Language support in UK universities: Raising awareness of 'dead end' thinking?

Charlie Martineau

The dead end of a railway line. Photo: VaikooveryHall et al (2011, pp.4-14) list ten 'dead ends'; mistaken ways of thinking about languages, their uses and their users. Some of these dead ends are integral to public discourse about language in the UK (and elsewhere). Specifically, that:

• some groups of people don't use their language properly
• languages exist independently of users and uses
• a nation has, or should have, one language
• languages get contaminated by influence from other languages
• some people speak their language without an accent
• written language is superior to spoken language

'Dead end' thinking about language makes no sense linguistically, but is alive and well in my workplace; a UK university where I support international students with English as an additional language. In confronting these dead ends, I face some difficult questions.

One question relates to students who speak a variety of English which is not well understood here (and have difficulty understanding local varieties of English too). I have tried to help some of these students develop an awareness of local pronunciation so that (a) they can understand it better and (b) – if they choose – can adopt it to a certain extent (depending on a range of variables such as age, motivation and cross-linguistic influence from their own variety of English and the other languages they speak) in order to become better understood locally.

I’ve found this approach is productive in terms of their listening skills, but not always in terms of their pronunciation. I am also aware of the possible dangers of suggesting that students change their own pronunciation. Firstly, such changes may not be possible (because of cognitive, social and linguistic variables such as the ones mentioned above). Secondly, my students may begin to feel worse about their English and be therefore less likely to want to use English in class or socially (linguistic insecurity). Thirdly, the responsibility of local students to work towards mutual understanding by broadening their own awareness of different varieties of English, and by monitoring their own talk for intelligibility, is downplayed.

Dead end, dead shot. Photo: Dave CrokerThese difficult questions require sensitive discussion with each individual student I see – raising their awareness of their own and others' varieties of English, and of how understanding is achieved in multilingual environment(s). I also need to find ways of letting my students know about the prevalence of 'dead end' thinking about language, and how this thinking relates to how they may be either judged and/or have certain identities assigned to them by their teachers and peers.

The institution-specific effects of Hall et al's (2011) dead end thinking on international students in UK universities, and possible solutions to the problems that arise as a result of this thinking, are in need of more research. Without such small-scale 'real world' research, 'language support' services risk reinforcing dead end thinking, thus damaging the prospects of the very students they have been set up to help, as well as failing to take the opportunity to help local students benefit from their 'internationalised' Higher Education experience.

Bibliography:

Hall, C. J., Smith, P. H. & Wicaksono, R. (2011). Mapping applied linguistics: A guide for students and practitioners. London and New York: Routledge

Teaching minority languages in schools: Bokmål versus Nynorsk

Anne-Marte Denk Ravnestad

Areas where Norwegian is spoken, including North Dakota (0.4% of the population speaks Norwegian there) and Minnesota (0.1% of the population) (Data: U.S. Census 2000).Norwegian (Norsk) is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway (but also in the USA, as the map on the left shows). Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants.

Norway is unusual because the majority (and official) language, Norwegian, has two written forms that are equally recognised by law: Bokmål and Nynorsk (Lovdata, 1981). The two forms have different geographical origins, and which form you use still depends a lot on where you live.

I write Nynorsk which is only a majority language in four out of nineteen counties (Språkrådet, 2011). Nynorsk closely resembles my spoken dialect, and I feel comfortable using it for that reason. There are often strong links between identity and language, and this is crucial to the understanding of minority language users' feelings about their language situation. Although have no issue with being identified as “Nynorsk”, I’m still aware that,

language varieties (…) can trigger beliefs about a speaker and their social group membership. (Garrett, 2010:33)

In my case, the social group I am likely to be identified with is “uneducated country folk”, and while I might not feel that this is problem, I understand that other Nynorsk users may not feel the same way.

