Sign o' the times

Having read an article on BBC News, it is believed that the sign language interpreter employed to convey the content of tributes at the Nelson Mandela memorial was – in one viewer's words – "signing rubbish". We are told that the signing conventions required differ from those of any spoken language. So as someone who has always been interested in sign language but can only fingerspell in British Sign Language, I can hardly comment on the accuracy of the video's content.

Though as the news article suggests, repeated signs used to represent completely different words should surely have aroused suspicion from the outset. If the signer can be shown to have been inept, then we can only speculate as to how a seemingly incompetent individual was able to work at such a significant event and stand in front of hundreds of world leader and dignitaries and a global audience of millions. The article quotes a blog editor, Charlie Swinbourne, thus:

"If the accusations that the man was a "fake" turn out to be true, "on a day when the world saluted a man who fought oppression, a guy stood on stage and effectively oppressed another minority - deaf people."

I'm a great fan of the Australian comedian Adam Hills, who often employs an interpreter to sign his stand-up shows. I'd even credit him with raising awareness of signing, especially as he raises the subject in a respectful yet light-hearted way. So if he can show such care and attention on a comparatively small scale, why was it not possible to get one of the (few) interpreters in South Africa to effectively 'name their price' and get the job done properly in this case?  It matters. People should care.

Word of mouse

I'm grateful to a good friend for sharing an article on social media that appeared in the Los Angeles Times last week. Its author illustrates the perceived preference of some media outlets to portray the desperate acts of typhoon victims as 'looting'. Yesterday, in a short programme on the BBC called Newswatch (content not available online outside the UK), members of the public also questioned the need for numerous TV anchormen to present the news from the scene of the disaster; thus risking turning a catastrophe into a circus. To its credit, the BBC responded with a justification that several reporters were needed to report developments 24 hours a day. Reluctantly or otherwise, we have all now, collectively, manufactured a need for rolling news. We also learned that BBC staff take their own supplies of food and water, thus not detracting from the relief effort in any way.

But in this culture of constant news updates and the 'newsworthy' narrative created to relay them to us, the simple act of sharing an alternative perspective on social media – word of mouse, if you will – is becoming increasingly important. The L.A. Times article, for example, shows a clear need for us to develop a more critical eye. With so much news content now available, we need to fine-tune our own filters to discern the true facts of the information presented to us.
 

Should children still be seen and not heard?

I read with interest a BBC report of a school in the UK having banned its primary-aged children from talking or writing in their local dialect. The school has adopted a "zero tolerance" approach – presumably in the same way that many of us strive for a zero-tolerance approach to the sloppy grammar and punctuation of some adults who could do better. At the school featured in the report, children have been 'banned' from using dialectal language in the classroom. The head teacher helpfully pointed out that this ruling only related to the classroom. This appears to be a tacit acknowledgement that even he has limited jurisdiction when it comes to policing language use.

Earlier this year, another school launched an identical initiative. But I do not believe that enough attention has been paid to the distinction between written and spoken language. They've simply been lumped together, with seemingly little concern for their very different social and communicative functions. Rather than banning certain language varieties, it is surely much more valuable for children to learn about and understand the co-existence of the different forms of communication elsewhere. Input here would include an appreciation of register, formality, audience, the distinct lack of any widespread 'standard' English accent in the UK, standard grammar and other features of writing, contrasted with other forms permitted in speaking.

Any other approach leads to the criticism that we are stigmatising people's social and regional identity as expressed through their language use. Similar linguistic discrimination existed from the 1840s until well into the 20th century in Wales with the Welsh Not, where schoolchildren were punished for speaking their native Welsh language at school. Children – can cope with multiple language varieties, whether these are dialects or separate languages. Were this not the case, then no-one would ever become bilingual.

As I have no doubt mentioned previously, German-speaking Switzerland, in contrast, positively celebrates its linguistic diversity in schools and in society generally. As the form of standard German used by national newsreaders (and almost no-one else) does not enjoy the prestige of one's local dialect, I was tasked with creating a 'language code' at school, a simple rule for pupils' day-to-day language use. This has nothing to do with banning children from speaking using their own dialect(s). Rather, it has everything to do with a lack of proficiency on my part and that of my other non-Swiss teaching colleague, where our understanding of Swiss German forms is concerned. The rule states that in the presence of us non-Swiss, for our benefit, High German, English or French be used.

