Phipps, A., presented by Forsdick, C. At Home and Exiled in Language Studies: Interdisciplinarity, intersectionality and interculturality. Presentation at the Language, Communities and Moving Borders: Theories and Methodologies symposium, hosted by Birkbeck, University of London and the Institute of Modern Language Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London, June 29, 2017.
Chi-Square Test Non Parametric Test Categorical Variable
At Home and Exiled in Language Studies: Interdisciplinarity, intersectionality and interculturality
1. At Home and Exiled in Language
Studies: interdisciplinarity,
intersectionality and
interculturality
Alison Phipps
University of Glasgow
2. What is the Crisis?
– Of the disciplines
– Of linguistic inclusion
– Of global mobilities
– Of technological fix
– Of performativity
– Of management
– Of imagination
– Of language diversity
Modern Languages: Phipps &
Gonzalez 2004
3. Worked with 2 key concepts
(2004)
Languaging – with
emphasis on
improvisation and
development of
language habitus –
strongly focused
Freirean critical
pedagogies and
Boalian creativity.
Intercultural being –
an ontological model,
shifting from a skills
based model to a
model of practice,
following ingold and
Bourdieu
4. Introducing language diversity &
Interculturality in 2004?
• Varieties of English?
• World languages?
• Languages spoken by
minority groups?
• Heritage languages?
• Indigenous
languages?
• Multilingualism?
• Plurilingualism?
5. Arguing for Diversity in 2004
Globalization
Marketization
Size Matters
Protection
Survival
Fragility
Conservation
Apocalyptic Scenarios
6. Using Diversity Arguments
• Choice
• Heritage
• Political Statement
• Ecological trope
• Linguistic
Anthropology
• Defence against
standardization
7. Things are getting worse
“Things are always getting
worse and the cultural
critic like the despairing
travel writer can only
report on a world that is
about to lose its
distinctiveness and leave
us adrift in a standardized
world.”
Cronin (2006)
8. Decline
• The trope of a decline in diversity is common to
cultural criticism and to today’s linguistic
criticism.
• This trope is ‘a particular myth of knowledge like
evolution, placing history outside of the domain
of human activity’ (Cronin 2006).
e.g.
• Language death vs. Language genocide
• “The Persistence of Diversity” (Forsdick 2005)
9. “The Persistence of Diversity”
• Arguments for language diversity in higher
education are often not arguments for
languages but for social and symbolic
capital.
• Languages persist despite higher
education
• How languages persist and why is a
crucial research question and question of
language pedagogy.
10. e.g. Scottish Landscape for
Languages
Languages Persisting to Degree Level in
Scotland
Arabic; Chinese; Czech; French; German;
Greek; Hebrew; Italian; Japanese; Latin;
Modern Greek; Persian (Farsi); Polish;
Portuguese; Russian; Sanskrit; Scottish
Gaelic; Spanish
11. What do language offerings tell us?
• We have enemies/ we are
diplomats.
• We go on holiday to sunny
places
• We learn ‘world languages’
• We are part of Europe
• We are part of literary Europe
• We are part of a Classical past
• We are part of a Biblical past
• We were part of the Cold War
• We have migrant workers
• We would like to open into the
‘new markets of Asia’
12. Scottish Languages History
• What languages should
we teach to tell us
something of our past?
• Classical languages
(including Biblical
languages)
• French (Auld Alliance)
• Gaelic
• Scots
• Old Norse/ Anglo Saxon
13. Contemporary Scottish Languages:
• What should we learn to
understand who we are today?
• Indigenous languages (Gaelic;
Scots)
• European languages
• Neighbouring languages (Irish,
Welsh; Scandinavian)
• Postcolonial languages
(Chichewa; Urdu
• Tourist languages
• Languages of relationship
• Varieties of English
• Languages for peace building
(English, Arabic)
• Migrant languages
14. Language Futures – towards
Translating Cultures
• Languages of hope
• Language lines of
relationship and love
• Languages for ecological
futures
• Languages for new
economic futures
• Languages for beauty
and for justice
• Languages for utility
(greater good)
• Language learning and
languaging
15. RM Borders: Critical language
reflection
• Where is this language from?
• Why am I learning this?
• How am I learning this?
• Why am I learning this, this way?
