A Multilingual Congress ... on the train

Thinking about my recent trip to Essen, Germany to participate in an applied linguistics conference, I realize that one of my most lasting memories is also one of the most mundane. That’s not to say that I’ll soon forget gazing into the sunset in the reflecting pool by the Zollverein coal mine, or having late night discussions in the open creative spaces of Essen’s Unperfekthaus, or even admiring the gothic spires of neighboring Cologne’s famous cathedral. But these brief tastes of Germany, postcard-perfect as they are, nonetheless didn’t strike home as much as the short metro ride across town that showed me what I might have been.

Of course, I went to Germany expecting nothing less than intellectual inspiration. The event at which my American colleague and I were scheduled to present is actually called a “congress”, and not ‘just’ a “conference”. This highly touted gathering takes place only once every three years, and was to bring together people from across Europe and around the world to discuss “aspects of multilingual matters and the linguistic richness of [the European] continent,” as the website says. For our part, my colleague and I were ready: we had theorized and debated about the meanings of multilingualism and multiculturalism in classes, at universities and other academic gatherings across the U.S., and in a variety of other countries. On that cool and overcast day in Essen, I was looking forward to learning how the changing linguistic tapestry of Europe related to that of my home state of California, where over 40% of the population uses a language other than English at home.

However, sitting on that train as we wound through the city streets, I was struck by a fact of life more basic than any theory I have learned. I, and my friend from the multilingual state of New York, live in a country where monolingualism is the norm.

Both of us, of course, had learned another language as we grew up and moved through our respective school systems. He had studied several years of German, a fact that made our navigation of local trains and restaurant menus in Essen much easier (just like the high school textbooks promised!). And I had taken Spanish classes for four years in middle school and high school. Not much help in Germany, to be sure, but, as many of us who grew up in monolingual California homes argue, an ability that is valuable nonetheless.

Yet, as I sat on that metro and listened, I realized that my years of Spanish instruction had left me with only one tongue: the world I lived in after high school was still written in English.

Well, I protested to myself, if German or Spanish was not my respective strong suit, then surely Japanese was. I had studied it for 3 years in the university and, through odd twists of fate, both my colleague and I had ended up living there for several years. Each of us had used the Japanese language to take classes, to negotiate apartment contracts, and to build friendships and working relationships alike. And perhaps because they were aware of the fate of non-English languages in the U.S., nobody we met in our many cross-cultural encounters had given us anything but praise for our linguistic accomplishments.

Yet, as the metro train approached the city center, and as I continued to sit, watch, and listen, I wondered: have either of us ever learned to be like...that?

The two women who sat across from us gestured and smiled as they moved smoothly between two languages. The woman facing me asked a question in one language, and her friend leaned forward without a blink, answering in the other. A moment of silence followed. Both looked out the window. Perhaps they were considering what had just been said. Then the first made a quick assertion in German, only to qualify it in English as her friend shook her head in disagreement. She glanced over at me (was I staring?) while her friend leaned back in her seat, agreeing (I think) in German. All this before using English to quickly change the topic yet again!

Did they realize that I sat enraptured by the movement of their conversation? These two languages could not have been reduced to one—why would the two friends switch so often and so strategically if words in either language ‘meant’ the same thing? And did they realize that this conversation was also a performance, hiding, revealing, and then hiding its details again to its ‘linguistically challenged’ audience, all the while helping to build their own bonds of camaraderie?

This was not, of course, the first time I had heard fluent bilinguals speaking—far from it! But hearing the prestigious academic congress’ theme of multilingualism alive in the words of everyday people in such an everyday setting, I found myself thinking, how ironic that I—a hopeful scholar of language—am bound to my variety of English for the vast majority of my linguistic life. I found myself wondering what that life would have been like if I had followed my father when he was sent to work in Cologne in the 1980s, when I was still a child. If I had lived in Germany, would I now be able to intuitively see the layers of meaning between German and English? Would my eyes have been opened to other possibilities of being if other languages had been prized in the schools I attended? And if more people in the U.S. had experiences like that, would we as a society be able to realize that multilingualism cannot, in fact, be captured on a postcard?

Getting these words online

I’ve finally sat in the lair of the enemy in order to write these words to you, one step from surrender. When did the solitude of simply being with one’s voice and thoughts become oppressive? We used to be able to recite our words in our minds without necessarily giving voice to them. And there was a time when we could type them out without sending. Have these two things become the same?

