Something about us!

"WE NEED TO BE CONSCIOUS ABOUT THE DIFFERENCES WE HAVE, AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THESE FOR IMPROVING OUR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND OUR SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS"

Song

Jimmy Cliff

                                            I can see clearly now

ALL DIFFERENT BUT WE HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON: A CULTURE THAT IDENTIFIES US.

DEFINITION OF LANGUAGE

What is Language?

Many animal and even plant species communicate with each other.  Humans are not unique in this capability.  However, human language is unique in being a symbolic communication system that is learned instead of biologically inherited.  Symbols  are sounds or things which have meaning given to them by the users.  Originally, the meaning is arbitrarily assigned.  For instance, the English word "dog" does not in any way physically resemble the animal it stands for.  All symbols have a material form but the meaning can not be discovered by mere sensory examination of their forms.  They are abstractions.

Do the following words sound or look like the animal shown here: canis , chien , hund , perro  ?(They all are words for dog in European languages.)

A word is one or more sounds that in combination have a specific meaning assigned by a language.  The symbolic meaning of words can be so powerful that people are willing to risk their lives for them or take the lives of others.  For instance, words such as "queer" and "nigger" have symbolic meaning that is highly charged emotionally in America today for many people.  They are much more than just a sequence of sounds to us.

A major advantage of human language being a learned symbolic communication system is that it is infinitely flexible.  Meanings can be changed and new symbols created.  This is evidenced by the fact that new words are invented daily and the meaning of old ones change.  For example, the English word "nice" now generally means pleasing, agreeable, polite, and kind.  In the15th century it meant foolish, wanton, lascivious, and even wicked.   Languages evolve in response to changing historical and social conditions.  Some language transformations typically occur in a generation or less.  For instance, the slang words used by your parents were very likely different from those that you use today.  You also probably are familiar with many technical terms, such as "text messaging" and "high definition TV", that were not in general use even a decade ago. 

Language and speech are not the same thing.  Speech is a broad term simply referring to patterned verbal behavior.  In contrast, a language is a set of rules for generating speech.  A dialect  is a variant of a language.  If it is associated with a geographically isolated speech community, it is referred to as a regional dialect.  However, if it is spoken by a speech community that is merely socially isolated, it is called a social dialect.  These latter dialects are mostly based on class, ethnicity , gender , age, and particular social situations.  Black English (or Ebonics ) in the United States is an example of a social dialect.  Dialects may be both regional and social.  An example is the Chinese spoken dialect and written form called nushu.  It apparently was known and used only by women in the village of Jiang-yong in Hunan Province of South China.  Women taught nushu only to their daughters and used it to write memoirs, create songs, and share their thoughts with each other.  While women also knew and used the conventional Chinese dialect of their region, they used nushu to maintain female support networks in their male dominated society.  Nushu is essentially gone now due to its suppression during the 1950's and 1960's by the communist government of China.  The last speaker and writer of nushu was a woman named Yang Huanyi.  She died in 2004.  Not all societies have distinct dialects.  They are far more common in large-scale diverse societies than in small-scale homogenous ones.

Over the last few centuries, deaf people have developed sign languages that are complex visual-gestural forms of communicating with each other.  Since they are effective communication systems with standardized rules, they also must be considered languages in their own right even though they are not spoken.

	Women in Papua New Guinea conversing in Pidgin English

A pidgin is a simplified, makeshift language that develops to fulfill the communication needs of people who have no language in common but who need to occasionally interact for commercial and other reasons.  Pidgins combine a limited amount of the vocabulary and grammar of the different languages.  People who use pidgin languages also speak their own native language.  Over the last several centuries, dozens of pidgin languages developed as Europeans expanded out into the rest of the world for colonization and trade.  The most well known one is Pidgin English in New Guinea.  However, several forms of Pidgin English and Pidgin French also developed in West Africa and the Caribbean.  There have been pidgins developed by non-European cultures as well, including the Zulus in South Africa, the Malays in Southeast Asia, the Arabs in North Africa, and several American Indian societies.  The most well known pidgin developed by American Indians is Chinook, which was used on the Northwest Coast of North America.

