One of the Nowruz traditions involves leaping over bonfires to rid oneself of pain and sorrow (Image credit: Borna News)

As people in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Iran, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan prepare to celebrate Nowruz, there is a palpable sense of excitement and anticipation in the air. Nowruz, which literally means “new day” in Persian, marks the beginning of spring and the start of the new year for many peoples across the Middle East and Central Asia.

Nowruz is celebrated on the vernal equinox, typically falling on March 20 or 21, and lasts for thirteen days.

Rooted in the Zoroastrian tradition, Nowruz is a time of renewal, hope, and cultural celebration that transcends borders and unites people across the Persianate world.

Nowruz Down Under

Although in the Southern hemisphere Nowruz falls in the beginning of autumn rather than spring, still it takes on a special significance for Iranian Australians as we bring the traditions and customs of our homeland to this distant land.

The Haft-Sin table, with its seven symbolic items representing rebirth and renewal, takes centre stage in our celebrations. From sprouts symbolising growth to apples representing beauty and health, each item holds deep cultural significance and is a reminder of the values we cherish.

Spirit of Nowruz

Haftsin Table in the Victorian Parliament (Image Credit: Australian Iranian Society of Victoria)

Poetry and music fill our homes with joy and inspiration during Nowruz. Poets and writers have long captured the essence of this festival in their verses, expressing themes of renewal and spiritual growth. Music, too, plays a vital role, with traditional songs and melodies evoking a sense of nostalgia and connection to our roots.

At the heart of Nowruz is the spirit of unity and solidarity. As Iranians around the world come together to celebrate, we are reminded of the bonds that unite us as a community.

Solidarity with the people in Iran

Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran in 1979, the regime has suppressed the nation’s multifaceted and ancient culture under a theocratic dictatorship. However, for Iranians, both inside Iran and in the diaspora, Nowruz is not just a celebration of a new year. It is a celebration of our rich cultural heritage, resilience in the face of adversity, and hope for a brighter future.

So, this Nowruz, as an Australian-Iranian, deeply concerned about the future of Iran, I unite with my compatriots across the globe who embrace and celebrate Nowruz. For us, at this moment in history, Nowruz is more than just a cultural tradition. It is a unifying force and a symbol of Iranian-ness and unity, with a rich history that predates the current regime.

At the outset of Nowruz, we remember Mahsa Amini, and many other young people whose tragic deaths during the recent protests against the injustices in Iran have ignited a renewed sense of solidarity among Iranians both inside Iran and in the diaspora. Their memories remind us of the importance of standing together in the face of adversity and working towards a brighter future.

My music

This Nowruz, it’s fitting to dedicate to everyone two of my songs, that encapsulate the longing for freedom, love, and peace, “Hamseda” (Sympathizer) and “Eshghe-Bimarz” (Endless Love), which were created by a group of artists inside Iran and performed by myself.

Happy Nowruz! نوروزتان پیروز

Fliers for Persian community events (Persian Library Parramatta, Nov 2010)

Editor’s note: In the second instalment in our series “Explorations in Language Shaming”, Dr Shiva Motaghi-Tabari examines children’s attitudes towards the perception of home languages other than English in Australia highlighting that home-language use may often be associated with a sense of embarrassment.

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Home-language (HL) maintenance as a concern for many migrant families has recently gained prominence. Much of the research has focused mainly on the role of parents and HL educators in child HL learning processes, while the role of children in this effect remained almost invisible. In my doctoral research on “Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families”, I demonstrated that children’s language attitudes, which in turn are influenced by language ideologies and wider social structures, can have significant impacts on their HL maintenance.

In fact, the broad impetus for my research germinated from my own observation of my child’s language learning and use, and my engagements with other parents in a similar situation since we came to Australia in 2008. Like many migrant parents coming from a non-English-speaking background, maintaining my child’s HL has been a concern in our new home in Australia. When we first came, my daughter was around seven years old. At the time, she knew some English, as we had sent her to language schools since she was four years old back in Iran. After arrival, I observed how quickly her English language, particularly her conversational skills, were progressing. As her English language progressed, I began to wonder if it might not be a good idea to use some English at home. After all, her father and I also needed to improve our English communication skills …

At the same time, we did not wish to put our daughter’s Persian at risk. Her Persian maintenance was not only important to us, but it was also a promise to her grandparents who relentlessly reminded us of the importance of preserving their grandchild’s Persian language. For this very reason, we also sent her to a Persian Saturday School in Sydney so that she would become literate in the language.

