Week 5 Blog

Topoi at play- Cause and Effect


In her essay, Language Acquisition and Language Learning, Heidi Byrnes questions what it means to become and be a competent user of a language and, more specifically, of a second foreign language, especially for adult learners (49). She first attempts to answer this question by looking at theoretical approaches relative to their influence on current thinking about language learning. Then, she explores he shift from more formalist, to functionalist, to individually and psycholinguistically driven, and finally to more socially contextualized ways of understanding language, our human capacity for learning and knowing, and describing the relational acts of teaching and learning (49). Her purpose is to relate her findings about the split between language courses and content courses to practice and influence a new wave in collegiate foreign language departments. She establishes a very formal relationship with her audience of scholarly linguists who are putting SLA to practice in the classroom.

Doris Sommer, in her essay Language, Culture, and Society, addresses the issue of globalization as well as posits the benefits aligned with multilingualism. Sommer attacks globalization from a number of different perspectives including an historical approach, a contemporary trend toward diminished self-respect and cultural preservation, and a very personal approach toward the different avenues that may be opened verbally and mentally by the acquisition of a second language or more. Her purpose is to spark a new awareness and understanding of the benefits of multi-language acquisition, particularly in this “single-minded” nation that we live in. With her audience, she establishes a very personal, scholarly brotherhood and pushes her aspirations of infiltrating hearts, minds, and classrooms all over the world.
While the Byrnes article was a little more technical, Sommer delicately balanced her technical jargon with socio-emotional appeal to her readers. Both articles approach language not as how we describe the world we live in, but as what creates the world we live in. While they have much the same aim toward language appreciation, they communicate through very different mediums. Sommer outlines some of the research underlying the ‘choose and lose’ theory. This is where cause and effect come in to play. By choosing to limit ourselves to one language, we deny ourselves the opportunity to reach new emotional and intellectual peaks. First, interestingly enough, it is impossible for any one of us to be truly monolingual because of all of the varieties and styles that fluctuate through our native languages. As a result, we know that we have built in to us the innate capacity to learn other languages. In order to reinforce her assertion that more is better, Sommer cites numerous studies involving the increased intellectual AND emotional capacities of multilingual students. The fact that one of the effects of multi-language acquisition is a better-equipped arsenal for emotional expression really spoke to me on a personal level. In my personal life, similar to Francois Grosjean, I am incapable of effectively communicating on an emotional level in English. I speak a dying Italian dialect, but not well. So I wonder if I acquired a second or third language, I would become more emotionally expressive. After reading this article, my interest is peaked!