Languages in a lamentable state (Part 2)

Earlier this year, I wrote a blog entry entitled Languages in a lamentable state – that state being, of course, the UK. This morning a BBC News article outlines renewed efforts to address the country's woeful inability to learn and use foreign languages and feel once again compelled to comment. So there's a cross-party group and we have phrases like "national recovery programme for languages" and "driving a languages revival" being bandied around. So far, so meaningless.

For once, at least, we now have a few figures to quantify the scale of the problem and proposals offered by the All-Party Parliamentary Group's chairman, Baroness Coussins, to tackle it:

"The UK economy is already losing around £50bn a year in lost contracts because of a lack of language skills in the workforce.

"And we aren't just talking about high-flyers: in 2011 over 27% of admin and clerical jobs went unfilled because of the languages deficit."

To me, these two statements perfectly illustrate the lack of understanding of the issues. We all know what the difference between a "high-flyer" and someone doing an admin and clerical job is, don't we? No, actually, we don't – and neither do the politicians. This is because, historically, the advantages of being able to use a foreign language competently and professionally are never outlined. As a result, investing the time required to learn a language to graduate level might even be seen as naive in some quarters. You can set up all the MPs' talking shops you like, it's now been fifteen years since I graduated; yet online job sites are still flooded with customer service positions (file under 'admin and clerical') offering the same £17k p.a. that they were paying in 1999. And if the country really is losing billions in lost contracts to the UK's multilingual competitors, then this is surely evidence that no-one in the UK really cares, anyway.

But fear not, foreign-language friends – help is on its way:

"The Department for Education said £350,000 was being spent in England in the next year to help primary and secondary teachers improve their teaching of languages."

Clearly we can spend the equivalent of around ten teachers' modest full-time salaries to cover the whole of England and the problem will go away. Get a good and enthusiastic linguist teaching in a primary school and you might – just might – have a handful of young people taking a foreign language at GCSE or 'A' Level a decade or so later. If you're very lucky, one or two may even study languages at university. But that's wishful thinking: 

"A spokesman added: "We are making it compulsory for children to learn a foreign language from age seven to 14, a move supported by 91% of respondents to our consultation on languages in primary schools."

The above statement shows that although just under half of state-school pupils go on to take a GCSE in a foreign language (itself an appalling statistic, especially when we don't know how many of them actually pass with a good grade); there is no intention to make studying a foreign language up to GCSE at age 16 compulsory. Numbers of students studying languages at university will continue to decline. So unless you can get young people with (pre-) GCSE-level French, German, Spanish or Italian to man the phones in customer service jobs, those contracts will still be lost and the state of foreign language learning in the UK will go from lamentable to, frankly, laughable.  

A whole new word

Earlier today, I stumbled upon an interview in The Guardian with the feminist writer Rebecca Solnit, following the recent publication of 'Men Explain Things To Me'. The book is her collection of essays, with the title being that of the first essay. The issues raised took me back to the Gender and Language component of my Linguistics MA, where – among other things – we looked at examples of how men and women talk to each other, the power balance between the sexes within spoken interaction, underlying assumptions and latent or blatant sexism.

Some years ago, Solnit's work and experiences provoked others to coin a new term of 'mansplaining' – a portmanteau word combining 'man' and 'explaining' – used to refer to the condescension shown by some men towards women in interactions. Solnit, the author of numerous books, described being on the receiving end of such treatment when, while at a party in 2003, a man sought to engage her in conversation with the following opening gambit:

"So? I hear you've written a couple of books?"

He then proceeded to gush about one particular book, interrupted by another guest who indicated (several times) that Solnit herself was its author. Online discussion boards carry similar testimonies of other women denigrated by and suffering ignorant men. But alongside these clear, unjustifiable examples of sexism, I worry that pinning one's outrage to a single neologism hinders rather than furthers the debate. It's similar to the issue that director Joss Whedon outlines so eloquently with the term feminist; in the sense that distilling a seemingly infinite number of experiences and perspectives into one term necessarily means that the term is ripe for misappropriation or the coining of related but trivial forms ('womansplaining', anyone?). We might even give a term the ephemeral status as a Word of the Year – such as this definition from the New York Times in 2010:

mansplainer: A man compelled to explain or give an opinion about everything — especially to a woman. He speaks, often condescendingly, even if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about or even if it’s none of his business. Old term: a boor.

Such developments and diluted interpretations only detract from the attempt to find a vocabulary and a voice to challenge forms of insidious misogyny in all areas of life. For me, 'mansplaining' is a manifestation of gendered roles in interactions, as identified in difference theory by Deborah Tannen and others; such that men seek to compete in interactions, whereas women seek to cooperate. That's not to say that such behaviour cannot or should not be altered once people's attention is drawn to it and its negative implications over time.

Considered debate of different standpoints is to be welcomed. But if genuinely experienced sexism is hijacked by the media or even added to the list of humorous terms along with 'testiculating' for example; then we will be no nearer to achieving the true gender equality that everyone deserves.


