Queen Essays

142 Wha They Don't Learn in School t

Works Cited The Gossamer Projea. (2000). krycek.gossamer.org/gossamer/index.html (accessed 20 Dec.

2000). Jaszi, P. (1994). On the author effect: Contemporary copyright and collective creativity. In

M. Woodmansee and P. Jaszi (Eds.), The Construction of authorship: Textual appropria­ tion in law and literature. Durham: Duke University Press.

Porter, J. (1999). Liberal individualism and internet poUcy: A commiuiitarian critique. In G. Hawisher and S. Selfe (Eds.), Passions, pedagogies, and 21st century technologies (pp. 231-248). Logan: Utah State University Press.

Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet. New York: Simon and Schuster.

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Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy

o f Food Service Workers Tony Mirabelli

itterwaitress.com is one of the newest among a burgeoning number of ' worker-produced websites associated with the service industry.! T h e

menu on the first page of this website offers links to gossip about ;lebrity behavior in restaurants, gossip about chefs and restaurant own- rs, accounts from famous people who were once waitresses,2 and cus- mer-related horror stories. There is also a forum that includes a "hate ail"'page that posts email criticisms of the website itself, as well as gen-

ral criticisms of waitressing, but the criticisms are followed by rebuttals ually from past or present waitresses. Predictably, most p f the criticisms

j'ther impUcitly or explicitly portray waitresses as ignorant and stupid, " n e ejliail respondent didn't hke what he read on the customer horror

ry page and sent in this response:

I f you find your job [as a waitressl so despicable, then go get an education and ! ' get a REAL job. You are .whining'about something that you can fix. Stop being

' such a weakling, go out and leam something, anything, and go m,ake a real con­ tribution to society…. Wait, Iqt me guess: you do not have any marketable skills

,or useful knowledge, so you do what any bumbling fool can do, wait on tebles. This is your own fault.

. 'his response inspired a number of rebuttals of which the following two

. st summarize the overall sentiment expressed in response to the- rant bove. The first is from the webmaster of bittenvaitress.com:.

1 4 4 What They Don't Learn in School

Is it possible that I have an education, maybe I went to, oh say, Duke, and I just waitressed for some free time? Or that there are very many people in the indus­ try who do this so that they CAN get an education? N o t all of us were born with a trust fund.—^There is, I might add, considerably more or less to a job than a "clear cut" salary. I f you…live in New York, …you'll know that empty stores and un-crowded subways are half the reason to work at night. By the way, what are the three Leovilles? What are the two kinds of tripe? Who was Cesar Ritz' part­ ner? WTiat is the JavaScript for a rollover? I guess I would have to ask a bum­ bling fool those questions. So, tell me then.

The second is from a mother of four:

I might not have a college education, but I would love to see those so called intel­ ligent people get a big tip out of a bad meal, or from a person who is rude and cocky just because that's the way they are—that takes talent and its not a talent you can learn at any university. So, think about it before you say, "poor girl—to dumb to get a real job…."

Assumptions that waitresses (and waiters) are ignorant and stupid and that waiting on tables contributes little to society are not new. The rebuttals to commonplace, pejorative understandings of the food service industry suggest, however, that there is complexity and skill that may go unrecog­ nized by the general public or institutions such as universities. Indeed institutions, particularly government and corporate entities in the United States, hke the Bureau of Labor Statistics o r the National Skills Labor Board, define waiting on tables as a low skilled profession. By defining this kind of work as low skilled, there is a concomitant implication that the more than one-third of America's work force who do it are low skilled.

Service occupations, otherwise known as "in-person" services (Reich, 1992) or "interactive services" (Leidner, 1993; MacDonald and Sirianni, 1996), include any kind of work which fundamentally involves face-to-face or voice-to-voice interactions and conscious manipulation of self-presen- tation. As distinguished from white-collar service work, this category of "emotional proletariat" (Macdonald and Sirianni, 1996) is comprised pri­ marily of retail sales workers, hotel workers, cashiers, house cleaners, flight attendants, taxi drivers, package delivery drivers, and waiters, among oth­ ers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (1996), one-fifth of the jobs in eating, drinking, and grocery store establishments are held by youth workers between the ages of 16 and 24. While this kind of work is traditionally assumed to be primarily a stop-gap for young workers who will later move up and on to other careers, it also involves youths who will later end up in both middle- and working-class careers. It should not be

Learning t o Serve / ' 145

forgotten that more than two thirds of the workers involved in food serv­ ice are mature adults—many or most who began their careers in the same or similar industries. Interactive service work is a significant part of the economy in the U.S. today, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that jobs will be "abundant" in this category through 2006.

Economists such as Peter Drucker (1993) suggest that interactive service workers lack the necessary education to be "knowledge" workers. These economists support general conceptions that service work is "mindless," involving routine and repetitive tasks that require little edu­ cation. This orientation further suggests that these supposedly low skilled workers lack the problem identifying, problem solving, and other high level abilities needed to work in other occupations. However, relatively little specific attention and analysis have been given to the literacy skills and language abilities needed to do this work. My research investigates these issues with a focus on waiters and waitresses who work in diners. Diner restaurants are somewhat distinct from fast food or fine-dining restaurants, and they also epitomize many of the assumptions held about low.skilled workplaces that require interactive services. The National Skills Standards Board, for instance, has determined that a ninth-grade level of spoken and written language use is needed to be a waiter or a wait­ ress.'Yet, how language is spoken, read, or written in a restaurant may be vastly different from how it is used in a classroom. A seemingly simple event such as taking a customer's food order can become significantly more complex, for example, when a customer has a special request. How the waitress or waiter understands and uses texts such as the menu and hotv she or he "reads" and verbally interacts with the customer reflect carefully constructed uses of language and literacy.

This chapter explores these constructed ways of "reading" texts (and customers) along with the verbal "performances" and other manipulations of self-presentation that characterize interactive service work. In line with Macdonald and Sirianni (1996), I hope this work will contribute to the development of understandings and pohcies that build more respect and recognition for service work to help ensure it does not become equated with servitude.

Literacy and Contemporary Theory In' contrast to institutional assessments such as the National Skills Standards Board (1995), current thinking in key areas of education, soci­ ology, anthropology and linguistics views language, Uteracy, and learning

146 What They Don't Learn in School

as embedded in social practice rather than entirely in the minds of indi

w t ; J r ' K r – 19M , Mabr i and Sablo, 1996; New London Group, 1996; Gee Hull anri

ankshear 1996). As earlier chapters in this book have noted, Gee (1991. 6 ) – a key proponent of this conception of literacy-explains that to be lit" erate means to have control of «a socially accepted association amon^ identi^ ^smg anguage, of thinking, and of acting that can be used to w o T – T n ' T ' r t ' meaningfol group or 'social net­ work. In a similar fashion, research work located exphdtly within w o r t p ace studies proposes that hteracy is "a range of practices specific to

l i l l t X w ' s l ^ genders"

^ societal institutions, however, literacy, continues to be defined by considerations of achievement and by abstract, standardized tests of mdividual students. Also, there is a decided focus on printed texts over other mediums of communication hke visual and audio Such a focus limits our understanding of Uteracy in terms of its use in spe­ cific situations m multiple modes of communication. T h e New Literacy Studies orientation that shapes the work reported in this book a n d T – ^ J « f ^ d s beyond individual experiences o f reading tions nf the various modes of communication and situa­ tions of any socially meaningfiil group or network where language is

claims that due to changes m the social and economic environment

t e r m f of T f literacy education in tradif T h e concept of multiliteracies supplements ttad tional h t e r a ^ pedagogy by addressing the multiphcity o f commu-

cations channels and the mcreasing saHency of cultural and linguistic diversity m the world today. Central to this study is the understa^di^^J that literate acts are embedded in specific situations and that they also

t T o T i t l T " K of commmiica- tion including both verbal and nonverbal. In this chapter, I illustrate something of the character o f literacies specific to the "social network" o waiting on tables and show how they are distinct from the concep­ tions o f hteracy commonly associated with formal education. This is not simply to suggest that there is a jargon specific to the work, which a b o X h e something unique and complex abom the ways waiters and waitresses in diners use language and l i L – aCy in doing their work. ^ iirer

Learning t o Serve / 147

Methodology Takfen together, extant New Literacies Studies research makes a formida­ ble argument for the need to re-evaluate how we understand literacy in the workplace—particularly from the perspective of interactive service workers. The research reported here is modeled after Hull and her col­ leagues' groundbreaking ethnographic study of skill requirements in the factories of two different SiHcon Valley computer manufacturing plants (1996). Instead o f studying manufacturing plants, the larger research sthdy I conducted and that underpins the study reported here involves two diner restaurants—one that is corporately owned and one that is pri­ vately owned. In this chapter, however, I focus only on the one that is pri­ vately owned to begin addressing the specific ways that language use and literacy practices function in this kind of workplace.

l b analyze the data, I relied on some of the methodological tools from the work of Hull and her colleagues (1996). In short, I looked at patterns of thought and behavior in the setting; I identified key events taking place; I did conversational analysis of verbal interactions; and, I conducted soci- dcultural analyses of key work events.