'Banning' children from using certain language forms can only be interpreted as disapproval of language forms that have – standard or not – served their communicative needs. Banning them arguably also does children a disservice. Children need to at least be aware of important cultural and linguistic differences if they are to be expected, at some point in later life, to interpret and work with all the language varieties they encounter beyond the school gates.

Who owns language?

With apologies for the very long silence, owing to work and other commitments, I return with a simple question for you: Who owns language? As I try to keep up to date with news and current affairs, it seems that people are becoming increasingly aware and concerned with language use and whether certain terms are appropriate. As always, the specific context is crucial, as is any perceived or actual offence – a relative concept that I touched on in a previous blog post.

The latest example of this concerns a term at matches involving Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, where any fans caught using a specific Jewish-related term could be arrested or face being banned from matches. Football authorities are quite rightly taking all steps necessary to kick racism out of the national game, though the caveat from the UK Prime Minister – such that action only be taken if the term is used as an insult – is important.

This is because some fans seem to use the term to refer to themselves as a 'badge of honour', in defiance of advice from police. This raises interesting questions about the intention to offend, as well as my question about the ownership of language. If an offensive or racist term is appropriated as an identity marker by the social or ethnic group it previously denigrated, can this term – in this specific context, at least – still be deemed offensive to that group? In the context of rival football fans at games (and even friends' Facebook posts prior to fixtures), where insults and chants – often euphemistically termed 'banter' – are commonplace; the line between bravado and offence is blurred.

I'm reminded of a similar news item earlier this year in Germany, when a father, reading aloud to his daughter, took offence at the presence of the n-word in a popular children's book. His actions sparked a national debate, resulting in the publisher agreeing to expunge the term from future editions – a move that was also welcomed by the book's author shortly before his death. The sad footnote to this example, however, was that both the father and his daughter experienced a backlash. It's also annoying when people persistently invoke the "political correctness gone mad" argument as a means of justifying the continued use of offensive terms.

My own feeling remains that offence is relative – so it's better to avoid using certain terms than risk offending someone, even unwittingly. That's precisely what political correctness is. At the same time, we have to recognise that no-one owns language or its use. Language in all its forms is only a mutually agreed form of expression which is subject to change over time. That's why policing its use is difficult, if not impossible. But if we modify our own language use, then we signify to others that we are aware of – and are sensitive to – its power. To the extent that we are also role models to those around us, what we say is as important as what we do.

Sing something simple

As my annual summer holiday approaches, silly season is upon us in the UK media. Towards the end of last week we were treated to a list of the most misheard song lyrics. Judging by the number of comments left on the article itself, we mishear things all the time, even though quite how anyone could mishear the actual song title of the Eurythmics hit Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of Cheese) or kd lang's biggest hit, Can't Stand Gravy,  is particularly amusing, since neither of these great songs has ever caused me any problems. I suggest that in the next survey of this kind, the results be split into separate categories, lest we forget all the other food-related examples. Who could forget Bigmouth Strikes Again by The Smiths, as Morrissey sang "Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking when I said I'd like to mash a beetroot in your head"? Never mind individual items, ABBA went one better in the food stakes by name-checking the whole shop in Super Trouper: "I was sick and tired of everything when I called you last night from Tesco".

There may be a case for compiling a list of misheard lyrics involving animals too, with Irish band The Saw Doctors topping the list with their great track Two Injured Swans. Then, of course, there are all the names of people in songs – people who we never hear of again. "I can see clearly now Lorraine has gone." Johnny Nash's day was brighter, he was happy ... and we were happy for him, though he never told us who this lady was, or how her absence helped. Similarly, it was a friend who alerted me to the mysterious "Lionel", the subject of David Soul's impassioned plea at the end of every chorus of his 1976 million-seller Don't Give Up On Us. I'm sure you have your own examples from hits both old and new!

