Language Shaming

[emk]

Please let's chill on the politics, and the discussion of virtue signaling, etc. As noted in a recent thread, we're really trying to tone it down at the moment, because—as often happens with politics—it was taking over more and more threads. Thank you.

[s_allard]

The discussion makes me think of the more general issue of what are the language requirements of jobs that require speaking in public. Politicians are high up on the list of course but there are plenty of professions where skill in a second or foreign language is valued. We know all about this in Canada.

My own position is that language for public use is part of the image we project to the world and reflects our upbringing, class origins and education. No politician or journalist wants to be caught dead speaking "poorly", i.e. full of mistakes in their own language. It's no different in a foreign language for professional purposes.

It's basically a situation where you either speak well - let's say at a C1 level - or don't bother speaking at all. I know that an accent and some mistakes can be cute but I'm a firm believer that speaking a foreign language for professional purposes should not be very different from speaking one's native language. You don't speak your own language poorly, so why speak a foreign language poorly?

Let me add that I emphasize "for professional purposes". This does not apply to language hobbyists like most of us who collect languages for pleasure.

[Theodisce]

It's basically a situation where you either speak well - let's say at a C1 level - or don't bother speaking at all. I know that an accent and some mistakes can be cute but I'm a firm believer that speaking a foreign language for professional purposes should not be very different from speaking one's native language..

At C1 you do not speak like a native. Even after 20 years of living in a country people make mistakes most natives would never do. While I agree that it's hard to fulfill some professional tasks without C1, I wouldn't equal C1 or even C2 with native fluency.

[s_allard]

It's basically a situation where you either speak well - let's say at a C1 level - or don't bother speaking at all. I know that an accent and some mistakes can be cute but I'm a firm believer that speaking a foreign language for professional purposes should not be very different from speaking one's native language..

At C1 you do not speak like a native. Even after 20 years of living in a country people make mistakes most natives would never do. While I agree that its hard to fulfil some professional tasks without C1, I wouldn't equal C1 or even C2 with native fluency.

I'm quite aware that C1 and C2 are not the same as native proficiency. And I'm certainly not claiming that one should have native proficiency or not speak at all. I think that once you get to a C level, and especially at the C2 level, you are quite comfortable in the language and could use it for professional purposes. In fact a C2 level for a foreigner will impress the hell out of people.

[aokoye]

My own position is that language for public use is part of the image we project to the world and reflects our upbringing, class origins and education. No politician or journalist wants to be caught dead speaking "poorly", i.e. full of mistakes in their own language.

What counts as a mistake?

[emk]

It's basically a situation where you either speak well - let's say at a C1 level - or don't bother speaking at all. I know that an accent and some mistakes can be cute but I'm a firm believer that speaking a foreign language for professional purposes should not be very different from speaking one's native language. You don't speak your own language poorly, so why speak a foreign language poorly?

Let me add that I emphasize "for professional purposes". This does not apply to language hobbyists like most of us who collect languages for pleasure.

I think there's an important difference here between a bilingual city like Montreal, and a monolingual environment. In a place like Montreal, you may often have a choice between English and French. So, yeah, in a professional context, you're going to use your native language if you can, and you're only going to fall back to a B2 or B1 language if there's no choice. Why struggle when you don't need to?

But if you're a PhD student or post-doc admitted to a US university on the strength of your work and grades, and your English is basically B2, you're still going to use your English. I've seen it plenty of times. And it's not like you have a choice, unless you join one of those research labs where everybody speaks the same Eastern European language or something. But a B2 speaker in 24/7 immersion (both professional and social) will speak a near-native conversational level within 3 to 5 years, anyway, except for residual accent.

So you speak whatever you need to speak to get by, as long as it's good enough that somebody will hire and/or pay you.

[s_allard]

With brief but innocuous foray into the world of US politics, let me give an example of professional use of language. For various reasons I currently watch about 2 hours a day of US news television - CNN, MSNBC and FoxNews. I hear journalists, politicians and commentators speaking different regional varieties of English. None of them make noticeable mistakes, and if they do - more like slips of the tongue - they correct them immediately. This is what I call (English) language for professional purposes.

In fact, a lot of fun has been poked at a certain individual - who shall remain nameless - because many people believed he said "bigly" instead of "big league". Some people even claim this same individual speaks like a child, but that's another story.

I'm sure every year tens of thousands of students arrive in American universities with B1/B2 level English skills. Not surprisingly, after a few years they have an excellent command of English. And I'm also sure that one can do excellent work in a lab with somewhat limited English skills. I'll even admit that one could probably live and work one's whole life in the US with a limited command of English.

So, if one uses the word professional in a very broad sense of working at any kind of job, it is true that C-level English is not always required. But let's say that the job requires interacting with the public in a sophisticated manner- especially in the world of politics - good language skills are important. So, for example, the question is whether B1/B2 English is good enough for professional purposes such as getting a job on air at CNN?

In Canada a large number of federal government jobs are designated bilingual with very specific language requirements that are tested. To simplify how things work, let's say that the job is designated bilingual level C. That's the test level you have to pass to get the job. You can't say "I'm a B now but after a few years on the job I'll be a C." There are even cases where people are demoted or lose their job because they fail periodic tests.