Rebecca Solnit's book, 'Men Explain Things To Me', is published by Haymarket Books,

ISBN: 9781608463862.

 

Celebrity deuce

We've all seen the wristbands, haven't we – the discreet, often neon-coloured bands emblazoned with the initials 'W.W.J.D.'? I was told that they enabled Christians to question their own behaviour at key moments and do the right thing by asking: "What Would Jesus Do?". If that helps them to make the right choice, then so be it. But when I first saw the bands at university, I personally disliked them as an outward sign of inner piety because my faith is my business. For me, it is not just another commodity to advertise, or a means of dividing the potential sheep from the free-thinkers.

I was reminded of this today as I read an article that could have added a new twist on the acronym had it been given the title:

W.W.J.D. – What was Jesus' dialect?

In the end, the BBC went with Who, What, Why: What language would Jesus have spoken?
and Reuters preferred Pope, Netanyahu spar over Jesus' native language. It depressed me that a hugely significant visit undertaken in the spirit of global spiritual tolerance could be trivialised by focussing on the comparatively inconsequential detail of the tongue Christ spoke in.

We believe that he read Hebrew, the educated language of scripture. He may also have had some knowledge of Greek; though he spoke to his poorer – presumably less well educated – followers in their own language, which was Aramaic. I am no statesman, nor do I lead millions of followers of a world religion. But I could have given the right answer to the question. This is because when I was 15, I was taught in Religious Studies at school that when he was crucified, Jesus reportedly cried out the words "Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani" (Mark, 15:34) – Greek words that are transliterations of the Hebrew and Aramaic words meaning: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

It would appear that both the Israeli prime minister and the Pope were right in their responses. So if the media are seeking to portray this brief exchange as two famous people intent on point-scoring rather than the pursuit of peace and mutual respect; then neither party has the advantage. It's what readers in the UK might call 'celebrity deuce'.

A word in your ear

Last Tuesday, I was sitting on the bus shortly after 7am, on my way to a day of teaching at school. The bus always stops at a certain place and the driver gets out and has a five-minute break for a cigarette. It's at this time each morning – after most passengers have got off at the train station – that the rest of us get to hear the breakfast show on the driver's radio. So far, so good.

The bouncy, booming voice of Cee Lo Green could be heard. I think he's great. But the radio was playing the expletive-laden original version of his 2010 No.1 'Forget You'. This made me laugh. Was I laughing because the only other people now on the bus besides me were two pre-teenage schoolchildren? No – I just couldn't believe that a popular Swiss radio station would decide to play the song in all its profane glory at 7:11am at all!

Given the rules governing the broadcasting of similarly offensive content on the UK airwaves – and how even an inadvertent slip-up can cost a DJ his job – I was curious enough to write to the station's Programme Manager for clarification of the Swiss radio station's policy. After all, I also noticed that on the station's playlist, the song was listed as 'FU'. I'm well aware of English swear-words losing some or all of their impact when they're used in other languages, though I was still interested in the response. I've translated it as follows:

"As a rule, we at [name of radio station] play songs in their original versions, not in their 'clean' versions made for the English or US markets. I am sure that English native speakers listen to the songs in a very different way compared to people here. It's significant that our listeners do complain about all sorts of things. Though no-one has taken any offence at inappropriate song lyrics yet – at least not in writing.

We've taken the 'FU' label directly from the cover of the single [cover image sent as an attachment]. Following your query, I've also had a look around at other [Swiss] radio stations. With the exception of a few small, private stations [named], they all play the original version."

I've removed the names of the stations mentioned. My intention here is not to point the finger. I made it clear that my e-mail was a query to satisfy my own curiosity. It was not a complaint. I admitted that hearing the song made me laugh.

So there you have it. You live and learn. I'm now prepared to accept that sometimes, apart from me, maybe no-one gives a f.... .

A moment of clarity

I know it has featured prominently on BBC News, though I can't let this news story slip into the archives without celebrating it here. Thanks to cochlear implants inserted a month ago and activated earlier this week, Jo Milne, a 39-year-old woman from Gateshead in the UK, is now able to hear for the first time in her life. Many other profoundly deaf people have this procedure and it is just as significant to them, as borne out by the many videos posted on YouTube. But thanks to Milne's mother, who filmed the moment on her smartphone, and the fact that the footage was picked up by BBC News, it has become a deeply moving event for us all.

In an earlier edit of the video, aside from her delight at hearing everyday sounds (light switches, running water, a ticking clock), Milne also shows us something very interesting about language. She was able to hear children's voices for the first time and, she was also able to hear what the Geordie accent sounds like. She seemed comforted by the fact that in her immediate vicinity, people sound the same when everyone else sounds so different. I'm intrigued to know how her own speech already has a slight Geordie twang. Do we really model our speech and accent based on the speech of others that quickly?

