SIETAR2004 - New Wants, Ways, Words

SIETAR Congress 2004, Berlin - Thursday, April 1, 2004, 11:30 a.m. - Track 9, DOR 24, 311

New Wants, New Ways, New Words

Patrick Boylan
e-mail: patrick@boylan.it

Department of Linguistics -- University of Rome III
via Ostiense 236 -- 00146 Rome, Italy

A pleasure and an honor to speak in this university...

Wilhelm von Humboldt (entry): Man perceives things in the way that the language he uses presents them to him.	Karl Marx (stairway, main hall): Philosophers have only interpreted the world variously; now it is time to change it.

Über die Vershiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss au die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts, published posthumously by Wilhem's brother Alexander in 1836.	11th thesis on Feuerbach, written in 1845 as personal notes, and published posthumously by Marx's colleague Engels in his Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klasssischen deutschen Philosphie, 1886.

Stoics, Plato: language = RATIONAL propositions

I. Humboldt: Man perceives things in the way that the language he uses presents them to him.
relativism¹, ordinary talk², language as being³

¹Boas, Sapir, Whorf, Hymes: relativism
²Austin (Oxford school): ordinary language
--- but from 1960's: Chomsky's "neo-platonism" has dominated ---
³This presentation (building on Gadamer and Halliday): Being

Let's start, however, from practical considerations.

IC is in transition:

less and less space for craftsmen (intuition);

in the near future: space only for
theoretically-grounded professional consultants.

(Compare with computer "consultants" 10 years ago.)

Examples of a "different" kind of LC2 instruction training:

identikit construction (+ being alter ego at home)
joining an LC2 Internet Dating Service or SIG

Compare such activities with "Intercultural games":

BaFà BaFà, . Barnga, . Ecotonos...
Intercultural Sourcebook: Cross-Cultural Training Methods,
S. Fowler & M. Mumford, Intercultural Press, Yarmouth, 1995.

Vision of LC (language/culture): sets of rules rationally describable

Vision of LC Learning: attaining (through learning the language) a tolerant understanding of a divergent culture.
(But you remain you. Thus purely formal accommodation.)

. .No! . . ~~tolerant~~ . . . . ~~understanding~~ . . . . ~~divergent~~

Compare the two kinds of activity:

Given the other party's language/culture matrix, the Interculturally Competent Person (ICP):
understands it (conceptually)	feels it as part of herself (momentarily)
tolerates it	likes partaking in it
considers it divergent	considers it instructive

(But only the ICP on the right can work in other cultures creatively.)

This is an example of how we might respond
to meet the challenge of rethinking our discipline:

rethinking what is "communication", "language", "culture"...
... to be able to teach/train creative ICPs.

So let's begin to rethink....

FIRST STARTING POINT -- Language Learning

Beginner student: . . How are you?

Advanced student: How's it going? *
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . What d'ya say? *

.*But: possibility of sounding false, ridiculous.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... ... ... ... .Why?

Stance = bodily position (posture); . also a psychological position

1^st intuition:

expression & way of being are linked.

(If expression is consonant with the speaker's way of being,
s/he will sound natural even if ethnicity, etc. is diverse.)

Peter Trudgill (1983:145): the falsely American pronunciation of many British pop singers

"Acts of conflicting identity. The sociolinguistics of British Pop--Song Pronunciation" in P. Trudgill, On Dialect - Social and Geographical Perspectives, Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.

But the genuine-sounding American accent of singers who have "acculturated"...

Mark Knopfler (Yorkshire) "Tenessee",
Van Morrison (Ireland), "Chicago Black"...

expressive stance = existential stance, way of being

Practical conclusion (for Language Teaching):

Just as musical scales and rules of harmony are not 'music', (but rather the material support of music) thus words and rules of grammar are not 'language', (but rather the material support of language); and just as customs and institutions are not culture, (but rather the products of culture) thus conversations and literature are not language (but rather the products of language).

"language" = EXPRESSION	LANGUAGE = WILL TO MEAN	CULTURE = WAY OF BEING
Repertories: lexis, gestures, genres	Particular expressive stances	Particular existential stances
conversations, literature...	genius of the language, style...	philosophies, ethics, politics...

Language is an alogical, intentional matrix,
a will to mean rooted in a way of being (culture).

Language shapes repertories of artefacts to represent itself by analogy: gestures, words, mimicry, even silence.

Teaching a language ≠ simply teaching repertories,
but a people's will to mean rooted in their way of being.

