'In', 'for', or 'with'?

[Susan Penfield]

While I appreciate all of this discussion, I just want to clarify one thing
related to the 'in', 'with' and 'for' concept -- When I said 'for' -- (and I
add this so that there will be no more polysemy read into it) -- I was
simply trying to say that linguists today (unlike the way I was trained
many, many years ago) need to think of themselve as being in service to the
community (therefore not only working 'with' but also working 'for' and
toward community-based concerns -- as a priority ) --- I know -- there are
still the academic responsibilities we all have to deal with -- but I really
think the mind set -- for training those just going into the field -- is
important to establish and consider. Which is not to say that there aren't
many other considerations (i.e. as we see in Decolonizing Methodologies) as
well.
Best,
Susan


On 1/16/06, Cunliffe D J (Comp) <djcunlif at glam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I think there is something in this conversation that strikes to the
> heart of what we (or most of us I guess) are trying to achieve.
>
> Annie Ross wrote about the artificiality of borders between people and
> that "...academic life likes to teach us academics that we
> are somehow different (smarter, more this or that), but we are not.  if
> we
> all knew that, there would be fewer problems. ... there is no 'insider'
> ther is no 'outsider'.  that is the big secret."
>
> While I am entirely happy to accept that academics aren't smarter etc,
> (guess who spent 45 minutes walking around Bristol Airport car park in
> the rain in the dark on Sunday night because he hadn't thought to make a
> note of where he parked the car!) I really think that there are some
> important issues around the insider / outsider boundary. If we fail to
> recognise and manage these issues then at best our efforts will have no
> effect, and at worse will cause damage.
>
> As an Englishman living and working in Wales and as a non-Welsh speaker
> (practically) working with the Welsh language, I recognise that I am
> 'outside' along several dimensions. Whilst I am happy to accept the
> label "incomer", hopefully I have managed to avoid being branded as an
> outright colonist.
>
> No matter how long I live in Wales, or how good my Welsh becomes (I
> wish!) I cannot ever foresee a time in which I would actually BE Welsh -
> either in my own mind or the minds of others.
>
> To my mind the best I can do is to recognise this and to try to identify
> appropriate ways of managing it.
>
> Being a simple computer person, my preference is for simple practical
> guidelines like those contained in (part of) Decolonizing Methodologies
> rather than high brow discussions of the need to re-radicalise the
> post-colonial agenda within the post-modern neo-liberal context (hmmm...
> can't help feeling that I ought to have included feminism in there
> somewhere...)
>
> Be seeing you,
>
> Daniel.
>



--
Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D.

Department of English
Affiliate faculty: Department of Linguistics
and the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Program
American Indian Language Development Institute
Phone for messages: (520) 621-1836
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ilat/attachments/20060116/7dd68f7c/attachment.htm>