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发表于 2009-7-20 11:38:08
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Anthropology
Anthropology refers to a domain which was constituted as a scientific discipline in the nineteenth century in the West. It responds to every society’s need to know the culture or cultures of which it is composed and to know those which are foreign to it. In this sense, anthropology occupies a border position between two or more cultures. Although it takes a global perspective by sometimes seeing its task as bringing together all the disciplines in the study of man, its least controversial findings are those established on the basis of the study of primitive or rural societies. In the European context, this latter domain is sometimes termed ethnology.
Anthropology and languages
Anthropology adopts a multi-disciplinary perspective and is related to the following domains: economics, history, politics, religion, and LINGUISTICS. Despite the diversity of these, they have methodological assumptions in common which underpin the field of study of anthropology and distinguish the anthropological approach from the sociological. Anthropology prefers restricted social units which are accessible to direct observation, and which are studied by qualitative analysis. This involves anthropologists at a personal level and requires of them the ability to overcome the effects of their own subjectivity. By explaining the functions of values which have been acquired implicitly by the individual in a given society, the anthropologist shows that behaviours which are experienced empirically as natural are not universal but the product of cultural learning. They are thus part of the identity of a community.
Countries which had a policy of foreign conquests (leading, for example, to the colonies of Ancient Greece, the Great Discoveries of the sixteenth century, colonialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) created the foundations for the confrontation of different cultures, on the basis of military and economic interests and spheres of cultural influence. The Other was seen from the double perspective of threat and wonder (Greenblatt, 1991). The need to have access to the language of the foreigner was immediately recognised as being indispensable for military knowledge of the terrain, and for commercial exchange, to overcome the limitations of the simple language of gesture and exchange. INTERPRETERS, the conquerors who lived with indigenous women, or these women themselves, were the first to experience the multiple functions of the linguistic and cultural intermediary, as was for example the case of Malinche, also called Do馻 Marina, the mistress of the Spanish conqueror Cortes, described by Diaz del Castillo in the sixteenth century.
In the face of linguistic difference in the field, anthropologists overcome their lack of language and check their data by using intermediaries who serve as guides, informants or interpreters, and ascertain the correctness of their assertions. (For an account of daily practices in the field, see the New Guinea journal of Malinovski which he kept from 1914 to 1915 and again from 1917 to 1918, and the work of his pupil Firth). Anthropologists thus developed skills focused on the relationship to the Other which can compensate for what, seen from a language teaching perspective, seems to be a linguistic handicap. In the course of the twentieth century it has been recognised that the competence of the anthropologist includes mastery of the language, but that this competence is not sufficient to guarantee the scientific value of their work. The skills of anthropologists do not consist only in the ability to suppress their subjectivity, which is inevitable, but also to recognise its existence, and to overcome the effects of exoticism, by becoming involved in the daily life of the society being observed. The complexity of the relationships between anthropologists and their field, in the continuum between the two poles of involvement and distancing, can be described as a paradox (Clifford, 1988) and the basis for the process of taking an objective view.
For those countries which during the nineteenth century developed a policy of disseminating their language abroad, linked to a policy of colonisation (Britain, Germany, Russia and the USSR, FRANCE, Italy etc.), the relationships between anthropology and education are influenced above all by the national interest of the colonisers. The dissemination of French and German cultures beyond their national frontiers reflects two different interpretations of national feeling, influenced by the three wars between these two countries in less than one hundred years (1870, 1914–18, 1939–45). German Kulturkunde incorporated the particularity of the German spirit (Elias, 1969), whereas the dissemination of the FRENCH language was linked to the dissemination of the CIVILISATION fran鏰ise, the bearer of universal values. These cultural models created a relationship of political, economic and cultural dependency in the countries where the language was disseminated. ‘LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM’ is linked with cultural imperialism (Phillipson, 1992).
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the recognition of cultural and linguistic diversity is one of the points on which there is agreement between the claims made on behalf of the findings of anthropology and those made in the name of politics. The concept of HUMAN RIGHTS, which is fundamental to a pluralist vision of democracy and concerned with minorities and the respect for cultural identity, plays a mediating role between the human sciences and educational and political interests. The use of the term ‘ethnic group’ provides for a positive categorisation of cultural diversity and the development of an official policy of multiculturalism, linked to the defining of identity and national citizenship. This is what happened in the 1970s in the USA, CANADA and AUSTRALIA, which recognised the role of indigenous minorities (‘First Nations’ in North America, and aborigines in Australia) in the definition of their national identity, although they did not recognise officially the linguistic pluralism which is its equivalent. The contrast between MOTHER TONGUE and culture and foreign language and culture is not deemed to be relevant in this case. The fundamentals of multi-ethnic education, in which reduction of prejudice, anti-racist education, CULTURAL AWARENESS, equality and equity of rights are relevant to language teaching, were institutionalised in the context of courses designated as multicultural.