The data used in this chapter came from direct participation, obser­ vation, field notes, documents, interviews, tape recordings, and transcrip­ tions, as well as from historical and bibhographic hterature. I myself have been a waiter (both part-time and full-time over a ten-year period), and I was actually employed at the privately owned restaurant during my data collection period. In addition to providing important insights into work­ er skills, attitudes, and behaviors, my experience and positioning in this setting also enabled access to imique aspects of the work that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. T h e primary data considered in this chapter were collected during eight-hour periods o f participant observation on Friday and/or Saturday nights in the restaurant. I chose weekend nights because they were usually the busiest times in the diner and were there­ fore the most challenging for the workers. Weekend shifts are also the most lucrative for the restaurant and the workers.

Lou's Restaurant Lou's Restaurant^ is a modest, privately owned diner restaurant patterned in a style that is popular in the local region. I t has an open kitchen layout with a coimter where individual customers can come and sit directly in front of the cooks' line and watch the "drama" of food service unfold while enjoying their meals. The food served at Lou's is Italian-American

148 WhatThey Don't Learn in School

and It includes pastas, seafood, and a variety of sauteed or broiled poultry beef, and veal. As is often the case with diner restaurants, Lou's has over ninety mam course items, including several kinds of appetizers and salads as well as a number of side dishes. The primary participants focused on in

'this chapter are three waiters at Lou's: John, Harvey, and myself. After finishing my master's degree in Enghsh Uterature and deciding-

to move out of the state where I taught EngUsh as a Second Language at a commumty college, I ended up working as a waiter for two years at Lous. This work allowed me to survive financially while fiirther advanc­ ing ̂ y academic career. At the time I began my study aj; this site, the only waiter to have worked longer than two years at Lou's was John. Like myself, Jolm began working in the restaurant business to earn extra money wlule in school after he had been discharged from the Marines where he had been trained as a radio operator, telephone wireman, and Arabic translator. Two days after his honorable discharge, he started working m the restaurant that four years later would become Lou's H e subsequently has worked there for ten years. John also is the most expe- nenced waiter at Lou's, and although the restaurant does not have an offi­ cial head" waiter, John is considered by his peers to be the expert. In an interview, he noted that it took almost ten years before he felt that he had really begun to master his craft.

Harvey might also be considered a master waiter, having been in the profession for over thirty years. However, at the beginning of the study he had been with Lou's for only two weeks. He ,was initially reticent to participate m the study because he said he lacked experience at this restaurant and "didn't know the menu." Having left home when he was 14 years old to come "out West," over the years he Jiad done a stint in toe Air Force held a position as a postal clerk, worked as a bellhop and artende^ and even had the opportunity to manage, a local cafe. H e

decided that he did not like managerial work because he missed the free­ dom, autonomy, and customer interaction he had as a waiter and took a position at Lou's.

The Menu Harve/s concern over mot knowing the menu was not surprising. The menu is the most important printed text used by waiters and waitresses, and n o t ^ o w m g it can dramatically affect how they are able, to do their work. The menu is the key text used for most interactions with the cus­ tomer, and, of course, th'e contents of menus vary greatly from restaurant

Learning t o Serve / 1 4 9

o restaurant. But, what is a menu and what does it mean to have a liter- te understanding of one?

The restaurant menu is a genre unto itself There is regularity and redictability in the conventions used such as the listing, categorizing, nd pricing of individual, ready-made food items. The menu at Lou's con­

tains ninety main course items, as well as a variety of soups, salads, appe­ tizers, and side dishes. In addition, there are numerous selections where, for'example, many main course items offer customers a choice of their own starch item from a selection of four: spaghetti, ravioli, french fries, or a* baked potato. Some of the main course items, such as sandwiches, how­ ever, only cDme with french fries—but if the customer prefers something such as spaghetti, or vegetables instead of fries, they can substitute anoth­ er item for a small charge, although this service is not listed in the menu. In addition to the food menu, there is also a wine menu and a fall service bai" meaning that hard liquor is sold in this restaurant. There are twenty different kinds of wine sold by the glass and a selection o f thirty-eight dif- felent kinds of wine sold by the bottle, and customers can order most other kinds of alcoholic beverages.

In one context, waitresses and waiters' knowing the meaning of the words in the menus means knowing the process of food production in the restaurant. But this meaning is generally only used when a customer has a question or special request. In such situations the meaning of the words olT the page are defined more by the questions and the waiters or wait­ resses' understanding of specific food preparation than by any standard cookbook or dictionary. For example, the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book (1996) presents a recipe for marinara sauce calling for a thick sauce consisting of tomatoes, tomatb puree, peppers, carrots, celery, and garlic all sauteed and simmered for over thirty minutes. At Lou's, a mari­ nara sauce is cooked in less than ten minutes and is a light tomato sauce •consisting of fresh tomatoes, garlic, and parsley sauteed in olive oil. At'a similar restaurant nearby—Joe's Italian Diner—marinara sauce is a seafood sauce, albeit tomato based. Someone who is familiar with Italian cooking will know that marinara sauce will have ingredients like toma­ toes, olive oil, and garlic, but, in a restaurant, to have a more conjplete understanding of a word like marinara requires knowing how the kitchen prepares the dish. Clearly, the meanings of the language used in menus are socially and culturally embedded in the context of the specific situa­ tion or restaurant., l b be literate here requires something Other than a ninth-grade level of literacy. More than just a factual, or literal interpre­ tation of the words on the page, it requires knowledge of specific prac­

1 5 0 What They Don't Learn in School

tices such as methods of food preparation—that take place in a particu lar restaurant. i' ^u-

On one occasion Harvey, the new but experienced waiter, asked me w at pesto sauce was. H e said that he had never come across the term

f l a m e d that he had never worked in an ItaHan restaurant and had rarely eaten at one. Pesto is one of the standard sauces on the menu, and hke marinara, is commonly found on the menus of many tahan-i^erican restaurants. I explained that it comprised primarily ohve

oil and basil, as well as garlic, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese, and a Httle cream. Harvey then told me that a customer had asked him about the sauce, and smce he could not explain what it was, the customer did not order it.

On another occasion a mother asked Harvey i f her child could have only carrots mstead of the mixed vegetables as it said in the menu.

though he initially told her this was not possible, explaining that the vegetables were premixed and that the cooks would have to pick t h e car­ rots out one by one, the motiier persisted. After a few trips from the table to the cooks hne, Harvey managed to get the carrots, but the customer tiien declined them because everyone had finished eating. Later I explained to Harvey that it would have been possible to go to the back of the restaurant where he could find the vegetables in various stages of preparation. While the cooks only have supphes of pre-mixed vegetables on the hne, Harvey could have gone to the walk-in refrigerator and picked up an order of carrots himself to give to the cooks.

Harvey's interactions with his customers highhght how much of what he needs to know to be a good waiter is learned witiiin the specific situa­ tions and social networks in which that knowledge is used. The instantia­ tion of the meaning of words Uke pesto and marinara often occurs in the interaction, between co-workers as well as with customers. Conversation becomes a necessary element in achieving an appropriately hterate under­ standing of the menu.

Harvey's understanding and use of the menu and special requests also mvolves more than his knowledge of food preparation. I t involves the mampulation of power and control. Sociocultural tiieories of Hteracy con-

^'ithority in tiie construction o f meaning (Kresj 1993). From his perspective, the order of carrots was not simply M order of carrots, but a way o f positioning one's self in tiae interaction. T ^ e customer saw her desire for tiie carrots as greater tiian what was advertised in the menu and thus exercised authority as a customer by requestmg them despite Harvey's attempt to not make die carrots an

Learning t o Serve / 151

option. While such a request might seem fairly innocuous in isolation, •when considered in the specific situation of Lou's at that time—that is, peak dinner hour—it becomes more complex.

