TESOL 2010 Luminary Session
Ulla Connor, PhD
Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Bill Eggington, PhD
Professor and Chair, Linguistics and English Language Department,
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah
1. Re-Imagining Culture in TESOLTESOL March 25-28, 2010 Boston Ulla Connor, PhD Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Bill Eggington, PhD Professor and Chair, Linguistics and English Language Department, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah
2. Introduction: (Bill) We’re going to imagine and (re)imagine culture and TESOL Along the way, we’ll also mention: Definitions Big cultures and small cultures Modern and post-modern perspectives Airplane accidents The English of East LA Teaching stuff High School ESL classes College-level teacher education classes Middle grounds Personal Culture Diagrams Multi-colored jackets Bonfires and Ants Power and solidarity
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5. The Outline (1) What is culture? (Ulla) Activity: Is it possible to bring the different perspectives of culture together into a working paradigm useful for TESOL training and teaching? Different Perspectives: Reconcilable differences Irreconcilable differences Report back How do big and small cultures work? (Bill) Activity: Is it possible for small group culture to exist independent of large group culture? Report back
28. Activity 1: Is it possible to bring the different perspectives of culture together into a working paradigm useful for TESOL training and teaching? Different Perspectives: Reconcilable differences Irreconcilable differences Report back Some different perspectives: Big culture, small culture Modernist, post-modernist
29. How do big and small cultures work? (Bill) The relationship between big and small cultures in particular contexts What the research tells us The ethnic theory of plane crashes (Gladwell) Non-evidential epistemic modals (Youmans) English cultural notions of personal autonomy , reasonableness and whimperatives (Wirezbicka)
31. The big culture/little culture relationship in the cockpit The KAL story The Avianca story From Gladwell, Malcom (2008). The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes (Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot). In Outliers: The Story of Success. Little, Brown and Company
32. Power Distance Index (based on Hofstede, Geert. Culture's Consequences, Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications, 2001) Top Five Brazil South Korea Morocco Mexico Philippines Bottom Five United States Ireland South Africa Australia New Zealand
33. The relationship in the cockpit Gladwell, Malcom, The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes (Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot) In Outliers: The Story of Success. Greenberg wanted to give his pilots an alternative identity. Their problem was that they were trapped in roles dictated by the heavy weight of their country’s cultural legacy. They needed an opportunity to step outside those roles when they sat in the cockpit, and language was the key to that transformation. In English, they would be free of the sharply defined gradients of Korean hierarchy formal deference, informal deference, blunt, familiar, intimate and plain. Instead the pilots could participate in a culture and language with a different legacy. (p. 219)
34. Criticism of Hofstede’s PDI The Construction of the Modern West and the Backward Rest: Studying the Discourse of Hofstede’s Culture’s Consequences Journal of Multicultural Discourses Vol. 2, No. 1, 2007 Martin Fougere and AgnetaMoulettes This paper studies the discourse deployed in Hofstede’s Culture’s Consequences (1980, 2001), the international best-seller that introduces a model classifying national cultures according to four (later five) supposedly universal dimensions. Noting that this management-oriented scholarly discourse has had a huge impact in both the business world and academia, we take a critical stance towards the Western-based, ethnocentric perspective that characterises it. Our aim is not to merely repeat the already formulated objections to the model, concerning its ontology, epistemology and methodology, but rather to focus on the very words of Hofstede himself in his second edition of Culture’s Consequences (2001). With a broadly postcolonial sensibility, drawing on authors such as Said and Escobar, we contend that Hofstede discursively constructs a world characterised by a division between a ‘developed and modern’ side (mostly ‘Anglo-Germanic’ countries) and a ‘traditional and backward’ side (the rest) and discuss the cultural consequences of such colonial discourse.
35. The big culture/little culture relationship in a multicultural community Youmans, Madeleine (2001). Cross-cultural Differences in Polite Epistemic Modal Use in American English. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development Vol. 22, No. 1, 2001001) Table 1: Greatest differences in non-evidential epistemic modal use per 20,000 words Epistemic modal Anglo uses Lemon Grove uses Could: Advice 37.73 3.11 Can: Suggestion 33.34 1.55 Think: Mitigating 30.71 0 You know: Soften suggestions 18.43 0 Maybe: Polite hedge 21.94 0
36. The relationship in a multicultural community Youmans, Madeleine (2001), Cross-cultural Differences in Polite Epistemic Modal Use in American English Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development Vol. 22, No. 1, 2001 This study compared the use of selected epistemic modals in English speech of Chicano barrio residents and Anglo visitors to the community. Transcribed conversations served as the database. The Chicano speakers tended to use the epistemic modals only to index the evidential weight of propositions, whereas the Anglo speakers tended also to use them for numerous non-evidential functions, most frequently for negative politeness. In this paper, I discuss those epistemic modal functions used the most disparately between the two groups. These differences in epistemic modal use are shown to relate to cross-culturally different uses of epistemic modality for politeness. Sociocultural explanations for this disparity are proposed: the different patterns of epistemic modal use which emerge are argued to be tied to different, culturally based epistemologies held by the two groups.
64. Effectiveness of post-modern approaches to culture in the classroom (Menard-Warwick, 2009) Post Modern Approach 1. problematizes cultural representations 2. emphasizes dialogue 3. emphasizes critical awareness & interaction Menard-Warwick did not find much success in creating intercultural speakers using the above approach
68. Activity 3: (Ulla) How can we teach culture more effectively in the classroom? Approaches, tips, suggestions? Report back
69. Are there privileged cultures that enhance ESL communicative competence? (Bill, 15 minutes) Technology and its relationship to language and culture Relationship between technology and big culture communication Global village Global discourse communities Global speech communities What are the linguistic requirements of participation in the world village? What are the cultural requirements of participation in the world village? Modernist perspectives Post-modernist perspectives Cultural and linguistic imperialism vs. natural human social evolution
70. Is there something more to human, social and intercultural relationships than “power”? Given that, as Kubota (2003) has argued, “images of culture (in language education) are produced by discourses that reflect, legitimate or contest unequal relations of power” (p. 16) Power axis Solidarity axis Plus power and plus solidarity
72. The Bonfire and the Ants AlexsandrSolzhenitsyn translated by Michael Glenny I threw a rotten log onto the fire without noticing that it was alive with ants. The log began to crackle, the ants came tumbling out and scurried around in desperation. They ran along the top and writhed as they were scorched by the flames. I gripped the log and rolled it to one side. Many of the ants then managed to escape onto the sand or the pine needles. But, strangely enough, they did not run away from the fire. They had no sooner overcome their terror than they turned, circled, and some kind of force drew them back to their forsaken homeland. There were many who climbed back onto the burning log, ran about on it, and perished there.
73. Activity 4: (Bill) What is the English teacher’s role in promoting or challenging big and small cultures? Report back
