#RhetoricSoEnglishOnly: Decolonizing rhetorical studies through multilingualism

ABSTRACT

Rhetorical scholarship must move in new linguistic and decolonial directions, to illustrate those languages/cultures/nationalities that have been marginalized in academia. English language dominance in the academy reflects relations of power, race, ethnicity, culture, globalization, colonization, and dualistic ways of thinking. Fluency in English is a type of linguistic capital that is preferred and demanded within academic scholarship in the US and globally. This essay explores what might we consider from other (non-dominant) languages and cultures that would expand our understandings of rhetoric and rhetorical practice, drawing from examples in Indonesian and Spanish. I also examine questions such as: How might concepts in other languages besides English enhance our knowledge and understanding of multicultural rhetorical practices? How are those who are multilingual expected to engage in multilingual work with little recognition for that academic, personal, and emotional labor? The profound impact that language usage has on all of us should be of utmost concern and interest for rhetorical scholars as we seek to understand how audiences connect with rhetorics of all kinds.

KEYWORDS:

• Multilingualism
• translation
• Latinx languages
• decolonial languages
• decolonial rhetorical methods

Acknowledgments

I deeply appreciate Darrel Wanzer-Serrano for initiating this forum and for his helpful feedback in improving this essay. I am also grateful to Tiara Na’puti for her comments and engagement with my work, as well as Vincent Pham and Godfried Agyeman Asante for their contributions in this forum.

ORCID

Stacey K. Sowards http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0797-7047

Notes

1 My name … for now I do not need to name myself. Not because it’s a crazy mystery. Already I have considered it: I do not yet need to truly present myself to others. Mystery! We each will privately arrive there, whether we want to or not, with all our soul and body. Minke, the protagonist in Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s novel, Bumi Manusia (Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Hasta Mitra, 1985).

2 My soul in between two worlds, three, four my head buzzing with all the contradiction I am disoriented because of all the voices that speak to me simultaneously. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Book Co, 1987), 77.

3 Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs, and Charlton McIlwain, “#CommunicationSoWhite,” Journal of Communication 68 (2018): 254–66. doi:10.1093/joc/jqy003.

4 Mary Jane Curry and Theresa Lillis, “The Dangers of English as Lingua Franca of Journals,” Inside Higher Ed, March 13, 2018, http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/03/13/domination-english-language-journal-publishing-hurting-scholarship-many-countries?mc_cid=435505a2bc&mc_eid=2be98e0d15.

5 I develop some of these arguments more fully in: Stacey K. Sowards, “Linguistic Capital: Latinx and English/Spanish Language Fluency,” in Latina/o Communication Studies: Theories, Methods, and Practice, eds. Leandra Hinojosa Hernández, Diana I. Bowen, Amanda R. Martínez, and Sarah de los Santos Upton (Lanham, MD: Lexington Press, 2019).

6 Christopher A. Chávez, “‘News with an Accent’: Hispanic Television and the Re-negotiation of US Latino Speech,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 12, no. 3 (2015): 9.

7 Mystery, not yet, already, and in process.

8 See also Bernadette M. Calafell, Latina/o Communication Studies: Theorizing Performance (New York: Peter Lang, 2007).

9 Consciousness of a “mixed” person, pulled between ways, open wound (of the border), rebellion, someone who is considered a “traitor” to indigenous people, a shapeshifter/protean being, seeing deeper realities from surface meanings, “selling out” or not “knowing” one’s culture. These terms are very loosely translated here, and these translations do not fully explain the rhetorical usefulness of these concepts here, but are brief examples of how rhetorical scholarship could benefit from exploring concepts in other languages. In Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.

10 Robert Gutierrez-Perez and Leandra Hinojosa Hernández, eds., This Bridge We Call Communication: Anzaldúan Approaches to Theory, Method, and Praxis (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019).

11 Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Trenton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 332.

12 Mari Castañeda, Claudia A. Anguiano, and Sonya M. Alemán, “Voicing for Space in Academia: Testimonios of Chicana Communication Professors,” Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social 16, no. 2 (2017): 174.

13 Yolanda Flores Niemann, “The Making of a Token: A Case Study of Stereotype Threat, Stigma, Racism, and Tokenism in Academe,” in Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, eds. G. Gutiérrez y Muhs, Y. Flores Niemann, C. G. González, and A. P. Harris (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2012), 349, citing Garza 1993.

14 Kathleen/Catalina de Onís, “‘Pa’ que tú lo sepas’: Experiences with co-presence in Puerto Rico,” in Text+Field: Innovations in Rhetorical Method, eds. Sara L. McKinnon, Robert Asen, Karma R. Chávez, and Robert G. Howard (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), 101–16.

15 Michelle A. Holling and Bernadette M. Calafell, “Identities on Stage and Staging Identities: ChicanoBrujo Performances as Emancipatory Practices,” Text and Performance Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2007): 58–83.

16 Chela Sandoval, “Translation as “Trans-interpretation”: Notes on Transforming the Book Methodology of the Oppressed into Metodología de la emancipación,” Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social 17, no. 2 (2018): 26–32.

17 Ernesto Laclau, Debates y combates: Por un nuevo horizonte de la política (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fondo de cultura económica de Argentina, 2008).

18 Kathleen/Catalina de Onís, “Lost in Translation: Challenging (White, Monolingual Feminism’s) <Choice> with Justicia Reproductiva,” Women’s Studies in Communication 38, no. 1 (2015): 1–19. I encouraged Dr. de Onís to foreground the original text and make an argument about why she should do so, that is, to privilege the voices and work of organizations on justicia reproductiva.

19 Mitsuye Yamada, “Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster: Reflections of an Asian American Woman,” in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, eds. C. Moraga and G. Anzaldúa (New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983), 35–40.

20 Pramoedya Ananta Toer, The Mute’s Soliloquy, trans. Willem Samuels (New York: Hyperion East, 1999), 317.