The Third Space and Chinese Language Pedagogy

Negotiating Intentions and Expectations in Another Culture

Xin Zhang, Xiaobin Jian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000290523
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Enseignement des langues

The Third Space and Chinese Language Pedagogy presents the Third Space as a new frame through which foreign language pedagogy is conceptualized as a pedagogy of negotiating intentions and expectations in another culture.

The field of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) in the past decades has been expanding rapidly at the beginning and intermediate levels, yet it is lacking in scholarship on the true advanced level both in theory building and research-supported curriculum and material development. This book argues that it is time for CFL to go beyond merely satisfying the desire of gazing at the other, whether it is curiosity about the other or superiority over the other, to focusing on learning to work with the other. It reimagines the field as co-constructing a transcultural Third Space where learners are becoming experts in negotiating intentions and expectations in another culture. It presents a range of research-based CFL pedagogical scholarship and practices especially relevant to the advanced level and to the goal of enabling learners to go past fans or critics to become actors/players in the game of cross-lingual and intercultural cooperation.

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Negotiating a co-constructed multilingual and transcultural Third Space

Xiaobin Jian

Introduction: possibilities of and paths to a constructive and productive Third Space?

Human history can be characterized as a history of cooperation among more and more groups of people with diverse traditions and practices, although “cooperation” is by no means always benign, voluntary or mutually beneficial but more likely involves negotiation, manipulation and/or coercion (Tomasello, 2014; Harari, 2015). As we are entering the third decade of the 21st century, where glocal (global-local) is a fact of life and “one world one civilization” is more than just an idea, cooperation among people speaking different languages in different cultures is not only inevitable but desirable. It is with this understanding of the world we are in and the future to which we are heading that rethinking the goals and approaches of the enterprise of foreign language pedagogy, with special attention to the field of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL), becomes necessary and urgent. Simply satisfying the desire of gazing at the other, curiosity about the other (seeing/hearing something about them) or superiority over the other (telling/showing them what to do) are no longer enough or meaningful as program-matic objectives—we need to go beyond these assumed and often unquestioned outcomes to focus on meeting the call of learning to cooperate with the other. To this end, it is time to further explore the conceptualization of Third Space with special focus on the possibilities of and paths to the constructive and productive cross-lingual-cultural interactions taking place in a negotiated and co-constructed multilingual and transcultural space.

Spatializing what happens when differences meet (self meets the other, old meets new, etc.) presents the advantage of catching and further exploring the complexity of hybridity inevitable in these meetings, such as Bourdieu’s generative “habitus,” a “structuring structure” where the more durable “primary habitus” confronts the more amenable “secondary habitus” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 166; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, pp. 42–45); Bhabha’s “space of translation,” where negotiated construction of an object “that is new, neither the one nor the other” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 37); Derrida’s “being-elsewhere,” an undefinable space where and only where the monolingual/multilingual paradoxically exist (Derrida, 1998, pp. 39–43); Panikkar’s “terra nullius (no man’s land)” where a utopia of interculturality “situated between two (or more) cultures” and “must kept silent” (Panikkar, 2000, p. 2); Sinha’s “blended space” where blending as microgenesis takes place within the collaborative micro-community (Sinha, 2005, p. 1551); Jullien’s “écart,” a constructed dynamic space in between two sides where shared imagination and conceptualization may take place (Jullien, 2013, p. 373); and, perhaps most influential to the field of foreign language education, Kramsch’s potentially subversive “third place,” where foreign language learners may turn “multilingual social actors” through their “resignifying practice” (Kramsch, 2009, pp. 103, 115, 200).

Focusing on the possibilities of and paths to a constructive and productive Third Space, cross-lingual and cross-cultural interactions should and can open up a new field, where different cultures converge, contest and cooperate; where expectations for the actors and interpretations of their actions do not entirely or constantly conform to the assumptions and norms of one culture but dynamic and fluid, motivated by specific goals of the interaction in question and negotiated among involved actors; and where the cooperative interactions of the actors’ emerging multilingual and transcultural personae are made possible by, and in turn, continue to co-construct the multilingual and transcultural Third Space that is continuously becoming.

From feeling “only-one” to seeing “obvious-two” to doing “not-two”: inter-cultural? Transcultural?

