post-colonial linguistics; education; powerpoint

7/27/2019 post-colonial linguistics; education; powerpoint

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VERSITET

EEVA SIPPOLA

AARHUS

UNIVERSITET ARTS

SEPTEMBER 2, 2013

UNI

POSTCOLONIAL LINGUISTICSLecture 4

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LAST WEEK- Postcolonial world and linguistics

- Applied perspectives

–Critical sociolinguistics

– Van Dijk, Fairclough, Kress

– Politics, empowerment

– Linguistic rights and Linguistic human rights

–

Makoni, May, Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson

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WHERE TO START WITH THE LANGUAGE

COMMUNITY Find out the basic characteristics of the community

E.g. Number of speakers, language family, typological characteristics,language practices and situation (endangered, bi/multilingualism),education, history, prestige, other languages present in the communityetc. ...

See if you can find articles dealing with topics that interest you

E.g. If you are interested in ideologies, has it been written about?

Make a list of interesting and useful sources

Can you connect some aspects of the community easily with theconcepts and ideas of postcolonial theory (that interest you)?

Remember that for the learning diary, you have to focus onsomething, it will only be a 2-page commentary.

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TODAY Applied critical perspectives.... Continued

LHR

Education and literacy

Case studies

Language ideologies (online presentations for the interested)

What does critical applied lingusitics mean in thecontext of postcolonial linguistics?

Variation and contact in Spanish America

Variation and contact effects in Latin America

Spanish in the US

How colonialism and spread affected Spanish?

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LINGUISTIC HUMAN RIGHTS

since 1980s LHR is a term widely identifiedw/a certain school or approach to

language rights Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Miklós Kontra,

Stephen May, Robert Phillipson, etc.

LHR as a subset of human rights

Language as one basis for fundamental freedoms

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LINGUISTIC HUMAN RIGHTS Individual level with implications on the collective level

Positive identification to one‟s mother tongue

Right to... learn the mother tongue (at least in basic education)

use MT in official contexts

learn at least one official language in the country ofresidence

Connections to other HR‟s

Participation in official life, political representation, fair trial,access to education/information/freedom of speech,maintenance of the cultural heritage

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GLOBAL

NATIONAL

CLOSECOMMUNITY

LEVELS OF LHRs

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INDIVIDUAL

L1/ Mother tongue

L2/ Second language

LWC/ Foreign

language



LANGUAGE RIGHTS Recognized in international treaties which are

legal instruments, such as:

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,

International Covenant on Economic, Social andCultural Rights,

UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging toNational, Ethnic, Religious &Linguistic Minorities

European Convention on the Rights of NationalMinorities

Provisions related to language in nationalconstitutions

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THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION

OF LINGUISTIC RIGHTS Presented to UNESCO in 1996 w/the aim of

leading to a UN International Convention

Includes widely established legal rights: Art.20 Right to trial interpreting in one’s own

language

and aspirational LHRs:

Art. 3.2 calls for

“equitable presence

”in mass media

Art. 8 calls for resources to ensure lang.maintenance

Art. 17 calls for translation of all official documents

(P. Patrick)

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CONNECTING WITH PCL Linguistic diversity and minority languages often

seen as a problem through many currentlanguage ideologies

But in the academia, language diversity seen ascultural/economic resources for speakers

LHR view: language-as-a-right is a positive

approach to minority (self-)empowerment. LR view is held to be compatible w/resources

Both are opposed to language-as-problem view

(P.Patrick)

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MAKONI vs. MAY, SKUTNABB-KANGAS

& PHILLIPSON Makoni‟s main point:

LRs and HRs have to be contextualized and definedat site

In dialogical, political communication Emergence, dissemination, interpretation

Now the discourse on LR & HR is western conceptsand frameworks (citizen, ethnicity, community,individual, mother tongue, varieties)

The discourse does not meet the realities ofspeakers, languages or commercial contexts

Discrepancies: NGOs promoting plurality use thehegemonic discourse; African scholars implementhegemonic concepts; etc.

