More videos: suggestions welcome!

Funding applications, some already successful and others ongoing, mean that a start can be made on a second series of videos to complement those already done – http://www.languages.dk/archive/video_data/Scottish_Island_Voices.pdf.

There will probably be a broad (though not exclusive) “environmental” theme in the second series. Appeals in the local press and other local contacts have generated interest, and suggested topics so far include the following:

Croftwork
Peatcutting
Children’s Parliament/youthwork
Fishing
Fishfarming
Tourism and Hospitality/visitor centres
Environmental sustainability/research
Marine environment
Boat building
Outdoor leisure activities (surfing etc)

Right now we’re having beautiful weather, and I’ve already got some nice pictures. The plan is to follow the same format of the original series: short scripted “plain language” documentary introductions, together with authentic speech “talking head” interviews. Anyone reading this, particularly if they’re at some distance from here, is welcome to get in touch with further suggestions or comments.

Musing on musico-linguistic linkage

This blog is broadly meant to provide some sort of reflective hinterland for my language work, but a recent spurt of recording and performing with the band in which I sometimes play has prompted me to think again about the links between language and music. It’s perhaps a bit of a diversion, but music has long been held to have a particular salience in relation to Gaelic language and culture, so it shouldn’t be irrelevant.

A Google search under “musico-linguistics” unearthed this article -http://facta.junis.ni.ac.yu/lal/lal2005/lal2005-10.pdf - by Mihailo Antovic, which provides a summary of research trends and developments in this area in the past 30 to 40 years. To “summarise the summary” a number of folk have taken an interest in using a linguistic model of analysis as a template for investigating music. At a theoretical level there has been some progress in aligning language and music analysis in a broader cognitive science context. Neurological investigation has also identified areas of overlap.

Though I haven’t studied the field it makes sense to me that features common to both language and music, such as rhythm, stress, and contrastive pitch should have some common genesis. I can probably take or leave (though preferably leave…) the intricacies of the latest advances in Optimality Theory, but I am interested in how we learn both language and music, and whether/how progress in one can support progress in the other.

I suppose my questions and concerns from what I’ve read and/or thought about so far are twofold.

Firstly, if such a thing as a “Universal Grammar” of both language and music is conceivable, then on the music side of things it needs to be inclusive enough to embrace not just the Western classical tradition, which appears to have been the focus of early study in this field (for example by Bernstein), but all other strands of musical tradition across the world – perhaps begging the question of what we mean by the term “music”.

Secondly, again in relation to music, a unifying model must surely describe “musical competence” as it applies to the population at large, not just to individual perfomers and/or composers. If, by analogy with language, music is to be viewed as a natural feature of human behaviour which we all share to some degree or other, then a focus on the output of exceptional exponents risks missing the general point – probably by some distance. Particularly in relation to my own “applied” interest in music learning/teaching – and how that relates to language learning/teaching – it strikes me that Music Therapy approaches in particular, which explore/develop the musical in us all, may have something to offer.

The above are two pretty fundamental concerns at a theoretical/conceptual, maybe “rarefied”, level. In terms of practical application my general interest would be in how music activity and acquisition may influence/assist language activity and acquisition, and perhaps vice versa. And, given my location, I would take a particular, though not exclusive, interest in this field in relation to Gaelic maintenance and transfer. I guess that narrows the focus somewhat. To be continued?

Meanwhile, back to the band… www.myspace.com/bhibeo

Podcast postscript

I had a premature Grumpy Old Man moment on the subject of podcasting on the POOLS blog some time back: Podcast Shmodcast. Premature as, firstly, I’m (still) not that old, and secondly, here I am doing one myself now: Podcast: Gordon Wells – Scottish Island Voices for National University of Ireland, Galway, talking about Island Voices with a view to finding partners for expansion/development. The terminological debate interests me no more now than it did before, but it’s a matter of some speculation as to whether the piece itself will stimulate more or a different reaction than a written piece would have. A sign of the multimedia times, when the spoken word finds/reasserts its place alongside the written?

European Award for Languages: a perspective on “community languages”

So, the news is out, and now the prize has finally been collected - www.gordonwells.co.uk/pages/news_archive7.html. The occasion was formal without being grandiose, and a useful opportunity to meet other people doing interesting things in the language teaching field. The speeches were generally kept brief – which didn’t necessarily exclude the chance to make some challenging points. Lots of people are exercised by the shrinking take-up of languages in UK schools.

