Ethnolinguistics and Cross-Cultural Knowledge

1. Universidad del Este Carolina, P.R. Ethnolinguistics and Cross-Cultural Knowledge Jorge Hernández ENGG 604 September 16, 2010

2. 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)

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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)

7. 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.

8. 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

9. 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.

10. 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)

11. 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.

12. 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)

13. 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.

14. 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)

15. 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).

16. 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)

17. 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.

18. 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).

19. 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.

20. 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).

21. 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).

22. 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: Thoughtson language and culture in the classroom. New York: The New Press. Horton, M. & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking: Conversations oneducation and social change. Phildelphia: Temple University Press. Macedo, D. (April, 2000). The colonialism of the English only movement. Educational Researcher.