the bounday-turn reflections on language, culture and identity through the epistemological lenses of...

The Bounday-TurnReflections on Language, Culture and Identity through the epistemological

lenses of time, space and social interactions in the 21st century

Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta

Professor ChairAcademy HumES, Humanities, Social Sciences & Education

Research group KKOM-DS, Communication, Culture & Diversity-Deaf Studies

‘Cultural Education and Civil Society: How can languages contribute?’European Expert Seminar

Leeuwarden/Ljouwert, Fryslân, The Netherlands

25-27 May 2011

Sweden

European expert seminar policy?

• …language?

• …identity?

• …culture?

• …discipline?

• (inter)state=European?

• (inter)national?

Seminar behaviours & backgrounds

• multilanguages

• multiliteracies

• multimodalities

• multidisciplinary

• multisites & multimobility


Sweden

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WE (the experts)

• Linguistics/sociolinguistics

• Anthropologists

• Educationists

• Computer analysts

• Cognitive scientists

• Sociologists

• European (?) languages

• Etc, etc, etc

• Different departments/institutions

Common grounds for social scientists & humanists today?

• post-structuralist?

• non-modernist?

• non-positivist?

• non-ethnocentric?

• non-eurocentric?

• non / post / fluid…

• non-conformist?

Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta 3


Theoretical frameworks Methodologies

Theoretical-methodological harmony

Assumptions Natural sciences paradigms dominate?

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Situated nature of meaning

• Seminar?• Conference?• Workshop?• Symposium?

• Language-in-action

• Real-life-ways-with-words


A cow produces about 18 liters of milk per 24 hours.

How much milk does the cow produce during one week?

Kalle goes to school and on an average he has 7 lessons a day.

How many lessons does he have per week?


How many days are there in a week?

A cow produces about 18 liters of milk per 24 hours.

How much milk does the cow produce during one week?

Kalle goes to school and on an average he has 7 lessons a day.

How many lessons does he have per week?


Language comes to life in the real world and changes from words and sentences into discourse

(Agar, 1994:6)


Fluidity, Languaging, Translanguaging, Continnua, ChainingDimensions of the Boundary-Turn

The vast majority of studies that focus languages at best analyse what has happened and fail to highlight that social interaction in itself is a meaning making enterprise wherein human realities and identities are co-created.

The far majority analyze either ‘idealized data in the form of isolated, fabricated sentences’ or discourses about attitudes or what human beings think about their language practices through interview and narrative based studies.

(Bagga-Gupta, 2007)


Fluidity of language identifications across time and space the example of Englishes

• Different “recognized” English languages, British-English, American-English, Indian-English, Australian-English, etc

– Distinct and are not considered different dialects of English

– Different English dictionaries as well as the different English correction possibilities available in digitalized word programs

• Annual ritual of the commonest used new words at the end of the year, “twitterati”, “unfriend/defriend”, “Youtube”, “Facebook”, “Spillcam”, “Vuvuzela”

– These are not accredited as English language words by digitalized computer programs at the beginning of 2011


The horizontal division: language classification in syllabi

• Swedish (first compulsory language)

• Swedish as a second language

• Swedish for immigrants

• Swedish for the deaf/hard of hearing

• English (second compulsory language)

• Swedish Sign Language

• Swedish Sign Language for hearing

• Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic (neighbour languages)

• French, German, Spanish (foreign languages)

• Turkish, Arabic, Finnish, etc. (home languages)

• Nationally recognised minority languages


A woman’s father ”is Sami” and lives in Jockmock in the Arctic region that lies in the far north of Sweden. The woman’s mother ”is Swedish”, spent her childhood in Teheran, Iran and the mother has lived for the last 30 years in Stockholm in the east coast of central Sweden. The woman, who grew up in Jockmock has lived in a university city in central Sweden for the last three decades, is married to a man who grew up in west Sweden and whose father “is Swedish” and mother “is Norwegian”. The woman and her husband have three children who are today young adults. All three children were born and furthermore spent their growing up years in central Sweden.



The woman and her family hold Swedish passports and “are white, blond, middle-class” citizens of Sweden.


