Persona Diploma in Persona Centred Counselling 2005-2007
THE CULTURAL SITUATEDNESS OF LANGUAGE USE IN PERSONCENTRED TRAINING
RUNDEEP SEMBI
Words are limited, like the beings that use them, and can only express the affairs of this
limited world. (Tai Gong Diao)
As a British Sikh woman with a long-term illness and committed to avoiding oppressive
practice, I am conscious of dominant/subordinate relationships that pervade the sociopolitical landscape. One measure I have taken to counsel ethically is to identify my cultural
location and consider how my normative values and spoken language may impede a clear
dialogue and limit the potential for establishing a democratic and accepting relationship with
another.
Before continuing any further, it feels necessary to stipulate that I am writing from personal
experience, memories and insights rather than hard facts. The focus of this discussion will
be to explore some of the contradictions that emerged for me as a bicultural person training
in the person-centred approach – a model of therapy that is rooted in Western individualistic
psychology. My contention lies with the failure to interrogate the everyday speech of course
members and make explicit how spoken English is not a neutral medium of communication
but is a language imbued with cultural-specific values that reinforce the individuated
construction of personhood.
The centrality of the individual as a bounded, independent self is perpetuated by the
emphasis on speaking in the first person in order to own one’s action. During my personcentred training, it was assumed that using ‘I’ as a self-referent indicated self-responsibility,
maturity and autonomy. It logically followed that individuals who did not communicate in this
way were somehow devoid of these qualities and were ultimately limiting their actualizing
potential.
Whilst these messages felt relevant within a Western context, they lacked any validity within
my Punjabi (home) culture, where the personal pronoun ‘we’ is given primacy over the ‘I'.
The transition to adulthood, accompanied by a growing sense of responsibility to the
community seems to be marked linguistically by identifying as a ‘we'. Although adult Sikhs
largely use collective terms to refer to themselves when speaking Punjabi, this does not
prevent me from experiencing them as unique, responsible persons. Contrary to my
experiences on the diploma course, speaking in the first person within my collectivist home
culture can feel rude, demanding and almost childish. In essence, saying ‘I' in this setting
can feel disempowering for me.
My very specific cultural reading of the ‘I' clearly exposes the situatedness of language
within a given setting. The meanings and values we attach to words or objects are
temporarily fixed and defined by prevailing discourses of knowledge which determine not
only what is meaningful in a particular topic (such as medicine or sexuality) but also how it
can be talked about and whose voices carry authority (Michel Foucault,1972, as cited in
Hawtin & Moore,1998: 91). Sarah Hawtin and Judy Moore (1998) describe how:
All societies have procedures whereby the production of discourses is controlled to preserve
the structures and conventions of that society. The process is reinforced by our everyday
use of language so that the assumptions embedded in our consciousness are repeated in
our most mundane utterances. (Hawtin & Moore, 1998: 91)
© Source: Chapter 7 pp 55-59 Politicizing the Person Centred Aproach -an Agenda for Social Change. Ed: G Proctor, M Cooper, P Saunders, B
Malcolm. ( PCCS Books 2006)
Persona Diploma in Persona Centred Counselling 2005-2007
For instance, the increasing recognition of how patriarchal bias implicit within the English
language functions to silence women's subjectivity is demonstrated by ‘the predominant use
of the male pronoun to describe universal experience' (Hawtin & Moore, 1998: 91).
In similar vein, I want to expose how cultural discourses of individualism were perpetuated
through ‘certain established ways of speaking' English (John Shotter,1989:140) in my
person-centred training. The individuated focus built into English limits the conceptual
possibilities for self-understanding, lending itself to articulating some experiences more
accurately and favourably than others, if not occluding some experiences altogether. During
my counselling training, it became apparent to me that the effect of having to conform to an
individualized pattern of speech in order to be acknowledged by my fellow trainees resulted
inadvertently in the censorship of my collectivist heritage. In the following section I elaborate
further on how this felt.
