Just Dance

Last Thursday I went to see a friend's senior project.  She is a dance major, so she talked some and then she danced some.  She quoted some famous dancer who talked about how dance expresses what words cannot.  When she danced at the end she invited other people in the audience to come dance with her.  And watching it all was so beautiful, making words seem completely irrelevant and unnecessary.

I've been thinking that a lot lately.  About the unnecessary quality words sometimes have.  You watch something creative and wordless unfold before your eyes and you suddenly wonder if you don't sound like "blah blah blah blah blah" all the time.  So all this hate for words was great making me hate my major, making me hate the lexical items that come pouring out of my mouth by the minute.

But then I started thinking that maybe, just maybe they're connected somehow.  That maybe I could learn about the beauty of words from watching wordlessness.  That just as words are used for evil, they can also be used for good.  Just as words are used to demonstrate academic superiority, they can also be used for beauty.  And sometimes, yes I should just shut up.  But sometimes words should be used and their beauty reclaimed.

Maybe part of reclaiming the beauty of words for me is using them in ways I don't usually use them.  For example, more than anything I use words to communicate concepts.  And that is all good, but I think language has more use than just the communication of one abstract concept from one human brain to another.  We get so caught up on meaning, on understanding, on grammar, on perfectionism that our words stop looking beautiful and start looking like rule driven blobs on a page.  Could be that I only feel this way because I am writing paper after paper full of rules, arguments, facts and assertions.

One of these many papers is about the phonology of speaking in tongues.  In doing the research for this paper I came across this master's thesis written by Marcos Donnelly at the State University of New York Empire State College titled, "Divine Methodology: Speaking in tongues and insights on second language acquisition."  He writes about speaking in tongues and he says some really interesting stuff about it.  like this (note: glossolalia is the linguistic term for speaking in tongues):

"Goodman's idea is intriguing: is glossolalia an utterance of "words" without meaning—not stripped of meaning, but never having been assigned meanings? Recall Paul of Tarsus's assertion that when he prays in tongues, "my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful" (I Cor. 14.14)—or even the popular adage attributed to Blaise Pascal, that "the heart hath reasons that reason knoweth not." Assuming that thought exists independent of words (argued thoroughly and persuasively by Pinker 44-73), and granting Chomsky his insight that human speech capacity is something altogether different from the lexicon of a particular language, we can hypothesize an alluring role for glossolalia on the spectrum of human linguistics: pure form without function, an expression of language that comes from the most basic level of human language production—signifiers stripped from the signified, to borrow terminology from Saussure's semiotics" (Donnelly 2008, p. 19).  

So this is an example of words used in ways they are not usually.  Words used without meaning to communicate things of the heart.  This is just one example and I am guessing that there are a million other ways in which words are connected to beauty and not just to manipulation, ways in which wordless creativity and words are connected.  And I don't really know what it looks like, but I'm hoping it looks like words dancing across a page and dancers speaking their dance.  It's true, maybe this is all idealistic and it really looks like dancers high kicking linguists in the face and linguists writing nasty critiques of dance performers... but wishful thinking can't hurt. 


- Lydia

The Kingdom of Second Language Acquisition

So me and Alisyn are in this class called Second Language Acquisition where we learn about how difficult and painful it is to learn a second language. Some of my other friends and me have been reading through the book of Mathew in the Bible where we learn about how difficult and painful it is to follow the teachings of Jesus. Haha or something like that.

February 2, 2010 (false precision, don't remember the actual day). In class lecture about the differences in language acquisition between kids and adults. Here's some of what the experts have to say (oh, and L2=second language):

1. Kids learn L2 better than adults.

2. Adults have inhibition and fear making mistakes in L2, so they don’t practice speaking L2 and therefore don’t learn it. Kids are already used to making mistakes in their first language, so they have no worries about making mistakes in their L2.

3. Adults fear losing their identity and their first language. They are reluctant to give these things up, so they are also reluctant to embrace a new language and new identity. Kids on the other hand want to pass as a native speaker so that they can play with other kids.

January 25 – February 7, 2010 (again, false precision). I was reading Mathew and stumbled across this stuff. Here’s some of what Jesus has to say:

1. “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.” Mathew 18:3-4

2. “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard which you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.” Mathew 7:1-2

3. “Love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! …He gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust. Mathew 5:44-45

So let’s see if I can make the connections make some sense.

1. This first one seems pretty obvious. To enter the Kingdom of Heaven you have to be like a kid and to learn an L2 successfully you have to be like a kid.

2. Jesus says, don’t judge, cuz however you judge is the way in which you will be judged. Adult speakers are afraid to speak in their L2 because they are afraid of being judged. They are afraid of being judged because they themselves judge other L2 speakers of their native language. You know… you as a well educated adult have at least once judged someone who was trying to speak your language as less educated, less intelligent and less attractive because of the “mistakes” they were making in their language usage. And because of this, you are afraid that the other educated adults out there in the world will judge you when you flounder around in their language. And you are right. They will. The standard which you use in judging L2 performance is the standard by which you will be judged.

3. Adults also fear losing their identity and native language to a new language and new identity. Why can’t both identities and both languages exist simultaneously? Because most people think of identities as mutually exclusive. This means that people define themselves by defining what they are not. This happens frequently in war when we label the enemy with terms like “gook” or “terrorist” to place them in a category separate from us. To define them as something other than us and to define us by how we are NOT like them. So when Jesus says to love your enemies, he is talking about a shift in the way we think about identity. It is impossible to love someone without recognizing the common humanity you share with that person. And it is impossible to recognize that common humanity as long as you are labeling them as “other” or “different” from you. When you have to shift to look at the similarities you share with this other person, you are shifting towards an understanding of inclusive rather than exclusive identity. This type of inclusive identity potentially makes way for adults to more easily acquire an L2 by enabling them to embrace a second language and identity without feeling that they are losing the first.

What’s the point? I guess the point is that a lot of the things you need to enter the kingdom of heaven are a lot of the same things you need to learn an L2. Jesus summed it up pretty well in his King James English when he said, “But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Mathew 6:13 For language nerds, I figure language acquisition has to be apart of "all these things". So this is especially interesting for those of us who try (and fail) to follow Jesus and try (and fail) to learn new languages. Because it is as if by seeking the kingdom we are simultaneously getting the skills we need in order to learn an L2. Just like a kid.

-Lydia