Mariscal, Jemeah Ann M.

Pelenio, Ryneir Jae M.

ELS 80: Philippine English
CO2 (A): The Philippine English Literature and Language

The shaping of Philippine writing

● Filipino writer and critic Arturo Rotor (1987)
- He lamented the fact that Philippine writing in English was still in the experimental
stage, and decried the abuse of local color in most short stories.
● “English was very simple, very direct” according to Casiano Calalang.
- The demand for local color was a compromise that American colonialism promoted
so that Philippines literature in English would become acceptable by its standards.
● It was a concept that allowed Philippine literature in English an opening into the
mainstream of literary life in the Philippines.
● It was a symptom of the contradictions in Philippine literary life as a result of
American colonial education.
- Filipino writers were expected to be original in their writing, that is, to avoid mimicking
Anglo-American literature.
● The literary texts they were exposed to in the colonial classroom were
Anglo-American.
- With the promotion of local color as a standard of excellence, American colonialism,
through education as a potent instrument, successfully delimited the sphere of
Philippine literature in English to that space where great literature does not belong.
With the demand for local color,
● Philippine literature in English was effectively pushed to the margins of the
mainstream, thus relegating it to the position of an 'other' literature.
- By contrast, local color was not an issue in Tagalog literature, precisely because
Tagalog literature already lay at the margins of American colonial society.
● Genaro Virtusio (1935) wrote the following Tagalistas. They are content to cater to
the great bulk.
- 'The trouble with our Tagalistas, is that they are content to cater to the great bulk that
is the unsuspecting ignorant mass yearning to be emotionally tickled and
sentimentally pleased, disregarding all that is good and beautiful, and worth-having in
literature'.
● ‘Great bulk’ were the thousands of readers of the Tagalog magazine liwayway.
- The wide readership of this magazine during the colonial period suggests that
emotional, sentimental, and moralistic literature was very popular. Virtusio's
 statement also reveals that at that time, emotionalism and sentimentalism were
considered qualities of poor writing, as well as of poor taste in literature.

English and the Filipino writer

● English in the Philippines is accepted as the language of technology, diplomacy, and
trade.
- Expressions of nationalism seem to be the turf of the national language, Filipino.
Hence, advocates of a socially-oriented literary tradition look askance at writers in
English, and the allegation that a foreign language is inadequate as a medium of
expressing local sentiments has made nationalistic writers suffer problems of
credibility, as there is the perception that English cannot serve as the language of the
masses.
● The use of English in the expression of the national spirit is a contradiction and
dilemma central to the postcolonial situation.
- Choosing English as a literary medium can be perceived as a political position that
has literary ramifications, and a choice that has forced a number of writers into
positions and actions of loyalty (or Disloyalty) depending on the dictates of the
individual conscience.
● On the one extreme, there are those who have abandoned the use of English,
fortunate in their equal ability in the native tongue, while on the other are those who
have abandoned the nation, and embraced the internationalism that English offers.
Then there are those who have no choice but to write using the borrowed tongue,
English being their only mode of expression, but who have remained committed to
their nation and culture, striving to prove that English can be a language of
nationalism.
● It is the third group that has borne much of the postcolonial burden of proof.
- They are committed to the nation and yet suspiciously express that commitment
through a colonial language. There have been suggestions of excising the language
from its cultural baggage in order to free it from its unwanted origins, although the
chances of success for such an operation would be doubtful. The other recourse is to
accept the language with all its cultural disadvantages and create positive uses for it.
Varieties of English and Philippine English
● English is not a static language.
- According to Blyden (cited in Mazrui, 1973), English is a language of accommodation
and pragmatic synthesis and not a stickler for purity. In many colonized nations, it has
been shaped by the dynamics of cultural impingement. Early scholarship has noted
the presence of English in varying registers, from the high to the low. The high variety
 hews closely to standard English (in the case of the Philippines, read American) and
is acceptable, while the lower registers contain local influences and are treated as
dialects or varieties.
● Postcolonial writers from other countries attest that they consciously write in their
own variety of English.
- Bailey and Robinson (1973) cite Mulk Raj Anand, who admits that in writing in
English, he is translating from Punjabi and Hindustani into English; R.K Narayan,
who states that (among Indian writers) there has been no attempt to write
Anglo-Saxon English and that Indianization has changed the flavor of the language;
and Chinua Ache be, who feels that although 'English is able to carry the weight of
his Mrican experience, it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its
ancestral home but altered to suit its african surroundings'.
● English 'is a language that puts a premium on restraint' and 'consider[s] poetry
written in this manner as artificial, bombastic and even insincere'.
- Only in recent scholarship has Manalang Gloria's poetry been re-viewed and
reconsidered in new light, and when seen as conflating traditions and expressing
Philippine literary experience, her poetry has gained substantial poetic clout.

