Concept: Language

Definition: (noun) a system of communication used by a particular country or community.

Related Terms: Bilingualism, multilingualism, pidgin, creole, dialect

Description: Language and migration are inextricably linked: an essence to cling to when all else is necessarily left behind. It is often said that we dream in our mother tongue. In his memoir, Heading South, Looking North (1998), Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean exile, describes his life as “a bilingual journey” between Spanish, his native language and English, his adopted one.¹ Dorfman writes about language as a home, and is able to use this metaphor to reflect on his migratory experiences.

The sociolinguistic effects of migration cannot be understated, particularly in relation to broader historical processes such as colonialism. The impetus of postcolonial writing has had much to do with many writers examining their own relationship with English, French, or German, the language of the colonial powers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and adapting them to their own purposes. Language can be liberatory and highly experimental in such uses. 

Conversely, the categorization of what constitutes language is political: Terms such as “pidgin,” “creole,” or “dialect” seek to differentiate languages that often emerge from the complex linguistic negotiations of migration from ‘official’ languages recognized by national entities. For example, the work of Singaporean linguistics scholar Lisa Lim speaks to an early “age of immigrant languages” where Bazaar Malay and Hokkien were some of the predominant languages spoken in Singapore for inter- and intra-ethnic communication.² This was followed by an “age of official languages,” where a postcolonial and interventionist government domesticated existing linguistic ecologies by institutionalizing English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil as the four official languages. This crystallized the main racial/ethnic groups with language as one of its key mechanisms.³

The concept of ‘language’ further extends beyond verbal language, to include the visual as a language, sign language, and computer programming, to name just three.

S.C. & J.Y. 2024

Notes

¹ Ariel Dorfman, Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey (London: Penguin, 1999).

² Lisa Lim, “Migrants and ‘Mother Tongues’: Extralinguistic Forces in the Ecology of English in Singapore,” in English in Singapore: Modernity and Management, ed. Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir, Lionel Wee (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 42

³ Lim, 43.