LESSONS:
FIRST MODULE
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AFTER
EACH LESSON, SEE HERE FOR THE SLIDES/NOTES USED.
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26/02/07
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Introductory Lesson:
Following advice of past students, a description of course
Course web site: boylan.it (or www.boylan.it
– the “www” is optional) If not working:
patrick.boylan.it (alternative site – NO “www”)
Course
for: I year, 2nd language (OCI, LL) 5 credits: Lettore, plus 5
credits for OCI students: module 1 & 2 (or just 3 credits for
LL students: module 1)
Conflicts in schedules: Spanish
on Monday (Prof. ???16-18) Arab on Wednesday (Prof. Lancioni,
16-18) Storia delle religioni on Mon., Wed. (Prof. Bonola,
16-18) To
solve these conflicts, course will end at 4:40 (you'll arrive a
half hour late to the other courses. English on
Friday (Prof. Maclaren, reading, 15-17) Prof. Maclaren has
already devised a work-around solution. Thank her!
There
is a traditional version of this Course for non
(regolarmente) frequentanti or for students who want
traditional language teaching: Monday & Friday, 12 - 2 pm
Explanation of English lexico-syntax and pragmatics.
This
course,from 3 to 5 pm, is the "real" course: New
vision of English, of language, of language learning. Part of
books replaced with equivalent activities (in particular a
European Community Language Project).
The course will have
multiple objectives: You want to learn English. But to do that
successfully, you must: 1. rethink what "English"
is; rethink how to learn English; 2. rethink what it means to
be a student; rethink what "learning" means, what a
"course" is, what relations to establish with teachers
and fellow students, what "knowledge" is, what "voti"
are worth.
Next time: form groups of 6 upon
arriving
Homework: Read course web
site. Enrol*
in the course
*In the large PC lab next to the Portineria from
16:30 to 17: 1. enter boylan.it, to to class page, click on
ROLL. 2. download the file form.zip 3. extract the file
form.txt 4. fill out the form 5. send it
from your web email service 6. if you do not have a web email
service, ask your neighbor to use hers or his.
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28/02/07
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Last time:
Tertiary societies export knowledge. Thus L2 (second language)
competence = knowing how to: - relate to others in an L2
(more than just explaining concepts) - share values -- theirs,
then ours -- through the L2.
Values are relational, not
absolute. Examples: The general semantic fields of the words
in each row below are similar. But the real meaning depends of
the culture of the speaker (i.e. the values that s/he shares with
most other people in her/his community), as well as on personal
choices. So we cannot understand the meaning of these words
without knowing the culture and personal existential stance of
whoever says them:
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![](../../image/flag-it.gif)
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![](../../image/flagusuk.jpg)
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![](../../image/french-1.gif)
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Tardi
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Late
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En retard
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Pulito
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Clean
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Propre
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Pasto
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Meal
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Repas
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Noi
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We
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Nous
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Ovest
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West
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Ouest
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Note:
these are VERY common words -- not complex, culturally-specific
words like
omertà,
self-reliance,
jouissance.
Yet even these VERY common words cannot be really understood
outside the cultural/existential context of their enunciation,.
Likewise,
when observing the American students filmed during a class
discussion, it is impossible to understand their way of
discussing (turn taking, interruption, bid to speak, direct
enunciation of concept, yet hedging and understatement, etc.)
without grasping the values underlying their behavior.
![](../../image/hs_discu.jpg)
So
the real problem, when trying to learn “English”, is
to find ways of identifying the values that give meaning to the
words and behavior of one's English-speaking
interlocutor.
Between speakers of different languages (and
often between speakers of the same language) there is no 100%
common code of values, not even a 90% common code. The following
diagram, inspired from Jakobson (1982: 350-377 [1958]), can be
criticized for assuming the existence of a common semantic code,
a pre-defined message, an un-problematic decoding, etc. In other
words, this is how computers speak to each other, but NOT humans.