At times, a pidgin language becomes the mother tongue of a population.  When that happens, it is called a creole  language.  As pidgins change into creoles over several generations, their vocabularies enlarge.  In the small island nation of Haiti, a French-African pidgin became the creole language.  It is still spoken there by the majority of the population as their principle or only language.  The same thing happened among some of the peoples of Papua New Guinea , the Pacific Islands of Vanuatu , and Sierra Leone  in West Africa, where different versions of Pidgin English became creoles.  Similarly, on the outer banks of Georgia and South Carolina in the United States, isolated former African slaves made another version of Pidgin English into a creole known as Gullah  or Geechee Creoles also developed in Louisiana, Jamaica, and the Netherlands Antilles 

It is common for creole speakers to also speak another "standard" language as well.  In Haiti, for instance, the more educated and affluent people also speak French among themselves.  Their creole language is used on the street in dealing with poor Haitians.  The Gullah speakers of Georgia and South Carolina speak English when dealing with outsiders.  Which language is spoken depends on the social situation.  This same phenomenon is often found in societies with different dialects of the same language.  People may quickly switch back and forth between dialects, depending on the person they are talking to at the time.   This pattern is referred to as diglossia  or "code switching."  The African American situational use of standard and Black English is a prime example.  Black English is usually reserved for talking with other African Americans.  North American reporters and announcers on national television programs are often diglossic.  They must learn to speak with a Midwestern, European American dialect regardless of the region or social class they came from originally.  We become so accustomed to this that it is usually a shocking surprise to hear them speak in their own dialects.

Typically, the dialects of a society are ranked relative to each other in terms of social status.  In the London area of England, the upper class speak "public school" English, while the lower class often use a Cockney  dialect.  Because of the stigma against the latter, upwardly mobile Cockneys in the business world may take language lessons to acquire the "public school" speech patterns.

WHY IS IMPORTANT CULTURAL AWARENESS FOR FUTURE MODERN LANGUAGES TEACHERS?

People who do not know about culture ignore totally where they come from and are not able to take a valid position in front of it. As Culture is a changeable human creation composed by customs, believes, religion traditions, language, symbols, values, norms, laws and others (Edward B. Tylor, 1871), we should be aware that each person in the world is the product of their own culture. It identifies us and shows the way we perceive the world around us. This is the understanding cultural knowledge provides us. However, there are people who do not reflect upon their behavior as the result of culture and tend to think, conscious or unconsciously, that their culture or ethnic group is the correct one until the extreme of rejecting and discriminating other cultural or ethnic tendencies. Fortunately, this can be avoided by means of education, that is why I dare to state that future modern languages professionals as me should be well prepare in such as essential aspect of our lives as culture is, in order to face surely multicultural classrooms.

Cultural knowledge would be a great aid for new teachers with multicultural classrooms. Being a modern languages professional gives certain advantages as working in another country, therefore, it is easy to find multicultural classrooms, what would not be surely an easy task; nevertheless, in accordance with Charlotte M. Jones, what is important when there exists culture clash is to be open, knowledgeable, and not be afraid to talk about the cultural differences in class no matter what discipline the teacher is teaching (12). I share completely her thought since teachers work is not just give knowledge about a subject, but form integral people who respect differences and there is not better way to avoid misunderstandings than by communicating. When in the classrooms there is a space in which students can expose their ideas looking for clarifying the false stereotypes we have about culture and people, the relationship between students becomes more bearable.

Cultural understanding helps future professionals to treat their students as people that conceive their world in different ways because of their backgrounds. Knowledge about culture supports teachers because they comprehend how “culturally relevant and responsible instruction clearly shows that knowledge of students' family, community and socioethnic cultures, their languages, literacy practices, and values--can help  them address  interests and build on the skills of their students" (Abt-Perkins and Rosen, 254). A good example of teachers’ cultural knowledge is implemented in the schools in the United State where almost all the classrooms are multicultural. There teachers have a cultural competence that allow them to interact with their students from culturally diverse backgrounds. There, exists a great search for teachers who are able to mediate between intercultural students.

