SECOND GENERATION MIGRANT WRITERS IN AUSTRALIA: TRANSCULTURAL CREATIVITY AND WORLD ENGLISHES Nina Fang Bachelor of Arts, Monash University, Australia Honours Degree of Bachelor of Arts, Monash University, Australia A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Monash University in 2020 Faculty of Arts School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics Copyright notice © Nina Fang (2020). I certify that I have made all reasonable efforts to secure copyright permissions for third-party content included in this thesis and have not knowingly added copyright content to my work without the owner's permission. ii Abstract With the transcultural flows of migrants across the globe, Inner Circle countries (Kachru, 1982) are no longer ‘monolingual’ and are, in many senses, host to different varieties of world Englishes (Sharifian, 2009). As such, writers from the Inner Circle also have creative potential to shift tran- spatially in the choices they make with language.
A category of these writers are second generation migrant writers who are ‘insider-outsiders’ with one foot in each door but writing only in English. They possess schemas of knowledge from both home and host cultures, and varying degrees of language competence in their different worlds. This thesis examines the transcultural creativity of selected second generation Australian migrant writers through the lens of World Englishes and Cultural Linguistics. The sources of data are selected texts from Alice Pung, Benjamin Law, and Randa Abdel-Fattah, paratexts drawn from online sources, a questionnaire-survey and follow up interviews of participant responses, and semi-structured interviews with the selected authors.
This thesis investigates the potential forms of transcultural creativity through the linguistic strategies used by the authors, and as revealed by participant responses to their transcultural creativity. The results show that the transcultural creativity of second generation migrant writers takes both linguistic and discoursal forms. They also show that despite the Australian Englishness of the text, what seems like ‘otherness’ traditionally, has already crossed transcultural boundaries to be part of what is considered ‘the norm’. Furthermore, these results show that the transcultural creativity of the selected texts is a construction of the authors’ metacultural writing competence guiding their readers and the reader’s own interpretation of the text.
Findings suggest that the transcultural creativity of second generation writers is produced through the authors’ choice of linguistic strategies, reflection of self, perception of participants, cultural conceptualisations of both home and host cultures, and defamiliarisation and refamiliarisation of dominant social discourses. iii Declaration This thesis is an original work of my research and contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at any university or equivalent institution and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, this thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made in the text of the thesis. Signature: Print Name: NINA FANG Date: 12/09/2020 iv Publications during enrolment Fang, N. Chinese‐Australian cultural conceptualisations of ancestor worship, death and family.
Shaping a new voice: blending Australian English and heritage languages in second-generation migrant writing. Re-schematization of Chinese xiao (filial piety) across cultures and generations In M.), World Englishes and Cultural Linguistics. “Ok, you heard of grammar?”: On being overly prescriptive when writing online. v Acknowledgements It has been a long journey in writing this thesis.
What began as a tiny seed of possibility has grown epically over the years of my candidature, shaped by the nourishment of inspiring conversations and encouraging voices. Among these voices, I wish to express my deepest, sincerest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Zhichang Xu, for his endless patience, excellent advice, immense support, and assistance in all things academic related. There are not enough words to express my thanks for all the time Dr Xu placed in reading and reviewing the innumerable number of drafts I sent his way, especially when they sorely needed critical feedback I would like to also thank my associate supervisors, Dr Sanaz Fotouhi, Professor Farzad Sharifian and Professor Kate Burridge. To Dr Sanaz Fotouhi, my thanks goes to you for being there at the beginning of my journey, for all the wonderful and inspiring conversations on this and many other topics.
To Professor Farzad, if I had never encountered Cultural Linguistics, this thesis may not have taken the shape it has. To Professor Kate Burridge, my thanks for your encouraging support and excellent advice in the final months of my candidature. I would also like to thank all my participants for responding to my questionnaire-survey and taking part in the follow up interviews, my cultural informants for answering my questions, and the selected authors, Alice Pung, Benjamin Law, and Randa Abdel-Fattah for granting me an hour of their time to participate in an interview. I wish to thank my PhD colleagues of office S503, Dima, Eve, Tom, Luluh, Ellen, Sara—no matter how our office has been moved, renovated, transformed, I shall always be grateful to you guys for your limitless advice and understanding of the woes and triumphs of doing a PhD during this time.
My special thanks goes also to my dearest friends, Rachel Fan, Maria Spasenoska, Daniélle Smith, Lyss Tam, Thuy Dinh, who have accompanied me for all or most of my PhD journey with their patient ears, encouraging motivation, and thoughtful outsider insight at times when I couldn’t see past the bush in my way. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their endless encouragement even when it looked like my Thesis tree was about to crack under pressure. Though I am the first to achieve this academic milestone in my family, my parents have given me immeasurable support and reassurance that if you work hard, then all will be well. vi Table of contents Copyright notice.
iv Publications during enrolment. vi Table of contents. vii List of Tables .xii List of Figures. xiv List of Key Terms.
