bilingual interactions

Wed Aug 24 15:17:00 UTC 2011

Dear all:

Below is my first attempt at at edit of this great conversation on bilingual
conversations for the SLA blog.  I have cut out our epistilatory greetings
and sign offs as well as emoticons and some other conversational framings
but have left most of the rest of the responses intact.  The line breaks
still need some work.

Let me know if this works for you.  Rudi, if you do a bibliography from all
these suggestions, that can easily be posted as a separate blog post.

all best,

Leila

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?

Rudolf P. Gaudio

---

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...

Kathryn Woolard

---

This happens where I've done my work (Darjeeling, West Bengal, India), most
often with Nepali, Hindi, Bengali, and English.

Chelsea L. Booth

---

I think I may have heard it called "non-reciprocal

Bilingualism.”

Lauren Zentz

---

Laada Bilaniuk has written about it as "non-accommodating bilingualism." One
reference is her 2005 "Contested Tongues: Language politics and cultural
correction in Ukraine." Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. Another is the sidebar she
wrote for my intro textbook, "The Anthropology of Language" (2008
Cengage/Wadsworth).

Harriet Ottenheimer

---

There is a 2007 European volume on receptive multilingualism that addresses
this phenomenon. (I've recently been informed by my Sociolinguistics
colleagues that "receptive" is the preferred term for this form of
bilingualism in their camp, as "passive" seems to downplay the complexity of
comprehension.) The aforementioned volume highlights two-way receptive
bilingual situations, such as the one that you describe, as a desired model
of multilingualism and multiculturalism that is promoted throughout Europe
(notwithstanding increasing attacks on multiculturalism):

http://www.amazon.com/Receptive-Multilingualism-Linguistic-analyses-language/dp/9027219265

http://benjamins.com/catalog/hsm.6?sa=1

Jonathan Rosa

---

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 Alvarez Cáccamo

---

When I went to Bolivia in December 2010, it was interesting to listen to
people from my group (A) speak in English to person B, who translated the
English to Spanish to person C. Person C translated Spanish to Quechua, to
Person D. Then it went in reverse, Person D spoke Quechua to C; C translated
Quechua to Spanish for person B; person B translated from Spanish to English
for us, People A. It was so cool to see this, and is probably quite common
in Bolivia, but it made me wonder what the longest "chain" of languages
might be in the world. Does anyone have any idea?

Teresa Phipps Lane

---

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

---

 This is also very common in UN Peacekeeping missions where you have people
working for the UN from all over the world. Even though Peacekeeping
missions have an official language (English or French, depending on the
mission) for use in all official settings, in more informal settings where
people were tired, you would often find multilingual groups, where people
had some knowledge of various languages, but were too tired to actually try
to produce appropriate language replies. In my experience, it was very
common in East Timor, for example, to have a group of people speaking
English, French, and Portuguese, with the person speaking their native
language, and others replying in their own native languages. For most, it
was far easier to understand than to try to speak in that language,
especially if you're tired (or drinking) so this actually seemed to work out
quite well.

Nancy Lutz

---

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

---

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

---

I agree that this is a very interesting thread, with several good examples.
The one thing I would add is it's important to specify what kind of boundary
the participants understand themselves to be talking over, when deciding on
a term (accomodation, asymmetric bilingualism, etc). That is, the
communication pattern described by Rudi is very common inter-generationally
among immigrant families (e.g., children speak English, parents answer in
Spanish or other), which is very different than the peace-keepers described
by Nancy, or from Jean Jackson's example from the Vaupes (I believe there
was such bilingual communication in her description, perhaps I'm
mis-remembering; that's in Bauman and Sherzer's volume "Explorations in the
Ethnography of Speaking" from 1974, and there's a follow-up somewhere from
the nineties).

The other point to keep in mind is that in a stable situation, the varieties
generally converge in many ways that participants aren't necessarily aware
of, even if they hold these varieties to be distinct "languages." How the
varieties are maintained distinct, and enregistered as emblems, is linked in
some sense to the kind of boundary that is being signaled.

