Lecture Notes LING 187 PDF

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Dolores Inés Casillas, Winter 2020...

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Language, power & learning Evolution of language Popular culture: words like twerking, jive, obamacare, hangry, chillax, mansplaining, whitesplaining, blackfamous, #hashtag, receipts… etc. Race and Language Language is the entry point between something that is racialized and something that is ethnicized Racializing ethnicity - Race framed in “natural” terms - Racialized people seem “out of place” in the larger nation-state - “Marked” & - Ethnic framed in “cultural” terms - Ethnics seen as safe, orderly, making contributions to the larger nation-state - Ethnicized people are non-Anglo - “Safely marked”  process -ing o r -tion = Ethnicization - Ethnicization = more associations with ethnic families or individuals; tied to immigrant populations (communities) - The hyphenation of American is characteristic of an ethnicizing discourse (Asain American, Hispanic American, African American) - Ethnicization of spanish: contained in select spaces (non-threatening) such as festivals, Mexican restaurants, specific neighborhoods Racialization - Racialization = more associations with … missed rest of slide - Racialization of Spanish: equates with “foreigners” (more threatening), disorder, a refusal to assimilate (accented English, mix of vocabularies) The limits of language assimilation - Difference is safe when it cannot impede the ‘natural’ progress of social mobility in the US, but language difference is spoken and written about as an insurmountable barrier to such progress. Assimilation meant the good citizenship enjoyed by the successful ethnic… Racializing accent - Columbia (neutral) - Argentina (vos) - Mexico (que te pasaaaa - long end of sentences) - (...) - Puerto Rican & Dominican (drop the s) - Caribbean spanish speakers are different and considered bad or difficult Marketing of ethnicity through language

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Trader Joe’s - Trader giotto’s for the pastas/pizzas - Trader ming’s stir fried (in asain associated font) - Trader josé’s beer (mexico) Discourse - Written or spoken communication with “real life” repercussions Semiotics - The idea that language is a system of signs (signifier -an actual word, image, photo, sound, signified -corresponding concept, sign -the sign is the union between the signifier and the signified (multiple signs = language)) Ex. red light / red white blue / 9/11 / 9-1-1 (use this language in your papers) Discursive Deracialization - Use of veiled references, place and name, to racial groups New Racism - less blatant variety of racism supported by denial (close cousins with “colorblined society” or “post racial”) Critique of educational system based on race Data - 10 black parents = critique educational system - 10 white mothers, 9 white fathers = positive self-presentation (“we are human beings”) Results - Taboo with the word racism: class becomes a stand-in for race - White working class not considered - Race connected to physical space

Question How do you reference or introduce yourself? Name three things that describe your background that does not include race. (De)Colonization & Language Other words for colonization: settlement, settling, colonisation, plantation, peopling, occupation… Terms: - Latina/o : umbrella term used to categorize persons from Latin American backgrounds (Spain not included); more mainstream friendly - Hispanic : umbrella term used to categorize persons from Latin American, Spain backgrounds; preferred by government and more commonly used in the east coast (a no-no in Califas)

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Latin : a native or inhabitant of a country whose language developed from Latin; mostly applied to things not people (no-no list) Mexican : of mexican-origin or a mexican-nation Mexican American : used to refer to a person born here of Mexican ancestry, usually for second and later generations (less politicized) Chicana/o : ethnic term of pride for Mexican Americans, arose from 1960s and 1970s social movement to acknowledge a politicized commitment to two (or more) cultures; often generational (a-ending connotes gender) The use of an “x” : Chicanx, Latinx to connote a non-gender conforming existence or belief