Although teachers have cultural knowledge they can not avoid ethnocentrism or prejudices they feel about certain cultures. This is a position managed by the traditional perspective which considers culture can not be corrupted because it would produce fragmentation. Thus, this position deems that culture is fixed, predetermined and essentialist and its main search is assimilation instead of integration (Taguieff, 1997,Hannoun, 1987). I am in total disagreement with this position since this missed way of seeing diversity provokes teacher and students lack of comprehension. As Orange and Horwitz who argues that a teacher's culture, language, social interests, goals, cognitions, and values, especially,  if different from the students', could conceivably create a barrier to understanding what is best for children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (p. 254). Cultural knowledge should produce awareness of diversity which can be used by the teacher in a way that enhances a better development in the classes since students can enrich their way thinking by hearing other perspectives of the world.

    Culture is only a word which does not denote what it really frames. When we deepen in what culture represents, we find innumerable aspects to reflect as cultural differences, ethnocentrism, relativism, racism, ethnic discrimination, subcultures, cultural awareness, and many others that help to comprehend it. The reflection about cultural issues makes us recognize how short of thinking we are sometimes since we believe that our conception of the world is the same everybody should have. Our way of thinking probably would change if we have cultural knowledge which could be called a capacity to clear our minds of prejudices and look culture with open mind. And, here is where education plays an extremely important role due to teachers can learn about culture in order to know how to manage students with different views of the world.

Conciencia Cultural...

Quiza no seamos de diferentes paises o de diferentes culturas, pero cada uno de nosotros tiene sus propias opiniones y pensamientos... Pero aun asi, buscamos las mejores maneras para tratarnos y hacer de nuestra amistad algo duradero y puro. cada uno tiene su propia cultura...

Jenny: Es la más cuerda ( como decimos por aqui) de todos, siempre ve las cosas de una manera muy logica y razonable. Nos da los mejores consejos y nos ayuda en todo.

Luisa: Ella es una loquita bastante agradable para todos nosotros, sale con cosas, con las que solo ella puede salir, es alegre y muy inteligente.

Mauro: el es otro loquito, con su forma de ser nos agrada, nos enamora con su voz y nos hace reir con sus disparates. Es relajado en el buen sentido de la palabra.

Finalmente yo... Creo que del grupo soy la de la mitad, ni muy loquita ni muy cuerda, eso si soy la mas relajada de todos, en el buen sentido de la palabra... jeje.... 

No es necesario ser de otros paises para tener nuestra propia cultura.

nuestras formas de ser y nuestros gustos son prueba de ello.

Los cuatro aun siendo muy diferentes tenemos nuestra propia conciencia cultural, nos aceptamos y respetamos el punto de vista del otro... Y cada cual con sus cosas...  Jenny con el deporte, Luisa con el ajedrez y el ajedrecista, jaja,  Mauro con la musica y su comida... Y por ultimo yo con el desespero total de estar donde quiero estar. 

CULTURAL AWARENESS Music

MGTM- ELECTRIC FEEL.

Lyrics.

All along the western front

People line up to receive.

She got the power in her hands

To shock you like you won't believe.

Saw her in the amazon

With the voltage running through her skin

Standing there with nothing on

She's gonna teach me how to swim

Ooh girl

Shock me like an electric feel

Baby girl

Turn me on with your electric feel

Ooh girl

Shock me like an electric feel

Baby girl

Turn me on with your electric feel

All along the eastern shore

Put your circuits in the sea

This is what the world is for

Making electricity

You can feel it in your mind

Oh you can do it all the time

Plug it in and change the world

You are my electric girl.

Ooh girl

Shock me like an electric feel

Baby girl

Turn me on with your electric feel

Ooh girl

Shock me like an electric feel

Baby girl

Turn me on with your electric feel