Saturday, April 30, 2005
Identity, Culture Learning, Language Learning
For those of you who may be interested in issues of identity, here is a paper that I presented at TESOL this year. As some of you know, I believe that we should all be interested in identity issues. Why? Because our identities affect our instructional practices. Please take this paper in context. First, it's an oral presentation. So I preserved the oral tone of the paper. Second, it was part of the spotlight session on race and nonnativeness in English.
Lia D. Kamhi-Stein TESOL 2005, March/April
California State University, Los Angeles San Antonio, TX
Paper presented at the annual TESOL Conference. Spotlight session on race and (non)nativeness in English.
Mi Viaje: A Journey of Invisibility and Nonnativeness in English
In 1995, when I was about to complete my dissertation, and I was beginning to search for a tenure-track position, a professor I greatly admire said something like: “You are Latina but I don’t think you will have problems finding a position.” I did not quite understand what he meant by this statement. Was my being Latina a problem? But at the same time, in spite of my being Latina, I was going to find a job? How could this be explained, reconciled? I asked my professor for clarification and he told me the story of one of his neighbors who was Latino, fit the Latino stereotype, and faced many challenges because he “looked different” from the mainstream, dominant culture. He concluded his explanation by saying: “Your case is different, you don’t look Latina; therefore, you should not have a problem fitting in; people’s perceptions about you will not be affected by perceptions about “how Latina you are.”
When I heard these words, I had two immediate reactions: First, Lia, the survivor said to herself: This is good news. I will be able to fit in; this is positive since search committees usually look for people who can fit in.” However, Lia, the immigrant woman who had come to the US when she married an American, said to herself: “There is a lot wrong about this statement: I don’t look Latina, therefore, I can’t be Latina. And this is the one reason why finding a position will be easier for me than for other Latinas who look darker than me? Of course, what went unsaid in my conversation with my professor was the issue of my accentedness, which in this country is a marker of foreigness.
This vignette reflects my experiences as a TESOL professional in the US. My physical appearance makes me an invisible minority. However, my L2 accent makes me visible, and prompts reactions like: Wow, your English is very good. Did you speak English when you came to the US? A question that I always answer by describing my EFL learning experience, my training as an EFL teacher in Argentina, my years of teaching EFL and working as a program administrator in Argentina, etc. In the US, it is my accent in English that, particularly early in my career, made my interlocutors doubt my professionalism. Or to draw on Hansen’s (2004) ideas, it was my accent that obscured my experience/value as a TESOL professional.
How different are my experiences from those of many of my MA students? Many of my MA students are nonnative speakers of English like me. However, these students come from Asian countries. These students stand out from the “mainstream” Anglo culture. In my case, I don’t stand out. Drawing on Kanno’s work, I could pass as an anglo if I wanted to—that is until I speak. In contrast, for my students, their physical features mark them as different. Even if they wished to pass as anglo, they would not be able to be so.
Now, let me fast forward to the summer of 2004, nearly 10 years after my conversation with my professor. I went to Argentina, the country where I was born and raised, and the country where I lived until I was 32 years old. I visit Argentina every year. However, this time, I was there to do research related to language proficiency and NNES teachers (TIRF grant). I decided to visit my old high school to find out whether the school would be interested in participating in the study.
My Spanish is flawless, my knowledge of Argentine events and Argentine life is up-to-date, and in-depth. In fact, I start my day by reading Argentine newspapers. I am a member of a basketball Web site, Manu Ginobili.com. Therefore, when I went to my former school, I was surprised to hear the school principal talk to me as if I were an American. She said something like: “But girl….You have lived in the US for 15 years, this country (referring to Argentina) is a different country now, the country you knew does not exist any more (referring to the economic crises of 2001). (And looking at me, from head to toe, she said): You are no longer an Argentine. You are more American than Argentine.”
When I heard these words, I felt hurt. But I knew she was right in that my identity had evolved. I was no longer the person that I was when I lived in Argentina.
I had made the wrong assumption that in Argentina, I would still be an invisible minority First, much like in the US, in Argentina I am a member of a minority group, I am Jewish, and within the Jewish community, I am also a minority, I am a Sephardic Jew. Second, I am invisible because my physical appearance makes me fit in. I look like any regular Argentine, and I don’t fit the stereotype of what an Argentine Jew looks like. However, I thought that the one important difference between my situation in Argentina and the US is that in Argentina I “sound right” (to use Gee’s 1996 term), in the sense that the way I sound should not make me be perceived as different, as an outsider, in the US., it is my accent that stigmatizes me as an “Other.”