The linguistic turn

● In 1969, Teodoro Llamzon published his Standard Filipino English.
- He claimed the existence of standard Filipino English. According to Llamzon (2000),
this claim received mixed reviews, more negative than positive. There was no
consensus that a Standard Philippine English had been established, and the
acceptance of the concept had to be postponed. In 1999, Ma. Lourdes Bautista
concluded at the end of her study 'that 30 years after Llamzon proclaimed the
existence of a Standard Filipino English, such a claim now has a basis in reality'.
● Bautista (2000) studied features of educated Philippine English and noted that the
most frequent deviations are found in subject-verb agreement, articles, prepositions,
and tenses.
- However, even today, there seems to be a strong preoccupation with a standard and
despite the recognition of 'new Englishes', there have been no substantial attempts at
re-considering attitudes toward deviations.
● In 1983, Andrew Gonzalez asked a crucial question: 'When does an error become a
feature of Philippine English?'
- Braj Kachru suggested that a distinction be made between deviation, innovation, and
a new creative expression (cited in Llamzon, 2000). This suggestion opens the space
for the use of non-standard English in creative endeavors, but not in communicative
 ones, and English users in the Philippines remain beholden to the standard.In her
study of verbs, Bautista (2004) observes that Filipinos are so far unable to elevate
their deviations to innovations, which perhaps implies that Filipinos have not yet
taken full ownership of their English.
● Ismail Talib asserts that the 'norm of what "good" or "standard'' English is, is derived
from one of the dialects of English spoken in southeastern England which was
relatively wealthier than other parts of England.
● Talib also cites the analysis of Alberto (1997), who 'specifies that the notion of what
"King's English" is might have arisen as a reaction to the threat of foreign corruption
of the language [and that] "King's English" is defined negatively by fears of what
English should not be rather than what it is or should be'.
- This, according to Talib, is sometimes criticized as being connected to 'linguistic
imperialism', which to my mind allows the marking of deviations as signs of inferiority
or themess rather than as opportunities and innovations.

The Abrogation of the Standard English Language

● It is the denial of the privilege of English.
- Rejection of the principles of standard English
● Relexify the mother tongue, combining English vocabulary with indigenous structures
and rhythms.
- The process therefore decentralizes English, and by admitting processes of
neologisms, innovation, tropes, and imaginative usage, it allows the English
language to become a tool with which a "world" can be textually constructed'
● Use of articles is different for Filipinos because Philippine languages have different
determiner systems.
- Based on whether the noun is focused or not, having an aspect system rather than
tense system
● Transliteration is another peculiarity of Philippine English.
Example: Open the light, abortion to miscarriage
- changes the words from one language or alphabet into another corresponding, with
similar-sounding letters with different characters
● Rolando Tinio
○ The first Filipino Poet who pioneered on code-switching when writing poetry.
○ Experimental, at his time, code-switching is a serious grammatical error.
- Tinio's poetry is 'disengaged' and would not be salvaged by a political intent. The
perception before was that such poetics were simply a fad or were just finger
 exercises for the poetically adventurous, and unlike West Indian writers, Philippine
authors seemed noticeably more restrained. Tinio broke with this tradition.
Sample work:
Strangely absolute ang impression
Ng hilera ng mga pin tong nagpuprusisyon
Individual identification, parang mummy cases,
De-nameplate, de-numero, de-hometown address.
Antiseptic ang atmosphere, streamlined yet.
Kung hindi catacomb, at least E filing cabinet.
● Filipino impingement in the English language is prominent in local situations, Filipino
words, and speaker’s cadence.
Sample work: Nick Joaquin’s El Camino Real
I wear the American uniform
who wore the Philippine rayadillo before and much earlier
less incredibly the colors of the Spanish cazador.
Yes, there I was, a Madrilen io, a young sargeant
in my own eyes a neo-conquistador
defending the Empire, here in the Orient.
- The intrusion of Spanish complicates English because the lines are only half English.
Lexically and semantically, the lines are in English, but syntactically and prosodically,
the lines are in Spanish.

