Connections, collaboration, and communication: what I learnt from the LAHP Languages and Policy Workshop

On Monday 7 December 2015, I attended a workshop on languages and policy hosted by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership. Having worked for The Policy Institute at King’s while completing my PhD on literature and cultural policy in Venezuela, I was very keen to learn more about how languages – or, more broadly, language-based area studies – interact with policy. This thought-provoking workshop highlighted three areas of interest: how policy affects the study of languages, the intersection of languages and policy outside of academia, and how aspects of language-based academic research can link to policy. For me, the workshop can be summarized in three linked key terms: connections, collaboration, and communication.

From Jocelyn Wyburd’s facts and figures about the crisis in languages education, particularly the deficit of secondary school language teachers, it was clear to me that we need to work together across the languages to lobby the government and encourage the study of languages. To do this, we must also reach out to other disciplines, such as neuroscience to show the cognitive benefits of language learning, or social scientists to discuss multilingualism and social cohesion. Philip Cavendish from the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies at UCL gave an example of a department which combines traditional language-related research (study of a language and its related culture) with subjects including politics and international relations, while also working with institutions beyond the university (the FCO, Open Democracy, the Calvert Foundation). I found it a shame, however, that there is not much communication between SSEES and other languages departments. I strongly believe that scholars in different languages have a lot to gain from working together; not only the traditionally taught European languages, but also the Asian and African languages which are often limited to specialist institutions such as SOAS.

In the second session, Chris Murray (Institute for Public Policy Research), Helen Laker (Southwark Council), Carolina Gottardo (Latin American Women’s Rights Service) and Lucila Granada (Coalition of Latin Americans) all demonstrated the interplay between languages and policy in the real world, in sectors such as education, health care, housing and employment. What struck me most was that all four depend on volunteers. While it was suggested that volunteering could be considered as an internship for PhD students, I thought that as undergraduate students often complain that they do not get enough speaking practice, why not put them in contact with associations or charities? I would like to explore further how to integrate this useful language practice into the undergraduate degree.

The final session stressed the importance of putting yourself out there, meeting people, making connections and being prepared to go beyond your comfort zone. I noted that Hilary Footitt called her work on the language policies of NGOs ‘a strange project to have arrived at’, and I paraphrased Ben Schofield with ‘If someone offers you something weird and wonderful, go for it’. The panel encouraged us to think creatively about links between our research of obscure literature (in both Ben’s and my case at least!) and wider policy implications. They suggested going to conferences on subjects outside of our own to find links, as Hilary did, both with other disciplines and other institutions. From lobbyist Zacahary Bishop, I learnt to develop my USP/‘elevator pitch’, so that if I’m ever in a room with policy-makers they can tell straight away if there is an opportunity for collaboration. Finally, Ben (who is something of a Twitter personality: @haben_und_soll), reminded us that social media is a useful tool: we should let the world know what we’re doing so people can find us!

Given the focus on connections, communication and collaboration, it was great to have not only speakers but other attendees from a wide range of disciplines, including sign language, education and medical humanities. We definitely learnt a lot from each other, and left inspired to build more connections beyond our own disciplines.

For more information about the LAHP, visit www.lahp.ac.uk

K-Link Widening Participation Scheme

(Originally posted on 24 April 2014)

As a firm believer in the importance of widening access to Higher Education, I was very happy to be asked to take part in K-Link recently. K-Link is King’s widening participation programme, which gives children from less privileged schools throughout London a taste of university education. Through the programme, I had two – very different – opportunities to teach secondary school children.

Firstly, GCSE students from the three schools that the SPLAS department is partnered with came in to King’s for a full day: a Q&A with current students, a translation workshop, tour, and finally a taster seminar. One of the school groups – 16 boys and girls, plus two teachers – had an introduction from me to studying culture as part of a language degree. I began by explaining what a seminar is – ask lots of questions, try out new ideas, do lots of practical exercises. We then broke up into small groups and brainstormed definitions of culture, before looking at some Frida Kahlo paintings and an extract from a short story by the late great Gabriel García Márquez.

