Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Division of English Language and Literature
English in the Era of Globalization
Fall 2007
Week 5 - Answers
Kecskes and Papp 2000, Chapter 1
1. What is a mother tongue?
While the idea of a mother tongue may seem straightforward to Koreans, most Japanese, Americans, or Germans it is not necessarily a very simple concept to many of the other people in the world. In particular where there are many different languages in a small space, or where people not only move around relatively freely, thus exposing themselves to more varied languages, but also where English (in particular) is given an official status despite the lack of an actual speaking community, we find that people`s linguistic profiles are much more complicated then linguists would like to believe. In fact, modern generative linguistics (the most dominant theory in linguistics since the 1960s) is completely reliant on the idea all of an infallible native speaker. What we find in discussing this term `mother tongue` is that maybe there is no such thing as a native speaker, as linguists might try to define it. Certainly the concept of multilingualism creates tremendous problems for the terms `native speaker` or `mother tongue`.
While for many monolinguals or even what we will term successive bilinguals the first language they learned is, as a general fact, the language in which they are most proficient and they, therefore, feel a closer connection to. This, however, is not necessarily true for people who have grown up in a multilingual environment or have experienced tremendous diversity in their linguistic exposure in practice. A person`s mother tongue is not necessarily the language that they were taught by their mother or even the language which they learned first. Certainly there are many Korean Americans, for example, who grew up in Korea speaking Korean and at some later point moved to the United States and sometimes stop speaking Korean entirely. At some inevitable point English eclipses Korean and at this point English might be seen as their mother tongue even though this individual`s mother has been no idea how to speak English, nor did they a few years earlier. A mother tongue may also simply be the language which a person uses the most or feels the most comfortable using, even if this person is not particularly proficient in that language. Fabbro (1999) records a multitude of interesting examples in which people who had incurred certain brain trauma, such as a stroke or being whacked over the head with a piece of wood, upon waking up from the trauma sometimes prefer to speak second or third languages in which their proficiency is highly limited and will actually report an inability to be able to speak their first language. The power of emotion is not to be overestimated. Human beings can really convince themselves of almost anything.
What is also interesting is that a person`s perception of their own `mother tongue` may vary throughout their lifetime depending on experience. As I have mentioned in class, when I was living in Germany and speaking German to the exclusion of virtually every other language I was certainly living under the impression that German was more like my mother tongue than any other language at that time. This is really a byproduct all of a deep immersion situation. Human beings simply can not avoid being affected both cognitively and emotionally from their environments and, to a large degree, to do so is to really reject the power of our brain and our humanity itself. What is interesting about this in relation to globalization is that all of us, regardless of where we actually are, live under the pressure of an English environment. How hard this pressure is, as well as its very nature, varies dramatically depending on where someone is, yet it is nonetheless always there. It would be strange to assume that such pressure would have no effects on our cognitive or certainly our linguistic makeup.
2. What is a foreign language?
Simply put, a foreign language is, traditionally, a language which had little or no place in the society in which it is being studied/learned. There are virtually no native speakers or at least no native speaker community and the speakers within the society do not need to use this language to communicate with each other. Certainly English in Korea is a foreign language, as is every other language. In describing the Korean linguistics situation Katzner (1995: 348) states,Korean is the official and universal language. Interestingly, for Katzner (ibid), this is all that can or need be said about the Korean linguistic situation. While this might seem true on paper, the situation here is actually much more complicated. This would mean then that all languages aside from Korean are restricted to study in the classroom and that once people hit the streets there is very little use for English. Hmmmmm. I’ not so sure.
We need to change some of these traditional definitions to accommodate certain aspects of the new global world. English may be a foreign language in Korea (or Germany) in some respects, but it also has a role in Korean society. Korea society has created a need for English - but this need is quite artificial. Uses for English are more artificial than realistic or practical. Koreans generally and often refuse to speak English with each other, in part because the simply are not used to it and don`t need to do so - for they have KOREAN. This is a strong reflection of the foreign nature of the English language in Korea.
So what about this pressure that I mentioned in the answer above? Well, certainly it is there, and in being there undoubtedly has effects on both the status of English and have English may be viewed and used, but it is pressure still and pressure is not something that leads to particularly good learning or happy feelings for that matter. Because this is an outside pressure which has been turned into an inside pressure it is really not something that people actually want to do as much as they feel they need to do it. Certainly, because of this pressure English does adopt certain aspects of a second language in Korea, but it remains, nonetheless, a foreign language.