Appropriation and Philippine English

● Appropriation captures and remolds the language to new usages, marking a
separation from the site of colonial privilege.
- Leads the end of the abrogation.
● Aims to break the cultural silence of colonized expressions
● Validating the colonized culture, bending the language to suit its needs.
Different methods of Appropriation
● Glossing - translation or explanation of non-English words.
- Appropriates by establishing non-English words as cultural signs thus creating a gap
between the word and its referent.
● Use of Untranslated Words - giving full authority to the word while releasing
language from the myth of cultural authenticity and demonstrating the fundamental
importance of situating context in meaning.
- the use of untranslated words presupposes a kind of equality between giver and
receiver
 ● Creation of an interlanguage - fusion of the linguistic structures of two languages.
- term is used to characterize the peculiar utterances of a second language learner,
not as deviations or mistakes, but as part of a separate but genuine linguistic system
● Syntactic Fusion - combination of linguistic structure found in standard words with
vernacular rhythm and syntax.
Sample Work: Like the Molave of Rafael Zulueta da Costa
Who will decipher Philippine hieroglyph?
Who, unravel the intricate formula?
Who, enter the jungle, mount the steep
And find the molave proud, knowing no death?
- carries elliptical structures common to Spanish and Tagalog
● Code-switching - referring to shifts from one language to another
● Vernacular Transcription - including spellings that follow dialect sounds and double
glossing.
Sample work: DH Sunday, Hong Kong by Isabela Banzon Mooney
I'm not ashame to be pinoy:
my contract's not expire, so pity
but I want a little to enjoy.

I not stop working, but unggoy

or please they never say to me;
well, I'm not ashame to be pinoy.

No play on day-off, no toy

with lift that go updown - no sorry
too but I want a little to enjoy.
I fix pinoy foods, hot like bachoy,
very near to jolibee …
Why I ashame to be pinoy?

Jewelries, pants, you like, 'Noy?

Ma'am, you pay? I take your money
'cause I want a little to enjoy.

I also buy- but cheap only, hoy —

pasalubong for my family
I'm not ashame to be pinoy,
I want so little to enjoy.

- Ungrammatical, disjointed, littered with Filipino words, the language comes close to
being pidgin, the language of the uneducated. However, this is their identity.
- The use of literary devices such as transliteration (Bumibili rin ako, pero mumurahin
lang *I also buy — but cheap only hoy) and Filipinisms (Open the light)

Filipino English Poetry

The course of Filipino poetry in English from 1905 to the present have passed through three
transformative phases or dominant strains:
The Romantic Spirit
- The struggle between the language and the poet’s subject (natives or Filipino
matters) that is to be expressed in the adopted language.
Sample work: The Flood by Ponciano Reyes
Before the light of day had shone.
The village was to desert turned.
No mark of life or places known
But corpses washed ashore alone.
● Social movement
- Poetry at this point is used to question “who is responsible for those who have less in
life?” or what “humanity as a Filipino” we have become after the series of colonization
our country have experienced.
Sample work: Moonlight by the Bay by Fernando M. Maramag
Not always such the scene: the din of fight
Has swelled the murmur of the peaceful air;
Here East and West have oft displayed their might;
Dark battle clouds have dimmed this scene so fair;
Here bold Olympia, one historic night,
Presaging freedom, claimed a people's care.
- Described the seemingly paradisal scene and the celebration of another conquest of
the country
● Language and history are crucial factors in writing the Filipino matter, our identity.
- Sought to convey substance and spirit.
● The first anthology, Rodolfo Dato’s Filipino Poetry, the language and subject were
borrowed as if we have no thoughts or feelings.
- In writings, the bird skylark and nightingale in English Romantic poetry are converted
into kuliawan and maya.
● Filipino Romantic poetry had come into full flower in the poems of Jose Garcia Villa,
Luis G. Dato, Angela C. ManalangGloria, and Trinidad L. Tarrosa-Subido.
● We incorporate Spanish Romantic spirit into our own native writings.
Sample work: Cagayano Peasant Song by Fernando Maramag
The dove, when newly hatched,
Has tasty meat and tender;
When old, howe'er you stew her,
You cannot rend her.
 ● The Filipino poets are mainly writing romantic love, however, Jose Garcia Villa broke
the taboo on explicit sex, passion, and homosexuality in our fiction or poetry
releasing Man-Songs and the story Song I Did Not Hear.
● When the 2nd world war came, the romantic efflorescence wilted.

