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NEWS
Thursday, June 15, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
University researchers study bilingualism in Argentina
from both a linguistic and sociocultural perspective
Study explores
bicultural practices
and languages
By JENNIFER MEER
Summer Managing News Editor
A research project conducted
through the University of Michigan
is bringing together linguists and
cultural analysts to better under-
stand bicultural communities.
The project, titled “Argentine
Afrikaners: Interrogating Hybridity
in a Unique Diasporic Community,”
looks at a bilingual community in
Patagonia, Argentina to better under-
stand cultural and linguistic rela-
tions between Afrikaans, a language
spoken in South Africa, and Argen-
tinian Spanish, a language spoken in
South America, communities.
It is one of three projects that
received
proposal
development
grants
for
research
from
the
Humanities Collaboratory in Febru-
ary.
Overseen by the provost and the
Institute for the Humanities, the
Michigan Humanities Collabora-
tory serves as a resource for research
in the humanities. It promotes team-
based work, as well as communica-
tion of research and humanities
scholars.
For May and June, the grant pro-
vides funding to the team, fostering
collaboration between its linguists
and socio-cultural team members
— anthropologists and religious his-
torians, among them — to analyze
their data and share ideas.
Nicholas Henriksen, an assistant
professor of spanish linguistics, is
the principal investigator on the
project. He described the grant’s
mission to bring together different
perspectives.
“One of the stipulations of the
grant is that all of the collaborators
meet and talk and bring together
ideas from different disciplines,”
he said. “By listening to people
who work in different disciplines,
with different backgrounds, one
nice advantage is we’ve been able
to understand the community from
different perspectives, which we
wouldn’t have done if we were just
working on this independently.”
In general, the linguists observe
the speech patterns of the bilingual
speakers.
“We’re exploring their hybrid
speech patterns,” he said. “When a
bilingual speaker speaks, sometimes
there will be an influence from one
of his or her two languages when
they speak the second language.”
Henriksen said typically linguists
only look for speech patterns and
concentrate on sounds, as opposed
to analyzing content.
Other colleagues on the project
are experts in history and cultural
practices. According to Henriksen,
they are helping to analyze the com-
munity based on such practices and
beliefs — religious, racial and ethnic
differences, among others.
“The two sides of the team kind
of work together to study our speech
community and its hybrid practic-
es,” he said. “On the one hand, the
linguists come together; on the other
hand, the social-cultural members
come together. We are able to por-
tray a picture of these speakers, of
our speech community, because of
the hybridity, but not just looking at
COURTESY OF LORENZO GARCIA-AMAYA
Researchers discuss findings from different disciplines as part of their project to
better understand bicultural communities.
one or the other — bringing both of
those together.”
Lorenzo García-Amaya, who is also
an assistant professor of spanish lin-
guistics, is a researcher on the project.
He works primarily with speech pro-
duction of second-language learners.
The linguists, he explained, use a
software to help analyze the speech.
Several undergraduate students also
help to analyze recordings of inter-
views with the speakers from Argen-
tina in both Afrikaans and Spanish.
García-Amaya said the collabora-
tion has been extremely helpful. He
said it was interesting how the socio-
cultural members were quick to pick
up on certain cues — hesitations,
pauses and interruptions — when the
speakers discussed issues of race and
indigeneity, among others, as these
topics might be sensitive to some.
García-Amaya
explained
lin-
guists themselves may not track
these occurrences on their own, as
they would normally conduct a more
quantitative study measuring fre-
quency.
“In a personal experience, it is
something that is wonderful — I have
been able to learn from them...” he
said. “It has been a surprising aspect
of the collaboratory — how much this
informs the type of analysis that we
conduct in our lab.”
The community of interest con-
sists of approximately 40 bilingual
individuals — 20 of whom were
interviewed for the project — who
are descendents of immigrants who
arrived in Argentina around 1902.
These
immigrants
maintained
Calvinist beliefs, coming from the
Dutch Reformed Church. The inter-
viewed group speaks both Afrikaans
and Spanish — Afrikaans was the
exclusive language until the 1950s
— though their children likely only
speak Spanish, as it became domi-
nant later on. There were 15 inter-
viewees for the project who spoke
only Spanish.
Originally, Henriksen explained,
the group wanted to focus on reli-
gious
ideology
and
differences.
Many speakers had a predominantly
Calvinist upbringing but later were
influenced by Argentine Catholicism.
context in which we experience
our society and learn by pushing
the limits of our individual
perspectives,” she said.
Fierke said sometimes DEI
efforts are at odds with one
another. She also said diversity
is not always inclusive and
inclusion is not always equitable
inclusion.
“Our
conversations
must
account
for
this
emergent,
dualistic framework that is often
conditional to our institutional
value,” she said.
University alum Evelyn Galvan
introduced Castro, where she
stated the event should serve as
an opportunity for the University
to
invite
conversations
and
support action.
“The University of Michigan
and its students have an amazing
legacy of being at the forefront
of activism and participation
in national movements — being
a champion of diversity and
this is an opportunity for us to
contribute to that tradition,” she
said.
Galvan
noted
the
recent
incident in which employees,
who were immigrants, were
detained at Sava’s restaurant.
“Sadly these situations are
continuing in our community
and they’re happening with
greater frequency,” she said.
“Similar to our keynote speaker,
I am also from a family of
immigrants. The abuses faced
by members of our community
impact my life but also motivate
my activism.”
Castro
served
as
the
Democratic
Party’s
first
Hispanic keynote convention
speaker in 2012; the grandson
of an immigrant from Mexico
and raised by a single mother,
he was the youngest elected
city councilman in San Antonio,
Texas, before becoming the
city’s mayor.
He is an advocate for urban
revitalization and education for
students from disadvantaged
communities.
CASTRO
From Page 1
us what you see, and we’re going to
let the community know what we’re
hearing.’ “
Many residents at the forum,
however, expressed their frustration
and disappointment both with the
lack of transparency in the AAPD
as well as the current progress of
the review and the methods it had
incorporated.
Local
tensions
around
community-police
relations
intensified in November 2014 when
Aura Rosser, a Black woman with
bipolar disorder, was fatally shot
by Ann Arbor police, and months
later when the Washtenaw County
Prosecutor’s Office decided not to
press charges against the officer
on the grounds it was lawful self-
defense. Ann Arbor resident Shirley
Beckley said the review so far had
not sufficiently included the people
it was intended to benefit — Black
residents.
AAPD
From Page 1
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