SECOND STARTING POINT -- Intercultural Training

Intercultural Effectiveness

Peace Corps: "Tolerant understanding of divergent behavior." (But don't go native!)

. .No! . . ~~tolerant~~ . . . . ~~understanding~~ . . . . ~~divergent~~

Intercultural Effectiveness

IC Trainers: "Capacity to live contentedly and work successfully in another culture"

Thomas Vulpe et al., A profile of the interculturally effective person, Centre for Intercultural Learning, Canadian Foreign Service Institute, 2000.

external (behavioral), pragmatic (task focused) definition

But: behavior ≠ understanding . . task completion ≠ creativity
Better: entering into a subjectivity

Intercultural Effectiveness

This presentation: "Capacity to react to and participate in meaning-making events in a given culture, as a member might."

Boylan 1980, 1987, 1991, 1998, 2000 - available on the web:
www.boylan.it -- click on "RESEARCH"

a kind of UNDERSTANDING that produces CREATIVITY

"culture" = CUSTOMS	LANGUAGE = WILL TO MEAN	CULTURE = WILL TO BE
Repertories: greetings, etiquette, taboos..	Particular expressive stance	Particular ways of being, existential stances
table talk, business cards, giving orders...	style, spirit, genius of the language...	philosophies, ethics, lifestyles, politics...

_____________________ ... ..___________________________________________

FORMAL ACCOMMODATION . . .. . .SUBSTANTIAL ACCOMMODATION

How?

1.Change of viewpoint: Begin rethinking language as:

a sedimentation of modulations of social behaviour created by repeated reactions to meaning-sharing events and by repeated attempts at (co-)producing such events in response to a felt need

to represent something (to oneself, to others),
to do something (through representation), above all
to be something (through representing, doing).

(Cf. Buhler's, Jakobson's, Halliday's speech functions)

2. Dare to experiment learning activities that:

- call for a change of tastes, values
- provoke a "transformation of consciousness."

Examples: identikit construction (+ being alter ego at home)

. . . . . . . . joining an LC2 Internet Dating Service or SIG

. . . . . . . . For more activites like these, click here.

Compare such activities with "Intercultural games":

IC: understanding "them". . .IC: understanding us

Given the other party's language/culture matrix, the Interculturally Competent Person (ICP):
understands it (conceptually)	feels it as part of herself (momentarily)
tolerates it	likes partaking in it
considers it divergent	considers it instructive

(But only the ICP on the right can work in other cultures creatively.)

Rethinking language as...

New WANTS -- To speak another language (or, more simply, communicate interculturally) most effectively, one must acquire a new volitional (existential) stance..

New WAYS -- The new wants will produce new behavior: one will begin doing things differently to seek different kinds of satisfaction.

New WORDS -- Language is not words but a behavioral complex; nonetheless, behavior includes talking and gesturing: thus among the new ways of behaving will be the use of new words to make one's wants felt.

Research:

Phenomenon	Perception*	Interpretation**
1. An accumulation of signals...	...taken to be intentional and thus an offering...	...constitutes an existential value.
2. An accumulation of values...	...taken to be coherent and thus a stance...	...constitutes a conversational contribution.
3. An accumulation of contributions...	...taken to reveal a Weltanschauung and thus a frame...	...constitutes a scene, the basic unit of a narrative event.
* Psychological rules governing perception ("Ratification rules"): - The perception (attribution) of intentionality ratifies signals as offerings. - The perception (attribution) of coherency ratifies values as stances. - The perception (attribution) of a Weltanschauung ratifies contributions as frames.
** Rules of interpretation (hermeneutic rules for laying claim to sense): - A (projected) likeness of feelings constitutes offerings as values -- Affect. - A (projected) conceptual scheme constitutes stances as contributions -- Cognition. - A (projected) "will to be" constitutes frames as scenes -- Volition. Scenes are stages in the progressive enactment of an intent, i.e. a particular instance of a historical will realizing itself. The term "scene" is thus a process-bound concept.

II. Karl Marx: Philosophers have only interpreted the world variously; now it is time to change it.

Two visions of Intercultural Communication (IC):


IC=understanding "them"*	IC = understanding us

*Gen. Sanchez's IC courses for Marines in Iraq and Wolfowitz's statement.

Two visions of Intercultural Communication (IC):

understanding "others"
(to manipulate or defeat them: win/loose as a policy)
understanding "ourselves in others"
(to empathize with them: win/win when possible)

Thank you.

Bibliography at www.boylan.it -- click on the word RESEARCH
Slides at http://interculture.interfree.it/sietar/ in a few days.