bilingual interactions

Tue Aug 23 03:00:47 UTC 2011

I heartily concur with Colleen. While working on a syllabus for next semester, I found a great piece that follows along the lines of Romaine's critique. This piece about academics' use of English also makes me think about our own roles in these thorny aspects of social relations. Here is the link to it and I think my students will like it so I wanted to share with it with my colleagues on the internet.

http://web.natur.cuni.cz/~simon1/Robert_Hassink--Its_the_language,_stupid_On_emotions,_strategies,_and_consequences_related_to_the_use_of_one_language_to_describe_and_explain_a_diverse_world.html 

As  a person who works with endangered language speakers in Germany, I have also encountered similar dynamics of non-reciprocal bilingualism/asymmetric bilingualism and issues of accommodation. It just reminds me that we still have  a lot of work to do as scholars and educators to help non-ling-anthers  explore the reasons why people do what they do with multiple repertoires. 

Elizabeth Spreng
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work
208 Waters Hall
Manhattan, KS

785-532-4981
spreng at ksu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Linguistic Anthropology Discussion Group [mailto:LINGANTH at listserv.linguistlist.org] On Behalf Of Colleen Cotter
Sent: Monday, August 22, 2011 6:57 PM
To: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: bilingual interactions

Just happened to run across these issues of classification/identification, theoretically and descriptively, in Suzanne Romaine's 2010 chapter on language contact in Potowski, ed.  
Language Diversity in the USA, CUP.

She cites the "predominantly monolingual orientation of linguistic theory" (p. 28) dating to Bloomfield and Weinreich, and the "hegemony of monolingual ideologies" (p. 29) on the policy front, as problematic, particularly when characterizing contact issues in communities and language mixing in actual speakers.

She problematizes the "prescriptive" notion of the "balanced bilingual" and fact that "real-world bilinguals" (p. 29) seldom exhibit fluency in all contexts all the time. She notes that educators and linguists would be better served to focus on social context and function (as ling-anthers do as a matter of course) when characterizing competence and dominance.

May I also recommend Potowski's book for a comprehensive account of Languages of Other than English in the US.

Colleen Cotter
Linguistics Department
School of Languages, Linguistics and Film Queen Mary, University of London London E1 4NS UK

Quoting Celso Alvarez Cáccamo <lxalvarz at UDC.ES>:

> I think Susan Gal (in Language Shift, 1979; also perhaps in "Peasant  
>  men can't get wives", 1978) called this pattern "unreciprocal   
> language choice", about the times of Kit Woolard's "bilingual norm"   
> and of Monica Heller's "negotiation" of language choices (related).   
> Regardless of labels, it's clear they/you all were into something   
> and the same. I don't have my rusty notes with me, but I believe   
> that from a social-psycholinguistic perspective (Scherer and Giles,   
> eds., Social Markers in Speech) it has been called "divergence", a   
> sort of a misnomer, as non-reciprocal "language" usages ("choices")   
> may indicate the opposite ("convergence", that is, reciprocal   
> tuning) at a deeper, fundamental coding level of human   
> communication: that of speaking the same language (yes, with   
> different words and grammar, but so what?). Please excuse so many   
> distancing quotation marks, but...
>
> -celso
>
> Celso Alvarez Cáccamo
>
> Em 22/08/2011, às 23:48, Lauren Zentz <laurenzentz at GMAIL.COM> escreveu:
>
>> I think I may have heard it called somewhere "non-reciprocal 
>> bilingualism"...?  Like Kit, however, the citation eludes me...
>>
>> Lauren Zentz
>> Doctoral Candidate, Language, Reading, and Culture Department of 
>> Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies University of Arizona
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 2:45 PM, Chelsea Booth   
>> <chelsealbooth at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> This happens where I've done my work (Darjeeling, West Bengal, 
>>> India), most often with Nepali, Hindi, Bengali, and English.
>>>
>>> Chelsea
>>>
>>>
>>> *Chelsea L. Booth, Ph.D.*
>>>
>>> Presidential Management Fellow / Public Health Advisor****
>>>
>>> Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Adminitration 
>>> (SAMHSA)****
>>>
>>> On rotation: Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)****
>>>
>>> Division of Prevention, Traumatic Stress & Special Programs, Suicide 
>>> Prevention Branch****
>>>
>>> Suicide Prevention Branch, State/Tribal****
>>>
>>> 1 Choke Cherry Road, 6-1094****
>>>
>>> Rockville, MD 20857****
>>>
>>> Phone: (240) 276-1834****
>>>
>>> chelsea.booth at samhsa.hhs.gov
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 5:22 PM, Woolard, Kathryn 
>>> <kwoolard at ucsd.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Rudi -
>>>>
>>>> This practice has been advocated  by some policymakers in Catalonia 
>>>> over the last couple decades, since autonomy was established in 
>>>> 1979. I wrote about it as "the bilingual norm"  in my 1989 book, Double Talk (pp.
>>>> 77-80). I think I've used other terms elsewhere - maybe "passive
>>> bilingual
>>>> conversations"? - and others have written about it in Catalonia, 
>>>> too, though again I can't recall a settled term.  I recently saw a 
>>>> comment on the practice elsewhere, but darned if I can remember where...
>>>>
>>>> Kit
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: "Gaudio, Rudolf" <Rudolf.Gaudio at PURCHASE.EDU>
>>>> Reply-To: "Gaudio, Rudolf" <Rudolf.Gaudio at PURCHASE.EDU>
>>>> Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:06:40 -0400
>>>> To: "LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG"
>>>> <LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
>>>> Subject: bilingual interactions
>>>>
>>>>> Dear colleagues:
>>>>>
>>>>> What do you/we call it when a conversation unfolds in which 
>>>>> Speaker A speaks to Speaker B in one language (X-ish), and Speaker 
>>>>> B responds in another (Y-ish)? The assumption is that both 
>>>>> speakers have at least some passive competence in the other's language.
>>>>>
>>>>> And do you know of any scholarship on this phenomenon?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for your help.
>>>>>
>>>>> -Rudi
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Rudolf P. Gaudio
>>>>> Associate Professor of Anthropology and Media, Society & the Arts 
>>>>> Purchase College, State University of New York
>>>>> 735 Anderson Hill Rd.
>>>>> Purchase, NY 10577
>>>>>
>>>>> tel. +1 914 251 6619
>>>>> fax +1 914 251 6603
>>>>> rudolf.gaudio at purchase.edu
>>>>
>

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