Special requests and questions can extend the meaning of the menu beyond the printed page and into the conversation and interaction between the waiter or waitress and the customer. Furthermore, special requests and questions can be as varied as the individual customers them­ selves. The general public shares a diner restaurant menu, but it is used by each individual patron to satisfy a private appetite. How to describe something to an individual customer and satisfy their private appetite requires not only the abiHty to read the menu, but also the ability to read the customer. This is achieved during the process of the dinner interac­ tion, and it includes linguistic events such as greeting the customer or tak­ ing food orders and involves both verbal and non-verbal communication. In such events the meaning of the menu is continually reconstructed in the interaction between the waitress or waiter and the individual cus­ tomer, and as a text functions as a "boimdary object" that coordinates the perspectives of various constituencies for a similar purpose (Star and Griesmer, 1989); in this case the satisfaction of the individual patron's appetite. The degree to which private appetite is truly satisfied is open to debate, however. Virtually everyone who has eaten at a restaurant has his or her favorite horror story about the food and/or the service, and more often than not these stories in some way involve the menu and an unful­ filled private appetite.

In addition to being a text that is shared by the general public and used by the individual patron to satisfy a private appetite, the menu is also a text whose production of meaning results in ready-made consumable goods sold for a profit. The authors of a printed menu, usually the chefs and owners of the restaurant, have their own intentions when producing the hard copy. For example, it is common practice to write long exten­ sively itemized menus in diner restaurants like Lou's. As was pointed out earlier, Lou's menu has over ninety selections from which to choose, and many of these can be combined with a range of additional possible choic­ es. Printing a large selection of food items gives the appearance that the customer will be able to make a personal—and personalized—selection from the extensive menu. In fact, it is not uncommon for patrons at Lou's to request extra time to read the menu, or ask for recommendations before making a choice. The authors of the printed menu at Lou's con­ structed a text that appears to be able to satisfy private appetites, but they

152 What They Don't Learn in School

ultimately have little control over how the patron Avill interpret and use the menu.

T h e waiters and waitresses, however, do have some control. While customers certainly have their own intentions when asking questions, waitresses and waiters have their own intentions when responding. When customers ask questions about the menu, in addition to exercising their own authority, they also introduce the opportunity for waiters and wait­ resses to gain control of the interaction. A good example of how this con­ trol could be manipulated by a waiter or waitress comes from Chris Fehlinger, the web-master of bitterwaitress.com, in an interview with New Yorker magazine:

"A lot of times when people asked about the menu, I would make it sound so elaborate that they would just leave it up to me," he said, "I'd describe, like, three dishes in excruciating detail, and they would just stutter, 'I, I, I can't decide, you decide for me.' So in that case, if the kitchen wants to sell fish, you're gonna have fish." He also employed what might be called a "magic words" strategy: "All you have to do is throw out certain terms, like guanciale, and then you throw in some­ thing like saba, a reduction of the unfermented must of the Trebbiano grape. If you mention things like that, people are just, Hke, 'O.K.!'" (Teicholz, 1999)

The use of linguistic devices hke obfuscating descriptions and "magic words" is not unusual—particularly for waiters in fine dining restaurants. In The World of Waiters (1983), Mars and Nicod examined how English waiters use such devices to "get the jtmip" and gain control of selecting items from the menu. Their position of authority is further substantiated in fine dining restaurants by the common practice of printing menus in foreign languages, such as French, because it shifts the responsibihty of food ordering from the customer, who often will not imderstand the lan­ guage, to the waiter.

While diner restaurants generally do not print their menus in incom­ prehensible terms, they do, as at Lou's, tend to produce unusually long ones that can have a similar effect. But, diner menus hke Lou's which offer Italian-American cuisine do use some language that is potentially unfa­ miliar to the clientele (e.g., pesto). The combination of menu length and potentially confiising language creates frequent opportunities for waiters and waitresses to get a jump on the customer. Customers at Lou's tend to ask questions about the meaning of almost every word and phrase in the menu. No t being able to provide at least a basic description of a menu item, as shown by Harvey's unfamiHarity with pesto, usually results in that item not being ordered.

Learning t o Serve / 1 5 3

Knowing what a customer wants often goes beyond simply being able to describe the food. I t also involves knowing which descriptions will more likely sell and requires being able to apply the menu to the specific situation. For instance, in the following transcription I approach a table to take a food order while one customer is still reading the rrienu (Customer 3 b). She asks me to explain the difference between veal scalop- pini and veal scaloppini sec.

Tony: (to Customer 3 a and Customer 3 b) hi Customer 3b: what's the difference between scaloppini and scaloppini sec? Tony: veal scaloppini is a tomato-based sauce with green onions and

mushrooms / veal scaloppini sec is with marsala wine green onions and mushrooms

Customer 3b: I'll have the veal scaloppini sec Tony: ok / would you like it with spaghetti / ravioli / firench fries Customer 3b: ravioli Customer 3 a: and / I'll get the tomato one / the veal scaloppini with mushrooms Tony: with spaghetti / ravioli / french fries Customer 3a: can I get steamed vegetables Tony: you want vegetables and no starch? / it already comes with veg­

etables / (.) (Customer 3 a nods yes) ok / great / thank you Customer 3 a: thanks

The word sec fimctions not unlike one of Fehlinger's "magic" words. Customers who are interested in ordering veal frequendy ask questions about the distinction between the two kinds of scaloppini. I discovered over rime that my description of the veal scaloppini sec almost always resulted in the customer ordering the dish. It seemed that mentioning marsala wine piqued customer interest more than tomato sauce did. One customer once quipped that marsala was a sweet wine and wanted to know why the word sec—meaning dry—^was used. I replied that since no fat was used in the cooking process, it was considered "dry" cooking. In situations like this the menu is situated more in a conversational mode than a printed one. The transition from print to spoken word occurs due to the customer's inabiUty to tmderstand the menu, and/or satisfy his or her private appetite which results in a request for assistance. As a result the waiter or waitress can become the authority in relation to not only the printed text, but within the interaction as well. Eventually, I began to recommend this dish when cus­ tomers asked for one, and the customers more often than not purchased it.

This particular food-ordering event also is interesting with regard to the customer's request for steamed vegetables. When I asked what kind of pasta she would Uke with her meal, she asked for steamed vegetables. T h e

1 5 4 What They Don't Learn in School

menu clearly states that vegetables are included with the meal along with the customer's choice of spaghetti, ravioU, or french fries. When she requested steamed vegetables, I simply could have arranged for her to have them and persisted in asking her which pasta she would Uke, but instead I anticipated that she might not want any pasta at all. I knew that, while it was not printed in the menu, the kitchen could serve her a double portion of steamed vegetables with no pasta. Most importantly, this customer's ability to order food that would satisfy her private appetite depended almost entirely upon my suggestions and understanding of the menu. Mars and Nicod (1984: 82), discussing a situation in a similar restaurant noted a waiter who would say, "You don't really need a menu… I 'm a 'walking menu' and I'm much better than the ordinary kind… I can tell you things you won't find on the menu." Examples Uke this illustrate not only how waitresses and waiters gain control of their interactions with customers, but also how other modes of communication—such as conversations—are used to construct complex forms of meaning around printed texts hke menus. Thus, the meamng of words in a menu are embedded in the situa­ tion, its participants, and the balance of power and authority, and this meaning manifests itself in more than one mode of communication.