However, as I showed in my above example, in Argentina, I am no longer perceived as having an Argentine identity.
One could theorize that the position as an “outsider” that I experience in both my first language/culture community and my second language/culture community is problematic. However, I have come to perceive my identities in both settings as an advantage. My shifting, fragmenting identities have allowed me to develop what Canagarajah’s (2004) calls a “critically informed subjectivity,” it is from this critical subjectivity that I have developed a voice that is detached from both cultures. Or to draw on Bhabha (1994), I have learned to negotiate my identify from a “third space,” defined as a space of culture in which hydrib identities can be performed and affirmed.” (p. 96)
However, arriving at this third space has not been an easy, or a painless process. In the past, I felt conflicted by the fact that I did not see myself belonging in either culture. In fact, in the past I found myself in awe of some colleagues or friends who saw themselves as fitting into the L1 and the L2 culture. For example, this is the case of Jun Liu (2004), who in spite of being a visible minority in the US, achieved what he calls “adaptive cultural transformation” from a position of dual culture. This was not my case.
Now I can admit that when I graduated with a Ph.D. degree, I still did not have a voice of my own, or I did not see myself as having a voice, and this lack of voice affected the formation of my identity and particularly my professional identity in this country. Like many other NNES professionals, I felt conflicted about my nonnativeness in English. Even though I had a doctoral degree from a widely respected university, I did not feel that I owned the English language. To draw on Widdowson’s (1994), I was able to speak English and to write in English for academic purposes. And quite well, I should say. By the time I completed my Ph.D. program I had published or was in the process of publishing several articles/chapters. However, my topics tended to be “safe,” focusing on issues related to cognitive perspective on reading and reading-to-write. In fact, I subconsciously avoided topics such as affective factors and language minority students.
So over the past few years, I have reflected on the factors that have contributed to my gaining my professional voice, to my finally taking ownership over the English language. If I were to draw on Cummins’ work on academic language development, I could say it is the length of exposure to the target language in a natural setting and my higher degree of comfort in academia that contributed to the development of my voice. However, this is not the right answer for me.
I think that the single most important factor that contributed to my finding my voice as a professional is my work/involvement in the NNEST Caucus. I often say that nonnative speaking-professionals were a non-issue in the TESOL organization or in the field, prior to Braine’s seminal (1996) colloquium at TESOL Chicago. Within the NNEST Caucus, I found a forum in which nonnative speakers were not objectified. The NNEST Caucus has given me, much like it gave other NNES, a sense of community, and it is in this community in which we have developed our strength and we have, using a first-person perspective, discussed topics such as the status of nonnative English-professionals, issues of TESOL teacher preparation, professionalism, and accentedness. More recently, we moved onto a topic that until a couple of years ago seemed to be taboo, this is the issue of language proficiency, and also recently, we stopped looking at native and nonnative English speakers as being two different species, as having discrete characteristics. Now, with today’s colloquium we have further moved away from the native/nonnative speaker dichotomy by looking at the intersection among race/ethnicity and language status, and identity.
My own work, in the area of publications, presentations and as a teacher educator, focuses on issues of mentoring of NNESTs, and I believe that this line of work has affected how people perceive me in the TESOL community. Let me clarify this point. For some colleagues, my work in this area has been characterized as relevant, appropriate because it is concerned with the notion that teacher educators are responsible for creating conditions in which all students can succeed. For other colleagues, my work has been characterized as “touchy-feely Californian” (a comment that I found to be very insulting and pejorative). And still for other colleagues, my work focusing on NNESs has been the subject ridicule. Specifically, this was the case of a colleague who recently said something like: We could organize a series of talks, workshops, and you could give a talk on “your NNS thing…” I personally think that this person feels threatened by the fact that NNE topics do no longer take a back seat to other topics.
So in the recent past, I have begun to question the focus of my work. Could it be that working on issues related to mentoring, and specifically issues of mentoring NNES professionals, is perceived much in the same light as working on issues related to the practicum course? It is something that needs to be done, right, someone needs to do it, it but at the same time it is not academic enough (it cannot be quantified), therefore, much like with the practicum course, it does not carry the same prestige as work in other areas in the TESOL field. Could it also be that issues of mentoring have been traditionally associated with women, and as such the topic is marginalized, is not well seen?
In any case, I perceive this line of work as vital since it contributes to helping teachers develop a positive self-image, regardless of whether they are native or nonnative speakers. And to do my work, I draw strength and intellectual guidance from the third space to which I previously made reference.