Some years ago, I discovered that our French neighbours even have a word for this phenomenon of misheard lyrics: yaourt (yoghurt), where the verb to yoghurt describes the act of singing phonetically similar, yet nonsensical versions of popular song lyrics. However, I would probably draw a distinction between non-native speakers of English enthusiastically misinterpreting their favourite anglophone tracks as they find their way through the minefield that is connected speech in English and us native English speakers seemingly content to sing incoherent drivel – sometimes for many years – with no such excuse! Bring back Smash Hits magazine and its songwords, I say!

Have a great summer, everyone! But if you are planning on having your stereo blasting from your car with the windows down as you sing along, do us all a favour and get the lyrics right!

Much ado about nothing?

Along with other commentators such as popular etymologist Mark Forsyth, I've been amused this week by reports of eyebrow-raising over the German language's inclusion of the English neologism der Sh**storm in its somewhat sacred Duden dictionary. Here in Switzerland, the term was also voted Word of the Year in 2012. The term denotes uncontrollable public outrage, usually online in the context of social media posts – and often insulting in its content. As I have mentioned in previous posts, neologisms interest me, since their ability to gain currency demonstrates a social need to construct a new term for a new concept. As such, they show that a language is healthy and can adapt to the culture it expresses.

But just in case we are at a loss to understand the kind of public outrage that might warrant use of the term, the torrent of excrement gushing forth in the wake of the plagiarism row engulfing Germany's erstwhile defence secretary Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, and then more recently, use of the term in a speech by German prime minister Angela Merkel are cited as examples. An interesting piece in The Guardian seems to highlight German's preference for swearwords with faecal rather than sexual origins, though quite how or why the term has managed to float to the top of public consciousness and usage is not really examined. Predictably, there is no shortage of verbal diarrhoea in the comments sections attached to these articles.

In this particular case, I think we are once again witnessing the Internet-driven obsession with quantifying and describing everything anew. We clearly need to find new ways to feel anger and to display it, now that previous profanities and practices so obviously date from a time when media outlets defined outrage. These days, I increasingly find that the same outlets are now more than happy to solicit public commentary, stir gently and watch events unfold. But surely this is journalistic laziness masquerading as legitimacy.

I had never heard of the term until I read it in a Swiss newspaper a few weeks ago. I do not believe it is used widely in English. As such, any attempts to cite the word as further evidence of an English assault on the German language are misplaced. Other popular pseudo-anglicisms – das Handy (a mobile phone), der Showmaster (the host of a TV show), der Beamer (a projector) among others – are then used wrongly by German speakers, who believe the term to be an English loan word. In my own experience abroad, I have occasionally used one of the above words as a kind of shorthand to aid another person's understanding. However, I then always point out that the word is a purely German invention. I believe the same is true of this latest addition to the language.

The times they are a-changin'

Recently I've been alerted to the new inclusions in the latest version of the Oxford English Dictionary. In keeping with my previous blog entry, appetites for documenting language change are very strong – regardless of whether we're looking at historical linguistics; or looking at the present or the near future to see where we're heading. So what do the new words for June 2013 tell us about the zeitgeist and who we are? 

Well, from the 1200 new or amended words, it's hardly surprising that media reports have tended to focus on terms such as crowdsourcing, flash mob, geekery and terms related to social media – follow and follower, for example. To me, such examples demonstrate media outlets' own intentions to be cutting edge, on trend – or another vacuous term to separate the leaders from the easily led. Other terms not in the spotlight seem to have been in widespread usage for a great deal longer – head space, jolly hockey sticks or live blog. This is because the policy adopted when compiling lists of new words saw fit to only include those words that had already been in use for a certain period of time. That policy has now changed slightly, as revealed by the dictionary's Chief Editor, John Simpson:

"The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED. This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be current for ten years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on."

To include a term purely because it "[...] seems to be catching on" is rather misguided, in my view. Twitter may prove itself as a durable social media platform. However, as we have seen with other portals and sites; it may yet be superseded by a brighter, better, platform. This process would then have given undue prominence to a piece of ephemera unable to hold its own. Similarly, any dictionary can only document usage retrospectively. If you compile a dictionary this month, it can only be a record of language usage from June 2013 and earlier. At least if a word has flourished for ten years, speakers have assigned it a value and a purpose.