In our search for effective ways of managing the two languages, Persian and English, we heard many parents’ stories of success or failure related to their HL maintenance. For some of the parents, despite their investments of time and money, they found it challenging to get their children to learn and use their HL. Some of them blamed the Community Language School teachers for not being able to teach the HL properly, and some of them blamed themselves for not spending enough time to practice the language with their children. Some of them also seemed confused as they had been advised by their children’s mainstream teachers to speak English with their children.

Eventually, these observations shaped my interest in doing further research in the area, and that’s how my PhD research ‘Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families’ came into existence. That my research struck a chord is obvious from the fact that it won the 2017 Michael Clyne Prize. The Michael Clyne Prize is awarded annually by the Australian Linguistics Society for the best postgraduate research thesis in immigrant bilingualism and language contact.

‘Bidirectionality’ in parent-child interactions is a notion that I have borrowed from family studies and extended to the field of second language learning. In a bidirectional model, the process of socialisation of a child into a set of language and cultural rules involves not only a parent-to-child direction of influence but also a child-to-parent direction. Central to the bidirectional model is the concept of agency. Agency in this framework means “considering individuals as actors with the ability to make sense of the environment, initiate change, and make choices” (Kuczynski, 2003, p. 9). The core assumption in this framework is that both parents and children as active agents interpret and thereby reconstruct social messages (Kuczynski, Parkin, & Pitman, 2014, p. 138). This means that, in the field of language learning, children, like adults, adopt a certain way of thinking about languages based on the language ideologies they encounter in their daily lives. Based on these social perceptions, they make choices about what languages to learn and use. Therefore, to find more effective ways of HL maintenance, it is essential to bring children’s language attitudes and practices to the forefront alongside parents’ language attitudes and investments, and HL teachers and their teaching methods.

Despite parents’ wishes and efforts, children often show a disinclination to learn and use the home language, the language of their family, relatives and loved ones. Instead, they often tend to prefer English, as one of my child participants said: ‘I mostly speak Iranian, but I prefer English’. Reasons for this preference that the children gave to me included the following: ‘Because Persian is so hard’ or ‘it is Australia!’

It is true that for many children, their limited HL skills could make it difficult for them to communicate in that language. However, the same child who felt that Persian was too hard also made the comment ‘it is Australia!’ This adds another dimension to children’s choice of English as their preferred language. In effect, in a process of linguistic and cultural mainstreaming through the educational system and social practices, the dominant language and culture are inscribed as legitimate while other languages are devalued. In circumstances where communicative norms are constituted into a homogenised form, it comes as no surprise that children who do care about belonging and acceptance, internalise and reproduce the underlying message that ‘to be an Australian, one must speak English’. For them, using their HL may be perceived as a marker of lack of belonging or difference, and ultimately, making them feel a sense of shame and embarrassment over different forms of language other than what is seen as ‘normal’, as in this example:

Child participant: I get embarrassed [laughs] to speak Persian.
Shiva: Why is that?
Child participant: Because I don’t want anybody to think I’m weird.

Under circumstances where children  feel that they may be viewed as ‘weird’ if they use their home language, it is obvious that they may not show much interest in practising that language; and so, they exert their agency in different ways to use their preferred language despite their parents’ wishes, as is evident from the following conversation I had with two children:

Shiva: Then you are asked at home to speak in Persian?
Child participant 1: Yeah.
Child participant 2: A lot.
Child participant 1: Yeah.
Child participant 2: A lot.
[Both laugh] Shiva: And then you don’t?
Both [giggling] No! [more laughter] Shiva: No?
Child participant 1: maybe for one second, but then after that [laughs]

In sum, raising a child bilingually can be a difficult task when the onus is only on the family, particularly in a context where the value of the HL is not tangible for the children and is not acknowledged by the wider society. So, before any language instructions can be successful, children need to truly feel and understand the importance of preserving their home language alongside learning the English language. To achieve this, it is essential that families, community languages schools and mainstream schools come together around the same positive message: English is not the only language of Australia and bilingualism is cool and worth encouraging.