Reading menus and reading customers also involves a myriad of cultur­ al distinctions. Although there is not the space to discuss them here, age, gender, race, and class are all relevant to interactions between customers and waiter or waitress. The argument can be made that diner restaurants like Lou's promote a friendly, family-hke atmosphere. Historically diners in the U.S. have been recognized as being places where customers can find a familial environment. Popular media today support this characteristic— particularly via television—^where restaurant chains explicitly advertise that their customers are treated like family, and a number of television situation comedies have long used restaurants, diners, bars, and cafes as settings where customers and employees interact in very personal and intimate ways. This cultural atmosphere can have a tremendous impact on interac­ tions with the customers. There is sometimes miscommunication or resist­ ance where a customer may or may not want to be treated like family, or the waitress or waiter may or may not want to treat a customer Hke femily. At Lou's, in addition to having an intimate understanding of food production and being able to describe it to a customer in an appealing fashion, reading a menu and taking a customer's food order also requires the abiHty to per­ form these tasks in a friendly, familial m a n n e r

The following example reveals the complexity of meanings involved in taking a customer's food order and the expression of " f a m i l y " A1 is a

Learning t o Serve / 155

regular customer who almost always comes in by himself and sits at the counter in front of the cooks' line. He also always has the same thing to eat, a side order of spaghetti Marinara, and never looks at the menu, perhaps more important to A1 than the food he eats are the people he interacts with at Lou's. H e will sit at the covmter and enjoy the badinage he shares with the other customers who sit down next to him at the count­ er, the waitresses and waiters as they pass by his seat, and the cooks work­ ing just across the counter. On this particular evening, however, he was joined by his son, daughter-in-law, and young adult granddaughter, and rather than sitting at the counter, he sat in a large booth. Although I immediately recognized Al, I had never waited on him and his family before, I was not sure how informal he would like the interaction to be. So I began with a fairly formal greeting saying "hello" instead of "hi" and avoided opportunities to make small talk with Al and his family:

Tony: hello::= Customer 2d; =heIlo Al: hey (.) what they put in the water? / 1 don't know / is it the ice or

what is it? Customer 2s: (chuckles from Customer 2d, Customer 2s and Customer 2c) Tony: does the water taste strange? Customer 2s: no Tony: do you want me to get you another water? Al: no / 1 don't want any water Tony: ok Al: I had a couple of drinks before I came Customer 2s: (chuckles)= Tony: (in reference to the water tasting strange) =it could be / it could

be/ I don't know Customer 2d: (to Customer 2s) are you having anything to drink? Customer 2s: I'll have a beer / American beer / you have miller draft? Tony: (while writing dovra the order) miller genuine Customer 2d: and I'll have a tequila sunrise Al: (to Customer 2d) what are you having? Customer 2d: tequila sunrise Al: oh / you should fly / you should fly Tony: (to Customer 2 a) al / you want anything Customer 2s; (to Customer 2a) a beer? / or anything? Al: no / I've had too much already Customer 2s: are you sure Customer 2d: we'll get you a coffee later Tony: (nod of affirmation to daughter-in-law) Al: I've been home alone drinking Tony: ugh ogh:: / (chuckles along with Customer 2s)

1 5 6 What They Don't Learn in School

Al's comments about the water tasting funny and his drinking at home alone both provided opportunities for me to interact more intimately with A] and his family, but instead I concerned myself solely with taking theif drink orders. Al's desire for me to interact in a more famil ial manner became more apparent when I returned to take their food order.

Customer 2d: (as the drinks are delivered) ah / great / thank you Tony; (placing drinks in front of customers) there you go / you're wel­

come Al: (to Customer 2s) so we're flying to vegas (mumbles) Tony: all right / you need a few minutes here? Customer 2s: no / (to Customer 2a) are you ready or do you want to wait? Customer 2d: you made up yoiu" mind yet? Al: (mumble) made up my mind yet Customer 2d: oh / ok Tony: al / what can I get for you? AI: I said I haven't made up my mind yet Tony: oh / ok (everyone at the table chuckles except Al) Al: I always have pasta you know / I would walk out there (points to

the counter) the guy says / 1 know what you want Tony: ok / I'll be back in a few minutes Customer 2d: come back in a few minutes / thanks

While I misunderstood Al when I asked if he was ready to order, for him the greater transgression was simply asking if he was ready to order. Al expected me to know what he was going to eat because he's a regular; he's like family. He wanted a side order of spaghetti marinara and didn't want to have to speak regarding his food order. To be successful in fulfilling Al's private appetite required more than the abihty to describe food according to individual customer preferences. A side order of spaghetti marinara represents not merely a food item on a menu, nor a satisfying mix of pasta and tomatoes, but also, depending on the way it is ordered and served, a gesture of friendliness; "I always have pasta you know / 1 would walk out there (points to the counter) the guy says / 1 know what you want." l b be literate with a menu also means knowing when and how to express emo­ tion (or not express emotion) to a customer through its use.

Being able to take a customer's order without him or her reading the menu or being, able to fulfill a special request not printed in the menu are important ways of expressing friendliness and family at Lou's. John, the most experienced waiter on staff, often can be found running to get an order of homemade gnocchi from the back freezer and deUvering them to the cooks when they are too busy to get back there themselves. Or, he might step in behind the bar to make his own cappuccino when the bar­

Learning t o Serve / 1 5 7

tender is busy serving other customers. On one occasion, hke matiy oth­ ers, John had a customer request a special order called prawns, romano, a pasta dish consisting of fettuccine with prawns in a white sauce with green onions, tomatoes, and garhc. This is not listed on any menu in the restaurant, but it is something that the cooks occasionally offer as an eyening special. John politely asked whether or not the cooks could accommodate his customer's request, and they complied. One can fre­ quently hear John greeting many of his customers with some variation of, "Can I get you the usual?" Alternatively, in the case of special requests, some variant of, "That's no problem" is an often used phrase. Just hke a friend for whom it would be no problem, John attempts to satisfy his cus­ tomer's special requests in a similar fashion.

Yet, friendliness is often a feigned performance. Being friendly is an experiential phenomenon that is learned through participation. To be a good waitress or waiter generally requires being able to perform friendh- ness xmder any number of circumstances. To be successful at the practice of being friendly requires performing certain techniques over and over until they can be performed on an unconscious level. Referred to as emo­ tional labor (Hochschild, 1983: 6-7) this kind of work "requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance t^at produces the proper state of mind in others." Emotional labor also is an integral part to how a waitress constructs meaning in a menu. While emotional labor may not yield the same monetary results in restaurants hke Lou's, it is still essential to the work. For example, John is masterful in the way he utihzes emotional labor. On one particularly busy evening John was trapped in a line at the bar waiting to place his drink order. H e was clearly anxious, and was looking at his food order tickets to see what he needed to do next. The crowd of customers waiting to be seated spilled out of the foyer and into the aisle near where the waitresses and waiters where waiting to place their drink orders. One customer, who recognized John, caught his attention:

John: hi= Customer: =hi can I get a glass of wine John; sure (.) what do you want Customer: are you busy John: N O (.) I got it (.) what do you want

John's friendly "hi" and over emphatic "no" were intended to suggest to the customer that he was not busy, when he clearly was. As he later explained, he knew that the customer knew he was really busy, but he also

1 5 8 What They Don't Learn in School

knew that if he was friendly and accommodating, the customer probably would give him a nice tip for his trouble, which the customer did. His feigned amiability in agreeing to get the customer a drink was more or less a monetary performance. John had learned to use language for finan­ cial gain. One should not be fooled by the apparent simplicity in the pre­ ceding interaction. While it may be brief, being able to be friendly and accommodating under extreme circimistances like the "dinner rush" requires years of practice in a real work setting learning to be able to say,- "hi—sure—^NO, I got it." '

Although interactions with customers have been presented individu­ ally, the reahty of how these events occur is quite different. Unlike fine- dining restaurants where the dinner experience can extend over a few hours, diners operate on high volume serving to a great number of patrons in a short amount of time. George Orwell, reflecting on the dif­ ficulty involved in this work, wrote, "I calculated that [a waiter] had to walk and run about 15 miles during the day and yet the strain of the work was more mental than physical…. One has to leap to and fro between a multitude of jobs— ît is like sorting a pack of cards against the clock" (Orwell, 1933). Because one person may be serving as many as ten tables or more at one time, the process of serving each individual table will over­ lap with the others. Food orders are taken numerous times in a half-hour period during busy dinner hours at Lou's. The preceding transcriptions were taken from tape-recorded data collected on Friday evenings around 7 o'clock. My own interactions were recorded during a-period when I had what is referred to as station, meaning that all of the tables under my supervisidn were filled with customers. By this point in the evening I had two customers at the counter, a party of four and six parties of two, for a totil of eighteen customers—all of whom were in the process of ordering their meals within the same half-hour to forty-fivfe minute period.

