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.