A colleague from a listserv I have been on for many years recently posed the question - "What is the name of the concept used when a teacher shows how we should be proud of one's dialect, culture and identity?"
I love this question - it speaks to the foundation of what our new center (The Center for the Integrated Study of Migratory Education: CISMEducation.com) represents. I feel that it is seminal, that we must ask it of ourselves, especially if we are teaching other languages to students who intend to use them to express their ideas, their inner thoughts, and their motivations.
I now live and work in Gaziantep, Turkey so I am fortunate to spend my time exclusively with non-native speakers here, primarily Arabic speakers but also some Turkish students as well as my fellow colleagues and scholars.
In America, I taught at a community college and also at a university that attracted a large population of non-native English speakers. To me, these students and colleagues have always been my preferred "audience" as a teacher and researcher. I welcome their new (to me) perspectives and unique ways of using English that always sound delightful to my ears even if others may think that these "idiosyncratic" ways of expressing oneself in their second language (in this case, English) is not completely correct. It's why I choose to live and work abroad.
It's one of the reasons.
As a professor and trainer and teacher, and especially as an adviser and consultant, I encourage the people I train and the people I teach to place a high value on these "unique-nesses" in their language use, spoken and written. And I have always worked with my students who use English as their second (or third or fourth) language to preserve some of their native constructions as they present their thoughts and ideas in English. This results in very forceful and persuasive and often, very personal, writing and speaking. And, this writing and speaking reflects the dialects, cultures, and identities of my remarkable and gifted students.
So, to answer this question - in my program in New Mexico, we called this preservation "heritage language" - but the term isn't broad or inclusive enough to mean what we might want or need it to mean.
What I often do when I write essays or articles is - when I need a specific word, I use all of my language knowledge to find it - searching through dictionaries of many languages to find how to say what i want to say in the way I want to say it. I am encouraging all of us to do this also to find the words, or to make the words, we are looking for. I always look in the older languages, Ancient Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. I am currently studying Arabic, which I find to be the most encompassing and expressive language I have ever encountered. Arabic is deep and almost unending in its ability to express ideas, feelings, and descriptions according to a specific context. So, maybe there is an Arabic word that describes what we mean - and we can translate it or find a way to express it in English.
The act of "being proud of one's dialect, culture and identity" needs to be developed and preserved and protected in ALL students who learn another language that is used academically. I remind my students that residing in their language is their soul, their heart, their true character - that they should NOT lose their native ability to express themselves, even if when they translate it into another language, and it doesn't sound quite as true or have the same deep meaning. I tell them that when they travel to study, it is crucial to retain their native ways of understanding and expressing, of feeling and reacting - that this is who they are and they must care for it and nurture it and not allow their "adopted culture" to interfere in it, even though it is difficult to do.
I wish I had the exact word that we need. Maybe it will manifest one day as we begin to work together.
In Native American cultures, people identify themselves by tribe, clan, family and marriage bonds when they introduce themselves. It locates them linguistically and culturally from the beginning. One of my students here told me that this is also done in Arabic cultures - in my mind, this shows how one is "seating" oneself, especially in a place of dislocation in this time of heavy, painful, and forced migration. It is in Arabic names, preserved for all to see - we must admit and respect that in our "naming" we identify and present the confidence and pride that we express as we speak and write and work. If any of us can present an historical "snapshot" of who they are when they introduce themselves, that is what we are looking to define; it's what we should be working to preserve. There should be a term for this - maybe there will be someday.
Thanks so much to my fellow scholar for asking this question.
