Transcript Slide 1

Sociolinguistic Inquiries into
Heritage Language Learning:
The Indian Diaspora
Rakesh M. Bhatt
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
[email protected]
NHLRC Summer Heritage Institute
June 24, 2009
Hindi-HLL and Hindi-LCTLL:
A Retrospection
Context: Hindi LCTL Class, Second Year, First
Semester, 1987
Student: ye kyaa aap Sanskrit paRhaa rahe haiN
ya Hindi
“What is this that you are teaching us, Sanskrit or
Hindi?”
NHLRC Summer Heritage Institute
June 24, 2009
Why that question?
The first two semesters of Hindi were used
to teach students (a majority Heritage
learners) how to read and write Hindustani
(the vernacular), based on materials
created locally;
The third semester switches into High
register, using published texts that
introduce a style unfamiliar to Hindi-HLL.
NHLRC Summer Heritage Institute
June 24, 2009
My Response
Then: (roughly) This IS, of course, Hindi!
You’ll just have to deal with it!
Now: I understand, but in the absence of
research on Hindi heritage language
learners, trained heritage language
teachers, appropriate teaching materials,
and institutional support, I am afraid …
you’ll just have to deal with it.
NHLRC Summer Heritage Institute
June 24, 2009
The South Asian Diaspora
Asian Indian community:
Circa 1900: 2000
Between 1990-2000:
• population growth 113% (10 times the national average), and
grew 38% between 200-2005 (15 times the national growth rate);
• highly educated: 74% bachelor’s or higher (3 times the national average)
• one of the wealthiest in the nation (median income: $ 91,195)
• 200,000 Asian Indian millionaires (Merrill Lynch)
• Settlement patterns distributed (no China Towns, etc.)
• Hindi is the MT of 87% of the Indians, which rose 286% in just the last two
decades
• Hindi is the fourth most widely spoken language in the world
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June 24, 2009
The South Asian Diaspora:
Focus on Hindi
Number of people in U.S. whose MT is Hindi
Year
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
Hindi 3,493 22,017 115,774 287,067 331,484
NHLRC Summer Heritage Institute
June 24, 2009
The Problem in a Sociolinguistic
Perspective
Appropriate Pedagogy:
Learners: Who are they? What is their motivation?
Texts: What are the sociolinguistic functions of
language variation?
Teachers: Knowledge of grammatical deficits,
Knowledge of register sensitivity.
NHLRC Summer Heritage Institute
June 24, 2009
Understanding the Learner
Learner in the Classroom:
(i) Heritage Learner (HL)
(ii) Cognate Heritage Learner (C-HL)
(iii)Non-Cognate Heritage Learner (NC-HL)
(iv)Foreign Language Learner (FLL)
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June 24, 2009
Understanding the Learner—2
Heritage Language Learner:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(v)
(vi)
Upper Middle Class, Multilingual (English, Heritage, Hindi,)
Settlement patterns: not in enclaves;
Specific majors: Engineering, Pre-med, Business, Pre-Law
Peer communication: English;
Atrophied L1 acquisition: Relearning L1;
Passive bilinguals: Some fluency in speaking and understanding,
but difficulty in reading and writing (perhaps because all Indian
scripts are syllabary);
(vii) Language maintenance: continued “use” mainly through
Bollywood movies;
(viii) Cultural maintenance: Mixed
NHLRC Summer Heritage Institute
June 24, 2009
Understanding the Learner—2a
Hindi HLL: Motivations
(i) (Re-)Identification with heritage
language and culture;
(ii) To communicate with relatives;
(a)Focus on reading and writing;
(b)Focus on communicative skills;
(iii)To improve the GPA
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June 24, 2009
Understanding the Learner—3
Cognate Heritage Language Learners
• Speakers of IA languages: Gujerati, Punjabi, Bengali
• Linguistic Similarities with Hindi
• Similar word-order syntax
• Minor morpho-syntactic differences
• Similar phonological system
• Considerable overlap in vocabulary
• Cultural Similarities: Plenty
• Hindi language input: Bollywood movies
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June 24, 2009
Understanding the Learner—4
Non-Cognate Heritage Language Learners
• Speakers of Dravidian languages: Tamil, Malayalam
• Linguistic Similarities with Hindi
• Similar word-order syntax
• Cultural Similarities:
• Subtle
• Hindi language input: Bollywood movies
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June 24, 2009
Understanding the Learner:
Competence Differences
Masha’s mantra: It’s the lack of focus on SMALL details that
lead to BIG gaffes (‘deficits’).
