Slavic 470/570: Issues in Bilingualism

Fall 2011

Instructor: Katarzyna Dziwirek Telephone: 543-7691, 543-6848

Office: Smith Hall M260 e-mail: dziwirek@uw.edu

Office Hours: Wed 2:30-3:20, Fri 1:30-2:20

Class website: http://faculty.washington.edu/dziwirek/slavic470/slav470.shtml

Materials:

ð Textbooks:

& Myers-Scotton, Carol. 2006. Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publlishers Inc.

& Pavlenko, Aneta, ed. 2006. Bilingual Minds: Emotional Experience, Expression and Representation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

ð Articles and chapters on Electronic Reserves

ð Books on reserve in the UG library:

& Auer, Peter and Li Wei, eds. 2007. Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication. Mouton de Gruyter. P115 H366 2007

& Baker, Colin. 2001. Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Clevendon, UK: Multilingual Matters Ltd. LC37515. B35 1996

& Bullock, Barbara E. and Almeida Jaqueline Toribio, eds.2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-Switching. Cambridge University Press. P115.3 C36 2009

& Danquah, Meri Nana-Ama, ed. 2000. Becoming American: personal essays by first generation immigrant women. New York: Hyperion. E184. A1 B288 2000

& Kecskes, Istvan and Liliana Albertazzi, eds. 2007. Cognitive Aspects of Bilingualism. Springer. P115.4 C64 2007

& Nicol, Janet L. (ed.) 2001. One Mind, Two Languages: Bilingual Language Processing. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc. P115.4 O54 2001

& Romaine, Suzanne. 1989/2000. Bilingualism. New York, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. P115 .R58 1989

& Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove. 2000. Linguistic Genocide in Education or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erblaum Associates, Publishers. P40.8 .S58 2000

& Wei, Li, ed. 2007. The Bilingualism Reader. London: Routledge.

Requirements:

u Readings: This is a fairly reading-intensive course. Please follow the reading schedule.

v Class Participation: You should be prepared to discuss the readings in class and contribute your comments and critical evaluations. (See handout on reading and class discussion on the class website) Class participation is worth 100 points.

w Assignments and projects: there are 5 study activities (1 –2 pages, 20 points each), two reports (4-5 pages, 50 points each), and a final project (7-10 pages, 100 points). Total: 400 points.

Report #1 Macro View: Country Report (due week 4)

Pick a country or area of the world and write a brief report on the linguistic situation there. Research what languages are spoken, how linguistic minorities are accommodated, what are the official language policies, status of bilingual education, etc. Reflect on larger issues: what is a language, what is the difference between a language and a dialect, etc. Please let me know your area by October 10. There will be brief oral presentations with handouts.

Report #2 Micro View: Identity - Culture, Emotions, Behavior (due week 8)

Write about your own experiences or interview a bilingual person about the cultural obstacles you/they had faced, with special emphasis on emotions. Reflect on what it means to be a bicultural person when it comes to everyday behavior and fitting in in a different culture. This can be “unscientific” and anecdotal, but do address the bigger questions of to what extent the language we speak determines who we are, how we behave, how we express emotions, what behaviors we expect from others, what we perceive as rude/polite, etc. For some excellent examples of this assignment please see the class website.

Final Project: A Report on a Minority Language in the Northwest (due 12/12, presentations 12/7)

This project is a survey of a minority language spoken in your community, i.e., the greater Seattle area, Washington State, or the Pacific Northwest. It can be a language of an immigrant community or a Native American language. Please choose your language early and let me know what your choice is by October 19 as this is a quarter long fieldwork project. You will need to identify key figures/leaders in the community and interview at least one such person. Your report should include the estimated number of speakers of the language in the area (use census figures and other data), information on the efforts to promote language maintenance (is there a community center, a heritage language school, what organizations there are, what publications, cultural activities, is the language taught at UW, etc.), and a brief evaluation of language maintenance/shift across generations (are there more or fewer speakers of the language in this area now than 20/40/60 years ago? why? consider immigration patterns and degree of integration over time, etc.). You can use interviews, surveys, publications, participate in community events, etc. Cite interviews in references.

Graduate students enrolled in 570 and honors students are expected to write more in-depth reports #1 and #2 (5-6 pages), a longer final project (10 or > pages) and submit an additional project (due 12/7, 50 points). Please choose ONE of the following:

Code-Switching

If you are a bilingual person: for one week pay special attention to your speech. Keep a notebook with you and write down all instances of code-switching. Summarize your data and try to find generalizations: when do you code-switch the most (talking to X, talking about X, in the context of X), what type of switching is most common (using language X nouns, verbs….). Try to address the questions in the Study Activity in Wei p. 321. If you are not bilingual, either summarize the readings on code-switching, or find a sample of code-switching data and follow Wei’s Study Activity on p. 321 (on electronic reserves).

“State of the Art” Report

Pick an area of special interest to you (bilingual children, code-switching, language death, pressures in language maintenance, linguistic diversity and linguistic human rights, neurolinguistic aspects of bilingualism, etc.), and write a literature review summarizing the current "state of the art" on this topic.

