Re-imagining Culture in TESOLPresentation Transcript

1. Re-Imagining Culture in TESOLTESOL March 25-28, 2010 BostonUlla Connor, PhDIndiana Center for Intercultural CommunicationIndiana University-Purdue University IndianapolisBill Eggington, PhDProfessor and Chair, Linguistics and English Language Department,Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah

2. Introduction: (Bill)Were going to imagine and (re)imagine culture and TESOL Along the way, well also mention:DefinitionsBig cultures and small culturesModern and post-modern perspectivesAirplane accidentsThe English of East LATeaching stuffHigh School ESL classesCollege-level teacher education classesMiddle groundsPersonal Culture DiagramsMulti-colored jacketsBonfires and AntsPower and solidarity

3. Session OverviewWhat we are going to doWhat we hope to achieve 4. What we are going to doAttempt to address four salient questions through:PresentationActivitiesOpen debateSmall group discussionReport back to whole groupThe four questions are:What is culture?How do large and small cultures work?Why does culture matter in language teaching?Are there privileged cultures that enhance ESL competence?

5. The Outline (1)What is culture? (Ulla)Activity:Is it possible to bring the different perspectives of culture together into a working paradigm useful for TESOL training and teaching?Different Perspectives:Reconcilable differencesIrreconcilable differences Report back How do big and small cultures work? (Bill)Activity:Is it possible for small group culture to exist independent of large group culture?Report back

6. The Outline (2)Why does culture matter in language teaching? (Ulla)Activity:How can we teach culture more effectively in the classroom?Approaches, tips, suggestions?Are there privileged cultures that enhance ESL communicative competence? (Bill)ActivityWhat is the ESL teachers role in promoting or challenging big and small cultures?

7. What do we (big we) hope to achieve?Our goalsYour goalsAnd, if possible, who are you?

8. What is culture? (Ulla)

9. Culture as a Burning Issue in the 21st CenturyEarly notions of culture, the received view, consider large groups as sharing a definable culture (ethnic, national, international)Postmodern views see culture as a dynamic, ongoing process which operates in changing circumstances to enable group members to make sense and meaningfully operate within those circumstances (Holliday, 1999, p. 248)Culture has become less and less a national consensus, but a consensus built on common ethnic, generational, ideological, occupation or gender related interests, within and across national boundaries (Kramsch, 2002, p. 276) 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

10. Tesol & Culture (Atkinson, 1999)Two Views:Received view, geographic cause (and quite often nationally) distinct entitiesPost modernist-influenced conceptsunchanging homogeneous identityhybridity essentialism power difference agency discourse resistance confrontation 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

11. Middle-ground approach (Atkinson,1999,continued)Acknowledge the important place of shared perspectives and socialized practices in the lives of human beings.All humans are individuals.Individuality is also cultural.Knowing students individually also involves knowing them culturally. (p. 643) (Teacher has to be a researcher.) 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

12. Middle-Ground Approach, cont.Social group membership and identity are multiple, contradictory, and dynamic.Social group membership is consequential.Methods of studying cultural knowledge and behavior are unlikely to fit a positivist paradigm.Language (language and teaching) and culture are mutually implicated, but culture is multiple and complex. 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

13. Get rid of old, outmoded views of language and culture butretain robust notions of locality and solid practice.(Atkinson, 2008) 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

14. Re-imagining Culture in TESOLNational culturesSmall culturesIndividual cultures 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

15. Helpful Paradigm (Holliday, 1994, 1999)Big CulturesEssentialist, culturalistCulture as essential features of ethnic, national, or international groupSmall (sub)cultures are contained within and subordinate to large

culturesNormative, prescribedSmall CulturesNon-essentialist, non-culturist Relating to cohesive behavior in activities within any social grouping No necessary subordination to or containment within large cultures Interpretive, a process 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

16. Big and Small Cultures in the ClassroomComplexity and interacting small cultures in an educational setting. Adapted from Holliday, 1994, 1999. 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

17. Activity 1:Is it possible to bring the different perspectives of culture together into a working paradigm useful for TESOL training and teaching?Different Perspectives:Reconcilable differencesIrreconcilable differences Report back Some different perspectives:Big culture, small cultureModernist, post-modernist

18. How do big and small cultures work? (Bill)The relationship between big and small cultures in particular contextsWhat the research tells usThe ethnic theory of plane crashes (Gladwell)Non-evidential epistemic modals (Youmans)English cultural notions of personal autonomy , reasonableness and whimperatives (Wirezbicka)

19. Starting Point: Big and Small Cultures in ContextComplexity and interacting small cultures in an educational setting. Adapted from Holliday, 1994, 1999. 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

