or position the articles “a” and “the” incorrectly. (19) Thus, there is a need to know how Singlish sounds like before it can be represented. This is rather problematic for writers who live away form Singapore. In Love and Vertigo by Hsu-Min Teo, the narrator says that her mother spoke “the local Singlish patois, her vocabulary a mélange of English, Malay and Chinese; her syntax abbreviated, chopped and wrenched into disconcerting unfamiliarity” (Teo 3). But after giving this generalised definition, the writer makes no attempt to portray this “Singlish patois”. In one instance, the narrator says, “He was English–educated, like herself and because of their different dialects they conversed in the local Singlish patois” (Teo 101). But the reader never gets to hear their actual communication. Bakhtin points out that it is impossible to reveal the activity of a character and his world-view just by his acts alone “without representing his discourse” (Bakhtin 335). In Teo’s novel, that which is often heard is either the translation of dialects or Standard English. Unlike Singlish, a unique form of pidgin English with a “hip image”( Tan Dawn Wei 20) which has recently become popular with the younger generation, largely owing to the success of the actor Gurmit Singh’s portrayal of Phua Chu Kang in a popular sitcom, Singapore English, which has evolved after 1965 from Singapore–Malayan English, has a considerable variation. Singapore English is a continuum from the more prestigious variety the acrolect, through mesolects down to the basilectal sub-variety. Hence, it is artistically possible to depict Singapore English in a novelistic hybridization as there is a greater consensus on what it constitutes, and there are linguistic markers to show its use. The depiction of Helena Sim’s speech demonstrates that even when the writer lives outside Singapore it is possible to represent Singapore English convincingly. Since it is necessary to hear the speech of 229 characters, because “in order that language become an artistic image, it must become speech from speaking lips, conjoined with the image of a speaking person” (Bahktin 336), the aim in novelistic hybridization in a multilingual society is to focus on the linguistic features of the various levels of language in use. Keeping in mind that “verbal repertoires of Singaporeans are strongly dependant on the ethnic and educational background of the speaker, though these are not the only criteria as age, sex and socio-economic status may also be of significance” (Platt 64), the writer is at liberty to depict any of the different levels of language use in fiction. In the organizing and presenting of the speech of each character in the discourse, not only the underlying theme of the narrative is emphasized, but also the characteristics of the speaker. The dialogic tension between different points of view is realized by the social diversity of speech types and the differing individual voices which form the compositional unities of the novel. Hence, in a multilingual environment, the speeches of narrators, inserted genres and speeches of characters become one of the most fundamental aspects of prose style and demand specific artistic elaboration. In a multilingual environment, therefore, the novelistic plot must organize the exposure, not only of all social languages, but also all levels of language use in the society through the speaking person. The reader’s aesthetic appreciation of the writer’s use of language, according to Talib, comes when the reader realizes “the knowledge of the various levels of language use in society and how they can be depicted in fiction” (Talib, Interlogue, Vol. 1, 161). However, in order to stimulate both aesthetic and intellectual appreciation, there must be selective use of the strategies of code-mixing, code-switching, lexical borrowing and the low variety of English. 230 The study of these selected novels reveals that these strategies have gradually replaced vernacular transcriptions. Not only are these strategies, “common ways of installing cultural distinctiveness” (Ashcroft et al. 72) but also the means of constructing the multilingual environment. 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M.A. Quayum and P.C. Wicks. (eds). Petaling Jaya Longman, 2001. 269 – 275. 242 [...]... bilingual policy with English as the first language and mother tongues as the second The National Language (Bahasa Kebangsaan) which is standard Malay became gradually the medium of instruction in all schools in Malaysia after 1976 Although English was phased out slowly as a medium of instruction, it is still retained as one of the languages in the curriculum The variety of English in Malaysia is known as... (152) The question in the mind of the reader would be In what language did they interact?’ The utterance “‘Baik-lah, lekas!’” gives the reader the answer The chances are the heiho spoke no English as he is a Malay and the incident takes place during the Japanese Occupation when the use of English was frowned upon Would there have been greater clarity if, at the start of the paragraph, the writer had indicated... lingua franca among the non -English educated was Bazaar Malay When a writer portrays the Singapore-Malayan English spoken by characters, there is a need to ascertain the lectal level of English in use Since the variety of English used by a character depends very much on the level of education of the speaker, older characters cannot speak in a variety of English unless they have been educated in the English- medium... standard, in whatever way that ‘standard’ is defined (Talib 147) The narrator’s use of Standard English acts as a contrast to the other speech varieties used by individual characters According to W.J Crewe, a living dialect which is the daily speech of a substantial proportion of the population has a place in the naturalistic literature of the nation so long as the dialect speech is within the framework... framework of Standard English (82) It is only then that there will be “local interest and literary and social approval” (Crewe 82) Since the presentation of the language of the characters, “has more variation from the standard In addition to their own idiosyncrasics of speech, the characters have social affiliations that make their speech quite distinctive” (Talib 147), the novelist in Singapore and Malaysia... drama and other literary forms (Southeast Asian Review in English, 57) Thus the reluctance can be attributed to the demands posed by the dynamics of literary representation of the multilingual environment The rest of the introduction will identify the main challenges that face the writers in English in this region and the methods of language appropriation employed to represent the speaking person in. .. Sinnathurai that they were not as fortunate as Nadarajah, his son, Mr Sinnathurai said, ‘Whada pity, whada pity,’ and rolled his head sadly from side to side, Indian fashion Mr Sinnathurai had all the Indian mannerisms and gestures Shaking of the head as if the head was on a 22 loose hinge, and clicking the tongue, clut, clut, clut He brought them over to introduce to some of the other adult male relatives... any of the characters The mode of first-person narration on the other hand demands the characteristics of the spoken rather than the written word, where the vocabulary and syntax characteristic of colloquial speech are used to give the narrative the appearance of spontaneity, rather than of a carefully constructed account (Lodge 18) When using this narrative mode it is important that the narrator avoids... could afford to give their children an English education attended these schools Since the establishment of English- medium education was slow and somewhat erratic, it is not surprising that the main lingua franca among the non -English educated remained Bazaar Malay, while among the English educated, a new lingua franca, Singapore-Malayan English, developed “mainly through the transference of linguistic... language to another is only obvious because of the phrase “said Stark in Malay” at the beginning of the dialogue Apparently, the servant does not understand English at all, for Stark verbally abuses him in front of the guests Here the writer translates Malay into English and dramatizes the colonial attitude to the locals The power of this dialogue lies in its connection to the theme of the novel, a journey . THE DYNAMICS OF LITERARY REPRESENTATION AND INTERPRETATION IN A MULTILINGUAL ENVIRONMENT: A STUDY OF SELECTED MALAYSIAN AND SINGAPORE NOVELS IN ENGLISH ROSALY. franca among the non -English educated remained Bazaar Malay, while among the English educated, a new lingua franca, Singapore-Malayan English, developed “mainly through the transference of linguistic. Language (Bahasa Kebangsaan) which is standard Malay became gradually the medium of instruction in all schools in Malaysia after 1976. Although English was phased out slowly as a medium of instruction,