Toé, t’es Torontoise!

"Using language, be it the one from my childhood or the one that I later learned in adulthood, has always been a political act, one that has mostly reflected the politics of other people.

Despite the fact that I have conversations with people and excitedly exchange ideas with them, I don’t seem to ever get a say in how my identity unfolds during such moments. These are the moments where I am assigned an identity or given a mask, and asked to play, not my part, but the part others need me to play for them.

When I show confusion over this casting, when I indulge in a soliloquy that explains why this personage is not authentic to my character, I am met with a familiar gaze: I am being difficult. In trying to be true to my character, I become cast as the diva."

My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/toe-tes-torontoise-by-rhonda-chung/

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

I Want to Talk About Race But I Don’t Know How

"At the most basic linguistic level, we could say that the speaker knows the semantic properties of a word, in particular what concepts it invokes, what its descriptive limitations are and how it’s used in discourse. These are all necessary components of ensuring comprehensive communication between parties.

Now ask yourself, what does it mean to not know a word? At the most basic communicative level, it means that a speaker can identify neither the concept he or she wants to discuss, nor its semantic delimitations, rendering him or her unable to engage in meaningful discourse.

It effectively eliminates all possibility of communication and ensures that we cannot talk about race because we simply don’t have the words to do so. We are thus receiving a very clear message: don’t talk about race.

The effect of this “wordlessness” bears out uncomfortable dialogues between people who don’t want to sound racist and those who are tired of explaining racism. We are essentially trying to speak to each other in a language that does not exist. Is it any wonder that we are all exhausted by race issues?"

My entire entry can be read here: https://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/special-issue-i-want-to-talk-about-race-but-i-dont-know-how