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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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