Language is Power

“The broken tongue not only denotes the political economy of language in English, of the dominant society, but also makes claims to many different, unrecognized tongues, bodies, and memories.” (p.34) Right away when someone speaks English in an accent or speaks “broken English” all the political and social connotation are clear. With the clashing of two languages, there is also the clashing of history, culture and social standing.
In Scene 4. The Past Is Not Dead; It Is Not Even Past Kim mentions how after the US won WWII that the dominant language of Japanese was replaced by English in Korea. The winners not only write history but they establish their own language as a means of conquering. Now people like Kim’s grandmother, who are not allowed to know Japanese and do not know how to read Korean, are striped on any power that language can give them.
“Even after colonization has ceased to exist in official history, this tradition of displacement in exchange for survival has continued.”(p.41) Since many people are forced to “forget” their mother tongues in order to survive they become displace people. They don’t know enough about their own culture to feel a part of it and they are looked at as outcasts by native English speakers.
My question is why even after learning English are they still persecuted? First they are made to feel ashamed of their mother tongue but even after learning the “correct language” they are still made to feel ashamed.