UNIT 5 LANGUAGES AND IDENTITY

Identities and exchanges

 How do languages reflect cultures?

TOWARD A GLOBAL BABEL?

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a)The continent who has the greatest variety of languages is Africa with languages spoken reaching 1995
languages.The part of the world that has the greatest variety of languages compared to its area is Papua New
Guinea because its not as big as Africa and it almost has the same numbers of languages as Africa

b)The languages that will most likely disappear in 2050 are 90% of the worlds spoken languages and the languages
that will be 10 most spoken languages are(Mandarin,English,Arabic,)

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Sharing words means sharing worlds
1) What kind of document do you think this is?
Describe it and say what it symbolizes.

Overview
2) Which of the following themes are dealt with in the four texts?

racism communication difference solidarity

 language war hatred nature

3) Say in which documents language is used as a tool :

- to entertain or to denounce
- to define and identify
- to bridge cultural gaps
- to communicate without ambiguity

4) Which title would best suit each text?

White comedy 4 Junction 1 Representation 2 Never mince words 3

5) Zooming in the four texts

TEXT 1
1. Which country do the two men repairing the shovel come from? France and England
2. Do they speak the same language? Is its lack of accuracy an impediment to mutual understanding? No they speak
different languages
3. Is this new language seen in a positive or negative light by the listeners? Justify.

TEXT 2
1. What does the old man do for a living?fisherman
2. In what way do his views on the sea diverge from those of the young ones?
3. What rhetorical device is referred to in this passage?
4. To what extent does gender influence the perception of a word?

TEXT 3
1. What kind of school does the child go to? What are his special needs?
2. What are Mrs Peters’s and Siobbhan’s special needs?
3. Choose the right adjectives to describe the narrator’s attitude in this extract and justify your choice:
sarcastic pragmatic idealistic genuine straightforward realistic scornful
4. Do you agree with the narrator?

TEXT 4
1. What do many of the words have in common?repetition of color white
2. Say why you think words have “laundered” or “whitened”.to clean@
3. What is humour in this poem due to?
4. To what purpose does the author resort to humour?

6) Vocabulary: find the words with the same roots

to stroll (verb  noun) a stroll
a contestant (noun  verb) to contest
foreign (adjective  noun) a foreigner
loose (adjective  verb) to loosen
fluent (adjective  noun) fluency
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to think (verb  noun  adjective) a thought/thoughtful

7) Throughout the 4 texts, find:

a tool: shovel an organ: liver 2 diseases headache / blackwater fever

8) Complete the chart

TEXT 1 TEXT 2
definitions definitions
- to walk in a leisurely way =to stroll
- the leader of a gang of labourers =ganger - an anchored float serving as a navigation mark =buoy
- a long narrow section forming the handle of a tool = - a person who takes part in a competition =contestant
shaft - to refuse to give(something due or desired) =withheld
- to pull or wrist suddenly and violently =wrenched
- to repair =mending their shovels
Synonyms Antonyms
fellow = man wild tamed
wicked 
TEXT 3 TEXT 4
antonyms definitions
stupid  smart an offensive term to refer to a person who is not
difficult easy white=black jack
to borrow  to lend
to call out to someone to attract attention=

9) Fill in the blanks with a relative pronoun

1. Sometimes those who love the sea say bad things of her.
2. Misunderstandings often come from phrases which may be wrongly understood.
3. Hemingway, whose famous novel The Old Man and The Sea was written in 1952, lived in Cuba.
4. The way which you speak can often be revealing of your education.
5. Mark Haddon’s novel, whose narrator needs to go to a special school, uses an unexpected point of view.
6. Whether you like poetry or not, you cannot deny the poem which Benjamin Zephaniah wrote is original.
7. Ernest Hemingway, whose many novels are American classics, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
8. His distinctive writing style which. is characterized by economy and understatement, influenced 20th-century
fiction.
9. Siobbhan,whose students have special needs, must be very patient and caring.
10. People who don’t speak the same language manage to communicate when they really need it.