• Phonology
• Vowels: Problems with length contrasts
• Consonants:
• Little systematic control of dental-alveolar and alveolar-retroflex
contrasts;
• Oral stop consonants do better than nasal consonants;
• Worst case scenario: the distinction between alveolar and retroflex
laterals;
• Problem with the four-way opposition in stops:
•aspirated-unaspirated
•voiceless-voiced
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June 24, 2009
Competence Differences: Syntax
(i) DOM project—Silvina will discuss that;
(ii) Persistent problem with agreement within DP
and IP:
Examples from oral production: Picture story
(a) Vo [us] wolf ne …
‘that wolf’
(b) Tumhaaraa [e] kaan
‘your ears’
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June 24, 2009
Competence Differences: Syntax—2
(c) vo cal rahaa[ii] hai jangal meN … usko[ne] dekhaa vo wolf
‘she is walking in the jungle’
… ‘she saw that wolf’
(d) usne [vah] LRRH kii daadii ko khaa gayaa [liyaa]
‘He ate the grandmother of LRRH’
(iii) Binding-theoretic problems
(a)
ek laRkii[i] uskii[j] [apnii] naanii ke pas jaa rahii thii
‘a girl[i] was going (to visit) with her[i] grandma’
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June 24, 2009
Competence Differences:
Discourse Structure
Information structure: Post-verbal focus/new info
(a) vo cal rahaa hai jangal meN …
‘she is walking in the jungle’
(b) usko dekhaa vo wolf
‘she saw that wolf’
(c) jab vo jaa rahii thii forest main se
‘when she was going through the forest’
(d) vo wolf aayaa thaa uske piiche
‘that wolf had come behind her’
(e) wolf calaa gayaa uskii daadii ke ghar pe
‘the wolf left for her grandma’s home’
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June 24, 2009
Variation in Hindi: Challenges for Hindi-HLL
• Dialectal variation: Braj, Awadhi, Maithili
• Regional variation: Eastern (Bihar) vs. Western
(Rajasthan) Hindi
• Diglossic variation: High (Sanskritized) vs. Low
(Hindustani)
• Registeral variation: a whole range of variation from
religious sermons to cricket commentary
• Social variation: To index power (distance) and solidarity
(intimacy)
• Contact-induced variation: Code-mixing and switching
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June 24, 2009
Understanding Text: Focus on Variation
First year: Building linguistic skills
Texts: Informal (spoken) language
•Focus on form (learning how to read and write)
• knowledge of orthography: introducing all
complexities
• knowledge of grammar: simple structures
• knowledge of vocabulary: One word-One
meaning
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June 24, 2009
Vocabulary Acquisition
•No registeral distinctions are introduced
EX: cold water
shiital jal, formal register
ThanDa paanii, informal use
No registeral switching allowed: (The gaffes)
*shiital paani ‘cold water’
*ThanDaa jal ‘cold water’
Hindi-HLL: not aware of the formal register
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June 24, 2009
Second Year Texts
• Switch
into High Hindi (mainly at the lexical level)
Word-level
• evam, tathaa ‘and’ (aur)
• kramashah ‘respectively’
• vyaktitava ‘personality’
Phrase-level
•pravesh nished ‘no entry’
• dhumrapaan varjit hai ‘no smoking’
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June 24, 2009
Second Year Texts
• Social
variation: appropriate, ungrammatical
utterances
Formal register:
• aap caay piyeNge
‘Will you drink tea’ (indexing power asymmetry)
• (?) aap caay piyoge
‘Will you drink tea’ (indexing intimacy)
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June 24, 2009
Second Year Texts—2
• Contact-induced
variation:
Standard-dialect-English switching:
[Standard Hindi] mai sab samajhtaa huuN, tum bhii khanna ki tarah bahas
karne lage ho. maiN saatve aur nauveN ka pharak smajhtaa huuN.
[switch to Awadhi] hamkaa ab prinsipalii kare na sikaav bhaiyaa, jonu
hukum hai, tonu cuppe se [switch to English] kari aut [switch to Awadhi]
karo, samjhyo naahiN
[Srilal Shukla, Ragdarbaarii]
‘I understand everything. You have also started arguing like Khanna. I
understand the difference between seven and nine. Don’t teach me,
dear, how to be a principal. Whatever is the order you carry it out quietly.
Do you understand or not?
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June 24, 2009
Second Year Texts—3
• Contact-induced
variation:
Hindi-English switching:
phir ThoRi der baad Darte-Darte bola, “Can we
go to Gita masiz house?”
‘Then after a while he said, fearfully, “can we
go to aunt Gita’s house’
Susham Bedi, Havan
NHLRC Summer Heritage Institute
June 24, 2009
Other HLs of the Indian Diaspora
• Tamil
Diglossic: Classical (H) Vernacular (L)
• Bengali
Diglossic: Saadhuu (H) Colit (L)
•Telugu
Diglossic: Granthika (H) Vyavaharika (L)
Kannada
Diglossic: Literary (H) and Colloquial (L)
NHLRC Summer Heritage Institute
June 24, 2009
The Teachers: Pedagogical Models
• Hindi Language Instruction: Focus on
Accuracy
•Continuation of 60s pedagogical model
• teach basic grammar and vocabulary
• incremental introduction of grammatical
complexity
• Whose Language/Whose Standard/Whose
Communicative Competence?: Competing Language
Ideologies
• Delhi Hindi or Maithili Hindi
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June 24, 2009
The Teachers’ Conundrum
• Mixed
Class (HLL, C-HLL, NC-HLL, FLL)
• Program A: no Hindi heritage section
•Traditionally a LCTL program, with
attendant implications
• Low enrollments (=low inst. support)
• Teaching Methodology:
• DI—the ONLY option?
NHLRC Summer Heritage Institute
June 24, 2009
THANKS & Acknowldgments
• Works
of Rodney Moag, Vijay and Surendra Gambhir
• Silvina Montrul, for adding me into her Heritage
Research Program
• Vandana Puri, for transcribing oral narratives of
picture-story task
• Archana Bhatia, for help in recruiting students for the
Hindi survey
NHLRC Summer Heritage Institute
June 24, 2009