Recording and Analyzing Talk by Meredith Marra was an interesting experiment that sparked me to consider how language evolves in all different workplaces. The experiment was to recognize the thought and reflection that takes place while members talk together at a workplace. They were to recognize the technical, logical, and ethical issues. Two main goals of this study was to first, identify the interests that struck both researchers and their volunteer subjects. Second was to build strong relationships and for those who were being studied to not feel like 'lab rats'. The researchers wanted to research with versus on. These prerequisites required the team to learn the specifics of this culture in New Zealand. Once the study left government type buildings and corporate offices, those who were researching began to feel uncomfortable in sorts from the differences that they were seeing in language.
The volunteers were not to be controlled, but were controlling the experiment themselves. They had to record 4 hours of discussion over a 2 to 3 week period. They had control over what they wanted to be recorded and included as part of research. They referred to this as the 'appreciative inquiry'.
The piece did discuss that first senior management was contacted but 'the internal support means success.' I began to think about if I were to be recorded for a day, how many different identities one would hear. I know that at my interview with management I was professional, much different than how I am on a daily basis now that I have worked in the establishment for two years. I thought about how my conversations differ between my guests who are dining and looking for a fabulous experience versus my coworkers who hate being at work just as much as I do. I think about the age of my coworkers versus those who have come in to dine, and how the topics vary greatly on how well one knows each other. Two lunch shifts could cover about 6 hours worth of taping, yet I wonder how many different variations of tone, vocabulary, connotation that you would hear after reviewing it. I thought of my managers and how they speak to us in order for us to operate as one whole unit. There are different situations for different
Marra also writes that English was primarily used in the workplace of the Māori people. It is commonly mistaken that English is interpreted from one cultural perspective. The message: that because two people use the same words and it appears that one understands the other, it should be that both understand each other. This leads into the article by Baker from Tesol Quarterly, that there are a plurality of Englishes. English cannot be seen as a property of one culture or community. There is no real native language then for English because of all its variations. (Baker, 2006). As both Marra and Baker write, we try to create a way of communicating with others who have a different first language or in this sense, share ours but in ways we might not understand. I remember being in Wales with a dear friend on Valentines day of 2008. We were at a bar after my long 7 hour flight and our 3 something hour bus ride. We were having a pint when two gentlemen approached us. One male was moving his mouth and speaking to me, although distracted by his good looks I knew I did not understand this fellow. My friend laughed and kept translating for us. I was baffled at how she knew Welsh. She told me he was speaking English and she was just so used to hearing the differences on a daily basis from living there. Switching back to Marra, the Māori people made it clear that "[I] am an outsider, a visitor, and always will be." (1992:51). I was this outsider and although we shared such common ground, we were truly strangers to one another.
In Chapter six, McKay and Bokhorst struck my interest when they expressed that people choose to speak in a different way and that is their way of self expression. I wonder how we 'choose' how we speak. Our different discourse determines what language we learned and how we are to properly use it, but our decision is our own. The way people tend to portray their sense of speech can affect how others perceive both their social and personal identities. My dear friend has a very low, deep voice that when others speak to him they initially think he is angry. He claims he has to change his voice for certain people and that he doesn't always use his 'real' voice. I know that voice differs from language, but they do go hand in hand. You choose what type of voice you are going to use when you are expressing certain language in different contexts (i.e in a work presentation or when talking to a baby).
No comments:
Post a Comment