To conclude, it is my hope that the conversation that we are starting today will contribute to the understanding of the multiple factors that affect nonnative English-speaking professionals in the TESOL field. Ultimately, it is my hope that through these conversations we can move beyond the native/nonnative speaker dichotomy and promote the creation of conditions that contribute to strengthening the initiation of novice professionals/scholars to a field is more fair and just.
References
Braine, G., Canagarajah, S., Connor, U., Sridhar, K., Thomas, J., Chitrapu, D. (1996, March). In their own voices: Nonnative speaker professionals in TESOL. Colloquium presented at the annual meeting of the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Chicago, IL.
Canagarajah, S. (2004). Multilingual writers and the struggle for voice in academic discourse. In A. Pavlenko & A. Blackledge (Eds.), Negotiation of Identities in multilingual contexts (pp. 266-289). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Gee, J. P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideologies in discourses (2nd ed). London: Taylor & Francis.
Hansen, J. G. (2004). Invisible minorities and the nonnative English-speaking professional. In L. D. Kamhi-Stein (Ed.), Learning and teaching from experience: Perspectives on nonnative English-speaking professionals (pp. 40-55). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Kamhi-Stein, L. D. (Ed.). (2004). Learning and teaching from experience: Perspectives on Nonnative English-speaking professionals. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
Kanno, Y. (2004). Sending mixed messages: Language minority education at a Japanese public elementary school. In A. Pavlenko & A. Blackledge (Eds.), Negotiation of Identities in multilingual contexts (pp. 316-338). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Liu, J. (2001). Confessions of a nonnative English-speaking professional. In L. D. Kamhi-Stein (Ed.), Learning and teaching from experience: Perspectives on nonnative English-speaking professionals (pp. 25-39). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Widdowson, H. (1994). The ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly, 28(2), 377-389.
Lia D. Kamhi-Stein TESOL 2005, March/April
California State University, Los Angeles San Antonio, TX
Paper presented at the annual TESOL Conference. Spotlight session on race and (non)nativeness in English.
Mi Viaje: A Journey of Invisibility and Nonnativeness in English
In 1995, when I was about to complete my dissertation, and I was beginning to search for a tenure-track position, a professor I greatly admire said something like: “You are Latina but I don’t think you will have problems finding a position.” I did not quite understand what he meant by this statement. Was my being Latina a problem? But at the same time, in spite of my being Latina, I was going to find a job? How could this be explained, reconciled? I asked my professor for clarification and he told me the story of one of his neighbors who was Latino, fit the Latino stereotype, and faced many challenges because he “looked different” from the mainstream, dominant culture. He concluded his explanation by saying: “Your case is different, you don’t look Latina; therefore, you should not have a problem fitting in; people’s perceptions about you will not be affected by perceptions about “how Latina you are.”
When I heard these words, I had two immediate reactions: First, Lia, the survivor said to herself: This is good news. I will be able to fit in; this is positive since search committees usually look for people who can fit in.” However, Lia, the immigrant woman who had come to the US when she married an American, said to herself: “There is a lot wrong about this statement: I don’t look Latina, therefore, I can’t be Latina. And this is the one reason why finding a position will be easier for me than for other Latinas who look darker than me? Of course, what went unsaid in my conversation with my professor was the issue of my accentedness, which in this country is a marker of foreigness.
This vignette reflects my experiences as a TESOL professional in the US. My physical appearance makes me an invisible minority. However, my L2 accent makes me visible, and prompts reactions like: Wow, your English is very good. Did you speak English when you came to the US? A question that I always answer by describing my EFL learning experience, my training as an EFL teacher in Argentina, my years of teaching EFL and working as a program administrator in Argentina, etc. In the US, it is my accent in English that, particularly early in my career, made my interlocutors doubt my professionalism. Or to draw on Hansen’s (2004) ideas, it was my accent that obscured my experience/value as a TESOL professional.
How different are my experiences from those of many of my MA students? Many of my MA students are nonnative speakers of English like me. However, these students come from Asian countries. These students stand out from the “mainstream” Anglo culture. In my case, I don’t stand out. Drawing on Kanno’s work, I could pass as an anglo if I wanted to—that is until I speak. In contrast, for my students, their physical features mark them as different. Even if they wished to pass as anglo, they would not be able to be so.
