Karissa Ringel
EDSL 633
Hilda Hernandez
Pragmatic Ethnography
I.
Data Collection (See Appendix A for interview notes)
II.
Analysis
I have never met anyone so proud of her language, and the culture that language
represents. Maria1 absolutely glowed as she began telling me about her education in Puerto
Rico. From kindergarten to high school, she attended a Catholic school where American nuns
taught English classes. Though all other subjects were in Spanish, she really felt drawn to her
English classes and would always watch the HBO channels her parents purchased on cable
television. However, as she grew older she began to see her Spanish language as an integral
part of her identity. For this reason, when she attended college in Puerto Rico she majored in
Spanish classics. This identity followed her to the United States when she moved after getting
married to an American in 2002.
Maria mentioned that although she had a lot of English training from school in Puerto
Rico, she had a hard time adjusting to the culture of the United States. She cites her first
Christmas away from home as one of the hardest times of her life. She says that she missed
her music, food, and cultural ways of celebrating. For instance, her family generally goes to
mass and opens presents on Christmas eve, where Americans generally have their big
celebration on Christmas day. In an attempt to retain her identity, “who she is”, she tries to
maintain ties to her heritage language. She mentioned lots of interpersonal language when she
talks with friends or family from home, and even some interpretive skills from when she
reads and writes status updates on Facebook. She emphasized that she really tries to write
correctly, even though many people get lazy and shorten words, or use incorrect grammar
when they type online. She realizes that as she lives longer in the United States, she is
gradually losing touch with her heritage language skills. Another way she maintains her skills
is to keep up with Puerto Rican news by reading online newspapers every day. She says that
she would love to watch Spanish or Puerto Rican television channels, but that cable is too
expensive.
Interestingly, she has not found a community here in the United States that shares her
language, Puerto Rican Spanish, or cultural values. She acknowledged that there is a lot of
Spanish, but that it generally comes from a different culture, often from Mexico, and it isn’t
the same. Even so, she admits that she gets excited whenever she hears Spanish, and will
often try to speak it with strangers if she hears them conversing. She even likes it when coworkers make an effort to speak Spanish with her, regardless of how well or fluently they
speak it. Interestingly, she noted that she sometimes finds herself taking on a different
Spanish accent when talking with non-Puerto Rican speakers of Spanish. When questioned,
she thought this might be an effort to put her listeners more at ease with their familiar dialect
of Spanish.
As a self-titled “Spanish junkie”, Maria enjoys interacting with any dialect of Spanish,
but she prefers to speak with others who are from Puerto Rico. Not only is the language itself
more familiar, she tends to converse with these speakers about daily life in Puerto Rico,
something she misses while living in the US. She admits that she likes to keep it light, and
that she avoids talking about things like politics or anything heavy or difficult. In her case, it
is probably not because she couldn’t talk about more advanced subjects, but that she chooses
1
The name of my consultant has been changed to protect her privacy.
to use her heritage language to talk about topics that are familiar and remind her of her native
culture.
When we delved into the particulars of her proficiency in reading and writing, she
admitted that writing has always been her weakest skill. Perhaps because she developed
English writing skills at such a young age, this interferes with her Spanish writing. Even in
college, she acknowledged that her lowest grade was in a class where she had to write
sophisticated academic papers. For some reason, she said, she “can’t just make it flow”. In
order to continue working on her writing, she tries to correspond with friends via e-mail, but
finds that face book is a more common platform for her writing. On the other hand, reading
plays a much different role in her life. She says that she has always loved to read in Spanish,
but her young toddler keeps her too busy to read much these days. She remarked on the
forced reading in high school, but then really opening up to the more serious reading in
college. From the classics to historical nonfiction to the Spanish newspapers from home,
Maria emphasized how important reading is to her, and how she looks forward to reading to
her son as he gets older.
Having a child in the US has made Maria even more aware of her heritage culture and
language. She mentioned how important it is for her to bring some of her native culture into
their home, especially during the holidays. For instance, she makes sure to celebrate Three
King’s Day with the traditional meal and cultural practices associated with it. For common
holidays, like Christmas, she has come to a happy medium between Puerto Rican culture and
American culture. For example, while she cooks ham for her husband, and listens to Bing
Crosby, she also has rice and beans and plays some of her own cultural music. This melding
of cultures and languages has helped her feel more at home in her new country. However,
when it comes to language, Maria emphasized her dislike for the melding of English and
Spanish into Spanglish.