References

Kuczynski, L. (2003). Beyond Bidirectionality: Bilateral Conceptual Frameworks for Understanding Dynamics in Parent-Child Relations. In L. Kuczynski (Ed.), Handbook of dynamics in parent-child relations (pp. 3-24). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Kuczynski, L., Parkin, C. M., & Pitman, R. (2014). Socialization as Dynamic Process: A Dialectical, Transactional Perspective. In J. E. Grusec & P. D. Hastings (Eds.), Handbook of socialization: theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 135-157). New York; London: The Guilford Press.

Motaghi-Tabari, S. (2016). Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families. (PhD), Macquarie University. Available from http://www.languageonthemove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Thesis_Shiva_Motaghi-Tabari_BidirectionalLanguageLearning.pdf

Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken (Source: quotesnpoems.com)

It is not unusual for bilingual parents to experience a sense of bewilderment when it comes to language choice in the family. When raising a child in a language different from the one parents were socialised into, old truths and certainties quickly disappear. Studying language choice in migrant families, Pavlenko (2004) found that parents’ confusion can be related to language ideologies that see the first language as the language of emotions and the second language as the language of detachment. Consequently, parents are often torn between speaking their first language because it is supposed to enhance the emotional connection with their children and speaking the second language because it is supposed to be the language of the new country.

This sense of bewilderment is often expressed by Iranian migrant parents to Australia who I interviewed for my ongoing doctoral research into bidirectional language learning in migrant families. Mina and Mahmoud (all names are pseudonyms), for instance, adopted a monolingual Persian-only policy with their primary-school-aged daughter, but, at the same time, speak about their intention ‘to change the plan’:

مینا: چون اصولا در خانه قانون کردیم که همه فارسی حرف بزنیم.

محمود: فکر کنم برای improve زبان فارسی‌اش [دخترمان] خیلی عالی بود، ولی برای ما نه، از نظر انگلیسی خیلی و اتفاقا اخیرا ما=

مینا: =تصمیم گرفتیم تغییر بدیم این برنامه را.

محمود:مطمئنا من زبان انگلیسیم در حدی نیست که بخواهم خیلی ازاحساساتم را به زبان انگلیسی به خوبی الان بیان کنم براش.

مینا: من فکر می‌کنم قدری برایم سخت است بخوام switch کنم، تو خونه انگلیسی حرف بزنم.

Mina: Because, basically, we have set a rule at home that everyone should speak in Persian.

Mahmoud: I think it was excellent for [our daughter’s] Persian language improvement, but not for us, in terms of English, and in fact, recently we=

Mina: =we’ve decided to change this plan.

Mahmoud: Certainly my English is not at a level so that I would want to express many of my emotions to her in English as well as I am doing now [in Persian].

Mina: I think it’s a bit hard for me if I want to switch into, talk in English at home.

Like many parents in Pavlenko’s (2004) study, Mina and Mahmoud construct Persian as the ‘language of emotion’; their preferred language choice to ensure an intimate parent-child relationship. While this discourse reflects the perceptions of many parents, some parents may use their second language for various reasons such as making closer connections with their children or to be in control of the situation, as in Farhad and Farah’s case.

فرهاد: من کاری که کردم، دلیل اینکه من گفتم توی خارج از خونه، یا حداقل، تو خونه شاید اوایل یه زمان خاصی باهاشون [بچه هام] انگلیسی حرف بزنم، همین بود، بخاطر اینکه نمیخواستم از دنیای اینها فاصله بگیرم. میخواستم، همانطور که خب فارسی، اینا که خب حله، انگلیسی هم هست. بدونم اینا چی میگن، حرفاشون چیه.

فرح: ما خودمون را به اونا نزدیک میکنیم در عین حال سعی می‌کنیم که از اونطرف هم اینا رو بکشیم سمت خودمان.

Farhad: What I did, the reason that I said that I spoke English with [my children] outside the home, or at least, at certain times at home when we first came, was this, because I didn’t want to distance myself from their world. I wanted, similar to Persian, well, which is ok, there is also English. I wanted to know what they were saying, what they were talking about.