These approaches, also evident in Europe, ensure continuity between a pluralist interpretation of citizenship, the national identity of each European country, and the recognition of the multi-ethnic dimension of a society One of the aims of the COUNCIL OF EUROPE, stated in 1949, is to ‘favour the recognition and valuing of European identity whilst combating all kinds of intolerance’. The 1992 Treaty of the European Union uses for political purposes concepts borrowed from the field of anthropology such as cultural values and heritage. The development of the European dimension in education is related directly to the learning and the dissemination of the languages of the Union’s Member States. The language field is seen, at the level of the whole education system, as being appropriate for the diffusion of a message of tolerance.
Anthropology and language learners
As it was developed from the study of so-called primitive societies, anthropology initially focused on a naturalist approach to mankind in particular, based on the study of anatomic variation. This starting point, called physical anthropology and similar to the interests of archaeology, aimed to classify populations in terms of biological, cultural and sociological factors, and to measure physical differences by anthropometric classification. Today the description of the influence of physical factors on social factors is only a marginal aspect of the discipline. These theories were invalidated scientifically, after World War Two, by the recognition of symbolic systems, the attack on the reductive effects of cultural evolutionism based on a Western view of progress (Lévi Strauss, 1958), but also politically by the political fallout of racial ideology, decolonisation and the acceptance of humanist values by international organisations such as UNESCO and the Council of Europe. Anthropology rejected a unitary vision of the development of humanity, asserted the equality of cultures in the scientific approach to comparison, and contributed to the popularisation of its knowledge by attacking threats to identity and the ethnocentrism of prejudice towards foreigners. The implications of this for language teaching are important: the notion of the native, borrowed from anthropology and re-used in the expression NATIVE SPEAKER, neutralises the ambiguous and pejorative values contained in the term ‘foreigner’, especially when this notion was preceded by such notions as ‘the barbarians’, ‘the bedevilled’, ‘the enemy’ and ‘the colonials’. However, the anthropologist relativises the ability of the native to describe the culture to which he/she belongs, giving him/her the status of informant, whereas in a traditional mode of thinking in language teaching, the native is generally an absolute model whom the foreigner is encouraged to follow.
In the context of the INTERNATIONALISATION of the economy, the requirements created by geographic mobility also make the debates and discussions in anthropology relevant to language teaching, in connection with expatriation and immigration. The issues of short- or medium-term residence abroad have arisen in different geographic contexts and structures according to the social categories involved. On the one hand there are managerial staff who have to leave their own country in order to export the technological knowhow of their company. On the other hand, there are the migrant workers who bring their labour to countries richer than the ones where they were born. For example, as the US policy of economic expansion was established, work was developed to respond to the NEEDS of the commercial world. This had to take into consideration the constraints of efficiency and economic viability, whilst developing the skills of negotiation and persuasion of those sent abroad. It involved, for example, the raising of awareness of the unconscious models which in every culture structures the concepts of time (Hall, 1959) and space (Hall, 1966), of cultural misunderstandings which trouble communication between interlocutors socialised into different cultures, and of the effects of the length of the period of residence abroad, in particular the concept of CULTURE SHOCK.
A quite different direction was taken in the 1970s in Europe with the beginning of a common European linguistic policy, focused on ADULT and child migrants who needed to be educated in their host country. The response to this in linguistic terms was accompanied by a critical analysis of the concept of ACCULTURATION, which had direct implications for family structures, relationships between men and women, and the question of citizenship. For example, in France the terms ‘integration’, ‘assimilation’ and ‘insertion’ were used to designate the measures taken with respect to these groups, measures which devolved from the French conception of the universality of values, whereas in Britain the focus was on ‘differentiation by class as opposed to differentiation by race’ (Todd, 1994), and Germany preferred to maintain the identity of the ethnic groups it hosted, as the terms Ausl鋘der or Aussiedler imply, designating respectively immigrant and foreigner with German forebears.
Language teaching attempts to systematise the description of the difficulties arising from the movement from one culture to another by using the term ‘INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE’, and is beginning to focus on the resolution of these difficulties. This term provides a common perspective on all those who are involved in the relationship between two languages: those who learn a language in which they have not been socialised, and those who belong to the culture whose language is being learned. The creation of European mobility programmes creates a new area of interest, in particular with respect to EXCHANGES of university and school students. The aim that every European should in the long run speak three languages of the European Union (European Commission, 1996) can be related to the globalisation of information, to flexibility in education and employment, and to the construction of a European identity.
Wherever such mobility exists, for example between North America and East Asian countries, it requires language teaching to recognise the reciprocity of identities and the valuing of linguistic and cultural pluralism. This means, for example, that in the context of a period of residence abroad, when they participate in new ways of life and become involved in a different education system, students should move beyond the status of a foreigner and not relate to the country as a tourist. Their position is comparable to that of the anthropologist.