10) Connect the two sentences with a relative pronoun to have only one sentence. You might need to change
the order of the sentences and to change a few details.
1. They heard a language which wasn’t heir own.
2. A large fellow was giving instructions who was English.
3. The old man whose vision of the sea differs from that of the young fishermen is an outsider
4. Mark Haddon who
claims it is not a novel about Asperger’s syndrome, but about difference.
5. Benjamin Zephaniah is a poet, novelist, playwright, children's writer and reggae artist who was born in 1958 in
Birmingham.
6. His poetry is strongly influenced by the music and poetry of Jamaica and what he calls ‘street politics’which
He calls his poetry political, musical, radical, relevant.
7. His first book of poetry for children was called Talking Turkeys which had to go into an emergency reprint after
just six weeks because it was extremely popular.

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8. A hospital in West London has named a wing after him in recognition of his work whose work is considered
inspiring and realistic.

11) Again, complete with a relative pronoun.

1. The world tends to speak the languages of the nations which are economically or militarily the most
powerful.
2. In the first text, they spoke a language which was partly French and partly English.
3. The men who repaired the shovel understood one another perfectly well.
4. The language which they spoke was a mixture of distorted English and French.
5. The old man in Hemingway’s novel, whose physical existence is almost over, is called
Santiago.
6. The fishermen who referred to the sea as “el mar” give it masculine features.
7. The narrator in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a boy who has autism-related
disorders.
8. The novel is narrated by a 15-year-old boy who. describes himself as a “a mathematician with some
behavioural difficulties".
9. The narrator, whose uncommon perspective of the world suggests that everyone, in fact, has a
subjective point of view, suffers from a syndrome which is never specifically stated.
10. Benjamin Zephaniah hated the dead image which. the establishment had given poetry.
11. Zephaniah proclaimed that he was out to popularize poetry by reaching people who did not read books.

12) Finish the sentences

1. She speaks only English (but she’d like to speak other languages). She wishes to learn other langauges
2. His Spanish is so poor. If only he could perfect his Spanish.
3. If you don’t speak English at all, it is high time to start learning English
4. He wants to learn Japanese, but he finds it difficult. He wishes it becomes easier
5. People would prefer to understand one another. They’d rather they …………………………………………
6. Mark Haddon’s main character wishes ………………………………………………………………………...

13) DIFFERENT WAYS TO SPEAK: match the verbs and their definition
- to enunciate – to voice – to gabble -– to babble (to prattle) - to utter – to stammer

1. To talk rapidly and continuously in a foolish, excited or incomprehensible way to gabble

2. To say or pronounce clearly to enunciate
3. To talk rapidly and unintelligibly to babble
4. To speak with involuntary pauses or repetitions to stammer
5. To make a sound with one’s voice to utter
6. To express in words to voice

14) DIFFERENT INTENSITIES: again, match them

to mouth < to whisper < to mutter < to shout < to scream < to yell < to shriek < to holler < to bellow

1. To shout in a loud, sharp way to scream

2. To say something in a low or barely audible, especially in dissatisfaction or irritation to mutter
3. To utter a loud cry, as an expression of strong emotion to shout
4. To move the lips in silence as if saying something to mouth
5. To give a long, loud, cry expressing emotion or pain to yell
6. High-pitched piercing sound, out of terror, pain or excitement to shriek
7. To speak very softly, especially in the sake of secrecy to whisper
8. To emit a loud cry to holler
9. To emit a deep loud roar, typically in pain or anger to bellow

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SHARING WORDS MEANS SHARING WORLDS
accomplishment - contemporary - convey – cultural – culture – debates – emotionally - extracts – from -
implicit – individual – least - linguistic - poem – principles - reflecting – reflects – relationships – respect
- society - style – tone – understanding -

This document is made up of four different texts varying in their linguistic styles, tones, and narrative
voices, but all are linked by a common theme: how words can convey messages, ideas, or symbols.

The first three documents are extracts from contemporary novels and the last one is a poem. They all refer
to the linguistic and cultural differences sparked off by the meaning of lexicon. The third text questions
the normality of words, thus debates the normality of human beings. As a matter of fact, the implicit
message in this set of documents is that apparently, any kind of communication is intrinsically and
intimately linked to ambiguity. Indeed, no message can be monosemic because the choice of words is the
reflection of an individual's emotions, principles, and understanding.

