English 343-001January, 30 2012

Agenda

Discussion Topics

Reminders/Announcements

Going over last week’s readings

Identity: Holliday et. al.: Being represented, Multi-facedness, artifacts of culture, identity cards,

Narrative Inquiry

Identity Narratives

Group Project: Analyzing Identity Narratives

Kumaravadivelu Chapter 2

Reminders/Announcements Class Blog: http://crossculturalissuestesol001.blogspot.com/

Learning log contents (550 words minimum—2 pages, double space):

1) Summary of the articles

2) Your reflections, critique.

3) Connection to your own teaching and learning experiences

4) Further questions

Recommended: Bring a copy of your blog entry/critical response paper to class each week.

Sing up sheet and blog helps ( 3:30)

Syllabus missing pages

Due date change for the Language and culture trajectory assignment

Message from Kasia, the director of ELI. If interested, sign up at the end of the class!

"The Conversation Partners program matches ELI students with community members who would be willing to meet and talk to an international student one hour per week. There is no expectation of teaching or following any curriculum during these meetings, and it is not a program to help American students practice their foreign language (though an exchange of an hour of English for an hour of an ELI student's native language is possible if both parties agree to it). The sole purpose of the meetings is to give the ELI students an opportunity to practice their speaking skills by interacting with an English speaker. Once we match the students with their conversation partners, the two parties make the necessary arrangements and the schedule for meetings. We recommend that the partners meet in public places (e.g. the library, a coffee house, etc.). Only students who know that they can handle the commitment of a weekly one-hour meeting consistently throughout the semester should sign up for this experience."

Overview of concepts from last week

Group Work (create your own chart based on Holliday et. al table and article on page 72-75!)

Essentialist view of culture Non-essentialist view of culture

Culture as a noun: It has a specific entity. It’s homogeneous.

Culture as a verb: Societies display complex characteristics which are hard to pin down. Culture as “unbounded, kaleidoscopic and dynamic” (Heath & Street, 2008)

People in one culture essentially different from people in another

Cultures flow as people intermingle. Cultures have blurred boundaries

People belonging exclusively to one national/linguistic/cultural group

People can belong to and move through multiplicity of cultures within and across societies.

For successful communication with someone foreign, we must first understand the details and stereotype of their culture.

Understanding the complexity of who the person is. Moving beyond media representations. Being open minded.

Recent examinations of culture

Post-modern/post structural: Culture is no neatly packaged entities. They are NOT exclusive bodies of customs, values and thoughts. They are NOT perfectly shared by all who subscribe to them.

Contact zone: The social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they lived out in many parts of the world today”. (Pratt, 1991, p. 34)—bordercrossing/borderlands by Andaldua.

Cultures as travelling (Clifford): Unrooted, permeable, ever-developing and changing.

Six principles of culture (Atkinson, 1999)

1. All humans are individual

2. Individuality is also cultural

3. Social group membership and identity are multiple, contradictory, and dynamic.

4. Social Group membership is consequential.

5. Methods of studying cultural knowledge and behavior are unlikely to fit a positivist paradigm.

6. Language (learning and teaching) and culture are mutually implicated, but culture is multiple and complex.

Think about what these statements mean for you? What are the implications for TESOL?

Discussion: Definitions of culture

1) A culture is “a text the vocabulary and grammar of which its members learn” (Fay, 1996)

2) “Culture is a verb” (Street, 1991)

3) Culture is an “evolving connected activity, not a thing”. (Fay, 1996).

4) Believing…that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs (Geertz, 1973)

Important terms and concepts HOLLIDAY ET AL.:

Ethnic reductionism (Baumann)

Cultural essentialism

Nonessentialism

Liberal multiculturalism (Holliday, Kubota)

Small cultures and large cultures

KUMARAVADIVELU, 2006 CHPATER 2

Habitus

Cultural capital

Otherization/cultural otherization

The principle of linguistic relativity

Whorfian hypothesis (strong vs weak version)

Pavlenkov & Holliday et al

Identity, Narrative inquiry

Identity and language

Languages are not only markers of identity but also sites of resistance, empowerment, solidarity, or discrimination.

Giddens says our identities are reflexively organized information about possible ways of life (how to act and how to be). What a person is understood to be varies across cultures—do you agree with this?

One’s identity is not set and stone; it is not only in the behavior or people’s reactions, but it’s in the narrative you tell about yourself. It integrates events which occur in your world—It’s an ongoing story about self.

Do you see your identity as a matter of keeping “a particular narrative going” or would you use another metaphor? What metaphor would you use to describe your identity. Explain your metaphor.

Discussion questions on identity

How is identity of one individual created?

To what extend is any one individual’s identity a matter of personality and to what extent do influences from the socio-cultural context impact?

If identities do change, what factors are responsible for such change?

What’s the relationship between language and identity?

Holliday A.1.1 Deep seated essentialism: Discussion on Parisa

Summarize Parisa’s example.