20. The big culture/little culture relationship in the cockpitThe KAL storyThe Avianca storyFrom Gladwell, Malcom (2008). The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes (Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot). In Outliers: The Story of Success. Little, Brown and Company

21. Power Distance Index (based on Hofstede, Geert. Culture's Consequences, Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications, 2001)Top FiveBrazilSouth KoreaMoroccoMexicoPhilippinesBottom FiveUnited StatesIrelandSouth AfricaAustraliaNew Zealand

22. The relationship in the cockpitGladwell, Malcom, The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes (Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot) In Outliers: The Story of Success. Greenberg wanted to give his pilots an alternative identity. Their problem was that they were trapped in roles dictated by the heavy weight of their countrys cultural legacy. They needed an opportunity to step outside those roles when they

sat in the cockpit, and language was the key to that transformation. In English, they would be free of the sharply defined gradients of Korean hierarchy formal deference, informal deference, blunt, familiar, intimate and plain. Instead the pilots could participate in a culture and language with a different legacy. (p. 219)

23. Criticism of Hofstedes PDIThe Construction of the Modern West and the Backward Rest: Studying the Discourse of Hofstedes Cultures Consequences Journal of Multicultural Discourses Vol. 2, No. 1, 2007Martin Fougere and AgnetaMoulettesThis paper studies the discourse deployed in Hofstedes Cultures Consequences(1980, 2001), the international best-seller that introduces a model classifying nationalcultures according to four (later five) supposedly universal dimensions. Noting thatthis management-oriented scholarly discourse has had a huge impact in both thebusiness world and academia, we take a critical stance towards the Western-based,ethnocentric perspective that characterises it. Our aim is not to merely repeat thealready formulated objections to the model, concerning its ontology, epistemologyand methodology, but rather to focus on the very words of Hofstede himself in hissecond edition of Cultures Consequences (2001). With a broadly postcolonialsensibility, drawing on authors such as Said and Escobar, we contend that Hofstedediscursively constructs a world characterised by a division between a developed andmodern side (mostly Anglo-Germanic countries) and a traditional and backwardside (the rest) and discuss the cultural consequences of such colonial discourse.

24. The big culture/little culture relationship in a multicultural communityYoumans, Madeleine (2001). Cross-cultural Differences in Polite Epistemic Modal Use in American English. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development Vol. 22, No. 1, 2001001) Table 1: Greatest differences in non-evidential epistemic modal use per 20,000 wordsEpistemic modal Anglo uses Lemon Grove usesCould: Advice 37.73 3.11Can: Suggestion 33.34 1.55Think: Mitigating 30.71 0You know: Soften suggestions 18.43 0Maybe: Polite hedge 21.94 0

25. The relationship in a multicultural communityYoumans, Madeleine (2001), Crosscultural Differences in Polite Epistemic Modal Use in American English Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development Vol. 22, No. 1, 2001This study compared the use of selected epistemic modals in English speech of Chicano barrio residents and Anglo visitors to the community. Transcribed conversations served as the database. The Chicano speakers tended to use the epistemic modals only to index the evidential weight of propositions, whereas the Anglo speakers tended also to

use them for numerous non-evidential functions, most frequently for negative politeness. In this paper, I discuss those epistemic modal functions used the most disparately between the two groups. These differences in epistemic modal use are shown to relate to cross-culturally different uses of epistemic modality for politeness. Sociocultural explanations for this disparity are proposed: the different patterns of epistemic modal use which emerge are argued to be tied to different, culturally based epistemologies held by the two groups.

26. Anna Wierzbickas researchhttp://arts.anu.edu.au/languages/linguistics/AnnaW.aspFrom:Natural Semantic MetalanguageCultural Script TheoryCulture embedded in lexical semanticsWhimperativesPersonal autonomyHigh influence wordsReasonableFair

27. Activity 2: What are the big group cultures that impact your students?What are the small group cultures that impact your students?How do your students small group cultures interact with their big group cultures?