Take Note: - Notice the obligatory definition of ethnic terms or racial categories used in academic articles - Decisions to use white versus White; Hispanic versus Latina/o; African American verses Black; gay versus queer - Often the self-positioning of the researcher - Significance of naming a community, the significance of your own naming - “Accent” - use of quotes to remind the reader that it’s socially constructed or subjective Culture and Communication Wa Thiong’o (Kenyan) Colonization (historical and structural) - Colonization as a capitalist project (control wealth, land) - Colonization of culture: “but its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world ” (p16). - Involves undervaluing of people’s culture and domination of a people’s language Language as communication - Language used in “real life” (Karl Marx perspective) for EFFICIENCY *$* - Language as speech; VERBAL SIGNPOSTS, oral forms that organize and make production possible - Language as WRITTEN SIGNS or written speech that mirrors verbal signposts Language as culture - Culture, product of history - Culture, forms images in a child’s mind - Culture, transmits images through spoken word and language (through sound) Language as communication and language as culture are then products of each other… language is thus inseparable from ourselves as a community. NGUGI (Wa Thiong’o - Decolonising the Mind (the politics of language in african literature)) - “Communication between human beings is also the basis and process of evolving culture” - “Language is the collective memory bank of a people’s experience in history”

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Culture is almost indistinguishable from language Language as a dual character: “means of communication and a carrier of culture” Stand outside of yourself to look at yourself and understand yourself…

Through the Language Glass , Guy Deutscher (words that have no direct translations in other languages) (languages and meaning are very culturally specific) German: Waldeinsamkeit (The feeling of being alone in the woods and feeling connected to nature) Italian: Culaccino (The mark a cold glass leaves on a table) Japanese: Komorebi ( sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees) Russian: Pochemuchka (a person who asks a lot of questions - in fact, too many questions) Indonesian: Jayus (a slang word for a joke so unfunny and told so poorly that you cannot help but laugh) French: Dépaysement (the feeling that comes from not being in one’s home country, or being away from your origin in general) Swedish: Mångata ( the road-like reflection of the moon on the water) Spanish: Sobremesa (Time spent after lunch or dinner talking with the people you shared the meal with (often while in a food coma)) Colonization (historical and structural) - Split between language of school and language of home - “Learning for a colonial child, became a cerebral activity and not an emotionally felt experience” - Worse when native language associated with “low status, humiliationm and corporal punishment” Literary Wetback Alicia Gaspar del Alba - Maintaining spanish, maintaining mexican identity - Chicana writer as keeper of culture, keeper of language - “Forgetting my spanish - meaning not just the language but the accent as well - was the equivalent of losing my virginity” - Cultural schizophrenia to describe life on the border

How to tame a wild tongue Gloria Anzaldúa - Quotes Ray Gwyn Smith, “who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war?” - Gendered tradition of silence; chimosa (big mouth), bien criadas (well raised), habladora (liar) - “Chinaco Spanish is not incorrect, it is a living language” (p55); a forked language Linguistic terrorism - Delenguadas (without tongues), told in childhood that our language is wrong (often by family, school) - Sense of language being outlawed (p58)

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“If a person, chicana or latina, has a low estimation of my native tongue, she also has a low estimation of me” (p58) - Not accommodating the other, english-speaker - Being mexican for chicanoes is not necessarily tied to geography Examples - Children taken away from parents due to their limited english skills - Teachers advising children to speak english at home (and not spanish) - Warning signs translated with errors (putting people in danger if it’s not translated correctly for all) - Children being embarrassed to speak Spanish or native tongue Lexical borrowings or evolution of language Spanish - yarda, yard - pari, party - Chopin, going shopping - Ruki, novice - Jonrón, homerun

English - Barbecue, barbacoa - Lasso, lazo - Coyote, coyote - Guerrilla, guerrilla

Code-switching: reflection of language and culture evolving, living Language Lives! - Washero: a person employed at a car wash place of employment - Lonche: noun or verb used to refer to lunch or lunching - Garaje: area where one parks their vehicle - Carpeta: type of floor surfacing - Parkear: where one leaves their vehicle - La Yacusi: where one warms up after a cold dip in a pool - Twittear: to post a message on twitter ~ taking parts of english words and phonetically modifying them~ Send her a sign that mixes two languages in a way that is not completely correct for extra points on nectir - Sometimes because of efficiency - Half english half spanish sign - Style shifting and code shifting… (to court specific audiences sometimes it’s done for you) Is spanglish or code-switching or styleshifting, are these styles a way of signaling colonization? Is “Africanizing a language” a way of decolonizing languages? Is “Spanish-ing English” a way of expressing a distinct U.S. experience? Colonialism, capitalism - dispossession of language - “forget” the language - dispossession of land - dispossession of culture

