Month: December 2016

Chinese idea of face vs. the politeness theory

Shengwen Xu

In our textbook, the politeness theory is introduced. Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1987) analyzes how we deal with each other’s face wants. They divide people’s face wants into two types, negative and positive. Negative face is “the want of every competent adult member of a community that their actions be unimpeded by others”; while positive face is “the want of every member that their wants be desirable to at least some others.” (Brown & Levinson 1987:62) They assume not only that these operate in almost all languages and cultures, but also that the need to protect alter’s negative face and to defend ego’s positive face are important functions of politeness in all languages and cultures. (Nwoye, B. G., 1992)

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What makes dialects in South China much more diverse than in the North?

by Haoqiu Zhang

Yesterday on the way to the supermarket, my friend and I talked about our hometown and dialects. It seems to be the right and typical time to get a little bit homesick seeing that many of our other friends have already flown back home.

My friend is from Heilongjiang province in the northern part of China and I am from Jiangsu province in the south. After exchanging ideas, we surprisingly find something we had never paid attention to. She said a sentence in her hometown dialect. But I could barely find its difference from Mandarin except the change in the tones of the words. So I had to ask her, “that’s it”? “That’s it!” She replied without hesitation. She added that the dialects in the whole northern region in China sound almost the same, just with slight difference in tones or intonation from Mandarin. Therefore, it would not be a problem for people to understand northern dialect so long as they can understand Mandarin. So the northern dialect seems quite monotonous and dull.

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Language Learning Outside Classroom

Jamie (Xuan Zhao)

Recently I read about a study about how people learn a second language outside classroom; it is quite inspiring and really made me think about what contributes to our learning outcomes beyond classroom in learning a second language.

The study is entitled “From milk cartons to english roomates: context and agency in L2 learning beyond the classroom” (P. Kalaja et al., 2011), aiming to “examine the relationship between agency and contexts for learning, in the hope to show how the students’ capacity to act was, mediated by the tools and resources of the context” (P. Kalaja et al., 2011). Agency here means the “socioculturally mediated capacity to act”, defined by Ahearn (2001). They gave questionnaires to Finnish college students, whose first language is Finnish, asking about their experience in learning both English and Swedish as their second languages.

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No, I am not shy: reflecting on my non-participation in language use

The research study articles we read for this course employ various theoretical frameworks to explain phenomena related to additional language learning and use. Whether it is based on the critical race theory or the post-structuralist identity theory, they all share an underlying assumption that people do something with language in social contexts. That is, every study we read thus far suggests that examining learner’s participation or non-participation in social interaction holds the key to understanding these phenomena. In this light, I reflected on my non-participation in French language use.

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Montreal, Identity, Language, and Isolation

Maxime Lavallee – Post 3

I had an interesting discussion with someone the other night on the subject of English-speakers in Montreal. We were speaking about Quebecois theater and movies, and fell into a discussion about English-speakers in Montreal. We had found that a significant portion (not all of them!) of individuals we know, who had grown up in English-speaking families in Montreal, are completely disconnected from Quebecois culture. They don’t have French-speaking friends with whom they speak French, they don’t listen to French music, they don’t read French literature, they don’t watch French movies, or partake in any other Quebecois French cultural activity. We found it interesting that these individuals, most of whom are able to speak French, seemingly make no attempt to connect with French-language culture. Why is it that in a city, surrounded by so many French speakers, they haven’t made those connections?

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Language integration of anglophones in the Québec French school system: a missed opportunity for research?

Back in September, my group and I presented an article (Allen, 2006) on the integration of immigrants into Québec high schools via the ‘Classe d’Accueil’ program. The article stood out as it highlighted many issues facing how our province handles linguistic diversity and language integration in an ever-changing, multicultural city. It also allowed me to reach out to a friend who teaches ‘Classe d’Accueil’ and get some much needed insight into how difficult it can be for students and teachers alike.

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You Must Be Good at English Because You Are Studying in Canada

Monica

“How’s your study in Canada?”

“It’s good. And the people here are very nice to me.”

“So you must be very good at English because you are studying in Canada.”

“Emm … Not exactly. Academic writing is a great challenge for me. And I feel that I cannot involve in Montreal because it’s kind of like a French monolingual city.”

“Oh! I see, so you must be very good at French!”

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Are you just an -ophone?

Post 2 – Maxime Lavallee

Why do we use the words Francophone, Anglophone, and Allophone in Canada? I hear these used all the time and even tend to use them myself without really thinking about the impact of such words. I’ve employed them quite often in my writing as a student and have used these words to discuss a variety of education-related topics. After some reflection, I realized that in Canada and Quebec these words have developed a variety of connotations, positive and negative, and have essentially become restrictive labels.

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Can you believe that one day you wake up and the first word popping in your head is English?

by Haoqiu Zhang

In the first week after I arrived in Montreal, I found a place to stay through Airbnb. I lived in a locally owned accommodation. The neat, lovely apartment was managed by a young couple. The wife was from Alberta and the husband was from France. The wife was smart and pretty and the husband was handsome but a little bit shy. They were quite hospitable and we had great fun talking, in English, of course.

As far as I could remember, in the chatting I mentioned that my English was not very good, especially my oral English. Then the host said, “you know what, I could speak little English when I came to this city. I fell in love with this city first and then I found my wife. After many years of living with my wife here, one day I woke up, opening my eyes, and the first word in my head was English, not French any more.”

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Montreal code-switching

Natalie Lark

Like most other North American cities, if you wander down the streets of Montreal and through its neighborhoods, you will hear most of the languages of the world spoken and brought to the city by immigrants.

However, Montreal offers a particular twist to linguistic diversity in urban areas by the number of native-born speakers using two languages in their day-to-day lives (French and English), while the immigrants can use three or more languages. So, this final post is dedicated to my favorite topic called code-switching in Montreal, in which I am about to discuss the reasons of code-switching mentioned in the textbook and based on my own observations.

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