Morgan Chih-tung Huang & Rong-xuan Chu, "A Political Linguistics Analysis of President Tsai Ing-wen’s Apology to Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples"

Number eight in an occasional series of summaries of articles related to communication practices in Taiwan.

黃之棟、朱容萱，2019，「總統道歉的語言學：【蔡英文總統代表政府向原住民族道歉文】的政治語言學分析」《政治科學論叢》，82，81-114。Morgan Chih-tung Huang & Rong-xuan Chu, "Zongtong daoqiande yuyanxue: 'Tsai Ing-wen daibiao zhengfu xiang Yuanzhuminzu daoqianwen' de zhengzhi yuyanxue fenxi" [A Political Linguistics Analysis of President Tsai Ing-wen’s Apology to Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples]. Taiwanese Journal of Political Science 82: 81-114.

This is the article by Huang and Chu that I mentioned in my last posting.  I'm going to summarize this generally, and then I'll comment on a few particularly interesting points that might be expanded on.

Huang and Chu take a political linguistics approach to analyzing Tsai Ing-wen's speech. They identify her speech as an example of a genre of political apologies, which includes historical apologies where the speaker is not the transgressor ("apologizer ≠ transgressor") and the group being apologized to is not necessarily the people who directly suffered the wrongs that are being apologized for (although I assume they would suffer the results of that historical wrongdoing). They contrast these political apologies with interpersonal apologies, in that political (or "national") apologies are not an "expression of remorse" or an "admission of guilt," but are more an assumption of responsibility for actions of the past.  

Because they're writing for a political science audience, Huang and Chu go to some length explaining the differences between a linguistic approach to studying apology speeches and a political science approach. Important to the distinction between a linguistic approach and a political science approach is the view in linguistics that the language used in the speech act reflects the way that the speech act is framed and the often unstated assumptions of the speaker. They systematically analyze what was said through the speech's use of illocutionary devices (such as the use of language showing that this was an apology and not just an expression of regret for the other's suffering), the use of pronouns to clarify the relationships between the part(ies) apologizing and those being apologized to, and the parties or points that are left out of the speech (importantly, they argue, Tsai focuses on speaking on behalf of the government rather than the [Han] people of Taiwan, so that the non-Indigenous society of Taiwan is absent from the speech). They also argue that Tsai's framing of the apology risks recolonizing Taiwan's history despite her attempt to decolonize it The speech, they argue, is based on a Han historical perspective that both generally ignores pre-Han Taiwan (here they allude to Lien Heng's famous dictum, 台灣固無史也) and because it relegates Indigenous peoples to a passive role in relation to the colonial governments that controlled Taiwan over the past 400 years.

The article analyzes the speech acts in Tsai's apology in depth, so if you read Chinese, I recommend reading this. For the rest of this post, I want to highlight a couple of points that Huang and Chu make. One is in response to a question I asked in my last posting, where I was wondering about the Mandarin words Tsai was using that Chu and Huang had translated as "will." In this paper, they point out that Tsai uses "會" several times in that "will" capacity, such as when she says,「我會以總統的身分，親自擔任召集人」(In my role as president, I will personally serve as convener [of the Indigenous Transitional Justice Committee].) So that answers that question.

The other point I want to mention is their discussion of Tsai's use of the Atayal (泰雅族) terms balay and sbalay, which she translates as "truth" (真相) and "reconciliation" (和解). Chu and Huang observe that after the apology section of her speech, Tsai raises the issue of truth and reconciliation by introducing these two Indigenous concepts. They argue that the effects of this are that it (re)frames the apology in terms of reconciliation. The problem here, they argue, is that reconciliation is then assumed to be the goal for the Indigenous audience as well as that of the non-Indigenous listeners, so that the apology itself becomes secondary to the (hope for) reconciliation. As Chu and Huang point out, "reconciliation" might not actually be the goal of the apology process for the Indigenous audience, but Tsai's redefinition of apology in terms of truth and reconciliation doesn't leave them much room for their own possible expectation for the fixing of responsibility and consideration of compensation. 