![](../../image/confmisc/jakobson.gif) Communication
is rather the attempt to establish a relationship in which to
work out a common code. Language (Saussurian parole) is
the particular “will to mean” in a specific context
that impinges on a communicative situation through multiple means
-- not just through words but also, as in the Class Discussion
among American students, through silence, posture, seating
arrangement, gaze, turn taking procedure, topic avoidance
strategies, and so on. Thus language (Saussurian langue)
is not just “words+syntax+pragmatics” but a complex
behavioral matrix (in which often words are merely accessory, the
“musical background”); it is the sedimentation of
repeated acts of “will to mean in a particular way”
which produce a disposition to “will to mean” in that
way in the future. Thus, while a basic repertory of
Anglo-derived lexis and syntax (what grammarians call “English”)
is used by many different cultures, from the British isles to the
Caribbean islands, each idiom is in fact a different language;
in other words, we are dealing with different “Englishes”:
Jamaican, Indian, Nigerian, Tok Pisin, Singlish, Irish
(Hiberno-English), Australian Oz, etc.; and, in Britain, Scots,
East Ender, Brummie, Geordie, etc.; in the United States, Texan,
Ebonics, Brooklynese, etc. etc. etc. ). For each of these
Englishes expresses a different “will to mean”. All
this leads to the following conclusion: what we call “English”
is in reality not a language but a family of languages and,
because of the blend of Anglo-derived and non-Anglo-derived
cultures informing each variety, a métis family of
idioms.
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02/03/07
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Cultural
Differences among Students – In class
The
stereotype of the White, middle-class American of Anglo descent
versus the stereotype of the South-Central middle-class
urbanized Italian. See here.
Learning
a language – in this case, English – means acquiring
a will to mean that expresses a will to be shared
by some English speaking community. Thus, when we are speaking
English in class, we will be acting and thinking and feeling
things as we would in an American classroom (later, if time
allows, we will experiment doing things in a British, Australian,
Irish, Jamaican etc. way).
As for American ways of seeing
and saying things, specifically in a classroom
environment, here is what an American student from Trinity
college has to say about:
Coming
late to lessons Chatting
during lessons (to
hear the recording, click on the words in red)
This
is what YOU should think, feel and want
during the lesson, in order to speak to the teacher using his
language (American English). How can you want things that, as
an Italian, you have not been taught to desire? This will be a
central, recurrent question during the course.
A
language like English is therefore not simply a code (words +
rules for combining them). A language can seem like a code
because, from the standpoint of acoustics, people do use a set of
rules for signal/message conversion; and from the standpoint of
semiotics, people do use a set of signs in lexical-syntactic
opposition to each other. But this is only the superficial aspect
of language. If language were only a code, under normal
conditions there would be no ambiguities or misunderstandings or
inventiveness. Talking would be a mere bureaucratic function.
In
this course we will consider the “English language”
(langue) to be a particular
sedimentation in the minds of the members of some Anglo community
(including “elected members”, like language students
who speak “naturally” enough to be accepted as a de
facto member by their native-speaker interlocutors) .
That
sedimentation is the product of repeated acts of willing to
mean in a certain “Anglo” way (and trying to
impinge on some communicative situation in that way) – even
when no words are used, as in signing (= the systematic
use of gestures) by deaf
people or babies
in some Anglo community.
Ada
McGrath, the deaf woman in the film The
piano, is speaking “English” to
her daughter, using hand gestures + head inclination + shoulder
roll + gaze + facial expressions and so on. But note that most of
her gestures + ... + ... + ...+ facial expressions are NOT
equivalent to any single word or grammatical construction in what
grammarians call “(verbal) English”. They are,
on the other hand, Ada's attempts at making her daughter feel a
specific configuration of Ada's “English” will to
mean (actually her Scots English will to mean, since,
in the story, she was born and raised in Glasgow).
To
discover what values constitute the will to mean (when
communicating) and the will to be (as a shared existential state)
of a given English-speaking interlocutor, we will prepare an
interview using the materials from the PICTURE Project: HOW
to INTERVIEW using a questionnaire.
Homework: Do the
first section in How to Interview. See the instructions
under Task 0 (go to the main menu and click on RESEARCH TASKS).
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05/03/07
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Group
discussion of the ethnographic questions that each group member
proposes. Selection of ONLY the questions that concern a
SINGLE CULTURAL VALUE* List to be consigned on Wednesday
(7.2.07) with Task 0..
*Example
of choice of value.
Imagine
that these are your group's questions; some of the questions
involve the cultural value of “individualism” (some
cultures are highly individualistic – this is generally
true of Germans, Americans, etc. -- while other cultures are
highly collectivistic (this is generally true of the Japanese and
to a much lesser degree of Italians). Again, some cultures are
highly emotive (in general, Russians, Mexicans, etc.) while other
cultures tend not to display emotion (Scandinavians, Britons,
etc.). The questions below that seek to discover if the
interviewee is individualist are this
color; the questions that seek to discover if the
interviewee is emotive are this color.
Here are the imaginary questions:
1.
Do you often eat alone? 2.
Is it OK to cry in public? 3.
