Linguistics
Parent Involvement and Family Visits by Jenni Sharkey
Sociolinguistics and Business English by Freda Goldman
A History of Written Language by Carollyn James
Field Linguistics by Carollyn James
Neurolinguistics by Ann Burdette
Spanglish: A New Idioma? by Amy Sera
Parent Involvement and Family Visits
by Jenni SharkeyWe all know that open communication between parents and teachers are just support for the students. In today’s large bureaucratic schools, teachers often find it impossible to meet the demands of their classes, and know their students as individuals. Families have become increasingly busy and they often reflect structures from the traditional, two-parent two-children prototype. New media and technologies almost daily affecting family time and communication in ways we have not imagined years ago. These societal changes can be viewed as positive and progressive. However, there are still some teachers who have operated in traditional ways by delivering instruction, and try to overcome the barrier between parents and school, especially ESL kids. Very often we can hear complaints from teachers that parents of ESL students don’t want to be involved in their kids’ education, Talking about the Latino community is a very common subject. Parents rely on teachers to discipline and educate their kids, which is a cultural issue. Most of the Latino parents, especially in Carroll County, rely on one monthly income. It is usually the man who has to work long, hard hours in order to provide basic needs. Latino women usually don’t know how to drive, so they depend on someone else for transportation. Usually, school isn’t a walking distance from their house. Low, or no-knowledge of the English language makes them rely on translators to attend any school events. Unfamiliarity with the American school system makes teachers think that the parents of ESL kids don’t want to be involved. But this isn’t the case.
Teachers must see their work as educating the whole student, than just delivering facts. To educate effectively, teachers must reach out to families in ways not traditionally imagined. When parents are respected as experts of their children, they tend to cooperate and willingly help. In order to overcome the gap between parents and school, one way would be to provide family visits, since they are invaluable insights about students and families find that they can make meaningful connections and instruction.
Prior to a family visit, consider the following recommendations:
1. Make appointments in advance and follow up reminders. Try to schedule that key family members can attend.
2. Plan to make visits brief.
3. Be prepared for unexpected occurrences such as:- Cancellations
- New situations or surroundings
- Sharing of emotional & troubling information
- Views different from the visitor’s own4. To gain the most benefit from a family visit experience, consider the following:
- Concerning the children, parents and family members are experts
- Personal sharing may be appropriate at times
- Observing and listening can lead to insights, as well as asking and
answering questions.5. Successful home visits have brief agendas, but are flexible
& responsive to issues the family might raise. Good questions to
guides discussions include:-What are your child’s interest and favorite activities?
- What has your child done this summer that was a learning experience?
- What are your child’s strengths?
- How does your child handle stress?
- What have you noticed that your child can do now that s/he couldn’t
do until school was out?
- What do you think your child needs to work on and would like
to learn about most?
- How does your child interact with other children?
- What have you helped your child learn?
- What have you discovered about how your child learns best?
- What does your child already know a lot about?
- What are your goals for your child this year?
- Would you like to visit or volunteer in your child’s classroom?With help from:
www.crede.ucsc.edu
www.cal.org/store
www.ncela.gwu.eduSociolinguistics and Business English
by Freda GoldmanLanguage use represents dimensions of social behavior and human interaction.Sociolinguistics is the term that connects aspects of the spoken and written language to society at large. The interfacing of language and society has a wide range of impact from international to interpersonal relations. The study of language in relation to culture and society can reveal certain linguistic patterns, terminology, and social rules for conducting conversations, transactions, or presentations.
Business English is a sociolinguistic phenomenon and is a dynamic growing field. With the globalization of trade, companies and individuals have currently more of necessity to know Business English. English has become the essential language the “lingua francais” of the business world just as French was once the primary language of the diplomatic world. In fact, the internet is replete with advertisements for courses promising to teach any non-native speaker Business English so that he can communicate effectively and feel more at ease in the American business world.
A non-native speaker of English who might be proficient in common English might still have difficulties with the intricacies of Business English.The Business World is a universe that encompasses a dynamic language, phrases, expressions, protocol, and etiquette that are utilized and understood by most people working in the business world. This universe speaks in well-known daily terms such as transaction, problem-solving, email, input, and conference call. This language is known as Business English. However, within this business universe, there exist myriads of industrial and professional worlds. These industries and professions become subcultures boasting their own special terminology, codes, and expressions. They all demand conformity to their prescribed language and to certain norms of behavior.