As a fan of all things to do with phonetics, I'd love to know what phonemes or aspects the speech therapists focus on first in this case. Is it the plosives (/p/ and /b/) and the other bilabial (/m/) – phonemes all formed with the lips but with different attributes (voiceless, voiced, nasal, respectively). Presumably from lip-reading and watching others, these would surely be examples of sounds that a deaf person would know where to produce (place of articulation), without knowing how to produce them (manner of articulation). Would experts then move on to minimal pairs and consonant clusters?

More broadly, in Milne's case especially, we can only speculate on just how, socially and psychologically a person adjusts to a new life of hearing, listening and responding, given that these functions have always been absent for them. It's no wonder that the first voice she heard seemed loud, initially. Any sound at all must seem loud in comparison to almost 40 years of silence.

Jo Milne's experience provides a moment of clarity – literally for her, and also for those of us watching the video with the gift of hearing. We recognise that we are privileged to be able to share in one woman's joy at something most of us take for granted.

Frankie says relax, don't do evil!

Thirty years ago, when Frankie Goes To Hollywood were storming the pop charts with their huge singles Relax, Two Tribes, and The Power Of Love; you couldn't move for a series of t-shirts emblazoned with 'FRANKIE SAY ...' slogans, and inspired by designer Katharine Hamnett. The bold slogans themselves have largely been forgotten, possibly because there were so many of them.

However, I was reminded of the craze when I read about the address of Pope Francis as he attended the annual vigil for the innocent victims killed by the mafia since 1893. I wondered whether his words would similarly be forgotten as quickly. His message was unequivocal, namely that those responsible for the murders faced a stark choice: "repent, or go to hell". So compare the headline chosen in Germany's Die Welt newspaper (translated as: 'Pope Francis warns mafia of the tortures of hell') with the choice of BBC News: 'Pope denounces 'evil, blood-stained' mafia'. My initial reaction at the BBC stance had me picturing His Holiness as a latter-day comic-book superhero – Captain Vatican, if you will.

According to The Guardian, he went on: "You have had a father and a mother. Think of them. Cry a little and convert." But however you word it, and whatever conscience you appeal to; calling for the renunciation of criminality – not to mention the power, control and vast sums of money involved – is as bold as it is idealistic. Nonetheless, the Pope's clear stance against these crimes, along with a show of solidarity with grieving families, is to be welcomed. Though where the perpetrators are concerned, I fear that Frankie, my dear, they don't give a damn.

Echo and the funnyman

Besides learning how to teach, if there's one thing that completing the CELTA course has revealed to me; it's how I approach what I do – how I try and engage students. My go-to English teaching handbook, a well-thumbed copy of Scrivener (2011:14)* warns against 'entertainer teaching' – the practice of a language teacher regularly regaling students with hilarious anecdotes. Now, unlike 'teacher' Robin Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam and Dead Poets Society, for instance; I cannot bring a glittering career in stand-up comedy into the classroom. Where appropriate, however, I can recall a relevant, funny event to keep students engaged, provoke discussion or bring some 'real-world' relevance to the content under discussion.

The teaching manuals and TEFL tomes also rail against the practice of echoing, where the language teacher repeats the target language that has been correctly provided by the student. At various points in my teaching practice on the CELTA course, I was guilty of this. However, my qualification is geared towards teaching adults. Some recent discussions with the children I currently teach finally revealed to me why I was previously oblivious to my penchant for echoing. Consider the following interaction between myself and a pupil (speaking German) on a day spent in the great outdoors:

Teacher: So, what did you see in the cave?
Pupil: Spinnen, ganz viele! (Translation: Spiders, lots of them!)
Teacher: Wow, you saw lots of spiders! Were they big? ...

As far as possible at the school where I teach, pupils are required to converse with me only in English. For my part, I am required to speak to all students individually and often, and at a level of difficulty close to their ability. But whereas with adult learners, who would no doubt feel patronised by me echoing their correct English utterance; the example above sees me translating a child's response as confirmation that they have correctly understood my initial question. It is merely their own command of English that prevents them – for the time being – from responding in the same language.

It should also be noted that I teach in an environment where learning in individualised and student-led. As such, teacher-led, time-bound conventional classroom teaching is rare. Teacher input serves primarily as a means of stimulating learners and providing them with the tools to discover and implement knowledge (including language) for themselves. Consequently learning opportunities arise in both formal and informal settings: within school, outdoors, in breaks during games of basketball or table tennis, as we cook and eat meals together, on the bus to and from school, as well as at public events.

So I'm becoming increasingly aware of different methods of teaching and learning – and their respective merits. It is obvious that group-based lessons with conventional, group-based outcomes are only applicable to a limited extent in environments where learning and progress are deliberately individualised. In such a setting, echoing may continue in specific cases. Whether my English anecdotes make me an entertainer or even a funnyman is not something I can judge.

* Scrivener, Jim (2011) ‘Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide To English Language Teaching’, Third Edition, Macmillan Education, Oxford