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

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].

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].

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.

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?

Yantai University lecturers at York St John, August 2011Earlier this week, I taught a group of lecturers from Yantai University in China, specialists in English, Maths, Law, and Chemistry. The title of my session was Applied linguistics: What is it and why does it matter to teachers? In the session we considered five essential ingredients of applied linguistics: centrality of client needs; pragmatic orientation; social and cognitive embeddedness; role-shifting and collaboration; and mode of enquiry. For more on these ingredients, see Chapter 1 of Mapping applied linguistics: a guide for students and practitioners, available as a sample chapter on the companion website.

Stalin from a Soviet propaganda poster (Source: Wikimedia Commons)I have just discovered the Intrranet, a global online translators' and interpreters' network which has a 'language in the news' service. The first story in the list is a Moscow Times article about the recent death of Joseph Stalin's translator and interpreter, Vladimir Yerofeyev. This reminded me that Stalin himself had a keen interest in linguistics, publishing a series of articles on the subject in Pravda in 1950.

Our Lady of Guadalupe parish church sign, Rio Grande Valley, Southeast Texas, USAThe hand-painted wooden sign on the right, announcing the schedule of Catholic mass in Spanish, English, and Tex-Mex, is an example of the hybrid forms of literacy created and displayed in multilingual communities. We discovered this particular sign in the Rio Grande Valley of Southeast Texas, thanks to a graduate student who is studying to become a bilingual reading teacher.  He pointed out that multiliteracy is welcome in local churches but not in schools, reminding us that language can be treated as a problem, right, or resource (Ruiz, 1984) in different domains of use even within the same community. This contrast led us to map multiliteracy in the border communities where our students live and are preparing to become teachers . Specifically, we were interested in learning how multiliteracy--the practice of producing and interpreting texts in multiple languages—is perceived by (future) teachers along the US-Mexico border.

Photograph by Richard Schweizer (2002). Still image from the documentary film "Waking up the Nation", showing asylum seekers inside an Australian immigration detention camp. VideoTeppista.Guessing which country someone comes from is something we all do when we meet a person who doesn't seem to be 'from here'. We take into account peoples' clothes, their skin colour, hairstyle or gestures, and then confirm or revise our initial assessment when we hear what (variety of) language the person is speaking. Speaking French? Must be French. Speaking Mandarin? Must be Chinese.

Philip Thicknesse (1719-1792), British author and eccentric, with his chest cut open, revealing organs labeled cowardice, cruelty, defamation, disease, etc. First published: 15 December 1790 | Publisher: J. Aitken, No 14 Castle Street, Leicester Fields, UK | Source: Wikimedia Commons (1790-12-15)Language is both the medium for the law (statues, arrest warrants, the reading of rights etc.) and, potentially, a legal matter (either as evidence or as the actual subject matter of a case – such as in accusations of plagiarism, brand name disputes and defamation proceedings). In cases where language is the subject matter of a case, including where there is an accusation of written or spoken language as libellous, slanderous, blasphemous, racist, sexist or otherwise criminally obnoxious, it is normally the judge or jury who interpret the words used and who decide on the extent of their obnoxiousness. Sometimes, however, a linguist will be called as an expert witness.

But is something as commonplace and apparently straightforward as human language in need of expert testimony from applied linguists? As part of the York St John University English Language and Linguistics Colloquium series, in March 2011, Professor Alan Durant, of Middlesex University, UK, spoke about the difficult intersection between legal language and the courts' need to make sense of 'ordinary language'; giving examples from his own experience as an expert witness in a defamation trial.

Defamation is an intentional false communication, either written (libel) or spoken (slander), which harms a person's reputation. In the case described by Professor Durant, the plaintiff was a businessman who had been described as being 'economical with the truth' in a newspaper report. The businessman claimed that, in the context of the report, the phrase 'economical with the truth' suggested dishonourable concealment and misconduct, and therefore provided a threat to his professional reputation. The publishers of the report argued that the phrase could not be assumed to imply derogatory, and therefore libellous, meaning, and that it may even contain an element of praise for the plaintiff's actions.

So what did Professor Durant do? He searched a number of sources for evidence of the meaning of 'economical with the truth', including:

• literary concordances (for origins of the expression as a quotation, as well as influential early uses);
• the Oxford English Dictionary and other dictionaries and reference sources (for the historical development of and current conventions regarding its meanings);
• a transcript of relevant parts of the Spycatcher trial, held in Sydney in 1986 (for the context in which the expression was most famously used in recent times, in evidence by Sir Robert Armstrong);
• two corpora of English usage (one, an article search from the Financial Times Business Service covering the period 1983 - when the Service began – through to 1992; the other, the Survey of English Usage held at University College, London, which offers a large, representative body of English discourse for years prior to 1986;
• a sample of English-speaker informants (for patterns in speakers' intuitions about contemporary usage) for intuitions of English speakers.

(Durant, 1996 p. 2 - 3)

 Professor Durant's evidence was no doubt a helpful contribution to the decision-making process of the court. So why is linguistic evidence generally in less demand than the evidence of other experts, such as DNA profilers? On p. 297 of Mapping Applied Linguistics in our chapter on Forensic Linguistics, we suggest that one reason is that courts may be reluctant to recognize that something which is as commonplace and as seemingly straightforward as language could be in need of expert testimony. Only specialists can tell the court whether two DNA samples match, but figuring out what ordinary words mean, well, anyone can do that, right??

This assumption is an example of what Chris has called the Language Spell; the way in which the many, complex tasks performed for us by language operate without any need for our conscious awareness. This lack of awareness means that 'common sense' beliefs about how language works, including what words mean, are widespread and often deeply held. Research and reflective practice by applied linguists can bring new perspectives to the problems faced, in this case, by a judge and jury. We would like to argue that it is the job of applied linguists (including forensic linguists) to avoid the 'dead ends' we describe in Chapter 1 and raise our clients' awareness of the possible role of language in any problems they may face.

Durant, A. (1996). 'On the interpretation of allusions and other innuendo meanings in libel actions: the value of semantic and pragmatic evidence', Forensic Linguistics, volume 3, number 2, pp. 195-210.