Do you go on vacation trips in a
group? 4. Should
people have private health insurance or state insurance?
5. When angry, do you shout?
6. Would you like to be like John
Wayne or Woody Allen? 7. Is
it OK to play music loud, even if your family and neighbors hate
it?
If
the group chooses the value "individualism",
it will make a list with questions 1,
3, 4, 7. If it chooses the value
"emotivity",
it will make a list with questions 2,
5, 6.
(To
learn about cultural values, see Beamer in the Handouts.)
Discussion
of the criteria for evaluating Task 0 (the comments on the two
videos in Section 1 of How to Interview), See the
criteria here. See
the notion of British Academic English here.
Class
composition: See the statistics on “years of study of
English” for this course here. The
statistics compare LL and OCI students. Altogether, the
data are: – more than 12 years of study of English: 8% –
between 9 and 12 years: 56% – between 5 and 8 years: 32%
This
will be the level at which the course is pitched. –
with fewer than 5 years: 4%
For
the “genuine” lingua seconda students (the 4%
above), we will organize a Tutoring Service to help them
integrate into the course, do the Tasks, and learn to study
autonomously in the language lab. Any student from the 8% or 56%
categories (see above) can volunteer to be a tutor – some
have already on their enrollment form. Send an email to me
at
![](../../image/email-bk.gif)
<2
tutors (standing) and their students, English I
(2a lingua) course in 2004-05.
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07/03/07
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Your questionnaires,
in asking what values “young white Americans of Anglo-Saxon
origin” (most Trinity students) have, obviously deal with
STEREOTYPES. This is not necessarily
negative: STEREOTYPES are an inevitable first
approximation.
STEREOTYPES become
harmful when a person keeps them and refuses to change them . It
is normal for (let's say) an Eskimo who comes to Italy to say
that Italian first dishes are monotonous, “Always
spaghetti, always spaghetti” (because for him, at first,
fusilli, fettuccine, pappardelle,
lasagna, etc. are all just “spaghetti” with slightly
different forms). If, after months, the Eskimo continues to say
that Italian first dishes are all the same, we would conclude
that he has a problem “getting into” the Italian life
style: he refuses to see and feel the differences that Italians
see and feel when they order their first dish in a restaurant.
And the same for an Italian who goes with the Eskimo to
his home in Northern Canada: for the Eskimo there are 40
different kinds of snow, each with its own name (according to the
legend, in reality perhaps only 7 to 24: see here).
But for the Italian snow is just snow. At first. And it is normal
that the Italian sees snow stereotypically at the beginning, for
it takes time to adjust to a new environment and notice details.
But if, after months, the Italian continues to see snow as the
same in all its states, then he has not accepted to “get
into” the Eskimo way of seeing things and saying things
(the Italian will never learn the 24 different Yupik words for
snow in its various states).
So, STEREOTYPES
are a normal first step in getting to know any new reality.
The point is to be open to modifying one's stereotypes, as one
accumulates more data. Or rather, perhaps we should say
that the point is to be open to accumulating and appreciating new
data which will disprove one's initial impression, and thus to
creating a new vision of the object. Of course, the new
vision will be a stereotype, too; if will be more complex and
realistic than the initial stereotype, but not as complex and
realistic as reality.
Thus, in practice,
getting to know a person or an object from another culture means
going from stereotype to stereotype, improving them continually,
but never arriving at a vision with reproduces reality in all its
infinite complexity.
So does this mean that stereotypes
are good (useful)? Yes, it does. -- at least,most of the
time they are necessary transitory states of approximation.
But there is also a kind of stereotypes that is intrinsically
negative.
STEREOTYPES are absolutely
negative when they represent projections of unconscious problems
that a person has in dealing with her or his own culture (or that
an entire society has in dealing with its traditions). The
excerpt from the film The
Spanish Apartment shows an English boy who torments a German
room mate for his obsessive order, when perhaps the German was
simply “very orderly” (but not obsessively
orderly) and the English boy, at a time in life in which
he must decide what values to practice, had a problem accepting
the obsessiveness for order he acquired in his British culture.
In other words, he unjustly “stereotyped” the German
boy as “obsessively orderly” in order to be able to
say to himself: “Germans are like that, but I as a
Brit am not.” This is the characteristic of all racism: the
“evil” one unconsciously dislikes in oneself is
projected on the disliked minority to justify treating the other
persons badly. An example of a
Quantitative Survey. Read The
Importance of the family in Italy and in the U.S.> ![](../../image/pallin.gif) “Importance”
is expressed by a certain number of parameters. Which? Next
task (Official Task 1): Sections 2 & 3 of How to Interview
for Friday, March 9th.
