New aspects of language; Dial-A-Linguist
- Transcript
New aspects of language. Using a language is so much a part of our everyday lives that we do not realize just how complex an activity it is. Linguistics is the science responsible for investigating this activity. We take so much for granted during this series some of the tools and methods used by linguists to study the complexities of language are demonstrated. The series is prepared and narrated by Dr. Greg Franco associate professor of English and Linguistics at George Peabody college for teachers. In this last program of the series. James G. Perry head of the English department of high school in Nashville Tennessee. And Professor Joseph Bryson chairman of the department of Germanic and Slavic languages at Vanderbilt University joined Dr. Frankel to discuss how to dial a linguist. Well she says.
What he meant thereby of course is where do we find linguists organizational leg when we need them. I think it's worthwhile right here at the beginning to make a distinction between an organization which combines linguists for their own professional purposes to give them the possibility to exchange ideas and perhaps to foster some publications. And some other organizations where the teachers are using need opening with text information for his teaching programs can find professional help. As an instance of the former dean may mention the Linguistic Society of America LSA about which we're going to talk a little more later run. For the second purpose we may mention as an example in ZTE the National Council of Teachers of English which is a professional organization. Perhaps Mr. Kirby started with some.
What about in ZTE you I expect stuff about the linguistic aspects of the work which ends he's doing. My limbs the NCT is a national organization I support it by classroom English teachers. They are three divisions of this particular society. The elementary division which produces elementary English has a magazine and. For this particular and spinning thing is a journal for Secondary English teachers in the college English. EDITION. Our three of these magazines are devoted to modern trends in linguistics and CTE has been a. Forerunner of. Linguistic development. I have support it to. National or grants. For this particular purpose they have published the findings of these particular. Grants. They have. Reprint it to. Literally scale ads of source material for any classroom English teacher.
I mean one thing Mr. Case being about this three levels wouldn't that be of interest. Something to change if it is between the three and not have an entirely seperate. Kinds of teach in one level of law from the teacher on the other. Alas I would highly recommend that if you're going to seek membership in theirs I mean as a nation that you belong to all three levels because you can get an overall view a great amount of the work for example that is printed. And the. Elementary English. Journal and English journal. Are done by. The. Linguistic Senate just Chomsky for example has had work published in them things you know that's very interesting with comps given that he had his work published in. May be meant for teachers it really creates kind of a close cooperation between the practitioner and it isn't. Can you give us some of the research publications. Well there are four other publications you have the. Cea
newsletter the conference on English education newsletter. You have the research and the teaching. Which is printed twice a year and a very valuable. Magazine for those who entered in all the up to date research going on in. Linguistics and then you have the abstract facts abstracts of English studies which is mainly devoted to literature. It always the danger that a number of members of the organization simply don't understand and you strike them off with any way of becoming involved in linguistics with the help of activities himself. Can somebody go out and insist on what I'm going to do it to understand these things. Well. Of course many of the articles in the English journal and college English. Too. Are articles by teachers about the practice of linguistics in the classroom so that you get sort of a Ripoll war between people who have
actually taught modern language sticks and people who haven't taught linguistics at all. You feel like there is a tab between you and the people. Yes it's anyone think teaching is it possible that entails more than language. How much of the activity which is devoted to linguistic over writing presented at the present time because of the enormous interest. Less. Interest devoted to it. It's well I would say at the present time about 50 50 50 50 and there's a great deal of work being done of course in the research and teaching literature as a linguistic device yet of course read up that we have the two together yet. It isn't very difficult to join the NCT each other as a show runs about $7 per year Iraq campaign is what they.
Address is 5 0 8 6 trades Champagne Illinois sixty one eight twenty one as they said. Code number. You might belong to all three divisions You may also subscribe to via conference on college composition and communication which may not seem. Applicable for our high school teachers I am a school teacher but I want to assure you that there are articles in there which will help in any level and quite a few of those articles are on linguistic aid for college composition and for any type of composition. And even in high school because we have to concentrate on composition quite a bit of the time it takes to campuses know that vacancy for a long time. Well thanks mainly to the government institute. Quite a bit more is being done nowadays than the Indian writing ratios and I seem to be walking step in step. Together because I.