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LHR PERSPECTIVE

Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson respond: Contextualization at site:

Multilingualism is a complex issue

Languages are social realities

LRs always presuppose social interaction

Western concepts:

LR & HR relationships need to be addressed

Multidisciplinary approach is needed

Sociolinguistics and discourse studies

Law, history, social policy

Activism has had good results wrt. Language policies

Multilingual education (including L1) is beneficiary, asshown by several studies

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EDUCATION PERSPECTIVE

May responds: Ethical and epistemological implications of this

problematic are important

Language policy needs multiple methods on various levels

LR discourse is plural &sees language as flexible construct

Linguistic colonialism must be taken seriously

English in Africa, wrt. social class

Language dynamism is not merely an urban

concept Indigenous languages are highly dynamic and present

variation, both rural and urban

Dismissing L1 education creates real problems

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A BILINGUAL EDUCATION PROJECT IN

JAMAICAN CREOLE

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RESULTS IN JAMAICA(Carpenter & Devonish 2011)

BEP from 2004

Jamaican & English in Grades 1 to 6

Issues Lack of standard writing system

Lack of teaching materials (written)

Lack of public will to have children educated inJamaican

Home language / School language divide

Monoliterate Transitional Bilingualism as a norm

Tests: We Gried Chrii Pikni Kyan Dy Tes

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WE GRIED CHRII PIKNI KYAN DY TES(Carpenter & Devonish 2011)

Phonics, Listening comprehension, Structure/mechanics,Vocabulary, Study skill, Reading comprehension

Results show that BEP Jamaican pupils got the best results – but only marginally

Only in S/M and Phonics pupils studying in English got better results lack of reading materials in Jamaican

As early as the end of Year 3, the L2 performance (in English)of the BEP Jamaican pupils had begun to exceed that of

children only taught literacy in L2

In a communication task BEP Jamaican pupils scoredlower in Jamaican (but same as the peer group inEnglish) low amount of writing

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LANGUAGE & EDUCATION…when learning is the goal, including that oflearning a second language, the child’s firstlanguage (i.e. his or her mother tongue) should be

used as the medium of instruction in the early yearsof schooling. ... The first language is essential for theinitial teaching of reading, and for comprehensionof subject matter. It is the necessary foundation forthe cognitive development upon which acquisition

of the second language is based.

(Dutcher & Tucker 1996:36)

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LANGUAGE & EDUCATIONIn researching this report, we looked for programmeswhere the language of wider communication hadbeen used successfully for initial education. We did

NOT FIND ANY such examples in programmesaddressing underserved groups of the developingworld. This is not surprising. When parents are notliterate – and when children and adults never hear [thelanguage of wider communication] except in the

classroom, children are unable to learn, repeat their grades, and drop out of school before reaching Grade3 of the primary cycle.

(CAL 2001, 19-20)

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Learning in L1 does not hinder learning of L2

Learning in L1 helps learning of L2

Learning to read in L1 is easier and faster

What is learned in L1 transfers to L2

L1 allows students to learn curriculum content from thebeginning of formal education

Strong L1 helps students perform better in L2 academic

work L1 allows parents to participate more in their children‟s

education

Bilingual education (both L1 and L2) improves cognitivedevelopment

L1 helps teachers in assessing learning achievement Special support in learning L2 helps students become

bilingual

Relevant strategies support students to become bilingualand biliterate

(Kosonen 2005:90-92)



CONTENT & LANGUAGE INTEGRATED

LEARNING'CLIL refers to situations where subjects, or parts ofsubjects, are taught through a foreign languagewith dual-focussed aims, namely the learning of

content, and the simultaneous learning of a foreignlanguage'. (Marsh, 1994)

This approach involves learning subjects such ashistory, geography or others, through an additional

language. It can be very successful in enhancingthe learning of languages and other subjects, anddeveloping in the youngsters a positive „can do‟ attitude towards themselves as language learners.(Marsh, 2000)

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CREOLES IN EDUCATION Which factors have hampered the integration of

pidgins and creoles into the education domain?

What kind of education programs are there for pidgins and creoles?

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Discuss with your group, list at least 3 factors, writethem on the blackboard

List at least 3 programs and give examples ofthem



SHARE YOUR PCLP FINDINGS Discuss with your group does your postcolonial

language community have similar issues to dealwith?

If yes, which issues? If not, why?

Share a couple of examples with the rest of us

Can we make a common ground for language

in education in postcolonial settings? Are there similarities or are all the settings particular

and unique?