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09/03/07
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The
Quantitative
Survey. The Importance of the family in Italy and in the
U.S., asks 12 plus one questions. The questions 1-3, 4-6, 7-9
and 10-12 revolve around four parameters for measuring family
ties. (Can you identify them?)
You
will use the Questionnaire at Trinity College to interview the
students there on:
Monday,
November 20th, 8 pm until (probably) 10 pm during
the bi-cultural Encounter at Trinity College, Clivio dei
Publicii 7 (colle Avventino) WE WILL MEET AT 7:48
pm (a way of saying
“Be on time!”) IN THE SQUARE BESIDE
TRINITY COLLEGE, IN FRONT OF L'ACCADEMIA DELLA DANZA,
LARGO ARRIGO VII, 5
![](../../image/trinity2.gif)
![](../../image/trinit3b.gif)
NOTE:
Students who are NOT able to come to Trinity College on
March 12th must find, on their own (per
conto proprio), American students in Rome to
interview exactly as they would have done at Trinity College.
They can find these students during the day at American book
stores, churches, etc. and, in the late afternoon (“Happy
Hour”, after 5 pm) in the pubs. For a list of “lairs”
where the Anglo community holes out, click here.
Instructions:
Designate the following people for each group (if you don't have
6 people, eliminate the doubles... for example, instead of two
observers, nominate just one) 1. a sound technician uses audio
(video) recorder 2. lead questioner asks questions 3.
stenographer writes down answers 4. backup questioner asks for
clarification 5. observer #1 writes down body language
(parameters 2, prosody, and 4, facial signs); 6. observer #2
writes down body language (parameters 3, gestures, and 5,
posture)
After "official" questions on the
family, have an informal conversation in which you insert the
questions from your group questionnaire. Experiment with creating
empathy and moving from quantitative to qualitative questions. Do
not make it obvious that your are using a questionnaire, ask
questions with spontaneity. For Monday,
consign the homework that should have been turned in today:
Sections 2 and 3. For instructions how to do it, see Task 1 (go
to the Main Menu and click “tasks”).
NOTE: The
four Sub-Goals to make your interview more interesting are, in
reality, practices that help you create an empathetic bond with
your interlocutor. So you should in theory aim for all four
Sub-Goals. In practice you cannot since we have not talked
enough about them, in particular Sub-Goal D (Accommodating).
But during your first interview at Trinity, you can at least
try.
Sub-Goal A helps you take control of the interview
situation and become active, not passive, inquiring about what
exactly your interlocutor means. YOU take the
initiative.
Sub-Goal B helps you observe what your
interlocutor says in its entirety. We have said that language is
a particular will to mean that impinges on a communicative
event in many different ways, and not just verbally. Sub-goal B
teaches you to observe prosody, facial expressions, gaze and head
movement, gestures, posture, body movement and distancing. There
are, of course, many other kinds of signal that a person
communicating produces.
Sub-Goal C helps you
distance yourself from your own culture through “putting
it on the line” (attraverso il
chiamarla in causa). You can do this in many ways:
one is discussing – with an American, in the present case –
critical incidents in which an Italian causes a problem for an
American. By accepting to listen to the criticisms of various
Americans (who normally defend the American in the story) and
making their criticisms yours, you can begin to see your native
culture as only one possible value system.
Sub-Goal D
(accommodation) helps you to see the inner world of your
interlocutor by making that inner world yours when you express
yourself – at first by play, then ever more seriously. We
will return to the notion of accommodation later in the course.
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12/03/07
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Your task after asking the Official Questions:
establish an empathetic rapport in which to introduce your Group
Questions indirectly, adding genuinely qualitative questions to
complete the list. (See my correction of your Group Questionnaire
for the reasons why, in most cases, I do not consider it to
contain genuinely qualitative questions.)
Your task in
writing up a report on BOTH Questionnaires is to explain the
setting and the questioning process, to give your conclusions,
and to critique your conclusions epistemologically. For a
discussion of why the “knowledge” you obtain by your
questioning is NOT necessarily certain, see How to Interview,
Section 3, “A word of warning:”.
This section
says that 1. if you hypothesize that people in White,
Protestant, upper-middle class American culture are
“universalistic” (for them “Rules must be
respected always and everywhere, without exceptions”) and
2. if you test 100 subjects from that population with
questions like: “Do you disapprove of queue jumping, i.e.
moving ahead of other people in a queue to be first?”, and
they all say “yes”, 3. you still cannot say
that you have discovered that your subjects are “universalistic”.
