You`s article on Chinese white-collar workers and the cultural and linguistic production they develop due to the diasporic consciousness they are suffering from, is an example of how linguistic creativity works for people who make use of two or more languages or dialects in their writing.
I was deeply touched by this article and by the implications of diasporas in the creation of narratives.
According to You, the type of discourse created by Chinese white-collar workers is multimodal (they use imagines as well as linguistic devices), multidialectal and multilingual (2011: 426). As far the linguistic devices in the discourse are concerned, the metaphors, proverbs and lexical items employed ( among many other figures of speech) show the duality of being in-between two or more cultures, what Bhabha has called "third-space". This type of discourse is creative because the linguistic strategies employed in it project hybrid discourse patterns. As shown by some of the examples in the article, Chinese white-collar workers use English as a vehicle for self-reflection and some of their writing would be considered "ungrammatical" or "incorrect" by native English speakers. How could we differenciate from "correct use of the language" and "linguistic creativity" is something that should be further analyzed. The criteria to establish boundaries between these two ideas might be set in terms of the success of what is being communicated.
The general tone of the examples provided by You shows some sort of sorrow, yet there is some room for hope and future happiness. The meaning itself of the word "diaspora" implies some kind of suffering and not a self-imposed exile.
As previously mentioned, this article was specially interesting to me because I pictured myself and my generation (in Spain) as the objects of the study carried out by You. We could be described in similar terms and the context in which we have to live our lives has made us spread around the world in search of better opportunities and a fairer social reality. Many young Spaniards, very well educated and willing to work, are leaving the country because of the economic, social, educational and institutional crisis there. Therefore, mostly (but not exclusively) via the Internet, they are creating a multilingual narrative whose features could be explained depending on the cultures and languages with which they communicate in their daily lives. Thus, their identities are constantly being negotiated via their discourse. The fact that the Spanish language is spread worldwide and that it is nowadays the second language most present in the Internet makes it difficult for them to adapt themselves to more standarized English patterns of discourse. This fact makes the situation be totally different from other types of language production of other linguistic or cultural communities with a diasporic consciousness. How to balance the use of English and Spanish in order to negotiate their identities in this type of hybrid discourse is a question that will determine the extent to which Spanish speakers feel the need to use the English language in an English-speaking country like the US.
Another important idea that can be drawn from Canagarajah's article The Place of World Englishes in Composition: Pluralization Continued (2006) is that diasporic language production influences native speakers of English when they interact. In this context, the Internet can be regarded as a space for freedom of speech and free from connotations of power as it is almost impossible to distinguish between native and multilingual speakers of English (2006: 590). For instance, if we read a piece of news in The New York Times people from all around the world can comment on it. How do we know those people are not native speakers? To what extent does their discourse influence the discourse of native speakers? The Internet is once again a space that promotes equality among citizens.
To conclude, I would also like to point out at Canagarajah's idea of "personal engagement" when producing a particular type of discourse (2006: 597). In this sense, diasporic language production shows this personal involvement with the language (actually, with two languages usually) and it is a reason for transgressing, an act of resistance.
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