But by concentrating on all that is new, we do not have the full story. If the latest imprint of the second edition of the OED now contains a total of 823,000 entries, who is documenting those words and phrases deemed to have fallen out of common usage altogether? What do we know about these words? Surely it is the relationship between neologisms and these obsolete words and phrases that best illustrates how a language is gradually changing? It will be this information that tells us the most about how certain social and cultural forces dominate others through language, and – since neologisms generally arise from a communicative need not adequately addressed by language to date – even how effective a language is as a means of communication for the people it serves.

We are family

Back in August last year, I wrote a blog entry about cognates (It's all relative, 25 August 2012), which referred to new research indicating that Indo-European languages (of which English is one) may be as much as 9000 years old. A friend alerted me to recent research, summarised in The Guardian, that had been undertaken by some of the same researchers. Their work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of the United States of America (PNAS), takes the links between languages and language families much further. By applying a statistical model to examine the frequency of certain cognates in everyday speech across seven language families, the researchers assert that high-frequency cognates signify a superfamily of languages that may have existed across Europe and Asia as far back as 15,000 years ago.

Having never conducted any statistical linguistic research myself, the methods outlined simply indicate an attempt by the researchers to counter the usual criticisms or shortcomings of this kind of work in historical linguistics. Having said that, the researchers' results left me feeling that actually, the most prevalent, significant cognates – with controls to take account of chance sound associations – they discovered were actually rather predictable. The list of 23 significant cognates identified, in order of frequency, reads as follows: thou, I not, that, we, to give, who, this, what, man/male, ye, old, mother, to hear, hand, fire, to pull, black, to flow, bark, ashes, to spit, worm. Displaying these words in a table detailing variables such as their respective frequency, half-life (the expected time in 1000s of years before one word has a 50% chance of being replaced by a new cognate word) and the part of speech they exemplify is interesting.

In my view, this is because when they are presented together, knowing that seven language families have been considered; the words invite us to search for universals. From a semantic perspective, it doesn't surprise me that personal pronouns, interpersonal relationships and elements of the natural world are represented – since these words are, and have always been, by virtue of their function, essential to human interaction and/or survival for millennia. The researchers may, essentially, only be revealing by statistical methods what we have always believed to be true. If the pronoun we ain't broke, why fix it, for example? But our non-scientific gut feeling then leads us to consider to spit and worm as anomalies in the context of the table, when further historical or anthropological research may provide further insight.     

So for me, having never previously been interested in anything beyond cognates between modern English, German and French, this research will prove to be significant if its statistical model can be replicated and expanded in further studies. For if we are beginning to understand the rate of language change on a global scale from the distant past until the present; then the next step will surely be to apply the methodology to hopefully be better able to predict changes in languages and communication far into the future.

Doing things differently

I'll never forget walking into the free school where I work here in Switzerland, going downstairs to the CDT workshop and seeing about 10 children crafting bows and arrows in wood. Jobsworths would never sanction the supervision or manufacture of such weapons by children in the UK! However, the children's pride in their work and the subsequent – safe – archery competition in a nearby field spoke volumes about the activity-based learning that free schools encourage.

From 2014 in the UK, 102 free schools will offer an alternative way of learning to children. I'm sure schools will still be required to cover national curriculum material – if only so that leavers are able to continue with different forms of education later. My hope for the UK is that people begin to recognise that a man or woman standing in front of a board lecturing young minds does not work for everyone. People often say that the most rewarding part of teaching is that moment when a child finally understands a concept for themselves. In cross-subject, activity-based learning where teachers are guides rather than all-knowing lecturers, these moments occur regularly.

During our weekly 'language morning' at school – where all students make plans and set goals for their own language learning – hearing a six-year-old say he wants to "learn all the languages in the world" makes me, as a teacher, want to work harder on his behalf. One seven-year-old is counting a million grains of rice simply because she wants to understand what one million looks like. According to a recent radio factoid, counting to one million, uninterrupted by sleep or eating, would take a person four months. But we patronise these youngsters and their efforts if we remain entrenched in the test-oriented, league-tabled sausage factory of the state school system. If we allow children the freedom, with guidance, to pursue their goals, even if these are overambitious; they will engage with learning on their own terms and will learn better.

