Graduation Ceremony 20
Monday 7 December 2015 at 1630hrs – Jesuits Church Valletta
Graduand’s Speech
Sarah Grech
One of the first warnings I received as I began postgraduate research, was that I should
prepare for this to be a lonely experience, but, as I have reflected recently, I feel fortunate
to find that it has not been such a solitary process after all. Sometimes, support came in the
shape of extras teas, or the occasional pointed question "Have you finished yet?"/"Għadek
għadejja xbin". At other times, the support came through debates with my tutors at the
Institute of Linguistics, and colleagues and fellow postgraduate students. I am grateful for all
those occasions where the generosity of others made me keep my feet on the ground, and
challenged me to become more knowledgeable in my chosen field. I know that my fellow
graduands can also gratefully call to mind a few special people who challenged and
encouraged them in their own studies, too. Many of you who accompanied us most closely
on this journey are here today, so this proud occasion is your moment too. On behalf of all
the graduands, I would also like to thank the University of Malta, and specifically the
members of its governing body and its administration. Many of them are here today,
attentive to every detail, to ensure that this event is a success; there are also quite a few
others we have probably never even met, but who still might have made our journey that
little bit smoother, sometimes without our even realising it.
I wonder if some of you can call to mind an incident where somebody from Malta is
immediately recognised as Maltese, just by the way they speak, even though they are
speaking in English, and even though they might be abroad. You might yourself have been
sitting in an airport lounge somewhere, and suddenly heard an accent which you
immediately identified as your own. The fact that native listeners of a language variety, or
dialect, can quite accurately identify someone as a native speaker, or not, was a focal point
in my research for a Ph.D. in Linguistics, because it suggests that there is something socially
meaningful there that is worth identifying.
Although we often tend to think of languages in terms of their ideal form, linguists often
remind us that real-life language is rarely pristine, and carries far more information, also
about its user, than an ideal prototype would ever allow for. In other words, we don't speak
like robots. We speak like human beings, and because as humans, we are all quite different,
it follows that the language varieties and dialects we use reflect our differences in many
ways. Funnily enough, we're not always that accepting of these differences. A native listener
can almost instantly identify another speaker, but we rarely stop there, as we often go on to
measure up that speaker according to our own, internalised standards, such as that they are
ill-educated, or snobbish, or from a particular town, and so on. My thesis focused on
capturing the first knee jerk reaction, but without the added judgment. The dialect I focused
on was Maltese English so I'll leave you to imagine why I didn't want to capture the more
judgmental attitudes in this case.
Instead, I felt it was useful to describe Maltese English as it is used here in Malta, but not
with reference to another standard variety, where the temptation is simply to regard ours as
wanting, in comparison. Rather, it is often in examining language variation on its own terms
that we can begin to understand its place in our society. In Malta, more people use English
now than in the fifties and sixties. Unlike then, it is not just the lucky few granted an
education who get access to English, but the entire population. In a fit of nostalgia, we might
say we prefer the sixties version of one proper English. And by proper, we probably mean
something approaching Standard British English. But the reality is that that type of English
has little meaning for us today, because we don't form part of the society where that
standard variety is spoken, if indeed it is spoken, but that's another matter. Instead today
we are faced with variation in both our official languages, together with quite a few others,
which resists being categorised. Does this mean that we are going to descend into some
abysmal linguistic chaos of pidgin Maltese English, where both Maltese and English, and any
other languages are corrupted beyond recognition? Since the average person is well aware
that English is still a useful language for international communication, and that Maltese is
the home language, it is plausible to suggest that this is not a realistic threat. It is plausible
to suggest, that with a combination of awareness, and education – particularly in the
education of the very young – we will in fact draw on our multilingual nature and be
sensitive to when, and when not, to use different forms of all the languages available to us.
In fact, we already do this all the time, as any Gozitan will tell you, when they switch from
their dialect, to the standard dialect of Gozo, or to Maltese, as the need requires. There is no
reason to expect that the same should not happen with all our languages especially if we are
confident that this is one way to ensure their very survival. After all, nature not only thrives
in diversity but depends on it for survival, and Language is part of our nature.
Linguistics is concerned with the study of Language, and yet, in Linguistics we are also
committed to forging links between other disciplines in our quest to understand more about
this most human of activities. My own research has led me to work on English and Maltese
language and linguistics, on interpreting studies and on History; and I can also consider
Forensic Linguistics too. This multidisciplinary research has been an important learning curve
and I would encourage every graduand today to consider the benefits of reaching beyond
our immediate specialisation as we look to our future now. This might be a strange thing to
suggest as we are congratulated precisely for having managed to focus on a very specialised
area of study and yet, hopefully it is not so strange. Law, Entrepreneurship and Music, I am
sure, would all benefit from conversations across all sorts of boundaries. I leave it to you to
decide on the details of how or when or indeed why at all, such conversations might help us
to continue refining what we do.
Thank you.