The Formalist Strain

● By 1950s, we had modern poetry in full swing.
● Leonard Casper's Six Filipino Poets (1954),14 coming two years after Nick Joaquin's
Prose and Poems (1952), signaled the start of the American New Criticism
- This focused on the formal perfection of the poem as verbal icon and shaped the
poetic sensibility from the 1950’s to present day.
● Leonard Casper enhanced New Critical influence.
- At this point, Philippine Literature is offered at the collegiate level.
● The transformative phase of Romanticism to Formalist is seen in:
(Romance) ‘Day to Night’ (1941)
O beauty in that rift of cloud! O sails
Which butterfly the sea! For the soul's sake,
A petal's fall, five stars caught in a tree!
(Formalist) 'Off the Aleutian Islands' (1953)
I have reaped the sickle edge of rain,
Rain harvests that had no grass:
In youth I let, instead, lusty mushrooms
Discover me.
- The poems in the 1940s and early 1950s, are a poetic landmark. Its transmutation of
the Romantic idiom renders with pathos and restraint the condition of the colonial
subject, the lowly and the bereft, the victims of war and oppression.
- Sensitivity to the nuances of language, a sharpness of imagery and verve of
metaphor, and a poignant tension and irony of thought and feeling which, in New
Criticism, are the hallmarks of poetry.

Poetry from the 1950s to the Present

Transition of a poetry written as more relaxed and conversational.
Sample work: A Philippine History Lesson by Navarro Salanga
It's a history that
moves us away
from what we are
We call it names
 assign it origins
and blame the might
That made Spain right and America- bite.
This is what it amounts to:
we've been bitten off,
excised from the rind of things
what once gave us pulp
has been chewed off
and pitted- dry.

● By the 1970s, poets returned to formal excellence due to political activism and
Martial Law.
- We see this move clearly in the poems of Salanga and Gelacio Y. Guillermo, which
highlights the fact that since Ponciano Reyes in 1905, our poets in English (as well
as in indigenous languages) have always stood upon their own native ground.
● In the 1980s, new critical theories affect the writings of the poets.
- the structuralists who fostered an extreme type of formalism and the
poststructuralists who ravished the voids of language.

Short Stories of Philippine English

Hispanic Period
- Before the colonization of the country, Philippines already have its local narratives—
oral epics, ballads, and tales.
● Local narratives will be mixed with Spanish romance stories and lives of saints while
oral folk epics will decline.
● Spanish introduced metrical romance (awit and corrido), as well as pasion (Life of
Christ) that were transmitted or dramatized in the carillo and komedya or moro moro.
● Due to the Propaganda Movement, writers turn-away from romanticisms and focused
on empirical experience.
- Noli Me Tangere

American Period
● The beginning of English Philippine writing.
- During the last part of the 19th Century, novels in Tagalog flourished due to the
decline of Spain and the transitioning of America.
● Writers are aware that they need to sound different from the American and British
models.
 ● Before the World War II, Filipino writers came under the influence of American
“proletarian literature”.
- Jose Garcia Villa was challenged by the younger authors that found an alternative
critical framework.

Post-war Period
● Establishment of the Commonwealth Literary Awards.
- This was short-lived because of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Japanese
colonization in the Philippines later on.
● Liwayway was the only Tagalog literary magazine allowed to continue publishing.
● After 5 years, the country gained independence and Philippines became a republic.
- The american influence on Philippine culture remained strong, not only because of
the economic treaty but also because of the cultural program, known as the Fullbright
Program.

