Gerald Roche's "The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet"

Gerald Roche is an anthropologist, Associate Professor in the Department of Politics, Media, and Philosophy at La Trobe University, and a Co-Chair of the Global Coalition of Language Rights. His work focuses on power, the state, colonialism, and racism.

Roche applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet, and reported the following:

Page 99 of my new book, The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet, tells the story of Lhamo, a Tibetan woman born on the northeast Tibetan Plateau in 1993. Lhamo doesn’t actually exist. Her story is a fictional ethnographic composite, based on autobiographical interviews I did with dozens of people, designed to dramatize the profound changes that took place in the everyday life of the third generation of Tibetans to live under Chinese rule. Lhamo’s story describes her schooling, her struggle to find employment, her relationships with her family, and significant historical events and trends that formed the backdrop of her life.

Browsers opening The Politics of Language Oppression to page 99 would probably not get a very good overall idea about my book. Although Lhamo’s story deals with many of the key issues that the book explores, readers would miss most of the context they need to understand how her story encapsulates those issues. Three significant issues that appear on page 99, but which might not make much sense to readers, are the local ethnographic context, Chinese state policy towards Tibetan languages, and the Tibetan movement to resist those policies.

The local ethnographic context where Lhamo lives is the valley of Rebgong, on the northeast Tibetan Plateau, in what is today the province of Qinghai. Rebgong is predominantly Tibetan, and although Lhamo is Tibetan, her preferred language is not Tibetan, but a language called Manegacha. Manegacha is one of about 30 minority languages spoken today by Tibetans in China.

State policy completely ignores these languages, and we see this in Lhamo’s story. Lhamo studies in a school where Tibetan dominates, but she also has to learn China’s national language, Mandarin. She has no opportunities to pursue meaningful life opportunities through her own language.

Lhamo lives through moments of Tibetan resistance to such policies: the protests of 2008—the most widespread protests against Chinese rule in Tibet—2010 street demonstrations in Rebgong, and a series of self-immolation protests in 2012. However, all these protests focus only on a single, dominant Tibetan language, not minority languages like Manegacha. Lhamo’s story shows us that all she can expect from other Tibetans is discrimination in the form of taunts and jokes, rather than political support for her marginalized language.

So, although page 99 tells us a lot about Lhamo’s life, and about language oppression in Tibet more generally, readers could be forgiven for missing the significance of these details without some of the broader context.

Learn more about The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet at the Cornell University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue