Reflection on "Performing English, Performing Bodies"

Louis (2005) posits that “for ESL students, these oppressions may take the form of language-based ‘cops in the head,’ obstacles that affect students’ communication efficacy by interfering with their willingness to use English in selected contexts.” This echoes my experiences as an English learner and an EFL teacher. For a nonnative English speaker, the language itself is an. It is very likely for language learners to mean differently from what they say. To keep a conversation going, language learners need to create a conversational flow by using words or phrases they know or are familiar with or they would have to keep explaining the idea they have in mind without moving on. One of the elements needs to go to make the conversation work. Miscommunication also happens when a nonnative speaker says “yes” to all questions posed to him or her while he or she turns out to understand nothing. It also has something to do with the flow. Nonnative speakers want to overcome the obstacles affect their communication efficacy by showing their understanding about their interlocutors, meanwhile, they are busy searching for information that they know such as context, gestures, or few words, in order to make sense of any given situation.

While language may be a reason for miscommunication, another thing that challenges language learners is the unfamiliarity of the social cultural norms of the target language culture. One of my American friends once asked an international student from Japan about her winter break. She told him that the break was so wonderful that she didn’t want to come back to the U.S. The American friend replied “why don’t you just go back?” The girl suddenly burst into tears. Finally, the American friend realized that the Japanese girl mistakenly thought he was laughing at her not being able to overcome the pressure and difficulties studying in the United States. Nonnative speakers do not have the cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984) that enables them to meet the expectation of the target culture groups and they need to pay more efforts to maintain relationship with people from different cultures.