Discussions

How does the language and the culture we grow up with influence our way of looking at the world? Are there languages and cultures that are more important than others? What happens when a reader or a writer has been nurtured by different cultures and is fully conversant in both? How can she/he work with both cultural legacies and read/write not about the difference but from it? In other words how are we, readers and writers, at the same time receptors and creators of meaning through words? And how can we negotiate our loyalty to either culture and come up with a perspective of our own, re- creating ourselves through language?

These are questions that concern many of us, and that are central to the work of writers such as Jorge Luis Borges -one of the great world writers of 20th century- and Gloria Anzaldúa, a feminist Chicana writer from campesino background who is studied today in many countries for her insights on bilingualism and multiculturalism. A bit in the style of Borges' famous essay "Kafka and his precursors," for this discussion, we will read Borges from Anzaldúa and Anzaldúa from Borges, establishing relations between their lives and work. For example, both of them grew up in bilingual and bicultural households. Both reflected deeply on the question of how to enunciate identity from the margin. Such reflection shaped and enriched their fundamental work in ways that have contributed to build bridges among cultures.

We will discuss how Borges' and Anzaldúa's reflections on multilingualism and multiculturalism are present in their essays and short stories. I have put several of them on our virtual bookshelf for you to explore. If you only have time for two of the readings in the list, so that we are all on the same page, please at least read Anzaldúa's "Composing the Self, the Work, the World" and Borges "Death and the Compass." If you have time for more, you might enjoy the other readings too; you can also come back to them after our discussion. Please note that this one time discussion will be conducted in English. You are all welcomed to participate.

On August 24, Jorge Luis Borges' birthday (what would have been his 112th) was honored with a Google Doodle. Read about it here.
Readings: Anzaldúa, Gloria E. "A Geography of Selves" and "Composing the Work, the Self, the World" Interviews/ Entrevistas. Edited by AnaLouise Keating. New York : Routledge, 2000.
Barili, Amelia. "De brújulas y nepantlas: Identidad y fronteras en Borges y Anzaldúa." Itinerarios.Revista de Estudios Lingüísticos, Literarios, Históricos y Antropológicos 9 (2009): 9-21. Department of Hispanic and Hispano-American Studies. Faculty of Modern Languages and Literatures. University of Warsaw.
Borges, Jorge Luis. "Death and the Compass," "Garden of the Forking Paths," "Kafka and his precursors." Labyrinths. Edited by Donald A. Yates & James E. Irby. New York: New Directions, 1964.

Does our way with words influence the way we think—or does the way we think influence the language we speak? Human beings have pondered these questions for ages, and some of the answers they have proposed are as puzzling as the questions themselves.

In this session we will talk about two very contrasting views of these matters. One says that the human brain is somehow hard-wired to generate a set of thought structures that can be (and have been) "mapped" onto virtually any language in the world. The other view, which relates directly to the reading from Guy Deutscher's book ("Where the Sun Doesn't Rise in the East"), argues that languages are deeply variable, that they change across time and space, because human beings relate to one another and to the world around them in fundamentally different ways--ways that always involve language. This view suggests that the way we use language influences the way we think, act, and establish our values.

We will also discuss some of the further questions raised by these different views. For example, what does each one suggest about the possibility of making translations from one language to another? How are translations actually made in cross-cultural contexts? What do these different views have to say about "core" human values? Can we, like Humpty Dumpty, speak any way we want? "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said ... 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'" (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass).
Readings: Deutscher, Guy. "Through the Language Glass : How Words Colour Your World", Chapter 7

Is legalese a foreign language? Of course not: like English, it is made up of several languages! In this seminar, we will - all too briefly - discuss how law (like English) has come to incorporate vocabularies from many other lands, how legal speech can serve as a model for looking at pathologies or problems with everyday writing and speaking, and how careful attention to legal speech (and to English grammar) offers an exciting entree into grand philosophical questions of agency and responsibility.

Are all languages just codes for saying the same things? Or are different languages really different, encapsulating the thoughts of alternate cultures? We will consider these questions in light of the language of mathematics. Mathematical language is similar to natural language, but has some significant differences which are worth knowing about.
Readings: No specific readings are required, but students are encouraged to explore the virtual bookshelf.

The session will concentrate on the topic of linguistic transition, specifically the transition from one language to another in the context of changing cultures. What are the challenges associated with such an endeavor? Is bilingualism at all possible if the second language is acquired much later than the first one? Can one preserve the native language while becoming fluent in a new one? How is language connected with cultural identity? Those of us who emigrated to the US from other countries or just came here to study had to face these issues. The discussion will start off using the book by Eva Hoffman Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language, a philosophical autobiography describing the author’s transition from Polish to English, and what it meant for her both linguistically and culturally.
Readings: Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation.

