How does this sound?

Tomorrow I’m giving a guest lecture as part of a subject I’m teaching in a Masters of Interpreting and Translation program. Normally I just teach tutorials but this week I get to do part of a lecture. I’ll be teaching a bit of phonetics and phonology in the hope that it will give the students a tool for improving their pronunciation in their B language. For most of the students, English is their B language, but there is a small handful of native English speakers whose B language is Spanish or Japanese. The idea of the subject as a whole is for students to learn how to keep developing their proficiency in both working languages, beyond the period they spend studying.

 (image from http://introling.ynada.com/category/phonetics-phonology)

I like the following quote from Daniel Jones, who was a British Phonetician who became Professor of phonetics at the Sorbonne University in Paris. He is thought to be the person upon whom George Bernard Shaw based the character of Professor Henry Higgins in his play ‘Pygmalion’ (see also My Fair Lady). Obviously we want our students to master grammar and vocabulary as well, as most of them are looking to be professional translators or interpreters, but since pronunciation can be such a barrier, not just to understanding but to interpersonal relations, I think equipping them with some phonetic training is important too.

“I gradually came to see that Phonetics had an important bearing on human relations – that when people of different nations pronounce each other’s languages really well (even if grammar and vocabulary are not perfect), it has an astonishing effect of bringing them together, it puts people on terms of equality, a good understanding between them immediately springs up.”

Daniel Jones (1881-1967, phonetician)

I quite like teaching phonetics. It’s not my main area of expertise in that it wasn’t the field of my doctoral research, but I remember how much I enjoyed as a student learning how to classify sounds and produce strange sounds and gaining a more technical knowledge of the sounds of speech and how they are used (or not used) in different languages. I have a reasonably good ear for differentiating sounds so I enjoyed being able to put that to use.

One reason I like teaching phonetics is that it requires you to get rid of your inhibitions and be willing to be laughed at. My past phonetics lecturers have involved me singing and making all kinds of strange sounds in order to illustrate a point, e.g. to illustrate the point that vowels are sonorant (i.e. singable), I demonstrate that you can’t sing ‘Happy Birthday’ (apart from the rhythm) on the consonant [k]. I also love it when the students can’t help themselves and start trying out the sounds as you explain them. You get some very interesting facial expressions and sounds coming from the lecture theatre – somehow the students seem to forget that they are in a lecture and don’t even realise they are making the sounds!

There are also lots of interesting videos about how the human vocal tract works, which liven up the lecture quite well. If you’re interested (and not too squeamish), here’s a video of a laryngeoscopy showing the vocal chords (larynx) of a female singer while she makes sounds with varying loudness and pitch. A slightly less graphic one is this x-ray video (no sound) showing how the shape of the vocal tract changes for producing different vowel sounds.

Language: from the mouth of...

In the course of my search for blogs about language/linguistics and faith, I came across this very interesting post about whether the human language in which the Bible is written limits God’s ability to communicate with us. The discussion was based on Article IV of the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy – a statement of affirmations and denials prepared following an intensive 3-day conference of about 300 evangelical pastors. The Article in question reads as follows:

We affirm that God who made mankind in His image has used language as a means of revelation.

We deny that human language is so limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for divine revelation. We further deny that the corruption of human culture and language through sin has thwarted God's work of inspiration.

There are two points I would like to make about this now, but I might return to it in a later post after I’ve thought and read some more.

Firstly, God ‘made mankind in His image’ (see Genesis 1:26) and I take it that, as part of his creation of humans, God created language also. God, who is a relational God, created us in his image to be relational creatures, and it seems to me that God has given us language so that we can relate to each other, but also so that we can relate to him.

I was recently reminded of the way humans reflect God’s image in terms of communication when I read Psalm 94. The psalmist cries out to God to bring justice and judge wrongdoers, who keep doing what they are doing, thinking that God can’t see them. In verses 8-11, the psalmist then goes to address these wrongdoers:

 ⁸ Understand, O dullest of the people!
Fools, when will you be wise?
⁹ He who planted the ear, does he not hear?
He who formed the eye, does he not see?
¹⁰He who disciplines the nations, does he not rebuke?
He who teaches man knowledge -
¹¹ the LORD - knows the thoughts of man,
that they are but a breath.

