What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

Okay, so now that we’ve got an introduction to the “language and culture” conundrum lets figure out why this matters. I’m from Durham; I was born here, I grew up here and I hope to spend a very long time working here in the school system (assuming I survive the mountain of readings and the sleep deprivation of grad school) so I’ll focus on foreign language and the DPS system.

I remember the first person I ever met who didn’t speak English. I was in 6^th grade and the idea of someone who didn’t speak English completely baffled me. I remember thinking how brave she was to come to school every day, sit in class, and have no idea what the heck was coming out of the teacher’s mouth. English as a Second Language (ESL) classes hadn’t made it to my middle school yet, so she would sit in the back of my Spanish class and do busy work. Bless her heart (as we say in the south) she could have fallen through the cracks and lost all interest in school but luckily for her, the bus we road was full of kids who were bound and determined to get her speaking English.

Now we can’t take all the credit, since she was one of 9 children, 5 of whom were in the middle school we went to, so they got an ESL teacher rather quickly to accommodate their learning. And however many years later I can say that she learned better English than I speak today. But she was lucky; she had a 5 to 1 student to teacher ratio, a community of peers who wanted to help, and a church community backing her up along the way. Not all ESL learners have that kind of support system.

I did a little research. Durham Public Schools has over 90 (primary) languages spoken by 6,080 students; 5,316 of those students speak Spanish at home. And 651 students are classified as “recent immigrants” which from what I can tell, translates to ‘don’t speak a word of English.’

Then Durham distinguishes between ESL students (those in the process of learning English) and English Language Proficient students (those who have a working knowledge of the English language and are in standard classes). Of the 6,080 students who speak, as a native language, something other than English 4,565 are ELP students. Which means that 1,515 students are currently in the DPS ESL program.

DPS employees 79 ESL instructors, so that’s roughly a 20-1 student to teacher ratio. Not bad you say? I mean yeah, that’s a better student to teacher ratio that I’ll ever see in anyone of my math classes. But, if the majority of the class is spent learning the English language (because lets face it, its complicated and confuses ME and I’ve been speaking it for almost 25 years) how much of that time gets spent on content material.

Think about it: I will venture to say most of you took a foreign language in High School. How long did it take you to read a page in Spanish, French, German or Latin? How much of that time did you spend actually understanding the material? I’ll bet none of it. You spent most of your time reading trying to understand the words, and the meaning tends to get lost along the way, or takes you twice as long to get.

Having served in the Peace Corps for 2 years I can say immersion is the best way to learn a language, but its hard as hell and extremely frustrating. I understand why ESL programs are put into place, but I just can’t help but wonder if there’s a better way.

I hear rumors of content-level ESL programs starting in DPS, where (since Durham has an ever increasing Latino population) classes start off in Spanish, and work there way into English. What’s that? Immersion math class! Now there’s an idea I am on board with! Content material first with English as a side effect—it’s a win-win in my book.

Now assuming that we get the ESL students up to ELP standards, and they are in your class. Do you think everything that you say will be understood? I bet not. Think about English, we have a lot of words that to the untrained (or newly trained) ear sound alike or look alike.

Read (he reads the book)

read (I read the book)

through (I almost didn’t make it through)

threw (he threw the ball)

one (as in the number)

won (woo we won!)

Take the following video for example; it’s of a class of ESL students demonstrating every day frustrations with the English language. Keep in mind they’re elementary school kids with a video camera, so they’re a little shy, but I think they prove my point, not everything we say as teachers gets communicated effectively:

Still not convinced that English is tricky, take a look at this one:

Now, let us ignore that it’s a commercial for an English language program, the point remains: English is hard to learn, and we may think our ELP students are getting what we’re saying (“sinking”) but they may not be (“thinking”).

The moral of the story-- well, I’m not sure if its as cut and dry as this, but I’m going to say it anyways: think about what you’re saying and make sure its being understood by you ELP and ESL students. Follow up when you notice confusion, and please don’t do what the “teacher” did in that first skit and choose coverage of material you’re your student’s understanding.