Am see DEA makes quite a bit of publication for the National Defense Education Group and yes they support all of the institutes they print the findings of these institutes and. I think it's a healthy thing. I've noticed that these youths many of the lecturers come by specialization are also offices That's right and. That might be the reason the two have been tied together so closely. I think one of the main contributions of NZ to the. Ass out of the publications which I write produce monthly. Would be the vast amount of resource material which is available to the membership. You may order reprints of articles from The Journal and from the elemental English section and from the college English section. You may order entirely new publication and I by the way at a discount price. This is one of the yeah.
As one of the added charms of the Army donation. And you may buy these re price now you can go back and catch up on work that was done 10 12 15 years ago so that you won't feel like you're stepping into the water without first learning how to surround. You have available to you. Filmstrips recordings tapes. Even my apps I don't know when I do have a dialect and I have time I'm really but this is the most important thing that I have found in NCT it gives me an opening into these publications. Now I understand from some of my friends that the percentages of English teachers does not see them right here right away. So if they so much as interesting as it is at trying to update people to familiarize them with the latest findings in the field in which they are active almost all of the teaching time. Why should people not take an active interest in it.
Or perhaps one reason is that the teachers who are members have done a very poor blessedly job on that. Maybe we are tending to keep it as a secret project. You're doing things because it's ineffective what they're doing. No definitely not. Perhaps of course a great many secondary English teachers aren't tied up with other subjects. They not only teach English but perhaps teach a foreign language and maybe even mathematics and quite a few general education teachers are English teachers and they say that foreign language at every meeting members of the modern language such as yours. Right right right. They make it the same as true. That's true they do they do information through that other organization. Perhaps you will tell us a little bit about this mother language thing as well as more than language. Organisation is English only and we know it includes It includes English and all foreign languages. That means modern foreign languages. The teachers of classical
languages have their own organisation that is English teachers practically have two possibilities. That's true I think. In our more than one which association is quite an old organisation it was founded eight hundred eighty four. And it has grown steadily. To day. It has 25000 members. Of the last National Convention. Which was held in Chicago. Had 13000 teachers attending. So it is a huge organization and there are. Many. People who believe that it should be split between teachers of English and teachers of foreign languages. But this has been resisted so far. There's doubt that it does work for some years but that isn't borne fruit yet. Well it is.
As far as National Convention conventions are concerned. It has become unmanageable. We have to be in for hothouse. And it's simply too huge to meet at the same time it is with a sort of mix of you know. But this now this national organization is of course broken up in broken down in six regional units. North east south east midwest central south central and west. Now for example we in Tennessee belong to south eastern branch of more than language organization and we have our. Regional. Meetings we have our regional publications and and so on. What does that leave for. It's it's it's really of South Atlanta South Atlantic modern language organization.
You know it raises some of the states have their own publications associated with NCT But Tennessee is not one of them. Now of course Modern Language Association has been engaged in many activities while the first important activity of course is holding off national and regional conferences where learned papers are presented to. Various committees scheduled to work and so on. Then of course. You have the publications the publications of modern language associations and the any bibliography no lippy MLA. That's right is the most important publication in this field. I mean one thing to emulate in general more linguistics oriented than NCP because after all doesn't cover language only neither neither neither being neither does more than Language Association there is of course linguistics various
literature and there is folklore of folk writing to the homeless. How Of course then. More than Language Association has been sponsoring many projects. Such as. Intensive summer programs in languages or language and area SANDERUS. Or exchange programs where the foreign country us. Then. They have done quite a bit. In the field of higher degrees. For example. What is an example ary AARP HDD pre in English or in French. If that fails example it is quite well-known that the rate of yes.