In other words, you have not necessarily uncovered real
knowledge.
This is because your questionnaire (as well as
YOU, unconsciously) supposes three unproven hypotheses to
be true. If you read the section you will see what they are and
can think of ways of reducing the uncertainty of the knowledge
you produce though questionnaires and even ordinary conversation.
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14/03/07
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In our lesson on March 9th, I said that,
to understand truly a person speaking to you in English, you have
to “create an empathetic bond with your interlocutor.”
And I said that part of the process of creating that bond is
reducing the expressive and interpretative distance between you.
Reducing the expressive distance has been termed
“accommodation” by the sociolinguist Giles.
For
a description of accommodation theory, see here
and here.
Accommodation is the change in language (lexis,
intonation, turn-taking rules, etc.) that you adopt when you
speak, for example, with a child. You do not imitate a
pseudo-children's language, or else you sound false. You
genuinely forget the time, forget adult values and relive the
values you enjoyed living as a child. (I gave an example of that
change of mentality on the classroom floor!) If accommodation is
sincere (“substantial accommodation”), then it
normally reduces the communicative distance and permits the other
person to speak more freely.
Warning: In some cultures,
like traditional Japanese culture, people do not want foreigners
to accommodate to their way of speaking and acting. They want
foreigners to remain foreigners (“in their place”).
We discussed in class what to do in such cases.
If
accommodation theory is true, then “learning English”
means “learning how to accommodate in English” and
thus how to recognize, define, assimilate and “live”
the mind sets (and use the expressive repertories) that produce
the different varieties of English you will encounter.
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16/03/07
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Varieties of English
in the world (Crystal, English as a Global Language).
Three
general categories of English: norm-providing, norm-developing
and norm dependent (Kachru, 1982, 1988). These categories can be
represented with concentric circles:
![](../../text/white00.jpg)
(language
contact) Pidgin >>> Creole >>>
Language Compare Hawaiian Pidgin English (now probably
a creole) and Tok Pisin or Jamaican patois, once
considered creoles but increasingly full-fledged languages and
thus varieties of English, with established varieties like Indian
English (also see Hinglish), Singaporean English (also see
Singlish), etc.
It is not a question of
learning either SBE (SouthEast British English or Standard
British English, spoken by the upper classes) OR one of the
marginal varieties in the norm-providing circle, OR one of the
emerging varieties in the norm-developing circle. Your task
is to learn not as many varieties as you can – impossible
at this stage – but rather the ethnolinguistic capabilities
that will enable you to learn the varieties you will need in the
future. In a global world, you will assuredly need to
accommodate to more than just SBE speakers.
In any case
SBE remains the prestige norm in Britian and to some extent in
continental Europe. So next week we will try to use the English
of the red brick universities in England.
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19/03/07
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An example of Internet
resources for studying: The general characteristics of
British Academic English here.
(from the University of Hertfordshire)
With respect
to the specific trait of “numerous explicit discourse
markers”, see: --
British Academic English: University
of Warwick CELTE site,
discourse
markers,
test and
compare the markers with those current in: -- American
Academic English: University
of Michigan MICASE site,
markers,
test
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21/03/07
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Encounter
with the student representatives for a discussion within the
framework of the second objective of this course: to question
what it means to be a university student. For further
information:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/rappresentanti_lci/
http://roma3linguecomunicazione.forumup.it/
Problems
with correcting Task 2.
Email
from Daniele (Group C) and my answer:
Hai
scritto il / you wrote on (Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:39:31 +0000):
____________________________________________
>
Ritengo che i voti che ho posto siano bassi a causa
>
della grande confusione che si è creata tra lavoro
>
individuale e di gruppo e non per incapacità dei
>
componenti dello stesso. Quindi mi sono trovato in
>
grande difficoltà nel mettere voti a persone che non
>
avevano ben chiaro quale fosse il loro compito.
I
tried to explain in class that I understand the confusion of most
students since, in their schoastic and academic history, teachers
have always told them what to do.
Instead,
in this class, they have to ask questions (that they invent using
the guidelines I furnish) and come up with answers to their own
questions.
This
is new and so confusion is inevitable.
So
you have to judge them on the basis of:
1.
factual presentation
2.
epistemological honesty.
There
is NO "right answer" or "official way of doing
things."
I'll
look your sheets over. But in the future you are going to have
the same problem until students realize that THEY are responsible
for the knowledge they create.