To change up the gears a little, and just incase you thought I’d forgotten about the Language and Culture relationship, I found another interesting video. It’s of an Arabic class in Israel. Yep, you got that right, Israeli kids are learning the Arabic language AND in the process, a little respect for the Arab culture as part of the “Language as a Cultural Bridge” program:

As Dadi Komen says in the video, “the main goal of [the] program is not just to teach Arabic as a language. The language is a bridge to the culture and the culture is part of the language.” In this program Jewish students are able to better understand their Palestine neighbors. If there are more programs like this created on both sides, maybe one day, armed with a better cultural understanding and able to effectively communicate (i.e. no miscommunications or language goof-ups) there will one day be peace.

Just food for though.

**DPS ESL figures were taken from the DPS website: http://www.dpsnc.net/programs-services/esl/esl-quick-facts

Humpty Dumpty

Jennifer phrased it so nicely in the comments I really have no other option than to use her wording: What we have here is a Chicken and Egg situation. Which came first? Who birthed who? We can’t say the chicken because then where did it come from? The egg of course, which came from what again? Oh yeah, the chicken. Now we’re right back where we started at.

The same paradoxical situation occurs in our look into the language and culture connection. Which came first: language or culture? Did one form out of the other? Or are they mutually exclusive? And does either of them impact the way we see and interpret the world?

Lera Boroditsky sets up an interesting argument in her article Lost in Translation about languages’ impact on our worldviews. The way an English speaker views/interprets an event is different than that of a person with a different native tongue. Just play along for a second:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a…

We know what comes next don’t we? Well wait a second, are you sure about that?

Let’s forget we speak English for a moment. Then what? So far into the story all we’ve got to work with is a rather large Egg sitting on top of a wall and we haven’t the slightest clue as to why.

In English Humpty is a male egg, we’re never explicitly told this after all—English verbs are neither feminine nor masculine—but since Humpty is displayed in the story books in male clothing we assume that the Egg who does the sitting is a boy, the language cannot tell us any different. But what is it my mother always said about making assumptions? That’s right, they make an as…tronomical jerk ‘outta u and me.

Do all languages view this story the same? In Russian there is a separate verb tense for the sexes. That is, the verb for ‘sit’ will be different depending on if that Egg is a Mr. Dumpty or a Miss. Dumpty. And hold that thought. Did Humpty (the he or she version) finish the act of sitting before they proceeded with the act of falling? Or was the sitting action interrupted, say by a swift wind or the sound of a frying pan heating up, and then a Humpty to fell to his cracking? Yep, you guessed it: in Russian a completed action is conjugated differently than an interrupted action.

So depending on how the story is worded in those story books we get 4 very different mental pictures:

1)   A male Mr. Humpty Dumpy sat (in the completed action sense of the word) on a wall, then…

2)   A female Miss humpty Dumpty sat (in the completed action sense of the word) on a wall, then…

3)   A male Mr. Humpty Dumpty sat (in the oops, I got interrupted during my sit sense of the word) on a wall, then…

4)   A female Miss Humpty Dumpty sat (in the oops, I got interrupted during my sit sense of the word) on a wall, then…

Maybe that’s just the Russian language being difficult you say? We’ll that’s not entirely true; the Turkish language provides an interesting twist in the story telling.

Who is telling us this story anyways? Looking back on it I never question Mother Goose’s account of this story much, although in hind-sight I should have been a little skeptical of a Goose telling me stories about little families that live in shoes and Eggs that sit on walls dressed in outfits straight out of Shakespearian times. But that’s another point completely, we’ll get to my gullibility soon enough.

Back to the Turkish language: the story changes, that is the verb tense changes, depending on who does the telling. Is this Humpty sitting and falling a first hand account? Were you, the storyteller, actually there? Were you trying to help all the king’s horses and all the king’s men put that Humpty back together again or did you hear this story from a reliable (or unreliable for that matter) source? In Turkish verbs, this qualifying detail matters. Yep, you get 2 different verbs depending on if this story is told from your point of view or if it’s a second hand story.

