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)
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!
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