October 2016 – Page 2 – Educational Sociolinguistics

Languages change faster than we might think!

Raheel

In the third chapter of the textbook, we read about physical isolation and language change. Van Herk shed some light on some types of linguistic isolation and he touched upon the idea that usually when immigrants revisit their home counties, they find that the spoken language has changed slightly – or even significantly – from how it was when they lived there. Reading that chapter made me think about my own experience. In fact, even though I have been away from my homeland for a relatively short period of time (2 years and a half), I cannot recognise some aspects of language now commonly used in my home country.

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Chinatown vs. Chinese Identity

By Jia Pu——second post

What is your impression of Chinatown? Before coming to Montreal, my understanding of Chinatown all came from online videos and TV programs about it. For me, Chinatown should be a place filled with traditional Chinese features, like the honorific archway, red lanterns and, of course, Chinese characters, which can help to maintain and propel Chinese identity of the immigrants and their offsprings. Meanwhile, as a tourist attraction, Chinatown can provide tourists from all over the world with an experience of Chinese culture. However, what I saw in Chinatown here completely changed my impression of it. I made the decision to visit Chinatown in Montreal the second day after arriving because I thought it would be a good way to relieve me from my homesickness since I could enjoy Chinese food and talk to people in Chinese instead of French. But what I saw there was almost nothing like what I had imagined before. To my disappointment, there were just a few restaurants and stores operated by Chinese immigrants, which covered quite a small area and looked shabby. Besides, I noticed that even Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese restaurants could be found in Chinatown, making me more confused about the purpose of building it in the first place. Therefore, I read several articles concerning Chinatown and tried to find the answer.

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‘Gayspeak’ in China: a(nother) case study

Simon Desmarais

During the last two years, I lived and worked in China, and while I was there, I noticed a very interesting phenomenon, related to sexuality and gender. Once again, this is based on my own experience; I haven’t done any legitimate research on this, and also, very importantly, I am not Chinese, I’m not an expert on the Chinese LGBTQ+ community’s linguistic practices, nor do I pretend to be; this post should only be viewed as what it is, an attempt to make sense of my experience regarding specific linguistic practices while living in China.

I think Van Herk (2012) does a very good job of summarizing work on gender and sexuality and language, but I still want to include here the notion of ‘gayspeak’, a set of linguistic features (higher pitch, elongated consonants, etc.) that indexes the speaker as gay. Drawing on work from Cameron and Kulick (2003), he argues that ‘gayspeak’ is used to perform a specific identity, in this case being gay.

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English pronunciation – Can it be a criterion to measure English level?

Yerim Lee

As a speaker, learner, and English teacher, I’ve been wondering what good English pronunciation is. There are numerous kinds of pronunciation in this world, but there’s no definition or criteria of which pronunciation is the ‘good’ one. When I was young, my English teachers used to tell me that I had a good pronunciation, which led to the situation where I often was selected to read the text book out loud. In addition to that, some friends thought my English was very good and even asked me whether I came from the States. Looking back to those days, I think it is a very funny thing that people saw me as having very good level of English only because of my pronunciation. But, did I really have a good pronunciation? What are the criteria to decide so? In my personal opinion, the basis of good pronunciation depends on the perception of listeners.

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Mandy’s language biography – A Chinese girl and her Latin languages

Shengwen Xu

I was born in the Southern part of China. I speak a major dialect in China, Cantonese, with my families and of course, Mandarin, which is a mandatory subject for all Chinese students. Although Cantonese is only a regional dialect in China, its influence and exchange with other language is related to the immigration history. Most of the early Chinese immigrants in English-speaking countries like the US, Canada, the UK, etc. are from the southern provinces of China, thus bringing the language of Cantonese to the world. Now familiar English words like Dim Sum, Wonton, Wok, Chow Mien, mostly words of food, come from Cantonese instead of Mandarin.