Farah: We make ourselves closer to them, while, at the same time, trying to attract them towards us.

Nevertheless, I could feel a sense of hesitation – if not to say guilt – about using English with his children in Farhad’s talk. This sense of hesitation can also be inferred when he tries to rationalise his use of English at home, and to redress its ‘unacceptability’ by stressing ‘at certain times when we first came’. This uncertainty about parental language choice, is often increased when parents receive contradictory advice, particularly from those who are deemed to be ‘experts’, such as educators, pediatricians, or speech pathologists. The excerpts below illustrate instances of this kind of advice given to parents.

رامین: اول که اومدیم همه به ما می‌گفتند در خانه انگلیسی صحبت کنید. من واقعیتش یک مدت دچار تردید شده بودم که واقعا باید این کار را بکنیم یا نه. بعد به این نتیجه رسیدم، “نه”.

Ramin: When we first came, everybody told us to speak English at home. Honestly, I began to feel dubious about it for a while, whether to do it, really, or not. Then I came to the conclusion that, ‘no’.

 

آذر: اوایل که آمدیم معلم امیر خیلی تأکید می‌کرد امیر در منزل انگلیسی صحبت کنیم، بعد من به او گفتم شاید خیلی نتوانیم با او انگلیسی حرف بزنیم ولی سعی می‌کنیم امیر را لغت یاد بدهیم.

Azar: When we first came, Amir’s teacher emphasised so much that we should talk in English with him at home. Later I told her that maybe we would not be able to speak that much English with him, but we would try to teach Amir more [English] words.

 

ایمان: ما حتی یک سری مشاوره گرفتیم، نزدیک مدرسه، که رفتیم principal مدرسه را دیدیم. ما حتی ازش پرسیدیم که ما چکار کنیم. گفت “اصلاً شما به انگلیسی این کاری نداشته باشید. شما تا میتونید فارسی را باهاش کار کنید.” گفت “شما انگلیسی‌اش را به ما بسپرید، شما باهاش فارسی.”

Iman: We even sought some advice, close to school, when we went and saw the school principal. We even asked her what to do. She said, ‘Don’t worry about her English. You work on Persian with her as much as you can.’ She said, ‘Leave her English to us, you use Persian with her.’

In multilingual contexts, such either-or propositions undergirded by monolingual ideologies oversimplify the reality of multilingual existence in the emotion-laden context of family interactions where members have more than one linguistic resource at their disposal. A reality which is depicted by Emad, a father for whom family multilingualism is not a new experience that came with migration. Emad had himself grown up with multiple languages back in Iran.

عماد: می‌دانید یک نکته است که در فارسی و انگلیسی- خواهرم که با او هم انگلیسی صحبت می‌کردیم و هم فارسی، بعضی وقت‌ها می‌خواستیم احساساتمان را خیلی دقیق بگوییم. بعضی وقت‌ها مجبور می‌شدیم، با هم صحبت می‌کردیم، من یادمه با خواهر برادرم فارسی صحبت میکردیم. می‌گفتیم این چیزی که می‌خواهم بگویم، آن حرف دل من است، این کلمه است که در ترکی هست که در فارسی نیست، یا در انگلیسی هست که در این دوتا زبان نیست. می‌خواهیم بگوییم بعضی وقت‌ها آن کلمات کمک می‌کند که آدم اون اصل حسش رو خود را درست بیان کند.

Emad: You know, there is a point that in Persian and English- with my sister who we spoke in English and Persian, sometimes we wanted to express our feelings very precisely. Sometimes we had to, when we spoke together, I remember that we spoke Persian with my sister and brother. We said that what I want to say, that is the word of my heart, it is this word which exists in Turkish, but not in Persian, or that, it exists in English but not in those two languages. What I mean to say is that sometimes those words help you express precisely the spirit of your emotions.

Emad is one of the parent participants who embrace the fact that a multiplicity of languages can be developed as resources to convey emotions. Therefore, while recognising the different context of his child’s English learning to that of his own, Emad allows a natural flow of emotional communication by his child.