A map of the official language forms (målform) of Norwegian municipalities as of 2007

Norwegian law requires that pupils learn both written forms of the language at school – and it has been hotly debated whether we should change this practice. Bokmål users have claimed that it is difficult to include both forms in school.  I believe – both as a teacher and a Nynorsk user – that we should maintain this practice, not only because we would lose some of our cultural heritage if we didn’t, but also because of the effect it would have on Nynorsk users’ self-esteem, potentially further weakening Nynorsk’s position in society.

Teaching additional languages in school is both a challenge for teachers and an opportunity for them to think about their teaching methods. In the case of Nynorsk, it’s important for teachers to create awareness of this living language through showing examples of it in literature, newspapers and other media.

In my opinion the most important thing, when it comes to government-regulated additional language teaching and learning, is the teacher’s attitude towards the language. This attitude will be reflected in the pupils' motivation to learn and will ultimately determine the success of their learning experience. I believe languages reflect the huge variety of people and cultures in the world, and I want to pass my enthusiasm for that variety on to my pupils.

Bibliography:

Garrett, P. (2010). Attitudes to language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Lovdata Mållova (1981). Lov om målbruk I offentleg teneste [målbrukslova] (Law about language use in governmental services). [Internet] Oslo, Lovdata. [Accessed 21 October 2011].

Språkrådet (2011). Språkstatistikk – nokre nøkkeltal for norsk (Language statistics – some key numbers for Norwegian). [Internet] Oslo, Språkrådet. [Accessed 21 October 2011].

Attitudes to linguistic variety in Norway and the UK: The case of Ingerid Stenvold

Rosie Hedger

Ingerid Stenvold (Photo: Ole Kaland, NRK)Dialects first began to interest me when I moved to Norway from the UK. I had previously studied ‘bokmål’ as an additional language; bokmål being the more widespread of the two official written forms of Norwegian. I very quickly discovered that my knowledge of the official ‘bokmål’ form meant very little – in Norway, regional dialects are used with pride and the degrees of mutual intelligibility between them vary. I slowly but surely began to understand the differences between them, largely thanks to Norwegian media outlets: for many years, radio and television presenters on all main channels have been encouraged to use their own dialects.

In 2009 this acceptance of linguistic variety was further extended when Ingerid Stenvold became the first newsreader to be allowed to speak her own dialect when presenting Dagsrevyen, the evening news programme shown on the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s main channel. In spite of the support for Norwegian dialects in the media, those responsible for news broadcasts had maintained that all presenters should speak a ‘standard’ version of one of the two official language forms. The decision to allow Stenvold to speak a ‘non-standard’ form aroused some criticism, though she received widespread support from viewers for reasons eloquently expressed by Norwegian linguist Ernst Håkon Jahr,

A national radio and television channel should nurture our common culture; our common language. As anchorwoman on a television news programme, Ingerid Stenvold represents us all. She ought to feel both pride and a sense of duty to speak our common language. (Jahr, 2009, translation my own)

Stenvold’s success came as little surprise in a country where dialects are a sign of national, regional and individual pride. Nevertheless, I remain sceptical as to whether attitudes towards linguistic variety in the UK will enjoy the same success – whilst journalists and newsreaders such as Stenvold enjoy the freedom of speaking their own variety of Norwegian, I fear it may take time for the social judgements brought about by the ‘monolithic myth’ to be dispelled in the UK. The BBC may have moved slightly away from the traditional Received Pronunciation English on radio stations aimed at young people and light-hearted entertainment programmes, but only when this move extends to more serious broadcasting will other varieties of English be taken equally as seriously.

References:

Jahr, E.H. (2009). Dialekter forteller hvor du er fra og det er viktig. Agder, University of Agder. [Last accessed 29 October 2011].

Myhr, K. (2009). Ja til dialekter og aksenter i NRK. NRK News, 31 August. [Last accessed 29 October 2011].

Clients of applied linguistics? Users of Sri Lankan sign language, their parents and educators

Chaya Manawamma

As I had the chance of working with Deaf people in a dance-drama production in Colombo, Sri Lanka, I thought I would particularly focus this blog on their language-related issues.