Even the perceived lack of structure or rules at Summerhill in the UK is no longer true, if indeed it ever was. The children have a say in the running of their school. This tradition of direct democracy is also alive and well where I work – and includes agreeing rules for lessons, breaks and other activities. During my teenage years, the demands of our School Council for girls to wear trousers and for us to be allowed to remove our ties in hot weather (usually vetoed by teachers) seem laughable in comparison.

Students do succeed and go on to do apprenticeships, public language exams and/or university entrance exams. But I would argue that the goal-oriented, holistic approach to learning pupils and students experience at a free school makes them more independent and more responsible for their own learning – two skills which are vital to their future progress. The state system worked for me, though it doesn't work for everyone. So I think we should all at least have the courage to do things differently.

Teaching grammar to suck eggs

We all know what grammar is, don't we? Yes, grammar is that part of language and communication that we often find fiddly. We may even actually come to resent it, since it often represents a hurdle to overcome if you want to avoid being misunderstood. It isn't sexy: good grammar has none of the instant gratification for minimal effort that we now demand from other aspects of our lives. No-one's going to congratulate you on your grammar the next time you post an eloquently written comment on Facebook, are they?

In response to a proposal from UK education secretary Michael Gove, The Observer newspaper has today published a debate on the question of  whether good grammar is still important. As often happens, the two writers debating were seemingly selected based on their skill at turning the issue into a predictable right wing versus left wing caricature. The progressive left-winger believes that an insistence on grammar pits rich against poor, ignores the inherently changeable nature of language per se, exploits the social divisiveness that good versus bad grammar encourages, and diverts our attention away from a lack of funding in education. The indignant right-winger will usually bemoan the falling school standards and paint a picture of general indolence in a world where he's the only one who cares about anything anymore.

Now, you can take a view on all of that if you like, but if we can focus for just one minute on what grammar is for, we might be getting somewhere. Understanding the grammar of a language is a great liberator, a leveller that allows you to say whatever you want. Learners of German complain about the case system. However, its perceived complexity is precisely what makes its word order so flexible. But of course, we only see such benefits when we learn a foreign language. We don't learn our mother tongue in the same way because we mistakenly feel it belongs to us. We feel we rule it; it does not rule us. But with freedom comes responsibility. We are free to use language however we choose, though we do have a responsibility to ensure that we can be readily understood.

So similar to my own experience of German, one predictable point made in the debate concerns the idea that the English grammar of non-native English speakers and writers is better than that of the Brits – cue a slew of grammarians rubbing their hands with glee. So when I focus on English grammar and tenses with my students here in Switzerland tomorrow, when I ask them to give me a sentence using the past perfect continuous, they will answer within about five seconds. How long will it take the man on the street in London – Michael Gove, say – to do the same, I wonder?

Muddling Sunday!

Like the Let's eat grandma vs. Let's eat, grandma error, where an errant comma has seen cannibalism replace what should have been a lovely meal with a much-loved matriarch; I have seen instances of a more immediate, worrying state of affairs. In many parts of the world, today, though not here in Switzerland (when it falls on 12 May), is the designated Sunday when we celebrate the women who bore us – our mums.

After conspiring with my sister back in the UK, our mother received a lovely bunch of tulips from us both. I saw the flowers myself on Skype (the wonders of modern technology). They were lovely! So today I blindly went about my business, having made Mum happy. But then I noticed that many people – including the UK store M&S – have named today – Mothers' Day. I was under the mistaken impression that I only had to worry about my own mother. Do we now have to look after everyone else's as well?

Luckily I posted a song this morning on Facebook for all women and mothers, I hope that suffices!

La langue est morte. Vive la langue!

Last Thursday was the 14th annual UNESCO International Mother Language Day. I'd call it Mother Tongue Day, myself – but who cares? In a world where we are bombarded with initiatives all the time, why should the language we speak – a 'choice' usually imposed on us by family and/or the accident of where we were born or raised – be given any special attention at all? Well, UNESCO's initiative here is part of a desire to "promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by peoples of the world" and "promote unity in diversity and international understanding, through multilingualism and multiculturalism."