Although it seems unquestionably outdated, the subconsciousness of “my culture is the only culture” or “my culture is the only culture that matters” is still part of the reality in every culture. To the extent that the other culture’s presence cannot be simply overlooked, the subconsciousness of “theirs is but an inferior version or earlier stage of ours” may kick in. Operating under such subconsciousness in cross-lingual and cross-cultural interactions, the higher foreign language proficiency level the learners have, unfortunately, the more likely “communication breakdowns” and misconceptions about each other will occur as language and/or behavioral mistakes, inevitable in non-native environments, will likely be interpreted as intended offenses. It therefore should be argued strongly that developing learners’ awareness of and sensitivity towards other cultures remains a major issue for foreign language programs to consider (Walker, Chapter 7 of this volume).

More complicated, more problematic and more consequential is the conceptualization of the “obvious-two.” As well intended as they may be (ill intended is beyond the scope of this study), those from the perceived dominant culture tend to exoticize the other side as “the other” (they are so different from us), hoping to normalize differences but often ending up further abnormalizing the other. For examples, see Arthur Smith’s study on Chinese behavior culture (Smith, 1894) and Richard Nisbett’s study on how Asians think (Nisbett, 2003), both offering neatly contrasted but nearly static perceptions of “the other”; those from the perceived marginalized culture tend to exoticize the self as “the other” (we are so different from them), hoping to redefine the self’s place in its own right but often ending up further isolating the self, such as Ji Xianlin’s belief that the East’s holistic “combining two into one 合二为一 heerweiyi” culture will replace the West’s analytic “dividing one into two 一分为二 yifenweier” culture and save the 21st century for humanities (Ji, 1992); and Cao Shunqing’s argument that the Eastern civilization and the Western civilization are two qualitatively different entities—“异质文明 yizhi wenming” (Cao, 2016). Finally, paradoxically, those tend to romanticize the other are more likely driven by what they see the self is not than by what the other is, such as the ahistorical presentation of “the Chinese way of thinking” by Francois Jullien (Jullien, 2000) and the equally ahistorical presentation of “the American way of life” by Lin Da (Lin, 2015). It is not uncommon for those of us who live and work regularly between cultures to hear disappointments that the “the other” is not as the other as they are supposed to be—for example, upon arriving China, some American learners of Chinese are surprised that the Chinese are not behaving the Chinese way while some Chinese who work with the American learners of Chinese are dismayed that the Americans are not American enough. Indeed, the popularity of the two-color-schemed (red and blue) and simplistically contrasted graphic series East Meets West (Liu, 2016) further demonstrates that developing critical reception towards static ahistorical generalizations of cultural differences should become a serious concern of foreign language programs.

Consider the case of “Steven quitting learning Chinese.” According to his Chinese teacher’s published account, Steven (who has a Chinese name 史力文 Shi Liwen) was the all-agreed most hard-working and most talented top student in Yale University’s Chinese language program during the years he was in Yale and he quitted learning Chinese after two summer study-abroad trips to China—that is, he quitted learning the language after actually interacting with the native people in their native cultural environment (Su, 2007).¹ The reasons for Steven’s quitting are so complex and so revealing that it is worth discussing more about it here. According to this published nonfiction narrative, Steven already wanted to quit after his first summer in China because he felt his Chinese language partners/roommates kept reminding him how great Chinese culture was and how short the US history was. The fact that they wanted him to learn a Chinese song named Our Great China really provoked him: “Can you imagine what effects it would have if America had a song named Our Great USA?” he asked, and he declared in English: “I am sick of it!” (Su, 2007, pp. 109–110). However, he managed to continue learning this time. When Steven returned to Yale from his second summer study-abroad trip to China, he calmly informed his Chinese teacher (平静道出), in his smooth and Beijing-accented Chinese (一口滑溜的充满 卷舌音的京片子) that he had decided to quit learning Chinese. He explained: “I am not kidding you. I already know how I can pass off and drift through in China, and I am not bad at doing this at all” (The Chinese word “混 hùn” with fourth tone is used here as a verb to mean “pass off,” “drift along”). He went on to express his frustration: “I have never thought I could have become such a … jerk, that’s right, a jerk!” (The same Chinese word “混hún” with second tone is used here as part of the noun “混蛋 húndàn” to mean “a jerk,” “a bastard”). Responding to his teacher’s surprise, he came up with an English word “fake” to further explain:

As long as you learn how to fake and get used to all kinds of faking, that’ll be it…. you first lie (“骗 piàn”) to yourself and then you lie to others…. you lie to yourself that you are not that “Steven” and you change to this “Shi, Li, Wen,” and then you are free to fake…. you can fake for whatever reason, the Chinese love to hear flattering words, I’ll then say flattering words to them; if they say they don’t like Americans, I’ll say I am a Uighur from Xinjiang; if they want to learn something about America, I’ll then say I am a Yale student. This is called “oily” (“油 yóu”) in Beijing speech, and I, this “Shi, Li, Wen,” is pretty oily now.