Literacy practices in this Environment are nothihg like those found in traditional classrooms, but they might be more comparable to those found in the emergency ward of a hospital or an air-traffic controller's tower. Interaction with texts and participants takes place in a rapid suc­ cession of small chunks. During the dinner -hoiurs, there are no long, drawn out monologues. Time is of the essence during the busiest dinner hours for all participants involved: from the waiters and waitresses to the cooks, bartenders, and busboys. In two hundred lines of transcribed dia­ logue during a busy dinner period, for example, I never paused longer than thirty-nine secbnds, and no participant spoke mdre than forty-one words in one turn. Even these pauses were usually the result of other work

Learning t o Serve / 1 5 9

being completed, such as preparing a salad or waiting to order a drink. During this period, virtually all the conversation, reading, and writing were related to the immediate situational context. As this research has shown, language use was far more complex than one might assume in sit­ uations and events that involve taking a customer's food order. In addition to knowing how food is prepared, what will appeal to specific customers, and how to present this information in a friendly manner, the waiter or waitress must also remain conscious of the number of other tables wait­ ing to have their orders taken and the amount of time that will take. Reading menus and reading customers requires the ability to think and react quickly to a multitude of almost simultaneously occurring literate events.

Conclusion •i Menus at Lou's are texts that are catalysts for interaction between staff and customers, and their meaning is firmly embedded in this interaction. Meaning is constructed from the menu through more than one mode of communication and between a variety of participants. This process involves knowledge of food preparation, use specific linguistic devices like magic words and other ways of describing food, the ability to read indi­ vidual customers' tastes and preferences, the general expectation to per­ form in a friendly manner, and all during numerous virtually simultaneous and similar events. Yet, there is much left unconsidered in this chapter, particularly regarding the nature of power and control. While waitresses and waiters are frequently able to manipulate control over customer deci­ sions while taking a food order, this control is often tenuous and insignif­ icant beyond the immediate interaction.

Little also has been said in this chapter about the role of management. Extensive research has already been done in the area of management con­ trol, hteracy, and worker skills (Braverman, 1974; Hochschild, 1983; Kress, 1993; Leidner, 1993; Hall, 1993; Hull et al., 1996; Macdonald and Sirianni, 1996; Gee, Hull, and Lankshear, 1996). These researchers con­ sider how Hteracy practices are manipulated by management to maintain control over the worker. Whether it be scientific management sdiere workers are deskilled and routinized, or Fast Capitalism where forms of control are more insidious and shrouded in the guise of "empowering" the worker, there is little research on intferactive service work beyond the fast food industry that explores how this rhetoric plays itself out in a real world situation. This leaves open to debate questions regarding the effec­

1 6 0 WhatThey Don't Learn in School

tiveness of Fast Capitalism as a form of control over the worker. While my research has shown that waiters and waitresses can exercise some level of authority, skill and wit through their use of language with customers they must also interact with management and other staff where authority and control plays out in different ways.

In the end, however, the customer has ultimate authority over the waiter or waitress. Diner waitressing has a long history of prejudice dat­ ing back to the beginning of the industrial revolution and involves issues of gender regarding our general perceptions and ways of interacting (Cobble, 1991; Hall, 1993). Waitressing is integrally tied to domesticated housework and likewise has historically been treated as requiring little skill or abihty. In fact, the stigma of servitude that plagues waitressing-and other similar kinds of work are not only the result of less than respectable treatment from management, but from customers as well. In her socio­ logical study of diner waitresses in New Jersey, Greta Paules sums it up best:

That customers embrace the service-as-servitude metaphor is evidenced by the f way they speak to and about service worl^rs. Virtually every rule of etiquette is

violated by customers in their interactions with the waitress: the waitress can be interrupted; she can be addressed with the mouth fall; she can be ignored and stared at; and she can be subjected to unrestrained anger. Lacking status as a per­ son she like the Servant, is refased the most basic considerations of polite inter­ action. She is, in addition, the subject of chronic criticism. Just as in the nineteenth century servants were perceived as ignorant, slow, lazy, indifferent, and immoral (Sutherland 1981), so in the twentieth century service workers are condemned for their stupidity, apathy, slowness, competence, aijd questionable moral character. (1991: 138-139)

T h e low status of waitressing and waitering belies the complex nature of this kind of work and the innovative and creative Ways in which such workers use language.

Notes O

1. Sbme of the more" than 20 websites I'have foimd so far like •waitersrevenge.com'are award vanning. They includfe sites for taxi drivers, hotel workers, and the like.

2. How to appropriately refen to'waitresses and waiters is no,t a simple decision. Terms server and food server are alternatives, but all are problematic. I personally do not

like server o i food server because they are too closely related to the word servitude. T h e waiter/waitress distinction is problematic not simply because it differentiates genders, but also because it is associated with a" kin(l/class of service. Often in fine- dinirig restaurailts today both men and womeh'are referred tb as waitets, but it is

Learning t o Serve / 161

more commonly the practice in the "diner" style restaurant to maintain the distinc­ tive terms. This is historically connected to the diner waitressing being regarded as inferior to fine-dining waitering because it was merely an extension of the domesti­ cated duties of the household.

3. Pseudonyms have been used throughout this chapter.

Works Cited Better homes and gardens nem cook book. (1996). New York: Better Homes and Gardens. Braverman, H. (1974). Labor and Ttionopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth

century. New York: Monthly Review Press. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (1996). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor. Drucker, P. (1993). Innovation and entrepreneurship: Practice and principles. New York:

Harperbusiness. Cobble, S. (1991). Dishing it out: Waitresses and their unions in the 20th century. Urbana:

University of Illinois Press. Gee, J. (1991). Sociolinguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. New^brk. Falmer.

, Hull, G., and Lankshear, C. (1996). The new work order: Behind the language of the new capitalism. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Gowen, S. (1992). The politics of workplace literacy. New York: Teachers College Press. liall, E. (1993). Smiling, deferring, and good service. Work and occupations, 20 (4),

452-^71. Hochschild, A. (1983). The managed heart. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hull, G. (Ed.). (1997). Chan^ngwork, chan^ngworkers: Critical perspectives on language, lit­

eracy, and skills. New York: State University of New York Press. et al. (1996). Changing work, chan^ng literacy? A study o f skills requirements and devel­

opment in a traditional and restructured workplace. Final Report. Unpublished manu­ script. University of California at Berkeley.

Kress, G. (1993). Genre as social process. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds.), The powers o f literacy: A genre approach to teaching writing (pp. 22-i l) . London: Falmer.

. (1995). Writing the future: English and the making of a cultural innovation. London: NATE.

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Leidner, R. (1993). Fast food, fast talk: Service work and the routinization o f everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Macdonald, C. and Siriaimi, C. (Eds.). (1996). Working in the service society. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Mahiri, J. and Sablo, S. (1996). Writing for their lives: The non-school literacy of California's urban African American youth. Journal of Negro Education, 65 (2), 164-180.

Mars, G. and Nicod, M. (1984). The world of waiters. London: Unwin Hyman. New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social fatures.

Harvard Educational Review, 66 (1), 60-92. NSSB (National Skills Standards Board). (1995). Server skill standards: National performance

criteria in thefoodservice industry. Washington, DC: U.S. Council on Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Education.

162 What They Don't Learn in School

Orwell, G. (1933). Down and out in Paris and London. New York. Harcourt Brace. Paules, G. (1991). Dishing it out: Power and resistance among waitresses in a New Jersey

Restaurant. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Reich, R. (1992). The work o f nations. New York: Vintage. Star, L. and Griesmer, J. (1989). Institutional ecology, translations and boxindary objects-

Amateurs and professional in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-1939 Social Studies o f Science, 19.

Street, B. (1984 April 5). Literacy in theory and practice. London: Cambridge University Press.

tid —• j

'learning to Serve" Stuart Tannock

f the interactional study of science and technology has often worked 2 ^ r t o make the labor of scientists and technicians appear less speciaHzed

and more everyday and mundane, the interactional study of low-end sei;vice work has frequendy taken the form of a "recovery project," seek­ ing to make that which we see as everyday and mundane seem instead to be special, skilled, and indeed, "Uterate." Such symbohc leveling can be immensely and aesthetically appealing in the halls of academe: with our oyra hands—that is, with our own specific forms of social scientific Hter- a c y — c a n begin to erase the vast inequahties that exist between con­ temporary knowledge and service workers. Service workers now appear to us as highly knowledgeable; knowledge workers as merely serviceable. l 'I In tiiis response, I do not wish to focus so much on the core argu­

ments. of Tony MirabeUi's chapter, for these I find to be persuasive. MirabeUi produces a deft analysis of the precise ways in which the literate w6rk of diner waitstaff is locally and collaboratively accomphshed, embedded in social networks, and closely tied to individual waitstaff iden­ tities. From the vantage point of literacy studies (and critical discourse analysis), MirabeUi produces an excellent example of the value of moving beyond simple text analysis to study how actual written texts are pro­ duced, read, and negotiated in real time, ongoing interaction between diverse social actors.