Contemporary Period
● In 1960, the government instituted the Republic Cultural Heritage Awards.
- This aims to initiate a movement for greater and more dedicated efforts in cultural
advancement to complement the country's program of economic development', and
the first recipient was N. V. M. Gonzalez for the novel The Bamboo Dancers (1959)
● Short Stories in Philippine English were described as extravagant, dense,
impressionistic, and a manipulation of language.
● The debate between Villa and Lopez is still ongoing and the lack of audience for the
Philippine writing in English is becoming obvious.
● The period of maturity for many older writers such as Joaquin, Casper, Polotan who
are now producing novels.
● During the 1960s, the quality of the stories published in the Philippines Free Press
and the Graphic Magazine reached new heights
- The former, in particular, had a powerhouse staff consisting of some of the most
gifted writers in English: Joaquin, Polotan, Brillantes, Nolledo, andJose Lacaba,Jr.,
and published stories by both major and emerging writers.
● In the late sixties, the country entered a period of political turbulence.
- Student Power had erupted in campuses all over the world, partly fuelled by
widespread protest against the Vietnam war; and Filipino students were rallying to a
radical nationalist movement, which resulted to the politicization of writers.

Present Scene
 ● Despite the unchanging growth of the audience for literature, the tribe is increasing.
● F. SionilJose, Linda Ty Casper and Aida Rivera Ford is still writing.
● Gemino H. Abad, Carlos Aureus, Antonio Hidalgo, Carlos Cortes, Jose Y. Dalisay, Jr.
and Charlson Ong are older writers that just rose to prominence recently.
● Then the youngest generation of fictionists is producing stories which range in style,
from the conventional 'well-made stories' of Romina Gonzalez ('Elevator', 2003) to
the postmodernism of Maria Elena Paterno ('Song in the wind', 1992), from the social
realism of Menchu Sarmiento ('Good intentions 101 ', 2001) to the gothic lyricism of
Clinton Palanca ('The magician', 1996), from the quiet little initiation stories of Cyan
Abad:Jugo ('Sweet summer', 2004) to the raw violence of Marivi So liven Blanco
('Penitence', 1999), from the sexual explicitness of Lara Saguisag ('Fever', 1997) to
the cerebral games played by Luis Katigbak ('Document', 2000).
- The content of today’s writing has no boundaries: incest, prostitution, child abuse,
abortion, euthanasia, ethnicity, gender, globalization, but also, of course, about the
old subjects -love, death, courage, betrayal, guilt, forgiveness, expiation.
● Establishment of Creative Writing as a discipline.

Philippine Novels in English

Paradoxes of Philippine Novels
● Written as a solitary act of writing and consumed for mute reading.
- Written by the middle class but is accessible by the Filipino people
● A preeminent genre which the society speaks and conceives itself.
- Concerns with imagining it whole and is based on the lived experience of an
individual
● It is influenced by Europeans but is conveying Filipino content.
● It is a commodity
● Unread by the majority of the Filipino
Characteristics of Philippine Novels
1. Its production and reception are restricted to a minority of cultural workers in the
publishing, journalism, and educational sectors.
- a fact that accounts for the seemingly 'incestuous' nature of literary production and
consumption, and the preeminence of a 'personal' politics of authorship in the country
2. Its selective 'deterritorialization' beyond the territorial boundaries of the Philippine
nation-state through the Filipino diaspora
3. The shadow cast by the former colonial power and current hegemon, the United
States.
 - as a source of 'international' exposure, educational training, knowledge production,
and intellectual and artistic validation
*Events such as World War II in the 1940s and the 'People Power Revolution' in 1986 have
caused a spark of international interest in Filipino novels in English.
- The institutionalization of postcolonial and Asian-American studies in the
Anglophone world, while limited in scope, has also created a niche for the circulation
and critical reception of Philippine novels in English in First-World academia, even as
the politics of translation and publication in the 'world republic of letters' are marked
by inequalities and marginalization of cultural products written in nonEnglish native
languages from the Third World.