xv Chapter 1 Introduction .2 Statement of the problem .3 Aims of the study .6 Significance of the study. 8 Chapter 2 Literature Review .2 World Englishes and Linguistic Creativity .1 Language, English, and the Global Context: World Englishes.2 Wave 1: Postcolonial and colonial writers .1 Writing in English.2 Nativisation and linguistic strategies .3 Wave 2: Expanding Circle writers .4 Wave 3: Writing, language, and creativity from the Inner Circle: A focus on Australia and second generation migrant writing.1 Linguistic creativity of the next order: the potential to revisit the Inner Circle .2 From the Inner Circle: A focus on ‘multicultural literature’ in Australia and varying responses .5 Returning to Language, English, and the Global Context: World Englishes and challenging the monolingual mindset .3 Transcultural Creativity and Cultural Linguistics .2 A Cultural Linguistic approach to Transcultural Creativity .2 Sources of data .2 Questionnaire-survey and the follow up interview participants .3 The interviews: Author participants .4 Data analysis procedure. 84 Chapter 4 Transcultural creativity as a reflection of self .1 Overview: From what we know .2 Social context, the influence of politics .3 Author relationship with the English language, and where does this situate them? .4 The meaning of ‘writing’: A way of knowing .5 The Creative Process: Constructing the self.6 The Creative Process: Conscious choice. 102 Chapter 5 Transcultural creativity as linguistic strategies .1 Overview: The “-ness” in second generation migrant writing .3 Creative and direct translation .4 Creative manipulations, puns, and humour .5 Semantic shift, linguistic innovation, and borrowings .6 Terms of address.
129 Chapter 6 Transcultural creativity as perception .1 Overview: Perceiving creativity .2 Too close to ‘standard’? .3 A collective effort? Cooperative fracture and reference as perception .4 It’s because I feel something: Emotional correspondence .5 Personal interpretation as creativity. 150 Chapter 7 Transcultural creativity as meaning making .1 Overview: Same words, different meanings .2 Interpretability of cultural conceptualisations .1 ‘Ghost town’ and ‘old white ghosts’ .1 GHOST in ‘ghost town’ .2 GHOST in ‘old homes’ .3 ‘I older than you!’ .1 AGE EQUALS RESPECT .2 AGE DEMANDS RESPECT .4 ‘Straight As’ Asian.5 ‘It was an Aussie thing’: Gender and physical affection .1 GENDER ROLES AS DEFINED SET OF EXPECTATIONS .2 PHYSICAL AFFECTION AS CULTURALLY BOUND .3 Interpretability of transcultural punning and metacultural writing competence. 180 Chapter 8 Transcultural Creativity as breaking convention .1 Overview: “New” ways of doing things.2 The role of humour .3 Stereotypes and caricature .4 ‘Rewriting’: The advent (again) of a new era .5 Re-reading in appreciation: The acceptability of the texts for ‘others’ .6 Paradigm shift, transcultural creativity, and second generation migrant writing .2 Summary of findings and contributions .3 Implications of the study .4 Final remarks and future recommendations. 221 Appendix A Selected Texts.
238 Appendix B Text Excerpts. 243 Appendix C List of Linguistic Strategies. 246 (2) Creative and direct translations. 257 (3) Creative manipulations and puns.
266 (5) Terms of address. 286 Appendix D List of authors. 291 Appendix E Epitext of selected texts on Amazon. 302 Appendix F Paratext: Reviews.
312 Unpolished Gem reviews. 320 The Family Law reviews. 335 Does My Head Look Big In This? Reviews. 344 Ten Things I Hate About Me reviews.
359 xi List of Tables Table 1 List of key terms. xv Table 2 Selected author profiles and the selected texts. 55 Table 3 Selected paratexts. 59 Table 4 The attributes of the cultural informants.
64 Table 5 Questionnaire-survey follow up interview participant's information. 66 Table 6 Selected author participant information. 68 Table 7 Data analysis procedure. 76 Table 8 Adopted and adapted analytical frameworks.
78 Table 9 Coding categories for linguistic strategies. 79 Table 10 Example coding for book review paratext data. 81 Table 11 Author and text codes for linguistic strategies. 82 Table 12 Examples of linguistic strategies coding.
83 Table 14 Names of main characters in selected texts. 118 Table 15 Summary of key findings of the research questions. 206 Table 16 Excerpts selected for the questionnaire-survey. 243 Table 17 Codemeshing – subcategory 1 lexical items.
246 Table 18 Codemeshing - subcategory 2, varieties of language. 253 Table 19 Creative and direct translations - subcategory 1, direct translations. 257 Table 20 Creative and direct translations - subcategory 2, creative translations. 260 Table 21 Creative manipulations and puns.
262 Table 22 Linguistic creativity: semantic shift, lingusitic innovations and borrowings. 266 Table 23 Terms of address. 269 Table 24 Referential acts. 274 xii Table 25 Speech acts.
283 Table 26 Naming acts. 286 Table 27 List of potential authors and texts. 291 Table 28 Epitext of selected texts on Amazon. 302 xiii List of Figures Figure 1 Questionnaire-survey sample 1.
72 Figure 2 Questionnaire-survey sample 2. 73 Figure 3 P-R-D-G1 list of Australianisms translated to Americanisms. 201 xiv List of Key Terms Table 1 List of key terms Key term Meaning Home culture/home language The culture of and language used by the parents at home, the parental tongue(s) Host culture/host language The culture of the country the individual lives in, and the official language used in the country Second generation migrant First born in Australia in a family to migrant parents xv Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Overview Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential. Simply put, aside from using one's imagination - perhaps more importantly - creativity is the power to act – Ai Weiwei An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all – Oscar Wilde Creativity takes courage – Henri Matisse The need to be creative can best be demonstrated through language, in which it is almost human nature to be creative.
As Runco (2014) writes: Creativity plays a significant role in language, for example, and in fact this may be the best example of everyday creativity. It is the creativity of language that demonstrates that it is not entirely acquired through experience and learning (p.