Steven finally sincerely told his teacher (诚恳道出): “I have discovered that the better Chinese language I have the less respect I have towards it and it seems getting more and more so this way; if I continue to learn, the result can only be that I will become disrespectful to both the Chinese language and China.” With an unusually calm tone of voice (口气却异常平静), Steven declared: “So, I’ve decided to quit Chinese.” It is worth noting that towards the end of the narrative, it was indicated that the teacher noticed Steven’s Chinese sounded very fluent and effective (流畅达意) (Su, 2007, pp. 111–112).

It is clear that Steven was keenly (painfully?) aware that there are “us” and “them,” but it is unclear if he saw “them” as the wrong/bad version of “us” that should be left behind, or if he thought “them” as a “qualitatively different entity” impossible to penetrate and to work with. He just didn’t seem to be able to pass the “obvious-two” stage and move on to the next step. Indeed, just recognizing differences alone will not lead to productive cross-cultural conversation; dwelling on the differences and overly exoticizing, romanticizing or stereotyping the other often end up strengthening the division rather than bringing about the cooperation between “us” and “them.” A constructive and productive Third Space can only be emerging from the state that is beyond “obvious-two” after seeing them, as the Chinese Buddhist tradition may call it, the state of “无二 wuer” (no-two). Raimon Panikkar once warned that, to speak of “interculturation” or “mutual fecundation,”

We must seek a middle way between the colonial mentality which believes that we can express the totality of the human experience through the notions of a single culture, and the opposite extreme which thinks that there is no communication possible between diverse cultures, and which should then condemn themselves to a cultural apartheid in order to preserve their identity.

(Panikkar, 2000, p. 5)

We may add that this type of condemning oneself to a “cultural apartheid” could happen to anyone just by staying on seeing “obvious-two,” regardless of whether that person is from a perceived dominant culture or from a perceived marginalized culture.

The acts of 反 fan (return, reverse), 不二 buer (don’t see/do “two”) and 物化 wuhua (transformation of things): the Daoist and Buddhist practices

If the term “middle way” sounds too cliché to have real impact on bringing about “mutual fecundation,” let us introduce to the dialog some considerations from the Chinese tradition, namely, the acts of 反 fan (return, reverse), 不二 buer (don’t see/do “two”) and 物化 wuhua (transformation of things).

A quick glance on some of the most well-known texts from the Daoist tradition, such as the 《老子》Laozi² and the 《庄子》Zhuangzi,³ one will find relative dualism seemingly everywhere: Birth relative to and contrasting with death, good relative to and contrasting with evil, beautiful relative to and contrasting with ugly, hard relative to and contrasting with soft, tall relative to and contrasting with short, and so forth. Upon close reading, one can argue that the motive of the recognition of all these relative dualistic contrasts is the desire to transcend them instead of dwelling on them. It starts with a remarkable critical reflection on the act of recognizing differences. The first line of the second chapter of the Laozi is widely quoted but often-misinterpreted: “天下皆知美之为美斯恶矣” (Yang, 2014, p. 8). The commonly accepted interpretation of this line, “When people see somethings as beautiful, other things become ugly” (Mitchell, 1988, p. 2) takes the pronoun “斯 si” (this, it) to refer to “other things” and thus makes the expression to reflects a relative dualism the Laozi attempts to transcend. In the original text, the pronoun refers to what has been stated before it, that is, the act of recognizing the beautiful as beautiful, and the expression should be read as “When all under the heaven knows the beautiful as beautiful—this is ugly” (Lau, 1963, p. 6; I modified Lau’s English translation to reflect the original text’s sentence structure more c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Third Space and Chinese language pedagogy: possibilities of and paths to cross-lingual and cross-cultural cooperation
• 1 Negotiating a co-constructed multilingual and transcultural Third Space
• 2 Native speaker effects, C2 receptivity of learner and co-construction of Third-Space personae: a pedagogy of target culture expectation
• 3 Negotiating intentions in intercultural conversational interactions: excusing oneself from a family gathering
• 4 Striving for the Third Space: an American professional’s experiences in Chinese workplaces
• 5 Establishing domain expertise in the Third Space: constructing language learning motivation to perform beyond proficiency
• 6 Online forum as Third Space? CFL learners’ experiences on an online knowledge-sharing community
• 7 Why we perform
• Index