Chu and Huang don't go into this much, but to me what's especially interesting about this whole issue is Tsai's use of Atayal concepts to introduce truth and reconciliation. One would assume that she could have just used the Chinese terms 真相 and 和解, since they've often been used in the contexts of transitional justice for 2-28 and the White Terror. In fact, as Chu and Huang suggest, Tsai goes out of her way to frame truth and reconciliation as an Indigenous practice in her speech. They quote the following (my translation):

In Indigenous culture, when one party offends another person in the tribe and there is a desire for reconciliation, the elders will bring the perpetrator and the victim together. Bringing them together isn't for a direct apology, but rather to enable the parties to honestly speak out their own mental journey (心路歷程). After this process of speaking the truth, the elders will ask everyone to drink together to let the past really be past. This is Sbalay. (p. 94) 

But is it? As Da-Wei Kuan and Guy C. Charlton (2020) argue in another context, 

If we perceive sbalay as a ritual process, then every action within the process could be viewed as “texts.” To interpret these texts, it is an [sic] important to fully grasp the meaning of sbalay. Yet “meaning” is not denoted by the ritual process itself but is given by the social and spatial “contexts” surrounding these actions that give these texts meanings. Were it not for these social and spatial contexts, the ritual itself becomes detached, meaningless, and decontextualized. (p. 232)

Tsai focuses on the process but ignores the social and spatial contexts that Kuan and Charlton emphasize. In fact, in their other article, Huang and Chu (2021) observe that the apology ceremony was held in the Presidential building, which used to be the offices of the Japanese Government-General during the Japanese colonial period. As one of their interviewees wonders about this context, "Why do you [President Tsai] ask the Taiwanese aborigines to go to the perpetrator’s home to accept your apology?" (p. 94). Even worse, Huang and Chu point out that some Indigenous attendees felt that they were being "summoned" to an audience with "the emperor," demonstrating that "the government doesn’t understand aboriginal ceremonies" (p. 95). Finally, they argue that Tsai simultaneously plays the roles of apologizer (perpetrator), elder/mediator, and (in her role as a descendent of a Paiwan grandmother) victim. I'm not sure about the last of these since they point out in both articles that she never referred to her own Indigenous heritage in the speech, but I agree that it was odd for the representative of the perpetrators to also play the role of the elder/mediator. As Huang and Chu (2021) note, "from the perspective of Taiwanese aborigines (Kisasa and Lo, 2016a, 2016b), such a suggestive priest/clergyperson image implied that Tsai was located at the top of the power structure, commanding forgiveness and reconciliation between the two parties" (p. 95).

All of the above suggests some of the dangers accompanying colonizers' adoption of the rhetoric or cultural practices of the colonized when attempting to apologize for past (or present) transgressions. That said, I would love to hear from people more knowledgeable about Indigenous rhetoric (particularly Taiwanese Indigenous rhetoric) about this topic. I am admittedly not anything near an expert on this, so I'm eager to get feedback on my summary/analysis/interpretation of these articles and topics!

Rong-Xuan Chu & Chih-Tung Huang, "The day after the apology: A critical discourse analysis of President Tsai’s national apology to Taiwan’s indigenous peoples"

Number seven in an occasional series of summaries of articles related to communication practices in Taiwan. 

Chu, R.-X., & Huang, C.-T. (2021). The day after the apology: A critical discourse analysis of President Tsai’s national apology to Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. Discourse Studies, 23(1), 84-101, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445620942875

I want to start this by saying that this post will primarily focus on the article--I'm not, at this point, going to get into a larger discussion of what the Tsai administration has done in terms of reconciliation with or reparations to the Indigenous people since the time of her apology. 

