After I spent some years in Malaysia as an international student from Korea, I created my LinkedIn profile, opting to list my pronouns as she/her. I also included my English name alongside my Korean name, considering it a strategic choice in the job market. Now, my pronouns are not in my LinkedIn profile anymore because I do not feel represented by English pronouns, nor does the English name simply sound similar to my Korean name, which is always mispronounced or misspelt. 

I’ve been given various names in different countries, yet none feel entirely mine. Nevertheless, I respond to these names, recognizing the combinations of characters as representations of myself. Naming is a profound act that imbues identity and fosters connections with others. The jasmine flower, therefore, only gains meaning because we named it and isolated it from another group of flowers. A racial slur that summons the minorities erases the persons’ identity but insulates them into a representation, the connotation, and the violence within the power of naming carries. 

I speak the colonizer’s language – because my thoughts only gain power in a language that others understand. I name myself in English, and call myself gender-oriented pronoun. I act the English. When it comes to calling a noun without naming it, Latin-based Romance languages such as English, Spanish, French and many more have a division between feminine and masculine grammar – including articles, spellings, and pronunciations. While the concept of gender-neutral pronouns is not new in Western society, the question remains: are they enough to represent your foreign body?

Captured only in fragments in the foreign language, the calling of myself retreats meaning in my mother tongue. In Korean, gender distinctions are absent in language, described simply as ‘그’ (gue), representing an infinite array of individuals and objects. Malay also has the word to name their people before the colonizers. ‘Dia’, a Malay gender-neutral term, can be used for everyone regardless of gender. It is neutral, but it does not neutralize the histories of oneself.

Even today, speaking English prompts discomfort and heightened awareness of my word choice and grammar. I need to develop colloquial expressions and idioms that do not make sense in my mother tongue but only in English. I often feel like an actor on a stage, straddling cultures with meticulous calculations to present myself as a fluent English speaker, a highly educated person, and, therefore, who deserves better opportunities. When I am finally alone, I recount my performance as a foreigner. Every word, sentence, and body gesture that is Westernized singles me out from either culture – I have a thick accent to be a native English speaker, and I am not a part of the Korean community here in Malaysia. So, who am I?  

Claiming ownership over a colonizer’s language, which attempts to capture my experiences interwoven with my native linguistic framework, fails to truly represent who I am: the communications start and end, which are rearranged by the liminality of the colonial languaging practices. Expats, like myself, grapple with fluency in ‘doing the language,’ confronting the monolith of colonizer’s language that remains between themselves and the world. Therefore, language can be a new window peaking a brand-new domain, but it fails to mirror yourself who need to practice and submit to it. 

Language shapes thought, action, and, ultimately, identity. I’m not alone in constantly shifting between cultural identities on campus. When do you feel disconnected from both languages? And how do you navigate a language that doesn’t feel entirely yours?

Reference List

Not like a native speaker : on languaging as a postcolonial experience by Rey Chow

Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault; Donald F. Bouchard

Article by Juyeoung