My focus in this response is instead on the frame that MirabelH uses to argue for the larger social value of his chapter:»specifically his desire to erase the "stigma of servitude" by demonstrating the "complex," "mnova-

GLORIA ANZALDUA

How to Tame a Wild Tongue

Gloria Anzaldua was born in 1942 in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. At age eleven. she began working in the fields as a migrant worker and then on her family's land after the death of her father. Working her way through school, she eventually became a schoolteacher and then an academic, speaking and writing about feminis t, lesbian, and Chi­ cana issues and about autobiography. She is best known for This Bridge CalJed My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981), which she edited with Cherrie Moraga, and BorderlandsfLa Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). Anzaldua died in 2004.

"How to Tame a Wild Tongue" is from BorderlandsfLa Frontera. In it, Anzaldua is concerned with many kinds of borders – between nations, cultures, classes, genders, languages. When she writes, "So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language" (par. 27), Anzaldua is arguing for the ways in which identity is intertwined with the way we speak and for the ways in which people can be made to feel ashamed of their own tongues. Keeping hers wild – ignoring the closing of linguistic borders – is Anzaldua's way of asserting her identity.

"We're going to have to control your tongue," the dentist says, pulling out all the metal from my mouth. Silver bits plop and tinkle into the basin. My mouth is a motherlode.·

The dentist is cleaning out my roots. I get a whiff of the stench when I gasp. "I can't cap that tooth yet, you're still draining," he says.

"We're going to have to do some­ thing about your tongue," I hear the anger rising in his voice. My tongue keeps pushing out the wads of cotton, pushing back the drills, the long thin needles. 'Tve never seen anything as strong or as stubborn," he says. And I think, how do you tame a wild tongue,

33

34 GLORiA ANZALOOA

train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and saddle it? How do you make it lie down?

"Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war?"

– RAY GWYN SMITH 1

I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess – that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler. I remember being sent to the comer of the classroom for "talking back" to the Anglo teacher when all I was trying to do was tell her how to pronounce my name. "If you want to be American, speak 'American.' If you don't like it, go back to Mexico where you belong."

"I want you to speak English. Pa' hallar buen trabajo tienes que 5

saber hablar el ingles bien. Que vale toda lu educaci6n si todav{a !tablas ingles con un 'accent:" my mother would say, mortified that I spoke English like a Mexican. At Pan American University, I and all Chicano students were required to take two speech classes. Their purpose: to get rid of our accents.

Attacks on one's [orm of expression with the intent to censor are a violation of the First Amendment. El Anglo con cara de ino­ cente nos arranc6 la lengua. Wild tongues can't be tamed, they can only be cut out.

OVERCOMING THE TRADITION OF SILENCE

Ahogadas, escupimos el OSCU1'O.

Peleando con nueSlra propia sombra el silencio nos sepulra.

En boca cerrada no entran moscas. "Flies don't enter a closed mouth" is a saying I kept hearing when I was a child. Ser !tabla­ dora was to be a gossip and a liar, to talk too much. Muchachitas bien criadas, well-bred girls don't answer back. Es una (alta de respeto to talk back to one's mother or father. I remember one of the sins I'd recite to the priest in the confession box the few times I went to confession: talking back to my mother, hablar pa' 'tras, repelar. Hocicona, repelona, chismosa, having a big mouth, questioning, carrying tales are all signs of being mal criada . In

HOW TO TAME A WI LD TONGUE 35

my culture they are all words that are derogatory if applied to women – I've never heard them applied to men.

The first time I heard two women, a Puerto Rkan and a Cuban, say the word "nosotras," I was shocked. I had not known the word existed. Chicanas use nosotros whether we're male or female . We are robbed of our female being by the masculine plural. Language is a male discourse.

And our tongues have become dry the wilderness has dried out our tongues and we have forgotten speech.

– [RENA KLEPFlSZ2

Even our own people, other Spanish speakers nos quieren poner candados en la boca . They would hold us back with their bag of reglas de academia.

Oye como ladra: ellenguaje de la frontera

Quien tiene boca se equivoca. – MEXICAN SAYING

"Pocho, cultural traitor, you're speaking the oppressor's lan- 10

guage by speaking English, you're ruining the Spanish language," I have been accused by various Latinos and Latinas. Chicano Spanish is considered by the purist and by most Latinos deficient, a mutilation of Spanish.

But Chicano Spanish is a border tongue which developed natu­ rally. Change, evoluci6n, enriquecimiento de palabras nuevas por invenci6n 0 adopci6n have created variants of Chicano Spanish, un nuevo lenguaje. Un lenguaje que corresponde a un modo de vivir. Chicano Spanish is not incorrect, it is a living language.

For a people who are neither Spanish nor live in a country in which Spanish is the first language; for a people who live in a country in which English is the reigning tongue but who are not Anglo; for a people who cannot entirely identify with either stan­ dard (formal, Castillian) Spanish nor standard English, what recourse is left to them but to create their own language? A lan­ guage which they can connect their identity to, one capable of

36 GLORIA ANZALOOA

communicating the realities and values true to themselves – a language with terms that are neither espa/;al "i ingles, but both. We speak a patois, a forked tongue, a variation of two languages.

Chicano Spanish sprang out of the Chicanos' need to identify ourselves as a distinct people. We needed a language with which we could communicate with ourselves, a secret language. For some of us, language is a homeland closer than the Southwest­ for many Chicanos today live in the Midwest and the East. And because we are a complex, heterogeneous people, we speak many languages. Some of the languages we speak are:

1. Standard English 2. Working class and slang English 3. Standard Spanish 4. Standard Mexican Spanish 5. North Mexican Spanish dialect 6. Chicano Spanish (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California

have regional variations) 7. Tex-Mex 8. Pachuco (called cal6)

My "home" tongues are the languages I speak with my sister and brothers, with my friends. They are the last five listed, with 6 and 7 being closest to my heali. From school, the media, and job situations, I've picked up standard and working class English. From Mamagrande Locha and from reading Spanish and Mexi­ can literature, I've picked up Standard Spanish and Standard Mexican Spanish. From las recitn {{egadas, Mexican immigrants, and braceros, I learned the North Mexican dialect. With Mexicans I'll try to speak either Standard Mexican Spanish or the North Mexican dialect. From my parents and Chicanos living in the Val­ ley, I picked up Chicano Texas Spanish, and I speak it with my mom, younger brother (who man'ied a Mexican and who rarely mixes Spanish with English), aunts, and older relatives.

With Chicanas from Nueva Mexica or Arizana I will speak Chi- 15

cano Spanish a little, but often they don't understand what I'm saying, With most California Chicanas I speak entirely in English (unless I forget). When I first moved to San Francisco, I'd rattle off something in Spanish, unintentionally embarrassing them. Often it is only with another Chicana tejana that I can talk freely.

Words distorted by English are known as anglicisms or pachis­ mas. Thepacha is an anglicized Mexican or American of Mexican

HOW TO TAME A WILD TONGUE 37

origin who speaks Spanish with an accent characteristic of North Americans and who distorts and reconstructs the language accord­ ing to the inOuence of English.3 Tex-Mex, or Spanglish, comes most naturally to me. I may switch back and forth from Engli sh to Spanish in the same sentence or in the same word. With my sister and my brother Nune and with Chicano lejano contempo­ raries I speak in Tex-Mex.

From kids and people my own age I picked up Pachuco. Pachuco (the language of the zoot suiters) is a language of rebel­ lion, both against Standard Spanish and Standard English. It is a secret language. Adults of the culture and outsiders cannot understand it. It is made up of slang words from both English and Spanish. Ruca means girl or woman, valo means guy or dude, chale means no, sim6n means yes, churro is sure, talk is periquiar, pigionear means petting, que gacho means how nerdy, ponle aguila means watch out, death is called la pelona . Through lack of prac­ tice and not having others who can speak it, I've lost most of the Pachuco tongue.