Rong-Xuan Chu, according to her bio at the bottom of the article, is an applied linguist; Chih-Tung Huang, according to his bio, is an Indigenous scholar who is interested in ethnic/indigenous policy. This article focuses on the August 1, 2016 official apology given by Taiwan's president on behalf of the R.O.C. government to the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan for the R.O.C.'s role in the oppression of the Indigenous people. It analyzes the language of Tsai's apology speech, including her uses of the verb "apologize," the modal verb "will," and pronouns "I," "we," and "they." They explain that she directly apologizes instead of expressing "regret" (a term that is usually seen as not being an apology, as they point out, and as Hang Zhang observed in an article on the Hainan Island plane incident of 2001). 

However, they also argue that her use of "will," a modal that can refer to both future and present actions, weakens the commitment to change because it "allow[s] for a certain degree of ambiguity and doubt regarding her determination to uphold the reconciliation" (p. 90). They also argue that "will" can in places denote "capacity or power," which suggests that "Tsai viewed her government as the power holder who could influence the success or failure of the reconciliation" (p. 91). 

It's at this point where I wish the authors had specified which Mandarin modal verb(s) Tsai was using that meant "will." Are all the wills in English translating the same word in Chinese? The authors published an article in Chinese in 2019 on Tsai's apology speech, which I guess I'll have to read at some point to answer this to my satisfaction.

They also look at the pronouns used in the speech, noting that Tsai seems to separate Indigenous people from the rest of Taiwan's society by using "they" to refer to them while using the second-person plural to refer to the government and (presumably non-Indigenous) Taiwanese citizens. 

In discussing the political context of the apology, they observe (among other things), the KMT response in the form of a Q&A with Hung Hsiu-chu, former KMT chairperson, who said, “I wonder whether she [President Tsai] deliberately wants to use the aboriginal conception of Taiwan’s history to exclude the Han/Chinese nationality from the history and even to achieve de-sinicisation” (p. 92, translated by the authors--in a video of her comments, Hung says, 「要懷疑她是不是想用這個，故意用這個所謂的原住民史觀來排斥這個漢民族的史觀，甚至去中國化的一個史觀，結果形成一個另外一個史觀？我覺得，不能講說我們懷疑她的這個動機跟用心，但是難免會讓人家打上問號」。 I'd add that her use of 所謂的--"so-called"--in describing the Indigenous historical perspective seems dismissive either of Tsai's conception of that perspective or of the perspective itself.)  

The authors go on to argue that the whole apology ceremony received mixed reviews from the public--and, especially important, from the Indigenous recipients of the apology. While some appreciated it, there were several complaints. The venue, which was the President's mansion, was criticized as requiring the victims "to go to the perpetrator's home to accept [the] apology" (p. 94), and the staging of the apology, the authors argue, resembled an emperor summoning Indigenous subjects to an audience. 

In the end, Chu and Huang argue that "the apology did not seem to bring comfort to the indigenous peoples, rather it reawakened the long-simmering conflict between the Taiwanese government and the indigenous population over historically unresolved disputes" (p. 96). They conclude, however, that it was an important first step. 

There are other points brought up in the article that make it worth a second reading. I'm not as familiar with CDA (critical discourse analysis) to evaluate the authors' success with this approach or whether the article is making a theoretical contribution to CDA. I'll leave that to others. (Feel free to comment!)

Hunter School, by Sakinu Ahronglong (tr. Darryl Sterk)

I started reading Sakinu Ahronglong's Hunter School (1998; tr. Darryl Sterk; Honford Star, 2020) on the train down to D.C., then finished it upon returning to Boston. I had ordered it after reading a review by Michael Cannings. Originally published in Chinese under the title 【山豬．飛鼠．撒可努】(Mountain Boar, Flying Squirrel, Sakinu) in 1998, the book is a series of vignettes based on Ahronglong's life as a member of the Indigenous Paiwan ethnic group in Taiwan. A movie was made in 2005 that is based on the book:

I haven't watched the movie yet--guess that's my next project. But the book, a relatively short 162 pages, is definitely worth reading if you are interested in getting a personal perspective on the relationship of traditional Indigenous culture under Han domination in contemporary Taiwan. In his review, Cannings writes that 

[a] sense of loss permeates the book – loss of culture, loss of habitat, loss of language. The writing itself feels like an act of defiance against an encroaching world that has already taken much of what Sakinu considers to be the essential nature of the Paiwan people.