I’m drinking the wine of the enemy as I write these words to you. It’s not for lack of trying, you see. I’ve been looking for hours now. Or is it weeks? It feels like so long since I could rest assured that my words would find their way, far away from all of the...the easy connections of home. Is that what home has become?

I’ve walked the streets here with my compass in hand, not wanting to give in so easily. I checked at every street corner and every public place of gathering, monitoring for signs of openness, availability, potential. I need to get these words online but...things work differently here.

I must have seen two hundred names flash past my eyes. They all turned out to be mirages, fading quickly or remaining behind locked doors. And though I’ve tried to ignore her, the princess in her dark green circle beckons at almost every turn, promising a quick end to my suffering, offering me refuge in her cozy web of connectivity. I never would have thought that forest green and hot pink were so natural together. Have they always been?

Codes, codes, codes...human faces glance this way and that on the street corner, but they offer no help. It’s the shop signs and apartment names that might point the way, though sometimes the least secure-looking structures are the most impermeable. And why? Codes nowadays reveal no treasures in themselves; having the right key only enables you to walk through their portal, to the same place you always go. How is that even possible? In what kind of world does that make sense? One where businesses can claim proprietorship and charge for the privilege of using ‘doors’, doors that apartment owners name and protect, and doors that individuals covet and spend hours upon hours searching for, when they all lead to the same place?

This coffee is turning lukewarm. My ‘compass’ sits in my pocket, powered down now after leading me into this T-Mobile network. My feet hurt after covering miles in downtown Düsseldorf. And now I’ve been at this table for almost an hour. It’s been fifteen since the nice gentleman in the green apron, same princess emblazoned on front (surely you know the one!), cleared my tray. My power adapter is still plugged into the wall, bulbous universal adapter bringing down the 220 volts for my old G4 PowerBook. Battery’s back at 96%, the only consolation I have for placing myself in this establishment. It’s time to give in or head out.

How bad do I need to send those emails, to check my profile, to post on this blog? After powering my laptop up, I had taken my wallet out, even pulled out my credit card, the ultimate act of submission in the world of online access. I was ready. How much would it be? 4.95 for an hour? 9.95 for 6? Expensive but fine, I need to get online.

But 8 € for 60 minutes? That’s $12. That’s twice as much per hour as it costs to watch a movie. That’s four times as much as the cost of this coffee. That’s the same as it’ll cost me to take the train back to Essen tonight, my last night in Europe before resuming life in Berkeley, a place of easy connectivity, where I spend more time on the other side of the door, where everything is the same.

Sorry, Starbucks. I went as far as buying a drink, sitting down, and opening my internet browser, but you can have your network. By next year I might not be able to stand being disconnected. And the price will have surely gone up by then. But for now, I’ll hold on to these words a little longer and keep on walking.

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* Uploaded 1 day later from O’Hare Int’l
** Thanks to Woyton for the free WiFi in Düsseldorf!

Speak English or be suspended?

Several golf and sporting-news sources have reported over the last few weeks on what is being called a first-of-its-kind language policy for professional athletes in the U.S.: “Speak English or be suspended.”

The new policy, if it remains in force, would require that all of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA)’s 121 international players from 26 countries, including 45 players from South Korea, would have to pass an oral English proficiency examination after 2 years of membership. Explaining the LPGA’s reasons for initiating the rule—first announced by commissioner Carolyn Bivens before the Safeway Classic in mid-August to an audience of only South Korean players—deputy commissioner Libba Galloway explained,

We live in a sports-entertainment environment. For an athlete to be successful today in the sports entertainment world we live in, they need to be great performers on and off the course, and being able to communicate effectively with sponsors and fans is a big part of this. Being a U.S.-based tour, and with the majority of our fan base, pro-am contestants, sponsors and participants being English speaking, we think it is important for our players to effectively communicate in English. (quote from the International Herald Tribute article linked above)

Such policies have not been considered by other pro sports organizations in the United States, the IHT article noted—this includes the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League (based in Canada), each of which has significant numbers of international players. And, after growing opposition from players and civil rights organizations, it appears that the LPGA has started to rethink this rule: Golfweek magazine, which first broke the story about the rule, reported that the organization has proposed a revised approach to its so-called “effective communication policy”, stating, “there are other ways to achieve our shared objective of supporting and enhancing the business opportunities for every tour player.”

