The misuses of dialogue

SABBATICAL NOTES. 23 JUNE 2014. MONDAY. N4. 
The misuses of dialogue. 

THERE IS THIS CLAIM now that the advocates of language rights (ALR) in the Philippines--the ragtag band of the real (read: not the fake ones) MTB-MLE educators and indigenous languages activists--are not willing to enter into a dialogue with the status quo and that there would be no dialogue when ALR keeps on using 'strong words' such as 'fascist' and 'schizophrenia.' 

Let us go procedural to respond to these claims. 

Let us also define our terms in the process, the same act of defining our terms when we were in sophomore high school and were taught the meaning of context and the need to operationalize our terms.

1. Status quo (SQ) means that group of people who believe that the salvation of the Philippine nation state rests on the continuation of the state of affairs in education in general, and in the teaching of the schizophrenic Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino in particular.

2. SQ accuses ALR of using strong words such as: (2.1) fascism in national language, and (2.2) schizophrenia in Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino.

3. Let us go back to what fascism across the years is all about: 'A belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach.' [New Oxford American Dictionary, NEOD]

4. Let us now see the meaning of schizophrenia, to wit, (4.1) 'a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation,' and (4.2) '(in general use) a mentality or approach characterized by inconsistent or contradictory elements.' [NEOD}

5. Let us also see the meaning of dialogue. We are taking the second meaning of the term as this is more relevant to this issue at hand. The dictionary says that a dialogue is 'a discussion between two or more people or groups, esp. one directed toward exploration of a particular subject or resolution of a problem' [NEOD]

The accusation is that the ALR is not willing to enter into a dialogue with SQ.

Our response is this: we need to explore the issue, and we need to resolve the problems, and to do that, the dialogue partners--as the hermeneuts would remind us--must be partners.

Partners, period.

Partnership in a dialogue means that the conversing partners are in equal footing.

With privileges given to the schizophrenic Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino--and with the people's taxes being used to prop it up all the time and with ideological state apparatuses (read: KWF, Deped, and ChEd) as reinforcing agencies in its continued dominance over all Philippine languages many of which are on the road to extinction, how can there be 'dialogue' here?

We have to make things clear here: the provision of the laws of the Philippines--laws that have lost their meaning in the contemporary need to redefine what is the Philippine nation state is--talks of Tagalog as the basis of the national language, not this penchant for 'slash/slash' as if inaugurating a naturalizing process for that grand deception especially when the unthinking masses are not looking.

The clue--and cue--here is 'basis' NOT slashing/slashing.

When a national language cannot even make up its mind what it is, and sporting a variety of names, what deception is coming in next except to repeat the lie a la Goebbels, yes, that agent of The Greatest Fascist of them all, until that lie becomes a truth, and until that 'a truth' becomes 'the truth.'

People talk about 'Filipino' as our 'sariling wika'. Sariling wika nino?

Here, we might as well change the Gospel.

FELIPENAS/