And for example. They have been very active in device scene the new curricula as far as English and foreign languages are concerned. Now. Then more than one which Association has their very. Effective Information Center and service. If you. Wish to know for example. The chairman of areas language departments foreign language staff members or which institutions are teaching Chinese or Arab E and so on that's of course all available cutlet with. All linguistic problems. Yes and this is of course combined with the statistical research center of the Modern Language Association where you can learn about the romance in various languages. For example that
of Hydrastine role meant in this country it is in French. And that for example the enrollment in Russian has been decreasing steadily in the last few years on the other hand the enrollment in Chinese has skyrocketed. The enrollment in modern Hebrew has skyrocketed. And so on in the way that many of us are kryptonite he first got out 10 in the Senate individual get this information. No you're so you're serious you know formation is available to individuals. And it is distributed to the to the institutions. Then of course there is a center for editions of American authors. And one Language Association has seen to it that critical editions of Whitman ha'p'orth on Madeleine all these authors have been prepared to present the less well nor the activity of the day with us as at least less well-known today with.
Than there is of course teaching material sent. Here of course. If testing service now how for example to test Ph.D. candidates in for a knowledge of some foreign land real or knowledge of foreign languages. And language laboratory us. Textbooks. As you know there has been a great discussion how to teach Chinese. There are several methods of teaching Chinese none of them has been satisfactory yet you are the right thing with us all and not at all that there is which is called the orderly rather let them who have allowed this to have some part of their parts right that's part of it. For it. And of course language movies send or release a teaching device that is actually published. They have not published tax breaks for that until they are remembering their own gods and yes.
Information of this on the connectors project. Well they have taken the project English out work onto their wings as bacon and have published for this. Project I have several of the. Research and Development and they are quite valuable and I have a whole collection of project initiated by Friday. Well I don't hate it as much as I know about it. That's because it's sponsored by the government and. Anyone who is interested in doing research in any field of English and I might add that linguistics is the favorite field to do research and return and I plan to the department that to handle project English and it would be approved of course you would have to. Give some idea how much money you would need for this project and then there carried on at various centers around the United States as wanted. Oregon and the brassica has it and a colleague takes as well.
I may add that most of the people I have worked with sitting with THINK approach to teaching has come up with a solution they favor transformation the grandmother writes interesting. Side although I would like to. Remark that the textbooks in might say German and other languages which have been sponsored by MLA. Have not found any response among the. Among. Us. In my college and university teachers. And of course. Private publishers have not been very happy about this just as I mean generous less effective in its influence on teachers and city and the English fans. The US response to their fourth round this is just one example there are does not mean time a is much more interested in research activities standing in there producing.
Things like textbooks and then we have the Center for Applied Linguistics But as of which is also an offshoot of the modern language that has years and we use entirely with practical problems and in fact it has been founded to deal with lack of problems and this is now about how does a six six seven years as a Center for Applied Linguistics and really consented to mainly with questions of collection dissemination making information available even now lately with. Jump up and join us. Oh yes oh yes yes yes. This is of course Modern Language Association put out. Three times a year at least to form a consensus in the field as a linguistic reporter which is put out by the Center for writing with the most useful in all respects and the connection with Applied Linguistics and the new centers for disseminating material which has not yet been
published for the extremely useful because one of the greatest difficulties in linguistics as you don't cross know was to become familiar with the thing on. That's when I get ready to publish takes its manuscripts the reading of which would be very helpful but you have no way of getting at them. So that these new regional centers are meant to supply less of manuscript material which you can order in Xerox and some other form of extremely helpful and will enable people to exchange ideas not to work on the same kind of. Of research and then come up within a short time with almost identical bugs and a waste of money if what he does for you I think that's extremely important. Also more than Language Association it's the public's fault be HDD separations. Yes all that let's say. A candidate who is ready to write on one topic can find out whether somebody
at the University of Michigan is engaged in this activity yet which is very important for people who are going to feel great import these days because of every Red Cell fast bibliographies and transformation of Graeme and BPO as a second language and so on are extremely important. I would like to add a few words of course we could go on for ever talking about these issues and organizations each one would probably warrant a problem of its own I'm sorry can't really do that. But as we just mentioned the practical aspect and I mentioned teaching a second language. I may just as well devote a few words to this new organization. Called Tesla. A key Association for teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages. We had the opportunity in a previous program to mention the difference between teaching it as a foreign language teaching as a second language and teaching of English Speakers of Other Languages all these names have become
