Language and Power

Week 10: 

Thursday your portfolio is due.  You will find a form to download on our Moodle site, under Week 10. Please print it and place it first in your portfolio. Your self evaluation should be included in that portfolio. You should have made 2 copies of your evaluations of peer editing group members: one for your portfolio and one for theirs. After presentations, we will have a potluck! The faculty will bring plates, cups, napkins, and utensils, so you should bring food and/or beverages.

Evaluation Conference. This is required, so be sure to sign up and ask if you have forgotten your appointment.  At the conference, you will need to bring faculty evaluations for all three of us.  Naturally, you will have more to write about your seminar faculty, but each of us gave lectures, led discussions, and helped advise you. Note: The college has a policy that allows you to submit your evaluation of faculty to the program secretary rather than directly to the faculty. You must do that by Wednesday, June 10 at 4:30pm if you did not submit your evaluation directly to your faculty.  After your evaluation from the faculty has been posted to Regisration, the faculty receive your evaluation. Our secretaries are in Sem II A2117.  

What should you address in your faculty evaluations?  Consider the program as a whole--how did the lectures, texts, workshops, and films fit with our theme of language and power and help you learn? Faculty work hard to present an integrated, interdisciplinary program, and this was a new one.  Consider the help you received on writing your papers and advising. How did the faculty help make seminar a collaborative learning experience?  

Very important: Your faculty feel strongly about the process of evaluation at Evergreen. Students must write self evaluations and submit them to the faculty and Registration. Students must also evaluate all three faculty.  There are forms for both types of evaluations on line and in the computer center. Faculty evaluations, however, do not need to be on the form. They do need to be signed.  If you do not submit these evaluations, we will deduct 2 credits.  Please understand that your faculty want your evaluations, but also we need them for our portfolios. We are evaluated by our dean or our colleagues.

Self Evaluations: These are a very important part of your transcript. Work on writing a clear explanation of what you learned.  Write "I learned that..." rather than "I learned about..." Being specific is highly valued. You might make a list of important concepts and/or texts as you begin to write your self evaluation. Remember that your evaluation also clearly documents your writing ability, so make sure that you check your grammar, spelling, and that you have written clear sentences and paragraphs.

Program Description for 16 credits:

In Language and Power, a one-quarter interdisciplinary program, students studied specific theories of power as well as language ideologies and linguistic analysis.  Specific themes were propaganda, standard languages and dialects, gendered talk and gendered language, ethnography, orality and literacy, bilingualism, medical language, language hierarchy, and colonialism.  Students learned through lectures, films, and seminar discussions. They submitted  structured notes on the readings, worked in peer editing groups, and wrote 7 expository essays. Finally, they wrote and two research papers, one using library research to consider attitudes towards language policy and one using ethnography to examine language use in the courts. They presented one of these to the class.  Learning objectives included learning sociolinguistic principles of linguistic variation and the ways in which power affects that variation; understanding how gender differences are socially constructed in language; learning concepts of cultural anthropology; developing a foundational understanding of Foucault’s perspectives on power; learning skills in research using library databases; using some ethnographic approaches to seeing how language and power operate in the courts;  and improving skills in reading, writing, verbal communication, public speaking, research, and group collaboration.  Texts included Ahearn, Invitations to Love: literacy, love letters, and social change in Nepal; Berk-Seligson, The Bilingual Courtroom; Bauer and Trudgill, Language Myths; Borges, “Funes the Memorious,” “John Wilkins’ Analytical Language,”& “The Book of Sand;” Chamoiseau,  Solibo the Magnificent Crawford, Language Loyalties; Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1; Graff & Birkenstein, They Say, I Say; Lippi-Green, R. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States; Orwell, 1984; journal articles by Cameron, Coates, Kiesling, and Holmes on gender in conversation; Siegel, selection from Solo; Howard, “Kin Term Usage;” Bourdieu, “Production and Reproduction of Legitimate Language.” Films were “Pygmalion,” “Do You Speak American,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” “The Namesake,” “Color of Freedom,” & “Battle of Algiers.” 

