Lippie-Green and Soundhouses

     Lippie-Green's article about non-accent was very interesting.  Some quotes, in particular, I found enjoyable were "language is a dialect with an army and navy" and, " dialect is nothing more than a language that gets no respect."  It's amazing to see the geopolitical facets incorporated into language.  

     While reading Lippie-Green's article, I couldn't help but think about my flatmates while studying abroad.  All of them new English as a second language, and all of them had varying English accents.  I remember one conversation in particular, when two girls from the Netherlands were discussing why they chose what accent they wanted while learning English.  One girl chose to learn "British English", while the other chose to learn "American English." This surprised me very much, since I didn't know that these practices existed.  When I learned Spanish in high school, I took a "Spanish" course, free from an explicit dialect.  Yes, we obviously were learning some form of spanish particular to the instructor, but there was no focus on it.  This made me wonder what my flatmates would be learning in an "American English" class.

     Another event that I recall was a conversation with a Finnish girl named Rikka.  While talking to her, I would have thought she was a native British speaker.  Maybe it was because I wasn't fully acclimated to varieties of British English to hear any native language breakthrough, but I was convinced she was British, along with many others.  Some other Finnish flatmates of mine criticized her for speaking British, pretty much free of any Finnish accent. They were under the assumption that she was hiding her identity and ask questions such as, "Why doesn't she speak with an accent like every other exchange student here?  In regards to this reading, I question if Rikka was right or wrong in attempting to mask her Finnish accent.  Personally, I feel that there are obviously people who want to reduce their accents, so they have an individual right to do so.

Bilingualism and Parenting

When I read King and Fogle's article, the positive view of bilingualism came as a surprise to me. I was immediately interested in the article's publication date of 2010.  When reading most articles, it seems that the general public is against bilingualism, but with this article, there seemed to be a rising consensus on the benefits of bilingualism.  It seemed that by discussing all the various popular literature and expert advice, bilingualism has become a lot more popular.  This could also be seen in the end of the article, calling for more development in the public education sector of bilingualism.  To me, this article helped illuminate the rising acceptance and importance of bilingualism in America.

    With a growing appreciation for bilingualism, King and Fogle's ideas in their article could be reached.  With rising importance of bilingualism, discourse would grow both publicly and privately, improving the methods of bilingual parents and teachers alike.

Cultural Material Evaluation.

     If there is one thing that has been taught to history education majors throughout my span at ISU, it is that textbooks are not a sufficient method of teaching students.  While textbook sections may provide some beneficial aspects of historical periods, the often portray the opposite.  It seems to be a trend in most history textbooks of failing to address the complexity of human culture.  Hinkel warns of the dangers of a monocultural textbook.  What most history books are are monocultural interpretations of events, based around Western Culture.

     Now, Western culture is a very broad term. Given the complexity of cultures that come from the occident, it would be inaccurate to use Western culture as an umbrella term.  Most history books however, only show events that are tied to these particular cultures from the west.  Most of world history, through the eyes of a textbook, are very anglicized.  In this "World" history, students learn of kings, queens, and events from Britain, Spain, or Germany.  Personally, I have very little knowledge of African, East Asian, and South American history.  It seems rather inconvenient that world history textbooks tend to marginalize the histories of a majority of the world.  A textbook should never develop a pattern of marginalization.  This is especially important in an ESL classroom.  What kind of message would ESL students receive when taught, either consciously or subconsciously, of different cultures being constantly subjugated? In American history books, most portrayals of Mexicans are being defeated by Americans in the Mexcan-American War.  In the latter portions of textbooks, most portrayals of hispanics are due to border control.  Many times,  eastern european countries are brought up only in light of a particular defeat, whether militaristic or economic.  If being taught by a textbook, the notion that "those of non-anglican cultures are constantly subjugated", will be ingrained in students heads.  

     The only positive element of this tragedy, is that these biased textbooks can be used to unearth cultural tensions.  By addressing the unequal gender and cultural stereotypes, students can see the marginalization at first glance.  Teachers may use textbooks as a guide, but by using them as a content-stable in their lecture, students are being marginalized equal to minorities in their textbooks.

Multiculturalism, English, and Globalization.

Throughout the readings, one of the most important aspects of multiculturalism, English, and globalization is the breaking down of stereotypes associated with English.  Kubota and Ward do an excellent job discussing this in their article about World Englishes.

Throughout the article, Kubota discusses the importance of making students realize their own accents.  I came to the realization that I had an accent a few years ago.  For the most part, I guess I just believed that the Chicago accent was a "normal, "standard" English.  I mainly viewed U.S. in 4 accents:  The Southern accent, New Yorker accent, bostonian accent, and then the "normal" midwestern accent. Everyone around me spoke similarly to me, so I had no reason to really be cognizant of my own accent. It wasn't until I was surrounded by a few people from Florida, when I said the word "apple," with an æ. I was met with giggles because of the way I spoke.  After this encounter, I realized people thought differently about my accent, and maybe my Chicago accent wasn't as "normal" as I once thought.

