The art exhibition, which draws on the theme of home and language, is the result of a series of 20 workshops organised by Dr Liao and the Edinburgh & Lothians Regional Equality Council (ELREC) and funded by the RSE.
“I grew up in Taiwan, but have been living in Scotland for 23 years now,” Dr Liao remarks.
“My work is mainly about how languages move across cultures, but I also work with the local community and people who speak different languages.
Dr Liao led the series of workshops. (Image: NQ)
“And I think it’s probably often underestimated how multilingual the city is.”
A number of languages were represented over the series of workshops, including Arabic, Cantonese, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, and Persian.
Refugees and migrants from around the world, as well as multicultural Edinburgh residents, came together to speak about language, but also to draw and paint.
“I had all this academic thought about what I wanted to research, but I didn’t want to use them as research subjects,” Dr Liao says of her participation. “I want them to do things that they would [normally] do, rather than because I want to research that.
“We provide a nice environment; tea, coffee, refreshments, and people just come and we talk a bit. And then people just do whatever they want to do and we’ll provide different kinds of drawing materials depending on how skillful they are. They can draw with pencil on paper or watercolor on canvas.
“We just let the languages flow and people are not judged by their English ability or whatever. If people are talkative, we talk, and in some sessions nobody talks at all and that’s totally fine as well.”
Are there any paintings in the exhibition that particularly stood out?
“Some paintings are very happy, they are expressing their happy feelings about mother languages,” she says. “A lot of them have to do with home and also castles.
“A castle is stable,” Dr Liao explains, “And that’s how people think about languages, their first languages.”
However, the more challenging side of multilingualism is also apparent in the artwork.
The workshops helped to bring different communities together. (Image: RSE)
“Several people drew a person being like a prisoner,” the linguist says. “That’s how people feel when they speak English.
“Those two participants I remember clearly didn’t speak English much, but they found a way to express feelings that they wouldn’t be able to explain verbally.”
Too many people think they are monolingual, Dr Liao remarks, when actually they use multilingual thinking everyday.
Adopting a multilingual mindset can help to ease tension and unite people from the dominant language group with those from smaller groups, she adds.
“Even living just in Edinburgh, every day you see shop signs in different languages.
So I think many people don’t realize they are multilingual.
“And if you don’t restrict yourself to this monolingual model, you open up a bit.
“If you think of yourself in that way, then you’re not much different from these people coming to Scotland who speak a few words of English. It’s just like you, isn’t it?
“So then you don’t have to worry about how to approach them. Because we’re essentially all the same.”
Thousands of people gathered on Leith Walk following an allegedly anti-Muslim stabbing in Edinburgh earlier this year. (Image: Stand up to Racism Scotland)
On one occasion, Dr Liao explains how the group took a long walk down Leith Walk and spoke about the numerous shop signs in different languages.
“Everyone’s an expert because we all know different languages,” she says.
“Very often people come here, like myself, thinking that their English is not good enough.
“But it’s not just English. There’s so many other languages.
“After two hours walking on the street,” she recalls, “I remember a lovely Arabic-speaking girl saying that she did not realise that some of the signs were not in Eglish.
“She thought there were so many English words she didn’t understand. And now she understands that those were Japanese words or Mandarin words.”
“Edinburgh is multicultural and everyone knows a bit of it,” Dr Liao adds. “And we, living here, we are part of it as well. We own the city and we know a part of the city nobody else knows.”
“I think language is such an important part of our life,” reflects Dr Liao.
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“I mean, every moment we are talking, we’re using it, but some people don’t reflect so much about the languages we are using.
“I think the languages we use and the languages other people use are so important in our life. It’s just like, you cherish a book, you cherish language itself as well.”
Language is inescapable. It consumes our daily lives and often dictates our destiny.
Breaking down barriers to learning English in refugee and migrant communities is an essential aspect of effective cultural integration.
Yet, it goes beyond that.
It is incumbent on all of us to open our minds and embrace the newcomer and stranger, no matter what language they speak or how many English words they can say.
The Curious festival is running between September 5 and September 13 at the Royal Society of Edinburgh on George Streetww.