Jamie A. Thomas
  • About
  • Video
  • Teaching
    • Greenwashing
    • Linguistic Landscapes
    • AfroLatinx Podcast
    • [ZOMBIES REIMAGINED]
  • Presentations
  • Blog
  • Connect With Me

#languagestory blog

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

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

11/20/2015

0 Comments

 
By Jamie A. Thomas
Picture
Bikes and bajajis at a taxi stand and bus stop in Dar es Salaam.
"I don't like the way they speak English in front of me."

Research is Communication.

In my last post, I wrote about what I find most powerful about research, and how I came to develop a strong project during my fieldwork in Tanzania a few years ago. Here, I want to describe what I've learned about the importance of interpersonal communication.

I was weaving in and out of the midmorning city traffic in a bajaji, a typical motorized form of three-wheeled, open-air transport, when I most intensely began to understand the importance of language and communication in urban Tanzania. This was in thanks to the bajaji driver, who I had struck up a conversation with during our ride across Dar es Salaam, from Sinza to Msasani.

An Unscripted Experience in Listening.

We had begun by speaking in Swahili that overcast morning, exchanging a set of unsurprising hellos and how-are-yous. However, once it came out that I spent a lot of my time at the local university, a place the driver did not frequent, the conversation quickly escalated. We continued in Swahili, and I strained to hear him as we picked up speed, and the wind whipped by us, carrying a cacophony of honking car horns and hazy exhaust.

Read More
0 Comments

Realtalk? We want to express ourselves

9/15/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
A Desire to be Understood
At the core of our social experiences is a desire to be understood, to be heard, and to connect with users we find a commonality with. We want people to discuss our ideas with, validate our concerns, and share in our joys. When we turn to new and additional languages, we are celebrating these human threads in new modalities of self-expression and community. Time and again, this has been my personal experience, when I learned Malay, and later Swahili, and Arabic. This is how I know language learning to be the ultimate journey in self-awareness and communication. 

Working with new speakers of Arabic in Jordan in 2014, I used ethnographic techniques to investigate their attitudes toward dialects of Arabic, and their preferences for Jordanian Arabic. What I learned, and experienced with them through participant observation, was the importance of using colloquial dialects in everyday settings, and the personal dimensions that language embodies for each user. This is what Winnie, a Chinese American speaker of Arabic, shares with me in our interview, that: "It's necessary to have language through which you can express yourself well."

Talking with Winnie from Jamie Thomas on Vimeo.

Localization in Real Time
In our day-to-day lives, we spend maybe 40-50% of a weekday in a formal work or school setting. However, even in formal settings, our speech and conversations may not all be conducted in fully formal registers of talk. We can usually get a joke in edgeways here and there. 

In Arabic, it's the formal, information-bearing bits that are communicated in mostly Modern Standard Arabic, and the jokes and gab and gossip that come across in a colloquial variety. Interestingly enough, it's Modern Standard Arabic that adult language learners are taught in colleges and universities in the U.S. If learners can gain access to instruction in other dialects of Arabic, these opportunities typically become available through study abroad (though a few U.S. universities offer courses in Egyptian and Levantine dialects on a limited basis).

As you might imagine, there's a certain excitement in learning a new dialect, or unique version, of a language you've already studied for some time. This was the case for the American learner of Arabic that I worked with in Amman, Jordan. We were excited to see all the ways that Jordanian Arabic replaced words in Modern Standard Arabic with words of its own, and presented alternative expressions that we could begin using. But we also recognized the powerful utility of the colloquial dialect. Over time, I could see learners strategically avoiding use of Modern Standard Arabic, in favor of the local variety.

I began to realize that what they were doing was localizing their experience in study abroad. In our desire to speak with locals, we began to speak like locals, to minimize distance in our conversations. In other words, there didn't seem to be a way to talk informally, casually, or personably in the Standard variety. This was why we turned to Jordanian Arabic, so we could express ourselves with a type of speech that mirrored the feel of 

Read More
0 Comments

Language is About Cultural Exchange: تبادل  /tebaadl/

8/14/2015

1 Comment

 
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 

Read More
1 Comment

Taxi Problems

11/11/2014

0 Comments

 
This first #languagestory comes from my time with U.S.-based learners of Arabic on study abroad in Amman, Jordan in spring 2014. 

I already had been interviewing them one-on-one or in groups of two, talking about their experiences in Amman, when the subject of rush-hour traffic came up. Crossing the streets on foot near the University of Jordan, or most places around the city was like playing Frogger.

**

What to do when you're trying to hail a taxi, and your taxi is usurped by another? What words do you use to express your frustration? To hail another cab? And then how do you communicate with the driver? It just so happens that one day after school, we all piled into a taxi together. 

And this is what happened...

ليش؟ Lesh? Why (English Subtitles) from Jamie Thomas on Vimeo.

0 Comments
Forward>>

    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.

    Archives

    January 2022
    September 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014

    Categories

    All
    Afterlife
    Art
    Beginnings
    Bilingualism
    Body
    Borderlands
    Cinema
    Collaboration
    Colloquial Speech
    Colonialism
    Communication
    Communicative Competence
    Context
    Creation
    Cuba
    Cultural Exchange
    Digital Humanities
    Diversity
    Election 2016
    Emoji
    Engaged Research
    Gender
    Gentrification
    Hashtag
    Ideology
    Idioms
    Inclusion
    In-N-Out
    Intercultural Learning
    Interpersonal Communication
    Intersectionality
    Linguistic Inequality
    Local
    Mexico
    Modality
    Museums
    Participation
    Philadelphia
    Project Goals
    Public Ethnography
    Public Health
    Public Memory
    Race
    Saturday Night Live
    Semiotics
    Sexuality
    Sign Language
    Spanish
    Speech Community
    Stereotypes
    Storytelling
    Study Abroad
    Video
    Women
    Zombies

    RSS Feed

​Thank you for visiting! More project photos and video: https://linktr.ee/jamieisjames​