It is interesting to examine and study some of the terminology used in some of these industries. The financial world of Wall Street bulges with so much vocabulary that there now exists a dictionary dedicated to only financial terms. For instance, a suicide pill is not a pill that can kill but a financial provision so devastating that any outside company attempting to acquire a target company would find it extremely difficult.. The suicide occurs when the provisions force the target company to liquidate to pay off creditors. Volatile does not refer to a person who can’t control his emotions, but instead to a security(stock) which is subject to large fluctuations in price. Fight the tape is not throwing around a cassette but is a phrase denoting a stock trader who continues to buy stocks in a declining market or sell stocks in a rising market.
In the world of telecommunication, hyperactivity is not a physical condition, but a piece of digital telephone equipment that flashes its indicator lights while actually not functioning. . While x-ray is a photograph taken with high-energy photons, it becomes a diagnostic software test of individual parts of a telecommunication switching system. Operations are not a health procedure but instead a series of business or manufacturing processes. For the IRS, a receipt is not a confirmation of payment but another word for revenue. Business languages are continuously expanding and reflecting changes in the economy and society while they integrate these new phrases into functional vehicles of communication.
The vocabulary, expressions, and idioms are trademarks of a particular industrial world. They take on specific meanings in a professional context. Knowing these phrases and using them appropriately demonstrates being a member of that specific industrial sphere. The key to being accepted as a “member” of these business societies is the proficiency of the person to say the right thing, in the right way, at the right time.
Recommended Links:
http://business.englishclub.com/presentations-lang.htm
http://www.immi.se/intercultural/nr2/mcgee.htm
http://www.1sadc.org/web2/socioling.htmA History of Written Language
by Carollyn JamesEveryone literate is bilingual. Reading and writing are our second languages. Ask any third grader working on her cursive skills or eighth grader who can’t pass the state’s standardized language tests, if you don't believe me. It’s hard work learning and practicing to transcribe symbolically what is known orally and intuitively.
Because it is hard-and it is work-alphabets and writing systems were not invented to pass the time. If any invention was ever the mother of necessity, it is writing. And, like most social systems that have been successful, writing began because of economics. It literally was an answer to getting a receipt.
History
For thousands of years, thousands and thousands of years, as human beings and their languages evolved, we were a species of small tribes. What we wanted to say, we could easily say within a few feet of where we were. There was no need for a written language. If we had to tell our neighbor that we wanted to his daughter or his pig or his spear, we either told him and then took it or we took it and then told him. Everyone knew everyone else. Everyone was everyone else's first cousin. If we wanted to expound on the universe, we could that too. We could tell stories to each other and even create religions. Our world was small. We were hunters and gatherers and in most of our life times never met a stranger.
But then, we started to become more and more agrarian. As our farming skills improved and the land we cultivated expanded, our small tribal culture changed into a small village culture. We could support more people, and we did. What we needed now to live, changed too. What we couldn't produce ourselves, we traded for among ourselves. And I-will-give-you-six-baskets-of-barley if you-will-give-me-six-buckets-of-beer, thank you very much, was how we did business and improved our life styles. We still rarely met someone we weren't related to, albeit now as third and fourth cousins.
But human beings are an adventurous sort. Eventually, someone heard that there was another village three days walk up the road and set off to see for himself. When he came home, he told of strange people with strange habits who didn't speak a word he understood. But, he added slyly, their fields don't look as good as ours. They might want some our extra wheat--for a price.
And so trade began in lieu of a promise from a brother-in-law. However, with a brother-in-law, if he didn't come through with his end of the bargain, you always knew where he lived. With a stranger, there wasn't the trust or the back-up of finding him readily. What happened then, around 4100 BCE, was that clay tokens in the Uruk region of Mesopotamia were invented to record a sale. These were simple, fired bits of lines or crosses, each particular to what was being sold. A round bit of clay with an etched cross might mean that a cow had been sold. A triangular bit of clay with six vertical lines might mean that a bushel of grain had been exchanged.
And each bit of clay became a money of exchange with a known value.
As trade in the Mesopotamia valley increased, so did civilization. The Sumerian culture of 3500 BCE expanded the "writing" on clay bits into cuneiform on tablets. More symbols were invented. Man no longer was limited to writing about barley and cows. Now he could write about deeds and wars, in a limited fashion.