The students were clearly tired after such a demanding day, and many of the boys were too cool to show enthusiasm, so it was challenging to get them to participate, but I succeeded in the end (I’m very grateful for much needed help from their teachers in this). After the session, one teacher told me that although they were reluctant to speak, he could tell that they had gained a lot from it. He said he was really happy for the children to have had the chance to experience cultural studies when the demands of GCSEs allow no time for anything like this, which made all the effort worth it.

The following week I went into another of our partner schools. This time I was extremely lucky to be teaching four of the most gifted, enthusiastic girls I could hope for. We covered similar material but the small group size and eagerness of the pupils meant we could go much more in-depth. I was hugely impressed, as they were more engaged than some of my final year students! I felt privileged to teach them and really pleased to learn that they all plan to continue to language study at university.

Let's Get Multilingual

I've just finished watching the fifth episode of the excellent Norwegian-American co-production Lilyhammer, which is currently airing on BBC4. Steve Van Zandt (famous for being part of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band) stars as New York mafia underboss Frank Tagliano who, after testifying, chooses to go into witness protection in Lillehammer, Norway, because he enjoyed what he saw of the town in coverage of the 1994 Winter Olympics. It has an odd, Norwegian sense of humour which appeals to me, but one of my favourite aspects of the show is how Frank (or Johnny as he becomes) speaks English and everyone else speaks Norwegian and they all understand each other perfectly. 

If only the rest of the world was like Lillehammer! (Or maybe not, the people there seem quite strange on the programme....) I love the idea of mutual understanding without the need for English linguistic hegemony. Yes, Johnny expects people to understand his English, but they expect him to understand their Norwegian too. I think it would be amazing if we could all just speak our own languages and everyone understand. It would take a lot of effort of course - and effort not many would be willing to put in given how relatively few people learn languages in England - but understanding a language is far easier than learning to speak it. You would never have to worry if your grammar or pronunciation is correct, plus it is far easier to express yourself fully in your own language.

It's an idea explored in more depth in Un Filme Falado (A Talking Picture), a 2003 film by Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, who amazingly is still working at 103! One of my students told me about the film one night during the Social Programme - between the group of us we spoke English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Greek, but no-one spoke all of those languages, though we wished we did. In the film, Catherine Deneuve (French), Stefani Strandelli (Italian), Irene Papas (Greek) and John Malkovich have a prolonged conversation, all speaking their own languages.

One day I hope to be able to hold a conversation like this, only less melodramatic! (By the way, if Malkovich sounds incredibly insincere, it's apparently intentional, as all the characters are supposed to highlight stereotypical 'flaws' of each culture, insincerity being the American example).

PS: While we're enjoying all things multilingual, I recommend David Garza's very catchy mash-up of many languages, Dead French Dudes. Annoyingly embedding the video has been disabled, but you can listen here.

Minority Literatures and English Translation

While doing some dissertation research, I came across a website which lists every Galician book ever translated into English. All 45 of them. Out of the thousands of books published in Galician every year, only 45 have reached our bookshelves, and 14 of these were in the last two years. Many of them only had runs of a few hundred prints too.

 

I found the list from an article in the Galician version of Spanish daily El País, featuring my lecturer Dr Craig Patterson (listen to my interview with him about translating Eduardo Blanco Amor's A Esmorga here). He explains that English is the medium by which most minority literatures reach publishers in other countries (they probably don't understand Galician but they certainly do understand English), so if we don't publish them, it is unlikely that anyone else will. The problem is that it's a vicious cycle: translations will only get published if they're guaranteed to sell, but there's no way of knowing whether they would sell until they've been published. If you consult the list, you'll notice that a lot of the texts are by a select few authors, because if one of their books sells, it's likely people will want to read another. Unproven authors don't stand a chance. 

