Desire and Identity

     Identity has been 'increasingly medicated' since the turn of the twentieth century. According to Ibrahim in her text "Becoming Black: Rap and hip hop, race, gender, identity  and politics of ESL learning", with this identified we can further question "Who learns what" and "How is it learned'? Ibrahim further questions how can we develop pedagogy in a 'post colonial' society? And why are black L2 students drawn to learn 'North American Black English? Race is increasingly being studied in respect to second language learning and, according to Ryuku Jubota and Angel Lin, can help the word race not be so vitally equated with racism.
    There is no better or worse language, there is no high or low end of identity or communication  However, there is a prescriptive and descriptive way of speaking.
     She is concentrated with "the linkages among the self, identity, desire, and the English(es) that students invest in." She suggests that there is a desire to use BSE and BE to better identify with people that look similar. I think that she is displaced and her study is not wide enough for her to identify and critique all areas of why BSE is used. Her subjects were black and attended a high school in Ontario, Canada. She continues to describe what hip hop is. "I use hip-hop to describe a way of dressing, walking, and talking. The
dress refers to the myriad shades and shapes of the latest fly gear: high-top sneakers, bicycle shorts, chunky jewelry, baggy pants, and polka-dotted tops (Rose, 1991, p. 277). The hairstyles, which include
high-fade designs, dreadlocks, corkscrews, and braids (Rose, 1991, p.
277) are also part of this fashion."I like that she asked the question "...how do who we identify with effect how and what we learn?" This statement is a generalization and acts as rhetoric to further marginalize and other.  I am interested to see if a students culture effects how they think of learning, and if it does inhibits them or benefit them in any way.
     "The Western hegemonic representations of Blackness, Hall (1990) shows, are negative and tend
to work alongside historical and subconscious memories that facilitate
their interpretations by members of the dominant groups." I think it would be interesting to find out where and what these negative representations of Blackness are, and why they are perceived as negative by the collective. In the study, she confesses that the largest influence the black students have come from the television. Ibrahim states,  "this identification was certainly connected to their inability to relate to dominant groups, the public spaces they occupied, and their cultural forms and norms." I do not agree with the usage of the word 'dominant'. Language is strong, and perhaps it is this sort of rhetorical language that guides people into the mindset that there is a 'lesser dominant' culture and lifestyle. Perhaps this is why some fall in the 'post colonial' era. The given standard is not their culture, and as stated here, the given standard is more dominant than their culture. It does not shock me that some of these students feel as if they do not connect with the language learning in the classroom. I also found it interesting that, despite what was suggested before about how this is subconsciously acted upon, the students were able to express exactly why they were drawn to certain cultures.
     She later continues to comment on pedagogy  "Thus we as teachers must, first, identify the different sites in which our students invest their identities and desires and, second, develop materials that engage our students' raced, classed, gendered, sexualized, and abled identities." It is easy to assume that all of the students have similar needs, and similar backgrounds  Though, what is not said, is as important as what is said. She states that 'Black music' such as rap, should be engaged with. I would like to propose that she goes beyond this and question what is being engaged in the classroom, and what is accepted to be the norm?
     Kubota and Lin's text asks the reader to first question what race is. They state "According to Omi and Wmant 1994 , race ·IS a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts· and interests ..." Race is socially constructed, which can call for further questioning of who is exactly making these social constructions. With the examination of these articles, the reader can further explore identity, culture, and race in reflection to multilingual student.

A Step from Heaven

  The perception of America as a land of hope and opportunity motivates Ju's family to pick up their lives and move across the sea. Though, there is more to the story than this. There are lives involved, the young and the old. The perception of an American girl is pressed upon young Ju. Her mother perms her hair so that she can better fit into the physical idenity of a "Mi Gook" girl. This may make Ju be confused about her identity. Her new enviroment will also need for her to learn a new language. One that her family does not know, though if she does not learn it, no one will. This must be an aweful feeling and very stressful for her. And on thop of this she has to lean the curreculum in school.
It seems that just as soon as she learns the American culture, her parents are afraid she has forgotten her past. Young doesn't want her new American friends to see how "weird" her parents are or the poverty in which they live,

Waiting for Heaven: "Mi Gook is only for young people to have a new start" (21).
It seems that Ju, though she is young, is starting to feel the pressure of what is expected of her.


