Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature
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Introduction
Full text linkIn the early spring of 2014 just when Mother Nature was waking up from an unusually long Upstate New York winter dormancy, an invitation to guest-edit a special issue of Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature on Asian American literature came from its Editor-in-Chief Dr. Mohammad A. Quayum. I was greatly honoured by the kind invitation as I know Dr. Quayum is an internationally renowned prolific writer, leading literary critic, passionate educator and an unsurpassed translator of major literary works by Bengali writers. For the next couple of weeks, I was musing over a suitable topic for the special issue, one that would not only reflect the vibrancy of Asian American literature but also the positionality of my life as an Asian American
In Stitches: Con/Refiguring the Language of Wit and Humour in Contemporary Filipino Poetry in English
Full text linkPhilippine poetry in English is rarely read as humorous text, but the period from the 1970's to the present is seen as creating a liberating space for poetry, and I posit that part of this “liberation†is the rise of new poets whose awareness of and engagement with language, result in works that could actually be seen as humorous, in which humour is seen as more than just universal mirth over human folly, but is consciously delineated as a sharp, if not violent, recognition of incongruities and incongruences in expected reality.  In the poems of contemporary Filipino poets Paolo Manalo, in his acclaimed collection Jolography (2003), and Isabel Banzon, in Paper Cage (1990) and Lola Coqueta (2009), Filipino humour becomes a way to imagine communitas as the poems in these collections use linguistic play, breakage of language, creation of hybrid language in Filipino and English to respond to new Philippine social realities or re/create social hierarchies in the Philippines by repositioning or questioning individual and communal states in which Filipinos find meaning.   By using the incongruity humour theory and linguistic humour theories, this paper seeks to examine the language of humour and wit in representative poems from these collections by Manalo and Banzon, and attempts to centre a new sense of creativity possible in Asian writing that now explores the potencies of humour not just as a generator of laughter, but as entries into psychical, cultural and national delineations of identities and awarenesses
Re-Imagined Homes: Transnational Asian American Writing in Annie Wang’s The People’s Republic of Desire
Full text linkThis essay proposes that Annie Wang's The People’s Republic of Desire (2006) offers a new home-identity alignment for Asian American subjectivity in the transnational space of the Pacific Rim, an alternative to the predominant cultural nationalist model for home-identity configuration defined within the US nation-state boundaries. It argues that contemporary cosmopolitan life brought about by global capital has created a more flexible, border-defying cultural imaginary across the Pacific for Asian American writing and the making of Asian American identity outside the nation-state, yet its fluidity, by dissolving the traditional bond between home and identity, also signifies Asian Americans' continuous displacement and dividedness between national and transnational imperatives
Adriana Raducanu, Speaking the Language of the Night: Aspects of the Gothic in Selected Contemporary Novels
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Entangled Allegiances and Multiple Belongings in Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian American Memoir of Homelands
Full text linkIn Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian American Memoir of Homelands (1996), Shirley Geok-lin Lim writes, “The dominant imprint I have carried with me since birth was of a Malaysian homeland†and “there are homelands of the memory and homelands of the future, and for many of us, they are not the same†(231, 191). Oscillating between her birthplace, Malaysia, and her adopted homeland, the United States, Lim embarks on a whirlwind journey to find a place called home both literally and metaphorically throughout her poetically crafted memoir. Lim's mixed personal and cultural heritages, and her geographical and emotional wanderings which cross multiple terrains problematise the static anchorage of the idea of home, nationhood, and personal and cultural identities. In her narratives of home and exile, Lim simultaneously captures the trauma of displaced identities, the nostalgic yearning for her native land, and the loneliness of an exile, but also celebrates the dynamic multiplicity of transnational identities and homelands
Linguistic Knowledge Types and Past-Time Inflectional Output of Malay Users of English
Full text linkAcquiring the tense-aspect morphological system of English is challenging to second language learners due to the multifaceted nature of temporal markers. Acquisitional complexities may also be caused by the absence of parallel indicators in the mother tongue and the types of linguistic knowledge that users have. This paper highlights Malay-English differences in temporal markers and reports an investigation on language learners’ production of past-time inflections [-en] and [-ed] and their relationship with linguistic knowledge. Seventy-two Malay English majors who use English as a second language participated in the study. Data were collated using three instruments namely the Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT), the Metalinguistic Knowledge Test (MKT) and the Written Production Test (WPT). Correlational evidence between explicit and implicit knowledge and target item output was found. Qualitative analysis of written data indicates consistent usage of [-ed] inflection but not [-en]. The findings of the study will enhance theoretical understanding of the role of linguistic knowledge on the development of learners’ inflectional morphology and can encourage sound instructional practices in the classroom
