So sorry this is a bit late!

For our presentation on Language Diversity I was primarily responsible for setting a background of conflicts and relevance of language diversity.  While I was looking for sources on language diversity in Ghana I was continually reminded of some of my experiences in India.  Especially around the issue of English and having a Ghanaian identity imposed on English.  India was also colonized by the British and while they gained independence before Ghana (about ten years earlier) the British influence, including the use of English as a national language, is really prevelant.  Language in general shares a lot of similarities between the two countries; both use English as the primary language in their education system while having a myriad of native languages.  While I was in Delhi (where they primarily speak Hindi and English) I found myself often using and being confronted by "Hinglish."  For example, instead of using Hindi numbers people often used English numbers because linguistically they make more sense.  However, some numbers were always said in Hindi (1, 5, 20, 30) which I think is one way Indian identity was imposed on English.  

Language has been a subject of real interest to me since coming to Bryn Mawr and I really enjoyed doing a presentation on language diversity.  For me, language reveals so much about a culture and what it values.  Language informs so much of how we think about different issues without even realizing it!

A couple weeks ago, I shared a youtube clip over twitter that was a response to the meme "Sh*t ____ says." In this case, the video ridiculed stereotypes that African Americans hold against Africans. Alice responded:

@NtshadiMM This video is intense. What do you think about how it focuses exclusively on one group's ignorance? #bmced250

I really enjoyed doing the activity with everyone during our storytelling presentation. When we created the activity we knew it would be interesting but I was excited to see what everyone came up with (in such little time). All the presentations were so different in medium, style, content and presentation. They all showed something different about the individuals in the group and what was important to each of them. It got me thinking back to Gee and his ideas of discourse. While all the presentations were different they all seemed to fit the standard discourse we have in academia, rather than a discourse that would have been found in a place like Ghana.  What I mean is we have all been told stories throughout our lives, we have acquired (to use Gee’s word) a certain way to tell stories. They are through pictures or narrative and they all come from the narrator. We saw that in Ghana many stories involve movement from everyone or call and response, and those stories were not presented in our classroom. If they were it would have been a learned practice and the class would have been more aware of the choices they were making to tell their story in that way. I am now realizing even more how much our own discourses determine not only how we interact but also how we tell stories about ourselves (to bring in Rob’s class and Narrativity to tell about who we are). Our discourse determines how those stories look and the way they are told. Is it so crazy to ask us to step outside of our own discourse to tell our story? Perhaps it is.

I really enjoyed doing the activity with everyone during our storytelling presentation. When we created the activity we knew it would be interesting but I was excited to see what everyone came up with (in such little time). All the presentations were so different in medium, style, content and presentation. They all showed something different about the individuals in the group and what was important to each of them. It got me thinking back to Gee and his ideas of discourse. While all the presentations were different they all seemed to fit the standard discourse we have in academia, rather than a discourse that would have been found in a place like Ghana.  What I mean is we have all been told stories throughout our lives, we have acquired (to use Gee’s word) a certain way to tell stories. They are through pictures or narrative and they all come from the narrator. We saw that in Ghana many stories involve movement from everyone or call and response, and those stories were not presented in our classroom. If they were it would have been a learned practice and the class would have been more aware of the choices they were making to tell their story in that way. I am now realizing even more how much our own discourses determine not only how we interact but also how we tell stories about ourselves (to bring in Rob’s class and Narrativity to tell about who we are). Our discourse determines how those stories look and the way they are told. Is it so crazy to ask us to step outside of our own discourse to tell our story? Perhaps it is.