VI

In the States, some of the Chinese students that I worked with would refer to any non-Chinese person as "foreign." Technically this is correct. Or as the dictionary tells it:

for·eign
/ˈfôrən/
adjective 

1. of, from, in, or characteristic of a country or language other than one's own 

Since I am an American who identifies as an American, anyone who is not an American is foreign. Anyone who does not speak English, by this definition, is foreign. And likewise, for a Chinese citizen who identifies as a Chinese citizen, anyone who is not Chinese is foreign. Yet, in practice, in the United States at least, the word might be more likely to be associated with the negative connotations of its second definition:

2. strange and unfamiliar

As a language or writing teacher, I consider my job as to help students become more skilled communicators, thus raising awareness of their rhetorical choices is part of what I try to do. So when a student would use this word, and we were in a tutoring or other one-on-one setting, I would let them know that Americans might take offense, that it tends to mean something bad, "strange," and that they should be aware of this connotation. People are called foreign as a derogatory term, though perhaps in legalese, medicine, other instrumental uses of English, foreign might be more descriptive (foreign governments, foreign bodies, foreign language, etc.).

This potential danger of the term was particularly important to communicate to the graduate Teaching Assistants I was working with, as referring to an American undergraduate as foreign is to risk insulting them by mistake. Of course, we were in Indiana, a rural state where many of the undergraduate students at Purdue came from places where they had little exposure to diverse communities. This coupled with the occasionally present red state rhetorics of the problematic immigrants, underexposure to racial and cultural diversity, and a distrust of "liberal academics," made the teacher/student power dynamics a zone rife with potential conflicts. Not that I heard about an excessive amount of incidents from these TAs, but I've heard enough to know that these problems exist. With the word foreign, I'd point out its potential interpretation under the pretense that I was doing my students a favor. Then again, these kinds of responsibilities could swing the other way, and we could teach the undergraduates to approach their foreign teaching assistants with an open mind, or better yet, expose them to different varieties of English and other kinds of cultural knowledge to meet these TAs half-way (my colleague at work is involved in study doing just that; to see if giving students training in different English varieties makes a difference in teaching evaluations, which tend to be lower for international TAs).

Just as importantly, or despite the rationale of trying to be the conscientious teacher I discuss above, the word foreign has a negative connotation that reverberates through my system, and this is also why I bring it to the attention of students: Because I recoil at being referred to as foreign in my own country. Part of me thinks, who are you to call me foreign? Which of course I don't say, or even articulate fully to myself. I'm too polite to do that. Yet here in China, I don't mind being foreign since it's true: I am foreign, both by definition #1 and #2. And further, unlike in the states, a faint pride emanates from this designation. That I am not of this place or these people entirely, and thus this designation grants me a particular kind of freedom, one where I have the option to engage or not. We could call this "privilege," i.e. "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group," which in this case I'm defining as an immunity from the trials and tribulations of being a Chinese citizen, whatever that may mean. I am insulated not only from the legal definitions that my nationality provides, or the social responsibilities of not being Chinese, but also of things like the language, which my ignorance and illiteracy allows me to easily disengage with. Of course from another perspective these aspects of foreignness are not privileges, but avenues of alienation. A few nights ago on my way home from work a man on a scooter pulled up to the stop light, and looked at a map on his phone. He seemed a bit lost and turned to ask me something, but I could not understand him. On the one hand I was a foreigner free of any obligation. On the other I was a foreigner of no use to anyone.