28. Why does culture matter in English language teaching? (Ulla) 29. Helpful Notion:Culture as a verb; culture never just is, but instead does. (Heath & Street, 2008)Culture is not a fixed thing.Gradations of change in habits and beliefs, discourse formsEthnographers sort and describe what happens and help reveal the wealth of meanings.Implication:Teacher as an ethnographerStudent as an ethnographer 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

30. How to Consider What & How Cultures DO! Example from a WorkshopExamples from Teaching 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

31. Example from an Intercultural Workshop on Business Communication at ICICTraditional Concept of Cultural Differences in Business CommunicationIndividualism vs. collectivismMasculine vs. feminineHigh context vs. low contextPower distance between membersDegree of uncertainty avoidance 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

32. Personal Cultural Diagram3 M.A.s, Ph.D.JoggerGardenerIndiana, Washington D.C., Wisconsin, Florida, FinlandSuburb livingWifeMotherLutheranFull-time job at universitySpeak Finnish and English 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

33. Negotiation/Accommodation: A Key to Successful Communication Both sides converge to accommodate communication at the levels of ideology, discourse, language use, and nonverbal messages. Both sides need to know and value others preferred/habitual patterns. 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

34. Example from TeachingHigh School ESL ClassBigSmallIndividual 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

35. Example from Teaching, cont.College-level Teacher Education ClassBigSmallIndividual 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

36. Example from Teaching, cont.An ESL student from Mexico in a U.S. elementary schoolBigSmallIndividualConnor, U., Robillard, M., & Aino, A. (2005, March). Case study and contrastive/intercultural rhetoric as alternative methods to assess bilingual childrens literacy. Paper presented at the TESOL Research Symposium. Left Behind: The Contribution of Alternative Research Methodologies to Understanding and Evaluating English Language Policy and Practice in the NCLB Age, San Antonio, TX. 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

37. Example from Teaching, cont.Ministry of Finance ESP Program(Connor, Rozycki, & McIntosh, 2006)Big culturesChineseSmall CulturesDisciplinaryGenerationalGenderIndividual 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

38. Example from Teaching, cont.ESP Program for Postdoctoral ResearchersBig culturesChineseKoreanSmall culturesDisciplinaryGenderGenerationalIndividual 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

39. Example from Teaching, cont.International Medical Graduate ESPProgramBigSmallIndividual 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

40. Effectiveness of post-modern approaches to culture in the classroom (MenardWarwick, 2009)Post Modern Approach 1. problematizes cultural representations 2. emphasizes dialogue 3. emphasizes critical awareness & interactionMenard-Warwick did not find much success in creating intercultural speakers using the above approach

41. Ullas Culture Jacket

42. The 6th conference on intercultural rhetoric and discourseHosted by Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia Friday, June 11th & Saturday, June 12th, 2010Plenary Speakers:Suresh Canagarajah Kirby Professor in Language Learning and Director of the Migration Studies Project at Pennsylvania State UniversityUlla Connor Barbara E. and Karl R. Zimmer Chair in Intercultural Communication, Director of the Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication at Indiana University-Purdue University, IndianapolisEric Friginal Assistant professor in applied linguistics at Georgia State UniversityGuillaume GentilAssociate Professor at Carleton University's School of Linguistics and Language Studies in Ottawa, CanadaFor more information about the conference, please contact:Diane Belcher 404-413-5194 dbelcher1@gsu.eduGayle Nelson 404-413-5190 gaylenelson@gsu.edu

43. Activity 3: Design Your Own Personal Cultural Diagram (Ulla). 2010 Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

44. Activity 3: (Ulla)How can we teach culture more effectively in the classroom? Approaches, tips, suggestions?Report back

45. Are there privileged cultures that enhance ESL communicative competence? (Bill, 15 minutes)Technology and its relationship to language and cultureRelationship between technology and big culture communicationGlobal villageGlobal discourse communitiesGlobal speech communitiesWhat are the linguistic requirements of participation in the world village?What are the cultural requirements of participation in the world village?Modernist perspectivesPost-modernist perspectivesCultural and linguistic imperialism vs. natural human social evolution

46. Is there something more to human, social and intercultural relationships than power?Given that, as Kubota (2003) has argued, images of culture (in language education) are produced by discourses that reflect, legitimate or contest unequal relations of power (p. 16)Power axisSolidarity axisPlus power and plus solidarity

47. A power/solidarity perspective 48. The Bonfire and the Ants AlexsandrSolzhenitsyn translated by Michael GlennyI threw a rotten log onto the fire without noticing that it was alive with ants.The log began to crackle, the ants came tumbling out and scurried around in desperation. They ran along the top and writhed as they were scorched by the flames. I gripped the log and rolled it to one side. Many of the ants then managed to escape onto the sand or the pine needles.But, strangely enough, they did not run away from the

fire.They had no sooner overcome their terror than they turned, circled, and some kind of force drew them back to their forsaken homeland. There were many who climbed back onto the burning log, ran about on it, and perished there.

49. Activity 4: (Bill)What is the English teachers role in promoting or challenging big and small cultures?Report back

50. Conclusion (Ulla and Bill)