CHICANO SPANISH

Chicanos, after 250 years of Spanish/Anglo colonization, have developed Significant differences in the Spanish we speak. We col­ lapse two adjacent vowels into a single syIJable and sometimes shift the stress in certain words such as ma(vmaiz, cohele/cuele . We leave out certain consonants when they appear between vow­ els: lado/lao, mojado/mojao. Chicanos from South Texas pro­ nounce (as j as in jue ((ue). Chicanos use "archaisms," words that are no longer in the Spanish language, words that have been evolved out. We say semos, Iruje, haiga, ansina, and naiden . We retain the "archaic" j, as in jalar, that derives from an earlier h, (the French halar or the Germank halon which was lost to stan­ dard Spanish in the 16th century), but which is still found in sev­ eral regional dialects such as the one spoken in South Texas. (Due to geography, Chicanos fTom the Valley of South Texas were cut off linguistically from other Spanish speakers. We tend to use words that the Spaniards brought over from Medieval Spain. The majority of the Spanish colonizers in Mexico and the Southwest came from Extremadura – Heman Cortes was one of them –

38 GLORIA ANZALDOA

and Andalucfa. Andalucians pronounce II like a y, and their d's tend to be absorbed by adjacent vowels: lirado becomes lirao. They brought ellenguaje popular, dialeclos y regionalismos. ')

Chkanos and other Spanish speakers also shift II to y and z to S5 We leave out initial syllables, saying lar for eslar, lay for esloy, hora for ahora (ct/banos and puerlorrique.;os also leave out initial letters of some words). We also leave out the final syllable such as pa for para . The intervocalic y , the II as in lortilla, ella, bOlella, gets replaced by Ionia or IOrliya, ea, bolea. We add an additional syl­ lable at the beginning of certain words: alOcar for locar, agaslar for gascar. Sometimes we'll say lavaste las vacijas, other times lavates (substituting the ates verb endings for the aste).

We use angHcisms, words borrowed from EngHsh: bola from 20

ball, carpela from carpet, meichina de lavar (instead of lavadora) from washing machine. Tex-Mex argot, created by adding a Span­ ish sound at the beginning or end of an EngHsh word such as cookiar for cook, watchar for watch, parkiar for park, and rapiar for rape, is the result of the pressures on Spanish speakers to adapt to English.

We don't use the word vosotroslas or its accompanying verb form . We don't say claro (to mean yes), imag(I1ate, or me emo­ ciol1a, unless we picked up Spanish from Latinas, out of a book, or in a classroom. Other Spanish-speaking groups are going through the same, or similar, development in their Spanish.

LINGUISTIC TERRORISM

Deslenguadas. Somas los del espanal deficienle. We are your linguistic nightmare. your linguistic aberration, your linguistic mestisaje, the sub­ ject of your bur/a. Because we speak with tongues of fIre we are culturally crucified. Racial1y, cultural1y, and linguistically somas huerfanos – we speak an orphan Longue.

Chicanas who grew up speaking Chicano Spanish have internal­ ized the belief that we speak poor Spanish. It is illegitimate, a bastard language. And because we internaHze how our language has been used against us by the dominant culture, we use our lan­ guage differences against each other.

Chicana feminists often skirt around each other with suspicion and hesitation . For the longest time I couldn't figure it out. Then

HOW TO TAME A WILD TONGUE 39

it dawned on me. To be close to another Chicana is like looking into the mirror. We are afraid of what we'lJ see there. Pena. Shame. Low estimation of self. In childhood we are told that our language is wrong. Repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self. The attacks continue throughout our lives.

Chicanas feel uncomfortable talking in Spanish to Latinas, alTaid of their censure. Their language was not outlawed in their countries. They had a whole lifetime of being immersed in their native tongue; generations, centuries in which Spanish was a first language, taught in school, heard on radio and TV, and read in the newspaper.

If a person, Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my 25

native tongue, she also has a low estimation of me. Often with mexicanas y latinas we'll speak English as a neutral language. Even among Chicanas we tend to speak English at parties or con­ ferences. Yet, at the same time, we're afraid the other will think we're agringadas because we don't speak Chicano Spanish. We oppress each other trying to out-Chicano each other, vying to be the "real" Chicanas, to speak like Chicanos. There is no one Chicano language just as there is no one Chicano experience. A monolingual Chicana whose first language is English or Spanish is just as much a Chicana as one who speaks several variants of Spanish. A Chicana from Michigan or Chicago or Detroit is just as much a Chicana as one from the Southwest. Chicano Spanish is as diverse linguistically as it is regionally.

By the end of this century, Spanish speakers will comprise the biggest minority group in the U.S., a country where students in high schools and colleges are encouraged to take French classes because French is considered more "cultured." But for a language to remain alive it must be used· By the end of this century English, and not Spanish, will be the mother tongue of most Chi­ canos and Latinos.

So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my lan­ guage. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex, and all the other languages I speak, I cannot acceplthe legitimacy of myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have

40 GLORIA ANZALOOA

to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spang­ lish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate.

I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my se;.pent's tongue – my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.

My fingers move sly against your palm Like women everywhere, we speak in code .. ..

– MELANIE KAVE/KANTROWITZ7

"Vistas, ,J corridos, y comida: My Native Tongue

In the 1960s, I read my first Chicano novel. It was City of Night by John Rechy, a gay Texan, son of a Scottish father and a Mexican mother. For days I walked around in stunned amazement that a Chicano could write and could get published. When I read I Am Joaquin' I was surprised to see a bilingual book by a Chicano in print. When I saw poetry written in Tex-Mex for the first time, a feeling of pure joy flashed through me. I felt like we really existed as a people. In 1971, when I started teaching High School English to Chicano students, I tried to supplement the required texts with works by Chicanos, only to be reprimanded and forbidden to do so by the principal. He claimed that I was supposed to teach "American" and English literature. At the risk of being fired, I swore my students to secrecy and slipped in Chicano short sto­ ries, poems, a play. In graduate school, while working toward a Ph.D., I had to "argue" with one advisor after the other, semester after semester, before I was allowed to make Chicano literature an area of focus.

Even before I read books by Chicanos or Mexicans, it was the 30

Mexican movies I saw at the drive-in – the Thursday night special of $1.00 a carload – that gave me a sense of belonging. "Vdmonos a las vistas," my mother would call out and we'd all – grand­ mother, brothers, sister, and cousins – squeeze into the car We'd wolf down cheese and bologna white bread sandwiches while watching Pedro Infante in melodramatic tearjerkers like Nosotros

HOW TO TAME A WILD TONGUE 41

los pobres, the first "real" Mexican movie (that was not an imita­ tion of European movies). I remember seeing Cuando los hijos se van and surmising that all Mexican movies played up the love a mother has for her children and what ungrateful sons and daugh­ ters suffer when they are not devoted to their mothers. I remem­ ber the singing-type "westerns" of Jorge Negrete and Miquel Aceves Mejra. When watching Mexican movies, I felt a sense of home­ coming as well as alienation. People who were to amount to some­ thing didn't go to Mexican movies, or bailes, or tune their radios to bolero, rm,cherita, and corrido music.

The whole time I was growing up, there was norteno music sometimes called North Mexican border music, or Tex-Mex music, or Chicano music, or cantina (bar) music. I grew up bsten­ ing to conjuntas, three- or four-piece bands made up of folk musi­ cians playing guitar, bajo sexta, drums, and button accordion, which Chicanos had bon'owed from the German immigrants who had come to Central Texas and Mexico to farm and build brewer­ ies. In the Rio Grande Valley, Steve Jordan and Little Joe Hernan­ dez were popular, and Flaco Jimenez was the accordion king. The rhythms of Tex-Mex music are those of the polka, also adapted from the Germans, who in turn had borrowed the polka from the Czechs and Bohemians.

I remember the hot, sultry evenings when corridos – songs of love and death on the Texas-Mexican borderlands – reverberated out of cheap amplifiers fTom the local can tinas and wafted in through my bedroom window.

Corridos first became widely used along the South Texas/ Mexican border during the early conflict between Chicanos and Anglos. The corridos are usually about Mexican heroes who do valiant deeds against the Anglo oppressors. Pancho Villa's song, "La cucaracha," is the most famous one. Corridos of John F. Kennedy and his death are still very popular in the Valley. Older Chicanos remember Lydia Mendoza, one of the great border corrido singers who was called la Gloria de Tejas . Her "Eltango negro," sung during the Great Depression, made her a singer of the people. The everpresent corridos narrated one hundred years of border history, bringing news of events as well as entertaining. These folk musicians and folk songs are our chief cultural myth­ makers, and they made our hard lives seem bearable.