Unfortunately, language does not always unite people. Indeed, history has shown that a common language
and culture couldn’t stop people from killing one another within the same countries (civil war). It may
even become a barrier when it comes to debates or verbal sparring matches.

Some people study languages either for self-accomplishment or because they are enthralled by it and by
the culture it reflects. Some may study their parents’ mother tongue because they are emotionally
involved with their country of origin. Last but not least, speaking someone’s language can contribute to
reinforcing respect and mutual relationships.

Language is not only words, structures, and grammar. It’s also the main element that reflects culture,
ideas, and society.

When you take time to study a language, you show respect for a people and a culture.

INTERVIEW WITH WADE DAVIS ABOUT DYING LANGUAGES, 2009

Journalist: In your new book, you write about the alarming rate at which the world
languages are being lost. Tell me more about that and more particularly why it is
happening.

WD: Well, you know, it’s interesting, you hear so much about loss of biological diversity
and so little about the loss of cultural diversity and the key indicator language loss and
linguists believe there are roughly 7,000 languages spoken today but astonishingly, there
is a kind of uniformed consensus among linguists that half of them aren’t being taught to
children, which means effectively they’re more or less on the route to extinction. That
means that, by any definition, we’re living through a time when half of humanity’s
intellectual, social and spiritual legacy is being lost.
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Journalist: Well, I was going to ask because, for some, the obvious question might be: who cares? The world
would be a wonderful place if we all spoke the same language.

WD: Yes, a lot of people ask me: “Wouldn’t the world be a wonderful place if we all spoke the same language?”
and my answer is always: “What a great idea, let’s make it Mohawk, Kadu, Tibetan, Quechua”, and suddenly, you
begin to make a feel of what it’s like to be silenced, to have no ability to pass on the wisdom of your ancestors.

You would lose your own language.

WD “How would you feel as a native speaker in English if you couldn’t

communicate the wonder of who you are – because languages are just indicators
of culture loss. Some people say: “Why does it matter if a culture disappears?
Why does it matter to me living in Toronto if the Mandelian Northern Kenya
disappears?” The most important lesson of this book (The Wayfinders), and I
think the lesson of anthropology is that we’re not talking here of romantic
nostalgia, we’re not talking even about human rights, we’re talking about
geopolitical survival. Because if there’s one lesson in anthropology, it’s that
cultures are not trivial, it’s not decorative; it’s not just songs, prayers….. It
ultimately is a body of moral and ethical values that we place around the individual, to keep at bay the barbaric
heart that History teaches us lies just beneath the surface of all of us and all cultures.

It’s really cultures that allow social species to make sense out of sensations, to find order and meaning in a universe
that may have none. It’s culture that allows us, as Lincoln said “Always to reach for the better angels of a nation”.
If you want to know what happens when a culture is lost and individuals survive as the shadows of their former
selves, cast adrift in (…) a world that often involves disaffection, you only have to look at the sort of chaotic points
of collapse around the world, the kind of manias that emerge in the wake of that collapse, whether it’s the killing
fields of Pol Pot, with his fantasy about eliminating European influences and create the new man or whether it’s the
insanity of Al Qaida that invokes a kind of 7th c5entury world of Islam that never existed but has to be presumed to
exist to rationalize a certain kind of homicidal rage.

You know, culture is what allows us to be civilized, so

when you see this kind of flame, this increasing inferno
sweeping around the world in such a short period of
time, it’s something that really has serious geopolitical
ramifications.

READING COMPREHENSION
An interview about dying languages with Wade Davis
« A rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and defender of all life’s
diversity. » David Suzuki

Wade Davis (born in 1953) is a Canadian anthropologist,

ethnobotanist, author, and photographer whose work has focused on
worldwide indigenous cultures. He is Professor of Anthropology at
the University of British Columbia.
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 1) What is the main theme of the book Wade Davis is talking about?

2) What does Wade Davis find surprising?

