Work place

After he graduated from college, Ding was employed as maintenance personnel in Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport. At the very beginning, he was very excited

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about it because it seemed he was on the way to becoming a chief engineer and it was very likely he could be the hero who saved his family. However, after several months, he became upset. As a ‘green hand’, he was asked to do the non-technological and toughest tasks, which made him tired and upset.

Extract 25 (LOC_D_20150317) 霆：我简直想要辞职了。

滕：为什么？

霆：我很累也很失望，这似乎不是我梦想中的工作，这个工作和工程师一点关系 也没有，甚至跟维修都没有关系。什么关系都没有！

滕：发生什么事情了？

霆：他们总是叫我做最重的活。比如说搬设备、搬配件，清洗配件啊。这些都根 本不需要技术嘛。更糟糕的是，我的工资也少得可怜，养活我自己都难，更别提 养活我家人了。

滕：这只是开始。你也说过只要你成为总工程师，一切就都好了。

霆：别再提总工程师了。我知道那个是好工作，但是我等不起了。它可望而不可 及，对于我来说，它就像镜中月水中花……我所做的一切都是徒劳的……我压力 好大，我需要钱……我打算再坚持一年，毕竟我还是想成为一名工程师的，我不 想轻易放弃。一年后如果情形依旧没有改观，我就辞职。然后去做与金融有关的 工作，我听说那个工作赚钱快。

……

滕：你有没有觉得学习英语是一种浪费？毕竟，到目前为止，在你的工作中，英 语没有起到作用。

霆：有点吧……也许，以后能用得着。计划不如变化快嘛！

滕：你还会继续对英语学习进入投入吗？

霆：嗯……很难讲。我不想就这么放弃英语，但是我怕我没有时间学习。但是我 明白掌握一门外语是一件好事情，很有可能以后会很有用，说不定我还能靠它找 份工作，谁知道呢！

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01. D- I almost wanted to quit.

02. T- Why?

03. D- I was so tired and upset. It seemed far away from my dream job.

04. All that I did had nothing to do with engineering, only a maintenance personnel, 05. nothing!

06. T- What happened?

07. D- I was asked to do the toughest tasks,

08. for example, conveying the heavy equipment and accessories, cleaning them.

09. None of it needed any technique at all.

10. What’s more, as a beginner, my salary was too poor to support myself, 11. let alone my family.

12. T- It was just a beginning. You always said once you become a chief engineer, everything will be OK.

13. D- Do not mention chief engineer any more, please.

14. I know it is a dream job, but I don’t have time to wait.

15. It is too far to reach.

16. For me, it looks like the moon in the water and the flower in the mirror……

17. What I have done is in vain

18. ……I am stressed and I need money……

19. I intend to persist one more year.

20. After all, working on planes is my dream job even though I can’t be a pilot.

21. I can’t give it up easily.

22. If the situation doesn’t change within a year, 23. I will quit this job and to take a job in finance

24. because I have heard that that is a kind of job where you can earn money quickly.

…….

25. T- Do you think learning English is a kind of waste?

Because it hasn’t offered any help in your work until now.

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26. D- Somewhat. Maybe in the future, I can use it.

27. Changes can happen any time and everywhere.

28. T- Will you continue investing in English?

29. D- Hum… It is hard to say.

30. I don’t want to give English up but I am afraid I don’t have time to invest in it.

31. I believe mastering a foreign language is a good thing and it is very probable that in the future it would help me.

32. Maybe English would offer me a job to support my family, who knows?

It is evident that Ding is irritable when he talks about his current job. But his attitude should be understood with reference to his identity: he is the oldest son who bears the responsibility of taking care of his whole family. At this point, his identities are contradictory: the green hand needs time to get to the top position but the oldest son of a poor family can’t wait. During the struggle, he even bemoaned that what he learned was in vain, including his investment in English.

