Interview

I'll start my post by saying that the interview I conducted for the Final Project in this class was one of the most rewarding experiences I could have imagined coming from this class. As I've gone through the semester, I have frequently been frustrated with sociolinguistics for the same reason I was frustrated with science (I took biology, physics, and geology, if you're wondering) as an undergraduate. My frustration stemmed from the fact that when I read about all the wonderful work being produced by these disciplines, I was truly fascinated. When I got into the classroom, however, I was stifled by repetitive, detailed analyses of seemingly trivial details, the relevance of which was obscured by my inability to get past the fact that there had to be something better to do with this discipline than draw posters of cell reproduction. If you're still reading you'll have to pardon my digression. The truth is that often times, even 10 years later I get frustrated reading some of these studies because whether an /s/ is retained, aspirated, or deleted in a given social context really doesn't tell me about what I want to know. And while having to look at death by statistics in articles from scholarly journals is really close to making my bucket list, it really isn't what I want either.

It turns out that what I wanted was an experience like this interview. Probably not for the same reasons as a linguist, but who cares about them? I think I have always been intrigued by the interviews in the NMCOSS because it is a window into the history of this area, my history. Linguistically, we code switch some, we truncate /r/, we say trabajábanos instead of trabajábamos, and to quote Damián, "SO". I have a sense intuitively for what is happening in the language, just as everyone does in their own original dialect, but I was fascinated by the interview for the historic and ethnographic information I gained from it. It is priceless.

The people I interviewed were an 85 yr. old man and his 83 yr. old wife. They are from my país. After fighting in WWII, he went home and married his wife, and they came to Albuquerque in the 50s to find work. They worked, him as a ranch hand, her as a day care worker here in Albuquerque from the 50s to the 70s. They formed part of the Sawmill and Los Jardines neighborhood, and talk of Indian School Road between 6th street and Rio Grande as a cattle trail, fit for travel only by a horse and buggy. What these people have lived and experienced here in Albuquerque can never be recreated or accurately represented. I am so glad that I got to record 47 minutes of what they could tell me about their life here.

I appreciated the opportunity so much, that now I won't even complain about having to use such a valuable interview to scrutinize the mechanics of their speech and not the significance of the message in the interview. I'm off to the wonderful world of Santa Barbara!

The interview I had with my Auntie was fun, but at the same time frustrating. Although I had no problem getting stories out of her, I really battled to get her to speak in Spanish. I would prompt her by going in and out of both languages. I would ask her questions in Spanish, and she would respond in English. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? It's usually the parents or grandparents trying to get their little ones to speak in Spanish, while the younger generations stubbornly respond in English. There were a few times that I got so desperate that I explicitly asked her to tell me the story en español, and she would...for a little bit. What made it even more frustrating is that my Auntie speaks New Mexican Spanish beautifully. Before conducting the interview, I wasn't sure what to expect. My Auntie is a great story teller, but the stories she tells have always been in English. I knew that Spanish was her first language, so I was hoping that if I spoke to her in Spanish she would linguistically engage and accommodate to my questions. That didn't happen. Mateo is a witness, he was there for the whole conversation. As I ask myself why she wouldn't talk to me in Spanish, I'm reminded of one of the topic that came up during our conversation. When her son was growing up, she would try to speak in Spanish with him, and he would get angry. Eventually she gave up trying to teach him Spanish. Being a single mom, she mentioned that if the dad had been present there wouldn't have been such a struggle. In that sense, perhaps she had a negative experience with the language. However, when my Auntie was growing up, she had very positive experiences with the language. She was never punished in school for speaking Spanish. English was never forced on her, she learned it naturally by interacting with English speakers. For her, learning English was fun. When she was younger, my Auntie and her other siblings (including my grandmother who is no longer with us) would play casitas where they would pretend that they were speaking English, even though they didn't know how. They made up words for things like knife, fork, and spoon :)

All in all, it was a valuable experience. At first I thought I had wasted my time, since I didn't get the Spanish product I was hoping for. But many times it's not about the product, but the process. This interview gave me the opportunity to share quality time with my great Aunt, and she expressed gratitude for the time I spent with her. I'm thankful that I was able to learn about the language attitudes and experiences of my Auntie. Hopefully they won't be discarded, simply for being mainly in English.

Primero entrevista

Hola compañeros, esta noche hice mi primera entrevista con un señor tan amable. Todo pasó bien y su historia y todo que él compartió a mi fue muy rico. Pero había un problema cuando fui a parar el grabador lo dijó "tape full." Que lastima, no sé desde cuando se paró pero de todos modos la entrevista fue muy bueno. Si necesito voy a regresar y completar la entrevista con otros preguntas. Algo más, hice 31 preguntas pero necesité unos preguntos más por eso preparen preguntas extras en el caso que completan los principios. Hasta luego.
~Camilla

Resumen de entrevista

The interview went extremely well. Since I have had previous experience interviewing, I can say this was the best interview I have done yet. I had a feeling that it would go good because when I scheduled to meet with J.S., she was already calling me "mijita" and telling me that she couldn't wait to meet me.