Clay was quickly replaced by animal skins. And animal skins were replaced by papyrus. It was lighter, after all, to carry around, and it was unbreakable. More and more symbols were developed. By 1800 BCE, the Egyptian Book of the Dead had been written.While the Nile Valley and Middle East, and eventually Greece and Turkey, were developing pictographs and finally an alphabet, the Far East, in much the same way, found a need for a written language. By the time Western Culture had developed a left to right writing and reading alphabet, Lao-Tze oversaw an imperial archives in China. This was around 500 BCE.
Of course, knowledge is power and power is closely held. Those who could read these symbols were those who were the most powerful. Reading was the tightly held knowledge of priests and political ministers. General literacy had to wait until the 19th century when mass education became useful, thanks to the technological revolution and the written efficiency of educating the working population in what had to be done.
To look at any written system is not to know its oral progenitor. Aside from agreed upon grammars, it does not reflect the sound of any language any more than describing a color represents that color. Aside from the whole discussion of visual versus sonoran representation, Hindi and Urdu share nothing in their transcription, although both belong to the Indo-European language group. Croatian and Serbian languages use the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabet respectively, although both are closely related linguistically in all other ways.
Written language is a construct. It serves an agreed upon purpose. What is most amazing is so many were developed and that I have written this using the Roman alphabet when the only Italian I know is polenta, which I adore, with a glass of Chianti, of course.
Recommended links:
http://www.historian.net/hxwrite.htm
http://www.delmar.edu/engl/instruct/stomlin/1301int/lessons/language/history.htm
http://www.xs4all.nl/~knops/timetab.html
http://www.textism.com/writing/
http://www.krysstal.com/writing.htmlField Linguistics
by Carollyn JamesAs with all sciences, linguistics is data driven. Collected, measured, compared, and stored data. Words are as surely found and held up to the light against a ruler as it they were pot shards. Like fragmented pieces of clay, they are glued back together in grammars and lexicons by field linguists. In this way, societies and cultures are examined. Homo sapiens sapiens is further uncovered and understood. Humankind is served.
Collecting languages is arduous. More often driven by the will and wherewithal of the linguist than by the willingness of his informants. Anyone who goes into the field changes the field. It is not just a simple matter of setting down a tape recorder and asking someone to speak into it. That would be like bringing a camera to the dinner table and asking the diners to act naturally. Before the linguist can get down to his business, he has to have the trust of the native speakers. Language is personal. And every speaker is aware that what he is saying could always be used against him.
This usually means that the linguist has to live among the speakers whose languages he is collecting. This can mean that he lives in huts, as often as he lives in motel rooms. Since trust is rarely forthcoming–especially to an outsider who finds what is being said enough of an oddity to preserve it–the linguist’s life in the field could go on for years. John P. Harrington, an early 20th century American linguist who collected over a hundred native American languages for the Bureau of American Ethnology, never went home. His wife actually left him to remarry one of his informants and his daughter never knew him. Harrington was in a hurry. As the Indians were being assimilated or sent to Christian schools, their languages were rapidly disappearing. For him, saving a language was a personal mission.
Once a language is saved or collected, it has to be transcribed. There is an equation for transcription. For every hour of recorded language, it will take from ten to a hundred hours to transcribe. The transcription is done in the International Phonetic Alphabet–nowadays digitally–and as the linguist plays and replays the tapes, he has to not only hear clearly what is spoken but almost be familiar enough with the language to hear nuances. For instance, in some of the Eskimo languages, the differential in tone is so subtle that a child who has not been raised on that language, cannot by age three hear the pronunciation differences in several words. Linguists don’t always get it right, either.
Many linguists prefer to use notes to recordings, mainly because it cuts down on the hours of transcribing. However, note taking while interviewing is awkward. It disrupts the flow of information. The informant tires more readily and information is less forthcoming.
The linguist is usually best served when he and his informants share some common language. It may be a pidgin or creole, or it may be some second language of commerce. Obviously there has to be a way to communicate what it is that the linguist is after. Often, however, language is collected not directly from the informant to the linguist. It is collected via a translator from the linguist to the informant. In the beginning of the a language study, this is not detrimental. But, as the linguist goes further into the language, it is. How do you ask, for instance, a woman informant what the words or slang phrases are for various bodily parts or functions when she is not only reluctant to give out that information but she has to say it in front of someone else?
A translator is not the only problem with completing a collection. The informant’s grasp and use of the language is defined by ethnicity, gender, age, and class. Then there is the every persistent issue of honesty. The linguist has to take the informant’s word for it that what is being given is, indeed, the word for it. Many content words collected by Harrington, for instance, have been discovered to be not what he thought they word. Cultural taboos and even personal propriety often interfere with the collecting.
