acting on the linguistic landscape: performativity, translation, and other possibilities for...

Acting on the Linguistic Landscape: Performativity, translation, and other possibilities for language classroom intervention

Emory College Language CenterOctober 20, 2016 David Malinowski

Yale University Center for Language [email protected]

@tildensky

Discuss: http://bit.ly/actingontheLL

http://bit.ly/actingontheLL

Goals for today

the

why what

howof language teaching and learning in & with the linguistic landscape

TakeawaysLinguistic landscape can be a powerful resource for spatializing L2 learning and teaching by showing language to be (situated, multiple, contingent, ideologically charged) discourses-in-place.

In particular, the performative nature of signs—written, spoken, and enacted in place—begs us to consider how language learners can not just read but creatively and purposively act upon the linguistic landscape.

Goals for today

the

why what


The world doesn’t look or sound like this (anymore?)

The world doesn’t look or sound like this (anymore?)

Postmodern globalization: “The multilateral flow of people, things, and ideas across borders has made more visible mixed forms of community and language in highly diversified geographical spaces”(Canagarajah, 2013)

Superdiversity as today’s urban condition: An increased level and kind of diversity building upon “increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified immigrants” (Vertovec, 2007)

ACTFL National Standards for Foreign Language Education

The 5 C’s in context of multilingual texts, neighborhoods: • Communication• Cultures• Connections• Comparisons• Communities - “Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting”

ACTFL National Standards for Foreign Language Education

Communities as “The Lost C”?

“The most striking, and troublesome, feature emerging from this comparison [of student and educator rankings of the 5 Standards] is that for students the Communities Standards were first; for teachers they were last.”

- Magnan, Murphy, Sahakyan, & Kim, 2012, p. 177.

New London Group (1996), “A pedagogy of multiliteracies”

LinguisticDesign

AudioDesign

VisualDesign

GesturalDesign

SpatialDesign

New London Group (1996), “A pedagogy of multiliteracies”

Spatial Design…the underdeveloped literacy?

“Language must be understood not as an abstract system, but rather as a local phenomenon, arising first from the utterances of speakers in tangible places, at particular historical and ideological moments” (Pennycook, 2010)

“the ongoing production of space-time is a rich process that draws upon multiple material and discursive resources, is imbued with relations of power, and is malleable through individual agency and imagination” (Leander & McKim, 2003)

a need for ‘emplaced’ L2 learning

a need for ‘emplaced’ L2 learning

How?

In both senses of the word, “signs” tell us…

where we are, where to go, what to do—or not

In both senses of the word, “signs” tell us…

where you belong, and where you don’t

“Signs” as manifestation of struggle to make meaning in place

Performativity

Performativity in the LL: Signs as speech acts with uncertain outcomes

“[T]he simultaneity of the production and delivery of the expression communicates not merely what is said, but the bearing of the body as the rhetorical instrument of expression. This makes plain the incongruous interrelatedness of body and speech . . . the excess in speech that must be read along with, and often against, the propositional content of what is said” (Butler, 1997, p. 152).

What German word belongs on the white sign?

Goals for today

the

why what


Goals for today

the

why

what how

of language teaching and learning in & with the linguistic landscape

“The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government building combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region or urban agglomeration”

Landry & Bourhis (1997)

definitions“Linguistic Landscape”….evolving definitions

LL as an “independent variable” contributing to a group’s “ethnolinguistic vitality” (Landry & Bourhis, 1997)

The LL “signals what languages are prominent and valued in public and private spaces and indexes the social positioning of people who identify with particular languages (Dagenais et al., 2009, p. 254)

consequences“Linguistic Landscape”….evolving definitions

"we argue for an approach to language from the vantage point of the social circulation of languages across spaces and different semiotic artifacts"

“attention needs to be paid to how constructs of space are constrained by material conditions of production, and informed by associated phenomenological sensibilities of mobility and gaze” (Stroud & Mpendukana, 2009)

definitions“Linguistic Landscape”….evolving definitions

A sampling: Research in linguistic landscape

Growing visibility of L2 learning & teaching in the LL in the literature Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2008). The linguistic landscape as an additional source of input in SLA. Int’l Review of AL in Language Teaching, 46(3).

Rowland, L. (2012). The pedagogical benefits of a linguistic landscape project in Japan. Int’l Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 16(4).

Burwell, C. & Lenters, K. (2015). Word on the street: Investigating linguistic landscapes with urban Canadian youth. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 10(3).

• Chern, C. -l., & Dooley, K. (2014). Learning English by walking down the street.