A recent article in a Sunday newspaper over here in nearby Liechtenstein, quoting UNESCO's own figures, claims that 50% of the world's 6000 or so languages could die out this century, as the natural process of language death is accelerating like never before. It is understandable that UNESCO should want to celebrate linguistic diversity and cultural pluralism. But languages cannot be kept in a glass cabinet and protected for their own sake. They are changing entities. The survival of any language variety depends on its capacity to fulfil communicative functions which, crucially, are accepted and practised in the same way by significant numbers of users internationally for their own social or economic needs. Incidentally, I prefer the term 'language variety' to 'language' in discussions of this nature. Otherwise we run the risk of getting bogged down in issues of 'dialect' vs. 'official language' as well as language and national identity.

However, the surprising fact that half of humanity speaks one of only 19 different languages does not mean that lesser-spoken language varieties will necessarily die out if they are unable to compete with the others (the top five most-spoken ones currently being Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi/Urdu and all forms of Arabic). I say this because last Wednesday (20 February) was also the 75th anniversary of the recognition of Romansh as the fourth national language of Switzerland. Figures vary, though according to the 2000 census, the variety was said to have around 60,000 regular speakers.

You might wonder how such a minority language variety could survive. But if the will of the people and active governmental support are able to secure a viable future as an important form of communication – and more than a mere cultural relic – then even acknowledging that many varieties will struggle globally; there is no reason why people cannot at least slow down the rate of language death through their own actions. I believe we should accept that a significant number of language varieties will die out. In the top 10 languages cited by the Liechtenstein article as those languages most widely spoken at present, French did not even make the list! I think the changes we are seeing are an inevitable consequence of globalisation. So if the future of any language variety cannot be secured beyond a local level; then whilst we should actively investigate its bygone culture, keeping it alive artificially serves no purpose.

Mind your language

Recently at school, we have been contemplating the following questions:

1) What is language?
2) What do I know about language?

By means of a mind map on the board, my colleague and I collected interesting interpretations and responses. Yesterday students put their views down on paper. Very often, we encourage them to follow the principle of écriture automatique (automatic writing). I was first introduced to this concept as part of my French course at university. Automatic writing is one of several forms of Surrealist automatism, conceived by Surrealism founder André Breton and others in the early 20th century. The subconscious is important in Surrealism, and one attractive way to explore it through écriture automatique involved people jotting down their random thoughts just before they dropped off to sleep.

Similarly, pupils and students are used to jotting down their unrefined thoughts as a means of exploring their personal motivations – as am I. Whilst I am fully aware that my response was coloured by an excellent book by David Bellos and his attempt to define translation; my response reads as follows:  

Language is a mutually understandable communication tool, enabling speakers and language learners to express themselves and make themselves understood in different times and spaces for a certain purpose. But language and meaning are not the same thing. This is because meaning is yet another collaboratively constructed repository, which is in a constant state of change, redefinition and reconstitution defined by a given purpose.

I know how one goes about learning a language; how one might best learn a second language (a non-mother tongue). I also have ideas for language teaching, though I also know that teaching and learning are two separate worlds. Language learning involves forming a network of connections in the brain of the speaker. This is why each person learns in their own way. When we learn and use language, individuals are subconsciously looking for any connection that is reflected in our own lives – which thus creates very personal perceptions and meanings. Were this not the case, then surely we would, for example, all find the same jokes funny; we would all have the same writing style, the same speech style and we would all experience identical compliments and swearwords with the same degree of intensity. In short, we would not each be able to construct our own idiolect.

The second question above sought to elicit 'rules' that had been acquired and could be recalled. A few did surface – related to spelling, grammar or vocabulary. However, the free nature of the exercise meant that we remained preoccupied with philosophical issues, which is no bad thing. Language rules and quirks are necessarily linked to a given language pair (e.g. German and English) or language group – rather than to language learning per se. Still, écriture automatique and the other forms of expression that the school advocates provide learners with the freedom to explore their own learning in ways that were rarely, if ever, made available to me as a learner.