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CONCLUSIONS TO APPLIEDPERSPECTIVES (based on Hornberger 2012)

Several approaches, data and methods

CDA, ethnography, language and education

texts, discourses, practices document collecton, observation, recording, elicitation

Interpretative, inductive vs. patterns, understanding

Reach for the local point of view, but at the same time, we

must create a whole picture!

Subjective involvement of the researcher in mediatingbetween tehory and data

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CONCLUSIONS TO APPLIED, CRITICALPERSPECTIVES (based on Hornberger 2012)

Critical ethnography:

”…you look at local context and meaning, just like we always have, but then you ask,why are things this way? What power, whatinterests, wrap this local world so tight that it

feels like the natural order of things to itsinhabitants?”

(Agar 1996:26)

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SPANISH IN AMERICA

Nro 2 by native speakers

~400 million

spread closely connected with colonialism

In America

native languages

slaves

other immigrant languages

Contact induced change and independentdevelopments in the new world

Flux of immigrants, several layers of contacts

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DIALECTAL FEATURES

Great variation, both geographically and socially

routes of migration

Connections to dialectal zones in Spain

Andalucían traits and others, note, not only in America

seseo

aspiration of /h/

verbal forms and pronouns (ustedes, voseo, simple past)

Correspondances to Portuguese in Brazil levelling and“simplification”

Contact phenomena mostly in lexicon

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MISSING SPANISH CREOLES

Why only Media lengua (mixed language in the Andes) andPalenquero (afro-Spanish creole, Colombia)?

no Spanish presence in the African coast

(1778 Tratado de San Ildefonso (1777) y El Pardo (1778) EquatorialGuinea, but really from 1850‟s)

Social structure in the Spanish Americas (Granda 1978)

Abolition of slavery that lead to transculturation (Granda 1978)

Plantation model of the Spanish differed from the Caribbean

Spanish occupied territories that were already usingPortuguese based contact varieties

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WHAT KIND OF VARIATION?

Common cases of contact induced change:

lexical borrowing

calquing

semantic convergence

Non prototypical cases presented in Lipski

What are they?

What kind of features and ideologies areconstrued based on the different varieties?

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ANDEAN SPANISH

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ANDEAN SPANISH

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SPANISH SPEAKERS IN US

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SPANISH SPEAKERS IN US

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Language shift Spa Eng

2nd generation

As many other immigrant communities in the US

Nordic languages

Contact with new immigrants and LatinAmerican popular culture

Negative correlation, esp. previously Older generations NY, Puerto Ricans

In the South-West, maintenance correlates witheducation level



TRANSITONAL BILINGUALS

Vestigial communities and heritage languagespeakers (losislenos.org, Sabino River Spanish)

Assymmetrical conversation

Passive knowledge

Spanish as a home language

No schooling in Spa, no reading/writing

Features

Instable inflection, variation in verb conjugation,article use,

Nonstandard prepositions

exaggerated use of subject pronouns, backwardanaphora

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SPANGLISH

Group work: Define Spanglish. 3min

Write on the blakboard

1. Who speaks it?

2. Where can it be heard?

3. What kind of mechanisms of borrowing areincluded?

4. In which contexts it is NOT likely to find switches

between codes?

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SPANGLISH

No universally accepted definition.

Use of Anglicisims (integrated and nonassimilated)

Loan translations and syntactic calques

perro caliente „hot dog‟, llamar para atrás „callback ‟

Code switching, intrasententially

Codes that show signs of language attrition

Second language learner varieties Junk Spanish

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CODE SWITCHING

Fluent bilingual speakers

Switch points, normally acceptable

Article – noun

Complement – subordinate clause

Conjunct – one of the conjuncts

Normally unacceptable

Pronoun subject – predicate

Pronoun clitic – verb

Sentence initial interrogative and remaining sentence

Auxiliar (esp. haber) – main verb

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EXERCISEFind a representation of you PCL community and try to make aninitial analysis of it

What kind of representation is it? Who is theaudience?

text, video, humor, official text?

What is the context?

How can you identify linguistic agents in therepresentation or sample you are studying?

Explicit context, grammatical level, turn taking (ifconversation)

Can you think about a more specific analyticaltool that would be suitable for thedeconstruction and analysis of this sample?

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