• What questions of history, identity, process and
nationhood does this language and its pedagogy
offer?
• What difference does it make that I am learning
this language, at this time, in this place?
16. Giving up on simplicities (Law:
2005)
• We will need to teach
ourselves to know some
of the realities of the
world using methods
unusual to or unknown in
humanities and social
sciences.
• Hungers, tastes, pains of
our bodies.
• Sensibilities, private
emotions, passions,
intuitions, fears, griefs or
betrayals.
18. e.g. Tourist language learning
(Phipps 2006)
• Margins, after hours.
• In people’s lounges.
• During holidays.
• Taught by (excellent)
hourly paid women.
19. Possibilities
• Languages are alive and
well, on holiday!
• Why bother?
• Learning to ask for a cup
of coffee.
• What is most despised is
what creates the social
miracle.
• Meeting, greeting and
eating. (Williams) –
languages in the social
world of Applied
Linguistics.
20. Languaging
• Languages, skilfully
embodied and enacted,
are part of the richness of
human being.
• Languaging is a life
practice. It is inextricably
interwoven with social
experience – living in
society – and it develops
and changes constantly,
as that experience
evolves and changes.
21. • Languaging is the
intellectual challenge for
languages in a post-
disciplinary H.E.
– How to teach languaging &
intercultural being?
– How to live in translated
worlds?
– How to enable real, messy,
internationalisation &
interdisciplinarity in H.E.?
2004-2014
25. The Challenge
“A new and dynamic approach to foreign language education, in the
context of the communication effects of globalization, requires
ongoing interrogation as it surrounds us with unprecedented
challenges of conceptualization and still unimagined challenges of
pedagogy.” (Lo Bianco, 2014, p. 523)
26. Context of
the project
UK Arts and
Humanities
Research Council:
Researching
Multilingually at
the Borders of the
Body, Language,
Law, and the State
(2014-2017)
28. Unpredictability
The languages used to language – to
attempt to work through the loss
and possibilities, the pain and the
hope – are now radically
unpredictable.
The unmoorings (loss of one or both
anchors) of mono &
multilingualism are myriad and
occurring at the levels of :
• Self
• Kin
• Community
• Work
• Environment
• Market
• Politics (local / global)
29. Researching Multilingually
Aims:
1)to research interpreting, translation and multilingual practices
in challenging contexts, and,
1)while doing so, to document, describe and evaluate
appropriate research methods (traditional and arts based) and
develop theoretical approaches for this type of academic
exploration.
2)To up end the ‘normal’ routines of academic representation
giving control and voice to those normally denied
representational power as artists.
30. 5 Case Studies
1) Global Mental Health: Translating Sexual and Gender
Based Trauma (Scotland/Sierra Leone)
2) Law: Translating vulnerability and silence in the legal
process (UK/Netherlands)
3) State: Working and Researching Multilingually at
State and EU borders (Bulgaria/Romania)
4) Borders: Multilingual Ecologies in American
Southwest borderlands
5) Language Education: Arabic as a Foreign Language
for International Learners (Gaza)
31. Hubs and Impacts
- Academic Hub
-Creative Arts Hub
Multimodal Creative Interventions
Curation of films, workshops, methods, poetry, drama,
devising.
32. A human ecological language Perspective –
with Glenn Levine
● Creativity
● Complexity
● Capabilities
● Conflict
● Compassion
Responding to these creatively, reflexively and ethically
defines for us the characteristics required for a human
ecological language pedagogy.
37. Translating at Root
Slow, careful,
considered, deliberate –
utterly dependent on the
slow wisdom of
translation as metaphor
and material reality
38. But always
exemplary language
subtle as flowers
plastic as waves
flexible as twigs
powerful as wind
concentred as rock
syncratic
as the self
beautiful as love.
Hinweis der Redaktion
ALISON:
Gayatri Spivak wrote recently that “Globalisation takes place only in capital and data. All else is damage control.” Damage calls for a response from the human subject. As does globalization.
GLENN:
The languages we teach now, we teach at the end of the most violent century in world history and one which had seen unprecedented technological change and innovation, the accumulation of wealth in certain parts of the world and a military-knowledge economy growing to protect that wealth and ostensibly to ‘keep the peace’ and ensure global security.