Slavic 470/570: Course Outline and Reading List

Symbol key: & = assigned reading, italics = available on electronic reserves

! = written study activity or project, J = be prepared to discuss or oral presentation

Week 0:

9/28 Introduction of Course Themes and Goals

Week 1:

10/3 Introduction to the Study of Bilingualism: Concepts and Definitions

& Myers-Scotton 1

& Wei: Dimensions of bilingualism

& Mackey: Description of bilingualism

J Wei study questions p. 55

! Study Activity #1 Wei p. 55 due 10/10

10/5 World Languages, Social and Political Dimensions of Bilingualism

& Skutnabb-Kangas 1

& Myers-Scotton 2

& Ethnologue http://www.ethnologue.com/

& Excerpts from K. David Harrison “When Languages Die” p.3-60

$ Video: Voices of the World. The Extinction of Language and Linguistic Diversity

Week 2:

10/10 Social and Political Dimensions of Bilingualism

& Myers-Scotton 3 and 4

& Ferguson: Diglossia

& Fishman: Bilingualism with and without diglossia…

& Fishman: Who speaks what language to whom and when?

J Wei study questions p. 107

! Study Activity #1 Wei p. 107 due 10/17

Pick an area for report # 1

10/12 Social and Political Dimensions of Bilingualism

& Myers-Scotton 5 and 12

& Skutnabb-Kangas 5

& Excerpts from K. David Harrison “When Languages Die” p.95-100, 137-140, 161-166

$ Video: The Linguists

Week 3:

10/17 Social and Political Dimensions of Bilingualism

& Skutnabb-Kangas 7

& Parkval: Limits of Language: Language as a Legal Matter

& United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the General Assembly 13 September 2007 http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/declaration.html (read in the language of your choice)

$ Video: Professor James Tollefson’s lecture

10/19 Slavic Interlude: Guest lectures

Diglossia in the Czech Republic (Jaroslava Soldanova)

The Linguistic Situation in the Balkans (Bojan Belic)

Pick a community for the final report

Week 4

10/24 Glimpses of Bilingualism in Washington State

& Excerpts from R. Magarati’s Ph. D. thesis: Bilingualism and Educational Expectations

(based on data from UW’s Beyond High School Project) p. 114-121

& Excerpts from R. Hugo’s MA thesis: Indigenous Language Education in Washington

& Native American Languages Act of 1990 http://www.nabe.org/files/NALanguagesActs.pdf

& Michael Shepard: The Lummi Tribe

Slavic Interlude: Guest lecture

The Linguistic situation in Ukraine (Laada Bilaniuk)

10/26 Report #1 presentations

! & J Report #1 due, presentations

Week 5:

10/31 Bilingualism in the US

& Census 2000: Language Use and English-Speaking Ability

& Data from American Communities Survey 2005-2009

& 2005 The Year of Languages Resolution

& Alex Kotlowitz: All Immigration Politics is Local (from NYT)

& Teresa McCarty: Empowering Indigenous Languages

& James Crawford: Advocating for English Learners: Official English Legislation

! Study Activity adapted from Baker (2001): due 11/7

Carry out a survey in your area and find out how many different jobs use bilingual

skills, or analyze job advertisements in local papers for language skills required.

11/2 Bilingual Individuals - Measurements of Bilingualism in Individuals

& Baker 2

& Pienemann and Kessler: Measuring bilingualism

! Study Activity adapted from Baker (2001): due 11/9

Find out what tests are used to measure language achievement in your school district.

For what purposes are these tests being used? Are they fair to bilingual children?

OR, find out how speakers of other languages are assessed for placement in your school

district.

Week 6:

11/7 Bilingual Individuals - Bilingual Children

& Myers-Scotton 11

& Baker 5

& Rokita: Code-mixing in Early L2 Lexical Acquisition

11/9 Bilingual Individuals – Cognition, Thinking and Intelligence

& Cook: Relating language and cognition: The speaker of one language

& Wierzbicka: Bilingualism and cognition: The perspective from semantics

& Sanders: Focus on Form

& Baker 7

! Study Activity adapted from Baker (2001): due 11/14

Analyze an IQ test and locate any items that you think are unfair to bilinguals, OR

ask a bilingual person how they see the relationship between bilingualism and thinking:

do they feel it gives them any advantages or disadvantages, elicit examples.

Week 7:

11/14 Bilingual Individuals –Cognition and Culture

& Pavlenko: (Re-)naming the world: word-to-referent mapping

& Istvan Kecskes: Synergic Concepts in the Bilingual Mind

& Grosjean: The Bicultural Person: A Short Introduction

& Grosjean: The Bilingualism and Biculturalism of the Deaf

11/16 Bilingual Individuals –Cognition, Culture and Emotions

& Myers-Scotton 7

& Kyoko Mori: Polite Lies, chapter 1 (Language)

& Wierzbicka: Preface: Bilingual Lives, Bilingual Experience

Week 8:

11/21 Bilingual Individuals –Emotions

& Pavlenko 1 (Pavlenko)

& Pavlenko 2 (Besemeres)

& Pavlenko 5 (Dewaele)

11/23 Bilingual Individuals –Emotions

& Pavlenko 7 (Panayiotou)

& Pavlenko 8 (Stepanova Sachs and Coley)

& Furmanek: Emotions and language choices

! Report #2 due

Week 9:

11/28 Linguistic Aspects of Bilingualism: Code-Switching

& Bullock and Torribio: Themes in the study of code-switching

& Myers-Scotton 6, 8

& Poplack: Sometimes I”ll start a sentence in Spanish….

11/30 Linguistic Aspects of Bilingualism: Code-Switching and Language Processing

& Myers-Scotton 9, 10

& Schmitt: The ‘Bare Bones’ of Language Attrition

Week 10:

12/5 Course Summary

& Myers-Scotton 13

& Wei: Methodological issues

12/7 Presentation of Final Projects

Final papers due: Monday 12/12 by noon under the door of Smith M260, no extensions, yes incompletes.