Last fall I was in trouble for what seemed to be unprofessional behavior on my part. A meeting was to be arranged so I could give a justification for what had happened. Someone, an American, suggested I could deliberately — if not duplicitously — switch to my mother tongue as I spoke English in the meeting. This suggestion was to make it look as though I were so nervous in defending myself, that I involuntarily inserted a few words from my mother tongue. Then, I could follow that insertion with “uh, uh, I am sorry, I mean, uh … ”
Needless to say, I did not appreciate the “advice.” I looked at the person in astonishment, and said very calmly, “No, I wouldn’t do that.” Inside, I was angry. The idea of that “advice,” though unspoken, and maybe unconscious, is that if I project an image of a “foreigner” who is not powerful enough to be capable of maintaining a nerve-racking conversation in English, my second language, there is a glimpse of hope that the authority I report to may take pity on me, dismissing me as a pathetic, poor foreigner who doesn’t know “what’s up.” Thus, I would get out of the trouble.
Clearly, my advice-giver here does not know what it means for someone to decide to pursue an education and achieve success in a foreign language, far away from home. In my last article, published on Jan. 27, I compared building respectable competency in a foreign language to bodybuilding.
Shifting from the bodybuilding analogy, it is compelling to also think of speaking a foreign language the same way as playing music. As the common aphorism goes, music is a language. Music expresses as many thoughts and moods as language does. Yet music is no one’s first language. Music, for anyone who plays it, is a foreign, i.e., learnt, language. All great musicians, despite maybe their gift for it, had to “learn” how to play music. And when they are no longer beginners, they never practice their musical instrument less than before; if anything, they practice more.
Speaking a foreign language comfortably, so much like playing music, is not so much of a necessity or an objective as it is simply a “passion.”
This is particularly the case for those who take to the native languages of their foreign countries, whether they are Americans going to Lebanon or Arabs coming to America. For those individuals, expressing thoughts and ideas in their foreign languages becomes much like playing a musical piece that communicates a certain emotion. Imagine asking a passionate guitarist, who has worked for years and years to reach a level of dexterity, to deliberately mess up a note while jamming in a competition in order to solicit the audience’s sympathy for his/her pretended stage fright. This is what my friend asked me to do when she suggested I intentionally drop a few words from my mother tongue in my meeting to pretend as though I was so weak a foreign speaker that I lost command of my language skills, something I have dedicatedly and passionately worked for, for years. Virtually, what she suggested I do is chicken out of the trouble by intentionally making myself come across as a total failure. And for what purpose? To make someone take “pity” on me.
How revealing the advice is! How telling it is of the way international students (more for some nationalities than it is for others) continue to be perceived by their American peers (or Americans, period) on U.S. campuses. Is it any wonder there seems to be a shared feeling among many of the international students I speak to that they are being treated like helpless “victims”? And the sole reason is that they come from foreign, “exotic” countries that do not speak your glorious language.
I truthfully do not mean to slander anyone by raising this issue. In fact, it was also an American undergraduate student here at The University of Mississippi who once told me: “I train myself not to judge others. I even catch myself doing it in the head.” What a noble statement indeed. Condescension isn’t just a word you say or an attitude you show; it could be a perception you hold of yourself and others. When you hold the other to be inherently less intelligent, less capable, less empowered and suchlike, merely on the account that they are foreigners hosted by your country, you are being condescending to them. We need, I think, to take for example that kid who is no more than 19 years of age, and be watchful of our unconscious tendencies of patronizing, essentializing and authoring the other.
And for the international students out there who perhaps found themselves identifying with what I wrote: The flagged misconceptions, if I am not delusional in thinking them a reality, are partly your fault and, partly, your responsibility to amend. Allow yourself to be incorporated into the life and activities of the local community, and have the local community activities be incorporated into yours. Refuse to accept the associations of disempowerment, which may be attributed to you, by engaging in conversation, speaking your mind and asserting your different character. May your stay in America be free of ostracism and xenophobia.
Ahmed Seif is a graduate student of English literature from Alexandria, Egypt.
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