In “Beyond the Polite Smile,” Janice Pang compares the Cantonese dialect of Chinese and English and her experiences with them. The essay takes a look at the author’s experience with both: one language is native to her family, while the other is the language of the public. The difference is not purely linguistic: the language affects how she behaves, feels, and thinks while speaking it. As an example, Pang starts the essay by explaining the meaning behind her full name Pang Jing-Ling, a “quiet spirit” (Van Rys et al., 2021, p. 236). The author questions if the name determines her or she determines the name. Her family sees Pang as a quiet, obedient child who knew how to behave around adults, smile politely, and never speak up. Pang sees it as repressive and voices her discomfort with how she has to act to meet the expectations.
On the contrary, the author described speaking English as a liberating experience. As she states, her “voice refuses to be passive” (Van Rys et al., 2021 p. 237). Pang explains how she needed to master English to learn how to break it, whether by playing with syntax, using short sentences, or indulging her texts with semicolons. It correlates with Pang’s work and studies, as she described correcting people’s grammar, working with demanding clients and dissecting texts. The writer describes her experience differently: Pang used primarily fully formed, straightforward, and proper sentences while writing about Cantonese. In the part where she talks about English, her sentences are short, incomplete, full of semicolons and dashes. The author affirms her voice by using “I” over and over. She treats English as a language that “affirms,” a language that allows her to express herself (Van Rys et al., 2021, p. 237). It highlights not only the way Pang sees the language but also the cultures associated with them.
The author associates feeling restricted and stifled with her family’s language but also culture. She behaves according to how people view her and want her to behave. At the same time, when she describes English and life associated with it, such as public school and work, she becomes a more proactive person who voices her opinions with no hesitation. While surrounded by her family who uses the Cantonese language, the author fakes a smile expected of her; when away from this culture, at work or school, speaking only English, she allows herself to relax and take off the mask. This difference seems to be at the foundation of her feelings towards both languages.
While the essay does not rely on logical fallacies such as “ad hominem” or a strawman, the way it describes and compares languages can be skewed and distorted. In her own words, Cantonese is a “language of submission,” while English “is a language I command” (Van Rys et al., 2021, p. 237). The language she uses is slanted: it calls English affirming, commanding and even correlates it with a privilege. On the other hand, Cantonese is described as passive, repressive, and is associated with submission. While it is a detailed look at how people change their demeanor based on language they speak, it can be somewhat misleading as the root is more than language itself when it comes to Cantonese. The discussed languages are not given an equal comparison and without giving a more detailed linguistic look at Cantonese, it can come off as a hasty generalization of a language that even the author admits she has not mastered yet.
Reference
Van Rys, J., Meyer, V., VanderMey, R., & Sebranek, P. (2021). The college writer: A guide to thinking, writing, and researching. Cengage Learning.