Don’t use the phrase “I picked up” a language because that isn't giving yourself enough credit Linguistic terrorism Bodily: the process by which the monologic pressures to speak only English and to silence chicano spanish have led to bodily harm and psychological trauma for young Chicano/a and Latino/a students Legal: recall “legal protection of the English” which depends on constructing other languages as harmful, useless, or threatening Ethnicity linked bilingualism : accepted belief that good english is assumed to be naturally available, people living in the US have no excuse for not acquiring it Language and culture - as nouns : understood as things - bilingualism acquired in school is unproblematic, correct, and uncomplicated by culture Self-policing : I feel like I might not sound good, my accent might not be 100% or whatever… Bilingualisms - Additive bilingualism is adding another language, often with positive connotations - Subtractive bilingualism is adding another language at the sake of silencing a native language often with mixed sentiments - Receptive bilingualism is often seen across generations, “fluency” in cognitive understanding in one language and speaking in another - Differential bilingualism is when somebody renders you a certain way whether you are bilingual or not... assumptions, social values ascribed to language proficiency based on social location (class, phenotype, generation, race) Reproduction of colonization - Playing with a cousin of mine who spoke spanish… father furiously came out of the room and screamed you are the shame of this family - I never wanted to betray my parents nor my people, stopped speaking spanish almost entirely Policied by both Social construction of : Fluency, Mastery, Proficiency, Native Standard american english - SAE (midwest, “non-accent” form of English) Standard language ideology - SLI I have a “home version” of french, something that is comfortable for me and my family to converse with. It’s more of a franglish than french… Language Management Theory - Organized management (directed management) - Simple management (discourse based management) Semantical Bleaching

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Definition - the loss or reduction of a meaning of a word: semantic change or loss If a word’s meaning becomes so vague that one is hard-pressed to ascribe any specific meaning to it anymore. It is said to have undergone bleaching - Often owed to repetition Example SHIT - basic meaning is feces but has undergone a semantic change to now indicate “thing” or “stuff” Dont touch my shit... I’ve got a lot of shit to do this weekend… Indexical Bleaching - Definition - the process of a media catchphrase. Circulation of a word that prompts new meanings - A technique to deracialize ethnically-marked names in exercises of dominant power (Bucholtz) Names for aspirational purposes - Similar to what she talked about in lecture Name change = $$ - Real material affects of your name - Names have always been signifiers of race in america Mary bucholtz - Renaming as a process of anglicization, to de-ethnicized or to de-radicalize a name - African Americans and Native Americans were forcibly stripped of their names as part of colonialism, christened with European names - Native Americans use anglicized personal names/surnames in educational settings and preserve birth names to families - Governmental renaming projects, so people can be ‘legible’ to institutions Renaming, denaming - Malcom X - In spanish, my name Esperanza means hope, in english it means to many letters (Sandra Cisneros) - “Names that make us strangers to ourselves” - “Ideology that denies them the right to their own names” (p275) Learning another language is like becoming another person. - Haruki Marukami Pierre Bourdieu & “Capital” Capital- wealth (property, money, knowledge) Social Capital- network of relationships among people who live and work together Cultural Capital-  skills and knowledge through which people can enhance their social situation (Bordieu’s example in music, museums, education) Symbolic Capital- when forms of capital are assumed, perceived and/or recognized as legitimate (ex. War hero running for office)

Linguistic Capital- skills and knowledge of “valued” language which people use to enhance social situation (adapted from cultural capital) Navigational Capital- s kills and knowledge through which students can navigate complex university or college system (used in education, ex. FAFSA) Relationship between capital and semiotics… ? don’t understand Examples of emphasis on voice - Boston symphony (first group to have blind auditions - in response to accusations of lack of female representation) - “The Voice” - Customer service hotlines - Phone sex industry - “Accent hallucination” - “Sound Black” “Things like voice, sound, tone, and tune generally manifest a category of person and contain a strong sense of a person acting.” “Accents mark origins, which means they may contain a tone or tune that signals one’s origins” (p114) Results and patterns - This person sounds poor, middle class, like a separatus, etc. - Identifying a voice with their own linguistic histories - “us” versus “them” - What was said: “middle class because he fears the street” (p110) - How it was said: Speaking English clearly or without an “accent” - People’s perceptions of errors are strongly affected by their perception or accents (p116) - Then imagining the speaker: assigning phenotype: light skinned Dominican (p112) *Class, then race, then social location “Language judgements become most sharp-edged when correctness is mapped onto class and race: language segments are either correct or incorrect; if they are incorrect, they can and should be corrected to a class and race markedness” (p115) Whiteness & English Carmen Fought’s Writings - Whiteness as an ethnicity and as an “accent” is invisible yet dominant - Whiteness linked to being middle-class - Whiteness is not associated with masculinity - Whiteness associated with uncool and unhip - Whiteness linked to Educated-sounding voices - Whiteness associated with grammatically correct English (“articulate”) - Whiteness associated with a stereotyped “valley girl” or California “accent”