What did you make out of the comments that Parisa received from her colleagues? What are some of the essentialist attributes behind Parisa’s colleagues’ behaviors? Give instances from the excerpt where Parisa was “othered” or “misrepresented” (be specific)

How do you think Parisa’s colleagues would act if they were holding a non-essentialist view of culture? (see pg. 11)

Discussion: Think of a situation you have been in which is like the Perisa example and describe it in similar detail.

Important terms

Multi-facetedness of people: the person being described has some stereotypical characteristics of his/her original culture (e.g. wearing head covering) but also has unique characteristics that are not stereotypical (such as being outgoing, creative, articulate). One should be sensitive to use a thick description rather than a superficial description. In this thick description look at the complexity of a particular situation from different examples.

Thick-description (Clifford Geertz): Seeing and explaining the complexity of a social event by looking at it from different layers (see the figure on pg 9)

A thick description of a human behavior or a social event explains not just the behavior, but its context so that the behavior becomes meaningful to an outsider (see emic vs etic levels of cultural analysis on page 241—dangers of contrasting selves)

A.1.2: Chinese teaches

Cultural Resources: Aspects of culture which exists in our society which we can draw on at different times for different reasons. In different settings you draw upon different things. This depends on time, where you are at, and whom you are with.

What was going on in the Chinese teachers example on page 12? How is Chinese society represented by Zhang and Ming?

Cultural identity and deconstruction of self

What people say about their own cultural identity should be read as the image they wish to project at a particular time rather than as an evidence of an essentialist national culture (p. 13)

Have you experienced a situation similar to the Chinese teachers? What are some of the differing ideologies we hold as teachers about our own pedagogical practices in the U.S.? Is there a unified way of explaining our experience? What are the cultural resources you draw as you form your ideologies about teaching ESL/EFL or any other subject?

We are linked through a common experience, we have our icons, our ideologies and our communal history to draw on, and we encapsulate all of this in our discourses. Because all of us inhabit different cultural groups, we are in fact all unique in our cultural identities (p. 19)

Who is Aneta Pavlenko?

Professor of TESOL at Temple University, NY.

Winner of the 2009 TESOL Award for Distinguished Research and of the British Association

Research Interests: Multilingualism, bilingualism, immigrant narratives, language and identity.

Check out her website!

Krystal says… The article that we read for class was very interesting. It is about

identity and more specifically about how autobiographies, “play a central role in the process of identity negotiation in writing” (Pavlenko 34). As stated in the article, an autobiography is an example of identity narratives. The focus on this article was about memoirs, specifically those that were written by first generation immigrants. As soon as I began reading I began to think how these narratives can help researchers and people in the present time get an idea as to what first generation immigrants’ lives’ were like. Everything from what they wore, ate, where they lived, and how they lived. I can relate to learning through narrative readings from the times that my grandma has shown me writings that my grandpa wrote when he first arrived in the United States. From these writing I could mentally construct an identity of how he was like at that time, how the community was like, and his feelings that surrounded the process of moving and leaving his family back home. Unlike the many memoirs noted in the article from various immigrants, my Grandfather’s story is a little different.

Krystal’s narrative…

He came here in hops of finding a job so that he could provide for his family in Mexico. He came to the United States during the era in which they were letting immigrants from Mexico come here to work. Unlike the immigrants in the memoirs written, my grandfather did not go to school nor did he get into the publication/writing business. He first worked on a field and then made his way to working for a railroad company out in California. Like clockwork, my Grandfather would send money to my Grandmother in Mexico along with the hope that she, and their children, could join him in the Untied States. It was not long until that dream became a reality. Both my grandparents had to go through countless obstacles, such as the language barrier and ridicule for being an immigrant, among other things. However, they were able to provide for their family and have a comfortable way of living. Without proper higher-level education (i.e. college), my Grandparents were still able to live well, raise all ten of their children and help them assimilate into their new culture and ways of living. Yes, it would have been easier if my grandparents would have spoken English, would have known all of the socially acceptable norms of living, and if they would have received a college education. Nevertheless, they managed. Their hard work and perseverance paid of.

Fabiola says..

After reading Pavlenko’s work this was one of the main sentences that stood out to me, “second language learning was transformed into a painful journey, involving a loss of primary identities linked to the mother tongue” (63). We live an America which is full of diversity and people with various backgrounds. Years ago people came to this country speaking a wide range of languages and even the indigenous people had their own language at that time. However, nowadays it is seen as a defivit and students learning English or any other language go through a very rough time because it is not looked at as accepting in the country. Learning a new language should not mean giving up who you are and losing your mother language. Instead, it should be an addition to your identity that is always changing and progressing. I associated the “painful journey” to the education systems that have many controversial issues with implementing adequate services for the language learners.