Credit Equivalencies: 16

4 – Sociolinguistics

4 – Cultural Anthropology

4 – Expository Writing

2 – Library Research on Language Policy

2 – Ethnographic Research

Program Description for 12 credits:

In Language and Power, a one-quarter interdisciplinary program, students studied specific theories of power as well as language ideologies and linguistic analysis.  Specific themes were propaganda, standard languages and dialects, gendered talk and gendered language, ethnography, orality and literacy, bilingualism, medical language, language hierarchy, and colonialism.  Students learned through lectures, films, and seminar discussions. They submitted  structured notes on the readings, worked in peer editing groups, and wrote 7 expository essays. Learning objectives included learning sociolinguistic principles of linguistic variation and the ways in which power affects that variation; understanding how gender differences are socially constructed in language; learning concepts of cultural anthropology; developing a foundational understanding of Foucault’s perspectives on power;  and improving skills in reading, writing, verbal communication, public speaking, research, and group collaboration.  Texts included Ahearn, Invitations to Love: literacy, love letters, and social change in Nepal; Berk-Seligson, The Bilingual Courtroom; Bauer and Trudgill, Language Myths; Borges, “Funes the Memorious,” “John Wilkins’ Analytical Language,”& “The Book of Sand;” Chamoiseau,  Solibo the Magnificent Crawford, Language Loyalties; Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1; Graff & Birkenstein, They Say, I Say; Lippi-Green, R. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States; Orwell, 1984; journal articles by Cameron, Coates, Kiesling, and Holmes on gender in conversation; Siegel, selection from Solo; Howard, “Kin Term Usage;” Bourdieu, “Production and Reproduction of Legitimate Language.” Films were “Pygmalion,” “Do You Speak American,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” “The Namesake,” “Color of Freedom,” & “Battle of Algiers.” 

Credit Equivalencies: 12

4 – Sociolinguistics

4 – Cultural Anthropology

4 – Expository Writing

Carnaval in Solibo Magnificent. Here is a link to a brief explanation of historical aspects of Carnival. http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/carnival

In the novel, there is the addition of the syncretic culture of voodoo: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/voodoo

General Discussion Forum: We now have a forum for announcements or discussions related to the program on our Moodle Site!

Here is a site from the documentary, "Do you Speak American?", in which Bill Labov writes about his career as a sociolinguist.  His work defined the new field. http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/sociolinguistics/labov/

Interested in reading about Orwell's son's memories of his life with Orwell? http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article5889541.ece

Program Description: 

Are some languages more powerful than others?  To what extent does language have the power to shape the way we think and define our selves?  How are nations are held together or torn apart by the languages spoken by sometimes diverse internal publics?  How does the way we classify the world through words circumscribe our relationships with others?  Who, or what, controls language?  What is the power of silences, of that which cannot be said? This program will explore these questions and others through the lenses of linguistics and anthropology.  We will consider the languages of medicine, politics, and law in the US and in the broader context of other cultures, particularly those of Southeast Asia.  We will examine hierarchical languages like Javanese, through which people anxiously re-inscribe the social order through every speech act by talking up to superiors and talking down to subordinates.  We will weigh the privileges entailed in gendered language and investigate how people accept, contest, or redefine the categories that come to define their identities.  We will look at dialects, standard languages, literacy and orality and discover why they matter in our lives today. 

Through the course of the program students will learn about the theories of power of Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu and be provided with an introduction to sociolinguistics and cultural anthropology.  Our sources will include novels, ethnographies, journal articles, films, and texts about particular issues.  We will study and analyze these texts in detail through workshops and two short research projects. You can expect to learn the ways that words create and maintain world views and ideologies, from the vast workings of totalitarian regimes to the everyday interactions with those around us.  

This program will be an intensive examination of topics requiring 200-250 pages of reading each week.  You will be expected to spend at least 40 hours per week on the program in part because of the heavy reading schedule. 

12 credit option:  If you want to take a language course, you can arrange to take 12 credits in our program. You must request a "registration override" before you can register for 12 credits. Please contact Susan Fiksdal to request this override. In your message you need to provide your Evergreen ID number, your class level (freshman or sophomore) AND the name of the language course you have registered for.  If there is a problem when you register, then register for 16 credits and notify Susan. This will maintain your place in the program. We will try to resolve the problem before tuition payments are due. Note that faculty contact information can be found on the side bar of our web site.

Program Activities:·        

• Lecture/Workshops: Most weeks you will hear a faculty lecture and then participate in a workshop designed to help you learn the concepts introduced.·        
• Film/Discussions: Each week we will view a film or selections from films and discuss the ways in which they demonstrate concepts we are working on in the program. ·        
• Seminar Preparation: You will take notes on the reading using a specific format.·        
• Writing: There are two types of writing in the program: expository essays and research papers.  Each week you will meet in peer review groups to read these papers and hear feedback. You will then post your paper on our Moodle site, and your faculty will respond.  Your expository papers and research papers will be the focus of these weekly reviews. ·        
• Final Exam: You will have a final, in-class short essay exam in the 10th week, for which you may bring notes on one note card.