Code-switching

STAR World is an English language channel providing mostly American television to Asia. It is broadcast to China, Singapore, Indonesia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Middle East, Malaysia, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Myanmar and Bangladesh. STAR World is owned by News Corp., the same HUGE media conglomerate that is run by Rupert Murdoch and owns others like Disney, Fox and Time Warner¹.

Though neither of us are big TV watchers when we are home, for us, STAR World is a nice break from China.  It has shows that we are familiar with, even if we wouldn't normally watch them in the US, and that are in English. We even get exposed to shows like Junior Masterchef Australia, which I have come to love.  The style of the channel is very different from US television channels. While in the US, usually for an hour show there is 47-53 minutes of show and the rest is taken up with 4-5 commercial breaks sprinkled throughout the show. I always assumed that because STAR World was spread across such a vast geographic area that they were unable to focus advertisements, therefore, the amount of breaks for shows were cut in half. When there were breaks they would usually be 2-3 ads for other shows coming up and then 1-2 that were for Colgate or something and had general Southeast Asian actors.  This was nice because you get more show and fewer commercials. But now things are different.

STAR World was recently named the Highest Rated...Female-Oriented Channel...in the Philippines! ::applause::

When they first started advertising this, on STAR World, we were laughing about it. They have a whole montage of all their shows and they have graphics saying "Thank you" in 25 languages, and even shots from the Philippines winning some big beauty pageant. It started with just this commercial, at least once in every commercial break. Then the shows started being sponsored, something that was never shown before: "Glee Season 2 is brought to you by Greenwich Pizza, the most popular pizza of the Philippines". Okay, that's cool. Then the commercials started changing. No more of the Colgate commercials that I had memorize from seeing them so many times, instead a Dove commercial for whitening deodorant. (Whitening soaps are very common in Southeast Asia, however since we have been mostly in more northern China, they haven't been prevalent).  Then it happened, Ben and I were watching television and a commercial break came. Apparently for some men's cologne or aftershave, it might have even been mouthwash, the man was clearly Southeast Asian and as he was speaking we became very confused. It was as if I could understand him, but I couldn't. I questioned what he was speaking, what I spoke, did I even know English, I just didn't know anymore. When it was over Ben and I looked at each other and asked "Was he speaking English?" This started happening with more and more commercials. We finally were able to piece together that there were certainly English words in the commercials, but they were not in English, they were definitely in another language. That language was Filipino or Tagalog, well kind of, let me explain.  I assume that you have all heard of "Spanglish", hopefully you have seen the film as it is good. Spanglish is an example of code-switching. A speaker who knows two languages, switches in between the two while speaking, most commonly just using the first form of the word that comes to mind, no matter the language. Tagalog is the non-standardized form of Filipino. Filipino and English are both official languages of the Philippines, therefore, Taglish or Englog is very commonly spoken there. Here is an example²:

Magshoshopping kami sa mall. Sino ba ang magdadrive sa shopping center?

We will go shopping at the mall. Who will drive to the shopping center?

See how confusing that can be? Now, all shows are sponsored by companies in the Philippines and the commercials are almost entirely in Filipino/Tagalog or Taglish. It is not that I care about the loss of Colgate commercials, I mean who can like a company that makes Wisps, but it's that Fox has done exactly what a large media corporation should do in this situation. They have been told the Philippines is watching them, so they have decidedly switched entirely over to targeting only them. By doing this I feel they have alienated the entire rest of the market. The Philippines is only one of the countries STAR World broadcasts to. Of course this doesn't affect me all that much, but if I was a resident of any of the other countries I wouldn't give a crap if Greenwich pizza is the best in the Philippines, I'm not there and I am not Filipino. This is obviously one of the lesser of the enumerable evils by News Corp., but it is still something to think about. Thanks Fox, at least now I know more about code-switching than I ever thought. Below is a great example of the commercials with code-switching in the Philippines.