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To cite this article: Ariane Macalinga Borlongan (2016): Relocating Philippine English in
Schneiders dynamic model, Asian Englishes, DOI: 10.1080/13488678.2016.1223067
RESEARCH ARTICLE
1. Introduction
The theorizing done by Braj B. Kachru (summarized in his 1992 paper) regarding the
spread of English around the world subsequently labeled the world Englishes paradigm
is a generally well-recognized thought in linguistics. The paradigm has been invoked and,
quite expectedly, further developed and sometimes even refashioned by other scholars. The
representation of the spread of English in terms of three concentric circles (Kachru, 1985)
has exceptionally attracted many but a particularly recent and acknowledged development
and modification of this representation is Schneiders (2003, 2007) dynamic model of the
evolution of new Englishes.1
This paper argues that Philippine English has already met the parameters set for phase
4 and that this phase may be dawning in the development of Philippine English. The dis-
cussion that follows shall cite proofs of the attainment of the parameters set by Schneider
(2003, 2007) for phase 4.2
Schneider (2007, p. 49) points to a very specific event that transitions an English-using state
or territory from phase 3 to phase 4 that which he names as Event X:
I call this Event X typically it is an incident which makes it perfectly clear to the settlers that
there is an inverse mis-relationship between the (high) importance which they used to place
on the mother country and the (considerably lower) importance which the (former) colony
is given by the homeland (as when Australia was left unsupported against attacks in World
War II). Event X may frequently cause STL strand immigrants to feel a sense of isolation and
being left alone at first, but it will then cause them to reconsider and redefine their position
and future possibilities, to remember their own strength, and to reconstruct a radically new,
locally based identity for themselves.
For the case of the Philippines, the ratification and implementation of two post-World
War II Acts may serve as Event X in the development of Philippine English. Through the
Tydings Rehabilitation Act of 1946, US$620,000,000 was to be given to those victimized by
war and thus the American congress was supposed to give financial aid to the Philippines
for post-war rehabilitation. However, this was on the condition that a free trade agreement
in the form of the Bell Trade Relations Act of 1946 would be agreed upon by the presidents
of the Philippines and the United States. The Bell Trade Relations Act allowed free trade
between the Philippines and the United States. Only a five-percent tariff was introduced
year by year until the hundredth-percent would have been reached by 1974. However, the
Act also gave Americans the right to unlimited use of the natural resources with no special
privileges given to Filipinos.
Filipinos later realized that the two Acts worked only to the advantage of the United States
as the two acts excessively prioritized the United States in Philippine trade and also gave
the United States control over the Philippine economy. Prominent political personalities in
the Philippines at that time senator and famous nationalist Claro M. Recto and president
Sergio Osmea who himself was a known supporter of the Americans condemned the
curtailment of the rights of Filipinos to their own country with the passage of the two Acts.
Needless to say, the Acts were thoughtless of the difficult situation the Philippines was in
after the recently gained post-war independence in which the two Acts ought to help. Two
historiographers bemoan:
4 A. M. BORLONGAN
It is obvious that the United States would help her most loyal ally only if the Americans would
be granted the same rights as the Filipinos enjoy in the exploitation of the resources of the
country. The United States, then, played the role of a man who, having been aided by a friend
who lost everything in defense of the former, now brashly demanded that he be given given
[sic] the right to live with his friends wife in exchange for his financial help. (Agoncillo &
Alfonso, 1960, p. 497)
There may be one incident that will clearly let the colonized know that they have already
been detached from the mother country but there may also be post-Event X incidents that
may also be contributory to the inverse misrelationship between the (high) importance
which they used to place on the mother country and the (considerably lower) importance
which the (former) colony is given by the homeland (p. 49) and sense of isolation and
abandonment (p. 49) that Schneider (2003) considers as consequences of the so-called Event
X. And as in historiography, resulting situations and/or conditions cannot be attributed
solely to a single cause, it is important to add to Schneiders (2003, 2007) theorizing and
conception of phase 4 that it may well be necessary to also make mention of post-Event X
incidents that also contribute to and even help Event X itself make the colonized feel
detachment from the mother country.