Once a language has been collected, linguists have to share their work with other linguists. Data has to be generously given up–not only to insure that the transcription is correct but to bring the circle of knowledge closer. Nowadays, linguists routinely take their laptops into the field and modem their information back to their universities. Software programs make classification much quicker and consistent. When Harrington was collecting, although he was collecting for the BAE, he felt that his work was his work. He simply refused to show his work even to his supervisors. It was many years after his death before his notes and recordings were transcribed, let alone published. That delay may have created errors in his accuracy as many of the native speakers and linguists who went in and collected after him had died.
Whatever the peculiarities of the linguists and languages and the informants, field linguistics is the foundation, the rock that linguistic knowledge is built upon. As the world becomes more urbanized, languages are dying out faster today than when Harrington was collecting. “It has been estimated that half of the world’s languages will die out when the generation now learning them dies, and that 90 percent will be gone in less than 100 years,” says Spike Gildea, a linguist at the University of Oregon.
Anyone who has ever spoken, understands the importance of everyone else’s mother tongue. It proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Gilroy Was, indeed, Here.
Websites for further investigation of Field Linguistics:
www.monolith.eva.mpg.de/~gil/riau/working.htmThis site is a personal narrative with photos of a linguist’s field work:
www.bondy.ird.fr/pleins_textes/pleins_textes_4/sci_hum/41739.pdfThis site addresses technological needs of field linguists, especially software programs:
www.ling.wisc.edu/~phonetics/datagathering.htmThis site offers a bibliography of field work:
www.ldc.upenn.edu/exploration/LSA/sprouse/
www.comm.uoregon.edu/inquiry/archives/archives.php?issue+spring2001&article=article5This is the official website for the Journal of Field Linguists:
www.emuseum.mnsu.edu/cultural/languages/topics_in_anthropological_lingui.htmNeurolinguistics
by Ann BurdetteThe sub-field of neurolinguistics is new enough that its definition cannot easily be found in standard dictionaries, and Microsoft Word underlines it as orthographically incorrect! In medical dictionaries it is generally defined as the science that studies the human brain mechanisms (or neuroanatomy) underlying the comprehension, production and abstract knowledge of written, spoken and signed language. As such it is distinguishable from psycholinguistics, which researches the cognitive mechanisms of language through traditional methods of observation of such behaviors as eye movement and intonation. Neurolinguistics is necessarily interdisciplinary, tapping research from linguistics and neurobiology, and, more recently, computer science.
The field of neurolinguistics evolved from the early studies of aphasia, or loss of speech, through brain injury, which yielded important information about the lateralization of language in the left hemisphere of the brain, and the location of certain language capacities in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas. The use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission topography (PET), and event-related potentials (ERP)
has yielded detailed information about the locations of certain language activities in the brain. By tracking the rapid movement of blood through the brain, which is an indicator of electrical activity, neurolinguists can conduct both spatial and temporal mapping of the brain’s behavior.Such research has yielded much specific and detailed information about the location and process of such activities as verb conjugation, functional word retrieval, etc., but there are many broader notions of the brain and language that are generally accepted by neurolinguists. First, the brain appears to be an interdependent system of activity that hints at the presence of clusters of activity, rather than specific locations for specific tasks. Second, the brain appears to be organized in the same way for language of all kinds, a notion gleaned from studies of American Sign Language production. Third, the brain has “plasticity,” or the ability to use alternative routes and areas to process information. Finally, the brain’s anterior portions seem to be most concerned with the production of language, while the posterior portions are most closely aligned with receptive language.
Research in neurolinguistics is vast, but there are a number of important general topics of inquiry. The physical evolution of the brain is an area of study that delves into the origins of the mechanisms that made human speech possible. The driving question is, “What is the ‘lingua ex machina’ that represents the qualitative leap forward from ape ‘protolanguage’ to the syntax and semantics of human speech. The work of Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky inform this discussion. A second broad area of research has already been mentioned, that of the task of mapping the centers of brain activity and connections to find the loci of all sorts of language elements. How do we recognize sensible and nonsensical utterances. How do we produce syntactically-correct speech?