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Challenging the dominant narrative in ELT: A call for counterstories

Alison Crump

In last week’s class, we were talking about race, identity, and language education. We explored how identity is something that can be given to us (e.g., through Census categories, which define national identity possibilities and thus define access to things like education and resources) and something that we can perform and negotiate. We talked about how where you are can shape the possibilities for who you can be. We talked about stories that make our hearts feel heavy – people who are denied jobs on the basis of their accent or skin colour. By talking about the racism that is embedded in English language teaching (ELT) hiring practices and perpetuated through the white native speaker myth we were acknowledging the power of what critical race scholar Richard Delgado (1989) called “stock stories” or dominant narratives. These are the stories that tell us that “white” people who speak English are better suited for English language teaching. Yet, talking about race and the racialization of ELT can be discouraging for individuals who do not benefit from the (not always deserving) privileges that come with being able to identify with the invisible yet audible majority. The ideologies of nativeness and whiteness in our field of language education have real material and practical consequences for real individuals. How can we ensure that we are not repeating or perpetuating systems of inequality and racism in our teaching? How can we empower and validate language teachers and learners and challenge problematic discriminatory and racist practices in our field? How can we privilege all the stories of language teachers and not just those that reinforce the dominant narrative?

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You Speak Mandarin, You Are Not a Shanxier

colinczayan

Before you read my post, I would like to offer some background knowledge.

Standard Mandarin is the official language in China. While Chinese people use simplified characters in writing, they may speak a variety of dialects depending on where they are. These dialects are spoken in different ways. I found a video that presents how Mandarin and some dialects are spoken and sound differently. Please check it out via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynbRQeeEma4

In China, 4 or 5 undergraduate students share one dormitory together, which indicates they do not have their private room.

Every time I encounter a Shanxier outside Shanxi province, they do not believe I am a Shanxier because of my inability to speak Shanxi dialect. While “a single linguistic choice can mark you as a member of (or let you affiliate with) a particular community” (Van Herk, 2012, p. 97), I therefore believe that I lose some of my identity as a Shanxier and I sometimes feel isolated because I fail to speak Shanxi dialect.

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A Case Study in Senior Citizens’ Education

Liting Liu

During our preparation for last presentation about social class and time, we have read many papers talking about adult education and senior citizen education, some of which are about senior citizen’s learning motivation. Such articles stroke a chord with me. I could not help recalling the days when I was working in an adult education institute back in China.

Most of the students there are office workers or businessmen. There are some well-off elderly students too and most of them are well educated. Otherwise they would not have the sense of studying at all, let alone torture themselves to study a new language at such an age. Speaking of their motivation, it varies from person to person. Some signed up merely for killing time and protecting themselves against Alzheimer’s, which makes perfect sense according to the findings of psychologist Ellen Bialystok and her colleagues at York University in Toronto – those who were bilingual had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s about four years later, on average, than those who spoke just one language. Some signed up out of the zeal for travelling. Since they regard English as a useful tool which makes their travelling experience easier, they decided to come to the school and give it a try.

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Texting: A New Register or Style in the L2 Curriculum?

Bonnie Reimer

The blog is somewhat related to the interesting perspective Melissa brought to texting last week. Since I have some slightly different issues and perspectives to share, I thought it would be better to post a new blog rather than comment.

A couple years ago, I was teaching paragraph writing to a low intermediate ESL class of adult newcomers from various countries. One of the students, who had been in Canada almost a year, had recently started the level and was just beginning to write compound sentences, so his assignment was to write a paragraph of about 75-100 words incorporating both simple and compound sentences. At the time, we had not covered register or style, but I was still quite taken aback when this Afghani male in his 30s emailed me the paragraph completely in textese, some of which I could not decipher. This learner was able to clearly read the paragraph to me though he had difficulty expressing his writing in a more formal style. This was the first and only time I had received a writing sample in textese although I occasionally receive writing with abbreviations and symbols. I had hoped to get some input from my colleagues, but this had never happened in any of their classes.

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Let’s Go Change Some Lives!

Hina

This summer, I worked for seven weeks with a company called LbE Japan. This company works with the Japan Tourist Bureau (JTB) and Guy Healy Japan to provide intensive 3-day English summer camps for students. By inviting about 40 university students from America, they aim to give Japanese students the experience of living in America. The students got the ultimate ‘American’ experience – complete with American carnivals, dance parties, and campfire. By the end of August, we had undergone 30 USA Summer Camp sessions, and had had over 1000 attendees. “Let’s go change some lives!” was our unofficial motto – we were ready to help the kids learn to love English.

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