7.6 Comment

Due to new and different systemic patterns of control in Ding’s workplace, his intersubjective positioning shifts yet again and he no longer sees the direct affordances that investing in English learning can bring him although he still persists in his studies. Returning to the notion of ‘niche’ as a place to act in a language (Menezes, 2011), we can see by Ding’s words that he does not intersubjectively position himself as belonging to this particular language niche once he has a job as airplane mechanic.

Ding is one of the participants whose positioning seems to change the most. For a long time, Ding never viewed English acquisition as a kind of cultural capital. When he was in secondary school he perceived it as unimportant until he failed in the pilot recruitment testing. After that, he realized that English played a critical role as a

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necessary condition to help him make his dream come true but he still did not conceive it as a kind of capital.

Later, during his college life, and realizing that he could not become a pilot, Ding still invested much more in English in order to become a chief engineer. Intersubjectively, Ding seemed to position himself as a possible member of the discourse community (Menezes, 2011). In his eyes, English acquisition could offer access to this job, which, in turn could help his family get out of poverty. Currently, in his workplace, although English acquisition seems useless, he believes future English acquisition may offer a job, which means he now conceives English as a potential (although indirect and rather vague) cultural capital that can bring economic capital for him and he would like to continue investing in English.

It is intriguing to consider whether Ding was motived or unmotivated to learn English.

In the work of Gardner and Lambert (1972), instrumental motivation references the desire that language learners have to learn a second language for utilitarian purposes, such as employment. So he still has instrumental motivation to learn English (eager to be a chief engineer) but due to his complex social history and multiple desires, Ding’s investment in English varies according to his shifting identities and we can see that he currently perceives English as holding potential affordances as well as a means to social, cultural and economic capital. Ding also appears to be somewhat conflicted concerning how is treated by an educational system that is implicitly based on

‘meritocracy’.

This argument that the ‘deserving’ will inevitably ‘rise’ to the top and thus ensure that ‘the best’ individuals will be appointed to posts of responsibility is based on educational performance, placing the onus of failure upon the individuals who do not attain high levels of educational performance. Meritocracy does not take into account institutional and structural barriers to success, or the lack of access to the

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social and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1993) that is embedded in the habitus of those more advantaged groups that generally succeed in educational performance.

(…) The role of education is not to equip all individuals with the abilities, skills, and understanding to become fulfilled members of society, indeed, in order for some to succeed, others must necessarily fail – thus creating institutionalized and codified (and ‘rationalised’) failures, and thereby justifying discriminatory practices against specific social groups. Poor educational attainment is used to justify lack of success in the employment market: educational failures have only themselves to blame. (Ross, Dooly, Hartsmar, 2012, p. 122)

Yet despite Ding’s acute sense of disadvantage (his positioning towards the inequalities of the social welfare system that makes him responsible for his family’s well-being, his sense of injustice at the hand’s of his peers, his awareness that being a

‘green-hand’ implies getting all the onerous tasks), Ding continues to being willing to invest in English learning. This is remarkable as, different from Lily and Serena (seen in the previous chapters), his language acquisition has delivered no tangible benefits.

For Lily, English was converted into a job that requires her knowledge on a daily basis (English language teacher), for Serena, English positioned in the role of language broker for foreign patients, earning her the praise of her superior and similarly she was a translator in her parents’ factory. But for Ding, there are no such affordances and yet he continues to believe that this investment will eventually pay off – leading to the conclusion that he is also intersubjectively positioning himself to the implicit power infrastructure of the supposed meritocracy in place in China (but which has been proven to be false as social and cultural capital of who-you-are and who-you-know still play key roles in acquiring jobs and education).

Along these lines, the chart below shows a graphic summary of Ding’s perceived benefits, his intersubjective positionings and the systemic patterns of control which all contribute to his changing identities and investment in English.

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Table 5. Summary of Ding’s affordances, positions, patterns of control and tensions

Participant Affordances/Perceived

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Chapter 8 Cherry