Jamie A. Thomas
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#languagestory blog

Video & perspectives on communication, intercultural learning & the impact of anthropological research.

Media Stereotypes: The Power of Speaking Your Mind

9/24/2018

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A student describes how media stereotypes impact his study abroad experience.Amman, JORDAN: I talked with a U.S.-based student who described how media stereotypes have impacted his study abroad experience.
By age 6, young girls are already impacted by gendered stereotypes of intellectual ability (and media representations of scientists and engineers, for example). This is according to a 2017 study published in Science.  

In fact, there is no doubt that media stereotypes and representations have wide-ranging influence, but how should we respond to these when they impact our everyday interactions as adults? 

Media Smarts, Canada's Centre for Digital and Media Literacy, reports that stereotypes in video games, films, and other avenues of popular culture influence the real-life treatment of protected groups across North America, including:
  • First Nations, Aboriginal, and Indigenous people,
  • persons with disabilities, and
  • people of varying sexual orientation and gender identification.

Moreover, in her oft-cited book English With an Accent, sociolinguist Rosina Lippi-Green, among others, has shown how media stereotypes--even those in Disney films--reflective of ideologies of language contribute to depictions of racial, ethnic, and gender groups in particular ways. These are depictions that have long been a tool of language discrimination in the U.S., as linguists John McWhorter, John Rickford, and others have explained, in separate analyses of courtroom proceedings in the wake of the 2012 Trayvon Martin shooting.

So, if media stereotypes and language ideologies impact young children, popular culture, and the everyday conduct of courtrooms, how do they impact contexts of education abroad? How might it be empowering to speak truth to disarm stereotypes?


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Haverbros, Mawrters, Scripsies, and SPUdents

12/22/2017

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by Juhyae Kim and Anya Slepyan
​
Juhyae is a junior linguistics major and education minor at Swarthmore College. Anya is a freshman and potential major in Russian, also at Swarthmore College. Watch their video essay below.

College Campuses as Speech Communities.

Watch the Video.

In our #LanguageStory project, we set out to explore the semiotic landscapes of various college campuses to see how certain speech communities and identities developed within them. We first had the idea for the project during fall break, when Anya visited a friend at a different college. Anya and her friend were discussing the school police at their various colleges and realized that though they served the same function, the emic terminology or nomenclature differed from school to school. What Anya called “pub safe” (abbreviated from Public Safety), her friend referred to as “camp sec” (Campus Security).
While this difference may seem insignificant, it made her think about the variations in language across college campuses, and how the unique slang and language varieties helped build campus identities. As a freshman, Anya was especially aware of the fact that she had entered Swarthmore knowing none of the appropriate and community-specific language, but had quickly picked the slang and jargon necessary to navigate the specific semiotic landscape of our college campus. This made her curious to explore the different school-specific language used on various colleges, and to explore how language use may differ at schools of different sizes, types, and geographic locations. At the conclusion of our research together, we found that the existence of campus-specific vocabulary results in unique speech communities on each campus, which is an essential factor that forms campus identity...

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Diversity in Communication and Bilingualism

11/29/2017

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by Sophia Moore and Xena Wang

So Many Languages.

Picture
With over thousands of languages in existence, it is no surprise that many individuals speak more than one. Sociolinguist Carol Myers-Scotton, in her book Multiple Voices, defines bilingualism as ​“the ability to use two or more languages sufficiently to carry on a limited casual conversation”. [1] In order to investigate the different implications of bilingualism with regards to the self and others in a social context, we conducted two surveys within the college-aged community of Swarthmore College.

​In this post, we explore how bilingualism affects linguistic diversity: variations in all aspects of languages, including grammars, vocabularies, dialects, and languages themselves. Our study looked at the relationship between thought and speech patterns, and the different ways in which bilinguals’ speech styles differ depending on the language used. We examined the diverse ways people process language with the self (internally) and with others (externally), and how these differences contribute to linguistic diversity as a whole. By contributing to the overall diversity of the human population, linguistic diversity helps with the formation of new ideas or solutions to problems in relationships or larger societal issues, and aids in forging a unique identity within a community of language speakers. 


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Talking With My Hands in Manchester Airport

10/19/2017

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Speaking Without Vocalizing...Where to go?

Just two days ago, I was on my way home after spending an exhilarating long weekend in London and Amsterdam with researchers of language, linguistics, and culture (at Baraza at SOAS), when I found myself totally turned around in Manchester Airport. Which way to go after passport control? To transfer to another flight? The signage was confusing.

Ordinarily, I would've felt pretty lame about it, but then I also noticed another person angling back and forth between the signs/words printed on doors 1 and 2, with a look of confusion similar to my own. I turned to ask him where if he was on the same flight as me. When he didn't vocalize in reply, but instead used a variety of Sign Language, and gestured to show me a message he'd typed in English into the Notes feature on his iPhone,  I realized that not only was he from my same flight, but that he was also Deaf.

It also dawned on me that this same guy had earlier just been at the Passport Control desk adjacent to me in line, when we had thanked the UK Border Force officer with by gesturing his hand away from in mouth in a sign I recognized as "thank you." Now that we both stood in the airport between doors 1 and 2, the task became about how we would both get to our next flight, as both of us were heading stateside. My new friend tapped his wrist, as if pointing to the time, and indicated that we had only a short while before our next flight. Uh oh. With only limited time, how would we communicate to solve our problem?


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Voces - Voices from Havana and Santiago de Cuba

9/28/2017

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Watch the Video.

"I got to do an entire interview with [a local artist] in Spanish, and that was a huge confidence booster. I was like, yeah! I can do this! My Spanish is alright!"
​                       - Student reflecting on our AfroCuba research and experiential learning course
There's so much to be learned from listening to the voices of others. This past semester and summer, I was fortunate enough to have been part of an interdisciplinary team that prepared 17 undergraduate students for field research in Cuba. For nearly all of us, this was our first time to the island. For some of us, this was our first experience on an airplane, or outside of the U.S. Together, we represented studies in anthropology, Black Studies, linguistics, cultural studies, economics, environmental studies, Spanish, sociology, and visual and performance arts. ​This was a tremendous experience in intercultural learning and bilingual communication. 

All throughout our 10-day research and study trip, I conducted intermittent video interviews with students, my teaching partners at Swarthmore College--a team of faculty and administrative leadership. I created this video to chronicle our individual and connected reflections on multiple dimensions of our field experiences.

An Experience of Firsts.

Touring a cigar factory in Havana, Cuba.Touring a cigar factory in Havana, Cuba.
Biggest of all, this was our students' first experience speaking with Cuban people in Cuba about the enduring importance of the Cuban Revolution, the history of African enslavement in the Caribbean, the transformation of economic, education, and medical sectors, and the continuing traditions of African religion, dance, philosophy, and values across the island nation.

By speaking with Cuban professionals, mothers, doctors, museum directors, proprietors, artists, community activists, and makers of all kinds, students learned how to formulate meaningful and localized questions, connect with speakers of Cuban Spanish, and challenge their own assumptions about what is universally important to cultures other than their own. 

Our trip was generously sponsored through support from several partner organizations and departments across the College, and we are grateful!


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    Jamie A. Thomas is a sociocultural linguist and digital media producer. Her forthcoming book Zombies Speak Swahili is all about the undead, videogames, and why language and communication matter. She teaches at Santa Monica College.

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