Albisteak
Native Speaker
Native Speaker is the title of a fascinating novel published several years ago by the writer Chang-Rae Lee, which, among other things, constitutes a sociolinguistic document of irrefutable empiric relevance. The quality of the novel is evident in the fact that it has won a number of different accolades, including the PEN Hemingway Award, the Oregon Book Award and the American Book Award. In my modest opinion, it is an exceptionally well-written piece of work with universal value that extends well beyond the specific geographical area in which it is set, namely the city of New York. It is a paradigmatic work, mainly because it is set in the world’s most important city, a city which is the birthplace of trends, attitudes and behaviours that are subsequently exported to all corners of the earth. The author, who was born in South Korea, emigrated to the United States with his parents when he was just three years of age. Whether or not the novel has any autobiographical basis (something which does not necessarily concern us here), Chang-Rae Lee describes the situation of an immigrant in the city of skyscrapers, and takes a long hard look at his attempts to construct an identity within the complex world of the Big Apple. An American who speaks fluent English but who nevertheless feels himself to be an outsider in the capital of the world, despite the fact that it is the place where he grew up. «Ancient Rome», writes Chang-Rae Lee in Native Speaker, «was the first genuine Babel. The city of New York is perhaps the second. And the last, without doubt, will be Los Angeles».
If sociolinguists are (as they should be) also travellers, then they will know exactly what the writer is getting at. New York is the first Italian city outside Italy, the first Irish city outside Ireland, and, it goes without saying, the first Jewish city full stop. But even those least familiar with the city know that the cliché of the American melting pot demands both renunciation and integration. Any process of cultural assimilation (in any sense) has its advantages and disadvantages. There are two sides to the coin: the side of integration into the host society, and the side of strangeness, and of having to renounce in some sense your society of origin. «Nevertheless», continues Chang-Rae Lee, «in order to access these splendid places, new arrivals have to learn primary-school Latin. They have to silence their ancestral languages, loosen up their lips. They have to listen to the sundry cries of the North American metropolis». This is no joke, and without being unnecessarily alarmist, we would do well to think about the increasing localness (even simple rusticity) of our own languages and their expulsion from more urban, global functions. We would do well to think about our position in the global village and about our (dis)connection to universal sociolinguistic networks.
For his part and a few years before Chang-Rae Lee, Isaac Bashevis Singer, the father of yiddish arts in New York, recounted in his works the tale of his superhuman efforts to maintain his language and ethnicity in Brooklyn. Travellers who walk down the streets of this neighbourhood, which lies on the other side of the East River, may still come across hasidim, dressed strictly in black with ringlets hanging down in front of their ears, and their wives, wearing wigs that seem to us, at least, to belong to another time and place. These are families with an unshakable tradition who strive to live their lives in yiddish as humanely as possible, thus challenging to some extent the language graveyard that is New York city. They are families which eat in kosher restaurants and read Forverts, a newspaper in which Bashevis Singer himself worked as an editor. They are families who regularly attend performances by the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre, and who cultivate klezmer, popular music sung in their own tongue.
In short, travelling to New York or Los Angeles is, for speakers of non-hegemonic languages in a global market, a «journey to the future of the empire», as the title of another interesting book by Robert Kaplan says. For sociolinguists, it is uncharted territory, a space existing right in the middle of the absolute complexity of the megalopolis, a centre and metaphor of the society from which it springs. The instrumental and integrative function of the English language in the life of the future and, at the same time, the disappearance (or perhaps maintenance) of the languages from which one's identity springs, are key and urgent points for reflection. Sociolinguists cannot afford to forget that compact urban models tend to create and maintain a certain degree of public space, whereas suburban models, such as Los Angeles and the many cities along the Mediterranean coast, tend to break the territory up into separate areas and undermine social cohesion. Under these circumstances, cultural and sociolinguistic Darwinism is radically imposed. Sociolinguistic cohabitation is becomingly increasingly complex in a world that is becoming increasingly unitary, and which is undergoing deep-rooted structural changes. And sociolinguists end up as confused and perplexed as travellers. Their reflections and diagnoses require the same degree of complexity as the situation they observe and study.
Toni Mollá
Journalist and author of the book Manual de sociolingüística
