Martin Montgomery | Chair Professor, Department of English – University of Macau : ‘Cantonese is not just a dialect, it’s a language’

Professor Martin Montgomery

Professor Martin Montgomery came to Macau almost six years ago to take up an appointment as Chair Professor and head of the Department of English at the University of Macau. His career in British universities spanned over 30 years, most recently at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, where he headed the Department of English, was Vice Dean for planning in the Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences, and served as Director of the Scottish Centre for Journalism Studies.
At the University of Macau, he became head of the Department of English as well as the Department of Communication. He then served as foundation Dean of the University’s new Faculty of Arts and Humanities until 2014. With his expertise in New Discourse, Interview Discourse, Language and Social Interaction, and Language and Literature, the Times interviewee has been widely published, having written bestsellers such as “An Introduction to Language and Society”.

Macau Daily Times – Can Cantonese be considered an “anti-language?”
Prof. Martin Montgomery – I am no expert on Chinese, but I always found it strange from a sociolinguistic perspective that Cantonese and other regional languages of China are referred to as dialects of Chinese. The question of what is a dialect and what is a language is a very interesting one, because it seems to me that on the grounds of things like mutual intelligibility that Cantonese is not just a dialect, it’s a language. Probably you could say the same for many of the regional variances in China.
Calling it a dialect subordinates it. China is a very special case because you have a common writing system. So whatever regional language you speak, you would still have been taught Mandarin and the script, and therefore you can write and read. That is what makes China a special case. One of the miracles of the Chinese script is that it does not matter which regional language you speak, you are still able to read and write. That is probably one of the reasons it is non-phonetic and it is ideographic. But the real issue about anti-language and its relationship to language has in fact to do with power versus solidarity. It is always the case that one dialect stands in relation to another in a relationship of power and solidarity. The accents and dialects that tend to be stigmatized are always the ones that are furthest from the centers of power. The same happens to English and I guess also with all the other languages.

MDT – What can we learn from the process of the creation of these “new languages”?
MM – An anti-language works for exclusion and inclusion. It works to strengthen the bonds between the speakers of that “anti-language,” and that is the “solidarity” part we spoke about earlier. It helps to create a group identity, and at the same time it helps to exclude people who are not members of the group.
As a secondary role and more practically speaking, it enables illegal activities of the group to be conducted. In a third kind of aspect, there is quite often a sense of playfulness in the way terms develop in an anti-language. In an “anti-
language,” it is those areas that are most sensitive to illegality where you get the most terms. For example, in drug subcultures, you have many words. One good example of an anti-language for which there is historical evidence is what was called “pelting speech,” which had many words and was used among a community of robbers, vagabonds and others that made a living by stealing. The same happens with prison speech nowadays.

MDT – One characteristic which is common to all these forms is the fast pace at which the language changes. Is it a matter of survival?
MM – Basically things only stay secret if you keep changing the code. A code that is used over and over again faces the risk that someone will be able to crack that code and it will lose its usefulness. So this requires constant innovation. That is why it is usually related to crime communities.

MDT – Are there any words that may have started as an anti-language and then evolved to be part of the common language?
MM – I cannot think of specific anti-language words, but one of the curiosities of the English language is how much of the vocabulary has roots in maritime and naval activities. These activities spread from quite technical and closed-society activities into mainstream activities that became applied metaphorically to everyday situations, and have now become common idioms in general usage where the original literal (nautical) meaning has been lost. This includes examples like ‘the bitter end;’ ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea;’ ‘lost my bearings;’ ‘difficult to fathom;’ ‘to be taken aback;’ ‘hand over fist;’ ‘cut and run,’ etc.
For example, the word “fathom” represented a unit of measurement in the navy (a depth of six feet) while the expression ‘I can’t fathom’ means ‘I can’t understand.’
In another example, like in ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea,’ the ‘devil’ is actually a line on the side of a ship and you would be painting down to that line, but if you were clumsy you might fall off and would then be ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea.’ ‘I have lost my bearings’ is just a way of saying that ‘I do not know where I am going,’ but that is related precisely to navigation and to compass bearings that nobody uses any more, or even knows what they are.