Now, let me fast forward to the summer of 2004, nearly 10 years after my conversation with my professor. I went to Argentina, the country where I was born and raised, and the country where I lived until I was 32 years old. I visit Argentina every year. However, this time, I was there to do research related to language proficiency and NNES teachers (TIRF grant). I decided to visit my old high school to find out whether the school would be interested in participating in the study.
My Spanish is flawless, my knowledge of Argentine events and Argentine life is up-to-date, and in-depth. In fact, I start my day by reading Argentine newspapers. I am a member of a basketball Web site, Manu Ginobili.com. Therefore, when I went to my former school, I was surprised to hear the school principal talk to me as if I were an American. She said something like: “But girl….You have lived in the US for 15 years, this country (referring to Argentina) is a different country now, the country you knew does not exist any more (referring to the economic crises of 2001). (And looking at me, from head to toe, she said): You are no longer an Argentine. You are more American than Argentine.”
When I heard these words, I felt hurt. But I knew she was right in that my identity had evolved. I was no longer the person that I was when I lived in Argentina.
I had made the wrong assumption that in Argentina, I would still be an invisible minority First, much like in the US, in Argentina I am a member of a minority group, I am Jewish, and within the Jewish community, I am also a minority, I am a Sephardic Jew. Second, I am invisible because my physical appearance makes me fit in. I look like any regular Argentine, and I don’t fit the stereotype of what an Argentine Jew looks like. However, I thought that the one important difference between my situation in Argentina and the US is that in Argentina I “sound right” (to use Gee’s 1996 term), in the sense that the way I sound should not make me be perceived as different, as an outsider, in the US., it is my accent that stigmatizes me as an “Other.”
However, as I showed in my above example, in Argentina, I am no longer perceived as having an Argentine identity.
One could theorize that the position as an “outsider” that I experience in both my first language/culture community and my second language/culture community is problematic. However, I have come to perceive my identities in both settings as an advantage. My shifting, fragmenting identities have allowed me to develop what Canagarajah’s (2004) calls a “critically informed subjectivity,” it is from this critical subjectivity that I have developed a voice that is detached from both cultures. Or to draw on Bhabha (1994), I have learned to negotiate my identify from a “third space,” defined as a space of culture in which hydrib identities can be performed and affirmed.” (p. 96)
However, arriving at this third space has not been an easy, or a painless process. In the past, I felt conflicted by the fact that I did not see myself belonging in either culture. In fact, in the past I found myself in awe of some colleagues or friends who saw themselves as fitting into the L1 and the L2 culture. For example, this is the case of Jun Liu (2004), who in spite of being a visible minority in the US, achieved what he calls “adaptive cultural transformation” from a position of dual culture. This was not my case.
Now I can admit that when I graduated with a Ph.D. degree, I still did not have a voice of my own, or I did not see myself as having a voice, and this lack of voice affected the formation of my identity and particularly my professional identity in this country. Like many other NNES professionals, I felt conflicted about my nonnativeness in English. Even though I had a doctoral degree from a widely respected university, I did not feel that I owned the English language. To draw on Widdowson’s (1994), I was able to speak English and to write in English for academic purposes. And quite well, I should say. By the time I completed my Ph.D. program I had published or was in the process of publishing several articles/chapters. However, my topics tended to be “safe,” focusing on issues related to cognitive perspective on reading and reading-to-write. In fact, I subconsciously avoided topics such as affective factors and language minority students.
So over the past few years, I have reflected on the factors that have contributed to my gaining my professional voice, to my finally taking ownership over the English language. If I were to draw on Cummins’ work on academic language development, I could say it is the length of exposure to the target language in a natural setting and my higher degree of comfort in academia that contributed to the development of my voice. However, this is not the right answer for me.
I think that the single most important factor that contributed to my finding my voice as a professional is my work/involvement in the NNEST Caucus. I often say that nonnative speaking-professionals were a non-issue in the TESOL organization or in the field, prior to Braine’s seminal (1996) colloquium at TESOL Chicago. Within the NNEST Caucus, I found a forum in which nonnative speakers were not objectified. The NNEST Caucus has given me, much like it gave other NNES, a sense of community, and it is in this community in which we have developed our strength and we have, using a first-person perspective, discussed topics such as the status of nonnative English-professionals, issues of TESOL teacher preparation, professionalism, and accentedness. More recently, we moved onto a topic that until a couple of years ago seemed to be taboo, this is the issue of language proficiency, and also recently, we stopped looking at native and nonnative English speakers as being two different species, as having discrete characteristics. Now, with today’s colloquium we have further moved away from the native/nonnative speaker dichotomy by looking at the intersection among race/ethnicity and language status, and identity.