Along with picking up on accents, people have stereotypes associated with accents.  A common stereotype for U.S. English is that southern accents may sound less intelligent.  Before traveling to Liverpool, England, I wanted to get a glimpse of the accent over there.  After looking at Scouse (Liverpool's accent) I was met with a bunch of derogatory associations with Scouse.  A large number of people on the internet Liverpool to being the "Armpit of England."  Videos of Scouse on the internet portray it as a language of those of lower socio-economic status. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4vxN9vP3mg).  After arriving at Liverpool, I did run into many people who did speak similarly to the video.  Aside from the few examples on the internet I have seen of Scouse, I did not have many preconceived notions of people with such an accent.  I ran into college students, professors, or shop workers who all shared the same accents, free from a collective stereotype.  Other British English speakers may have had other ingrained feelings towards Scouse accent. On a similar note, many students on my international floor In England failed to identify a Southern U.S. English accent as "Unintelligent."  This shows more perspectives and how stereotypes can be paired with schema.

The main point of those stories is to show that ideas and stereotypes can be developed with accents. By addressing these different accents, stereotypes can be broken down or avoided completely.  Every speaker has their own accent and sense of individuality.  It is important that English Language learners, and all speakers of languages learn this.

Cultural Differences in the Classroom

     After reading Silva's article, he highlights the differences in NES and ESL writing in classrooms.  After reading the differences, the results seemed blatantly obvious.  Of course ESL students were going to fall short in nearly every category of writing.  It only makes sense that a person still in the process of learning the English language would struggle more lexically, morphologically, and semantically.  After looking at this study, I realized the most important part was to highlight these differences in the classroom.  While it may be obvious that an ESL student may not perform as well in writing as a NES, a future educator must realize this in his/her classroom.    It is paramount to understand that ESL students need special attention in areas they may be lacking.
      After seeing the dichotomy between ESL and NES students, I followed up with Kubota's story of Barbara. While there may be a large learning gap between NES and ESL students, it is important to look past the essentialist view of cultures and work towards developing an integrated environment where both native and non-native students can work.  Students should not completely abandon the cultural elements they bring to their education, but rather incorporate that element into their own curriculum.  To delve back into the idea of cultural identity, there is no broad identity that can be attributed to students.  Every student brings a unique perspective to the classroom.  To look at their perspective as indicative of a whole culture promotes a very essentialist mindset.

Korean-Immigrant Parents and A Step From Heaven

     A Step From Heaven was one of the most interesting books I have read in awhile.  It was a good read, especially while comparing the events in the book to Dr. Kang's article on Korean-Immigrant Parents. The two works worked together nicely to portray an image of Korean-Immigrant parents, and their outlook on their American-born children's identity.
     After reading A Step From Heaven, I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that we were immersed in Young Ju's life from a young age.  It was neat to see her development as an American, as well as an English speaker.  I just really loved how the writing style developed and became more comprehensible throughout the book's entirety.
     When reading this book, I kept on looking back to last week's talks on language identities.  It seemed in this book, Young Ju had various identities.  She had the narrative of not only a Korean adapting to American society, but a Korean woman.  It was interesting to see how this narrative was both inhibited and facilitated through her mother and father's view of gender roles.  As I kept reading, I also noticed how easy it was to forget about Joon, who was also living a very interesting narrative.  He was a male who was growing up with his Father's standards (being seen as a more useful human, with more capability) and feeling inferior to his sister who was getting better grades.  While we only see into his life a few times throughout the book, we see that he is going through some turmoil, especially in his later years.
     After reading Dr. Kang's article, there seems to be some linkages to An Na's novel.  The article looks at what drives a parent to maintain their child's mother tongue.  Three of the motivating factors are parent experiences with language barriers , socioeconomic opportunities, and, most prevalent in A Step From Heaven, language as an identity marker.
     Throughout the book, I did not pick up on much explicit maintenance of the home language through Young Ju.  It seemed that she fluently spoke with her parents, mainly in Korean.  Her and Joon spoke Korean in the household.  This can largely relate to the language barrier having an effect on speaking Korean in the household.  Both Uhmma and Apa have a hard time speaking English.  We rarely hear them speak throughout the book.  By stressing Korean in the household, both Joon and Young Ju have to communicate through Korean.
     Throughout the book, the Korean identity often comes up.  It may not necessarily come up in terms of language, but there are numerous events where both Apa and Uhmma feel that American culture is infringing on Young Ju's Korean identity.  Apa is definitely more radical in his thinking, believing that Young Ju cannot be friends with an American for fear of losing cultural Korean values.  We constantly see American values being juxtaposed with Korean values, especially in the realms of education, as well as social obligations (The Parks living with another family until they establish themselves, Young Ju borrowing money from Amanda).  The parents certainly stress the importance of staying true to this perceived Korean identity.
 
Questions for Dr. Kang:

1. Since the study in the article is largely based around parents with careers in higher education, do you think there would be differences in development and maintenance by parents without as particular of an education?  If so, how much?  I know you touched upon this study belonging to a certain socio-ecomonic status, so would educational identity factor into that?