3. What is a second language?
In contrast to a foreign language, a second language has elements of use within the society in certain functions and within a given linguistic community the second language might be functionally global. While there may not need to be a large number of native speakers of the second language, or any native speaker community really, the language is nonetheless used in this society for certain purposes (functions). It might be used as a general lingua franca, as in the case of English in The Philippines or India, so that speakers within a highly multilingual society can contact each other for a wide variety of different purposes and more generalized functions. In other cases, such as in Algeria, a second language, like French or English, may also be used for a particular type of function within a society. If we think about English in Korea we might say that English is developing into a second language (albeit relatively slowly, or least with a certain amount of consternation) through its increased and more exclusive use in the area of education. Looking at this example we can see that in societies second languages are granted special status because they are used for doing something deemed special or necessary (typically, as we have seen in our country profiles, English is used in education and government across the rainbow of ESL countries). A further common type of second language situation is a regional one, as in the case of Belgium, Switzerland and a large number of sub-Saharan African countries. In this scenario different languages are spoken within a continuous political entity, a country. In Belgium there are three languages, Flemish (Dutch) in the north, Walloon (French) in the south, and German in the east. At least for the two majority languages (every country has its minorities and in Belgium it is the German speakers) one can speak their own language freely in their own region, but once one travels or moves to another linguistic region she or he will need to shift into the language of that region. Not to do so would cause problems. So, regionally multilingual societies require that their citizens master all the major regional languages.
4. How does a second language differ from a foreign language?
There are many options in how we might choose to differ a second language and a foreign language as regards the way they are learned in a particular environment. In doing so we must acknowledge that the differences in second and foreign languages are far from being absolute. They do blend together at some points. So, it therefore make sense to put them instead of different places, to put them along what we can call a continuum where one slowly blends into the other.
-Continuum Approach = functional -vs- formal
The basic idea here is that because second languages are learned in a more natural environment and potentially in a more natural way then they will be more functional in nature. To say that the second language is more functional is to simply say that the actual reasons underlying instances on language use are apparent in second language learning because this language is learned in a more real and certainly richer context. Foreign languages are a little bit different in that they are generally learned in the classroom where the emphasis is not on language use so much as on simply acquiring knowledge about the language (often for testing purposes). Honestly, many of the teachers of a foreign language don`t know themselves how to use the language they teach because they also have lived their entire lives in a foreign language environment. Based on this then students are generally exposed more to forms alone and very little attention is paid to how these forms might actually be used. The functional nature of language is undervalued because it is simply not familiar and the society does not know how to deal with that element whether in or out of the classroom. Certainly for us in Korea we can to feel this distinction.
-Completeness, Nativelike proficiency = the level of cognition involved
Here, what we are focussing on is the basic idea that second languages seem to be learned in a much more complete manner which more closely resembles native-like proficiency in that language. It is often said about foreign languages that learners are, in a real sense, doomed from the very start because they will simply never be able to achieve high levels of proficiency if they stay in a foreign language mode/situation. These are stereotypes, and like all stereotypes are not true although they might have sprung from grains of truth. Part of the reason for the more complete learning of a second language, as opposed to a foreign language, is simply the amount of exposure. Because second languages are actually there, embedded somehow in the society they are more easily accessed. Exposure for a second language is not only longer but also of a different nature as we will soon see.
-Content of context = Is the content from the local region local context or from a foreign context?
This is actually a very interesting concern and one which I know Koreans think a lot about these days. This basically revolves around the idea that in a second language situation the second language is learned often in an environment or society different from the one in which the language originally sprung. A simple example should clarify. English is a second language in India based on its important to use as a lingua franca. Indians must learn English in order to speak with other Indians. But the English which they speak is certainly not the same as the English spoken in England. This is because the Indians have been taught English not by British or American teachers but by Indian teachers in an Indian society. English is not being used in India to contact foreigners so much as it is being used to contact other Indians and as a result the societal factors (culture) of India have become superimposed on their version of English. Of course we see similar things happening in all second language environments and this is why English, as a widely spread second language across the world, is changing dramatically from region to region. A foreign language does not go through the same change because the purpose of the foreign language is not for people in a local environment to speak to each other but for them to be able to speak to the native speakers of that language, and in the same forms from which the language has sprung. The local culture is not fused onto the foreign language because the foreign language was never intended to actually be spoken in the local environment.