عماد: مثلا، اونروز به مادرش میگفتش که، مامانش رو صدا کرد شب میگفت،‘!Just give me a hug’ مثلا این احساسش را داشت بیان می‌کرد. ولی، خب، احساس میکنم، ما فکر می‌کردیم که این احساس، در واقع، با یک زبان native دارد ساخته می‌شود نه با یک زبان مصنوعی که ما یاد گرفتیم.

Emad: For instance, [our daughter] was saying to her mother the other day, she called her mum at night and said, ‘Just give me a hug!’ She was, for instance, expressing her emotions. But, well, I feel, we thought that, in fact, this emotion is being made through a native language, not through an artificial one that we learnt.

All in all, the emotional primacy of the first language is a reality in migrant families. However, at the same time, the development of ‘emotional multilingualism’ is another reality that needs to be acknowledged. In migration contexts parents may be particularly concerned about maintaining emotional ties with their children. As migrant families become socialized into a new society, the relationship between language and emotions is bound to change.  The dilemma of which language to choose may well be the product of a monolingual mindset that unnecessarily denies the reality of families’ linguistic and emotional growth.

Pavlenko, A. (2004). ‘Stop Doing That, Ia Komu Skazala!’: Language Choice and Emotions in Parent—Child Communication Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25 (2-3), 179-203 DOI: 10.1080/01434630408666528

Multiculturalism in Australia: Should it be seen but not heard? (Source: det.wa.edu.au)

Australia has embraced multiculturalism as official national policy since the 1970s. Interestingly, the most recent incarnation of the policy, called  ‘The People of Australia’ embraces multiculturalism without embracing multilingualism. In this post I want to explore what it means to celebrate multiculturalism and Australia’s cultural diversity without equally embracing multilingualism.

I will begin by sharing two experiences from multicultural events I recently attended.‎

Vignette 1

In September, I attended the 2012 Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Student Achievement (Community Language Schools). The award is intended to celebrate and honour the achievements of students studying in a community school in NSW. The ceremony was very special for me and my family because my daughter was one of 130 awardees for her achievements in Persian.

The awardees and their families came from a wide variety of linguistic backgrounds and I am sure all felt as pleased as we did that our efforts were being recognized. Maintaining a minority language involves a lot of effort not only on the part of the student but also of the extended family: we give up our Saturdays and travel long distances just so that our children can study their heritage language. The recognition of these efforts and sacrifices was going to be a joyous event!

However, this sense of gratification was marred by an exclusively monolingual ceremony! No one had bothered to bear in mind that the extended families of a group of heritage language learners might not enjoy an English-only ceremony. A number of uncomfortable moments resulted. For instance, the audience was specifically asked, in English, to hold their applause until the end. In view of the fact that there were 130 awardees, that request was perfectly reasonable except that not all of the enthusiastic grandparents from various backgrounds understood the English-Only code of behaviour. The result was an atmosphere of discomfiture resulting from discordant applauding here and there after individual children were called. There were visible nudges and sidelong looks at those who didn’t comply, presumably because they had not understood.

If non-English speakers are made to feel inadequate and judged at an event specifically designed to celebrate linguistic diversity, what does that say about the general value of linguistic diversity in this country?

Vignette 2

The 2012 Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Student Achievement (Community Language Schools) was not the first time that I experienced this sense of cynicism in multicultural but monolingual events. During a government-sponsored public forum to discuss issues faced by migrant families English was the only medium of communication, too. It was excruciating for me to watch one of the panelists, a second-generation family counselor, who was visibly embarrassed when her father was called from among the audience by the host to share his migration experiences. It seemed that host had not been aware that the old man’s English was limited because when he started to speak in halting but comprehensible English she was visibly annoyed. It was then painful to see how the host cunningly interrupted the speaker and took away the microphone in mid-turn!

Multiculturalism without multilingualism

The indirect message of both these multicultural events is that the languages of Australia’s non-English-speaking population are unworthy of attention and unintelligible. The message is clear: Australia may be multicultural but it is not multilingual. English is the one and only language of our multicultural society.

Indeed, so powerful is this message that even speakers from non-English-speaking backgrounds look down upon their less proficient peers. Instead of creating multilingual spaces we demand that everyone assimilate to one language. As my examples demonstrate a multicultural event without multilingualism is inclusive in name and on the level of rhetoric only. Without an embrace of multilingual practices, our multiculturalism is bound to remain an exclusive one.

