Jamie A. Thomas
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#languagestory blog

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

Problematizing the Meaning of 'Asian'

1/8/2016

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By Christine Lee & Emma Remy

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Bamboo Bistro: Americanized Asian Cuisine #languagestory

Representing Asian Cuisine in Greater Philadelphia.

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​We were interested in Bamboo Bistro as the only representative of Asian cuisine in the Swarthmore borough. Christine had eaten at Bamboo before, while Emma had yet to. We were expecting to find some Asian community that congregated at Bamboo, either comprising Asian students of Swarthmore College or residents of Swarthmore town. However, we discovered that, as a result of the demographics and expectations of the Swarthmore community, Bamboo is incredibly Americanized.
 
When we first approached Bamboo, the restaurant was empty because it was a mid-afternoon on a Sunday. Several employees were sitting near the entrance, on their phones or chatting in (presumably) Mandarin. After asking for an interview, two of the employees squabbled over whose English was better until Tim agreed to his voice being recorded. We were surprised to discover that, while the employees of Bamboo were from the Philadelphia Chinatown area, the restaurant was intended to present Americanized-Asian food and atmosphere.

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Project Runway Tanzania.

11/13/2015

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By Jamie A. Thomas

Why Research is Powerful.

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One aspect of why research is so powerful, is because it brings us insight by making visible the relationship among factors we may have previously thought unrelated. And this is where anthropological research excels, by placing the human at the center of the study, with a parallel goal of contextualizing descriptions of human behavior.

​Importantly, research is only as good or strong as the contextual description it relies upon. Set against a poorly researched description of contributing factors, any study becomes too weak to stand on its conclusions. For example, in the picture above, there appears to be someone in jeans standing on the left. However, when brought into its full context, we can see there is really only one person (me) in the picture (below), standing instead on the right.

Building Contextualized Research is Not Easy.

Photo: At an outdoor market in Dar es Salaam.At an outdoor market in Dar es Salaam.
The richer the context we can develop because of our participation, passion, and mindful absorption of the locale of our research, the stronger we, as researchers, can come to understand the intersections of behaviors, histories, and practices in the daily lives of the people we care about. With context as a strong descriptive basis for our interpretations, we can feel reasonably certain about our conclusions and recommendations, because these are anchored by a deeply nuanced appreciation of multiple factors that combine to create the space we're focused upon. 

Even so, developing richly contextualized inquiry is not easy. But here's how I did it in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (2010-2011) to support my research on social identity and language policy in the teaching of Swahili to non-Africans on study abroad in Tanzania from the Austria, China, Libya, Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. 

In my experience, there were there main principles at the core of my fieldwork that assisted me with building context for the study:
(1) Participation and friendship.
(2) Interpersonal communication.
​(3) Openness and adaptability.

In this post, I'll address the first of these: Participation and friendship.


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Talking Under Fluorescent Lights

10/20/2015

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By Jamie A. Thomas
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...sometimes the greatest challenge comes from striking up friendships with people you think yourself the least likely to befriend and engage.
Where Was She? - 10:30pm
I shifted into my designed-to-be-uncomfortable seat at the airport. There were a few other folks still around, though they had mostly cleared out. I didn't know anyone, but the airport's one coffeeshop, a Starbucks, was still open. I reached into my wallet and pulled out Emirati Dirhams to get what I sensed was a $5 bottle of airport water. 

​Little did I know that the friendliest people I would meet that first night in Dubai would be a group of women from Malaysia.

Stuck in an Airport - 12:25am
Darn. My iPhone was starting to die. But thanks to Whatsapp and friendly airport wifi, I had already begun to realize I might be in for a long wait. Her last text intimated she had gone to the wrong airport, my friend. Or the wrong terminal, to be exact. It could be another hour before she found me.

I had come in from Jordan. Specifically, from Amman, where I had just completed about 5 months of glorious, challenging, thrilling fieldwork. In this work, sometimes the greatest challenge comes from striking up friendships with people you think yourself the least likely to befriend and engage. "Why shouldn't I learn from them?", you ask yourself. And then you go about trying to learn from them by participating with them in the things they care about, sharing a meal with them. A day with them.

​Plugging in my Phone - 12:32am
But in the airport terminal that night, there wasn't anyone I thought I had anything overtly in common with. Getting up to plug my phone into the nearest wall outlet, I did a cursory scan of the waiting area. Across the way, a group of some nine women sat together patiently chatting. Their headscarves were tightly pinned at the neckline with brooches. The fluorescent lights of the terminal dulled the shine of their brooches, but not the bright colors of their scarves. A ​songkok distinguished the head of the only man in their group, an elder. Like me, they also seemed to be waiting on a local contact to fetch them.

We caught each others' eyes as they looked around the waiting area, too. Suddenly, I was so much reminded of friends from my time in Malaysia years ago. I like to think that my time with the U.S. Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship program propelled me on my path in cultural empathy, field research, and people-intensive collaboration, because I saw such value in our countless moments of intercultural learning.
With Ummi Wadud, middle school teacher in Terengganu, Malaysia.
With Ummi Wadud, teacher and coordinator at IMTIAZ middle school in Dungun, Malaysia in 2007.
U.S. Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (2006-2007) visiting Johor, Malaysia.
U.S. Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (2006-2007) in Johor, Malaysia, with flood relief donations from participating secondary schools.

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Language is About Cultural Exchange: تبادل  /tebaadl/

8/14/2015

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Arabic conversation partner, Lubna, describes what she loves about teaching Arabic.
Lubna smiles as she shares what she loves most about working with American learners of Arabic on study abroad in Jordan (2014).
Her name: Lubna.  I sat down with one of conversation partners working with the program for American students at the University of Jordan. She's nothing short of amazing! With her vivacious spirit, she shared how spending time with American students had truly become a unique opportunity of exchange. 

The Arabic word for exchange, تبادل (tebaadl), has at its center, the word for change, بدل (badala). This in mind, the idea of exchange is to reciprocate between parties, and impact each other. Communication presents increased opportunities for the exchange of ideas, where language learning empowers participants and maximizes intercultural learning. 

Talking with Lubna from Jamie Thomas on Vimeo.

As part of my 2014 fieldwork in Amman, Jordan, I spent time with Jordanians involved in teaching Arabic, and their students, learners from U.S. colleges and universities. On campus at the University of Jordan, and in coffee shops and afterschool hangouts, I observed American students working together with Jordanian conversation partners for a full semester. 

American students were picking up new words from their local counterparts, and so was I. With more words under our belt, our afterschool exchanges moved from coffee shops to restaurants and bars. Language was becoming a vehicle of more than grammar and vocabulary. We were learning about Jordanian life, eating mansaf (the national dish!), taking part in concerts, and local volunteer organizations. Using Jordanian Arabic 

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Storytelling in the Pingelap Community

8/13/2015

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Aldrin doubles as a local elementary school teacher on Pingelap Island and a storyteller while visiting family in Sokehs, Micronesia (June 2015).

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    Main Author

    Jamie A. Thomas is a linguistic anthropologist and digital media producer. Her forthcoming book Zombies Speak Swahili is all about the undead, videogames, and viral Black language. She is Dean of Social Sciences at Cypress College and teaches at CSU Dominguez Hills.

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