My Future: "I do not like the word future. Everything is in the future" (28).
I think hope plays a role in this kind of thought. Hope for a better future for their children, and hope that they can break the cycle of their life. There is also much pressure placed on Ju's future in her new enviroment.

Park Joon Ho: "He laughs. You are a girl, Young Ju...Leave her to dream. Do not be so harsh" (38).
Ju also has to deal with the sterotype of a girl in America.

There is also a motif of the Sea. What does this mean?
Uncle Tim is holding champaign with "foam from the sea" spilling out.
The Sea they fly over.
Sky Blue Dress at the ceromony.
Amamda birthday is at the beach
As the Sea Threatens to Drown my heart (112). Because she has experanced a life that she likes with the Doyals, in compairson she does not like her home life with her familiy.
When her father hits her she imagines that she is drounding. Death by something that once promiced so much hope.

There is more to a person than just the surface. It is easy to assume that there are no inner troubles when there the person does not vocalize them, but I think it is then that they want to have a voice even more.

Disappearing Bubbles:"I nodded and said yes, even though I did not know what cider was" (54).
This reminds me of the text that we read last class. Communication breakdown. This made Ju feel very self concious, enough to where she did not want to speak up and confess that she did not know.

She then confesses that she often tried to look up words in the dictinary though they did not always make sense. I remember being in Spanish class and doing the exact same thing. It is a feeling of loss and confusion.

"I do not know why I have to speak Korean at home so I will not forget where I come from" (55).
Her two worlds are being kept seperate. This must take a tole on her identity.

Making Sure: It has to be odd being depending on so much at such a young age. Apa seems to have his own issues. He wants to play the male role, but can not due to his lack of english.

Reaching: "If I catch a cloud I'll make it to heaven." Her perseption of heaven has changed. Again, a hope for a better place. Ju seems so old, the way she acts, the way she thinks.

My Best is not Enough: Strangling me with your hopes. 96.

They are all living on hope. What does anyone live on?

"We are Korean do not forget" 104

"What good is God going to do"

Didn't they initally want Ju to become an American girl, I wonder what changed their viewpoints on American girls. TV? Newspapers? Maybe they are worried because they do not know.

What influences a person most?

Ju seems to have a confliction of role in her life. She acts like a adult in her household, though her father provides conflicting feedback on this. She is responsible for her brother becasuse she is the one that speaks English and can answer phones.

What does she really have to go back to. Even if she does go back it will be another foreign envoriment for her. Her culture is a mixture of both.

So, in TESOL should the parents be helped through the process of adjusting to their enviroment as well as the children. This would, or might, take stress off the children

Finding a Voice

There is no definitive answer to the integration of the language learner and the language learning environment. Diversity in the classroom, just as educators need to reach the diversity in non-ESL classrooms, need to address the students differences and adapt their teaching strategies to best fit the students needs both on an individual and a communal scale. The purpose should be to find unity within the class so students from different cultural backgrounds have a base of commonality to communicate in. In Peirces text, Social Identity, Investment, and Language Learning, he state4s, “We can see language as a way to identify with ones surroundings…” To better the student it would be beneficial to them to become acquainted with their environment. They should have an understanding and exposure so they can produce mental definitions of those items. Assimilation into a new language, and in turn a new culture, could then be an easier path. If the learner is not comfortable with their surroundings a learning block may develop.

