Like many of my linguist friends, I do not advocate polished accents and immaculate grammar. I celebrate dialects and creole, bask in foreign languages spoken in regional accents and adore toddler speak, lisps and all.
Fêting fractured grammar and Manglish aside, I was horrified when MP Tony Pua was called in by the cops to explain his tweet “Bastards. Real bastards. Royal my foot” in response to Nurul Izzah Anwar’s arrest. His tweet was called out on Twitter by inspector-general of police (IGP) Khalid Abu Bakar with a request for Pua to explain if his tweet was a slight to the royal family.
The expression ‘my foot’ is commonly used in lieu of ‘nonsense’, something that the IGP was apparently not aware of. Even so, dictionaries, Wiktionary and former English teachers are more often than not easily accessible in Malaysia and should be referred to. When in doubt always ask the experts, I say.
Should IGP Khalid’s poor command of the language result in members of the public being called in by the cops? I think not. Another misunderstanding occurred along the same vein when Lawyers for Liberty’s Michelle Yesudas was called in for tweeting “Because I am positively terrified that these crazy, rape-frenzied people are actually the majority of my country” over her concern for the Aisyah Tajuddin video incident.
Miscommunication happens all the time. The words we use to put a thought forward are merely vehicles that carry our message across. Using highly accurate words to describe our thoughts is one half of success in communication. The other half is dependent on the listener’s ability to decode the message successfully.
Put two interlocutors with different world views, style of communicating and different cultures, but who speak the same language, in a room, give them a topic of conversation and you have a fair chance for misunderstanding to occur. In certain situations and on certain platforms, the speaker has the opportunity to explain to the listener when a breakdown in communication occurs.
However, on a practical level, I do not want to have to explain what I mean when I tweet “it was raining cats and dogs” if the IGP thinks it’s seditious for me to say dogs are raining down on Kuala Lumpur. Nor do I want to have to write out a lesson plan as a statement at the police station to educate law enforcers what <insert relevant idiom> means.
Let us not use our weak command for a particular language to persecute others. Let’s call out low proficiency by its name and not repackage it as sedition.
This is, in my opinion, a wake-up call for the Najib Abdul Razak administration to up its language proficiency levels both in Bahasa Malaysia and English. When it has come to the point where people are being monitored for their choice of words on Twitter because of language proficiency issues on the side of law enforcers, desperate measures are needed.
Measuring language proficiency
A standard grading scale for language proficiency would do well to be introduced in the public service sector such as the Interagency Language Roundtable scale to measure language proficiency and determine if language enhancement courses are required. Language proficiency should not be an optional criterion in recruiting law enforcers.
The Indian Police Service Limited Competitive Examination includes English as a qualifying paper. Besides a compulsory Bachelor’s degree, Hong Kong police recruitment criteria include passing a certain level in English and Chinese language proficiency.
I have had the good fortune to encounter helpful policemen and law enforcers throughout my life. I grew up believing that in the event I was separated from my parents in a public space, to look for the man or woman in the uniform because he or she would help me get to my parents. I wish the trust we hope to put in our law enforcers extend to the virtual sphere.
English, like many other languages, is a game of wordplay. Words in various combinations can mean literally one thing and figuratively another. Our law enforcers have gone through arduous training before being able to put on the uniform and pin on those badges. It’s time they say “Challenge accepted” and take English by the horns.
DEBORAH CHOW is a linguist in the final stages of a PhD in bilingualism, translation and cognition. She believes in honesty, compassion and quaffing green juice. Deborah speaks, reads and writes in seven languages.