I agree that loss and the need to negotiate Paiwan identity with outside domination are important themes of Hunter School. This shows up in the chapter, "My Name is Paiwan," where Ahronglong struggles to arrange a traditional Paiwanese wedding in the face of his father's resistance (due to his Christian beliefs) and the challenges involved in restoring long-forgotten wedding customs. One thing that surprised me was how his community had adopted cultural practices from the Amis, another Indigenous group in Taiwan, causing them to lose their knowledge of some aspects of Paiwan culture. At one point during the wedding when everyone was dancing, he had to remind his guests that it was a Paiwan wedding, not an Amis wedding, because people were dancing in Amis style. 

But the book is also hopeful, particularly toward the end where Ahronglong writes about the restoration of his village's harvest festival, where he "sang with a voice like a mountain," and "we danced our way to the realization that what was lost can be found again, that it is an unchangeable fact that we are Paiwan."

There are some parts of this book that I think would work well in my courses. In my first-year writing course, in which we focus on literacy narratives, there are several places where Ahronglong writes of his acquisition of various types of literacy in the outdoors, learning from his father about how to read the forest and its animals, or learning from his grandfather about how to communicate with the birds in his millet field. The chapter about the frightening visit Ahronglong and his younger brother had in Taipei to find his father would work, perhaps, in my travel writing class (next time I get to teach it!). In both cases, I'd have to give students some background information to help them understand the texts, but that would be good for me, too--it would require me to learn more about Taiwan's Indigenous people and articulate that knowledge. This book is definitely a good place to start. 

A new collection in the former native speaker's collection

劉維瑛, 黃隆正, 六然居資料室, eds. 【現存臺灣民報復刻】. 國立台灣歷史博物館, 2018.

Ended up ordering these books myself because the library never got back to me about them.

The 8-volume set, published by the National Museum of Taiwan History, collects issues of the Taiwan Minbao (or Taiwan Minpao) from its first issue in 1923 to 1927. The paper itself was published under various titles (and in different languages) until 1947. The paper has been used in research on Taiwanese journalism, literature, and history over the years. I want to see what I can get out of it. See you in about 10 years!

[Update: Just took a second look at my title. Wish I could say that I wrote it that way on purpose!]

AAS CFP: Submit your Proposal for #AAS2023

by Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

The Association for Asian Studies program committee is pleased to invite proposals for the AAS 2023 Annual Conference program. 

We welcome organized panels, roundtables, workshops, and individual paper submissions across a range of topics that will advance knowledge about Asian regions and, by extension, will enrich teaching about Asia at all levels.

The AAS 2023 Annual Conference will be presented in two formats: In-Person and Virtual. Join us virtually, February 17-18, 2023, or in-person in Boston, MA, March 16-19, 2023.

As you work on your proposal, there are a few changes to the guidelines and format that we would like to share: 

• Two Appearances Allowed: The AAS has updated our long-standing one appearance rule! We will now allow an individual to participate in up to two (2) sessions. However, only one paper presentation appearance is allowed. See the full list of parameters as posted in the General Submission Guidelines.
• Two Formats, Two Sets of Dates: We will once again include virtual sessions on the Annual Conference program. All accepted virtual sessions will take place over the course of two days on February 17-18, 2023. All sessions accepted for in-person presentations will appear in Boston, March 16-19, 2023. Virtual sessions will not take place over the in-person dates.
• New Virtual Presentation Rules: Please make sure to review the guidelines set forth for virtual format before confirming your preference on the submission application, including:
  • We are unable to accommodate hybrid sessions. All sessions must be 100% virtual or 100% in-person.
  • Changing session formats is not allowed (i.e., in-person to virtual, or vice versa).
• Need Assistance? Are you planning to submit a proposal for #AAS2023 but need more presenters? Are you interested in presenting and want to join a submission? Use our CFP 2023 Community Forum to share information about you work and find collaborators with shared interests. (This community discussion is open to both AAS members and the public; non-members must create an account.)