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Impatience as a characteristic of sounding white

Music = Spanish (musicality of spanish) - Tone tends to imply a mood or personality feature - Tune: imply a melody reflecting in one’s native language; the music of a language or singing tone of Spanish; “English doesn’t sound like your singing” (p112) - When everyone has that same tone, that same voice, they are all the same race… Word Use, Speaker’s Body - Habitual be: “i be having a hamburger…” - Not noticed with people of color - “You know” = indexed as race (spanish/black), class (poor education), and locale (new york) - “That gets noticed is not simply the phrase ‘you know’ but the fact that it is used y a speaker already marked in other ways” (p118) - Relationship to “differential bilingualism” “Accents” Subjective to the ear English Standard = Appropriate = Respectability Politics (or a lack of attention towards structural forces and influences; focus on the individual) Style shift and code switch - critique on ‘home language’ by calling that a ‘private language’ and asking someone to style shift or code switch to use ‘appropriate’ dialect in public Labels/Tracking - English as a Second Language (ESL) - English Language Learners (ELL) - English Learner (EL) - Long Term English Learner - Non-Standard English - English Language Development (ELD) - English Language Proficiency (ELP) - Reclassified English Language Learner - Bilingual (towards English) - English-Dominant - English-Only - Dual-Language - Emergent Bilinguals - Emergent Multilinguals

California has a home language test before you put your kid in school. If you fill out that you speak a different language at home (at all) your kid will be labeled an ELL. They can test out of ELL to be put in the Reclassified ELL label as a 4th grader but that label tracks them until they graduate high school. Jonathan Rosa, Nelson Flores “...That the ideological construction and social value of standardized language practices are anchored in what we term a raciolinguistic ideology that conflate certain racialized bvodies with linguistic deficiency unrelated to any objective linguistic practices” (p150). Raciolinguistic Ideology value placed not on bilingualism but rather on racialized speaker In another paper by Rosa… Racialized Social Tense - Spanish as past/failure and English as future/redemption White gaze and white listening subject… Language as Commodity Meets Raciolinguistic Ideologies Nicholas Subtirelu - Looks at bilingual job listings and what that means in those jobs - Medical and customer service look first for spanish and second for mandarin Do job advertisements that require Spanish appear to be oriented toward Spanish as a world language (e.g. for use in international trade or multinational corporations) or Spanish as local language (e.g. providing services to US Spanish speakers)? Is there a difference by level of advertised pay? Racialization of Spanish; Classified Associations Online job ads - What does it mean when they say bilingual? Proficiency? Fluent? Multinational corporations conceive Spanish for international trade but do not consider Latinx to be the “appropriate population”; employers orient Spanish as a local language, seeking Latinx bilinguals, skills are not seen as deserving higher compensation. (Raciolinguistic Perspective) Negative correlation between pay and being “bilingual” Bilingual -> low paying job “Fluency” -> sought after language in terms of describing language capability - Different skill set (receptive bilingualism v bilingualism) Correlation - when spanish was associated with being abroad it was more pure, cosmopolitan, world language, even more so if you are non latinx (or latin american) Spanish (abroad): “pure”/standard, fluent, world language, culture, non-latino / latin american (up arrow) Spanish (U.S.): “mixing”/non-standard, proficient or bilingual, local, racialized, U.S. latino (down arrow) Adanari Zarate “You Don’t Look Like Yo...