Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Professor Kennedy
Linguistics 70
Brad McDonnell, M 5-6
In media, “Asian” is often portrayed as one language despite the distinctive features
found in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Although many people in the United States compile and
construct a pan-Asian language, there are differences in the phonetics, phonological structures,
syntactical structures, lexical structures, and the discourse. Folk linguistic attitudes are that
Asians are either unwilling to learn how to speak English, or are unable to. Margaret Cho, a
Korean- American, promotes the ideology that “Asian” is a language in her stand-up act, “I’m
Many people in the United States do not take Asians seriously due to the perception that
Asians are incompetent because of their struggles to achieve Standard English. Margaret Cho
characteristics into one pan-Asian language. In her performance, she makes many phonetic
generalizations; for example, she says, “YOUR EYE IS TOO BIG!!” in a guttural,
pharyngeanlized voice that typifies Asians to all have an aggressive and guttural tone. In reality,
Japanese speakers do not have this tone of voice. Cho also imitates a very stereotypical phonetic
sound of Asian women, the soft and delicate falsetto voice. Many folk linguists believe this
stereotype to apply to all Asian women, but in reality, Japanese and Chinese women rarely use
this tone to speak in. Another folk linguistic belief of Asians is that they all speak in a high-
pitched tone. In one of Cho’s stand-up acts, she says when she wants to pretend she doesn’t
speak English, she replies, “I don’t know!” in an extremely high-pitched voice. Japanese people
are not known to speak in this sort of tone, although it is generalized to the entire Asian
population. Along with phonetic differences in Asian-English vernacular, there are an abundance
Phonology is a category in which many Asians are generalized and beleaguered for.
Sudden rising and falling intonation is highlighted when Asians speak English varieties. Cho
exemplifies this stereotype in the utterance of, “What is your membership number?” in the tone
of, high; low high; high low; high; high low. The Japanese language does not have the sudden
fall and rise of the intonation. Alveolarization is a feature in Japanese and Korean languages,
which causes “everything” to sound like “everysing”. This phonological process is not present in
the Chinese language. Many Asian English speakers are often accused of turning “l” into “w”.
For example, Cho turns “tall” into “taw”. Chinese people often struggle to make this distinction,
but Korean and Japanese speakers do not have an issue with this feature.
Syntactical structure is highly important to Standard English speakers, and the
discrepancies are often highlighted when Asian English speakers talk. Tense neutralization is a
crucial process that is highly valued by standard English speakers. Many English speaking Asian
are accused of tense neutralization; in Cho’s stand-up act, she imitates an Asian who doesn’t
speak standard English by saying, “I grow up on the rice paddy; I come to America”. English
speaking Chinese do not usually make this mistake. An absence of copula is another noticeable
feature of the pan-Asian language. Although English speaking Japanese and Chinese people do
not struggle with this process, some Koreans do, as Cho imitates, “You too tall; you gay”.
Another prominent feature in the pan-Asian language, is the absence of articles. Although folk
linguists generalize this aspect of language to the entire English speaking Asian population,
Japanese English speakers do not have an issue with this. For example, Cho states, “Because that
is very good way to lose weight. I want eggroll”. A simple negation with “no” is a highlighted
feature of English speaking Asians. Cho makes the statement, “I am no chicken”. Koreans tend
to have an issue with this process, while Chinese and Japanese English speakers tend to avoid
doing this.
folk linguists. Non-contractions are a feature that is commonly highlighted when Asians speak
English varieties. For example, Cho states, “What do you mean I am fucking cock? I am not a
rooster. I am no chicken”. Folk linguists often describe non-contractions as a typical attribute of
the pan-Asian language, when in actuality both Japanese and Korean speakers tend to avoid non-
contractions. Abrupt topic changes are a noticeable trait that is often generalized to the entire
Asian population, but Japanese English speakers do not do this. There are many differences in
Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, which all translate to differences in those populations speaking
The form of our message comes in a poster and a website. We decided to choose these
mediums for several reasons. The poster is fantastic for delivering information right on the spot
to a wide variety of audience; it will be seen whether people are interested in our issue or not.
those who were interested could spend more time looking at the information we are presenting.
A website is an efficient and effective method in spreading our message. It will give people the
opportunity to thoroughly check out the research behind our claim that “Asian is not a Language”
and it will allow others to easily share the information by simply sending a url link to others. Our
poster is an important visual cue in our presentation; it allows others to immediately see some
concrete information, rather than just hearing it. Our slogan “Asian is not a Language” is
incredibly important for our message because it’s bold and straight to the point. We want our
slogan to be representative of our information and easy to understand at a glance, which it is.
We use linguistic data to back up our claims; the most important data for our project is “Beyond
Yellow English” an explanation done by Angela Reyes and Adrienne Lo, and published by the
Oxford University Press. We discussed the negative attitudes associated with the pan-Asian
language and the stereotypes associated with these attitudes. Asians speaking English as their
second language are often generalized as making the same mistakes while speaking English,
which we have proved, is completely false. Many Asians are not taken seriously because they do
not comply with Standard English, but the reasons behind this are not understood. Asian
languages are complex and have completely different structures and processes than English;
these processes and different structures are then applied to English, and stereotypes and negative
attitudes arise.
The goal of our message is simple: to educate the people of the United States about the
falseness of this pan-Asian language, and to reveal the truth behind the complexities and
English vernacular. I expect that readers and viewers will learn quite a bit from our project;
although many people may not hold negative stereotypes about Asian-English speakers, those
same people may not fully understand the differences in each vernacular, and the reasons behind
why Asian-English speakers do not speak Standard English. The alternative attitude presented is
that Asian-English speakers should be better treated and taken more seriously since the reasoning
behind the negative stereotypes is convoluted. Also, now that the differences in Asian-English
vernacular (for Korean, Chinese, and Japanese) have been explained, the argument that they’re
“all the same” is adequately disproven. We have sufficiently responded to and refuted the folk
linguistic attitude in which we are discussing. The so-called “logic” behind the folk linguistic
beliefs that Asians all speak the same language has thoroughly been discredited.
We have broken down the features of mock Asian presented in Margaret Cho’s standup
comedy performance “I am the one I want” and provided evidences that three commonly
encountered East Asian languages in the United States, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese are
unique and separate languages. The folk linguistic belief states that all Asians speak alike. There
is also a linguistic ideology that Asians do not speak English well. Such belief is conveyed
widely in the media today in the form of mock Asian. Any mock language is hurtful to the
speaker of language being mocked and harmful to the society. However, mock Asian is
unconventionally harmful. Mock Asian assumes that all Asian languages are the same,
potentially discrediting Asian people’s identity. Undeniably, some speakers of East Asian
languages have difficulty mastering English as their second language. Learner’s language shall
not be mocked to begin with. But above all else, mock Asian is based on a wrong concept. Asian
is not a language. The society has to be informed to remove the existing folk linguistic belief that