The primary goal of #AAS2023 is to highlight the richness and breadth of research in the field of Asian studies. Please feel free to contact the AAS with any questions at AASConference@asianstudies.org. We look forward to receiving your submissions!

Submission deadline: August 9, 2022, 5:00pm Eastern Time

Please see the complete Call for Proposals at the AAS conference website for full details and instructions: https://www.asianstudies.org/conference/call-for-proposals/ 

George H. Kerr, Luis Kutner, and the Chiang Ching-kuo assassination attempt case

I've been reading through some of George Kerr's correspondence concerning the legal issues surrounding the defense of Peter Huang (黃文雄) and Cheng Tzu-tsai (鄭自才), who were arrested for the attempted assassination of Chiang Ching-kuo in New York in 1970. Taiwanese independence advocates in the US hired Luis Kutner, a famous Chicago human rights lawyer, to defend the two. 

When Kerr learned about how much the World United Formosans for Independence (WUFI) was paying Kutner (a $17,000 retainer fee and $3,000 per month plus travel), he was disturbed and wondered if Kutner was just trying to profit off of the situation. He also expressed concern that Kutner seemed to want to use the trial "as a platform for loud charges against the KMT and the Nationalist government and elite" (Kerr to Lung-chu Chen [陳隆志], Jun. 14, 1970). He felt that Kutner wanted to grandstand at WUFI's--and potentially Huang and Cheng's--expense. 

Lung-chu Chen tried to reassure Kerr about Kutner; in a June 30, 1970 letter, he praised Kutner as "a genius noted for successfully handling 'impossible' cases" and someone "who inspires confidence." Chen felt that Kutner's idea of a class action lawsuit against the KMT was novel and that Kutner was "courageous; he is probably the last person the Chinese Nationalists can bribe or intimidate." 

Kerr continued to express serious doubts, particularly on the two points mentioned above: the monetary cost (he felt that if Kutner was so passionate about taking on the KMT, he should do it pro bono) and the great risk that a legal fight against the KMT would do to Huang and Cheng's defense (July 1, 1970). 

By October, WUFI was struggling to continue payments to Kutner. In a letter sent Nov. 23, 1970, Ron Chen (陳榮成) told Kerr that WUFI had terminated their contract with him. 

All of the foregoing (except for the items hyperlinked) come from letters contained in Su, Yao-tsung (蘇瑤崇), et al., ed., Correspondence by and about George Kerr. 228 Peace Memorial Museum, 2000, vol. 2. In my searching for more information about Luis Kutner, I came across a lot, including a report on Kutner released by the FBI saying that 

on 11-3-70 Chinat [Nationalist Chinese/KMT] Ambassador to U.S. advised Bureau representative in strict confidence that Kutner has approached Chinat Embassy offering his services to the Chinats despite the fact that he is currently attorney for WUFI and is defending Peter Huang and CHENG Tzu-tsai, attempted assassins of Chinat Vice Premier CHIANG Ching-kuo, 4-24-70, New York City. Chinat Ambassador stated he is still uncertain of Kutner's motives in such an offer but believes Kutner is only opportunist interested in financial gain.

I'm not sure when WUFI terminated his contract, so I can't tell if Kutner's attempt to offer services to the KMT was revenge for that, or if (even worse) he just wanted to make money off of both sides. Either way, it sounds like Kerr was right to be wary about him.

[There's a lot more that could be said about the CCK assassination attempt and its aftermath, but my main focus here is on the Kerr/Kutner/WUFI connection.]