This is particularly interesting for me, because it's at the heart of my interest in Latin American literature. In the last week, I've been busy organising a panel for the annual Hispanists (people who study anything to do with Spain or Latin America) conference on 'Canonicity and Latin America's Marginalised Literatures'. This stems from a deep frustration that the only literature from Latin America that tends to be studied over here is from a few big countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Peru. In commercial terms, success is even more limited to big names like Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Isabel Allende... It's not surprising people know so little about other Latin American literature when so few books make it into English, especially from countries which haven't proven their worth in terms of best-selling authors. This is turn leads to devaluing of literature in it's own country, at least in Venezuela, as it is thought that if no-one abroad wants to read it, it is clearly not very good (they're wrong, it is).

I'd like to make a list like Jonathan Dunne's Galicia one for Venezuela when I have some free time. I doubt it would be very long. Of the books I've read recently, only one has an English translation: Alberto Barrera Tyzska's The Sickness (La Enfermedad) which has had international success and also been translated into French and Italian. It's a thoroughly engrossing story of a doctor who has always been cold and removed with patients, seeing them more as bodies than spirits, until his father is diagnosed with cancer. I highly recommend it and it's only just over £5 for Kindle.

Also, if you're a poetry fan I have to recommend Guillermo Parra's translation of selected works of Venezuelan poet José Antonio Ramos Sucre which has just been published after many years of hard work .

These are very rare examples though. If the rest of the world is ever going to be able to enjoy the wonderful, multi-faceted literatures of Latin America - and other world literatures in general - publishers need to start taking a punt on unproven translations.

What is Culture?

It's a good question and one that I've encountered again and again in class and on the radio. An anthropologist would say that culture is everything that makes us human, that isn't the result of science. Different groups - tribes, nations, social classes, generations - can be said to have a different 'culture', encompassing ways of expressing themselves, rituals, beliefs. However, in every day parlance, culture is often taken to mean 'high culture': classical painting, sculpture, opera, ballet, auteur cinema. What I'm interested is somewhere in between: all kinds of artistic expression, including that high culture, but also popular culture, comedy, rom-coms, pulp fiction, musicals, graffiti - things that are often written off by the self-proclaimed defenders of 'culture' (although graffiti for one seems to be becoming rather establishment these days...).

'Culture' is such a loaded term that I have been criticised for being elitist in calling my radio show The Culture Show. Yet as much as I tried to avoid the perils of the word culture (and also the stealing from BBC2 implied in the name), there was no other word that conveyed the huge range of things I want to talk about: literature, music, theatre, dance, art and films of all kinds. So culture it is.

But as I've established, culture is a scarily vast term. So what exactly do I want to do? Well, as I'm forced to narrow my interests into some form of coherent PhD proposal, I'm not ready to let the others go just yet, so this is a place for me to consider cultural things that interest me. Sometimes that might just be 'This play/exhibition/film is awesome, go see/watch!', sometimes it might be an interview with someone that I've been lucky enough to meet through the radio. But what really gets me going is cultural analysis, so there will mainly be musings on what can be learnt from the book/film/musical/picture in question. I've always had incredibly multi-disciplinary interests (which is why I've always taken the broadest academic path, nothing can be vaguer than 'European Studies' which doesn't even know where the limits of 'Europe' are), and what I'm learning in class will undoubtedly prompt reflections here, so expect the following to appear somewhere:
-Questioning 'identity' in all its forms
-Nationalism, national identity and foundational myths
-Psychoanalysis
-Cultural mobility/intertextuality
-Translation and the politics thereof
-Foulcault and discursive techniques
-Orientalism and post-colonialism
...and probably a whole lot more! As for the source of materials, Spanish and French speaking countries will feature heavily, but I have spent the last 5 years studying 'Europe' so those influences will certainly crop up too, and as I currently live in Cardiff, how could I not be fascinated by Welsh culture?

I hope this will be not just interdisciplinary but multi-media. As well written ramblings, I will be putting my finely honed talking into a microphone skills to good use making podcasts, especially when visuals aren't essential. And when I eventually learn to use my camera, I hope to post videos too. And finally, I hope that all this inspires you to check out some of the things I talk about. My passion for languages, for travel, for research, for cultural analysis, was inspired by the films, books, music, theatre and art which I discovered one way or another and never cease to fascinate me. I hope some of them will fascinate you too.