This issue appears far from resolved, and it raises more questions than can probably be addressed. What moved me to write about it here was not only the probably discriminatory nature of the rule itself in linking performance in sport with oral linguistic expression (“an absolute slap in the face of women, minorities, immigrants,” said California State Senator Leland Lee), nor only the draconian idea of imposing mandatory English testing on its players as a way to enforce the policy, but also the money-making logic of professional sports that has even many international golfers nodding their heads, saying the English testing idea makes sense.

The imperative to inject broadcast sports with sound bites and interviews with media outlets and corporate sponsors before, after, and, increasingly, during sports events is something that gets my ire as a spectator of baseball (mid-inning interviews with the manager? When did these start?), football, and even the recent Summer Olympics (who ever thought of interviewing a sprinter 20 seconds after the race?). What it seems to mean is that professional athleticism is growingly contingent on a form of self-marketing, or even self-packaging, that takes place largely through language. And the idea that English should form the currency by which sports and other ostensibly non-linguistic activities are commodified, seems alarming.

Or…am I just off base here?

Duped by Saussure

Well...perhaps 20 would have been a better goal than 100? Now back in Berkeley for several days, I can feel the visceral sense of difference, the energy of being a displaced body, continuing to evaporate. Of course, it'd be just as possible to keep writing about little things I notice about life in the U.S., life in Berkeley, life on my street. Writing such a list might count as much for writing about life outside the U.S. as when I was in Lyon, since there is a period of time even after returning 'home' when familiar sights look strange, everyday behaviors look out of place. But this heightened awareness is lost all too quickly.

Why is it that even in Berkeley "diversity" seems to be more of a salad dressing than a salad bowl?

18. Langue - Parole - Langage...so what's "French"?
Saussure's distinction between three interrelated aspects of language was foundational in my language studies at Berkeley, as it is undoubtedly in programs across the country and around the world. Yet now, after having spent 6 months off and and on (more off than on unfortunately) studying French, I wonder how much of my fascination with this three-way distinction came at first from the fact that they are in another language, and that learning them--though off-putting at first, I thought, another example of the snooty barriers of academic discourse--was a tiny step in a new direction, an eye-opening language learning experience and, thus ... pretty darn cool.

"Langue", Bill Hanks reminds us in his Language and Communicative Practices (p.25 though I've extrapolated from his glosses here) is the formal system of grammar that forms the collective knowledge of a group of people at a particular instant in time; "parole" is the realization of langue in actual talk--what real individuals produce as they talk to each other with all their individual style, their stutters, stops and starts; meanwhile "langage" is the larger human phenomenon of language that encompasses both langue and parole (or, as many of our professors here say, "language with a capital 'L'").

It's not often that English speakers in the U.S. are told that the words we have to describe our own reality don't cut that reality up into as many pieces as they could--in a sense, that English isn't as fine-grained or precise as it could be, when you look at the world in a certain way. Sure, we (especially those of us living in low altitudes in the sunny state of California) are willing to cede the fact that we don't have as many words for snow as do the Inuit people are reputed to (a misunderstanding of what a word is?), an often-cited example when talking about linguistic relativity. But "language"? Wouldn't it just make sense in English to have a different word for the human faculty of language when English, Moldovan, and Nuahatl are languages too?

And why stop there? When one says in English, "The language of this document seems to indicate that...", isn't the speaker actually talking not about langage or even langue, but parole, a particular, unique instantiation of a larger system replete with idiosyncrasies, even errors?

That would seem to make sense. Or so I thought, smugly, as I left for France recently, armed with foundational theoretical insights that not only allowed me to slice up linguistic reality in my mind, but would also undoubtedly speed my acquisition of spoken French.

Wrong again. In four weeks of strained listening I don't think I heard the word "parole" once. (Maybe that's because people don't talk about it, they just do it?). When I tried using the word in conversation with a fellow grad student at the university, she looked at me a bit askance. Then I tried mentioning the name "Saussure" but it didn't help. Was I supposed to have said "de Saussure"? Was I mispronouncing everything horribly?