This reminded me that our ability to see, hear and reflect on the world in thought is a reflection of God’s ability to do all these things, since we are created in his image. The ability to hear (v.9) particularly struck me: what is God hearing (and, we assume, understanding) here but the cries and prayers of the people he has made? The characteristic of being communicative must also be a reflection of God’s communicative nature. Jesus’ testimony about God helps us see that God is communicative within the Trinity: there is communication between God the Father and God the Son (e.g. Matthew 11:27, John 14:10, 15:15; Matthew 26:39,42; John 14:6-7, 16), God the Son and God the Spirit (e.g. John 15:26), and God the Father and God the Spirit (e.g. John 14:16, Romans 8:26-27).

And so, because we have been created as relational, communicative beings, ‘God has used language as a means of revelation’. So all three members of the Trinity also communicate with people at different times (e.g. the Father in Genesis 1:28-29, Exodus 3:3-6; the Son in any of the gospels, also Acts 9:4-6; the Spirit in John 15:26, Acts 2:4).

God’s use of the human phenomenon of language to communicate with us reminds me of another beautiful way in which God used a human phenomenon to reveal himself - about 2000 years ago, in the form of a human, Jesus Christ. Because we are humans who use language, God uses language to speak to us through the Scriptures. Because we are humans who have physical, frail and mortal bodies, God sent his Son, Jesus, as a human, to point us back to God, and used his human mortality to demonstrate his love for the world. It was the ultimate communicative act.

What people are saying about language

There are some big questions that I'm thinking about at the moment and want to start writing about soon, but need to do a bit more reading. So today I was thinking I should find out what other language blogs are out there and what kinds of things they’re on about. Language is a broad topic, after all, so blogs about language could (and do) include funny ones about Chinglish as well as more serious ones about language teaching/learning resources.

There is even a ‘World Top 100’ competition of language blogs run by bab.la – you can see the 2011 top 100 list here. The list is mainly populated by blogs about language learning and teaching, translation, and language humour. Two that caught my attention were The Yearlyglot, by a guy who has made it his aim to learn a new language every year, and A Walk in the Words, with amusing language tricks, puns and observations.

So far I haven’t seen any doing anything similar to my blog – that is, thinking about issues of language and faith. I’m sure there are some out there, including many focusing on Bible translation (like God Didn’t Say That), and there are probably contributions to more generic blogs that do it occasionally (e.g. this one about what language God speaks, or this one about Bible Translation). I’ll keep looking… I’d be interested to hear of any interesting language blogs you know of, too.

Soundbites and cliches (part 2)

Last week I wrote some thoughts about the unhelpful effect of media ‘soundbites’ or uses of labels in un-thought-through ways. Referring to the perpetrator of the Norwegian bombing and shootings as a ‘Christian’ in early reports added to the public misunderstanding of what Christianity is actually all about (and see this article for a comparison with the effect of 9/11 on the public perception of Muslims). It also left its legacy of giving religion sceptics a foothold to say ‘well, see? It’s not just Islam that makes people violent – it’s all religions!’ In fact, you can take religion out of the equation and it turns out that people are often just inclined to be violent and treat one another badly (compare obvious examples such as Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao). But I digress...

I recently rewatched some episodes of ‘The Vicar of Dibley’, which I remember enjoying watching with my family when I was younger. Now I find it rather cringe-worthy, not just in terms of the humour that often descends into the slapstick, but in terms of the way the Dibley church (including church services, the Vicar’s conduct, relationships between parishioners, and lack of knowledge of the Bible) is presented. Obviously it’s a fictional church, and the characters and storylines are designed to be humorous, but it makes me wonder why that would be considered legitimately humorous material. Fiction or not, it’s no laughing matter when people who are supposed to be followers of Jesus behave like that.

But what I think is most unhelpful, in terms of the public understanding of Christianity, is that the mismatch of the characters and storylines with biblical Christianity is not being pointed out as something funny or strange in itself. I think viewers (particularly British viewers) are supposed to feel like that community is perhaps not far from their experience at all, and so the humour comes from the caricature of people you might almost have met before or could imagine in small village life. That is, there is supposed to be a degree of closeness to reality in it to make the humour work. And because the viewers are supposed to feel like that is what village church life is like (with some exaggeration), it plants untrue and unhelpful ideas about what the life in the church of Christ is like. A much more helpful picture of church can be discovered in the pages of the Bible (especially Acts 2:42-47, 1 Corinthians, 1 Timothy 3-4), but few seem willing to discover it for themselves.