Laura says…

Pavlenko states “In this perspective, identity is viewed as a dynamic and shifting nexus of multiple subject positions, or identity options, such as mother, accountant, homosexual or Latina (35).” Pavlenko and Holliday both share the idea that identity should be thought of as a non-essential view.This article also states that narrative identities are best shown in autobiographies, and the focus of the article is about memoirs written by first generation immigrants who came to the US as children or adults and discuss their story of assimilation. This seems to be a touchy subject for some people. I know for my family is it a very touchy subject. My grandma immigrated to the US from Italy when she was a child. My great-grandma sent her off to school with limited English proficiency. On the first day of school, my grandma was sent home early with a note that said she was not allowed back until she spoke full English. Horrified, my great-grandmother vowed that Italian was no longer allowed in the household.

With this experience, my grandmother does not understand, nor value for that matter, school systems, or the government going out of their way to help immigrants. She believes because she did it and it was expected then, it should be expected now. Those are the types of mindsets that need to be broken. It is a completely different time era and we have a plethora of technological advances on our side to help educate. Not only do we need to educate those who are learning our language, we need to educate those who think poorly upon those that need the help.

Lance says…

Overall, I found Pavlenko’s article to be fascinating. I love the idea of using autobiographical material as the basis of her scholarship. There are many interesting themes brought out by this article that I could talk about, but the section where Pavlenko reveals how immigrants presented their experiences of learning English is what I most want to focus on in this response. Pavlenko stated, “When depicted at all, second language learning is portrayed as an enterprise which proceeds through a series of comic blunders to a happy conclusion” (Pavlenko 50). It seems strange that so little focus is put on learning English as, for most immigrants even today, learning the native language is a crucial part of adapting to everyday life. I would suppose that learning the ‘native’ language of America would have been considered even more important a century ago, so I find the lack of emphasis to be quite curious. Additionally, picking up a language with the ease and speed described by the immigrant narratives would make any human being an outlier of the general populous irregardless of the time period.

Lance continues…

The only difference is, as alluded to by Pavlenko, a difference in society. I think the difference is the rise of a non-essentialist view of culture. In contemporary academic and political discourse, language and the how and why people should or should not learn them is a controversial topic that is constantly discussed. The debate, as I see it, lies between the essentialist and non-essentialist, whether they call themselves by these terms or not, parties. The essentialists who are generally calling for assimilation of some sort and the non-essentialist who are claiming that the falsity of an ‘American’ culture gives the essentialist no right to demand such a thing. At the time of the autobiographies in question, a non-essentialist view of culture would have been unheard of which would have made assimilation theories the norm. As a result, only the narratives that supported and showed success within this framework rose to popularity. I don’t think this is because of any malicious intent on the part of the authors or even an attempt at propaganda, but rather that they (or anyone for that matter) had even thought of culture in anything other than a traditional essentialist way. It isn’t that they agreed or disagreed with any certain theory on how to engage cultures, but that an engagement with culture different than how they had been conditioned would have been impossible at that point in history

Identity narratives

Narratives constructed about the identity of the speaker and about the community of which she or he is a member.

Imagined community: a community in which you imagine yourself (Anderson’s, 1991). Feeling attachment to a group members of whom you have never met.

Pavlenko’s study

Analysis of 11 narrative of immigrant memoirs and autobiographies published between the years of 1901 and 1935.

Methodology: A sociohistoric approach to study personal narratives” which sees autobiography as a literary and sociological form that creates particular images of subjects in particular historical moments” (genre that is shaped by the local contexts)

Research questions: which identities are negotiated? What is the role of language? Does the portray of second language learning in 20th century differs from those in immigrant autobiographies?

The analysis of earlier narratives

Inequality between immigrants.

Some felt the need to establish and argue for their Americanness.

English was seen as the key of assimilation, but the omission of “language” in the earlier narratives is intriguing. (see the examples)

Stories of “happy linguistic assimilation”: Second language learning as a successful and easy process. No mention of linguistic discrimination.

The analysis of later narratives

Linguistic hybridity

Recognition of ethnicity, race and gender.

Linguistic identities are negotiated in different ways according to the narrators sociohistorical realities.

National identity became strongly bound to monolingalism in English.

Present immigrants find themselves in a situation where learning English means giving up the first language.

Accounts of painful experiences

Identity narrative analysis

In your groups read the narratives from three different groups. What are some of the emerging themes do you see in these narratives? How do they negotiate their identities? How is second language and culture learning represented?

1. Narrative excerpts from “The inner world of the immigrant child”

2. Narrative excerpts from Eva Hoffman, Fen Shen, H.Kim

Narrative analysisAnalyzing language choices and content:

Examine the audience the narrator chose to address and why?

What are the implications of this linguistic choice for their narrative? Which events in their learning trajectory have become particularly significant and which have likely been omitted as a result of this choice?

Were the stories elicited in two languages or just one? Is it possible that proficiency or attrition have influenced the manner of the presentation or the amount of detail offered by the narrator? Did the language of the story correspond to the language in which the events in question took place?

What are some of the emerging themes you see in these narratives? How do they negotiate their identities? How is second language and culture learning represented?

REPORT YOUR FINDINGS TO THE WHOLE CLASS

Assignments

Catch up with your learning logs as soon as you can.

Next week: Readings, writing a learning log

Happy reading! Happy blogging!