• Chesnut, M., Lee, V. & Schulte, J. (2013). The language lessons around us: Undergraduate English pedagogy and linguistic landscape research

• Dagenais, D. et al. (2009). Linguistic landscape and language awareness.

• Malinowski, D. (2015). Opening spaces of learning in the linguistic landscape.

• Sayer, P. (2009). Using the Linguistic Landscape as a Pedagogical Resource.

Learning activities and competencies developed in LL projects

• Walking, observation, note-taking

• Photography, street recordings

• Recorded interviews • Neighborhood drawings• Mapping • Writing, blogging • Digital stories, video

projects• Classroom and/or

community-based art projects, exhibits, installations

• Civic events, protests

Competencies linguistic pragmatic intercultural multimodal,

multiliterate symbolic,

critical, participatory

Building (upon) pedagogical approaches in the LL: Project-based language learning

National Foreign Language Resource Center6 Tenets of Project-based learning1. Organized around real-world activities2. Learner-centered3. Collaboration as integral part of learning4. Use of assessment with dual purpose: guiding

the process and measuring progress5. Instructor as knowledgeable participant and

facilitator6. Creation of real-world product involving real

audience

Building (upon) pedagogical approaches in the LL: Civic awareness, service & engagement through research methods, reflective learning

● Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural communicative competence 1st “savoir” (savoir être): “attitudes of curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one’s own” (p. 50)

● Ethnographic methods applied to language learning offer students “...new ways of looking at the ordinary and the everyday, drawing out patterns from careful and extended observations of a small group.” (Centre for Languages, Linguistics, and Area Studies, University of Southampton course documentation)

Ex. 1: Yale-Télécom ParisTech French/English telecollaboration (C. Skorupa)

Activity prompt to prep for 2-on-2 Skype conversation: NEXT WEEK (11 March 2016): Street Signs and Linguistic Landscapes

By Wednesday, March 9th at 5:59 pm (Paris 23h59), each student should post a photograph of a sign from your neighborhood that you find culturally interesting and that will provoke discussion. You should post this on https://padlet.com/wall/oz6gmap5dmk . Padlet is very easy; no need to sign up. Just click on the screen and you can drag/import a picture. Put a caption on it, as well as your name.

https://padlet.com/wall/oz6gmap5dmk

https://padlet.com/wall/oz6gmap5dmk


Activity prompt to prep for 2-on-2 Skype conversation: What to choose? It could be a street sign, a business sign, a municipal sign, a billboard advertisement, an ad in a métro station, a sign in a different language, etc. The assortment of photos posted on the Padlet board will be the source of our discussions during the March 11th webcam session.

In the second part of that session, each group will lead their transatlantic friends on a walking tour of their school's neighborhood using Google Street View, with everyone looking out for signs and other highlights in the linguistic landscape.

S. Alexandrov, Yale 3rd Year Heritage Spanish

1.Photosafari. Find and photograph something from each zone. Caption in Spanish and share on Facebook.

Objective: explore Yale and its surroundings.


2. Spanish seen and heard in New Haven vs. in student's hometown. Students reported and/or photographed examples and shared on FB. Captions in Spanish. Class discussion of similarities and differences.

Objective: to raise awareness of the presence / lack of Spanish in New Haven and in hometown.

3. Translating signs. Students discussed what information (street signs, post office, public health and safety) they thought should be available in Spanish. They attempted an initial translation with Google translate and then produced their own version.

Objective: consider what messages need to be conveyed and how to do so. Discussion of the "untranslatable”.

Linguistic Landscapes in Chinese Heritage Classroom

Hsiu-hsien ChanEast Asian Languages and Literatures

Goals

The Origins: Hometown and You (use Social-

Geomap)

Yale Life and Chinese Landscapes in New

Haven/Yale Community (Language Practicum)

A Field Trip to MOCA/Chinatown: Museum of

Chinese Americans in NYC (Field Trip)

Assignments

1. Self introduction tracing family history of homes and migrations

2. Write a 300-500 character essay about college life. Find 3-5 Chinese-related landscapes in New Haven/Yale Community that connect with your local life. Conduct an interview or other research on those landscapes. Sse social-geomap.

3. A field trip to MOCA/Chinatown in NYC

Storymap

UC Berkeley - Suwon U. Korean-English telecollaboration (2005)

Goals for today

the

why

what how

of language teaching and learning in & with the linguistic landscape

Goals for today

the

why what


Our challenge: to “make space” by embracing & exploring multiplicity, heterogeneity, diversity

“Space” is not empty; it is a way of seeing multiple perspectives, possibilities, subject positions together

“Literacy is fluid and relational and, because of this spatial property, people can [create] a complex co-presence of different understandings that sit in relations of power” (Alex Kostogriz, 2004, p. 2).

