The following may be of interest to our Rhet/Comp friends...or not, but at the very least, I was impressed and it made me reflect on the rich (and very messy) process of language learning, culture, and composition in a language not our own.
My brother Ladd composed a short film for his grad-level linguistics class. He interviewed 4 people who originally spoke a language other than English, got an hour and a half of material condensed down to 14 minutes, and ended up with a fascinating look at how languages/cultures influence our thoughts and our identities.
Profiles in Heritage Language
Though I don't know another language (much to my chagrin), it made me reflect on the structures of grammar, vocabulary, and how those things get remixed & mashed up when we try to learn another language. At the risk of sounding Farmer-esque, speaking between two languages is an act of bricolage--and the ways in which these folks did so is truly impressive to me.
1 comment:
Neato! It makes me think, too, of how language itself is rather bricolage-esque. After all, no language is an island, and change happens because the sorts of mashups that we see in your brother's fine video happen over and over across hundreds of years (or, if we're thinking of the internetz, several decades). Maybe it's more along the lines of what F. Jameson would call pastiche. (Actually, that makes me wonder what the relationship of pastiche to bricolage might be. Hm...)
Thanks for sharing, Greta!!
Post a Comment