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23/03/07
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A
sample question that could appear on the written test for the
“partial exam” (esonero):
“Maria
hypothesizes that people in White, Protestant, upper-middle class
American culture are “universalistic” -- for them
“Rules must be respected always and everywhere, without
exceptions”. She wants to test 100 Trinity students for
this attitude by asking them “Do you disapprove of people
who jump the queue?”
If
most students say yes (to this and other similar questions), has
she discovered "knowledge" about the students, i.e.
that their culture is “universalistic”?“
Evalutation
of teacher using the forms from the Dean of Studies'
Office. Codes to use Code
Insegnamento LL: 20701949-1 for Lingua e Linguistica
students. Code Insegnamento OCI: 20701954-1 for Operatori
Interculturali
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26/03/07
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Practice
analysing discourse markers in British Academic English:
Sample
passage. Analyze the markers like this:
Sentence
1. Marker:___NONE____ Function: This
is the first sentence of the passage and introduces the paper. No
discourse markers are necessary. Note that the author expresses
an Anglo mentality in that s/he BEGINS by stating her/his PURPOSE
(what the paper proposes to demonstrate). It would have been
better if the author had also indicated her/his CONCLUSIONS . For
example, s/he could have written: “This paper is an attempt
to trace the development of theories of education within the
Northern European Renaissance, and within Renaissance France in
particular. It will show a increasing emphasis placed on the
learners (or readers) of a text, made to “live” that
text. My study centres... Sentence 2.
Marker:___SPECIFICALLY____ Function:
“Specifically” is a marker that says that
sentence 2. indicates the “focal point” or “specific
point” that will be discussed in the paper. To be even more
explicit, the author could have put a marker at the beginning of
the sentence: “In particular...” (eliminating
“specifically”). Now that the author has told us
where s/he wants to take us (sentences 1 and 2), s/he tells us in
sentence 3 how her/his paper is structured (in other words, how
she plans to take us there).
NOW YOU
DO THE SAME WITH THE REMAINING SENTENCES:
Entire
Text:
![](../variety/discuss/ac_spo_e/celte-3.jpg)
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28/03/07
|
Characteristics
of Anglo modes of expression
Sample
high level modes: the communicative intent manifests
itself as a. concrete, b. explicit, c.
practical, d. confrontational (but gentlemanly so: hedging,
understatement), e. eclectic...
Sample
low level modes: the communicative intent manifests
itself through a. phrasal verbs, quasi deictic
definite articles – spatial concreteness b. stress
placement to “telegraph” essential information –
explicitness c. mostly baton (with few redundant iconic)
gestures – practicality d. turn taking to avoid
silences & limit multiple floors – gentlemanliness e.
creativity in varying genres (new situations, fads...) –
eclecticism
Codes:
a. verbal, b. paraverbal, c. behavioral, d. interactional, e.
discoursual...
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30/03/07
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Summary
of MAJOR POINTS MADE DURING THIS FIRST MODULE
1.
A new vision of language learning: (you're beginning to speak
like Martina!)
(And
NOT like the Berlitz Language School advert. Video: “Mayday!
Mayday! We are sinking!”)
2.
A new vision of “English” (-►Englishes). Thus
“correctness” is relative. SBE
norms nonetheless claim universality.
Even in Iraq! (video of BBC interview of insurgent group)
3.
A new vision of language (a will to mean) and culture (a will to
be). Example: video of a New
Zealander professor and student)
4.
A new vision of British Academic English (BAE). A relative norm.
A way of saying things AND seeing things:: “linear”,
“explicit”, “hedged”, “gentlemanly”,
etc. (Celte:
Discussion on Cuba)
5.
A new vision of understanding others when using English: (Picture
interview.)
(video:
Afterwards
in a pub.)
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LESSONS:
SECOND MODULE
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18/04/07
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Module
2: April 18 20 23 25
27 30 May 2 4 7
9 11 14
16 18
Perhaps another lesson
will be annulled (tesi di laurea). So we will have 8
lessons. 3 to 5? (still conflicts with other courses?) TASK
4 . to send the audio(visual) files: if they are too large for an
email: http://intertransfer.interfree.it/
no limit to file size, 3 days on server
First
module Only two functions
of language: -- heuristic function (How to ask questions) –
using language to “know” someone or something --
informative or “representational” function (reports)
– using language to represent something Only one variety
of English: SBE or Standard British English or South-eastern
British English Only one pronunciation
of that variety: R.P. or Received Pronunciation Only one
register of that variety: BAE or
British Academic English
Second module Two
more functions of language: --
personal (using language to BE something) -- interactional
(using language to relate to someone)
NOTE: 7 social
functions of discourse: * heuristic >
“What?” informative (or “representational”)
> “No!” (“The cat did
it.”) personal > “Here I
am!” interactional > “Hello!”
