Linguistics for L2 Teachers

Larry Andrews

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9781135649197
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Linguistics for L2 Teachers is designed to help bilingual and ESL teachers better understand how and why the English language works, and to broaden their abilities to help their students learn about the various functions of English in the real world. It is not a complete curriculum in English linguistics, but rather, a foundation from which teachers can continue to grow and to teach with greater confidence. The reader-friendly, conversational style makes the concepts easily accessible to preservice and in-service teachers who have little or no previous experience in language study. This textbook:
* explains various aspects of English using non-technical terminology;
* goes beyond the study of grammar to examine the functions of language, not just its form;
* presents language applications in L2 classrooms; and
* clearly delineates the significance of chapter topics for L2 teachers and students. Each chapter includes prereading activities to enhance the reader's comprehension; postreading activities to expand and elaborate the concepts; and interactive "Be A Linguist" activities to help readers think in ways similar to the ways linguists think and to provide opportunities to apply ideas explained within the chapter. Intended for all teachers of students for whom English is a new language, this text will help them be better prepared to meet the important challenges and questions they encounter in their classrooms.

CHAPTER 1
Some Basic Features of Language and Communication

Somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew that “w-a-t-e-r” meant that wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand.

—Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

As you approach this chapter, think about how giving directions and participating in “party talk” are different types of language use; given these two distinctions, how does what you have learned over the years help you to be a successful communicator? Also, in how many ways is the language you use different from the communication systems animals use?

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this book is to help the teacher of those learners for whom English is a new language (ENL). For some readers, the contents of this text will be new information; other readers will find the text a useful review of previously learned ideas about the English language.

At the beginning, I would like to make one thing very clear: This is not a textbook describing teaching methods and strategies to use in ENL and bilingual classrooms. Rather, this is a textbook designed specifically for the ENL or bilingual teacher who has had limited opportunities to study the English language.

I don’t know whether you consider yourself a language expert, but many do, or will, depending on where you are on your professional career ladder. Your colleagues at school, your ENL students, and often the parents of your students believe that you are an authority— sometimes the authority—when it comes to questions about how and why American English works the way it does. When you have completed this text, your proficiency as an American English language authority will be greater, trust me. (I say this despite one of my favorite lines from the play, Steel Magnolias: “Don’t ever trust a man who says ‘Trust me.’”)

I have two more caveats to offer, then we’ll get down to our business.

First, there are two subdivisions within the field of linguistics that are important for the ENL teacher to understand: psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Psycholinguistics merges the studies of psychology and linguistics and typically examines topics such as language acquisition, neurolinguistics (language and the brain), brain damage, and aphasia. Sociolinguistics, on the other hand, examines how language actually works in the world, in society, and how language users adapt their uses of language to different social contexts.

There are several good texts addressing psycholinguistic issues important to ENL teachers; there is no need for those works to be duplicated. There are also any number of grammar texts available for those ENL teachers who want or need more information about English grammar.

The ideas in this text are presented from a sociolinguistic perspective, examining how English works in society. From time to time, you’ll read a psycholinguistic description or observation, because a merged perspective between the two approaches seems appropriate. Nevertheless, the predominate viewpoint or attitude will be a sociolinguistic one. Learners for whom English is a new language must learn certain standard uses of English, but ultimately they will need to use English, to the best of their ability, as it is used by native English speakers in the local, or host culture. If they don’t or can’t, then their successes in school, at work, at the mall, or anywhere else where English is the dominant language will be in serious jeopardy.

The second caution can be described more briefly. I hope you have examined why you want to be an ENL teacher and why, in your schooled opinion, immigrant and refugee children and adults need to learn English. So that you’ll know me better (and not because you must agree with me), let me describe my position. I believe immigrant and refugee children and adults should learn English because the degree to which they become more proficient in the language of their new country, the wider the range of options available to them in their lives. The better they can use English, the more options they will have available to them.