very familiar to linguists in recent years. So in March 1966 almost exactly two years ago today. People decided in New York that it was time to set up a special organization devoted solely to the teaching of English because of other languages. It has in its organization set up under the general supervision of nasty people who deal with the student advising in the United States. And again we have different regions just as you pointed out for different regions for instance in the CBA to Region 7 which covers the southeast. Not scale activity in this field will probably become apparent and prevalent in the near future. The two years have already shown that close cooperation exchange of ideas national meetings and
so on can do a lot of good to a people who have not been so familiar with the development that they shouldn't be and. I'm looking forward to more publications via the Tesla news letter and other means of telling each other what we think the first one for instance into a bibliography. Again something which is extremely important for general information. I would also at this point like that if you went on the Linguistic Society of America after all this is not to say the parent organization of all of us we all feel that this is the one organization that linguists all with a grievous allegiance to and the United States. Has not the very oldest competitors MLA. But it's just about half a century old not on the 1924 and it publishes the year in a language which is the best known of the linguistic in the United States. Interesting
it has grown very suddenly in recent years it used to be a small organization but with the graduate programs in linguistics which came about through various. Factors impacting post-war developments really has room for some thousands of members and at the present time meetings national meetings once a year almost as read a madhouse. We don't have really much time to discuss everything but there are so many other organisations one could mention for instance as an offshoot of the evening Wessex our society on the pedagogical level. You could mention the institutions which take place during the summit. Of biggest so far as to place in 1964. They grew up to that time. They had their ups and downs in
1964 and Indiana they had to about 70 faculty members roughly and about the same number of courses. Theoretical practical and language this year for instance we take place the interest of Illinois. Again the history of this institution has a very interesting one and it can be read up in the catalogue for the evening with against it today in Indiana 1964 way for written up by Hill who was the treasurer and we should also mention some other offshoot of at this point just in passing I feel as for instance the SNCF for mathematical and computational linguistics. These people have become so wide it technical that they can only talk among themselves. There are many papers on these topics presented at LSA meetings and comparing steps a point where only a very small minority of people could follow though they split off and combine mathematical and
computational interests now and me. One thing you have very often concerns with a linguistic answer then there is that. We should also mention in passing the Society for dealing with snakes. Some people have felt that link with profession thing without becoming too technical in their jargon and paying too much attention to analytical questions rather than to practical questions such as how many people speak a certain language as a first or as a second language. How many languages should one nor how much of a language should one know if one goes live say into international commerce things of this sort. That question of mere practical outlook. So they founded their own organization just a couple of years ago in New York it was a very strong sponsorship of your pay was known for his work interests and general field of his imaging general information. We may also mention
that we now have a society which is very similar to the name a society of America. It's something with a kind of a piano appropriately and they have put out some kind of a bulletin in which they purpose to unify linguists in your research and to enable them to exchange ideas. So I think that we are really presented with some kind of a linguistic tribute and I thank you gentlemen for sharing your knowledge with me. The material we could present necessarily has to remain. In the last program of this series. James G. Curry head of the English department of Glen Cliff High School in Nashville Tennessee. And Professor Joseph Price and. Chairman of the department of Germanic and Slavic languages at Vanderbilt University.
Have joined Dr. Frankel to discuss how to dial a linguist new aspects of languages prepared and narrated by Dr GERD Franco associate professor of English and Linguistics at George Peabody college for teachers and is produced in the studios of WP. This is Richard Waddell speaking. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.
- Series
- New aspects of language
- Episode
- Dial-A-Linguist
- Producing Organization
- WPLN
- Nashville Public Radio
- Contributing Organization
- University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/500-7h1dpc7f
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- Description
- Series Description
- For series info, see Item 3622. This prog.: Dial-A-Linguist
- Date
- 1968-11-27
- Topics
- Literature
- Media type
- Sound
- Duration
- 00:29:42
- Credits
-
-
Producing Organization: WPLN
Producing Organization: Nashville Public Radio
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
University of Maryland
Identifier: 68-36-13 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:29
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- Citations
- Chicago: “New aspects of language; Dial-A-Linguist,” 1968-11-27, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed November 6, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-7h1dpc7f.
- MLA: “New aspects of language; Dial-A-Linguist.” 1968-11-27. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. November 6, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-7h1dpc7f>.
- APA: New aspects of language; Dial-A-Linguist. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-7h1dpc7f