Chinese American Rhetoric

Mao’s Reading Chinese Fortune Cookie works within Pratt’s idea of contact zones. While Mao could spend his time discussing the “grappling” parts of Pratt’s idea, he instead focuses more productively on the creative energies produced in the asymmetrical power dynamic (22). Instead of looking at either Chinese or American rhetoric (and, by extension, how they jockey for dominance), Mao examines where the rhetorics meet—the borderland rhetoric of the Chinese American. The idea of Chinese American rhetoric, Mao is careful to point out, is more than a hybridized form of language. Chinese American rhetoric could simply be viewed as another “other” discourse acting in opposition to the dominant form of rhetoric. Instead, Mao says the Chinese American rhetoric works to “blur the boundary and to destabilize the binary between the dominant and subordinated” (32). This non-oppositional position has come to define how I understand borderland rhetorics.

            In both Mao’s text and Lyon’s article, I found the Derridian notion of definition through difference as also key to my understanding. Mao adopts a “togetherness-in-difference” approach that moves beyond looking at the discourse as simply agonistic because it is different. This allows him to view the Chinese American rhetoric as a rhetoric of “becoming” (32-33). Lyon takes a more western stance on difference by looking at the departures of Eastern and Western rhetorics in terms of grammar and style (132). And though this may seem less productive than Mao’s approach, I think that having both perspectives is essential to defining a rhetoric that fits neither side of the binary. As Derrida notes in “Differance,” we can only define things in relation to one another. It becomes impossible for us to see Chinese American rhetoric as something outside of not-Chinese and not-American, so we come to view it as Other. But if we look at it as something that is becoming we see it as actively moving between power structures independently.

            Mao really brings this out in Chapter Five when he describes the Chinese American response to John Elkington’s disparaging remarks about Chinese clients. Not only is the mobilization and networking of the community impressive, but the rhetoric of protest differs greatly from what is widely perceived as the American way to protest (picketing, harsh confrontation, legal recourse, etc.). Mao selects passages that are reflective in their approach—ones where the speaker is situating him/her heritage in relation to both Chinese and American. Time is also a factor. The past informs the present and the present defines this moment. But all of this—the rhetoric of becoming—culminates as they speaker asks the audience (in this case city council) to look with them at the possibilities laid out for the future. The prefacing quote of the chapter from Bourdieu is especially telling with language that evokes Bakhtin’s notions of utterances, heteroglossia, and social language. To examine Elkington’s comments from that perspective asks the audience to account for a history of oppression and an environment where these remarks could be acceptable (which Mao points out may have been the case since no councilperson spoke out at the time).

            The ultimate effect of this sort of rhetoric is a non-oppositional dialogue. The speaker engages the audience (who is active in defining the speaker through difference) and puts the audience in a position where they have to actively shape what the future might look like. This matches Canagarajah’s call to teach “teach communicative strategies—i.e., creative ways to negotiate the norms relevant in diverse contexts” (593). The grammar is far less important, than communicating clearly.

            In one sentence in particular I was struck at how many levels this works on simultaneously. Mao writes, “To claim, as did Mr. Elkington, that these remarks were meant as a ‘joke’ either reveals his own chutzpah that he can get away with uttering such remarks in public, or speaks to the significant challenges we border residents face as we try to promote co-presence and mutual understanding through the discourse of togetherness-in-difference” (128). Besides incorporating a Yiddish word into a conversation about Chinese-American relationships (yet another form of togetherness-in-difference), this sentence does a couple amazing things. First, it sets up an either-or binary, which we recognize as a trap (usually). But the way out of this dichotomous thinking is in the use of pronouns. Mao carefully selects inclusive pronouns to describe the challenges “we” face. He further distances us from Elkington by putting the word joke into quotes. The utterance is Elkington’s though the nature of language is social. It is because the language is social and we’re included in the dialogue that we have to opportunity to change the conversation.