According to Peirce, ”…this affective filter comprises the learner's motivation, self-confi-dence, and anxiety state-all of which are variables that pertain to the individual rather than the social context.” The unknown is always frightening. It is also stated that, “In the field of SLA, theorists have not adequately addressed why it is that a learner may sometimes be motivated, extroverted, and confident and sometimes unmotivated, introverted, and anxious…”. Humans contain multitudes. There is no absolute to a human emotion, nor is there an absolute to why a learner may feel motivated, unmotivated, introverted, or extroverted. Here the individual should be looked at and not grouped into the category of ESL, male or female. No one should be souly labeled as an introvert or an extrovert. The comfort level depicts how loose a language learner might be. From this I would like to propose the language learner be introduced to the culture and environment by means of their own language initially and then interweave both the two dynamics of learning. This may also make the student comfortable and become “an extrovert” to ask more questions thus, learning more from the unparallel of their mind. There should be no assumptions to why the connection of content is not being communicated to the learner. However, positive reinforcement and a constant strive to understand learners are vial to the learning and teaching process.

Culture in the Classroom

Learning about Culture

Can we ever fully understand and empathize with another culture? Within the confines of a classroom it is often difficult to teach and expose students to different cultures. Even with the exposure of different texts and examples culture may not be fully understood. It is the educators as well as the students’ responsibility to engage in multiple discourses in regards to cultural diversity. With this said, it is first important to recognize how we acquire culture, and what culture truly means.

According to Culture in Second Language Teaching and Learning, culture is a “historically transmitted sermonic network constructed by humans which allows them to develop, communicate and perpetuate their knowledge beliefs and attitudes about the world” (30). Common cultural attitudes create a common ground in which there is a predisposed understanding to a person’s idea. People may share a common lexicon which makes it less complex and effortful to communicate. This also makes metaphors, a common learning tool, easier to assimilate and understand. A mental representation of a word may be different across culture. For example, when you think of the word “bread” what comes to mind? A slice of bread, a loaf, a sliced open roll? All of these mental representations can be seen as difference in cultural values. Though, how we obtain individual values is determined on our past experiences. So, how can a teacher, with students with many different backgrounds and cultures assimilate then all into a respectful and communal understanding with one another?
Presented in Winrergerst's text, Exploring Culture, are six tips to help both students and teachers with the concept of culture. "1. Have students articulate their own definition of culture, 2. Raise culture to a conscious level, 3. Point out the hidden aspects of culture 4. Point out how cultures may value the same thing differently, 5. Help students understand how culture works, 6. Build awareness about the stress caused by cultural adjustment" (Winrergerst 2). One of the first and most difficult aspects of learning about culture is mentally displacing ourselves out of our own culture. If this is achieved it is easier to examine our own environment and then begin to compare and contrast it to others. If it is true that a person can fully understand the complexities of culture, exercises such as the one listed above is a good way to begin that process within the confines of a classroom.

Defining Culture

Culture is like a slight breeze, it may go unnoticed, though is constantly moving and changing as time progresses. After reading Morgan’s text on defining culture, we can further identify this concept of culture as a not only a noun, or essentialist, but also as a verb, or non essentialist. Morgan defines and deconstructs culture in a few different contexts. He states, “…the persons of the culture are the process of activity creating, changing products, practices, perspectives and communities” (24). He identifies culture as an active, living thing that, like the breeze, travels, and changes. Some of these aspects, such as products, are tangible, but it is often the non tangible aspects of culture, such as perspectives as Morgan illiterates in an iceberg, that may be often overlooked especially in the classroom.

A lesson activity that I appreciated in Morgan’s text was his activity “Analyzing the Cultural Phenomenon” (28). The purpose in this activity is to examine the interconnectedness of the five dimensions of culture. Some of the topics are a restaurant, a musical instrument, a food market, or a concert. By identifying students answers to these questions the instructor and the student can better identify some different aspects of culture.

I am also very interested in language and culture. Language not only is used as a vessel to communicate ideas, though can also be seen as a projection of a person’s identity. An example of this can be seen in the standardization of American English. Americans had a want to separate themselves from the English to create their own identity. The standardization of American English that came with the publication of Noah Websters dictionary in 1828 developed different ways to spell certain words. For this reason, diction, syntax, dialect can develop communities identity and culture. However, how does language, seen as part of identity, used in a classroom of students that is being taught the English language?

