LINGUIST List 6.1780

Sat Dec 23 1995

Qs: Bilingual Experience, Lang and Violence, Code switching

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <lveselinemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. Una Cunningham-Andersson, bilingual experience
2. M J Hardman, Re: language and violence
3. Alex Housen, Code switching in pop lyrics

Hi,

I am researching the effects of living with two languages and would
greatly appreciate input from any of you who are now or have in the
past been using more than one language in the course of your daily
life.

I am thinking of parents whose children are bilingual from birth
because of the parents each speaking a different language to them,
immigrant children and adults who have to use a language other than
their native one outside the home, but there are many other ways you
may be involved with 2 or more languages.

Any of you you are willing to share your knowledge and experiences
with me please get in touch, telling me what languages are involved in
your case, and what the background is. I will then get back to you
with more specific questions.

For myself, and as an example of the kind of info I want at this
stage, I am an Irish immigrant to Sweden, married to a Swede with whom
I speak English. We have 4 Swedish-English speaking children aged 9,
7, 3, 1 and a half. I speak English to them and their dad speaks
Swedish to them.

Thanks for your help

Una Cunningham-Andersson

I will be teaching a course on Language and Violence next semester and
am posting this in search of any ongoing/ completed research or other
information that I may be unaware of. I am not interested in
<maledicta>. I will be focusing on the way English is constructed and
used in everyday contexts to make violence the normal environment and
even a good. I will be using the work of Suzette Haden Elgin, Ann
Tickner, my own work on Derivational Thinking, & the work of Taylor
and Miller on Gender and Conflict. I also have the excellent
bibliography of Bill Gay of UNCC. I will be considering all levels of
language structure - grammar, discourse, metaphor, etc.

I am especially in need of materials that show a nonviolent
construction within a language and correlatively within a culture to
use as contrast to English. For example, If I understand correctly,
Navajo healing is the (re)establishment of harmony, while in English
we <fight> an illness until we <conquer> it. The material I have does
not fully explicate the way in which this world view is realized in
the structure of the language, except, of course, for the word
<hozho>.

I am not looking for a specifically pacifist world view; rather where
violence may be relevant only to particular times and places, not in
an all day every day fashion. I am posting this to the native net in
hopes that there may be something available that I am unaware of. For
example, on the audio-tapes of the 1989 CircumPacific Conference,
Adeline Fredin, then president of the Colville Tribe, gives a formal
paper and an informal talk. Behind her English words I can hear a
nonviolent world view, but I do not know how that is constructed in
the language of the Colville tribe. (This tape is valuable to me in
teaching students to hear and to listen to other voices. If any on the
net should know of Fredin's whereabouts, please convey my gratitude,
or let me know how I could convey such to her personally.)

I thank you in advance for any information you can give me. If there
is enough interesting information I will post a summary.

 MJ Hardman
 afn11122afn.org

Does anyone know of studies on code switching in pop lyrics, rock
lyrics or song lyrics in general? One of my students has taken an
interest in this phenomenon but he finds recent theories of code
switching (e.g. Poplack's and Myers-Scotton's) to be of little help
(particularly with respect to explaining why code switching occurs at
all in this instance of language use).

He is familiar with Muysken's article on code switching in the Wayno
of Southern Peru but any other pointers (or suggestions) would be
greatly appreciated.

- Alex Housen


Alex HOUSEN Dept. of Germanic Languages
University of Brussels (VUB) Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
Tel:+32-2-6292664; Fax:+32-2-6292480; email:ahousenvnet3.vub.ac.be