I do not believe English is inherently “better” than the ENL learner’s native language. I am not a linguistic imperialist. I am, on the other hand, an educator who believes strongly that one of my first obligations to my students is to help them to develop as wide a range of alternatives, options, and choices their expertise will allow. Our job, as I see it, is to help our students gain the linguistic abilities that will enable them to open more doors.

SOME NUANCES OF COMMUNICATION

I want to begin this chapter by borrowing a story from Richard Lederer, a writer who has written several popular books about English (and a delightful dinner companion, I might add).

Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame Cathedral, having grown too old to ring the bell in the tower, placed a classified ad in the local newspaper searching for a replacement.

A man with no arms appeared at the door. Quasimodo asked, “Have you come to inquire about the bell-ringing job?” “Indeed, I have,” the man answered.

Somewhat non-pulsed, Quasimodo asked, “How can you ring the bell with no arms?” “It’s easy,” the man replied. “Although I have no arms, I have a tough skull. I run at the bell and butt it with my forehead.”

Quasimodo hired the man, admiring his superlative perseverance.

The new bell-ringer climbed the stairs, ran at the bell, butted it with his forehead, and a lovely tone sounded. However, when the bell returned, in pendulum fashion, it smashed into the armless man and knocked him to the cobblestone street far below.

When the police arrived an officer asked, “Do you know this man?”

“Yes, he worked for me,” answered Quasimodo.

The police officer continued, “Can you give me the man’s name? We need to notify his next of kin.”

“I don’t know his name,” Quasimodo said, “but his face rings a bell.”¹

* * *

A second chapter in this story involves the twin brother of the armless man, hired for the same job, who meets the same fate! Quasimodo tells the police this unfortunate soul is a dead ringer for his brother!

These puns play on expressions that have two or more meanings. Although these stories are offered in the spirit of fun, you can imagine, I’m sure, how either expression, “rings a bell” or “dead ringer,” might not communicate humor (such as it is) to a learner for whom English is a new language. These learners face zillions of nuances about the language they are trying to learn!

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE

In one of the courses I teach, we begin and end with the same question: “Where did language come from?” Whether our topic is the origin of language or the history of English, the question, although redundant, seems appropriate in both places.

I am not the only writer about language who has made the following confession about where language comes from: No one really knows.

Which language is the oldest one? Did all languages evolve from a single source? Which language was used in the Garden of Eden? In the beginning, how were words created?

These are engaging questions and they have been asked, as best we can tell, for some 3,000 years! Each generation, it seems, keeps asking these questions, with the same frustrations of earlier generations. We have very little knowledge and evidence to use in answering these questions. The questions, nevertheless, keep appearing. All we can do is speculate.

Indeed, one group of 19th-century scholars was so dissatisfied (and perhaps bored) with these questions that they took severe action: the Linguistic Society of Paris, in 1866, published an edict banning discussions about the origins of language at their meetings.² So much for the open exchange of ideas at meetings of scholarly societies!

Otto Jespersen, a Danish linguist (“the great Dane,” 1869–1943) collected a number of origins of language theories, offered here for your amusement. As you read about these theories, referred to here by their nicknames, please remember this: No matter how comical a theory might sound to you, today’s 21st-century reader, each theory had a number of adherents at an earlier time.

The “Bow-Wow” Theory. Oral language began when people tried to imitate the sounds they heard in their environment, especially animal sounds or calls. The primary evidence supporting this theory, apparently, is the use of sound symbols, commonly known as onomatopoeic words. From the environment, then, words like hiss, bow-wow, click, creak, rustle, boom, and so on, came in to the language.

It is a fact that most languages in the world have onomatopoeic words, but it is also a fact that onomatopoeic words vary considerably in the ways they are used to represent sounds. It is also a fact that onomatopoeic words constitute an extremely small percentage of the total number of words available for use—in either written or oral form—in any language’s vocabulary. My advice, therefore, is don’t bet a prized possession on this theory.