Prescriptive language is the standard language and grammar. This use of language have a “correct” and an “incorrect” usage. This is what is typically taught in an academic setting. Descriptive language and grammar is how people actually speak, which can be translated into writing. In a classroom a teacher has the challenge of supporting the cultural aspects of language, but also enforcing the learning of prescriptive language.

Language and Culture

“Culture is not static; It evolves as people conduct their daily lives” (Hinkel 77). Language is not directly dynamic to culture, not is culture directly dynamic to language. However this is not to say that the two are not related at all. English lexicon across cultures may be similar, though the rhetoric that English language is used for may differ across cultures. For example, the persuasive essay does not exist as a common standard in India . (Hinkel 76). Instead of aiming to convince the reader of a point the writer exposes many examples to the reader and lets them decide in the end what to believe. Also according to Silva’s research,

NES subjects preferred explaining how something happened, using specific detail and organizing information in a text to form a theme-rheme pattern (recalling Kaplan'snotion of a linear pattern) and that they strongly preferred to reintroduce information from earlier in the text to develop another aspect of it. The native Japanese-speaking subjects preferred to explain why something happened, immediately repeating facts or ideas for emphasis, and to include only logically related information. (Silva)

“…successful communication may depend on socio-cultural factors…” (Hinkel 77). Cultural rhetoric is interpreted in the context of the speaker and may not always be understood by the reader or listener. In this section Hinkel concentrates on Indian CR verses Anglo-American CR. There are differing genres, such as short poems called geet and wedding invitations that differ across these cultures even though both may use the same vernacular of English. I find this interesting that culture is not directly related to the language that is used. Also, I find myself wondering how these differences in CR come about. Silva also states that, “They (Native Japanese speakers) strongly preferred ending texts or segments of texts with generalizations, ordering information to form causal chains, as in Kaplan'snotion of an indirect or circular pattern, and using adversative relations in clauses-creating a reason-counter reason pattern” (Silva). It would be interesting to find out how different ways of CR developed.

Visual Rhetoric

 

Instruction by images is powerful in language learning. Images have the power to convey messages, or help convey messages when text can not. According to Giaschi in his article “Gender Positioning in Education”, Images in ESL textbooks moved from 100-1,000 billion in 1985to 250 million-1.3 billion ten years later. It is suggested that this may because visual rhetoric has become much more understood. These images, like recent language learning systems, converse not only through text, but also through these images. However the role of visual rhetoric in such texts, according to Giaschi, has tended to be stereotypical to ‘Western culture’. Giaschi proposed that western produced textbooks tend to be ethnocentric and contain images that depict “women as possessions and men as a thing to envy”. The images also convey economic, and political influences. For a person who is not familiar to a ‘culture’, these images may support a stereotype that is not beneficial for the learner.

According to Giaschi article, Fairclough states that although his focus is on the verbal element in communication, visual images play an increasing role in a modem society's communicative life: "very often visuals and 'verbals' operate in a mutually reinforcing way which makes them very difficult to disentangle". Gisachi offers a few questions to disentangle the rhetoric for the reader. They are stated as,

 

 1. What is the activity of the image(s)?

2. Who is active (the "protagonist") in the image?

3. Who is passive (the "receiver") in the image(s)?

4. Who has status in the image(s)?

5. What does the body language communicate?

6. What does the clothing communicate?

7. Where are the eyes directed?

 

Each of these seven questions has a specific purpose letting the reader acknowledge and understand the visual rhetoric of the photo. It was found that most of the time, as stated before, men were depicted as a thing to envy and as the dominant protagonist, and women were depicted as a thing of desire and as the receiver.

           In Mendes article, “Construction of Racial Stereotypes in English as a foreign Language”,  this idea is also supported. However he go beyond gender roles and into power issues of the West. He stated that in most visual representations of ‘bad’ it was a foreign image, where is something was depicted to be beautiful or ‘good’ the image was constructed of something American.

            It is important for an educator to understand these visual rhetoric issues to initiate discussion and ask questions to the learners and make them aware of the discrepancies of the visual rhetoric. Images are able to speak past the expressive ability of text, and because of this what they are communicating needs to be fully understood.