Prof. Laqueur's first language was German and he spoke it with his mother even after his family moved to the US when he was four. Our discussion will focus on the emotional meaning of a Mother tongue as one lives and speaks ones second language more and more. Do words with the same literal meaning have different meanings in ones various languages; does the Mother tongue give access to, and keep alive, ones earliest memories and feelings; do we feel differently in our different languages. As a basis for discussion we will read in common a short essay Laqueur wrote on these questions.
Readings: Laqueur, Thomas. "Diary." London Review of Books 25.23 (2003): 38

What do we mean when we talk about voice in poetry? Do we mean a selection of words on a piece of paper, ordered by the hand of a particular author? Or are we referring, rather, to a sound and a body, the sound of someone speaking? When we read a poem out loud, whose voice do we hear and how does it relate to our own? This discussion will pry at the seams of text as sound. By first looking at, then listening to, a small selection of poems whose authors have left us records of their own reading voices, we will ask ourselves to what extent the sound of a poem can be gleaned from its appearance as mere text. More broadly, we will begin to consider all the ways in which voice is transformed, elided, and redefined by written language. How, for instance, can we claim to hear the voice of a deceased author for which there exists no audio recording? And why might it seem important to us that we be able to do so?
Readings - just posted to Virtual Bookshelf: Prins, Yopie "Historical Poetics, Dysprosody, and The Science of English Verse"

This discussion will cover two topics: The changing world economic center of gravity, 1980-2011, emphasizing particularly the relationships between the United States and China, and the main causes and consequences of the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Among the issues to be discussed will be Henry Kissinger’s recommendations in dealing with the potential conflicts between the U.S. and China in his recent book On China, the new conditions regarding budget deficits and the alleged dangers of inflation in the U.S. An integrating factor of the discussion mentioned above is the problem of civility in discussion within members of the family, faculty and students, inter-government relations and international policies among nations. These problems are at the core of the reading suggested for the discussion and for the interchange I look forward to having with the students.
Readings: Letiche, John, Crises and Compassion, Chapter 13

What do studies on linguistic diversity tell us about our distant past? Do these studies confirm what we have learned from looking at the genetic changes in our DNA that have taken place as our ancestors migrated out of Africa and across the globe? Are there parallels between the evolution of our genes and the evolution of our languages? These are the questions on which the discussion will focus. The session will be based on Chapter 5, "Genes and Languages," from Cavalli-Sforza's book "Genes, Peoples and Languages." If time permits, we might want to tackle broader questions at the intersection between biology and linguistics. For example, to what extent are our linguistic abilities genetically determined? does the existence of inherited speech disorders tell us that there are "language genes"?
Readings: Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca, and translated Mark Seielstad. "Genes, Peoples, and Languages", Chapter 5

As individuals, each and every one of us is defined by the genes that shape us and the languages that we speak. Join this discussion to explore the relationship between the evolution of these two essential features of humankind. The discussion will be led by two experts: Mairi McLaughlin, a Professor from the French department who works on historical linguistics, and Paramvir Dehal, a research scientist from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who works on genetics. The discussion will be based on the chapter by Cavalli-Sforza called 'Genes and Languages'.  We will explore fundamental questions such as: in what ways are linguistic and genetic evolution similar? how do they differ? can the tools of genetics be used to help understand where our languages came from and how they evolved? how should we classify languages? how many languages are there now? how many were there in the past, and how many will there be in the future? All you need to do before the discussion is read the chapter and bring along any questions and ideas you have - they can be as serious or as wild as you wish! 
Readings: Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca, and translated Mark Seielstad. "Genes, Peoples, and Languages", Chapter 5

The human brain has been extensively mapped with respect to the neural pathways involved in language. We will discuss the neuroanatomy of language production and comprehension, and how it is that physical processes in the brain might come to represent meaning. We will also speculate as to how linguistic capacity might have developed over the course of human evolution.

My discussion section will focus on the politics of language and accents in American society. How do we view those who speak languages other than English, or speak English with a foreign accent? What does it mean to have an "accent", and how does this shape the opportunities of Americans? To what extent are our ideas about being an American shaped by language? We will discuss these and other issues based on our reading of Rosina Lippi Green’s English with an Accent, in the OTSP virtual library.
Readings: Green, Rosina Lippi. "English with an Accent"

How many times have you seen someone point leftwards with a hand as they say "Turn right here"? - and I bet they really meant /left/, didn't they?  This happens all the time to speakers of many languages; it doesn't happen to signers, though.  Signed languages share with co-speech gesture the fact of being performed in the visual-gestural modality - a modality in which, for example, actual upwards or leftwards motion of a hand can /mean/ upwards or leftwards motion of an object being talked about.

Looking at the visual modality has a lot to tell us about language variation.  Signed languages are in some respects more structurally similar to each other than spoken languages are - perhaps due to the kinds of "iconic" representational structures mentioned above.  They are structurally very different from spoken languages, where the relationship between form and meaning (except for words like meow and purr) is much more arbitrary.  However, all spoken languages are spoken with accompanying gesture - yes, even when you're on the cell phone to your friend who can't see you, you're likely to gesture.  And those gestural systems share some characteristics with signed languages.

Further, the visual modality has proven to be a really fascinating "back door" to the cognitive processes underlying language production.  In many different languages, gestural patterns have been shown to help reveal metaphoric models of thinking. For example, English speakers and ASL signers both point metaphorically forwards towards the Future, and backwards towards the Past.  But speakers of Aymara, a language of the Andean highlands, talk about the Past as "in front" of them and the Future as "in back" of them - and that's how they gesture about Past and Future, too.  So the multimodal study of spoken language not only opens up the visual modality to us spoken-language users (who are often not very aware of it, while signers necessarily are), but can also help us pin down claims about crosscultural differences in linguistic and cognitive structures.
Readings: Deutscher, Guy. "Through the Language Glass : How Words Colour Your World", Chapter 7