As soon as Camile and I arrived, she welcomed us and offered coffee and home made desert. Immediately it was obvious that she had high interest in doing the interview and having us there. For the interview I had just taken the recorder, consent form and my list of interview questions, which i didn't even have to reference. The interview lasted an hour and ten minutes. I ended up just hitting the record button shortly after we sat down because already J.S. had shared plentiful information. The conversation flowed so well that only a few times I had to ask a question in Spanish because she tended to veer off and speak English for too long. Many times without having to ask her, she would begin speaking about a subject I already had in mind. J.S. discussed subjects relating to her family history and how they ended up living there, how the community used to be and how it has changed presently, stories about only speaking Spanish and its consequences, her family giving up on speaking Spanish and how newer generations have not continued the language.

The information she gave on Sawmill/Wells Park community was especially interesting because she lived through many major changes that occurred in that community, such as: the people not having rights of their property, banks devaluing their land, crime and violence setting in which also contributed to land devaluing, the city ignoring work that needed to be done to the community, roads and sewage. She spoke about how because of this, community members united together and learned the laws and their rights to be able to fight back and eventually getting their voice heard. J.S. also mentioned that the community was once a simple place where she left comfortable speaking Spanish, but now the community's language has changed because Spanish speakers from Mexico, Puerto Rico and Cuba have moved in and they make her feel ashamed of her Spanish. She discussed instances where people will stop speaking to her simply because they feel she doesn't know how to speak Spanish well. Not only do people make her feel ashamed of her language, but she also mentions that the community itself is no longer as friendly as it used to be. Because of this experience of losing her own language, I think, is more of a reason why she was so excited to contribute to this study. J.S. shared that she is currently writing a book of memories that she wants to leave with her family, and in addition to that she wants to do whatever it takes to try and keep her language alive as long as she is alive.

Overall, the interview process was very exciting, entertaining and it even reached an emotional level for me to hear in person so much history from such a welcoming person that in no sense was greedy in sharing it with complete strangers.

Basic transcription notation conventions in CA (Conversational Analysis)

I found a nice site, with a tutorial, in which you can practice transcription

You'll see a certain variety of notation symbols in CA, but the great majority will be based on what is often called the "Jefferson system" after its developer, the late Gail Jefferson. There is a comprehensive account in Atkinson and Heritage, and more abbreviated accounts in the books by Hutchby and Wooffitt, and ten Have.

The list below is fairly representative of the most widely-used symbols.

You might also like to look at the symbols explained page in the 'Transcript' section of this tutorial. It gives a more specific account of the symbols as I used them in arriving at a reasonable transcript of the audio and video clips.

	(.)	Just noticeable pause
	(.3), (2.6)	Examples of timed pauses
	↑word,↓word	Onset of noticeable pitch rise or fall (can be difficult to use reliably)
A: B:	word [word [word	Square brackets aligned across adjacent lines denote the start of overlapping talk. Some transcribers also use "]" brackets to show where the overlap stops
	.hh, hh	in-breath (note the preceding fullstop) and out-breath respectively.
	wo(h)rd	(h) is a try at showing that the word has "laughter" bubbling within it
	wor-	A dash shows a sharp cut-off
	wo:rd	Colons show that the speaker has stretched the preceding sound.
	(words)	A guess at what might have been said if unclear
	( )	Unclear talk. Some transcribers like to represent each syllable of unclear talk with a dash
A: B:	word= =word	The equals sign shows that there is no discernible pause between two speakers' turns or, if put between two sounds within a single speaker's turn, shows that they run together
	word, WORD	Underlined sounds are louder, capitals louder still
	ºwordº	material between "degree signs" is quiet
	>word word<	Inwards arrows show faster speech, outward slower
→		Analyst's signal of a significant line
	((sniff))	Transcriber's effort at representing something hard, or impossible, to write phonetically

main menu

From the site: http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~ssca1/notation.htm Consulted on October 12, 2010.

Talking about language, and because today is October 12

Respecto a la lectura para hoy de Roth Gordon, y retomando algunos estereotipos sobre el lenguaje, sobre los que hemos leído y hablado en la clase, aquí les dejo un post sobre el gran escritor, uruguayo, Eduardo Galeano.

