CCGL 9024:
Life and Death of Languages
Cultural Dissociation
Cultural dissociation is a the feeling of separation with the society that you are living in, in terms of cultural aspect. In the field of psychological study[1], dissociation is measured in scale and diagnosed in degree of seriousness.
In the case of biracial people in Hong Kong, they have a relatively high complexity in identity issues. They can possess identities from their father, mother and Hong Kong's society. If we set up a scale with ten intervals, we can indicate their level of cultural dissociation with reference to their spoken languages and sense of identity.
Interview 1
For interview 1, we can estimate that Jethro identifies with as a British, Pilipino and Hong Kong person. If we are going to rank on the scale, her identity associated with being Filipino is the highest because of her mother selective usage of English instead of Tagalog in her childhood. If we apply the idea that language shapes our culture and identity[2], we can see that she is disconnected from her Filipino heritage via Tagalog. All of her experience and knowledge about the Philippines are very basic, only coming from what Hong Kong can offer as Filipino such as imported food and music. Aside from a family connection, Jethro is more culturally disconnected from her Filipino identity.
As for her British identity, it is slightly lower than her Filipino identity because she considers her mother tongue to be English. As mentioned in the interview, her consistently changing accent can relate to her identity. One example to when she visited her famliy in England, her way of speaking changed as her living environment and culture changed. From this we can see that she identifies much closer to her father and her british heritage. Finally we ranked her Hong Kong identity as 2, which is the lowest among the three identities. This is because she has lived in Hong Kong for 19 years so she has adepted to Hong Kong's soceity. As Jethro mentioned, she enjoys Hong Kong culture and people. Despite this Jethro still only recognizes Hong Kong as her ‘homeland’ (or country of living), she does not identify as a Hong Kong person since she cannot relate local cultures and language.
[1] Roberto Lewis-Fernández, Alfonso Martínez-Taboas, Vedat Sar, Sapana Patel, and Adeline Boatin, "The Cross-Cultural Assessment of Dissociation" in Cross-cultural assessment of psychological trauma and PTSD (US: Springer, 2007), 279-280.
[2] Ronald Wardhaugh, ”Words and Culture” in An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Malden, M.A.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 221-223.
Interview 2
For interview 2, James has mainly two identities—French and Hong Kong. On one hand, we rank his Hong Kong identity as 1 because as he clearly states, his identity of Hong Kong people with the reason of long residency, fluency in Cantonese etc. On the other hand, he does not have strong connection with his French identity, though he is still using French in communication with family members
By comparing the two interviews, we can see an interesting observation. Although the two interviewees have lived in Hong Kong for a long time, the main difference between them is their fluency in local language. We can assume that the level of fluency of local language is directly proportional to the understanding of the cultures by communication. In this sense, it is not likely for biracial people who can speak and understand the local language to dissociate in the society with a sense of belonging. Therefore, the situation of forming coteries with local and international students and not understanding local pop cultures will not happen very often, provided that the biracial people learn the local language. If they find a closer connection with one culture, this may be easier for them to shift their language, as well as their identity.
written by Scarlet Ng
References:
1. Lewis-Fernández, Roberto, Martínez-Taboas, Alfonso, Sar, Vedat, Patel, Sapana, and Boatin, Adeline. "The Cross-Cultural Assessment of Dissociation" in Cross-cultural assessment of psychological trauma and PTSD. US: Springer, 2007.
2. Wardhaugh, Ronald. “Words and Culture” in An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Malden, M.A.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.