In Chapter 3, Sherzer claims that "play languages are one of the most common forms of speech play". He then goes on to talk about Pig Latin, and other familiar forms of speech play. This got me thinking about my childhood. I will never forget the time I sat in my third grade classroom and three of the kids around me starting talking “Gibberish”. I was so confused at the time and did not know what was going on.
For those of you that did not have this childish experience, here is a video on how to speak Gibberish:
Anyways, what was most interesting to see, was that in my third grade classroom, speaking gibberish started to create a sense of hierarchy. This new, made up language (which was actually just entirely based on English), gave those students who could speak it an upper hand. For example, people would tell each other "secrets" out loud if only the people they wanted to hear knew how to understand Gibberish and the people that they didn’t want to hear could not.
Those students that never learned to speak it, myself included, were put down and eventually considered to be the minority. However, in time, almost everyone learned how to speak this new language in my third grade class. This put pressure to find something new, which led to the start of the use of "Pig Latin". The same cycle appeared with Pig Latin as it did with Gibberish.
What is most interesting to see, is how quickly these new, invented languages, adapted to the people around me in my third grade world. It was so easy for these new play languages to become a "fad" and then shortly die out being replaced by something else. All students wanted was something that could make them "better" than the rest of the students, something that gave them more power, something that allowed them to "win". From this, I could see how speaking a language is like playing a game. The better you are and the more you practice, the higher chance you have to "win" and succeed.
Emma,
ReplyDeleteI was extremely interested when reading your post, because when looking at the readings for that day's class, my first thought was to think about the games involved in learning a second language. Many internships, study abroad programs, and even jobs require their applicants to be fluent in a second language, as our ever-interconnected world leds to more contact with people from different nations and cultures. Those students who have mastered a second language, whether through classes or perhaps by having a parent fluent in a language other than English, have a leg up on their classmates. It then becomes a game, or race, to take those language classes that will make you proficient in whatever it is you want to study.
I am interested in going into finance, and more and more I am told than Mandarin is increasingly more important as business opportunities continue to arise in China. I have many friends who already have a good grip on the Mandarin dialect of Chinese, and it certainly puts me at a disadvantage (and yes, I am self-proclaiming myself a "loser") by not understanding a word of it. This goes along perfectly with what you said about language being a game - the more you know, the better your chances are to "win" - in this case, I may end up losing out to those students with years of Mandarin experience.
- Alex Jacobs
This idea of language as a game made me think of all the different games that directly involve language, especially on the iPhone: scramble with friends, words with friends, hanging with friends, jumbling, tap word. And these are just a few of them. There are countless word games...there is even an entire category in the application store on the iPhone dedicated to word games. These type of games are what I would consider word games, today. However, when I was younger, me and my best friend used to talk in Gibberish or Pig Latin because we thought our parents and brothers wouldn't be able to understand what we were saying (but they too knew how to speak in these languages). It was a type of game for us because we would try to trick our brothers by speaking in these languages but they really knew exactly the pranks were were planning to pull on them. Today, I would equate Gibberish and Pig Latin with "texting lingo". While my brother knows exactly what I am saying when I say lol or ct or brb, my grandparents definitely do not. In this sense, it is still a type of code language that we can speak in so people do not understand what we are saying!
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I am so excited that you blogged about this because I was on the verge of raising my hand during that lecture and mentioning this made up language. I,too, used to speak gibberish in elementary school. I completely get what you mean about the hierarchal sense of this language. From my experience with gibberish at camp and elementary school, this language was primarily used to exclude others. If you and a friend could speak gibberish but a third person present could not, the two would speak secrets out loud as a rude way of gossiping in front of the person and making them feel left out. In fact, my mother can speak gibberish and spoke it for the same reasons when she attended over night camp. I noticed through my experience that primarily girls spoke gibberish making me wonder about the origins of this language. Was it in fact created by girls at over night camp to gossip? I personally found it very fun to speak gibberish with my friends. I haven't spoken/thought about this language in so long! Funny we both had the same thought from this guest lecturer.
ReplyDeleteNext time, raise your hand, Lucy!
DeleteEmma I can not agree with you more about this hierarchy and understanding Gibberish. I remember my first summer at sleep away camp two girls knew Gibberish and refused to teach it to everyone else because then everyone would know their "secret language." It wasn't until some else in my bunk who had an older sister started to make her nightly visits. I remember my friend crying to her sister that she didn't know Gibberish and how upset she was that the other girls wouldn't teach it to her. Luckily my friends older sister knew Gibberish and then make it a nightly thing to teach us a new word every night for the rest of the summer. I remember how empowering it felt to be the only bunk my age to know this language. It is funny now looking back how something so trivial could really make someone have more power over others.
ReplyDeletePrevious to this lecture, I had not thought of language as a game, but I completely understand it and agree with that thought now. As everyone has said, language can be a way to exclude people who do not know it, making those people the "losers." I think this can be true with more than made up languages, as Alex commented above. Even with the language requirement at UofM, many people still do not become fully fluent in a second language. I was lucky enough to learn Spanish, in school, while growing up so I have not had to take a language here, but from what people tell me, it is not easy to completely learn a new language when starting from scratch. I think this turns people off to learning a new language and thus can be detrimental for them in the future (making them the "loser"). I know that many jobs would prefer to hire people who can speak multiple languages, but the school system makes it hard for students to succeed and pursue learning a new language.
ReplyDelete