A spatial approach to language learning requires all our senses and faculties

“An object or place achieves concrete reality when our experience of it is total, that is, through all the senses as well as with the active and reflective mind” (Doreen Massey, 2005, p. 18).

“layered simultaneities” (Blommaert, 2005)

Henri Lefebvre’s The production of space (1991) pushing innovation in LL methodologies

Through juxtaposition of conceived, perceived, and lived spaces, “[add] a third dimension to linguistic landscape studies” (Trumper-Hecht, 2010, p. 236).

1.2.

3.

Lefebvre Trumper-Hecht L2 teaching

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate… • contextualizing • historicizing• mapping• categorizing…and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate… • observation • listening• sensing• recording …and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate drawing, imagining, interviewing, designing, storytelling, creating, protesting, enacting, etc……and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate drawing, imagining, interviewing, designing, storytelling, creating, protesting, enacting, etc……and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate… • observation • listening• sensing• recording …and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate… • contextualizing • historicizing• mapping• categorizing…and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these

Learning from the LL on/near your campus…

Reading (e.g., demographic) boundaries in your city…

2012-3 UC Berkeley Freshman/Sophomore SeminarReading the Multilingual City: Chinese, Korean,

and Japanese in Bay Area Linguistic Landscapes

Course description

This seminar explores the power of visible languages in the Bay Area—the “linguistic landscape” of storefronts, street signs, billboards, and other spaces of public display. Considering such realities as the nationwide English Only movement and California’s ban against bilingual education, we will ask how meanings that are written into and read from bilingual signs relate to controversial issues of societal multilingualism, in the U.S. and beyond. Focusing on the history and present state of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese in the landscape, the seminar will balance in-class discussions with off-campus field trips.



3-week unit cycles

1st week• Intro new topic, geographic scale/site, and focal

language• Mini-language lesson from EALC faculty• LL theoretical & methodological sampler2nd week• Site visit with directed activity• Blog response3rd week• Group reflections & analysis• Student presentations & work toward final project

UC Berkeley Fresh/Soph seminar: Reading the Multilingual City (2012-3)

Translate New Haven

3. Translation as public action/activation

Church Street, New Haven

3. Translation as public action/activation

Church Street, New Haven?

is “…a living, moving activity, not a dead one to be pinned down in a museum. It is this dynamism which can make it so interesting and so stimulating, not only to linguists and translators, but to teachers and students too.”

Guy Cook, 2010, p. xix

Translation in Language Teaching

“A different translation produces a different original, by emphasizing different faultlines in the original, that is, by traducing the original in one way rather than another. The original is led out into the open where the translator is obliged to see hitherto hidden features.”

Joseph Hillis Miller, “Translation as the double production of texts”, 1992, p. 124

Translation reveals cultural and linguistic

‘faultlines’

"A translated text should be the site where a different culture emerges, where a reader gets a glimpse of a cultural other”

Lawrence Venuti, The translator’s invisibility, 1995, p. 306

Translation as a site of civic action

Translate New Haven

Translate New Haven classroom-neighborhood-city sign-making project (Fall-Winter 2016)

Teams of students are “commissioned” by the city of New Haven to enrich the multilingual identity and visible identity of the city through translation of English signage, and creation of new Spanish signs. The city has committed to creating 5 new signs that have been produced, reviewed and approved by language students and community stakeholders. Students must take into account community histories and identities in New Haven, and debate the linguistic, demographic, cultural, historical, and visual meanings and ‘appropriateness’ of various translation for the specific places where they are to be located. At all stages, maximal participation is designed with/solicited from community members. Final translations are prepared for submission to the city, produced as actual material signs, and prepared for public display as part of a virtual-visual-mapping exhibit.

Our challenge is to innovate here…

…while fulfilling our goals here

TakeawaysLinguistic landscape can be a powerful resource for spatializing L2 learning and teaching by showing language to be (situated, multiple, contingent, ideologically charged) discourses-in-place.

In particular, the performative nature of signs—written, spoken, and enacted in place—begs us to consider how language learners can not just read but creatively and purposively act upon the linguistic landscape.

Acting on the Linguistic Landscape: Performativity, translation, and other possibilities for language classroom intervention

Emory College Language CenterOctober 20, 2016

David MalinowskiYale University Center for Language Study

[email protected]@tildensky