A Call to Adventure

Kuinka paljon maksa huone?

"Kuinka paljon maksa huone?"  In English: "What is you rate?"

This was one of the first phrases I learned in Finnish, spoken gleefully to my stepmother who upon learning its meaning informed me that she "charged by the hour." Ah, the joy of practicing new languages with family members!

(Above is an illustration of Mikael Agricola, known as the founder of written Finnish.)

Today my passport should arrive with my official Finnish work and residence permit – thank goodness that worked out, I was getting a little nervous and it's cutting it close (only four more days til departure). But now the reality is setting in and I'm amazed how much I've already learned – about language, about culture, and mostly about myself. Read more…

To Finland

I. "Where to next?"

This was a question I asked myself repeatedly throughout the last 4 years, a question that instigated both great anxiety and long periods of hopeful daydreaming throughout the often arduous process of completing doctoral studies in language and writing. As soon as I had landed in Indiana, PA, home to IUP, I began to consider what came next.

It seemed I had three choices:

1. Look for a job in the states
2. Look for a job abroad
3. Return to Japan

Each option had its own merit along with supporters and detractors. For example, "I don't think teaching at a Japanese university will be taken as seriously as teaching in an American one." This was offered by a grad program administrator with considerable experience. Likewise, "I've always pictured you living in Europe." This sentiment was often voiced by my own father. As much as I hated to admit my own inclination to leave the USA despite my strong family and friendship connections, Europe was a place I had always dreamed of returning to. Read more…

The First Life of Edison Hartwell

(from The Five Lives of Edison Hartwell)

It's difficult to say when the first life of Edison Hartwell began. For although an official birth certificate lists a time and date, many who knew him found this approach to establishing existence arbitrary. His mother's sister, for instance, knew Edison long before his birth date. Regularly playing violin to her sister's swelling belly, Matilda understood Edison's responsive kicks to the emotionally cathartic playing as appreciative applause. As such, when she could finally put down the violin and hold him in her arms, it was more of a meeting with an adoring fan than a first-time introduction.

For Thornton, however, Edison was a presence weeks before even Matilda knew him. Thornton had realized that Jane was pregnant even before she had. And why wouldn't he? Who else would be the first to notice the glisten and blush of one body becoming two? Who else could most make sense of his wife's broken orbit of emotion? In a way, Edison's life began when Thornton understood, with great trepidation, that he was suddenly a father. Read more…

A Writing Identity?

SO I think I have a pretty good idea as to who I am as an instructor, such that I would definitely say I’ve developed an instructor identity. While the majority of my research evolves around linguistic and sexual identities, it suddenly occurred to me while composing an email to my parents that I don’t think they know who I am…as a writer. This led me to considering whether or not I could say that I have developed an identity or identities as a writer.  For example, they don’t read me as a regular textual communicator (we don’t chat, im, text, or email all that regularly or to any great extent). I haven’t written a letter or postcard to my parents in about 15 years (and yes, I understand that although 15 years is a significant period of development for me, it has seemed like a matter of seconds to them). They know me really only through verbal communication, mostly via the telephone. That brings me to consider how I communicate differently in writing vs speaking, and the concept of distance vs closeness and its influence on communication.

So what does it take for an identity to have formed? It’s formed if we can observe it? What are the common characteristics? There must be degrees of identity formation and key events that contribute to and shape formation. What does it take for one to be aware of the identity?

So in my dissertation I theorize that participation and imagination both assist the development of an identity. If I imagine myself to belong to a community of writers and imagine that I am a writer via my own multiple definitions (personal or other), then I can be a writer. This “to be a (noun)” act is significant in that labeling legitimizes existence. But it is also the act of writing, the participatory behavior, that legitimizes the label.

So it’s not surprising that I like to begin my writing courses with discussions of what it means to write and to be a writer. I ask, “Are you a writer?” If so, why. If not, then why not?