BECOMING BICULTURALLY LITERATE
As with most counselling training, I was required to attend a personal development (PD)
group for the duration of my diploma. It is within this context that I first became aware of
how my speech composition could be (mis)understood by other PD members. Amidst the
discussions with fellow participants, it was often pointed out that I would speak in the second
person, when offering my personal opinions to the group. I would use the person pronoun
‘you', rather than the ‘I', as a self-referent. In the examples below I have tried to illustrate the
type of comments which I refer to:
‘You’d feel great having achieved that.’
‘You probably would behave in that way under those circumstances.’
Talking thus, in the second person, sent out ambiguous messages to the PD group as to
whether I was speaking about them or myself. ‘Since "you" may be singular or plural, the
person or persons being addressed have to interpret who is included and who is not’
(Malone,1997: 69). In PD, my words were construed to be generalizations about the group,
prompting irritated glances and criticisms. Furthermore, my motivation for not saying ‘I’ was
deemed to be a way of distancing myself from my experience and avoiding self-ownership.
Whilst I believed the group's assessment of me was plausible to an extent, it felt unjust at
times. Puzzled by this, I stayed with my feelings, having learnt to value my affective
responses in my person-centred therapy. I was also aware that despite my concerted efforts
to speak as an individualized ‘I’, I continued to lapse into the second person when offering
my subjective point of view. I wondered why I refrained from uttering this personal pronoun
because generally, I had no qualms about taking ownership of my statements when
challenged to do so. If I realized that I was not speaking as an ‘I’, I would quickly correct
myself.
I started paying attention to how I felt making ‘I’ statements outside of PD and discovered
that I felt rude, self-centred and a little immature, irrespective of my cultural context. I
realized that I had inappropriately transferred the values attached to the ‘I’ in a Punjabi
cultural frame to a Western setting and felt uncomfortable ‘speaking in an individuated
fashion that clashed with my collectivist values. Instead, by saying ‘you’ I could avoid these
intercultural tensions because the ‘you’ could reference me (the speaker) as well as
represent the collective and operate as a ‘we’ (Harvey Sacks, 1992, as cited in
Malone,1997) .
This indefinite quality of the ‘you’ seemed to reflect my sense of self, which at the time did
not feel sharply bounded and separate. I had unconsciously learnt to speak English in a way
© Source: Chapter 7 pp 55-59 Politicizing the Person Centred Aproach -an Agenda for Social Change. Ed: G Proctor, M Cooper, P Saunders, B
Malcolm. ( PCCS Books 2006)
Persona Diploma in Persona Centred Counselling 2005-2007
that reflected my self-experience and encompassed some of the values from my home
culture and the majority culture. However, this led to misunderstandings within the PD
sessions, because I failed to comply with the accepted text of Western individualism – the
meaning structures and codes to which the group adhered. I had not learnt the established
‘architecture of address' (Shotter,1989:146) to enable me to access the same
‘communicative opportunities' (ibid.) that were afforded to group members that spoke in the
correct tongue. In short I had to make a choice: either I persisted with my mode of speech
and remained marginalized within the group or I adopted the ‘legitimate' code in order to be
heard and accorded the status of responsible adult. I conceded to the latter position.
Due to the fractious exchanges that arose in PD, I was alerted to my specific style of
speaking English, which to my great surprise was considerably influenced by the value
systems entrenched in my Punjabi home culture and language. I had not anticipated this
because although I understand spoken Punjabi, my verbal proficiency is rather limited. I
speak Punjabi to my parents and to other adults in the community but quickly revert to
English due to a lack of confidence.
This insight into my pattern of speech has prompted me to revise how I use personal
pronouns in both cultural settings, but for now I attend to the collective ‘we' in Punjabi and
briefly account for my changing perception of this term since completing my diploma. During
my teenage years the ‘we’ had become synonymous with the collective values of my home
culture and represented a threat to my independence and voice. When my parents used this
collective reference, I felt I was being included in their address and spoken for without my
consent, leaving me feeling unheard and angry.
On reflection, I have come to understand my defensive reading of the ‘we’ at a conscious
level, thus recognizing the fallacy of my adolescent interpretation. First and foremost, I am
confident that my parents' choice of language would never be motivated to erase me.
Secondly, I have realized that I was comprehending the collective ‘we’ through a Western
lens, inevitably setting it up to be deficient and ‘Other’ because its meaning was being
qualified through ‘what it was not’ rather than in itself. In essence my internal world had
come to mirror my external reality, wherein the hegemony of Western individualism
functioned as the invisible yardstick from which other cultures are measured.
