When money loses its value, microaggressions and speech will be criminalized. The populace shall not accuse oligarchs of financial terrorism and war crimes. I am an individualist and believe in returning governance first to nation-states, then to states, then to counties, then to townships, and then to the people. I have zero hope for centralized governance, and instead, I promote the replacement of government with open source software, referendum, and the most faceless and omnipresent form of democracy possible: a world ruled by everyone. Centralized governments have been successful at killing hundreds of millions of people. The larger they are, the more they kill. When I see dangerous globalist ideologies, I am compelled to point them out.
Xiaoye You
Associate Professor of English and Asian Studies
English Honors Adviser
Penn State University
B.A. English Education, Gannan Teachers’ College, China
M.A. Applied Linguistics, Northwestern Polytechnic University, China
Ph.D. English, Purdue University, USA, 2005
Areas of Specialization
Rhetoric and Composition
multilingual writing, comparative rhetoric, world Englishes
In Cosmopolitan English and Transliteracy (2016) Xiaoye You argues for the greater inclusiveness of Cosmopolitan English and transliteracy into the American educational system. His book ties the term Cosmopolitan English to the word accent. The text made me think of my Chinese friend of forty years. A long time ago, when my friend lost his job at a place that we both had worked at, I talked with the owner of a different company who I was then working for to see if he would interview my friend. I needed to be relieved of some of my duties to attend computer networking technologies classes. The owner hired my friend despite the company's concerns about his Cosmopolitan English. It turned out that my friend remained on as the last employee at that company and continued working in his position after the owners sold out to a larger tech company. I also had a Chinese business associate who is a physicist at Jet Propulsion Labs. He was at the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Then, I thought of my English professor from Nepal who also has an accent, and I began to think about the complexities that surround Cosmopolitan English. To me, accents are outside of human relationships and more of an integration barrier both psychologically and pragmatically for those that must endure them. Professor You's book highlights some ways that Cosmopolitan English appears in media and literature. Although I appreciated the explications of the various manifestations of Cosmopolitan English, in light of the current lack of success of English departments to teach formal English, I found the author's prescriptive solution questionable.
The book is really a great read but by making Cosmopolitan English a construct supported by catch-phrase terms such as xenophobic, neocolonialism, racism, sexism, microaggressions, marginalized, privileged, othered and so on, the authenticity of the author's virtue-signaling becomes suspect to the possibility of underlying financial and positioning motives. The irrefutable nature of microaggressions lends itself nicely to divide and conquer strategies. Independent of the point of view of the one judging, claims of microaggressions may be made by anyone and everyone. Discussions about microaggressions shut down discourse and lead to aggressiveness because once somebody is told they are microaggressive the same may be said of the accuser: their claim is a microaggression. We might remember how U. C. Berkeley students shut down free speech earlier this year. A difference of political opinion stirred students to violence. Outrage over the greater issue of the assault on the constitutionality of freedom of the press became a minor public debate because of concerns over the microaggressive nature of the speaker's expected political speech. Had the author put his political opinions aside and stuck to the excellent demonstrations of how transliteracy is used to produce greater understanding I would have been entirely persuaded that transliteracy critiques are needed.
The author relegates people that speak with accents to an othered class of which he seeks a better political/educational solution than currently provided for within academia. Where the author sees social justice--a phrase used to mean fairness--as a top-down pedagogical approach, I see the injustices of divisiveness and am reminded of the false accusations that are accompanied by atrocities against people who have been singled out as those who do not conform to the social. The reason for my perspective is not due to the author's excellent methodology but rather that he relies on the aforementioned catch-all phrases as support for his propositions. My Chinese friend told me of the experiences he encountered during his membership in Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. He had the responsibility of deploying plastic explosives: blowing up trains and bridges. My business associate from J.P.L. told me about the time that he helped carry four of his friends who were shot to the hospital the night the Chinese government decided to end the protest at Tiananmen Square. Three of his friends died. To me, social implies collectivism and social justice suggests collective justice. Collective justice is administered by a judicial system of laws and regulations and to consider one as being a microaggressor is outside of the scope of law since the accusations must necessarily be judged as subjective and therefore speculative. Microaggressions are not a credible reason with which to argue for fairness.
In regards to political/educational social justice, one must wonder about the financial and positional opportunities available to those that support the implementation of speculatively based educational programs. Motive becomes especially suspicious when the author plays on sentimentality to suggest that educational systems have a moral duty. Governments and institutions do not have the faculty of morality because they are not individuals. Collective entities crush individuality through pressures to conform; they stifle the individual and snuff out the source of morality. Morality is something that is earned by each person over a lifetime of psychological development, not by the force of law or the force of social conformity. An ethos--a natural understanding of how to play the game--within the global village of America has yet to supplant nepotism, and no amount of social engineering is likely to change that. Let us never forget that the path toward the extreme end of political/institutional social justice leads through the Cambodian killing fields of Pol Pot. My experiences inform me that people organically appreciate one another by living in multicultural societies such as Los Angeles: by working through life side by side. Had the author omitted his emphasis on social engineering as we-need-to(s), I would have found his book a more enjoyable read.