Fluidity – Identifications of human beings and cultural connections


The woman and her family hold Swedish passports and “are white, blond, middle-class” citizens of Sweden.


www.oru.se/humus/Sangeeta_Bagga-Gupta 17

The horizontal division: language

classification in syllabi

Swedish (first compulsory language)Swedish as a second languageSwedish for immigrantsSwedish for the deaf/hard of hearing

English (second compulsory language)Swedish Sign LanguageSwedish Sign Language for hearing

Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic (neighbour lang)French, German, Spanish (foreign language)

Turkish, Arabic, etc. (home language)Nationally recognised minority languages

The vertical division: explicit or implied learner

category

Ethnic Swedish pupilsEthnic minority or immigrant pupilsAdult immigrantsDeaf & heard of hearing pupils in special schools

All pupilsDeaf & Hard of Hearing pupils in special schoolsHearing pupils in “regular” schools

All pupilsAll pupils

Ethnic minority or immigrant pupilsPupils who can make a claim to a nationally recognized minority language

Languages and learner-categories in the Swedish education landscape

SWEDEN


Language

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Identity

Culture


Language

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Identity

CultureFluidity, Languaging, Translanguaging,

Continnua, Chaining

The ”doing of” cultures, identification processes

Dimensions of the Boundary-Turn

Observing & analyzing human behaviour

TRANSCRIPTION AND INTERACTION ANALYSIS


• A child is born with 100 languages & we take 99 away from it

• ”I am because I communicate”

• ”There is no no communication”


Adult-children ASL—English signed communication (Padden, 1996:92)

Line i. Adult

B-A-K-I-N-G S-O-D-A, B-A-K-I-N [while

pointing to words on overhead projection],

THAT SAME [picks up box of baking soda

and points to <baking soda> on box while

mouthing “baking soda”].

(Now baking soda, baking – right here on the

screen is the same thing as this box in my

hand.)

Adult-teenagers SSL—Swedish signed communication (Bagga-Gupta, 2004:193-4)

Line i. Pupil

HOW SPELL A-U-T [pause]

(Official public authority A-U-T what?)

Line ii. Adult

MEAN A-U-T-H-O-R-I-T-Y PUBLIC

AUTHORITY A-U-T-H-O-R-I-T-Y [looks

questioningly]

(Do you mean public authority?)

Line iii. Pupil

[Nods] A-U-T-H [pauses, looks questioningly]

(yeah, A-U-T-H, it is spelled?)

Line iv. Adult

A-U-T-H-O-R-I-T-Y <AUTHORITY>

PUBLIC AUTHORITY [points to what she has

written on the board]

(It is spelled A-U-T-H-O-R-I-T-Y; this is how it is

written; this is how it is signed)


Adult Edo-English oral communication (Kamwangamalu in Sridhar 1996:57)

Dial enumber naa, n’uniform’en Mr. Oseni

eghe a approve encontracti nii ne. But

khamma ren ighe o gha ye necessary n’o

submit-e Photostat copies oghe estimate n’o ka

ya apply a ke pay era. You understand?

(Dial this number, and inform Mr. Oseni that

we approved the contract already. But tell him

that it will still be necessary for him to submit

Photostat copies of estimate that he first

applied with before we pay him. You

understand?)

Adult Hindi-English oral communication (Bagga-Gupta 1995:103)

Hum logoko arrival ka time staff attendance register

me likhna pardta hai

(We are required to write down our time of arrival in

the staff’s attendance register)


Who owns the problem when we analysts zoom into human language behaviors?

• Whose logic?

• Convenience?

• Tradition?

– Quantification/measurement

• Etc

• Purist position

• Homogenizing position

• Protectionist position

• A political position


communication24

Central concepts & assumptions

Language: meaningmaking/wayswithwords

Culture: waysofbeing/communitiesofpractice

Identity: communitiesofpractice/waysofbeing

Learning: socialisation/meaningmaking



Curse of language teaching

the assumption that language must first be developed before it can be used is one of the curses of language instruction, because it results in that … language instruction primarily becomes a matter of the development of skills and because the communicative linguistic actions and the pluralistic meanings that could be enabled in educational situations are left untouched

(Tornberg, 2000:265, my translation)

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Communication = Culture = Learning = Identity

• Communication

• Learning & meaning makingin mundane everyday activities inside & outside classrooms (not just in reporting)

• ”We are because we communicate”

• Not language categories

• Not learning & individual development

• Not merely ”how”

• Not categories based on traits

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Understanding complex communication

Focusing upon how experienced members of different settings shows that meaning making processes rely upon the use of bridges, connections, chaining in the fluidity between different modalities, codes, etc.

The doing of communication, culture & identities

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Paradox: democracy & equity

The paradox of language policy

The paradox of cultural policy

The paradox of equity in civil societies

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Illustration of ethnocentric monolingual labels for multilingual communities

“Indish/Indiska” = The myriad of mutually unintelligible languages spoken and written with different orthographic systems

Swedish, Danish, Finnish, English = Labels used for some other languages

Swedish: “svenska”

“pakistanish/ pakistanska”-Pakistan, “Spanish”-Mexico = other nation-states where multilingualism is accorded recognition both politically and culturally


the bounday-turn reflections on language, culture and identity through the epistemological lenses of...

Documents

sangeeta baggagupta10

sangeeta baggagupta8

sangeeta baggagupta3

sangeeta baggagupta7

sweden slide

sangeeta baggagupta9

language practices

liters of milk