My challenge has been to find a way of knowing my collective culture in a language that
does not negate it. This is difficult because my conscious thoughts and perceptions are
mediated through the English language which incorporates a set of values that do exactly
this. Instead of conceptualizing the ‘we’ cognitively, I am trying to unravel its meaning
experientially, through my interactions, feelings and intuition. What is noticeable is that I am
now more open to my collective heritage at an intrapersonal and interpersonal level, being
less preoccupied with defending the individual and more committed to experiencing the
uniqueness of a person through relationship. Moreover, because of my changing
perspective, what has been intensely rewarding is that I now feel more intimately connected
to my parents and Punjabi culture.
CONCLUSION
The merits of becoming biculturally competent are that I feel heard, empowered and
integrated within both cultures, thus illuminating the need for me as a practicing counsellor
to examine how the use of my language locates me culturally and informs my perceptual
awareness. By reflecting on my counselling training I have sought to demonstrate the
interface between language and society and illustrate how individuals are subject to various
contextual limitations discretely interwoven in the use of language.
© Source: Chapter 7 pp 55-59 Politicizing the Person Centred Aproach -an Agenda for Social Change. Ed: G Proctor, M Cooper, P Saunders, B
Malcolm. ( PCCS Books 2006)
Persona Diploma in Persona Centred Counselling 2005-2007
For this discussion, I have centred on how cultural discourses of individualism were
reproduced in my person-centred training through established ways of speaking English.
Tutors and students alike failed to challenge the insistence on referencing the phenomenal
self as an individualized ‘I’, thus maintaining the assumption that (1) the self can only be
conceived as a demarcated unit, (2) that that the sovereignty of the individual is a desirable
outcome, (3) that not saying ‘I’ was exclusively an expression for avoiding self responsibility
and (4) that all members of the group were complicit with this viewpoint. My intention is to
awaken counsellors and trainers from ‘the complacency of “conceptual sedimentation”’
(Gergen, 1989: 71) by urging them to recognize how those experiences that stand outside
the English language (and thus discourses of individualism), often hold less currency or are
rendered cognitively inaccessible. This state of affairs has implications for our process of
understanding self and others, which is permeated by the values embedded in idiosyncratic
language systems.
‘Language ... serves as a vehicle for the formation of relations of power and control in
relationships between people’ (McLeod, 2004: 177). In appreciating how my use of
language locates me, I make visible the particularity of my standpoint, leading to greater
congruence. By identifying those areas in which my understanding of the Other is limited by
my cultural positioning I can attempt to set aside any preconceptions and facilitate a deeper,
horizontal therapeutic relationship. In my counselling practice this will help me approach
more closely the authentic reality of the other.
REFERENCES
Gergen, K (1989) Warranting a voice and the elaboration of the self. In J Shotter & K
Gergen (eds) Texts of Identity (pp. 70-81). London: Sage Publications.
Hawtin, S & Moore, J (1998) Empowerment or collusion? The social context of personcentred therapy. In B Thorne & E Lambers (eds) Person-Centred Therapy: A European
perspective (pp. 91-145). London: Sage Publications.
Malone, M (1997) Worlds of Talk: The presentation self in everyday conversation.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
McLeod, J (2004) ‘On Anger and Hurt’ sessions: A narrative social constructionist
perspective. In R Moodley, C Lago & A Talahite (eds) Carl Rogers Counsels a Black Client:
Race and culture in person-centred counselling (pp. 175-89). Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books.
Shotter, J (1989) Social accountability and the social construction ‘You’. In J Shotter & K
Gergen (eds) Texts of Identity (pp. 133-51). London: Sage Publications.
Tai Gong Diao (1999) as cited in Taoist Wisdom: Daily Teachings from Taoist Sages (p. 13).
New Arlesford, Hants, UK: Godsfield Press.
© Source: Chapter 7 pp 55-59 Politicizing the Person Centred Aproach -an Agenda for Social Change. Ed: G Proctor, M Cooper, P Saunders, B
Malcolm. ( PCCS Books 2006)