Alejandro Paz

---

 I was thinking of different examples and the differences in situation,
motive, personalities etc. Inspired by Nancy's example, I wondered about
that particular kind of situation, frequent in my experience, more about
international colleagues working together on some project. And so why
wouldn't it happen with some frequency that two people with different L1s
and some competence in the other's L1 as their L2 sometimes talk their own
L1s to each other?

If it's true that L1 acquisition and L2 learning both show that at any point
in the process comprehension outpaces production, and if I remember right
that the preferred direction for simultaneous interpretation is L2 to L1 ...

And if there's a lot of space in that massive excluded middle between
"doesn't speak L2" and "speaks L2" so that it's normal and frequent for a
person using L2 to have what the Austrians call "Sprachmuedigkeit" or
"language/speech tiredness"...

And if nothing in the interpersonal and situational constraints  on
communication of the moment prevent it ...

Why wouldn't it happen that two people would figure out that they could both
talk in their L1, use less energy, and drink more? Perhaps this version
could even be about removing boundaries.

And having figured that out once, why wouldn't they go forth and suggest it
in other encounters, L2 comprehension ability and situational constraints
permitting?

Mike Agar

---

To continue the thread, it also strikes me that this kind of asymmetric
bilingualism could be about respect--about self respect (my language/way of
speaking is good, I can speak it and not accommodate to the other) and
respecting the other (his/her language [variant] is perfectly fine and I can
understand what I'm hearing). I take this from what I remember of Laada
Bilaniuk's nice book on Ukraine, as well as the articles on Vaupes (Sorensen
as well as Jackson). I have also had similar accounts from indigenous people
in Kamchatka. In the last case, where respect is absent, people claim that
languages are mutually unintelligible.

Alexander King

---

I too have experienced this phenomenon but not entirely in the ways listed

above. In my experience "asymmetrical bilingualism" has been encountered in
the course of my own language learning.

The first anecdote I can point to comes from Vietnam where my students,

friends, and some of the family I was living with would routinely speak to

me in English while I would carry out the conversation in Vietnamese. Now,
given the range of individuals who would use this communicative tactic, one
can safely assume it was employed for a number of reasons.

In the case of my students, I am nearly certain they saw our interaction as

a chance to converse with a native speaker, and would even go as far as to

ask me to stop speaking Vietnamese to give them exercise in their listening
skills. Many of my friends (anthropologists and younger people) would
generally discuss academic topics and/or have informal conversations
--vocabularies which I have yet to fully develop. If they did relate that
information in Vietnamese I would have been left in the dust. In this case
we see clear accommodation for a non-native speaker. With the case of the
family, I generally encountered this with the father who, unlike others in
the house, had studied English in university and used the language for
professional business. To not use English with me, it seemed, would be an
insult to his own intelligence and role as the head of the household. I
reach this conclusion based on the dynamics of our relationship, which was
quite paternal as he would usually be the one to take me aside and explain
the intricacies of Vietnamese life. Social roles in Vietnam can be quite
pronounced at times, especially in the realm of gender, family and class.
One dynamic of conversation, three different reasons.

My second anecdote comes from my grandfather who is a native speaker of
Hungarian. We traveled to his home country this summer and I was able to
pick up a beginner's level of conversational fluency. However, each time we
talk he still uses English while I respond in Hungarian. Here and there he
will throw in some Magyar phrases but it is by and large 'asymmetric
bilingualism.'
In this example, I feel our contours of communication are shaped by the fact
that he has used English with me throughout my entire life. Only a very
small percentage of our relationship has been bonded by the Hungarian
language. If anything, he is just being consistent.

Another interesting note on this relationship is that when we speak on
the phone
he will often respond to my inquiries in Hungarian with "si" - Spanish for
yes - a language he has a general familiarity with. Could this be attributed
to the fact he knows I am using an L2 and subconsciously shifts to mode of
thinking when he hears me speak? Or could it be he is just an old guy who
gets confused sometimes?

In any event, a fascinating subject and one I am glad people are discussing.
In the end we can be sure that, like most things linguistic, there is never
a one-to-one correspondence between communication and the reason people
speak the way they do. Just another reason why people in our profession
still have a mountain of work to ahead of them, and why our discipline is so
absolutely intriguing.

Dave Paulson

-- 
Leila Monaghan, PhD
Department of Anthropology
University of Wyoming
Laramie, Wyoming