3) According to Wade Davis, what does it basically mean to be losing half of the world’s languages?

4) How efficient do you think Wade Davis.s answer about a universal language is?

5) What is at stake when a language disappears?

6) What is at the core of a culture and how important is it in a society?

7) What do cultures allow society to do?

8) What do you think of the examples given about the consequences of a loss of a culture.
Can you think of others?

9) Summarize the conclusion of this interview about dying languages.

10) Do you consider Wade Davis is quite rightly sounding the alarm or that he is a doomwatcher?

READING AND COMPARING ARTICLES

LANGUAGES & SUICIDE
CHINTA PUXLEY, The Canadian Press
June 3, 2016

WINNIPEG—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says restoring indigenous languages is

key to preventing youth suicides in First Nation communities but stopped short of promising to recognize them as
official languages.
Trudeau told a virtual town hall with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in Winnipeg that languages are at
the core of indigenous culture and identity. Communities that do a better job of teaching their own language and
culture see “massive decreases in suicide rates,” Trudeau said.
“This is something that we know is essential,” he said Friday. “As an indicator of pride and identity, belonging and
culture, indigenous languages are essential.”
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Trudeau pointed to the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on residential schools — released a
year ago — which found preventing children from learning their own language was a powerful tool for
assimilation.
“We need to counter that by celebrating languages,” Trudeau said.
He wouldn’t say whether the federal government will recognize indigenous tongues alongside French and English
as Canada’s official languages but said he looks forward to discussing the idea with chiefs.
A rash of suicides, with some victims as young as 13, has prompted several First Nations to declare states of
emergency in the past few months.
Liberal MLA Judy Klassen, who represents a northern Manitoba riding, told the legislature Thursday that she and
others from her home community of St. Theresa Point First Nation carry around box-cutters because “you never
know when you will come across a child hanging from a tree.”
“This is our nightmarish reality,” she said.
Canada has failed for centuries to live up to the treaties signed with indigenous people, Trudeau said following a
speech to the country’s municipal leaders. The Liberals have put over $8 billion on the table over five years to
improve the standard of living for indigenous people but change will not happen overnight, Trudeau said. Closing
the gap for First Nations is “not a problem that is going to be fixed quickly.”
Some say elevating indigenous languages to official status would be a huge step forward.
Grand Chief Sheila North Wilson, who represents northern Manitoba First Nations, said suicides crises have
become all too common in some communities.
“Things stabilize but . . . it never really fully goes away,” said North Wilson, head of Manitoba Keewatinowi
Okimakanak.
Part of the despair felt by many stems from past racist policies which sought to make people ashamed of their
culture and language, she said. Officially recognizing indigenous languages would give First Nations their “rightful
place” in this country, she said.
It’s ridiculous to fly into a remote northern reserve in Manitoba and hear the flight attendant give a safety message
in English before putting on a French recording, North Wilson said.
“They should be broadcasting them in Cree because we want the elders to understand,” she said. “That’s not
honouring them as people.”

Cultural will cannot be outsourced

BARBARA KAY | May 17, 2016 THE NATIONAL POST

Over the weekend, the Globe and Mail published a cri du coeur by Adrienne Clarkson about the
importance of language, titled All Canadians Must Tell Their Stories. The piece is stylistically elegant, as
we would expect from our former governor general, but not polemically coherent.
Clarkson’s central thesis is that language is vital because “it is the basis from which we can act;” “we
cannot act until we tell our own story in our own language;” and “(w)e can learn who we are only by
knowing the story of which we are the heroes.” These abstract concepts have a nice ring, until we parse
them. Who is “we”? What does “our own language” mean? What does it mean, linguistically, to “act”?
What constitutes the “story” that makes us “heroes”?
In her own case, Clarkson’s native language — her “own” — was Cantonese. Her “story” is
multiculturalism: how, as an immigrant, she became truly Canadian when she learned both French and
English; and it is in these languages, not her “own,” that she tells her “story.” Thus, the basis of her ability
to “act” in Canada was her acquisition of new languages. Adding to the confusion is her assertion that,

