comparing and contrasting this week's texts

Why would Doris Sommer suggest that migrants play games of odd man out with their language? Is it really a game when African Americans signify a word to keep others in the dark? I believe the origins of African Americans “signifying” certain words come from being able to keep their secrets from the white people who owned them. I think that her use of the term “games” trivializes something very important. Sometimes people need a safer way to communicate. She comes back to this at the end of her essay by quoting Gates and Morgan but she doesn’t retract her use of the word “game” which makes the linguistic capabilities of people who can hide their real meaning from certain other people seem less important than it really is.
That being said, she seems to veer off towards a more thoughtful interpretation of multilingualism in the next sections of her essay. She moves through a high number of “they say” sentences about multiculturalism. I am learning this quarter about these “moves” of showing what others have said on a certain subject and then including what I have to say on that same subject. My problem with Sommer is mainly that she explains in depth and on many levels the issues that affect speakers of more than one language, but I didn’t feel that I was ever hearing her part of the conversation once she got rolling into the other strangely named sections of her essay. GOOD DAY? A JEALOUS SPIRIT? I used these divisions and tried to summarize what each separate section was about but could not do it. It surely has more to do with my lack of understanding than her writing, but I am trying to learn from the reading I do, and in her writing, I was mostly confused about what she was saying as opposed to what the people she was quoting were saying. Maybe her transitions are just so agile that I didn’t see them, therefore I could not distinguish her voice from those she quoted.
In contrast, Paul J. Hopper writes in a way that I can understand. Perhaps it is the fact that I like linguistics and I have already read about or studied much of what he writes about. I want to read “Historical Linguistics” by Larry Trask after reading about it in Hopper’s article. In fact, I want to memorize much of what Hopper says in this article because the information reminds me of how much the topic of linguistics excites me and the more I find out the more I WANT to find out. I want to know all there is to know and Hopper takes the time and the skill to give me a huge dose of linguistics in a lovely and learned way. “This process, whereby a sound that was once a mere phonetic variant comes to be an autonomous phonological unit, is known as phonologization.” Indeed! I read and reread that, almost wanting to applaud the simplicity of the explanation! Hopper has included everything I’ve learned so far in the field and added to my knowledge. I will return to his essay again and again. The material there is priceless.
Heidi Byrnes article is more about how we get language. I enjoy reading theories on how we acquire language because it helps me understand why I am STILL unilingual. I learned some new stuff about teaching my students that have English as their second language but I am most defeated by my inability to learn Spanish, not to mention Gaelic. I would love to move to Ireland and be a teacher there but the teachers there ALL have to be bilingual, English and Gaelic. I’ve been taking Gaelic lessons for a year and I can’t speak a word of it and can’t understand it either. I think everyone should be bilingual at a minimum but I can’t take my own advice. I tell the parents of my students all the time, speak your native tongue in the house; I don’t care what it is. Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean...The more the better and it makes me feel like just a sorry-assed old white lady to only know English.
The last reading for this week was TSIS pages 51-73. I can summarize that chapter quickly by saying that I had no idea what points Sommer was agreeing or disagreeing with, so I completely understood what TSIS was pointing to, and I agreed with, nay, was excited by, what Hopper wrote, and would use the techniques for agreeing with that TSIS gives on pages 56-57. By the time I finished reading the TSIS chapter, I was refreshed by the new knowledge of ways to show agreement (but with a difference) or disagreement.