SKILLS at SMHS Period 3

Wednesday, February 4

Culture and Markedness

Materials needed:

  • Student examples of linguistic landscapes (photos on smartphones, notes)
  • PPT
  • Journals (in classroom; bring a couple extra)

Icebreaker/ Warm-up (5 minutes)

  • What’s your favorite food? What culture do you think that food belongs to?

Logistics (5-10 minutes)

  • Consent and permission forms:
  • Collect remaining field trip permission slips
  • Collect consent forms that we gave them on Mon (the ones for the video recording); also collect remaining survey consent forms

Review of last time’s material (5-10 min)

  • Small groups (2-5 min): What do they remember about Monday’s discussion? What were their take-aways?
  • Large groups: what take-aways did you discuss? (5 min)
  • This should help us sort through any remaining confusion about linguistic landscapes, communities of practice, etc. and see what they got out of it.
  • CoPs: briefly review this, emphasizing the idea that communities can be defined by repeated, shared practices and that language is one of these practices.
  • Draw on student examples from last time, such as sports teams and jobs, to drive home the idea that some practices may be carried across different CoPs (e.g., slang terms), whereas others (e.g., scrubs) aren’t or would look weird/ stand out in another CoP
  • Elicit a few more examples of CoPs students are part of (their AVID class is a good example, and now SKILLS is a CoP we’re all building and becoming part of)
  • Also emphasize that all the different CoPs they are part of form part of the “linguistic landscapes” of their lives; as they move across different spaces, the linguistic landscape looks different because they move into and out of certain CoPs
  • Note-taking: are they taking notes during this portion? Pause and check in. Say that we’d like them to take notes throughout the next few slides. Explain that the purpose of this is to prepare them for college.

What is anthropology? What is culture? (5-10 min)

  • Before “anthro” ppt slide, pause and ask: Why would we care about CoPs and communities in a linguistic anthropology class? We’ve talked about the “linguistics” part of it and spent some time defining that. What’s anthropology?
  • They may recall this from the first day; either way, at this point go into the PPT slide on anthro/culture
  • Culture: is shared and learned (not just something in your blood or something you’re born into), generates behavior/action, helps us interpret experience
  • CoP and culture: A CoP is a cultural environment since there are shared practices repeated over time; the practices shared in a CoP can help bring about a shared culture and identity
  • Particularly emphasize that everybody belongs to a culture!
  • If we look at culture at the level of CoPs, we’re all sort of multicultural
  • if we look at culture at a broader level (e.g., national level), not everyone is multicultural.
  • The point is everyone is cultural; none of us exist in isolation. This might all seem really obvious, just like our definition of language (language changes, language varies). And yet, the common idea is that some people “have culture” and others don’t.
  • Use the quote about “I don’t have a culture” as a segueway into markedness

Make-up Discussion - Markedness within our common Linguistic Landscape (30-40 minutes)

  • Markedness PPT slide
  • PPT slides with makeup images from part of our broader, shared landscape of language and symbols. (work through in small groups and then share about each slide as a whole group).
  • These are the signs we all see all the time, even if we don’t use makeup, and even if we’re not really paying full attention to them (like the “visitors” signs at different places on their campus); they’ve probably seen these types of ads in the media, etc.
  • Remind them of the “language isn’t just language” idea from last time, so what they’ll see next has a lot to do with the body and other symbols, but we will be thinking about how language, other symbols, and the body work together
  • As we go through each slide, ask:
  • What do you notice about the words, colors, symbols, numbers and categories being used here? What social messages are they sending? What are these images framing as ‘normal’ or unmarked vs. marked?
  • For the second slide (the one with the cities), note that this slide represents communities (at the large scale of cities) as being very homogenous, and the shade that represents each community is assumed to somehow be the norm
  • Superbowl slide: what’s marked to one person may be unmarked to another; it’s context- and person-specific
  • Journals: Show PPT slide and let them know they can choose either option
  • Ask for a few volunteers to share some ideas from their journals. They don’t have to read straight out of their journals, but they can just provide a few examples.