I know this simple story is getting complicated. Then again, a native Russian speaker reading this story in English for the first time might think we’re a little dense to not ever question if Humpty is a girl or boy, and to them it makes no sense that we don’t care if the sitting action was completed or not. The Turkish guy or gal is probably nodding in agreement with the Russian that English speakers are weird, I mean who doesn’t check to see who’s telling the story before believing it?

Well let’s take the story aspect out of play for a second. Let’s assume we’re all there: at the foot of this big ol wall. We, the Russian, Turk, and you the English speaker, are all looking straight up at this egg. For the sake of this scenario, its just an Egg, I’m going to let each of you make up our own mind about its sex in a second.

The just plain old Egg of this story

So you’re watching this egg start to sit—now depending on how you interpret this action it can either be completed or incomplete, I’m not making the rules here that’s up to you, the eye-witnesses. So, either after he’s done or while he’s in the process a neutral gendered egg has a great fall and cracks into a million pieces in the most rated G for a child’s story book kinda way.

Here’s the crucial part, are you paying attention? Good, how are you each going to interpret what just happened. As eye witnesses to the event.

You, the English speaker, we presume has prior knowledge of this event. You grew up reading about it; you’ve heard the story hundreds of times and probably have my same mental picture of Humpty all dressed up in old-timey clothes and a top hat. So you’ve brought some baggage to this eyewitness account haven’t you? You’re going to assume that Humpty’s a male, and that it doesn’t matter if he fell after or during the process of sitting, that lines not in the poem and we’re not even going to think about it because it messes up the AABB rhyme scheme.

The Mr. Humpty Dumpty from my child hood

What about the Russian and the Turk? What preconceptions do they bring to this story? Maybe one or both of them assume Humpty is a girl because girls like to sit on walls (hey, I’m just saying, it could be true), then what? Well for starter’s we’ve got a different view on the events. Then the Russian has to determine in his own right if the sitting act was completed or not. It’s his call: I’m not influencing it because frankly, my language doesn’t care either way.

Boroditsky focused on Russian, Turkish, and English most likely because those are the languages she’s familiar with. So now it’s my turn: What about a Spanish speaker?

Lets add a Spanish speaker to our neutral egg doing the sitting scenario. Well right off the bat the witness must make a choice, is it a Miss Humpty or a Mr. Humpty? To my knowledge the verb for sitting doesn’t deviate from that which an English speaker would say (but there is a chance I could be wrong here, let me know), the egg sat and then what?

Well this is where the Spanish speaker is going to have to decide on a few things. Did Humpty fall intentionally (i.e. he/she jumped) or did he/she fall unintentionally (i.e. he/she got pushed)? If Humpty jumped, then he’s no longer falling, he’s jumping and we’re using a different verb.

But let’s say the falling was an accident, then what? Well the verb ‘to fall’ in Spanish is a reflexive one, that means the action needs to be placed on someone or something. In this case the Spanish speaker would view the accidental act of Humpty falling (that is, they didn’t see anyone push Humpty) as the ‘egg fell and broke itself.’

Ooo now we’re getting somewhere, the Spanish speaker places the blame of the falling on poor old cracked Humpty. That’s a difference from how the English speaker, the Russian speaker, and the Turkish speaker would view it.

How does this difference in views/understandings of the events extend beyond our Humpty Dumpy story? As Boroditsky points out, “such differences between languages have profound consequences for how their speakers understand events, construct notions of causality and agency, what they remember as eyewitnesses, and how much they blame and punish others.”

For example, Caitlin Fausey, a post-doctorial research fellow at Stanford University conducted a study with participants who spoke English, Japanese and Spanish. She showed the study participants a video of two people popping balloons, cracking eggs (in a literal sense this time, not in a fairy tale), and spilling drinks on each other both intentionally and unintentionally. Next up was a pop quiz, testing participant’s recollections of these events. What Fausey found was fascinating:

She asked the participants if they could remember, for each event, who did it? Spanish and Japanese speakers (who both share the reflexive nature of their verbs) couldn’t remember the culprit of the accidental events as well as the English speakers.  Additionally, when the event was intentional (i.e. their native language uses a reflexive verb that places blame on the person doing the spilling), everyone was able to remember the events just as they occurred and who did the spilling on whom.