2.  How do you practice maintenance and development of  Korean with your child?

Language Identity

     The readings this week focused on language, and how it can help for a linguistic and cultural identity. Norton explained concepts of poststructuralism and the idea of language identity.  One aspect of this article I found interesting was Norton's explanation of imagined language communities.  She states, "An extension of interest in identity and investment concerns the imagined communities that language learners aspire to join when they learn a new language" (355)  A language learners perception of the language community could help attribute to their identity.  I thought that this translated relatively well with Pavlenko's article.

     In her article, she touched upon memoirs of immigrants and their views of language, English, and their American identities.  I feel that each of these autobiographies touched upon the individual's imagined language community.  Some felt that in their perceived language community, English was most vital.  In one case, an immigrant felt his Danish was too underdeveloped, so he adopted English.  Another thought that speaking in his mother tongue was essential and of utmost importance.  Other immigrants associated English with the American dream.  In their esteemed communities, there were particular balances of power.  Often times, these balances helped form linguistic identities for these individuals.

Learning and Culture

     After this week's readings, I feel that I learned a lot of terminology surrounding the vague entity of culture.  What struck me in particular were the sociological issues highlighted in Kumar's Chapter.

    I felt he did a great job describing individualism/collectivism and otherization, but it was the section on Orientalism which truly helped clarify some of Kumar's explanations.  Kumar is describing individualism and collectivism as ways to define certain cultures. He said these terms are mainly used in sociology, but can often act as more of a continuum or as a representation rather than a realization of particular cultures.  I found this to be a little problematic since it somewhat labels cultures.  It says culture x tends to act this way, which certainly eliminates an individual element to culture.  Otherization built on this by showing how stereotypes build by looking at cultures in such generalizations.  This brought me to my favorite part of the readings:  Edward Said's Orientalism.

     Being a history major, I found myself drawn to this section because I have had to read Orientalism for several classes on Middle Eastern history.  I came across a fun fact when looking up the background of Orientalism :  Orientalism derives from the comparison of the Orient and the Occident.  The Orient means "the rise" in Latin, where as the Occident means "the fall." This tid-bit of knowledge is great in understanding the superior western view to eastern culture.  I found so much interest in Orientalism because it provides so much insight on the world today.  There is obviously so much political, sociological, and historical friction between the United States ( and much of the Western world, for that matter) and Southwest Asia, which can be linked to a misunderstanding of culture.  I will not get into specifics or strong political opinions, but I truly believe that U.S. Foreign Policy and American perceptions of the middle east have been built largely out of ignorance.

     After some outside reading of Robert J.C. Young's Postcolonialism, he provides some interesting insight and criticism of Orientalism.   As I read Said's work, I do believe that it is easy to view cultures too generally.  Young states, "The Occident is just as much of a construct as the Orient is.…the structure of Orientalism is nothing more than a structure of lies and myths, were the truth would be told, would simply blow them away.” Basically, I feel that it is the West's perceived superiority that is driving this discourse. It can be seen as contradicting to generalize one group at the cost of another.  This leads me to my final point.

     While this blog post may have a rather heavy analysis on the smaller portion of Said throughout the reading, I feel that a very important conclusion can be reached.  Cultural roots have been developed in each individual in some particular way.  They have unique experiences that shaped their well being.  While looking at whole cultures' responses and cultural contact zones may provide insight onto how societal misbalances of power happen, understanding each individual's cultural roots can help provide some cultural homeostasis. By understanding cultures through a non-essentialist lens at an individual level, maybe these understandings can be transferred to a societal level.   

Exploring Culture

     After reading Morgan's chapters, I felt that he did a wonderful job of allowing me to visualize culture.  The iceberg illustration really helped me to understand how perspectives could go much deeper than other explicit, cultural facets.  It was also very nice to read examples of the five cultural spheres, such as the restaurant.  This allowed me to see these cultural elements in use.
     After breaking culture into these five categories, I wondered if Morgan was right in doing so.  Could culture be so easily broken down?  Can one really categorize the complexities of culture so easily?    It seemed like there was a lot of overlap within some of the categories.  There is a perspective aspect of culture, along with a Persons view.  It seemed that every persons would have a unique perspective, along with many of the other facets.  That seemed almost like an umbrella term, which may have very well been the goal of Morgan. This leads me to believe that, after completing the reading, these five categories act as good guidelines for culture.  It is important for people to understand that culture will be complex, and that categorizing can help get a better grasp, especially in language.
     The part of chapter 4 I found most interesting was the tu/vous relationship.  I never really thought of the scenario Morgan described.  This really exemplified the point Morgan was trying to make this chapter:  Language and culture are intertwined.  As he said, language and culture are two sides on the same coin.  By teaching language, you can really teach someone about the target language culture.

Introductory Post: ENG 343

Hello everyone!  My name is Nate Spreitzer, and this is my second semester of TESOL Courses at ISU.  I am originally a Secondary History Education major, but am pursuing a minor in TESOL.  At first, I looked into TESOL classes to make myself more marketable in the very narrow job market of history teachers.  After taking various TESOL courses, I have had the chance to explore many interesting articles and studies, which have helped broaden my understanding of language not only in the ESL field, but also in other realms as well.  I am really looking forward to discussing cultural issues, since those were some of my favorite topics of ENG 345.