Sapir-Whorf and Perceptions of English Language

Part 1, English Freedom

It’s another presentation at a Saturday conference and this time we’re sitting in a circle discussing the negotiation of second language identities. I mention to the participants and fellow presenters that my dissertation will examine perceptions of empowerment and queer identity facilitation via the learning and performance of English (as a semiotic act/space). Heads nod when I suggest that there is something about English and English speakers that reference a sense of freedom for many language learners outside the American context. I follow with the question, “But is it really English that allows for this freedom in alternative identities, or would any second language allow this?” The room offers a unanimous “It’s English.” Read more…

Give Mary Gods a Quid, Ya'All

“You sound like the operator,” I say through a large grin.

“What?”

“Like the operator…the woman in the phone!”

My mother looks at me for a moment and then asks, “Whadduya mean?”

“When you talk on the phone, you sound funny. Like the woman,” I reply.

She considers this and is about to say something when I interrupt, enunciating every syllable my 6 year-old voice utters:

“Hello, this is Anita Harrison, Marlen Harrison’s mother. Marlen will be absent from school today because he is ill.”

I stop for a moment and giggle. My mother begins to smile. I continue with my right-hand pinky at my mouth and my right-hand thumb placed to my ear…

“Please have his teacher send homework home with our neighbor Andrea Burns.” I mimic my mother’s telephone voice in a posh, female tone. I tell her, “You sound different when you talk on the phone.”

“I do?”

“Yeah! You try to sound fancy.” Read more…

The Problem of Evidence

“The problem of evidence consists of the tasks of making this fact intelligible” (Garfinkle, p. 103).

    While recently writing an autoethnography examining the semiotics of name in relation to experience, I consistently came across criticism of ethnographic research aimed at highlighting the problem of interpretation of evidence. Coffey (1999) explains that in ethnography the researcher, and his/her interpretive eye, is as much a part of the research as are the subjects being examined. This sentiments is echoed in Garfinkle’s (1976) exploration of the documentary method of sociological research and the problem of Read more…

What do we know about reading?

As usual, I’ll sabotage this question and turn it around a bit to reflect what I thought I knew about reading and to examine some of Smith’s ideas that I found most interesting. As has been my recent mode, while reading Smith I found myself thinking, “Geesh, I knew that, but I guess I never really gave it that much thought.” It’s an interesting commentary considering the subjects and theses of both Rosenblatt’s text and now Smith’s (and I was tickled to see nods to Rosenblatt throughout Chapter 4), both concerning reading, the reader, and understanding.

Sternberg’s approach to understanding the mind and cognition (Metaphors of the Mind) explored a number of metaphors. Smith does the same albeit with a slightly different approach. Chapter 1 begins with a section entitled “Reading the World” and concludes that “reading” itself is a metaphor for looking and understanding, i.e. interpreting facial expressions. Chapter 2 continues with metaphorical examinations by comparing the mind to the computer and introducing concepts for the mind such as script and schema. These concepts form an introduction to the idea that reading is more than mere recognition of letters on a page, phonemes, and representations of sounds; a heck of a lot of thinking and experience are involved in the process of making meaning via reading. One of the most interesting ideas Smith explores is that much of reading is prediction! I suppose it is. I’d go a step further and bring a little bit of my newly learned pragmatics vocabulary into this discussion and couple prediction with implication. As a reader, I must Read more…

The Ring of the Text

What is a text and where is it located?

“The reading of any work of literature is, of necessity, an individual and unique occurrence involving the mind and emotions of a particular reader.”

