Linguistics
professors encourage cultural understanding
By Carolyn
Gonzales
Linguistics
Professors David Margolin and Zouhair Maalej are teaching courses
this spring that encourage understanding culture and people
through language.
Every
national society in the world is multilingual in some sense,
but some are more so than others, said Margolin, who is
teaching a course on societal bilingualism. He said that in
the United States we tend to see ourselves as one country, one
language, and believe that the rest of the world thinks the
same way.
The
fact is that most people in the world speak more than one language
and therefore have a different world view, he said, adding
that there are different ways to view the world and each is
appropriate and valuable.
In the
United States we tend to see ourselves as one country, one
language, and believe that the rest of the world thinks the
same way.
David
Margolin
Margolin speaks
English, Spanish, French, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and
Faroese, a language spoken in the Faro Islands in the north Atlantic.
He points to a theoretical background to explain what it means
to speak more than one language. To some Native Americans in the
United States who have lost land and been oppressed, their native
language can imply failure. English, on the other hand, represents
access to jobs and the mainstream.
That particular
model is seen the world over, said Margolin, but things are
changing both in the United States and other places where young
people are shifting more toward the minority language.
Margolin
spent nine months in Honduras as a Fulbright scholar working
with a bilingual teaching project with the Tawahka, a small
ethnic group who live in the northeastern jungles. They
represented the first indigenous people to be trained at a university
to teach bilingually, he said.
Margolin
said that the Tawahkas are, for the most part, trilingual. They
speak their local language, the regional language, Miskitu,
and Spanish.
During
the course, Margolin and his students will look at the linguistic
trends in some of these places. They will look at examples of
language stability as well as situations with great change.
Zouhair
Maalej is a visiting Fulbright scholar from Tunisia who is exploring
the differences in the use of metaphor in English and Arabic.
His course targets language in human interaction.
Maalej examines linguistic differences used to express time,
emotion, gender, proper names, advertising, translation and
sign language. He came to UNM, in part, because of the strength
of its sign language program.
When
expressing emotion, there is a recurring theme of embodiment.
English speakers will express anger, Im about to
explode. The body is the container for anger. In Arabic,
specifically Tunisian Arabic, the heart is the container or
host of emotion, Maalej said.
He said
that it is universal for humans to take abstract concepts and
embody them, but it differs from culture to culture how those
concepts are expressed.
In English,
someone would say, He broke her heart. In Arabic,
that isnt metaphorical because it is taboo to talk about
love emotions outside of the relationship. Love can be abstractly
described in Arabic, however, as madness or that to be in love
is to be dying, he said.
Both Margolin
and Maalej say that the first language an individual learns
influences the speakers use and perception of subsequently
learned languages.
We
can speak to each other in English, but my perception of English
is colored by the models and culture of my native language,
Maalej said. My understanding of English will never be
the same.
Margolin
said that the second language is layered on the model of the
first. One can learn the vocabulary, syntax and structure of
multiple languages, but the first language is always an influence.
Take
the concept of woman, Maalej said. The
concept is rooted in experience, culture and association. There
is shared understanding and overlap in the perception of woman,
but not understanding culturally what woman means can lead to
miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Learning
the tools of the language is but a small part of really understanding
the language in context. You have to live in that culture
and see how it functions, Margolin said.
Maalej
and Margolin agree on the value of learning multiple languages
in order to understand the worlds people and cultures.
Language
is the tool of diplomacy, Margolin said.