Popular Culture in Transglossic Language Practices of Young Adults

ABSTRACT

Based on virtual conversations drawn from two separate intensive ethnographic studies in Bangladesh and Mongolia, we show that popular cultural texts play a significant role in young adults’ heteroglossic language practices. On the one hand, they borrow voices from cultural texts and cross the boundaries of language, i.e., codes, modes, and genres, and engage in translocalization and transculturation. On the other hand, they subtly manipulate various ideologies hidden underneath the voices, transtextualize the cultural texts, and maintain desired affiliation and distance from certain identity attributes. A transglossic analysis of data shows that heteroglossia needs to be understood not so much through linguistic or genre-specific features as it is usually done in applied linguistics research but with reference to transgression afforded in the borrowed voices. The significance of popular culture in language and identity research can only be unravelled when language is considered as transglossic rather than heteroglossic.

KEYWORDS:

• Bangladesh
• bi/multilingualism
• heteroglossia
• Mongolia
• popular culture
• transglossia
• voice

Acknowledgments

This article was presented in Sociolinguistics Symposium 21 held in Murcia, Spain in June 2016.

We appreciate the constructive feedback and suggestions of the Editors of this journal, Dr. Alfredo Artiles and Dr. Jeff MacSwan, and anonymous reviewers about the first version of the article. We are also highly indebted to our PhD supervisor Professor Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), for his encouragement in aspiring to excellence in research and writing.

Notes

¹ Tamara and Tahura, students of Business Administration, are twin sisters majoring in Accounting and Human Resource Management respectively. They lived for 3 years in Arizona, USA, and have lived in Dhaka for 18 years. Having studied at a prestigious English-medium school and college in Dhaka, both of them are fluent speakers of English, which they speak with their friends and family members. These eloquent and confident women take immense pride in their competence in English, their presence of mind, and intellectual bent. They find it difficult to locate themselves only in terms of locale; instead, they consider themselves to be global citizens. Tahura, for example, points out that globalization is not only about transferring non-Bangladeshi cultural practices to her life. It is also about incorporating them into Bangladeshi culture and making Bangladeshi culture a part of the global paradigm.

² Other examples are Halkat Jawani—This Careless Mean Prime Youth (KhanHDMusic, 2012), Sheila Ki Jawani—Sheila’s Youth (Mahmud, 2010), or Halkat Jawaani (T-Series Apna Punjab, 2013).

³ Hindi, the national language of the neighboring country, India.

⁴ Indian entertainment has a strong hold over the Bangladeshi media (Khasru, 2012). Satellite TV channels broadcasting from India in Hindi and Bengali are popular for their soap operas, films, and sports coverage. ETV Bangla, an Indian satellite channel based in Calcutta, ZTV, Star Plus, Sony TV, and Zee Cinema are among the most popular Indian entertainment channels. Doordarshan, BBC, CNN, and ETV Bangla are popular satellite channels for news.

⁵ Ameen, born and brought up in the Sultanate of Oman, came to Bangladesh at the age of 19 and gained admission to Electric and Electronic Communication. Having been a student in a British school (Years 1–10) and then in an American international school (Years 11–12) in Muscat, he initially found it very difficult to adjust to the lifestyle in Bangladesh and the education system in general. However, he prefers Bangladesh because of its liberal environment, compared to Oman, which is run by strict Muslim Shariah law and codes of conduct in terms of relationships with women. He also feels empowered because of his competence in Arabic and French, which he learned in the international school in Muscat, and his fluency in English. Every now and then, he uses Arabic slang, such as hanith (“fuck yourself”) or ummakh (“fuck your mom”) to his friends or utters in French Je vous trouve très séduisant (“I think you are sexy”) to beautiful female students on campus, just to impress them.

⁶ Batjargal was a student at the National University of Mongolia, majoring in British and American studies. His socioeconomic background is privileged, as he went to one of the most prestigious Russian-medium high schools in Mongolia, where only children with wealthy and elite parents attend. He speaks fluent Russian and English, accompanied by intermediate French. He is a huge fan of heavy metal rock music.

⁷ The background of Batjargal’s FB friends is unknown since they were not the target participants of our main research project. The permission of reproducing Batjargal’s FB friends’ interaction on Batjargal’s FB wall was granted by Batjargal under the circumstances of using pseudonyms to protect their anonymity.