Why I Condemn Language Shaming
In my last article I have shown three examples of language discrimination inside the classroom. One of these cases was a clear example of language shaming and it was clear to my conscience that we need to pay attention, however it may be expressed in seriousness or in jest. As a Philology student, I was really appalled by the message shown in the image and, it seemed to me that the professor who used the so-called “sophisticated technique” was proud of it, without thinking about the damaging consequences.
Last February 26, I sent an email to Instituto Cervantes, the institution where the Spanish professor teaches, asking them to take action into the subject matter and as I am waiting for their response, I would like to call out their teachers who use discrimination as a form of pedagogical technique. Whilst personally I was not in Mr. Mojarro Romero’s class, in 2013 I experienced linguistic discrimination in the hands of one of their teachers. I remember my professor telling us, that using lexicon outside of the peninsular variety is wrong and as a result, she would penalize us if we uttered a word of it. This is one of the problems facing language teaching in general, and such prescriptivism and obsession to use the norm established by a governing body is actually counterproductive as native speakers do not speak the established and academic “norm”, after all the Real Academia Española can only recommend, but not impose these norms as each dialect has its own.
Going back to Mr. Mojarro Romero’s case, he, among all people, especially as a philologist, should know that prejudices are made by the speakers and not by the language itself. With that said, languages are not inherently discriminatory, it’s how speakers use the linguistic system. So, by saying that Spanish is ‘good’, and English is ‘bad’, he, as a speaker, is giving those attributes to these linguistic systems and not the languages per se. I am appalled as a Philology student, because I believe that all languages deserve fair and equal treatment, and no language is better nor worse over the other. Like I mentioned in the introduction, the message, whether in jest or in all seriousness, is discriminatory in whatever angle or perspective you look at it.
Furthermore, given our history with Spain, we are a misfit among its colonies as we do not speak the language anymore, however, it is not the English language’s fault, but rather its speakers, the Americans, for their effective brainwashing, during the first few decades of the 20th century. With that said, I also think that it’s important for Filipinos to learn Spanish, however, I cannot promote the language at the cost of other Philippine languages or at the cost of Philippine English.
As a conclusion to all of this, however precarious our relationship with Spain, and however tumultuous ours with the United States, they have left us with a good literary and cultural heritage, alongside with the indigenous, that we need to appreciate as Filipinos. We must not give in to the black and white thinking of our colonial past, but rather, understand the grey areas, however pitch black or clear white it may be, because not everything can be simplified, and simple historical data in its own can have its own complexities.
As a final note to this article, I hope to bring awareness about this matter, because discrimination in whatever form is not ok, and it should be eradicated in one form or another and we must be vocal about it, because as the philosopher-writer Edmund Burke once said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. If we don’t do anything about discrimination, it will destroy our social achievements and society a thousand times.