This was a conversation I had in the reception area of a storage company on one of my first days in Australia back in 2008. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary ‘cap’ can refer to (a) ‘a head covering,’ (b) ‘a natural cover or top,’ (c) ‘something that serves as a cover or protection,’ (d) ‘an overlaying or covering structure,’ (e) ‘a paper or metal container holding an explosive charge,’ (f) ‘an upper limit,’ (g) ‘the symbol ∩ indicating the intersection of two sets’ or (h) ‘a cluster of molecules or chemical groups bound to one end or a region of a cell, virus, or molecule.’ While I may not have had all these definitions at the top of my head, as someone who had studied English as a foreign language in Iran for many years, the general thrust of all these meanings of ‘cap’ was clear to me. The problem was that none of these meanings of ‘cap’ seemed to make sense in the context in which I found myself.

While I was frantically trying to figure out in my mind what I was supposed to help myself to, the receptionist noticed my incomprehension and beckoned me to follow him into a corner where there was a coffee machine. He pointed at the coffee machine and slowly started to explain that this was a coffee machine, that coffee was a beverage, that it was nice, and that Australians liked to drink coffee, and that there were different types, and that a cappuccino was particularly nice because it had a frothy top.

As it dawned on me that in the receptionist’s variety of English ‘cap’ had nothing to do with ‘coverings’ of any kind but was short for ‘cappuccino,’ I was mortified. The receptionist had thought my lack of comprehension was a sign not of a linguistic problem but of my ignorance and backwardness. I was so offended that anyone would think a sophisticated Tehrani like myself didn’t know about coffee! How dare he be so ignorant, insular and condescending?! Even so, I could not confront him. Fuming inside, I meekly accepted my bitterest-ever cappuccino. I took all the blame to myself for not having adequate English to have a smooth communication with ‘a native speaker’.

Intercultural communication over coffee (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 
This humiliating encounter made me question the many years of English language learning I had been engaged in since my early childhood. Despite all my best efforts of many years and the investment of my parents, here I was in Australia incapable of effortlessly and gracefully accepting a cup of coffee without being taken for a barbarian. It all seemed extremely unfair and in the past four years I’ve often experienced a nagging feeling of jealousy that my English was still deficient despite all my striving while ‘native speakers’ could have it all – and without the least bit of effort!

I have also come to realise that ‘English,’ like all languages, is dynamic and subject to change and that even ‘native English speakers’ encounter new words every now and then and miscommunicate in unfamiliar contexts. This realisation has been one step towards healing my tarnished linguistic confidence.

Trying to extend myself and to understand my in-between position better, I undertook a postgraduate course in Cross-Cultural Communication, where most of the teaching and reading I was exposed to stressed cultural differences as the source of miscommunication in intercultural communication. This has been an ongoing source of puzzlement for me: in theory, it made perfect sense that Australian and Persians, for instance, had different cultural values and orientations and so, of course, there would be problems when they meet. In practice, however, none of the miscommunication I have experienced in Australia seems to have anything to do with culture. My humiliation at the hands of the receptionist had nothing to do with the fact that Persians prefer indirectness and elaborate politeness routines where Australians are direct and to the point. On the contrary, as far as culture was concerned, this was a misunderstanding between two coffee lovers, i.e. culturally similar people.

Despite the fact that I now hold an MA in Cross-Cultural Communication, my feelings of English deficiency together with a lack of real cultural differences has remained a brainteaser until a short while ago when I read Ingrid Piller’s new book Intercultural Communication and there the explanation leapt out at me from Chapter 10: when misunderstandings in intercultural communication are derived from linguistic problems, they are often unfairly attributed to cultural issues as soon as it comes to “English-language learners, particularly if their proficiency is more than just basic” (Piller, 2011, p. 147).

So, my English is the proud result of my efforts, and Australians and Persians are pretty similar. It’s just that newcomers and old-timers in this country find themselves in positions of unequal power (or legitimacy) which they like to dress up as cultural differences.

Iranian coffee culture, by the way, dates back to the 9^th century!