For the Philippines, one post-Event X incident might be the Philippine Senates rejec-
tion of the 1947 Military Bases Agreement between the Philippines and the United States
in 1991, which led to the withdrawal of American military installations by 1992. A more
recent post-Event X incident would be the recalling of a small humanitarian contingent in
Iraq in July 2004 in response to the kidnapping of overseas Filipino worker Angelo de la
Cruz. The Philippines was condemned by many states, most especially the United States,
because of the action taken by the Philippine government in response to terrorist demands.
Unsound though it may seem, the pullout of the troops initially sent as a support for the
United States-led coalition against global terrorism following the September 11, 2001 attacks
demonstrates the Philippines prioritizing of (intra)national interests over the maintenance
of pleasant relationship with other countries, most especially with the United States, and
good standing in the community of nations.
were first able to name the national language as Pilipino, which became Filipino in the 1987
Constitution. Naturally, language-in-education policies follow the general language plan-
ning done by the government; two policies on bilingual education were framed and imple-
mented, one in 1974 and the subsequent revision dated 1987. At present, there is an ongoing
debate on the passing of a bill for the implementation of mother tongue-based multilingual
education. And in all those language planning situations, English has been appropriated
a prominent position in Filipino society. For a long period in Philippine history, language
choices were made by the colonial rulers: Spanish insisting on Spanish government and
education but vernacular evangelization, Americans promoting English-medium education,
and Japanese glorifying Tagalog. But now, it can be said that the Philippines is already able
to decide on its own in matters of language. And being able to do so is a pre-requisite to
phase 4 (Schneider, 2003, 2007).
It bears pointing out that the Philippines goal is to become a nation bilingual in English
and a Philippine language, and not to be monolingual in English, in contrast to the United
States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand that have already reached phase 5, and possibly
Singapore which appears to be on the verge of becoming a monolingual-in-English country,
too (cf. accounts of the development of these Englishes in Schneider, 2007).
a segment of the society remains ambivalent about what to do with obvious deviations from
the exonormative standard which has been in place a long time, everything that Bautista
and Borlongan stated about Filipinos attitudes towards Philippine English fits perfectly the
description of Schneider (2003) on the sentiments towards local norms in phase 4 some
insecurity remains (residually fostered by conservative members of a society who still long
for old times and old norms) (p. 250). But even in Singapore, which Schneider (2003, 2007)
considers as having already reached phase 4, Schneider reports the ongoing dilemma of
Singapore English scholars on what to do with the emerging local norms but In any case, a
local linguistic norm, positively evaluated by many, is an undeniable reality, and its formal
recognition is called for (Ooi, 2001, p. xi) and envisaged (Foley, 1988, p. xiiixiv; 2001, p.
32) (2007, p. 160). But what is more compelling is this claim made as early as the 1960s
regarding attitudes towards English and the acquisition of English in the Philippines:
Contrary to predictions, positive attitudes towards Americans were not crucial in the Filipinos
desire to learn English. Rather, feelings of satisfaction with the Philippine community were
associated with the integrative motive and English language achievement. This association
suggests that English is perceived in part as a Philippine language, and the integrative motive
to learn English in the Philippines derives from an identification with a set of Filipinos, and
this particular set is believed to constitute a Filipino English speaking community. (Santos,
1969, p. 47)
Philippine literature in English, without doubt, is flourishing. Works of Filipino writers have
come out almost ever since Filipinos started speaking the language. Abad (2004) writes, If at
first our [Filipino] writers wrote in English, later they wrought from it [emphasis original]
(p. 170); Filipino writers in English, one example of whom is F. Sionil Jose whose works
have been translated to more than 20 languages, have received international acclaim. A
Philippine English literary canon has been developed by Gruenberg (1985).
