Week 3 -- Pavlenko

Summary of the reading: Pavlenko researched narrative identities “constructed in American immigrant autobiographies” and examines the differences “between language and identity” in both contemporary and turn-of-the-twentieth-century immigrant memoirs (Pavlenko 34; 35).

Overall, I found Pavlenko’s article to be fascinating. I love the idea of using autobiographical material as the basis of her scholarship. There are many interesting themes brought out by this article that I could talk about, but the section where Pavlenko reveals how immigrants presented their experiences of learning English is what I most want to focus on in this response. Pavlenko stated, “When depicted at all, second language learning is portrayed as an enterprise which proceeds through a series of comic blunders to a happy conclusion” (Pavlenko 50). It seems strange that so little focus is put on learning English as, for most immigrants even today, learning the native language is a crucial part of adapting to everyday life. I would suppose that learning the ‘native’ language of America would have been considered even more important a century ago, so I find the lack of emphasis to be quite curious. Additionally, picking up a language with the ease and speed described by the immigrant narratives would make any human being an outlier of the general populous irregardless of the time period.

The only difference is, as alluded to by Pavlenko, a difference in society. I think the difference is the rise of a non-essentialist view of culture. In contemporary academic and political discourse, language and the how and why people should or should not learn them is a controversial topic that is constantly discussed. The debate, as I see it, lies between the essentialist and non-essentialist, whether they call themselves by these terms or not, parties. The essentialists who are generally calling for assimilation of some sort and the non-essentialist who are claiming that the falsity of an ‘American’ culture gives the essentialist no right to demand such a thing. At the time of the autobiographies in question, a non-essentialist view of culture would have been unheard of which would have made assimilation theories the norm. As a result, only the narratives that supported and showed success within this framework rose to popularity. I don’t think this is because of any malicious intent on the part of the authors or even an attempt at propaganda, but rather that they (or anyone for that matter) had even thought of culture in anything other than a traditional essentialist way. It isn’t that they agreed or disagreed with any certain theory on how to engage cultures, but that an engagement with culture different than how they had been conditioned would have been impossible at that point in history. (At least a non-essentialist view would have been)

For these reasons, I don’t doubt the sincerity of the autobiographers. It is possible that the failure of the average immigrant to assimilate ‘as well’ as they did allowed consideration for differing views of culture to emerge. Perhaps we owe the inability of essentialism to account for the complexities of culture to our current developments in the study of it. This may be completely off base as I have had no time to study the rise of the non-essentialist view of culture, but it is interesting to think about. (More positive leastways)

Week 1 Response

Summary of the Readings:

Essentially, the reading from Intercultural Communication provided an introduction into the Essentialist and non-essentialist definitions and descriptions of Culture. Most of the reading provide a more thorough exploration of information that was alluded to or covered briefly in the previous class. For example, the essentialist views culture as something that people can visit and has clear devisions whereas the non-essentialist view culture as something that has blurred boundaries and is not restrained to a specific language or country.

Kumaravedivelu’s article was essentially a case study about Asian students in an educational setting which responded to essentialist claims about ‘Asian Cultures.’

Atkinson promotes a non-essentialist “middle-Ground” approach to culture within a TESOL setting and provide six principles of culture as supporting evidence (Atkinson 635).

“Culture... comes to be viewed too simply as either behaviour (e.g. people don’t smile in public), or as fixed values and beliefs, separated from social interaction and socio-political realities (e.g. x cultures values the elderly)” (Holiday 71).

This quote stands most salient in my mind after reading the assigned text. I believe it accurately marks how many people define culture and how culture is described throughout the different mediums of communication. Although it may be true that people from different countries or regions smile less frequently, using this sole fact as a determinant of an entire population’s activities is ridiculous simply because finding a behavior that ten people do consistently is nigh impossible. Furthermore, even if the inhabitants of a region appear not to smile in public, it is probably not true in all situations. (Kumaravedivelu makes a similar point with ‘Asians’ in education) Imagine going to a stand up comedy show in this hypothetical place. Many public places to which tourists go to are not places where natives smile. Very few people are seen smiling in the streets of New York City, but most everyone associated with the city would not use such an essentializing descriptor like ‘New Yorkers don’t smile in public’ because they wouldn’t believe it to be accurate all the time.

I thought Kumaravedivelu explained the association, that of lack of participation and passivity in class, often given to Asian students with surprising clarity in her article. It is almost comical that Asian passivity is presupposed by many in the West when in reality it is something as common as anxiety from speaking an unfamiliar language in front of a classroom (Kumaravedivelu 712). It is a fear of failure and not being accepted that is found in almost all people rather than an attribute conditioned by a certain culture. This is, I suppose, a textbook example of reduction—seeing a trend between students who are from the same hemisphere and assuming that everyone from there must be like them.

With this said, I can see how easy it would be to draw similar conclusion. For instance, in my high school, there were a few native Spanish speakers and a few native Thai speakers. Most of the hispanic speakers where more likely to participate in class whereas the Thai speakers tended to be more reserved. Making a hypothesis from this example could lead one to come to such a conclusion, yet, as the article confirms, this is not the norm for all situations (Kumaravedivelu 711). One could find an example where the reverse would be true easily enough.

Intro

Hi. I am Lance, and this is my blog for Eng 343.