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“People cannot feel they belong if they do not have access to the languages in which they feel the most
comfortable, even if English and French are the official languages.”
As we finally learn, she does not mean “people” in general here — she herself became completely
comfortable in our official languages — rather, she means aboriginals. The thrust of this piece is that
aboriginal languages are dying, and they must be saved. So using her own story as a paradigm to
illustrate the importance of one’s “own” language has no relevance to what she really means to say.
Moving on to the importance of preserving aboriginal languages, Clarkson praises New Zealand for its
approach to the Maori people, whose culture and vocabulary permeate society in general. She strongly
implies that Canada could take a leaf from New Zealand’s book. But New Zealand is a tiny country with
one aboriginal culture and language to work with (150,000 New Zealand natives speak a single
language). By contrast, Canada, by Clarkson’s own calculations, is home to 250,000 people spread out
over a huge geographic area, whose mother tongues originate from more than 60 indigenous language
groups. So when she complains that “there is no feeling that our indigenous culture is as pervasive as it is
in New Zealand,” she makes no sense, for she uses the word “culture” in the singular, which applies in
New Zealand, but not in Canada, where there are multiple indigenous cultures (Cree, Inuktitut, etc).
Now we come to Clarkson’s actual proposal, namely, having “reaffirmed the central role of French and of
bilingualism in Canada,” and given that indigenous language is “a human right,” it is “surely” time “for
the same to happen with indigenous languages. This is a national imperative.” In other words, the
teaching of indigenous languages alongside French and English is a “national imperative.” But which of
Canada’s indigenous languages should be taught, Clarkson does not say. Cree? Inuktitut? Ojibway? All
60? One shudders at the political nightmare such triage would conjure.
Language is organic to culture. It is up to the people of a particular culture whether or not their language
survives. […]
Nobody has the right to suppress a group’s language, as Canada did in the residential schools, but a
language does not have a “right” in itself to live in perpetuity, as Clarkson seems to suggest. Only
speakers of a language have rights. To those indigenous peoples demonstrating the cultural will to
perpetuate their languages, we owe legal and material support in creating an optimal environment for
their children’s language acquisition, with written materials to supplement their oral traditions and
training in language teaching for native educators. But all such external support is useless if parents don’t
want to speak to their children in their own languages.
Clarkson’s assumption that First Nations’ languages can only be saved if non-native people start learning
them is maternalistic and matronizing. Languages survive if they are useful, and/or if they are loved.
Cultural will cannot be outsourced.

Work in teams and answer these questions about the articles.

1. What is Trudeau’s take on including Canada’s indigenous languages as official languages?

2. Explain Adrienne Clarkson’s ‘cri du cœur’.

3. How does Trudeau suggest we can begin to counter the effects or residential schools?

4. Why does MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly) Judy Klassen carry around box cutters?

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5. How does Adrienne Clarkson’s story have little to do with the plight of the aboriginal people and their
languages, according to the author? She learned French and English but her mother tongue is
Cantonese,she has learned to be a Canadian,

6. Name one similarity and one difference between the Maori people and Canadian aboriginals.

Both colonized, Maori 150 000 people and 1 language while Canada 250 000 aboriginal 60 languages

7. Why does North Wilson think that it would be best if indigenous languages were official recognised?

It will give indigenous languages theyre rightful place

8. Why does North Wilson say that it makes no sense for flight messages to be in English? What is the
context?

9. Do languages have rights? Explain the author’s point of view.

Languages don’t have rights but only speakers do.

10. What does the author suggest happens when you try to force non-native speakers to learn a language?

Comparison & Contrast Paragraphs

Write a paragraph comparing or contrasting the two articles.

In a comparison paragraph, you emphasize the similarities between two subjects.

In a contrast paragraph, you emphasize the differences between two subjects.

Keywords
Compare Contrast
akin to just as although in comparison
alike like but in contrast to
also likewise by comparison instead of
analogous to on a similar note, conversely on the contrary
as well as same despite on the other hand
both similar differ one difference
each similarly different otherwise
in the same way whereas different from unlike
even though variation
however yet

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