The book is really a great read but by making Cosmopolitan English a construct supported by catch-phrase terms such as xenophobic, neocolonialism, racism, sexism, microaggressions, marginalized, privileged, othered and so on, the authenticity of the author's virtue-signaling becomes suspect to the possibility of underlying financial and positioning motives. The irrefutable nature of microaggressions lends itself nicely to divide and conquer strategies. Independent of the point of view of the one judging, claims of microaggressions may be made by anyone and everyone. Discussions about microaggressions shut down discourse and lead to aggressiveness because once somebody is told they are microaggressive the same may be said of the accuser: their claim is a microaggression. We might remember how U. C. Berkeley students shut down free speech earlier this year. A difference of political opinion stirred students to violence. Outrage over the greater issue of the assault on the constitutionality of freedom of the press became a minor public debate because of concerns over the microaggressive nature of the speaker's expected political speech. Had the author put his political opinions aside and stuck to the excellent demonstrations of how transliteracy is used to produce greater understanding I would have been entirely persuaded that transliteracy critiques are needed.
The author relegates people that speak with accents to an othered class of which he seeks a better political/educational solution than currently provided for within academia. Where the author sees social justice--a phrase used to mean fairness--as a top-down pedagogical approach, I see the injustices of divisiveness and am reminded of the false accusations that are accompanied by atrocities against people who have been singled out as those who do not conform to the social. The reason for my perspective is not due to the author's excellent methodology but rather that he relies on the aforementioned catch-all phrases as support for his propositions. My Chinese friend told me of the experiences he encountered during his membership in Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. He had the responsibility of deploying plastic explosives: blowing up trains and bridges. My business associate from J.P.L. told me about the time that he helped carry four of his friends who were shot to the hospital the night the Chinese government decided to end the protest at Tiananmen Square. Three of his friends died. To me, social implies collectivism and social justice suggests collective justice. Collective justice is administered by a judicial system of laws and regulations and to consider one as being a microaggressor is outside of the scope of law since the accusations must necessarily be judged as subjective and therefore speculative. Microaggressions are not a credible reason with which to argue for fairness.
In regards to political/educational social justice, one must wonder about the financial and positional opportunities available to those that support the implementation of speculatively based educational programs. Motive becomes especially suspicious when the author plays on sentimentality to suggest that educational systems have a moral duty. Governments and institutions do not have the faculty of morality because they are not individuals. Collective entities crush individuality through pressures to conform; they stifle the individual and snuff out the source of morality. Morality is something that is earned by each person over a lifetime of psychological development, not by the force of law or the force of social conformity. An ethos--a natural understanding of how to play the game--within the global village of America has yet to supplant nepotism, and no amount of social engineering is likely to change that. Let us never forget that the path toward the extreme end of political/institutional social justice leads through the Cambodian killing fields of Pol Pot. My experiences inform me that people organically appreciate one another by living in multicultural societies such as Los Angeles: by working through life side by side. Had the author omitted his emphasis on social engineering as we-need-to(s), I would have found his book a more enjoyable read.
I appreciated seeing into the experiences that multicultural students have to deal with and I appreciated the way that the author brought out the potentialities of students through a synthesis of multicultural backgrounds. While reading through the examples of academic transliteracy writing, I realized the resultant meaning otherwise inaccessible and understood why people wrote in accented languages. Instead of reading or hearing a flat character stereotype, despite my familiarity with multicultural friends and associates, I more clearly recognize those behind the words written or spoken in Cosmopolitan English as being people that draw on useful and meaningful resources of more than one culture. Also, the examples of code switching were very enlightening because I noticed occurrences of it in many books and movies but never knew that it had a formal name. Despite the drawbacks mentioned above, I'd recommend the author's book to students that wished to know how English relates to multiculturalism.
One final note on Cosmopolitan English and Transliteracy is about the author's question which he says naturally arises: "why should we continue to emphasize a single dialect (Standard English) and a single style (formal or academic style) in the writing classroom?" (193). My answer to his question which, to me, does not "naturally arise" in light of his explications on "transliterate practices" is that English is a global language that unites all. By demoting English in favor of Cosmopolitan English educational departments across the globe would be participating in a return to national languages except for those countries in which English is the primary language. In English-speaking nations, students would be even worse students than they currently are. And, the author's proposition would benefit the larger number of Mandarin speakers more than any other language.
It is sad to see such an intelligent author mix his biased political views into an otherwise important book. I have placed Cosmopolitan English and Literacy into the most dangerous books section of my library because of its globalist top-down agenda. And, a little something to back my 7-year-old individualist claim that centralized governance can, and as I believe inevitably will be replaced by software. Harvard researcher Primavera de Filippi on Blockchain and the Quest to Decentralize Society
Excellent post, Ray. I really appreciated your examples drawn from among your fascinating and diverse group of friends. I also appreciated your provocative thoughts about microaggressions, a concept that's never sat well with me; but I think your exploration of that concept was truly insightful and helpful.
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