[reineke]

But if you're a PhD student or post-doc admitted to a US university on the strength of your work and grades, and your English is basically B2, you're still going to use your English. I've seen it plenty of times. And it's not like you have a choice, unless you join one of those research labs where everybody speaks the same Eastern European language or something. But a B2 speaker in 24/7 immersion (both professional and social) will speak a near-native conversational level within 3 to 5 years, anyway, except for residual accent.

So you speak whatever you need to speak to get by, as long as it's good enough that somebody will hire and/or pay you.

I don't know about this 3-5 years and poof you're near-native. Maybe if you're Swedish, German or Dutch.

"PUBLIC RELEASE: 23-MAR-2017
Age at immigration influences occupational skill development
Immigrant children develop occupational skills based on how close their native tongue is to English

DURHAM, N.C. -- The future occupations of U.S. immigrant children are influenced by how similar their native language is to English, finds a new study by scholars at Duke University and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.

"The more difficult it is for the child to learn English, the more likely they will invest in math/logic and physical skills over communications skills," said co-author Marcos Rangel, an assistant professor of public policy and economics at Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy. "It is really a story about what skills people who immigrated as children develop given the costs and benefits associated with the learning processes."

Two factors strongly influence the skills immigrants use as adults, researchers found: immigration before the age of 10, and whether immigrants' native language is linguistically distant from English.

Immigrants who arrive before the age of 10 pursue occupations very similar to those pursued by native-born Americans. They develop the same range of skills as native-borns, including communication, math/logic, socio-emotional and physical skills.

But for those who are older when they immigrate, the picture is different. After age 10, learning a second language is more difficult, and a child's particular linguistic background matters more. Some languages, such as Vietnamese, are linguistically very distant from English. Children from those countries are more likely to major in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields than those whose native language is linguistically close to English, such as German.
"Late arrivals from English-distant countries develop a comparative advantage in math/logic, socio-emotional and physical skills relative to communication skills which ultimately generates the occupational segregation we are used to seeing in the labor market," Rangel said.

The choice of majors made it clear that where these immigrants ended up in the labor market was not just because of different treatment by employers. It was also due to "the way the immigrants themselves look ahead and invest their time in becoming skilled in different tasks," Rangel said.

The study, published online in the journal Demography on March 20, provides insight into why "some U.S. immigrants find it more attractive to invest in brawn rather than in brain, in mathematics rather than in poetry, in science rather than in history," write Rangel and co-author Marigee Bacolod, associate professor of economics at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School's Graduate School of Business and Public Policy."

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases ... 032317.php

[Speakeasy]

... "PUBLIC RELEASE: 23-MAR-2017
Age at immigration influences occupational skill development. Immigrant children develop occupational skills based on how close their native tongue is to English.

DURHAM, N.C. -- The future occupations of U.S. immigrant children are influenced by how similar their native language is to English, finds a new study by scholars at Duke University and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.

Rather than decry this additional digression from "language shaming", I'll contribute to it by making an observation on the foregoing studies that, despite its appearance, is in no measure the expression of an insensitivity to the plight of immigrants.

Anyone who has spent their time in any of the world's major metropolis' over the past few decades cannot have done so without having noticed major changes to the demography of these social crucibles. It is not all uncommon for eighty-or-more distinct linguistic/cultural/ethnic groups to cohabit the major cities. Contrary to the conclusions stated above, my own (unscientific) observations are:
(a) some identifiable groups of immigrants place a proportionally higher value on education leading to the professions than do other groups, including members of the host group,
(b) some identifiable groups of immigrants place a proportionally higher value on entering into business ventures than do other groups, including members of the host group,
(b) many, if not most, groups of immigrants place an equivalent value on either higher education leading to the professions or on entering into business ventures as do other groups and simply integrate more-or-less seamlessly into the fabric of the host society,
(d) tragically, some identifiable groups of immigrants seem to place almost no value on either higher education or on entering into business ventures which might lead to greater social and financial success in the host country and, as a result, seem condemned to form part of the under-privileged classes in western society,
(e) the native LANGUAGE of the immigrant families and its proximity to that of the host community or that part of the host community that "holds to the keys to success" DOES NOT seem to be a significant factor; rather, the VALUE that the immigrants place on the "key vectors to success" seems to be the determining factor.

While I may not be a social scientist, I do possess as much capacity for observing society as does your average squirrel. That is, I believe that the "scholars" have seriously over-stated the influence of language.

EDITED: typos, wudn'ya no?

[reineke]

Is one's mother tongue similar to one's own skin in that it cannot be changed or shed and can all adults learn a distant language to a near-native level? If anyone can succeed at the task if they really try, then I suppose it's less of an issue to poke fun at those lazy learners? I didn't care for the discussion to turn this way, but we're on topic, I think.

I am acquainted with a Chinese-Vietnamese family. The children moved to the US in the 1980s. Of the 8 kids only the youngest two achieved native proficiency. The others, who were pre-teens, early teens and very young adults when they immigrated, and who received significant US education (including college degrees), exhibit accented, error-prone speech. Incidentally, their job descriptions support the study's findings.