Determined, I dropped my efforts at "parole" and refocused on "langue" and "langage". After all, I was there to work with people who were experts in FLE, or Le français langue étrangère, teaching French as a foreign language. And there it was in the title--French as a foreign "langue", just like the theory said.

So why was it that I kept hearing the word "langage" when I thought everyone was talking about the French language or the English language in particular? I wish I had a tape recorder to show you, to prove to myself. Ha! Why did I keep feeling like I was having my utterances corrected, that every time I tried using "langue" it was upgraded to "langage"? Can French be a langage? What would that mean? French is universal? Or wait, did I only hear that word because it sounds more like the English word and all the 'langues' of conversation were getting lost in an incoherent stream of sound? What am I supposed to call the language I'm learning, the language I'm writing?

And why can't they just have one word for it? That'd be so much easier. :)

Touching the interface

Written in the St. Exupery airport, outside Lyon
Dawn, Wednesday July 16.

It’s hard to write when you’re bleeding. I think this is what I meant when I was trying to explain to Nicolas what I meant by “disembodied” interaction online. Our bodies are not implicated in very important ways when we’re online. Sure, you have avatars. Cutting edge webcam technology may even be able to track your movements, gestures, expressions (some might even say emotions these days—you should be able to see it all, right?) and reflect these forms of corporeal communication in real time with an avatar or approximation of the self on someone else’s screen.

But something is missing when the inevitability of your contact with the interface is not then an artifact of the communicative process. When that engagement with the medium itself is in a separate perceptual domain than that which is apprehensible to both or all parties to an interaction. Put another way, if you’re bleeding onto the keyboard when you type, who knows? How does that get digitized, encoded, sent through some server?

Maybe that’s what it means to have a body anyway. Sure there’s an interiority inherent in consciousness itself. An (at least minimal) awareness of one’s own body as a type of medium in the world, one that is private, limber, stiff, joyful or sad, in pain or in pleasure, etc. etc. etc. But perhaps the experience of physical pain more than any other can bring into relief the hereness of the engagement with the medium of communication. People are fastidious about cleaning fingerprints off their cell phone and ipod screens—how about other less seemly traces of the fact that we have, we use, we inhabit, or rather we are bodies even more than we are avatars in Second Life or profiles on MySpace.

You can probably tell a few things about people by looking at their keyboards. Mine, on this PowerBook G4 (the label stares at me right below the screen), has repeated wear on a lot of keys...and, thankfully, now, no drops of anything else.

Wait, time to board the plane soon. What is this taste in my mouth, in my nose? Perhaps, like they say in that commercial back in the U.S., “It’s the cheese...” I’ve had it since I was up in the Alps. Will I carry it with me all the way? Will it last even after getting off the plane? We'll see...

lEft anD rIgHt

I've been in Nice the last few days with a friend from the GSE in Berkeley. Hoping to get out and take some pictures before going back up to Lyon tonight...

14. Left and right. There are a million ways left and right can be organized in any place you go, I guess. Lately I've been marveling at how cars drive on the right-hand side of the road, but trains, metros, etc. go on the left. Unless, of course you're talking about a tramway, which I assume has to go with car traffic and run on the right. Wouldn't it be interesting if it were the other way around? Walking is another story--like in Korea, where cars drive on the right but people tend to walk on the left. Here I think the general protocol is for people to walk on the right but I've been running into people on both sides...any insight out there? :)

15. Door handles. From the sort of mundane to the really mundane. I just can't figure out why door handles on apartment doors, when there are door handles at all, are positioned in the middle of the door instead of near where the key goes in. This means of course that you have to pull harder on heavier doors and you - or I at least - end up slamming doors a lot of the time when I'm closing them. What up?

16. Eyes, the gaze. This deserves more space and I'll write about it more later, but just wanted to get it down while I'm thinking about it. Students at Berkeley mentioned it in the context of videoconference interactions - the experience of looking at and being looked at in another language. Eyes have appeared in photographic and comic-style representation in several magazines, newspaper ads, etc. that I've seen while I'm here (hopefully will post some later). And eyes in French -- why does that have to be the hardest word for me to pronounce?