Schneider (2003, 2007) also says that the substitution of the label English of X by X English
is a symbolic expression of transition from phase 3 to phase 4. He quotes Braj B. Kachru in
an interview with Prendergast (1998) who said that the two labels are two distinct ways of
conceptualizing language use and its nativization and identity with the language (p. 229). As
early as Llamzons pioneering work on Philippine English in 1969, the label Filipino English
and more recently and more consistently Philippine English has been in use.
Lastly, works towards the codification of Philippine English through dictionaries and
grammars have been initiated and are ongoing. Schneider (2003) rightly predicts that dic-
tionaries come first before reference grammars. He says that grammatical changes are fewer
and much harder to accept as correct given that there is the so-called common core of
English grammar (Quirk et al., 1985) earlier mentioned. Bautista and Butlers (2000, 2010)
dictionary came out first before more extensive corpus-based grammatical analyses (syn-
thesized in Borlongan & Lim, 2012) were done and the grammars of the verb and noun
systems in Philippine English prepared and written (Bengco, 2014; Borlongan, 2011a, 2016;
Morales, 2016). An inventory of the features of Philippine English has been drawn up by
Borlongan and Lim (2013). Work towards defining 'Standard Philippine English' has also
been done (Bautista, 2000; Borlongan, 2007). Also, Philippine English words have con-
sistently been added in recent updates of the Oxford English Dictionary (Salazar, 2015).
Quite importantly, exonormative stabilization in terms of grammar is well-documented
even across time (Borlongan & Dita, 2015; Collins, 2015; Collins, Borlongan, & Yao, 2014;
Collins, Borlongan, Lim, & Yao, 2014; Collins, Yao, & Borlongan, 2014). Indeed, a foreign
scholar makes a comment as early as the 1990s that Philippine English is among the most
well-documented Southeast Asian Englishes (Tay, 1991). A pedagogical model for teaching
Philippine English has already been developed by Bernardo (2013).
7. Conclusion
The forgoing discussion conjectures that Event X already took place in the development of
Philippine English, the ratification and implementation of two inequitable Acts that were
supposedly to be an aid in the post-war rehabilitation of the Philippines. Aside from this
Event X, several incidents took place after that also contributed to the feeling of separation
of the Philippines from the United States. The Philippines has long achieved its freedom
and independence, initially from Spain and later on from the United States, and has been
self-governing since its independence from the United States. It has likewise formulated its
own language policies without any external control. There seems to be general acceptance
of an emerging local norm, though there is still residual insecurity most especially for those
who are linguistically conservative. English has been in use in literature almost ever since
the language was introduced in the Philippines. There are signs of structural stabilization of
the variety both synchronically and diachronically. Finally, the English used in the country
has already been homogenized to a point that (initial) codification is now possible through
dictionaries and reference grammars. Accordingly, it can be said that Philippine English is
at the dawn of endonormative stabilization phase 4 in Schneiders (2003, 2007) dynamic
model of the evolution of postcolonial Englishes. It is interesting to see how, not if, Philippine
English will progress in Schneiders model.
8 A. M. BORLONGAN
Notes
1. A recent update of Schneiders theorizing on the evolution of Englishes was made in a 2014
publication, and it was meant to include what was traditionally called the Expanding Circle
Englishes. He refers to the general evolution of Englishes (to include the aforementioned type
of Englishes) as transnational attraction. The earlier version of this paper was cited in the
said Schneider publication as among those which provided suggestions and modifications
on the model he proposed.
2. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 17th Annual Conference of the
International Association for World Englishes (IAWE) held in November 2011 in Melbourne,
Australia. Hence, a number of citations of this paper appears as Borlongan (2011b). In the
course of the writing of this paper, discussions with and comments from Ma. Lourdes Bautista
and Edgar Schneider have been particularly constructive and helpful. It must be mentioned
here that another account of the development of Philippine English has been subsequently
published, that of Martin (2014).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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