The “Pooh-Pooh” Theory. Advocates of this theory hypothesized that people instinctively make sounds caused by pain, anger, and other human emotions. The primary evidence supporting this theory is, apparently, the universal use of sounds as interjections, like gosh, or gasp. These words are rare in most languages, and the sounds made when you suddenly inhale from fright bear little relationship to the vowels and consonants used in the words you and I use. To this theory, I’d say pooh-pooh.

The “Ding-Dong” Theory. According to this theory, speech was created when people reacted to certain stimuli in their environment and they produced, spontaneously, sounds (“oral gestures”) that in some way demonstrated that they were in tune with the environment. Some dreamlike examples include the word mama, a word reflecting how the lips move then approaching the mother’s breast. Similarly, the words bye-bye and ta-ta demonstrate, ostensibly, how the lips and tongue work when we wave “good-bye” to someone. Please explain to me how the expression “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” supports this theory.

The “Yo-He-Ho” Theory. Could it be, some have theorized, that language began when people worked together moving large objects, producing grunts, groans, and gasps? Their continued group efforts, with the accompanying and continuing grunts, groans, and gasps led to the creation of chants. The primary evidence in support of this theory is presence of prosodic elements (suprasegmental aspects of language: stress, pitch, and rhythm) in most of the world’s languages. How these chants might have led to the totality of a complete language leaves too much to chance, in my view.³

The theorizing goes on today. As newer archaeological findings help to inform this discussion, we may learn more.

FEATURES OF COMMUNICATION

Of course, these theories sound either amusing or absurd today, but they represent earnest attempts to explain a history about which we know very little. What these theories have in common, I suggest, is the recurrence of people attempting to communicate with each other. The theorists recognized this basic feature of humanity. Communication is a social activity involving human beings acting in a collaborative activity, a theme found in all of the theories. Most of the conversations that are only imagined in these theories are, in fact, similar to conversations you participate in daily.

Some of your conversations are, for example, illustrative of the interactional function of language.⁴ Interactional language is used primarily to establish and maintain social relations.

Last weekend, my wife and I attended a birthday party for a faculty colleague. A new member of the faculty and his wife were also in attendance. The conversations were light, breezy, and by definition, social; the conversational partners were demonstrating friendliness. Some of the interactional language I observed was about the weather (“You think this is hot? You should’ve been here last summer!”). Some of the conversations, especially with the new faculty member, were about neighborhoods (“Actually, I enjoy living in south Lincoln. There’s that new shopping center at South 27th and Pine Lake Road, you know.”). Other conversations were about sports (“Who’s the better quarterback do you think, Bobby Newcombe or Eric Crouch?”).

These subjects are fairly predictable conversational topics. Their primary purpose is to establish and maintain social bridges and relationships.

Transactional language, on the other hand, has a different purpose: to transmit knowledge, skills, or information.⁵ Gillian Brown described transactional language as being message-oriented because its purpose is to create a change in the listener’s knowledge.⁶

Transactional language is often heard at faculty meetings (“Let me tell you about our new procedures for ordering supplies.”) and in classrooms (“When you want to retrieve a file from the archive, this is what you do…”).

These distinctions are important in classrooms in which there are learners for whom English is a new language. In teaching either conversation or listening comprehension, for example, it is important for both the teacher and the student to know the different purposes undergirding interactional and transactional language.⁷

Human communication can also be described as either direct (intentional) or indirect (inferential). Direct, intentional communications offer a smaller range in the meaning potential behind the expression.⁸ Which is to say, by way of illustration, statements such as these provide few alternative understandings: “No...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Some Basic Features of Language and Communication
• Chapter 2 Words and Dictionaries
• Chapter 3 English Use and Usage
• Chapter 4 Social Conventions and English Use
• Chapter 5 American English Variations
• Chapter 6 Meaning and Signification
• References