Currently, Australian comedian Judith Lucy is appearing in a series called ‘Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey’ which I haven’t seen yet (and it’s on the wrong night for me to be able to watch it) but I don’t anticipate that her treatment of Christianity will be any more helpful to those who might seriously want to know. I don’t doubt Lucy’s personal sincerity in wanting to discover the answers to her questions “Why are we here? What happens when we die? How do you find a reason to get out of bed in the morning”, but given that her spiritual journey has been produced as a television program, I can’t help but be cynical about how the religions will be presented and how much value that will have for public understanding. Entertainment, yes, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with entertainment. But entertainment based on religious exploration by those who are not in a position to properly understand or accurately present the crucial features requires critical viewing, which I fear is lacking to a large extent.

Soundbites and cliches (part 1)

One of the biggest media stories at the moment is the tragic events in Norway over the weekend. A young man (whose name I will not mention here – why give him the satisfaction?) caused the deaths of over 70 of his countrymen, apparently as an attempt to send a message to the government that he was not happy with their policy on immigration. Not just their general immigration policy, it seems, but particularly their openness to Muslim immigrants. It’s tragic that a citizen of a democratic nation felt the need to use violence to make a point rather than his democratic rights to petition the government on the issue that’s bothering him.

In early reports of the situation, the perpetrator was described as a Christian, and subsequent reports explained that he himself called himself a Christian on facebook and was aligned with the Knights Templar organisation. The use of the descriptor ‘Christian’ is very misleading and unhelpful, as most media attempts to succinctly capture a person’s character and motivations are. Apart from the likelihood that he is psychopathic, his motivations seem political and racial rather than religious. So associating him with the term ‘Christian’ is, firstly, a red herring, and secondly, a clear demonstration of the lack of understanding of what it means to be a Christian. Apparently the perpetrator himself, in the manifesto allegedly written by him, admits that he is not a ‘religious’ Christian in the sense of being a follower of Jesus and having a personal relationship with God (see this article). Rather, he aligns himself with what he calls a ‘cultural Christianity’, which seems for him to be synonymous with western democratic social values.

Yesterday, as part of my daily bible reading, I was struck by the following verses from the book of Proverbs (chapter 11, English Standard Version), which is a collection of the wise sayings attributed to King Solomon:

The righteousness of the blameless keeps his way straight, but the wicked falls by his own wickedness. (verse 5)

The righteousness of the upright delivers them, but the treacherous are taken captive by their lust. (verse 6)

With his mouth the godless man would destroy his neighbor, but by knowledge the righteous are delivered. (verse 9)

By the blessing of the upright a city is exalted, but by the mouth of the wicked it is overthrown. (verse 11)

Whoever belittles his neighbor lacks sense, but a man of understanding remains silent. (verse 12)

They each speak of the foolishness and destructiveness of doing evil, or plotting against or slandering one’s neighbour. The perpetrator of the crimes in Norway would have done well to heed this wisdom as part of his ‘cultural Christianity’. In a way, they are perhaps like an ancient form of ‘soundbite’! But I would argue that they are much more constructive and contain much more wisdom than today’s media soundbites, where in the absence of the full story a guess or incomplete piece of information will suffice, and there is scant regard for the consequences of connecting that piece of information with the events.

It reminds me of a report I saw in 2005 (Sydney Morning Herald, 10th June) about a tragic house fire in Wyong on the Central Coast of NSW which claimed the lives of four young children, three of whom were brothers. The mother of the three boys who died, and whose house it was, had gone out for the evening and had left the four children with two older siblings (12 and 13 years) and a cousin. Told like that, it sounds like a terrible tragedy and the reader would be expected to feel sympathy for the mother. But that is not the way it was told, as we get the following pieces of information (among others):

Lisa Forde, a mother of eight who rents the home where five of her children live with her...

Ms Forde lived in the rented house beside the Wyong River for four years. She and Mr Shepherd walked 50 metres down the street and across the road to Wyong Bowling Recreation Club to watch the Anthony Mundine-Mikkel Kessler fight on Wednesday night.

Mr Shepherd - who was outside the house yesterday drinking a long-neck as reporters milled around - said Ms Forde had gone to check the children when the fight ended.

