Download ethnolinguistics - ENGG604 Language and Culture

Universidad del Este
Carolina, P.R.
Ethnolinguistics and Cross-Cultural
Knowledge
Jorge Hernández
ENGG 604
September 16, 2010
Definition
Ethnolinguistics: that part of anthropological
linguistics concerned with the study of the
interrelation between a language and the
cultural behavior of those who speak it.
(Britannica)
Cultural Diversity in America

According to recent statistics, one American in
four currently defines himself or herself as non
white.

By the year 2050, the average U.S. resident will
trace his or her descent to Africa, Asia, the
Hispanic world, the Pacific Islands, the Middle
East almost anywhere but white Europe.

According to recent statistics, the percentage of
African American males who graduate from high
school has decreased.

In 1989, 34 percent of young African American
males attended less than four years of high
school and only 11 percent attended four years
of college or more.

In 1990, one out of four (23%) African American
males ages 20 29 were in the criminal system,
while only 6% of white males were in the
system.

African American males are disproportionately
placed in special education and speech
language pathology programs, and are more
likely to be recipients of disciplinary actions.

Recent research has shown that language and
communication norms among African American
males, particularly those of lower socioeconomic
status, are related, at least in part, to these
problems.

It is important for non-native speakers to acquire
as soon as possible a relative aware- ness of the
cultural values and the communicative norms
which prevail in the language community of their
speech partners.

Immersion is usually the means recommended to
achieve that end, as it is through immersion in a
foreign culture that we can notice the differences.
(Peeters, 2009)

In addition to differences in pronunciation,
vocabulary and grammatical structures among
cultural groups, variations also exist in the rules
for general discourse in oral communication,
covering such specific acts as narratives and
conversation. In communicating with one
another, teachers and students naturally will
follow the assumptions and rules governing
discourse within their respective cultures.
Discourse rules govern such aspects of
communication as:





Opening or closing conversations
Taking turns during conversations
Interrupting
Using silence as a communicative device
Knowing appropriate topics of
conversation
Discourse rules govern such aspects of
communication as:





Interjecting humor at appropriate times
Using nonverbal behavior
Expressing laughter as a communicative
device
Knowing the appropriate amount of
speech to be used by participants
Sequencing of elements during discourse.
The Quest for Meaning




When two or more individuals come together to
talk, they are said to engage in verbal
interaction.
The speaker’s main duty is to make her- self
understood, to convey a message.
The listener main duty is to try and understand
what has been said.
This effort is called “The Quest For Meaning”
(Dascall, 1992)

The problems encountered during the quest for
meaning, arise in endolingual as well as in
exolingual situations.

Endolingual communication occurs when two
individuals who belong to the same language
and culture grouping communicate in their first
language.

All other forms of communication are
exolingual.

The listener is likely to be less prepared for any
hurdles in an exolingual situation.

The reason for this is
simple:”In different societies, and different
communities, people speak differently”
(Wierzbicka, 2003)

Communication is culture bound. The way an
individual communicates emanates from his or
her culture.

A person may know more than one culture or
may be competent in a combination of cultures.
Nonetheless, one basic truth prevails:
communication is a product of culture.

Second language writers draw on a range of
cross-linguistic and cross-cultural influences at
the sentence, paragraph, and text level.

The effects of these influences on different
aspects of textual organization (cohesion,
coherence, schematic structure) (Connor, 1996)

In a colonial context education reproduces
the power of the colonizers and is
designed to serve their needs. The
colonizer purposefully ignores the culture
and history of subjugated groups nor are
they consulted. Subjugated children are
never educated to become leaders of
society except when it serves the needs of
the colonizer (Altbach & Kelly 1978;
Zweigenhalf & Domhoff, 1991).

In the United States, African, Native and Latino
Americans who have been historically
subjugated, colonized or exterminated when it
benefited the U.S. were indoctrinated in schools
to be proud to be Americans (even while they
live in racially segregated, dilapidated
communities) and recruited by the military to
serve as colonial soldiers to subjugate others
around the world and enforce the hegemonic
entrenchment of American culture, language and
consumerism. (Diaz Soto, 2006)

The monolingual, mono-cultural
educational model has successfully wiped
out possibilities for multilingual American
children. We have relied on outdated
teaching methods. Macedo (2000) notes
the irony of how America has dismantled
bilingual education, a field with decades of
research, while promoting foreign language
education, a field with well-documented
failures.

Language is important because it can
either enhance a child’s education or
destroy a child’s progress in school and
leave the child to languish on the margins
of society. Schools have even gone so far
as to forbid children from speaking their
own language altogether (Stubbs, 2002).

In Trinidad mastering the Queen’s English
can decide one’s economic status and
success in life, whereas the local
Trinidadian dialect is disenfranchised and
those who resist the Queen’s language
are relegated to living in poverty and/or
working in low paying positions.

In the U.S. rap music is tolerated because
it brings billions to the coffers of white
record owners; calypso singers in the
Caribbean are allowed to use their local
dialects to “entertain” the colonizer
(Dowdy, 2002).
Ethnolinguistic and Democratic
Education


Language domination impacts the cultural, the
social, the spiritual, the civic, the moral, the
economic, and the political.
Myles Horton, one of the founders of the famous
Highlander School in Tennessee in 1932 where
civil rights activists were trained, says that "what
makes a school or teacher successful is
commitment in terms of people’s interest, not in
terms of ours” (Horton & Freire, 1990).
References
Altbach, P. G., & Kelly, G. P. (1978). Education and colonialism. New
York: Longman.
Connor, Ulla (1996) Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross-Cultural Aspects of
Second Language Writing. Cambridge Universitu Press.
Dowdy, J. K., Dyuh, O., & Delpit, L. (2002). The skin that we speak:
Thoughts on language and culture in the classroom. New York: The
New Press.
Horton, M. & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking:
Conversations on education and social change. Phildelphia: Temple
University Press.
Macedo, D. (April, 2000). The colonialism of the English only
movement. Educational Researcher.