Hi everybody--
I hope it is not late to join this extremely interesting discussion . I
found myself agreeing with Jay's radical approach and challenged by Mike's
question (see below -- thanks a lot, Mike, for such a challenge!). Here is
my reply to Mike that I came after 3 days thinking about it :-)
I work with two groups of elementary school kids on a regular basis: 1)
white middle class kids in Northern Delaware and 2) Latino kids and
African-American kids from poor families in Wilmington . I noticed that the
two groups of kids have different reactions to my Russian ACCENT. By ACCENT,
I mean deviations from English kids expect to hear (e.g., grammar,
pronunciation, organization). Middle class kids often react with paralysis
when they hear me. They look at my mouth and often become quiet (or whisper
something to each other). Latino and African American kids are definitely
very experienced with the situation of non-understanding. They actively
indicate that they do not understand me, ask to repeat, tease me, make
guesses of what I said, ask me where I'm from.
My point is that ACCENT is a relationship. There is a joke that ACCENT is a
way how other people talk. By this definition, *I* can't have ACCENT.
Our mainstream culture is a culture of understanding and fluency.
Understanding is considered to be non-problematic, expected, and normal.
Non- and mis-understanding is abnormal and dysfunctional. If I understand
correctly Jay, he calls for destroying the normalcy of fluent understanding
and for expecting non- and mis-understandings (and cultural mastery of
dealing with them). If my understanding of Jay is incorrect, feel free to
attribute the statement to me :-)
What do you think?
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
> Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2000 7:22 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: lects
>
>
>
> Hi Jay--
>
> You ask:
> Why might someone WANT to try to sound exactly like a native speaker of
> this language when you are not one?
>
> One big reason is so that you can communicate! Never mind my experiences
> with Russian which are my most extensive. There I can communicate pretty
> well with adults and sometimes pass as, say, a Latvian or Estonian if I
> don't talk for too long. But no way to have a reasonable conversation with
> a four year old! And no way to get over the feeling of being unable to
> "say it the way I wanted to say it" even with colleagues when discussing
> topics of mutual concern (like, for instance, the relation between sense
> and meaning! :-)
>
> But it goes a long way beyond that. My dad, in middle age, spent several
> years in England. I noticed that after about a year he had adopted what
> for my tin-American ear sounded like an English accent and use of some
> expressions that were locally prevelant but also sounded strange to me.
>
> I accused him of language snobbism-- my old man an Anglophile!?! Perish
> the thought. His explanation was that he found if he did NOT adopt local
> ways of speaking, even simple tasks like buying groceries ran into snags
> and things really got difficult on the phone-- so we joined in, as best
> he could.
>
> Somehow I think those who study the development of standards of other
> kinds ought to have some helpful things to say about standards for
> spoken language and their feedback effects on human practice.
> mike
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