-Tasks and processes = Real-World tasks - vs- Pedagogical tasks (+/- conceptual structures)
Because of the different environments for second and foreign-languages different types of actual tasks both for learning and for practice are available. In the second language environment it is easy for learners to be able to engage in what are called real-world tasks. In fact, they probably have to do this whether they want to or not. What these real tasks are are simply things that people actually have to do in their lives for real or authentic purposes. That could be something as simple as going to the store and buying a bag of rice or as complicated as not only by buying a car but registering the car as well as getting insurance for the evil car. These are the types of things that people in second language situations are not only able to do but sometimes must do. In a foreign language situation things are obviously different. Because the target language is distant and even unreal and not used in the learners` society, learners will often be restricted to what are called pedagogical tasks. These should be extremely familiar to you because they are exactly what you did your whole life in school. They are tasks which really have no purpose in the real world like reading a text and answering a barrage of annoying questions about it, but have value (supposedly) in pedagogy or learning. Of course in the foreign language environment we can get real-world tasks through things like role plays and simulations, but they often lack authenticity.
-Conceptual fluency = knowing how thoughts are encoded - how meaning is conveyed
I think this is what we spent most of our time talking about in class and really this is what all the other ones come down to. To understand this idea we need to first introduce the idea of cognitive linguistics, which stands in diametric opposition to the principles of generative linguistics. Cognitive linguistics claims that linguistic structures do not come from some sort of underlying representation (UR), which is the same for every speaker and which is altered to fit the surface demands of the linguistic situation, as is claimed in generative linguistics. Cognitive linguistics, in turn, claims that linguistic forms are generated from an underlying conceptual structure, which varies from person-to-person to a limit extent and from society to society to a much, much greater extent. A simple example should make this a little bit clearer.
(1) The tree stood tall in the field.
(2) The field spread out beautifully under the tree.
In generative linguistics these two sentences have the same underlying structure and therefore the same semantic structure or meaning. Cognitive linguistics sees these two structures, however, as being constructed from two very different conceptual structures, and their meanings therefore are different. In cognitive linguistics meaning comes not only from the language itself but from the conceptual structure which is underlying the language structure. To put it as simply as possible: thought and language are intertwined.
Now, what this means for us is that in a second language situation, where learners have access to more real-world type tasks as well as much more direct contact with actual speakers of the language, they will adopt some of the conceptual structure of the speakers of that language. The simple truth is that different speakers all of different languages think differently in that they employ different conceptual structures to deal with the same situations. To be an effective language learner, as we have been claiming second language access allows one to be, one needs to be able to conceptualize like a speaker of that language. In a foreign language situation where a learner has little or no access to native speakers or even proficient speakers and might never actually perform very many functional tasks it will be very difficult to figure out how speakers of that language structure their cognition/thoughts. As a result foreign language learners end up using the forms of the foreign language with their own conceptual structures, which do vary from those of the target language speakers.
-Metaphorical competence = literal -vs- metaphorical meanings and understanding
This difference expands on what was mentioned above. What it basically claims it is that speakers of languages not only have an underlying cognitive or conceptual structure from which language is created, but thought is by no means as straightforward as we might imagine. While meanings are sometimes literal in that they are based on a one-to-one connection between the conceptual structure and the linguistic structure, this is not always the case. According to this idea, much of our human thought is actually metaphorical in nature. Interestingly, or sadly if you are a language learner, these metaphorical underpinnings of thought are highly individualistic and vary not only from person-to-person but on a societal basis. Lakoff (1987) cites the importance of ICMs (Idealized Cultural Models) in being able to understand how other people speak, and in turn think. A simple example of one of these ICMs for English speakers would be the metaphor of heat as anger (heat = anger). Native speakers of English make extensive use of this and thousands of others metaphors in their day-to-day communication. Again, the argument goes that in the second language learning situation the second language learners, because of their more intense, diverse, and authentic exposure to the language, will be able to understand some of this metaphorical structure within the thought of the target language speakers. Foreign language learners often will not.
References
Fabbro, Franco. (1999). The neurolinguistics of bilingualism. Hove: Psychology Press.
Katzner, K. (1995). The languages of the world (3rd edition). London: Routledge.
Lakoff, George. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.