My own work, in the area of publications, presentations and as a teacher educator, focuses on issues of mentoring of NNESTs, and I believe that this line of work has affected how people perceive me in the TESOL community. Let me clarify this point. For some colleagues, my work in this area has been characterized as relevant, appropriate because it is concerned with the notion that teacher educators are responsible for creating conditions in which all students can succeed. For other colleagues, my work has been characterized as “touchy-feely Californian” (a comment that I found to be very insulting and pejorative). And still for other colleagues, my work focusing on NNESs has been the subject ridicule. Specifically, this was the case of a colleague who recently said something like: We could organize a series of talks, workshops, and you could give a talk on “your NNS thing…” I personally think that this person feels threatened by the fact that NNE topics do no longer take a back seat to other topics.
So in the recent past, I have begun to question the focus of my work. Could it be that working on issues related to mentoring, and specifically issues of mentoring NNES professionals, is perceived much in the same light as working on issues related to the practicum course? It is something that needs to be done, right, someone needs to do it, it but at the same time it is not academic enough (it cannot be quantified), therefore, much like with the practicum course, it does not carry the same prestige as work in other areas in the TESOL field. Could it also be that issues of mentoring have been traditionally associated with women, and as such the topic is marginalized, is not well seen?
In any case, I perceive this line of work as vital since it contributes to helping teachers develop a positive self-image, regardless of whether they are native or nonnative speakers. And to do my work, I draw strength and intellectual guidance from the third space to which I previously made reference.
To conclude, it is my hope that the conversation that we are starting today will contribute to the understanding of the multiple factors that affect nonnative English-speaking professionals in the TESOL field. Ultimately, it is my hope that through these conversations we can move beyond the native/nonnative speaker dichotomy and promote the creation of conditions that contribute to strengthening the initiation of novice professionals/scholars to a field is more fair and just.
References
Braine, G., Canagarajah, S., Connor, U., Sridhar, K., Thomas, J., Chitrapu, D. (1996, March). In their own voices: Nonnative speaker professionals in TESOL. Colloquium presented at the annual meeting of the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Chicago, IL.
Canagarajah, S. (2004). Multilingual writers and the struggle for voice in academic discourse. In A. Pavlenko & A. Blackledge (Eds.), Negotiation of Identities in multilingual contexts (pp. 266-289). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Gee, J. P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideologies in discourses (2nd ed). London: Taylor & Francis.
Hansen, J. G. (2004). Invisible minorities and the nonnative English-speaking professional. In L. D. Kamhi-Stein (Ed.), Learning and teaching from experience: Perspectives on nonnative English-speaking professionals (pp. 40-55). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Kamhi-Stein, L. D. (Ed.). (2004). Learning and teaching from experience: Perspectives on Nonnative English-speaking professionals. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
Kanno, Y. (2004). Sending mixed messages: Language minority education at a Japanese public elementary school. In A. Pavlenko & A. Blackledge (Eds.), Negotiation of Identities in multilingual contexts (pp. 316-338). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Liu, J. (2001). Confessions of a nonnative English-speaking professional. In L. D. Kamhi-Stein (Ed.), Learning and teaching from experience: Perspectives on nonnative English-speaking professionals (pp. 25-39). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Widdowson, H. (1994). The ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly, 28(2), 377-389.
# posted by Kuki @ 1:15 PM 
Comments:
<< Home
I was really surprised and somehow bothered the first time I saw adult ed and community college classes called "Accent Reduction." I couldn't articulate exactly why it bothered me, but I felt that pronunciation work, with the intention of improving communication, would be a better description. Accent reduction seemed to imply that there was something wrong with having an accent.
I will never forget how you told us in TESL 570 that you didn't want to eliminate your accent because you saw it as part of your identity. I really liked that.
I will never forget how you told us in TESL 570 that you didn't want to eliminate your accent because you saw it as part of your identity. I really liked that.
Thank you for sharing this paper! Since I didn't go to the conference, I didn't think I would have the chance to hear/read it.
From your paper, I see that you have found a group of people you can identify with and relate to. And it was through this that you found your own voice. I guess for me, I'm still looking for that group of people to which I can belong. And perhaps when I do find it, I will be able to find my own voice.
Post a Comment
From your paper, I see that you have found a group of people you can identify with and relate to. And it was through this that you found your own voice. I guess for me, I'm still looking for that group of people to which I can belong. And perhaps when I do find it, I will be able to find my own voice.
<< Home
