S1E7: Unpacking Misconceptions about Language & Identities with Prof. Michel DeGraff

Today on the podcast, what language teaches us about identity? Can you be Mauritian but yet not speak the Mauritian Creole language? Can you be Latino but not be fluent in in Spanish? Can you be African-American but yet not be fully fluent in so-called black English? Welcome to Chalk Radio, a podcast about inspired teaching at MIT. I'm your host, Sarah Hansen, from MIT Open Courseware. My guest for this episode created a course that teaches students about how language helps us see and better understand our world. Michel DeGraff teaches the course Creole Languages and Caribbean Identities. The course highlights how linguistics can teach us about broader issues of identity, history, education, and more. Throughout this episode, we'll be intercutting Professor DeGraff's answers with his Creole translations. For now, we'll let him explain more about how he developed this unique course. My research is about trying to understand how languages evolve over time and what happens when new languages are created. Say, for example, in the Caribbean in my native Haiti, where Haitian Creole emerged in the 17th, 18th century, so we try to understand the patterns of development of those things that we call Creole languages and in terms of the structure, but also have a have applied side to my work where I try to understand how best to use say Haitian Creole in other local languages in education and how that's crucial for development of countries like Haiti. So, the course started out of a desire to try to have linguistics be accessible to a broader range of students and ways in which we could connect languages to larger issues of culture and identity. And as I'm from Haiti and as as my research is on Creole languages, I tried to think of ways in which we can use the history of Creole languages to introduce larger issues connected to linguistics, identity, history, sociology, education. Even though the course focuses on Caribbean identities and Creole languages, the course requires that students, who come from all over the world, to observe what language means for their own identities. Can you be Mauritian but yet not speak the Mauritian Creole language? Can you be Latino but not be fluent in in Spanish? Can you be African-American but yet not be fully fluent in so-called black English? So, those were questions that they themselves brought in. Then what I asked them to do as the very first exercise was to write what I called a linguistic biography. And actually and I got this hand from a dear friend and colleague, Professor Antoinette Hatfield. Antoinette actually shared with me her own linguistic biography and when I read that, I realized how powerful it was to read about her own growing up in terms of language, ethnicity, race. So, I thought that I would ask students to do something similar. The connection between language and power is highlighted in this course. A lot of what comes through in students' language biographies and other assignments touches on power structures and the hierarchies that exist because of cultural misconceptions tied to language and also race. I asked Professor DeGraff if students brought misconceptions about Creole languages to the course and how he unpacked them. So, one way that we start by unpacking these misconceptions is by comparing attitudes towards languages with attitudes towards race and ethnicity. And as they get when they get to see very quickly is that in fact there is perhaps as much misconceptions about language as there is about race. So, they get to see very early in the course that language can be used as a proxy for race. So, now it's impolite to say certain things about say black people or Asian people, yet it's still polite to say pretty negative things about language. And then and then at that point what we do, we introduce some basic linguistic analysis tools for them to be able to see that in terms of linguistic structure, there's nothing at all that's inferior about Creole languages. In fact, what we do from the very beginning is to show that structurally there are patterns both in the syntax or morphology of Creole languages that are quite similar to patterns in the syntax and history of of English, of French, of Mandarin Chinese. So, they quickly get a sense that empirically and theoretically one cannot argue that Creole languages are any way lesser than non-Creole languages the same way that there are no biological measures that would deem black people to be inferior to white people. So, they get very quick to understand the power of this myth that often they themselves have put along in terms of how they view different languages. In some case, Creole languages and other case, just even dialects of English, say Southern English or black English. Their attitudes that are very demeaning towards those varieties that have no basis in science that are rooted in hierarchies of power. And they get to see that very quickly. This course, the core of it is discussions and and in order for the course to be successful, we have to be able to discuss very delicate personal issues in a very safe way and to be honest. It cannot be that students are afraid to reveal the the positions on various topics including race, language, identity. And one way to do it is to given that I had at the very beginning of the course, I had the questionnaires about where they came from, what languages they spoke, where they grew up, I was able to to use that to trigger discussions. You know, so if we read texts about authenticity, for example, if you're an African, can you be an authentic writer if you write in English, for example? Then I knew that some of the students had dealt with this issue. For example, we had a student who although she was black and Hispanic, she wasn't very fluent in Spanish and and she wasn't clear whether her not being fluent in Spanish made her any less Hispanic. You see? So, I was able to use that in order to trigger a discussion around this notion that we had read in this famous debate between Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong'o about African writers. Can a writer be authentically African if they write in English or French for that matter? So, that that was one way to trigger rich discussion. So, the motto there was rich discussions are best arrived at if they stem from a personal basis where students are invested in trying to find an answer that can work for them in their in their personal lives or in the life of the families, the communities, the countries, etc. Another special feature of Professor DeGraff's course on OCW is that his instructor insights are available in both English and Haitian Creole. I asked him why it was important that he share in both languages how the course was taught. So, it was very I would say crucial for me to do this interview in both English and Creole because I I see Creole languages like even in the case of Haiti or specially in the case of Haiti as a a particular revealing and clear test tube or case study to really show how language can be such a powerful tool either for domination or for resistance, either for oppression or for development. So, I I would love teachers who look at the course to see how they can adapt the content in order to address similar issues in their own community because I think that what you see happening in the case of Creole languages also happens in in the US, happens in in in Europe, Latin America, in Africa where language is often used as this technology for domination or resistance. And I think this course gives the some basic analytical tools to be able to analyze these patterns. And and for me, it's also very important that teachers in Haiti and students in Haiti, including say, you know, future leaders or policy makers, get to understand this course and the readings and to understand that that Haiti could do so much better if teachers, students, leaders had this awareness of how their own attitudes towards Creole versus French have played over centuries in keeping the country underdeveloped. And if they could get a better sense of the importance of language in education and development, then I think the country would do so much better. And for me, it's a it's a it's a key bottleneck that we have to go past in order to really be able to develop a nation is to be is to be able to understand the history and the nature of your national your successful language and to be able to use it in the most systematic and productive way. If you cannot do that, there's no way that you can develop a whole nation that speaks that language. What the students get to understand at the end of the course is that we all hold dear to their attitudes about language. And some of these attitudes are positive for ourselves and for others, but often times, and this is actually one of the major issues that we discuss throughout the course, is that sometimes we have attitudes that have a very negative impact, severe negative impact, on the lives of other people, the lives of sometimes entire communities and nations. So, I hope throughout that students can actually take the theory analysis in the course and see ways in which they can apply it to themselves, to the communities, to the countries. So, some in in the course of this class have applied what they've learned and taken it outside, including volunteering in say there's a dual language program that just started in in Boston. It's a dual language program promoting the use of both Creole and English, and where students are immersed from kindergarten in both Creole and English. And now there's a student who took that class, my class, and was volunteering in that classroom for kindergarteners who are learning in Creole and and in English. And to me, that's a that's a that's a dream because it's one case where what she learned in the course can be directly applied in in the real world context, where she can make actual positive change in the lives of these children. Professor Degraff shares additional thoughts on teaching Creole languages and Caribbean identities within the instructor insight section of his OCW course. You can find these dual language videos, along with his openly licensed teaching materials, at ocw.mit.edu. And if you use these materials in your own teaching, we'd love to hear about it. Use the contact link in the show notes to share your story. Until next time, I'm Sarah Hansen from MIT Open Courseware.