Your shoes are really cute!

The opening line to a girl-versation.  It may or may not be what the speaker was thinking, but opens a line of conversation that can be followed-up with any number of other topics.  So why then would someone choose to open a conversation about class work with a statement about shoes?

It may be easier for women to begin communication through a compliment or a communal statement of acceptance.  This can read into all sorts of implicit ideals relating to culture and gender that do not cross the speaker's mind when using such a conversational tactic.

However, as a NNS, such interactive practices are not obvious and may not make sense.  Interpreting such implicature in the culturally-related settings takes time and investment on the part of the multilingual learner.  Just as Norton suggests in her 1995 article on context and language learning, in addition to language classes, learners need support to navigate the social aspects of language use.

Different phrases and formations serve different pragmatic functions:
Whereas, 'nice shoes', may allow a complete stranger friendly access to another speaker in order to talk about more in-depth topics, 'can I help you?' is the sort of statement placing the listener with a certain power to demand information or a table for two and a burger.  Statements carry different pragmatic information and must be learned through practice.

Hall, in a similar fashion to Norton, focuses on the need to help learners notice the differing pragmatic uses of language.  She then proposes methods for allowing structured practice of these paradigms.

Unlike Norton, Hall leaves less opportunity for the student to hold power as the researcher, and I therefore see her method as basic.  It can be useful for limited functions of discourse, but when it comes to analyzing vastly differing or strange results to the same phrase, Norton's Classroom Based Social Research pulls ahead.

Imagine you run into the following situations:

You are in class and someone next to you asks, "do you have the time?"
You look at your phone then reply, "it is 10 o'clock".
The person replies, "thanks".

You are walking down the street and a man asks, "do you have the time?"
You take out your phone and before you have a chance to respond, the man grabs your phone and takes off running.

You (a girl) are walking down the street (in a city in France) and a man asks, "Pardon, quelle heure est-il?"
You respond, "il est 10 heures".
He responds, "Merci jolie, vous vous appelez comment?"

Each of these three situations propose nearly the same question but lead to vastly different responses and situations.  It is due to such great, and somewhat disturbing, differences that the study of  prosaics of interaction for language learners is so important.  It is also due to such great differences that Hall's suggestions of creating classroom set-ups to introduce topics can only be a stepping stone in the right direction.  In order to empower and invest students in a language, they themselves must pose the questions and become the cultural reporters.

Grab your Code Switchers folks! We're going to make a Culture Pie!

People move for opportunity.  America was once, and still is for some, the land of opportunity.  But what happens when the opportunities presented don't align themselves with the goals, beliefs, roles, and attitudes of a person's first culture?  A person might do their best to assimilate.  A person might do their best to cling to pieces of the 'old world'.  A person might find him/herself stuck in the 'old world' while their future generations belong to the 'new world', creating a rift and lack of understanding between cultures.

Caroline: I hate that, that they want to know my baby's sex.
Victoria: Who does?
C: My mom, and Aaron's parents.
V: A lot of people do.
C: But what for?  So they can buy me pink or blue clothes and barbies and cars?  I don't want my baby to be gender stereotyped.
V: I feel you.  Plus people should be buying you white onesies to start... you can wash them on hot with a little bleach after all the vomit and poop!
Silvestre: Yeah, like my aunt and uncle, when my niece was born, they bought her a play set with a broom and vacuum.  Then when she started to play sweep the floor, my uncle commented that her instincts were kicking in!
C: I really hate that!

What we say can really describe a lot about what we believe.  Reading between the lines of Young Ju's father in An Na's A Step From Heaven is that he firmly believed in the roles one was to play in the house.  Korean should be spoken in the house, a man should not cry, a woman should take care of the children and not question her husband's choices.  Young Ju, like my roommate Caroline, believes in the equality that is taught in the U.S. school systems currently.  Also like Young Ju, she speaks another language in the home from that of the language of school and business.  Like codeswitching with language, both she and the characters of this book must use certain aspects of their cultures in certain situations, drawing on different terms and attitudes from two or more different cultures to create and display their sense of self in relation to those around them.

The force behind this striking narrative of a girl, feet on two sides of an ocean, really touched me.  She holds so many roles: daughter, big sister, babysitter, punching bag, student... and although she has come to the land of opportunity, she struggles more than ever for her life and happiness.  She is a dreamer that must uphold the male-led societal honor of her grandparents' country and culture.  She is powerless against the anger of her father who is powerless against the bureaucratic practices of the residency system.

The parallels between Kang's article and An Na's novel touch on a similar topic:  that of language as a carrier of culture.  However, supporting a language through use in the home and enforcing a language through use in the home create very different relationships for the children born into such multilingual worlds.

Acceptance and appreciation of the child for the language in the home means that it will either be cherished and passed down, or neglected and hated, and lost to all future generations.

Today we will have an opportunity to speak with Dr. Kang.  Two questions I would like to discuss with her in relation to this week's readings:

1)  In your experience with codeswitching in the home, do you find that imbedding an English word into a Korean sentence leads to less English in a response from a child than does ending a sentence or providing a correction in English?  (aka, the last word heard prompts a response in that language?)

