Re: emulsifying bilingualism

From: Charles Nelson (c.nelson@mail.utexas.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 01 2000 - 09:59:17 PST


Jay wrote:

>One of the most interesting, to me, was the repeated evidence that we are
>really misled by notions of language purity or homogeneous speech
>communities as a norm or ideal. In living communities where different
>language varieties are in use (including dialect and sociolect varieties,
>learner languages, etc.) there are no pure Languages that then get mixed or
>interact with one another. These ideal types are constructs of linguists
>and enforcers of language purity, always for ideological reasons (some more
>politically transparent, others very indirectly linked to the interests
>they support).

Yes, but it's not always for ideological reasons. Sometimes it's
pedagogical. As a former ESL teacher in Turkey, I could only teach my
students what I knew (what I found in books, learned from other teachers,
and my ideolect), plus the students had to start somewhere. Perhaps this
is what you mean by being "very indirectly linked."

>Against such a backdrop the notion that people have to be moved from ideal
>competence in one pure language variety to ideal competence in another
>seems obtusely narrow and procrustean. The efforts that go into the social
>work of purification on the part of the partisans of purity seem an uphill
>battle against the entropy of life, and a pointless mistaking of the need
>to maintain clear types in place of recognizing the emergence of new forms
>and systems, always changing, but in different respects and at different
>rates, that seems to characterize the speech ecology of a community.

You're right, but as an infrequent student of Turkish who will likely never
become fluent, I'm more interested in focusing the little time I have for
learning Turkish on what educated Turks consider good Turkish. Perhaps
this is more of indirectly supporting certain interests, but . . .
(continued below)

>It is perfectly possible to look in great detail at many of the dimensions
>of variability and complexity in these real situations without reifying the
>works of purification that enable some people to make grand theories and
>bask in their grandeur. Good for basking, and maybe for getting rich; but
>not for helping figure out how to help real people in real situations.
>Every theoretical notion that is not a provisional, dispensable, modifiable
>tool is a trap someone else has set for us. What we need theoretical
>sophistication for is to make useful ad-hoc theory, not to use theories
>ready-made.

as a real person in a real situation, I prefer to be pragmatic even as I
realize the provisional nature of dialects and theories. So it seems we
agree, on many things at least, but I feel the constraints of teaching and
learning a foreign or second language, and probably most human endeavors,
need to be kept in view, too.

Charles Nelson



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