The Nutcracker - 'This magical fantasy ballet for the entire family comes alive through a cast of inspiring performers, many of them differently able. The cast comprises of soldiers with special needs from the Ranaviru Seavana who were injured in the recently ended war and hearing impaired performers from the Sunera Foundation' (Ayah, 2011).

Hall et al (2011, p.52) discuss key populations that may require the services of applied linguists. These populations are referred to as ‘clients’ as they are the ‘users and the beneficiaries’ of the theories and practices of applied linguistics.

These clients have various needs related to language. Some of the underlying factors of their needs can be biological, social, professional or a mixture of two or all. In order to provide appropriate language related services to the clients, the authors have categorised them based on their language-related issues.

They mention the problem of labelling groups of people, as some have preferences for specific labels over other labels and so forth. For example, when I was doing a diploma in teaching children with specific learning disabilities, the course facilitators insisted that I use the term ‘children diagnosed with dyslexia’ rather than using the term ‘dyslexic children’ in my vocabulary. The reason was that these children should be treated as children first in spite of their learning disability.

Likewise, the authors mention a controversy around the naming of deaf people: ‘deaf’ with the lower case ‘d’ defines deafness as a pathological condition whereas ‘Deaf’ with the upper case ‘D’ means an identity, a community which may or may not include ‘deaf’ people.

Two concepts that caught my attention while doing background reading were bimodal and unimodal bilingualism. As defined by Woll and Spence (2011, p.359), unimodal bilingualism is when two spoken or two sign languages are used, whereas in bimodal bilingualism two languages are used but in different modalities: one signed and one written/spoken.

Woll and Sutton-Spence cite Emmorey et al. (2011, p. 364) who mention the ‘code blending’ phenomenon in hearing people with deaf parents. These people are bimodal bilinguals: they can speak and sign simultaneously. This cannot be done in unimodal bilingualism. If a teacher is a bimodal bilingual in the sign language of the learner and in the additional language he/she wants to learn, code blending would be a useful teaching method.

Chaya and dancers at the South Asian dance fesitval, York St John University, 2012

Further, I would like to mention my ignorance until very recently to think that if a deaf person can sign in Sri Lankan sign language (a language recognised by the national government in 2010), he/she will be able to read/write in Sinhala. Indeed, I have been one of the many illogical people to come to such a conclusion, mainly due to the unawareness that sign languages are unrelated to spoken languages and are as rich, complex and varied as any oral language.

The process of learning Sinhala or Tamil language by a Sri Lankan signing deaf person is similar to the process of learning English by a Sinhala (or Tamil) speaking child with perfect hearing, isn’t it?

This is an instance where the services of applied linguists are needed to remove the prejudices and ignorance of people with regard to deaf communication. At this point, it seems to me that this kind of work of applied linguists falls under Critical Applied Linguistics as it is concerned with ‘social change and action’ as per Cook (2006, p.76).

Thus, as a student of applied linguistics I begin to realize the wide scope of work in which I can be involved as a language professional and an applied linguist.

Internet resources for learners of Sri Lankan sign language include a dictionary of 350 common signs featured on this school website, this interactive, multimedia website for students, parents and teachers, and videos on the SLSLTA YouTube channel, such as this one demonstrating colours:

References:

Cook, G. (2003). Applied linguistics. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Hall, C. J., Smith, P. H. and Wicaksono, R. (2011) Mapping applied linguistics: a guide for students and practitioners. London, Routledge.

Woll, B., Sutton-Spence, R. (2011) Sign languages. In: Simpson, J. ed. The Routledge handbook of applied linguistics. Milton Park, Abingdon, [UK], Routledge, pp.359-369.

What applied linguists can learn from Texas

Patrick H. Smith

As a Texas transplant (via New England in the U.S. and Puebla, Mexico), I’m often asked what it’s like to live and work in Texas. At the 2011 World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA) in Beijing, where Mapping Applied Linguistics co-authors Chris Hall, Rachel Wicaksono, and I presented papers on mapping applied linguistics from the bottom up, I was surprised by audience interest in Texas and the U.S.-Mexico border. Hence, the topic of this blog: What can applied linguists learn from Texas?

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