42 GLORIA ANZALOOA

I grew up feeling ambivalent about our music. Country­ western and rock-and-roll had more status. In the 50s and 60s, for the slightly educated and agril1gado Chicanos, there existed a sense of shame at being caught listening to our music. Yet I couldn't stop my feet from thumping to the music, could not stop humming the words, nor hjde from myself the exhilaration I felt when I heard it.

There are more subtle ways that we internaljze identification, 35

especially in the forms of images and emotions. For me food and certain smells are tied to my identi ty, to my homeland. Woodsmoke curling up to an immense blue sky; woodsmoke perfuming my grandmother's clothes, her skjn. The stench of cow manure and the yellow patches on the ground; the crack of a .22 rifle and the reek of cordHe. Homemade white cheese sizzling in a pan, melt­ ing inside a folded tortilla. My sister Hilda's hot, spicy mel1udo, chile colorado makjng it deep red, pieces of panza and hominy floating on top. My brother Carito barbequing fajitas in the back­ yard. Even now and 3,000 miles away, I can see my mother spic­ ing the ground beef, pork, and venjson with chile. My mouth salivates at the thought of the hot steaming tamales I would be eating ifI were home.

Si Ie preguntas a mi ma1na, "iQue eres?"

"Identity is the essential core of who we are as indjviduals, the conscious experience of the self inside."

– GERSHEN KAUFMAN9

Nosolros los Chicanos straddle the borderlands. On one side of us, we are constantly exposed to the Spanish of the Mexkans, on the other side we hear the Anglos' incessant clamoring so that we forget our language. Among ourselves we don't say nosotYOs los americanos, a nosotros los espanoles, a nosolros los hispanos. We say nosotros los mexicanos (by mexicanos we do not mean citi­ zens of Mexko; we do not mean a national identity, but a racial one). We distinguish between mexicanos del olro lado and mexica­ nos de este lado. Deep in our hearts we believe that being Mexican has nothing to do with which country one lives in. Being Mexican

HOW TO TAME A WILD TONGUE 43

is a state of soul- not one of mind, not one of citizenship. Neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects borders.

Dime con quien andas y le dire quien eres. (Tell me who your friends are and I'll teU you who you are.)

– MEXICAN SAYING

Si Ie pregunlas a mi mama, "lOue eres?" Ie dira, "Soy mexicana." My brothers and sister say the same. I sometimes will answer "soy mexicana" and at others will say "soy Chicana" a "soy lejana. " Bu t I identified as "Raza" before I ever identified as "mexicarza" or "Chicana."

As a culture, we call ourselves Spanish when referring to our­ selves as a linguistic group and when copping out. It is then that we forget our predominant Indian genes. We are 70-80 percent Indian'· We call ourselves Hispanic" or Spanish-American or Latin American or Latin when linking ourselves to other Spanish­ speaking peoples of the Western hemisphere and when copping out. We call ourselves Mexican-American!2 to signify we are nei­ ther Mexican nor American, but more the noun "American" than the adjective "Mexican" (and when copping out) .

Chicanos and other people of color suffer economically for not acculturating. This voluntary (yet forced) alienation makes for psychological conflict, a kind of dual identity – we don't identify with the Anglo-American cultural values and we don't totally identi fy with the Mexican cultural values. We are a synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness or Angloness. I have so internalized the borderland conflict that sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one. A veces no soy nada ni nadie. Pero hasla cuarzdo no 10 soy, 10 soy.

When not copping out, when we know we are more than noth- 40

ing, we call ourselves Mexican, referring to race and ancestry; meslizo when affirming both our Indian and Spanish (but we hardly ever own our Black ancestory); Chicano when referring to a politically aware people born and/or raised in the U.S.; Raza when referring to Ch icanos; (ejanos when we are Chicanos from Texas.

Chicanos did not know we were a people until 1965 when Ceasar Chavez and the farmworkers united and I Am Joaquin was

44 GLORlA ANZALDOA

published and fa Raza Unida party was formed in Texas. With that recognition, we became a distinct people. Something momentous happened to the Chicano soul- we became aware of our reality and acquired a name and a language (Chicano Spanish) that reflected that reality. Now that we had a name, some of the frag­ mented pieces began to fall together – who we were, what we were, how we had evolved. We began to get glimpses of what we might eventually become.

Yet the struggle of identities continues, the struggle of borders is our reality still. One day the inner struggle will cease and a true integration take place. In the meantime, (enemos que hacer la lucha. cQuien esla prolegiendo los ranchos de mi genie? cQuien eSla Iralando de cerrar la fisura enlre la india y el blanco en nueslra sangre? EI Chicano, si, el Chicano que anda como un ladr6n en su propla casa.

Los Chicanos, how patient we seem, how very patient. There is the quiet of the Indian about us. " We know how to survive. When other races have given up their tongue, we've kept ours. We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of the dominant nOrle­ americana culture. But more than we count the blows, we count the days the weeks the years the centuries the eons until the white laws and commerce and customs will rot in the deserts they've created, lie bleached. Hwnildes yet proud, quielos yet wild, noso­ lros losmexicanos-Chicmws will walk by the crumbling ashes as we go about our business. Stubborn, persevering, impenetrable as stone, yet possessing a malleability that renders us unbreak­ able, we, the meslizas and mestizos , will remain.

Notes

I . Ray Gwyn Smith, Moorland Is Cold Coumry, unpubHshed book. 2. Irena Klepfisz, "Di rayze aheymrrhe Journey Home," in The Tribe of

Dina: A Jewish Women s A11lhology, Melanje Kaye/Kantrowitz and Irena K1epfisz, eds. (Montpeliel~ VT: Sinister Wisdom Books, 1986),49.

3. R. C. Ortega, Dialectologfa Del Bamo, trans. Horlencia S. A]wan (Los Angeles. CA: R. C. Ortega Publisher & Bookseller, 1977), 132.

4. Eduardo Hernandez-Chavez, Andre\' D. Cohen , and Anlhony F. Bel­ tramo, El Lenguaje de los Chicanos: Regional a'id Social Characlerislics of Language Used by Mexican Americalls (Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1975),39.

HOW TO TAME A WILD TONGUE 45

5. Hernandez-Chavez, xvii. 6. Irena KJepfisz, "Secular Jewish Identity: Yidishkayt in America," in

The Tribe of Dilla , Kaye/Kantrowitz and Klepfisz, eds., 43. 7. Melanie KayefKantrowitz, "Sign," in We Speak ill Code: Poems and

Other WYitings (Pittsburgh, PA: Motheroot Publications, Inc., 1980),85. 8. Rodolfo Gonzales, I Am JoaquiniYo Soy Joaquin (New York, NY:

Bantam Books, 1972). It was first published in 1967. 9. Gershen Kaufman, Shame: The Power of Caring (Cambridge, MA:

Schenkman Books, Inc., 1980),68. 10. John R. Chavez, The Lost Land: The Chicago Images of the Southwest

(Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1984),88-90. t t . "Hispanic" is derived from Hispa/1.is (Espmla, a name given to the

Tberian Peninsula in ancient times when it was a part of the Roman Empire) and is a term designated by the U.S. government to make it easier to handle us on paper.

12. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo created the Mexican-American in 1848.

t 3. Anglos, in order to alleviate the ir guiJt for dispossessing the Chicano, stressed the Spanish Paft of us and perpetrated the myth of the Spanish Southwest. We have accepted the fiction that we are Hispanic, that is Spanjsh, in order to accommodate ourselves to the dominant culture and its abhor­ rence of Tndians. Chavez, 88-9 1.

For Discussion and Writing

l. List the different kinds of languages Anzaldua says she speaks and organize them according to a principle of your own selection. Explain that principle and what the list it produces tells us about the Chicanola experience with language.

2. How does Anzaldua use definition to discuss her experience wi th lan­ guage, and to what effect?

3. connections Compare Anzaldua's sense of herself as an Amelican to Audre Lorde's in "The Fourth of July" (p. 239). In what way does each woman feel American? In what way does each not?

4. In her discussion of moving back and forth between the varieties of languages she speaks, Anzaldua uses the tenn "switch codes" (par. 27). Define that term and write about situations in your life in which you switch codes.