For at least 20 years or so, I have waited to read such an assertion, having always believed that standardized tests of reading comprehension were, to put it bluntly, ridiculous. How could an individual be assessed based upon his transformation of a piece of literature from a set of printed symbols to a situation with meaning? It always seemed that questions such as “What is the author’s main point?” were rife with the possibility for the reader to impose his own take on the main point. Or perhaps what it all comes down to is that I’m the kind of reader who is apt to taking over a text and imposing himself on it. Fowles, god love him, writes, “A sentences or paragraph in a novel will evoke a different image in each reader. This necessary co-operation between writer and reader, the one to suggest, the other to make concrete, is a privilege of verbal form” (in Rosenblatt, p. 15). Thank you, Mr. Fowles. Read more…

Letter to Achilles

Letter to Achilles

Hold fast,
breathe deeply,
tend to your armor, o warrior.

Your heart and I
will likely pummel you with waves of emotions,
soak you in stormy moods,
chill you with ice storms of thoughtless words,
and no doubt already have. Read more…

Good Teaching

What is good teaching?

Good teaching – oh the word “good” just doesn’t mean anything, now does it – effective teaching is….And what about “effective”? How is THAT defined?

George Mitchell challenged me, pushed me, and he did so not-too-gently. He told me I could be a different writer and was relentless in showing me how. But so was I, relentless in my desire to at first please, but then later, just to explore and experiment. His authority was one that I felt safe deferring to. Religion, literature, history, psychology all slowly merged into a two-year journey of both the world and my place in it, with Mr. Mitchell as my guide. At a towering 6 feet so many inches, his balding pate and baritone bravado commanded the classroom. It was a thrill just to be there. Read more…

Making Meaning Matter

“The wider intellectual community comes increasingly to ignore our [psychology] journals, which seem to outsiders principally to contain intellectually unsituated little studies, each a response to a handful of like little studies. Inside psychology, there is a worried restlessness about the state of our discipline, and the beginning of a new search for means of reformulating it. In spite of the prevailing ethos of “neat little studies,” and of what Gordon Allport once called methodolatry, the great psychological questions are being raised once again — questions about the nature of mind and its processes, questions about how we construct our meanings and our realities, questions about the shaping of mind by history and culture.” (Acts of Meaning, xi) Read more…

A Story Worth Preserving

“But you know your mother really wanted you,” said Connie, seemingly hurt by what I was saying. I was standing in her living room, emphatically yelling and complaining about my parents, listing a litany of hurts that to my 18 year old mind were cruel and harsh wrongdoings. “And another thing,” I would continue. So much anger, so much that I needed to get out of my head, only words and emotion would do.

I thought about what Connie had said, it hadn’t registered at first, my mind a rushing locomotive racing full speed ahead, unable to stop for anything, but – “Your mother really wanted you.” Connie sat on the petite pink sofa, her habitual evening cocktail in hand, Bam-Bam by her side watching me. Her words were only slightly slurred, but I knew she was on her way to that special place. It was autumn, and it was night. A storm was coming, a cold front perhaps. The leaves did not fall to the ground from their branches, they were ripped from them. The lights were on in the kitchen, the television was chatting away. I can see the scene as if I’m sitting in an audience, eyes upon the stage. There’s a pleading look on my face as if to say “See what I mean? You do understand what I’m telling you, don’t you?” But it was Connie who really owned that sentiment, now squeezed into a bullet and shot directly at me in the form of “But you know your mother really wanted you.”

I stopped talking and looked at her, the television the only sound now. Headlights from outside entered the far window of the living room – someone was parking a car, someone had arrived home no doubt eager to enter his home and take refuge from the impending storm outside.

to be continued…

but i AM a writer

“but i AM a writer” – Marlen attempts to define what a “writer” is and finds that perhaps he might just be one.