These strong negative feelings toward the obvious mixing of languages could be
reflected in her frustration that Americans seldom know anything about her culture. She said
that about ninety percent are actually surprised that she is from Puerto Rico because “she
speaks English so well!” After this revelation, people generally just show their ignorance
about that territory which is essentially part of the United States, often asking questions that
seem rude to Maria, such as “do you have indoor plumbing?” She said that she often finds
herself defending her culture, and getting upset. It was shocking to hear her admit that
sometimes she prefers to affect a Mexican Spanish accent so that people think she is from
Mexico. She admits that she gets many fewer questions in these circumstances.
However, Maria’s heritage language is an essential part of her identity, and she relates
its use to family, cultural traditions, and daily life in Puerto Rico. Her grasp on Spanish is
also her grasp on the part of herself that is distinctly Puerto Rican – the side of herself that
she hopes to one-day pass on to her son. As Webb and Miller (2000, p. 23) state, bilinguals
are “complex persons who are fundamentally different from monolinguals”, and, in this case
at least, Maria is proud of this fact. She is luckier than the other students in that book,
because she was able to finish her schooling in her heritage language before moving to the
US to find a job and have a family. However, she still struggles with maintaining ties to her
heritage culture through language in this largely monolingual society, where languages other
than English aren’t as highly valued. Maria speaks of her frustration at her initial inability to
find a job as a bilingual speaker of English and Spanish in California, and her gradual
realization that her English skills would be her savior in the job market. Fortunately, Maria
did not need a sympathetic teacher to remind her of the importance of preserving her
language. She has found her own ways to identify her progress over time, like talking to
friends or chatting on Facebook, and she keeps striving to improve her linguistic proficiency
and cultural connectedness, if not her academic command of her heritage language.
III.
Personal Perception Reflection
While I can never fully empathize with Maria’s point of view, having not had the
same life experiences she has, I have come to have great respect for her struggle to hold onto
her language and culture. I have been in situations where I am learning a foreign language in
an immersion situation, and I always gravitate towards speaking English when I can, in an
attempt to hold onto what is familiar. In this regard, I understand a little why Maria feels so
strongly about keeping her connection with Spanish. However, her connection runs much
deeper than mine. It is almost as if losing her language would mean losing her family, and in
a way, it would. It is clearer now why interpersonal communication is the most common skill
a heritage learner brings to their education; their heritage language is their connection to
home and family life. These essential connections are not enhanced with academic language,
or the ability to make presentations. In Maria’s case, her academic Spanish from college was
one of the first things she forgot because it did not help her communicate with her family and
friends from home. When discussing the topics she often spoke about in Spanish (Webb and
Miller, 2000, p.49) Maria stated that she avoided controversial topics. When at first I thought
this might be because they required more academic language than everyday conversation, I
now believe it is probably because she was avoiding having negative associations with using
her heritage language. Her whole story gives me a perspective I have never had on language,
and it forces me to think about my teaching.
IV.
Theory and Knowledge
As an English teacher in other countries, I may indeed have heritage learners of
English in my classes. This will be a very interesting situation for me, as I have never had to
think of English as my “heritage language” due to its prevalence in most countries of the
world. I think another situation that could also be common would be having students in my
classes who were trying to suppress their native language in order to learn English. To those
students, I will try to share the insights I have gained from this interview with Maria. I will
try to illustrate to them how important it is to hold onto their heritage language, and with it,
their culture. As Webb and Miller (2000, p. 17) note, teachers’ attitudes can have a huge
influence on how students view their own language. By fostering the idea that bilingualism is
an advantage in life, perhaps I will be able to encourage students to maintain strong ties with
their heritage language.
Also, in my personal life as well as my professional life I will try to be more aware of
my cultural biases against varieties other than Standard English. This will be especially
important as I teach in other countries and find different varieties of English in my students.
It will be important for me to remember that they may be reflecting their heritage language
and cultures in their use of English, and that if I look closer, I may learn a lot about my
students that I wouldn’t otherwise know.
The largest take away from the interview was how much information I learned about
my consultant in such a short time. In under an hour, I had elicited so much about Maria’s
language, culture, and attitudes towards both. This experience shows me how important it is
to take the time and get to know my students, their backgrounds, and their attitudes towards
language. It seems like twenty minutes would be a small sacrifice to learn about what is
important to a student, and recognize a new way of looking at language acquisition.
Source
Webb, J. B., & Miller, B. L. (2000). Teaching heritage language learners: Voices from the classroom.
Yonkers, New York: American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.