ìinstrumental >
“Mine!” regulatory >
“More!” imaginative >
“Let's pretend”
*M.A.K. Halliday, Language
as social semiotic - The social interpretation of language and
meaning. London, 1978.
The monograph Seeing
and saying things in Englsh describes
langauge-learning activites that help you acquire all seven
functions. (Traditional langauge teaching: mostly the informative
/ representational function.)
We will do activity
1 and another one, not yet determined.
Your
task now is to decide:
WHO
WOULD I LIKE TO BE, IN AN ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRY, IF I
COULD BE THAT PERSON FOR A DAY? (This means that I would not
only like to have the things that this person has, but to
talk, think, act, feel things like this person... at least for a
day.)
Please
avoid rock stars, Hollywood actors and other “artificial
celebrities,” whose real “way of being” may be
entirely different from the public image that their PR managers
invent for them.
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20-04-07
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Discussion on the partial exams, in particular on
the notion of qualitative and quantitative questioning. See the
email to Teresa on the Bulletin Board in the NEWS section or
here.
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23-04-07
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Halliday's 7
functions can be reduced to 3 general functions (following Karl
Bühler, Sprachtheorie. Jena: Verlag von Gustav
Fischer, 1934)
You use language
1. to represent
something (to yourself, to others) such as an idea, the
description of a feeling, etc. and you
study this function of language in your linguistics courses.
These courses ask: “What are
the formal properties of series of sounds and graphemes that
produce meaning?”;
2. to do
something and you study this
function of language in your sociolinguistics and pragmatics
courses. Pragmatics is a discipline
that studies the illocutionary force of words in context
(example: “The door!” meaning “Please close the
door”). See J. L. Austin in How to do
things with words. These
courses ask: “What are the
'rules of use without which the rules of grammar are
useless'?”* *Dell
Hymes, “On communicative competence” in J. Pride &
J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics. Penguin, 1972 (orig
1971), p.278
3. to BE something and
you study this function of language in courses teaching language
as culture.
To be someone in English, i.e.
acquire an Anglo persona when speaking English, you must: 1.
BRACKET your Italian values and ways of expressing yourself: 2.
FOREGROUND the values and expressive habits of someone (your
“double”) from an Anglo culture in which you would
like to live for a day... as that person., thinking and
feeling and wanting the things that your double thinks, feels and
wants.
One way of achieving this is by using the
techniques that the great Russian stage director Stanislavski
invented for actors. Actors should not represent an old man, they
should be an old man. Once they have found in themselves
the germs of an old man's feelngs (and all of us have, within us,
the germs of all cultures and all social conditions), then they
can talk and act in any way they want – and it will be
right for the role.
You will do the same thing in
English: you will NOT try to “represent” the way an
Englishman or American speaks. You will be an Englishman or
American and then speak any way you want.
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02.05.07
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At
the SIETAR Conference in Sofia
(Buulgaria), April 24, 2007 the theme of Module 1
(“Understanding others”) was discussed by
Geert Hofstede, inventor the construct called “cultural
dimensions”
NOTE:
Important! See the explanation of Hofstede's CULTURAL
DIMENSIONS here,
There are only 5: Power distance,
Individualism vs. collectivism,
Masculinity vs. femininity,
Uncertainty avoidance, Long
vs. short term orientation. Hofstede says he can
describe the differences among all the cultures of the world
using only these 5 dimensions. If this is true, then his
construct is “economical” (it gives you a lot with
just a little). One of the secondary criteria for a good
scientific construct is that it should be “economical.”
NOTE:
Many other social scientists have made longer lists of cultural
dimensions. For example, in the “Handouts” section on
this web page, you will find Prof. L. Beamer's list of 8
dimensions. To describe interaction between Mexican and United
States businessmen, Garcia Sordo* gives 15 cultural
dimensions. *García Sordo, J.B. (2004).
Cultural Dimensions of doing Business in Mexico: Perceptions
of U.S. and Mexican Executives. Journal of International
Marketing and Exporting, 9: 1.
![](../cultural/hofstede/hofst1-b.jpg)
Question
put to Hofstede: What do you think of qualitative
versus quantitative studies?
Listen to his
response here
(you can read it here).
(It is also the position advocated in this course.)