“A writer is a person who creates novels – a writer is a storyteller,” or so I’ve always thought. Of course I understood that there were other kinds of writers – journalists, reporters and documentarians, biographers and playwrights, but these identities never really held much importance for me…they didn’t register. No, a writer is a storyteller. True, I told stories, and for school, I wrote stories in my journal. I even enjoyed this process. And so despite the fact that adolescence had indeed called on me to be a writer, crafting stories, profiles, or “vignettes” as I liked to think of them, I somehow didn’t assume the identity. My stories weren’t very well developed, more like descriptions of brief moments in time; I felt that this was my unique brand of expression and liked to share my creativity with friends, but still hoped to one day be a real writer, not merely a writer in the worlds of my journal. Read more…

Literacy Story – The Year of the Kite

I can vividly remember some of my earliest writing, from a poem about the Statue of Liberty, to greeting cards prepared especially for my mother. It was at the ripe old age of 12, however, that I had an idea that writing would come to be a meaningful part of my life. Age 12 was the year of the kite, my first discovery that words could be manipulated and positioned to create meaningful and memorable mental images and movement. I remember my English teacher from that time, vividly – Mrs. Beer: Tall, waspish, blonde-haired with small pale features, proper, reserved, and the first person to fling wide open the doors of literacy. Read more…

Language & Cognition (& Pragmatics & Interpretation &…)

Language – communication and expression – and cognition – thought and thinking – when put together equals what? Psycholinguistics, or to quote Altmann, “…the mental processes that underlie our use of language” (1997, xi). Having studied psychology and psychological counseling, the field of psycholinguistics has always held some fascination for me: “Why do we say/write the things we say/write and how do we say/write them?”; “How do we interpret experience and construct meaning using language?”; “What does it take to be a good linguist or language learner?”; “Where does language come from and how are all languages related and yet also unique?”; etc. It is the answers to these questions (well, primarily the second one) that have nagged at me throughout the past decade as I attempted to make sense of human behavior and more recently, language and communication. Read more…

Why Does Writing Really Matter?

“Why does writing really matter?” he asked me. I thought about it for only a brief moment as the answer plainly introduced itself, “Because there are things that one cannot say.” “How true,” I thought after speaking those words. Perhaps I should have written them. I have come to realize that though I’m not currently writing to live that it’s the process of free-writing that releases us, let’s the bullshit fly from our fingers to make room for the gems hidden beneath. I use the terms “writing to live” with the intention of revealing the therapy that writing once provided me.“But if I cannot speak it, why should writing be different?” he then asked. I realized that this new question was quite difficult to answer. Perhaps speaking the answer would reveal very little of the truth behind my statement. Perhaps only living the experience would drive the truth home. Read more…

O Pioneers, ye ESL Instructors

Scaffolding, Context, and Technology: O Pioneers!

Part 1: The Wild Land (click me to read an excerpt from Willa Cather’s novel)

“The Internet is not so much a tool as a new social space that restructures social relations.” – Warschauer (paraphrasing Poster, 1997)

Mark Warschauer, a writer whom I’ve been following for the past few years and have quoted and cited innumerable times in my own writing, poses the question “Not what, not who, but how?” in his 2003 publication, Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide. Examining the reality of internet technology and current issues in the debate of the ‘digital divide’, Warschauer asks his readers to think not merely about the acquisition of technology, but the scaffolding and support that can be provided to its users. He asks us to examine a popular paradigm of the technology haves and have nots and to consider the importance of such technology within social contexts (a scale of varying abilities, access and attitudes towards technology) rather than in extremes. A recent discussion of Warschauer’s writing reminded me of Read more…

ESL and Digital Classrooms

How might you use a computer in your classroom?

Wow, this is a difficult one to answer because I’ve been using computer technology in my classrooms throughout my teaching career. My students and I have explored everything from on-line questionnaires, email exchange projects, and CALL drills, to use of computer-mediated video editing, in-class computer-facilitated synchronous language practice, and even cell-phone message exchange. My main paper for the qualifying portfolio will likely be an overview of my research from the last 4 years examining the uses of such technology in Japanese university classrooms and the majority of my published research has centered on the various stages and outcomes of keypal / penpal email exchange projects. Even now, as I develop my own online multi-lingual magazine, both synchronous and asynchronous communication data – as a result of regular emails, text chat, and discussion board use – is beginning to pile up! So the question “How might I…” could be re-worded as Read more…