2) How do you feel emotion comes into play with reception and willingness of children to accept bilingualism?  Do you feel that the family dynamic and positive treatment of bilingualism and multiculturalism are an important factor in a child's advancement in a home language?

2.1) And reading/writing for children over the age of 6... how do you see this as a factor?  Does encouraging bilingual literacy in the home help or hurt children as students of two languages?

What do you mean 'you don't eat no meat'?!

What we say as a representation of who we are.  What we do represents how we want to be seen.  Some people say that actions speak louder than words.  It may also be true that we have a chance to think before we act, whereas words spill out before we have a chance to filter them.

But what of a second language?  How do we express ourselves, and can we even be the same people, in a language that we have not mastered?
In the case of the post title, what if our self representations don't match with a language-culture into which we are assimilating?  (Thinking that we all speak English, but Greek-American, Jewish-American, African-American, French-American... everyone has their own individual cultural vernacular and expectations)

So what happens when we don't fit in to what others expect of us?
Shame.

Borrowed from Pike (2012) - aka me two semesters ago:

            The relationship between the L2 learner and the L2 society and culture is more complicated than a dichotomy of learner and learner environment would suggest.  As each person’s L1 social identity does not include the L2 contexts, s/he must constantly acquire both language and social context to form his/her schemata.  Furthermore, the relationship between the learner and the environment is constantly being manipulated by “power.” This plays a role in guiding the circumstances under which L2 learners will accept and resist conforming to L2 aspects. 

            The author discusses Krashen’s concepts of low affective filter combined with comprehensible input and scaffolding as a means of acquiring a second language.  When anxiety mounts, as could be the case in the first anecdote presented regarding an ELL and a native speaker surrounding the well-known character Bart Simpson in which the ELL was made to feel unacceptably ignorant for not knowing this television persona, a second language learner’s motivation may come second to their emotions and s/he may cut off from the language and cultural interactions.  In such a situation, the native speaker demonstrated a sort of pop-cultural power over her counterpart, the ELL, which became a cause of anxiety rather than a learning moment.  The author, Bonny Norton Peirce, remarks that “the relationship between the language learner and the social world is problematic” (12).  It is for this reason that Peirce proposes that motivation and social context combine forming a student’s “investment”.  She expresses that due to the power of native interlocuters to guide interaction and the power of the L2 cultural context to guide emotions and norms, the L2 learner’s motivation can at no point be viewed as a separate controlling factor and must be taken into consideration with the language learning context.

            The challenges posed to adult immigrants regarding this power struggle involve the adult’s sense of control and dignity.  When faced with the notion that s/he is viewed as lesser or under the control of another adult in a situation, the adult learner’s anxiety and affective filter will rise.  Where children are used to being told how to complete tasks and view events in their environment, adults feel they are past that point in life and need the respect of those surrounding them, otherwise they react negatively.  This negative reaction studied in Peirce’s article is the refusal to use the L2: English.

            L2 learners, including those in this study, are “not only exchanging information with target language speakers but they are constantly organizing and reorganizing a sense of who they are and how they relate to the social world” (18).  This means that when Eva, from the anecdote, feels that another woman is acting negatively towards her, she will in turn feel negatively towards the social world in which she finds herself.  If Eva believes that she is perceived as ‘ignorant’ or ‘lacking’ within her social context, her motivation to practice English will be outweighed by her investment which reduces her desire to speak.  Her investment keeps her in the social context as a learner, but reduces the opportunities that she will be viewed as the lesser power in social relationships, as she avoids producing speech that might be criticized by native English-speaking peers.

            On the other hand, Martina’s story presents another form of investment.  The struggle she faced meant that she could not choose silence in the face of adversity; she had to voice concerns and continue to develop her language skills as a mother, a worker, and a wife to a family which relied on her income and determination.  “Her courage to resist marginalization” (22) meant that Martina’s challenging social context only lead her to further succeed and allowed her to reframe the power relationships in her head.  Rather than seeing herself as an outcast in society, as a powerless adult in dealings with native speakers, she saw herself as a parent who was responsible for her family and her children.  She was the supporter and leader of her household and would not allow herself to be seen as less.  In doing so, she “claimed the right to speak” (23).

I am currently looking at a lot of wedding materials (being a bridesmaid in two upcoming weddings).  Norton (2010) discusses five ways in which the language classroom must come to better terms with all students in regards to identity.

It almost seems as if teachers must be behind the times if articles such as this are only recently being published and read in academic settings (can we say that the average language teacher, over the age of 25 and in an established classroom has read this research?), while mass marketing in the holy and coveted world of the sacred union which is marriage (can you sense my hint of sarcasm through the computer screen?) seems to have picked up on the money to be made in the LGBT world and is catering to more communities than language textbooks!!!

In many ways this is very upsetting: does it need to be about money for the varying identities of the world to be treated as equals?  Or is it just that greed makes this process move more quickly?