17. cApiTalIzatiOn. This is something that I've been wondering since last time I was here, in March. A lot of the time in the casual emails I've seen, people have capitalized at odd places in the word, and I've been wondering: what's going on? Are there times to do this, people who do it, is it just having fun, does the CAPS LOCK key get stuck on a lot of French computers (ok bad joke), is it just vowels that get capitalized, are you supposed to spell out separate words by looking at the caps, etc. etc. etc. Separately, I have noticed that a lot of people do capitalize their last names when writing them - this seems to be a convention for distinguishing between the nom and prenom. Do they get confused sometimes or is this just for ease of identification overall?

J’ai cassé la chaîne

Note: due to issues of practical necessity (i.e. how the hell am I gonna get 100 insightful, well-developed thoughts and stimulating impressions written on this blog?) this list is now about my experiences in France and learning French.

11. Sitting, talking, drinking. Maybe, just maybe, life doesn’t have to be a rush of over-caffeinated warmongering accusational testosterone-fueled stress cookies. People here seem to spend a fair amount of time just chilling out, sitting down, having a drink, checking out the scene. And that’s OK.

12. Life on the street. Speaking of the scene...why would you want to sit on the street in a Starbucks or Jamba Juice looking out upon a strip mall parking lot, an expanse of concrete with the sun glinting off the rims and mirrors of an army of SUVs? Or sitting overlooking the vastly underpopulated sidewalks of many American cities? I may be comparing apples and oranges—a critical take on suburban scenes from the U.S. after years of experience, vs. a number of days in some major metropolitan centers in France—but I have spent dozens upon dozens of hours walking, and there are cafes everywhere with tables, chairs outside.

Sure, this is something I knew from before and even have experience with to a limited degree—not totally new. But I think it bears mentioning because of just how everything’s arranged. Namely, everyone seems to be looking out. To the street. Whereas I had expected if a couple were going to sit down, or a couple of friends for that matter, they might sit across from each other with the table between them. Don’t you go out somewhere to look at each other in a different context?

That is how seats are arranged in a lot of the cases here to be sure, but what I was struck with (in Paris especially) was the number of places where chairs are arranged side-by-side, friends, couples, or people sitting by themselves looking out at the life in the street.

What, then, is the life in the street? Or is that it at all? What is everyone looking at? Surely, more than the curious tourist wondering what everyone’s looking at...

13. Verb of the day: Casser. To break. I wonder if there’s anything to the idea that it takes a contextualizing experience, or a counterpoint experience, a metaphorical projection, or some other way of getting distance on a word or expression before you can really learn it. Romain had just explained to me what you should say if a couple breaks up. Of course there are other expressions but if you want to be colloquial and leave no doubts about the state of the relationship you could say, “Ils ont cassé.” (they broke up). I think he made a rough and sudden pulling apart gesture with his two hands, indicating the rupture.

Good enough for the time being, but the word was cemented the next morning when I was riding my VeloV from home to ENS. I knew I had a clunker—the chain was skipping and grinding a little bit as I rode but it was holding up. I took it down the walking path along the quai of the Rhône. Beautiful morning, some clouds in the sky and a vibrant blue. Everything was fine until the little uphill segment which, given the gearing on the bike, I really had to grind up.

Push. Push. Push. Push again, and then >BOOM<.

My legs go flying and the pedals are spinning around, suddenly free from their lifelong connection to the crank to the chain to the gears to the wheel to the ground. And with no purpose.

I had about 15 minutes left on the bike and was wondering how I was going to get to Debourg just walking or pushing the bike. Got up to the street level, thought I’d try to use the bike like a scooter but after a few scoots the damn chain got stuck inside the plastic housing around the rear wheel. I stopped and struggled to get it out, pulling the chain while tryhing to stabilize the bike, the whole assemblage moving around in circles. I must have looked pretty helpless because a guy about my age came up to me and asked what happened.

Of course, I didn’t have the words but he figured it out soon enough when he saw my greasy hands.

“Ah! Tu as cassé la chaîne.”
“Comment?”
“Cassé, tu as cassé la chaîne.”

You broke the chain.

He probably didn’t realize why I was asking him to repeat himself, but at that minute there was a bond forming in my mind between the broken chain on the bike and the separated couple that Romain was telling me about the night before. Ils ont cassé. Et j’ai cassé la chaîne.

He kindly explained where a closer VeloV station was, which of course I didn’t understand, and I thanked him and was on my way. Oh well. One verb at a time.