What neurological explanations can we discover for reading behaviors such as dyslexia?Along with research into the production of speech, neurolinguists examine the process of language acquisition, especially looking at the ways in which language is learned through rules and/or examples. The roles of exemplar modeling (nurture), and its counterpart, cognitive predisposition (nature), are examined. How do humans construct language? What cognitive factors, or structures, support, or inhibit, language acquisition? These questions are equally important in a related area of neurolinguistic inquiry, second language acquisition. The learning of new languages is evidence of the brain’s plasticity. The cortical mapping of bilingual aphasic individuals has demonstrated that the same types of language activities are centered in the same areas regardless of whether it is the subject’s primary or secondary language. Important questions in this arena are: What are the brain structures (such as attention and allocation of cognitive resources) which mediate second language learning? What can the field of bilingual education contribute to the science of neuroimaging?
Neurolinguistics is an evolving science whose future is intimately entwined with computer science. Computational models of the brain and its activities based upon provided information, can demonstrate the plausibility, or implausibility, of certain neurological organizations. They can also provide independent predictions about the organization of the brain. In this area, the modern neurolinguist is a sort of “high tech phrenologist,” whose predecessors once drew detailed maps of the location of every human thought and skill. As the field of neurolinguistics evolves, it will be fascinating to see if we can go full circle and discover that “keystone” of the evolutionary process that sets humans apart as the only creative users of language.
Spanglish: A new idioma?
by Amy SeraLinguistics is a field that studies the morphology, syntax and semantics of different languages. Linguists do not intend to make judgments about languages; they only intend to study them. Each language is unique in its grammar and usage. Many vocabulary words are used in multiple languages, demonstrating that linguistic “borrowing” is a common phenomenon that has been used for centuries.
Code switching is a technical name for linguistic borrowing. Code switching occurs when a word, phrase or entire sentence of a certain language is inserted into a conversation in another language. Code switching that occurs as a regular form of communication can become so frequent that it creates a hybrid language or dialect. One such language is Spanglish, a combination of Spanish and English, often spoken by Hispanic and Latino immigrants. Many scholars, of both the English and Spanish languages, disagree with the labeling of Spanglish as a language. They would argue that Spanglish is an ungrammatical combination of both languages. Whether or not Spanglish is an accepted language among scholars, there is no denying its existence and importance for immigrant and bilingual speakers.
According to the definition of code switching, Spanglish is not poor grammar usage. It is simply a combination of English and Spanish phrases that does not violate the grammar of either language. An example of Spanglish would be if a person said, “Es muy cute” or “This is my friend que vive en California.” Many Spanglish speakers employ these types of “legal” code switching. If a speaker violates the grammar of either language, then poor grammar is being used. An example of poor grammar would be, “Ella hit me with her fist.” This ungrammatical combination of languages is not code switching, but is a reflection of a language deficiency in one or both languages.
Spanglish permeates many aspects of American culture, entering into American English vocabulary, in addition to being spoken by the majority of first and second generation Hispanic immigrants. It can be heard on the radio, seen on television and read in many print sources from billboards to greeting cards. It is not uncommon for Hispanic musicians and singers to record two versions of a song. One is in English and the other is labeled the “Spanglish remix”. Likewise, advertisers are beginning to use Spanish phrases to sell American products to the growing Hispanic population in the U.S.A. These products are varied, ranging from food and travel to beauty and clothing items. The Hispanic television and radio stations use the same types of Spanglish when advertising to the Hispanic population in Spanish, adding English phrases and idiomatic expressions not normally utilized in Spanish. Americans and Hispanics often feel threatened by the influx of this hybrid language into their native languages. They fear that the prevalence of Spanglish will “pollute” their own languages. In reality, Spanglish serves the purpose of an intermediary form of communication for native Spanish speakers learning English. Spanglish is not typically used in every sentence or even during every conversation.
The uses of Spanglish vary, but mainly it is used for linguistic borrowing, for emphasis of a cultural idea or to make a point. It can even be used to convey intimacy between speakers, creating a feeling of solidarity within social groups. As native Spanish speakers are trying to master English, they often employ the use of Spanglish to supplement their inadequate vocabulary. As the immigrant population continues to grow at an increasingly rapid rate, Spanglish is bound to grow and its everyday use will no doubt expand even more in the coming years.
Links and References:
For more information regarding Spanglish and code switching visit:
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/vangogh/555/spell/spanglish.htm
http://hamminkj.cafeprogressive.com
http://www.lasculturas.com/lib/libSpanglish.php
http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i07/07b00701.htm
http://spanishabout.com/library/weekly/aa042301a.htm
http://www.spainview.com/spanglish.html
http://www.hispanicvista.comIn Spanish:
www.elcastellano.org/spanglis.htmlLast updated August 28, 2003