Anthropology and language teaching
The dissemination of anthropological knowledge in language teaching can be envisaged on two levels. On the one hand, there is the question of the nature of the information about the culture whose language is being taught. On the other hand, there are the processes used in anthropology which are relevant to teaching.
In the first case there is an obvious use for work related to the anthropology of the body—studies of the perceptions of illness, health, ill-luck and death—and historical anthropology which studies the evolution of mentalities in the form of a history of national emblems, of eating habits, of religious thought, of living conditions, of private life, of taste, of hygiene, of the family and of sexuality. A second source of interest are the accounts of discoveries and voyages, autobiographies of explorers and migrants, and travel diaries. These are important documents through which it is possible to study how over the course of the centuries an analysis of the relationship to the Other has been developed. On the basis of such documents it is possible to make explicit intercultural misunderstandings and to begin a process of analysing the notion of the universality of values which is unthinkingly experienced by learners as natural. The quality of the anthropological information in these areas is now beginning to influence the content of TEXTBOOKS.
There is a parallel and often complementary development linked to the ethnography of communication, which studies the social distribution of linguistic SKILLS and the linguistic variation evident in different societies. Here, anthropology sensitises the teacher to the social diversity in any group of learners, to the variety of cultural practices which co-exist in any educational environment. It also contributes to the raising of learners’ awareness of the complexity of a culture which initially they often see in a reductive way.
The transfer of methods from anthropology to language teaching can contribute to the modernisation of the foundations of the teaching of languages which were established in the middle of the twentieth century. The anthropologist’s purpose is to develop a description of the way of life and the system of values of a given cultural community. It is also to systematise a RESEARCH METHOD based on an inside knowledge of the society arising from long-term contact with the community being studied, and on the principle of openness to the Other which ensures the anthropologist’s own independence of thought. The anthropologist’s work is characterised by the collection of information on foreign cultural products and values, the comparison of this information with another cultural system, and the relationships between the known and the unknown. There is, then, a parallel between the anthropologist, the teacher and the learner.
Although teachers and learners are most often valued in terms of their linguistic COMPETENCE, they none the less share with the anthropologist their position of being on the borders between several cultural systems. The social role of the teacher, like that of the anthropologist, is to describe a foreign society in a way which is free of prejudice, which takes into consideration cultural distance between the society being described and the one producing the description, and which is part of the process of understanding of this distance. There are several theoretical models to underpin the process of comparison. First, use of the notion of the cultural bridge takes into account the issue of intercommunication between groups and the difficulties involved. Second, the analysis of mutual perceptions of two cultures in a specific domain—for example, the media or school textbooks—emphasises the possibility of changing these perceptions. Third, and more broadly, the study of images of the foreigner in different sections of a given society shows how the sense of proximity and distance between cultures depends on the way information is received, and on the international geo-political context. Fourth, the analysis of practical situations of language teaching, where the focus is on issues of mobility rather than strictly educational OBJECTIVES, is linked to the methodology of anthropology in so far as such analysis is concerned with relationships in the field and with confrontation with cultural Otherness.
The relationships between anthropology and language teaching are, however, surrounded by ambiguity, since they are both political and academic. The impact of anthropology on the field of language teaching varies according to the languages and culture in question, and according to the geographic and historical realities within each national context. The impact varies also according to the level of learning. There is anthropological awareness linked to early language teaching, but it is especially at university level that the discipline is taught in its own right. In the Anglo-Saxon context, this disciplinary domain contributes to the teaching of CULTURAL STUDIES or AREA STUDIES. In this case the name of the course is linked to a national designation (a course in German literature, for example) or to a linguistic area (French Studies, for example) which often includes several cultural areas. In fact, this kind of alignment is determined by academic requirements:
the same cultural area might be designated in one situation as ‘Romance’ or ‘European’, and in another as ‘Cultural Heritage’. If there is explicit reference to anthropological terminology in the administrative organisation of university language departments, it is usually in parallel with linguistic terminology.
Conclusion
In the expression of public opinion, the term ‘language barrier’ tends to be used indiscriminately to describe all the difficulties of communication with a foreign language and culture. Often, communication by gesture is seen as a simple but universal response, and cultural difference is spontaneously interpreted in terms of human progress, in a linear and ethnocentric perspective. This is especially so in a tourist context. When the findings of anthropology are transferred to the field of language teaching, they confirm the significance of the cultural dimension of language teaching by identifying the limitations of purely linguistic competence and performance in a foreign language. There are certain areas, otherwise marginalised by a strictly linguistic approach—NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION, for example—or certain kinds of competence, such as attitudinal competence, which can be based on this and acquire academic legitimation. Contrary to the ideological discourses which idealise or reject the Other, the findings of anthropology offer a differentiated reading of difference, between universality and particularity (Geertz, 1973) and allow us to choose between several levels of interpretation—political, economic, historical, linguistic, educational—through which to approach a foreign culture. |
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