bilingual interactions

Tue Aug 23 03:14:17 UTC 2011

Hi all,

I loved this thread, both the messages about definitions and sources and the
examples (like Nancy's from UN in East Timor).  I'm reading it in a warnet
in upland Indonesia after spending time in a village.  Thinking about these
multiple repertoires from a non-monoglot-oriented perspective is really
fruitful, both in the village (influenced by labor migration) and in town
(influenced by tourism, especially European).  Thanks to all for the little
gems of internet-mediated wisdom.  :-)

Liz Coville
Dept Sociology & Anthropology
Carleton College

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 10:00 AM, Elizabeth Spreng <elispreng at aol.com>wrote:

> 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
> >>>>
> >
>
>
>
> --
>