Mr Shepherd, who said he had served two years' jail after being convicted on drugs charges, said Ms Forde had children by four men, two of whom were in jail.

At the very end, the reporter provides some balance with a positive character reference from Ms Forde’s neighbour, "She was a real good mother who only wanted what was best for her kids. This is horrible. How can you live with something like this?" but by then the damage has been done.

Ch- Ch- Ch- Ch- Changes (again)

The new semester has begun, and the shape of my week has changed yet again. Instead of being spread across 4 courses at 3 different campuses in two different cities, I'm very thankful to be based at just one campus this time. Unfortunately it's not very close to home, so I'm going to have to start making the most of train and bus travel time for reading and thinking.

My teaching this time is entirely in a postgraduate translation studies program. I'm teaching two subjects I haven't taught before (although one is very similar to one of the ones I taught last semester) but many of the students are the same as last semester so I'm glad to be able to continue with them, get to know them a bit better, and keep trying to equip them with linguistic skills to be good translators/interpreters.

As well as teaching, I have also started a ministry apprenticeship with the Simeon Network but based at the campus I'm teaching at. Teaching part time (and deliberately less than last semester!) gives me the opportunity to spend the rest of my week doing other things, and I was glad to be offered the chance to get some training in ministry. At first, it will mainly involve participating in training sessions in theology and ministry skills like one-to-one bible reading, leading small groups, etc. I'll also help with planning and organizing Simeon Network events and eventually help run training sessions for others. My apprenticeship includes time for thinking about the nexus between my discipline and my faith, so I hope to be able to update my blog more frequently with the fruits of those thinking times.

"I've got a little list"

There’s been a bit of a controversy this week about the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s ‘The Very Best of G&S’ show at the Opera House. One of the songs, the Lord High executioner’s ‘List Song’ from the Mikado, which seems designed to have its lyrics tailored to the contemporary events of the day, mentioned Hillsong Church in an allegedly derogatory way. The lyric deemed offensive was as follows:

“That Hillsong lot on television, all joyfully singing psalms, I wish they would desist, and their happy claps resist.”

Apparently, Hillsong’s lawyers wrote to the Sydney Symphony, asking to see the lyrics. I suppose the fact that the song is basically the executioner listing the people who should not be missed by his execution campaign, makes it a bit unkind. But they’re not the only ones to be targeted. A blog comment by the show’s conductor, Guy Noble, notes that “Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Clover Moore, Justin Bieber’s dermatologist, lovers of the music of Brahms, any aunty who has a moustache, anyone with a mobile phone, Westfield” were also included in the list of social irritants.

Having seen a full performance of the Mikado (by Opera Australia a few years ago), I can attest that it's a very funny song and the whole point of it is to poke fun at the joke-butts of the moment and draw the audience into an in-group of people who have the same attitudes about things relevant to their society. The Sydney Morning Herald (25^th June 2011) reported Maunder (who played Ko Ko, the executioner) as saying “If you are in the public arena, you are fair game... I'm very surprised anyone would have taken offence. It's affectionate and charming. It would be a mistake to say there was any malicious intent.”

But as always with these kind of 'what are they complaining about?' comments directed at Christians, I wonder whether the same joking treatment would ever be levelled at adherents of any other faith. Can you see the Australian Islamic community being written into the lyrics? I think not... The effect would be (as it is here) ‘We all think these people [insert name of individual or group] are a bit strange, but they sure provide us with something to laugh about together’. It’s great for creating an in-group of those who agree, but it also suggests that those who think differently are excluded.

While I have my criticisms of Hillsong, I think they have a right to draw attention to this public mocking disguised as musical culture. But it would have been a good opportunity to invite people to see what they’re all about, or to gently provoke discussion in the public arena about why it is that the Christian church is fair game for poking fun at in public while other faiths are off limits. I wouldn't have made it a legal issue, though. The Bible is full of references to the people of God being mocked by the world around them. It should be no surprise to Christians when they find themselves in the same situation. Jesus himself was mocked mercilessly even while he hung on the cross. The Gospels tells us that Jesus predicted that it would happen to him (e.g. Luke 18:32) and indeed it did, from various directions (e.g. Luke 22:63, Luke 23:11, Luke 23:36). He bore it with dignity, and rather than trying to take his mockers to court (he knew it was coming, after all), he mercifully offered to represent them, as he represents us all, in the highest court of God’s judgement.