El 12 de octubre de 1492, Cristóbal Colón escribió en su diario que él quería llevarse algunos indios a España para que aprendan a hablar ("que deprendan fablar"). Cinco siglos después, el 12 de octubre de 1989, en una corte de justicia de los Estados Unidos, un indio mixteco fue considerado retardado mental ("mentally retarded") porque no hablaba correctamente la lengua castellana. Ladislao Pastrana, mexicano de Oaxaca, bracero ilegal en los campos de California, iba a ser encerrado de por vida en un asilo público. Pastrana no se entendía con la intérprete española y el psicólogo diagnosticó un claro déficit intelectual. Finalmente, los antropólogos aclararon la situación: Pastrana se expresaba perfectamente en su lengua, la lengua mixteca, que hablan los indios herederos de una alta cultura que tiene más de dos mil años de antigüedad.
- Eduardo Galeano

the new perscriptivism

http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/deisenbe/jhpcolumn/jhp093.pdf

Tienen que ver este articulo para saber no hacer una investigacion sociolinguistica,

'The crucial and unique case, in fact, is that of “padre”/“madre.”If
one is not to use “mis padres,”howcan one say
“my parents”? This is
the only instance in which no existing term is adequate. I propose, on
the model of English and French, assigning this meaning to “mis parientes.”'

'There is enormous resistance to linguistic change, which resistance
is seemingly neurological in origin.'

Que opinan?

Cual assibilation de la r en Moroleon?

Bueno pues el artículo de Mendoza a cerca de la asibilación de la r en Moroleón era algo nuevo para mí. Mi familia es de ese rumbo de Guanajuato y tengo muchos familiares que viven en Moroleón y nunca he escuchado que asibilan la r. Ese artículo fue escribido en el 2004. He ido a México desde el 2004 con frecuencia hasta el 2008. También seria interesante a ver si esta asibilación que investigo Mendoza se contagia a otras ciudades cercas de Moroleón. Además, podría investigar otros lugares en vez de Kennet Square donde migran los inmigrantes de Moroleón.

Hellooo, empezamos de nuevo....

Sept 19, 2010
Bueno, empezamos el semestre con una buena explicacion de lo que es la sociolinguistica. Aunque lo hemos estudiado por unas semanas, lo cierto es que es un concepto muy complejo y dificil de definir. Hemos leido varios articulos sobre la variacion de dialectos y todos los diferentes factores que contribuyen a los cambios del lenguaje. Mi pregunta de siempre es y sigue siendo: cual es la mejor manera de conducir una entrevista autentica. Porque siempre existen diferentes factores que danan los resultados. En especial me refiero porque siempre se tiene que preguntar a la persona permiso para grabar y tambien informar “mas o menos” de que se trata la entrevista. Entonces, se me hace un poco difil, en una forma, de hacer una entrevista para ver como y cuando las personas hacen code-switch y otros aspectos del codeswicheo. Es un projecto el cual me gustaria desarrollar un poco si se puede, asi que si alguien quiere colaborar conmigo, por favor avizenme. Ahi los wacho, hasta la proxima.

Grabaciones

Al haber hecho un estudio de entrevistas y grabaciones en la comunidad, estoy acuerdo con lo mencionado en el articulo. En el articulo se mencionan los problemas que pueden aparecer, el mayor es no obtener respuestas honestas por parte de los entrevistados. En mi experiencia, es mejor situarse en un lugar donde la persona este comodo y no se sienta presionado. Cuando el interrogador se puede asociar con la gente y relacionarse al nivel comun de la comunidad, tiene mas aventaja. Una estrategia que puede funcionar es iniciar una conversacion que no se relaciona immediatamente con la entrevista para poder conversar con la persona y primero tratar de relacionarse. Ademas, como mencionado en el articulo, otro obstaculo que se presenta, es entender claramente las grabaciones hechas e interpretar correctamente lo dicho. Basicamente, hacer grabaciones es un proceso que toma practica y puede mejorar cada vez mas.

On Wolfram

I thought the article was interesting but a bit stereotypical. It made several references about certain ethnicities and their dialects but not enough data to support the claims made. Many claims were made as statements which in turn appeared in my opinion to be be simpy opinions. In addition, it also seemed contradictory because it mentions that saturated and unsaturated group exclusive usages are not to be determined on the basis of specifc proportions of speakers, yet it makes reference to a set of speakers. To be saturated or unsaturated is still referring to a particular group; otherwise the term cannot be classified, right? Therefore, I simply think that more evidence should have been provided, which would have presented better comparisons of different group dialects.

para que damián no se sienta solo

Hemos leído mucho sobre dialectos pero todavía no se como se hace la división entre dialecto y lenguas.

He hablado con personas de Inglaterra que no pude entender muy bien, pero estaban hablando ingles y hablo inglés. En mi clase de lingüística, Me dijeron que hay personas que hablan inglés que no podría entender. Algunas personas que hablan portugués me dijeron que pueden entender español, y algunos hispanohablantes me dijeron que pueden entender italiano, entonces no tengo ninguna idea como dividirlos.

Oigan! Hay que figurarse como añadir sus comentarios. Nuestra clase va a ser excelente!

¡Anticipando un semestre excelente!