In Myanmar, Language and Trauma
It was a treat to get to talk to the linguist Katie Craig recently about her study of ethnic languages throughout Myanmar. She pointed out the struggle that so many ethnic minorities face in trying to preserve their way of life in the face of government-sponsored programs of “Burmanization”, in which Bamar history, language, and culture is promoted ahead of local forms. But in addition to the trauma of losing one’s language, Katie points out that an entirely different matter is the trauma of having to adapt the language of one’s aggressor.
“Myanmar has a very long history of violence and conflicts. Sometimes quite literally, that’s the language.”
Host: In the Myanmar context, factually speaking, I think we can say that there has been a very strong dominance of the Burmese language, and a very strong preference for the Burmese language in governance, to the point where a lot of citizens who cannot speak, read, or write Burmese have been left disadvantaged and unable to defend themselves in court. They have been left unable to retain their property and retain their citizenship rights in some extreme cases. How severe would you say is the risk posed to minority languages in Myanmar?
Katie Craig: A lot! I mean, I guess another thing we could talk about with your previous question, as well as the trauma of losing your language, is the trauma of like forced assimilation, which also goes hand in hand with the fact that this language that they're being forced to use, or people are trying to force them to use it, is also the language that they were traumatized with, to begin with.
Myanmar has a very long history of violence and conflicts. Sometimes quite literally, that's the language. That was what was heard right before you saw your village burned down, before you saw your parents shot or before you were raped! So there's a lot of trauma wrapped up in language, in two different ways, also losing your language and the language that was used while you were being traumatized.
So there's that sort of psychological aspect. There's also the fact that they can't really participate in society if they don't just know Burmese, but also use Burmese in the correct way.
Going back to the standard language ideology, when they do learn Burmese, they're still stigmatized, because they don't sound like a ‘native speaker.’ They face prejudice and discrimination. So that's just not really helpful for anyone, that doesn't build social cohesion.
Host: Absolutely. It's important to emphasize, and I know that you've touched on this already a few times, that trying to marginalize the language is marginalizing an entire identity, the entire community! It’s a very egregious form of erasure that very often just flies under the radar and doesn't get doesn't get noticed Because language is seen by so many people as this functional tool. And if that particular language is not judged as particularly functional, then like a broken hammer, it should be discarded and replaced with a superior version. And that that's just not appropriate for language. That's just not how language works. That's not what language is to us, and especially communicating to the past generations, people who are dead, their writings and their recorded voices. If we lose that language, we've lost the ability to connect to our own ancestors. But as you point out, the the ideology that many people carry just does not recognize this and does not have space for this thing.
Katie Craig: Yeah, I think along with that, and you could probably do a little bit of a critique of capitalism, right? Commodification of everything. But I think that's another subject. That's definitely not my area of expertise. But you can't write everything interacts with everything else. So you can't really isolate anything.