What are the implications of this study? For one, that the way that we interpret and remember events is affected by the structure of our language. So case closed, Language affects the way we view the world, not the other way around. Thank you very much and good night? Nope, not so fast, as Boroditsky points out,

“Languages, of course, are human creations, tools we invent and hone to suit our needs. Simply showing that speakers of different languages think differently doesn’t tell us whether it’s language that shapes thought or the other way around.”

I came across this article when I was living in Peru serving in the Peace Corps. I was in what most volunteers refer to as the “senioritis” phase of my service. I had about 5 months left to go, and most of my projects were winding down, it was the home stretch if you will. I spent most of my time working in my community garden with local mothers. We had a huge pile of compost (25 Kg, that’s 55lbs, to be exact) almost done decomposing and just begging to be spread around in the newly opened section of the garden. I, being a slight perfectionist, suggested waiting one more week to let it cool off a little before spreading it and left town for a regional meeting of volunteers.

When I got home, my first thought was to go and check on my garden, make sure that it had been watered and take care of while I was away. And to my shock, all my compost was gone. G.O.N.E. gone. I could still see the shovel marks on the dirt where it used to be. My inner C.S.I geek wanted to take pictures of the crime scene and make a mold of the shovel scrapings so that forensic evidence could be used to determine who stole our compost and with what shovel!

I went back to my house to tell my host mom this story and she laughed at me. “Yennifer,” she told me, “nadies se llevó tu compost, ya se escapó” which roughly translates to “no one stole your compost, it escaped.”

I was furious, seeing red, and all sorts of confused as to how my host mother, who I deemed a rational and intelligent woman, was not able to see that someone stole my compost. It took me reading this article to get it: since no one saw who did the stealing, there was no stealing. One afternoon it was there, the next it wasn’t. Therefore, logically, it ran away.

Será yo? O Serás tu?

It took learning a new language for me to realize one key element of the “southern” variety of English I grew up speaking: we communicate in ‘–isms’, regional sayings of sorts. Down here, south of the Mason-Dixon, you say things like “built like a brick shit house” when something is sturdy and  “more stubborn than a mule” when someone’s being thick-headed (which in and of itself is another –ism). I’m not really sure why, since now a days you don’t really see outhouses anymore, be them brick or wooden.  And when was the last time you saw a mule walking down the street--of his own free will or being pulled by a frustrated owner? The fact that we continue to use these –isms without any personal basis for using them (I’m speaking for the rest of you, I have used a brick outhouse, and they are the way to go) just proves how deeply our culture is reflected in our language—or is it the other way around?

The point I’m making is we don’t communicate in words as much as sayings. These –isms, are a form of cultural jargon that makes a New Yorker seem to be speaking a different language to a North Carolinian; Throw a British guy in and we’re both confused. How does one effectively translate a cultural saying (--ism), and can it even be done? Possibly. I propose that true understanding of a language can only be accomplished once you have experienced the other language’s culture. Out of cultural context, language cannot be understood; it can only be guessed at. As the Director of Peace Corps In-Service Training so eloquently put it for us as we began our lessons of the Spanish language, “If you translate Spanish word-for-word in your head as you go you’ll never understand the people of Peru. You have to translate the feeling of words, you must see beyond the words and get to the idea at their core.”

Here’s where the tricky part gets added to the mix: does your culture affect your language or does your language reflect your culture? Which influenced which, and to what extent does the language we speak form the way we think about the world? Does language influence the way we rationalize our actions? With the help of Lera Boroditsky and her article Lost in Translation that ran in the Wall Street Journal in July 2010 we will begin our journey into exploring the extent to which our native language forms how we think (and visa versa) and possibly act.

In my next post I will explore the cultural-language studies that are mentioned in Boroditsky’s article and their implications to the idea of a dynamic culture-language relationship.

Please feel free to add/contribute to the exploration process along the way. Productive comments are always welcome and appreciated to expand my thinking and views on the subject, but please, let’s try and keep it civil and clean.

-J