Lived Experiences of Unequal Englishes of Filipino Domestic Workers in Hong Kong

Abstract

In this paper, I investigate the lived experiences with English of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong from roughly 30 hours of recorded ethnographic interviews and fieldwork with 28 key participants talking about language in relation to their living and working experiences. Employing linguistic ethnographic approaches to analysis, I describe recurring accounts reflecting the tension between doing being an English-proficient and an English-deficient other: a tension that emanates from enabling and constraining sociolinguistic conditions in the workplace and the host society, and informed by participants’ experiences and education from their home country. I demonstrate how participants seem to discursively invoke and locate themselves in a hierarchy of English speakers: on the one hand, as better English speakers in the household-workplace, commanding respect and being accorded family language policy decision-making powers; while on the other, as of lesser English speaking abilities and rights than native English speakers, choosing to be silent or aloof, and passing negative judgement to fellow Filipinos who deploy stylized English in communication situations. The accounts of Hong Kong-based Filipino domestic workers thus show conflicting effects of unequal Englishes framing migrant workers’ experiences in ways that simultaneously fuel and challenge power asymmetries inherent in this transnational labor set-up. Keywords: unequal Englishes, Filipino domestic workers, lived experience