SKILLS at SMHS Period 3

SKILLS at SMHS Period 3

Monday, February 2nd

Linguistic Landscapes

Materials needed:

Icebreaker (5 minutes)

Turn to their neighbor and share their favorite word/phrase, or share this with the whole group

Logistics (5-10 minutes)

Journals: Hand out journals once everyone is there and explain purpose of journals
Consent and permission forms:
Collect remaining field trip permission slipsand go over the tentative layout of the field trip with them. Emphasize that the purpose is for them to be engaged and participate with other students participating and NOT with just those in their class/school
Collect consent forms that we gave them on Wed (the ones for the survey)
Distribute new round of consent forms and briefly explain that sometime in the future, we’ll have recording equipment (explain the purpose of this)

Review of last time’s material (5 min)

What do they remember about Wednesday’s discussion? What stood out to them from last time?
Language variation: If it doesn’t come up, remind them of the principle/idea that language varies, like we saw last time with all of Taylor’s different styles and with the California maps they drew. Let them know that today we’ll be continuing to look at some of the ways language varies in their own worlds (landscapes) and in the world generally.

Linguistic Landscapes (45 minutes depending on whether they’ve actually done it)

Today we will be discussing your examples of linguistic landscapes and adding to our portraits of our linguistic landscapes.
Campus exploration (20 min):
To get them thinking about ways they see language in their home or peer life (which is what they probably brought in) in relation to what they see at school, have them split into groups and go outside
Make sure at least one person in each group has a camera/phone
They should take a few pictures of how language is used at their school. This can include signs they see. It can also include spaces that they feel are connected to particular ways of speaking.

Class discussion (25 min):
Number class off in order to divide them into 4 groups/clusters of 3-4, with each small group led by instructors and mentors
Begin by free-writing in journal on the most striking example they found. This can be from the campus tour or from the example they brought for their homework. Write the following questions (adapted from Scott Thornbury’s blog) on the board to guide their reflection: (5-10 minutes)
Where was this photo taken?
What is the photo of?
If the photo/ artifact includes language:
What kind of language is it? (Street sign, advertisement, billboard, etc.)
How many languages can you see? Does there seem to be a dominant or more prominent language?
Who wrote the text? Who is the intended audience?
Is any/all it in another language besides English? If so, why do you think this language is included?
Is there a translation? Why/why not? Is it translated well or awkwardly? Is it even correct?
Is there anything about the language use you don’t understand?
Is there anything else that stands out to you about the use of language?
If it doesn’t directly include language:
Add some language to the landscape (maybe use a cartoon bubble or a caption).
How do people use language in this space? What kinds of things would you hear or not hear?
How do you use language in this space? How does that compare to how you use language in other spaces?
How do people dress? How do they act? What norms or rules are there in this space?

Small-group discussion mediated by fellows and mentors (10-15 minutes)
Have each student share their example and reflections within each small group
Some questions to guide discussion:
Community of practice:
What are the practices in this space?
Norms/rules: think of a time when you saw norms somehow violated or rules broken in this space. What does this say about what is expected, normal, or “appropriate” in this space?

Use the large-group discussion to introduce some key differences between language, dialect, and accent. (Possibly also register, if it comes up)
Accent
Emphasize that this has to do with pronunciation. Try to elicit a few examples from them of different accents they hear in their landscapes.
Also emphasize that since “accent” just refers to a way of pronouncing things, everyone has an accent since everyone has a way of pronouncing things!
Dialect
Refers to accent as well as grammar and vocabulary
Like accent, everyone speaks/uses a dialect
Remind the students that the linguistic/scientific cover term for all three is “variety”

Make-up Discussion - Markedness and Variation within Linguistic Landscapes (30 minutes)

PPT with some images form part of our broader, shared landscape of language and symbols (even if they don’t use makeup, they’ve probably seen these types of ads in the media, etc.)
Remind them of the “language isn’t just language” idea from last time, so what they’ll see next has a lot to do with the body and other symbols
As we go through each slide, ask:
What do you notice about the words, colors, symbols, numbers and categories being used here? What social messages are they sending? What are these images framing as ‘normal’?
For slide 2 (the one with the cities), note that this slide represents communities (at the large scale of cities) as being very homogenous, and the shade that represents each community is assumed to somehow be the norm
Markedness and marked vs. unmarked identities: see PPT
What is marked vs. unmarked in each of these images?

Wind-down: have them write in their journals for a few minutes about what is marked vs. unmarked in their communities or the different spaces they represented in their linguistic landscapes. What blends into the landscape as normal and almost invisible? What stands out? This can be related to language