Heartening for me was the high profile given to various Community Language initiatives – with prizes also going to a primary Tamil project, and a teacher training course taking in Arabic, Mandarin, Punjabi, and Urdu. Those of us living in an Anglophone world may consider ourselves lucky to have instant access to a language with the all-pervasive and international reach of English, but there’s a less welcome flipside to that coin. For starters, in a world in which everyone speaks English where’s the advantage in speaking ONLY English? Yet “English only” is probably what most “native” English speakers speak. I’m afraid the Anglophone world generally has a pretty monolingual notion of what language competence entails. It’s when you engage with the other language communities in the UK - for example Gaelic or Hindi/Urdu/Punjabi in my own experience – that you begin to appreciate the wider communicative horizons that bilingualism naturally offers.

Integral to bilingual competence is the exercise of extended choice. Every bilingual has a choice of linguistic codes on which to draw, and code-switching and code-mixing  are perfectly natural and productive responses to that choice. That there are pockets of working bilingualism still existing in the wider monolingual Anglophone environment means that there are alternative and liberating models of language competence close at hand. To the extent that wider society is open-minded enough to acknowledge, accept, and learn from this happy situation then there remain grounds for hope that native English language skills can become a springboard to an extended language competence, rather than a recipe for complacency and a needlessly restricted communicative range. “Aye, dream on”, some might say. It’s certainly a big ask and I wouldn’t want to underestimate the scale of the task, but recognising through awards like this the potential contribution that community languages have to make is probably a useful first step.

Island Voices/Guthan nan Eilean: background thinking

The “Island Voices/Guthan nan Eilean” project (www.languages.dk/archive/video_data/Scottish_Island_Voices.pdf) was conceived as an exercise in teaching materials development. Its primary purpose is to help people learn languages. It has also been an immensely enjoyable piece of work to produce – trying to capture the “day to day creativity” of a bilingual community. It has certainly sparked interest beyond a narrowly educational one. Over the summer of 2007 it formed a part of the annual “Art on the map” trail, with the videos being played on a loop at Nunton Steadings in Benbecula. Pasted below are the introductory comments that I wrote for any interested viewers. I’d like to take the project further. Any comments or suggestions welcome.

“Art on the Map” 

We rely on our power to think in order to make sense of ourselves and the world in which we live. Our thoughts take shape in words. Language is fundamental to the way we find or create meaning in our lives. 

Yet we are not born with it. Every one of us goes through a creative process by which we learn to recognise and produce particular sounds, and organise them into patterns which have a shared significance for ourselves and those around us. And the patterns allow an infinite variety of shifting combinations, freeing us all to constantly mean something new and different every time we open our mouths to speak.

Generally we take this highly intricate complexity for granted, so naturally engrained is it in our everyday lives. We rarely acknowledge it, let alone celebrate it. Sometimes, however, the existence side by side of two distinct linguistic systems, for example English and Gaelic, presents a choice and may make us stop and think a bit about “everyday language”, and perhaps appreciate it more. The Uist communities of the early twenty-first century, through their day-to-day sharing of two highly differentiated yet equally valid “methods of delivering meaning”, offer the opportunity for reflection on a remarkable human characteristic.

In this series of short films the documentaries offer “slices of life and work” in the Uists. While they were undeniably fun to make, their function is really to establish a context. They are therefore, in an important sense, subsidiary to the interviews with real people talking naturally about their life or work. Most of the interviewees are bilingual, and offer “two takes” on their world. The monolingual viewer, confronted with an opaque wall of sound in an unknown language, may be alerted to an alternative and intricate way of making meaning. The bilingual viewer may reflect on the richness of choice available to them with their varied linguistic repertoire, and consider the value of maintaining it. The language learner can look forward to making the once opaque seem quite transparent.

The project is created, at heart, for learners – those who see inherent value in continuing to extend their expressive range. Yet some broader benefit may also be seen if we are all reminded of the unique creative capacity that we share – the natural art that is natural language. What people say about their daily lives may sometimes seem quite unremarkable. How they say it, when you do stop to think about it, is actually beyond words.

Gordon Wells, Benbecula, 14/07/07, www.gordonwells.co.uk