Alongside this has come an extraordinary democratization of both travel and of the experience of cultural, linguistic and ethnic otherness with new generations growing up in multicultural and intercultural contexts worldwide. This is not to say that diversity had not been part of life previously, but it is to say that the experience of diversity had become far more widespread. Part of that challenge is to create a theoretical, methodological and conceptually coherent teaching practice that is creative, reflexive and ethical in orientation.
ALISON
The university language classroom is not usually considered the site of ethical or, sadly, even genuine intercultural negotiation or struggle. To be sure, the cultural ‘content’ of the classroom may indeed provide learners with affordances for learning and expanding their horizons toward (for them) as-yet unknown perspectives through strange and (for them) inherently interesting study of the new culture. But in our observations of language classrooms in a range of educational settings, the mainstream pedagogical focus appears primarily to be rooted in instrumental and grammar-driven syllabi. Our complaint, if it may be called that, and the primary argument of this presentation, is that pedagogical practice has neither integrated the insights of a large and growing body of second-language acquisition (SLA) research of nearly a generation nor formally responded to the challenges of globalisation. In the 2014 Special Issue of The Modern Language Journal, Lo Bianco states that:
“A new and dynamic approach to foreign language education, in the context of the communication effects of globalization, requires ongoing interrogation as it surrounds us with unprecedented challenges of conceptualization and still unimagined challenges of pedagogy.” (Lo Bianco, 2014, p. 523)
ALISON:
Gayatri Spivak wrote recently that “Globalisation takes place only in capital and data. All else is damage control.” Damage calls for a response from the human subject. As does globalization.
GLENN:
The languages we teach now, we teach at the end of the most violent century in world history and one which had seen unprecedented technological change and innovation, the accumulation of wealth in certain parts of the world and a military-knowledge economy growing to protect that wealth and ostensibly to ‘keep the peace’ and ensure global security.
Alongside this has come an extraordinary democratization of both travel and of the experience of cultural, linguistic and ethnic otherness with new generations growing up in multicultural and intercultural contexts worldwide. This is not to say that diversity had not been part of life previously, but it is to say that the experience of diversity had become far more widespread. Part of that challenge is to create a theoretical, methodological and conceptually coherent teaching practice that is creative, reflexive and ethical in orientation.
ALISON
The university language classroom is not usually considered the site of ethical or, sadly, even genuine intercultural negotiation or struggle. To be sure, the cultural ‘content’ of the classroom may indeed provide learners with affordances for learning and expanding their horizons toward (for them) as-yet unknown perspectives through strange and (for them) inherently interesting study of the new culture. But in our observations of language classrooms in a range of educational settings, the mainstream pedagogical focus appears primarily to be rooted in instrumental and grammar-driven syllabi. Our complaint, if it may be called that, and the primary argument of this presentation, is that pedagogical practice has neither integrated the insights of a large and growing body of second-language acquisition (SLA) research of nearly a generation nor formally responded to the challenges of globalisation. In the 2014 Special Issue of The Modern Language Journal, Lo Bianco states that:
“A new and dynamic approach to foreign language education, in the context of the communication effects of globalization, requires ongoing interrogation as it surrounds us with unprecedented challenges of conceptualization and still unimagined challenges of pedagogy.” (Lo Bianco, 2014, p. 523)
Introduction: Our large grants project is made of five case study sites, all of which will generate material/examples the the RMTC and CATC hubs can draw on to research multilingually and translate cultures.
This case is but one example of the multiple case studies we will collect, but our translation of the case/experience is an amalgam of analysis and performance (as the example will illustrate).
Scenario:
A single mother war victim from Cote d’Ivoire with two disabled daughters seek asylum in Scotland.
She speaks her native Nzema and Fante (also spoken in Ghana) and French but needed to process the trauma in English and with the music of home.
She believes her children are a curse, at church, she is told by her African ‘pastor’ that the curse is from family members in Cote d’Ivoire
In Glasgow, She faces multiple problems regarding her spoken and written English, her children’s education, housing, work, child care, marriage and her own ambitions to became a designer.
How do we Research such a case and document, analyse and compare
How will the the emotional impact of this lady’s trauma be translated?
How did we collect the research data (the story)?
Documenting/translation: in a poem/song, a short story,