NOTE:
Hofstede does not use the terms “quantitative/qualitative”
but rather “emic/etic”. “ETIC” = from
“Phonetic” >>> What an observer
understands “EMIC” = from “Phonemic”
>>> What a participant understands (Kenneth Pike,
1967: Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the
Structure of Human Behaviour. The Hague: Mouton.)
On
Internalizing an English-speaking Double
Konstantin
Stanislavsky (1863-1938) Russian stage director and
theorist
(>>>
Lee Strasburg, Actor's School, “The Method”: James
Dean, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, Dustin Hoffman,
Al Pacino, etc.)
1. Don't act, BE!
2.
Reconstruction of values and emotional states (reliving them by
personal association – c.f, introjection)
3. “Magic
If”
4. Physical action (overt behavior)
More
information: Dulwich College course on the Stanislavsky system
Altri
ragguagli sull'interiorizzazione come aiuto per apprendere bene
Inglese: da una tesi di laurea
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07.05.07
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Practice
for the oral exam on May 18th
Sample
questions on these two speakers of English, dealing with their
linguistic-cultural background):
Lady
Diana Frances Spenser, Princess of Wales: Interview on the
BBC program Panorama, November 1995: “The most
daunting aspect was the media attention...”
“I don't want to be seen to ... be indulging in self-pity.
I'm not. I understand they have a job to do.
But...” (Upper class South-east British
English, with “Sloane” R.P.
Accent) Listen> I. II:
Read both texts>
![](../../image/pallin.gif)
Martin
Luther King, Baptist minister and political activist, Nobel
peace prize 1964. This sermon, “Why I am opposed to the war
in Vietnam,” was delivered at the Ebenezar Baptist Church,
Atlanta, Georgia, on April 16, 1967. (Afro-American
[or Black] vernacular English, also called
“Ebonics”) Listen> I. Read
the text>
II.
____________________________________________________
TOO
MUCH WORK IN THIS CLASS?
HERE IS MY OPINON.
in
our course, you have had to work a lot, I know.
You've had
to acquire capacities that the university does not normally teach
you (except
at the very end with the tesi di laurea, for those who
make it to the end, --
and even then you do not learn all of the following
capacities).
These
capacities are, for example: 1. how to organize a research
project by yourself and carry it out (self-initiative), 2. but
also how to work in a group to share information
for a common project, 3. how to evaluate the others in your
group and therefore, with time, yourself, 4. how to
participate in group discussions, class debates (using a
microphone!), 5. how to do research in English on the web and
share documents electronically, 6. how to speak English to
foreigners in the street, relating to them interculturally, 7.
how to tutor fellow students who know English less than you
(provided you joined our tutoring program – if
you didn't, then you missed an opportunity to learn a precious
skill); 8. how to study texts in English traditionally
but also as problem solving, 9. how to adapt your
English to different contexts (academic paper, interview...) 10.
how to plan a Task and consign it on time (i
wasn't very successful in this case, however), 11.
how to act in class as you would in a different (Anglo) cultural
setting (same thing).
In
addition, while leaning these things, you practiced how to: a.
speak, b. listen, c. write, and d. read in English
in view of the Lettori exam.
And, of course, above all
you learned the CONTENT of this course:
I. that languages
are not words but volitional matrices (insofar as they are
langue* *see Saussure) and wills to
mean (insofar as they are parole* *see
Saussure);
II. that English therefore exists only
as varieties, which are culturally connotated;
III. that
“understanding others” in English therefore requires
decentering yourself into their existential mind set, whether it
be British, American, Jamaican, Indian...
I realize that
learning to acquire the above eleven (11) capacities, in addition
to the content and English language skills, has been a lot of
work.
So why did I insist?
BECAUSE
IT IS WHAT EMPLOYERS WANT.
THEY ARE NOT
SATISFIED WITH THE TWO (2) CAPACITIES TAUGHT BY
TRADITIONAL LESSONS:
1. LEARNING TO TAKE NOTES AND
THEN TO REPEAT THE CONCEPTS AT EXAM TIME;
2.
LEARNING TO READ AND ANALYZE TEXTS AND EXPLAIN THE IDEAS AT EXAM
TIME.
THESE TWO CAPACITIES WERE ENOUGH FOR MINISTERIAL
BUREAUCRATS IN THE PAST.
NOT TODAY.
MINISTRIES
(AS WELL AS PRIVATE SECTOR EMPLOYERS) WANT THE 11 SKILLS LISTED
ABOVE. SEE THE EVALUATION FORM FROM THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN
AFFAIRS HERE.
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