ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing ktravula – a travelogue! blog archives for May, 2011.

How to Become a Language Snob

Inspired by Clarissa’s list of “20 Ways to Become Known as a Male Chauvinist“, I am compiling my own top ten list of How to be Known As a Language Snob, along with extra points.

___________________________

1. Whenever you meet someone from a different country tell them “I like your accent. You don’t speak like other _____________ (fill in country name) that I have met.”

2. After meeting someone for the first time, let your idea of a compliment to them be “Oh you speak good English.” For extra points, ask them where they learnt to speak it so well.

3. Whenever someone says to you “I like your accent too”, look insulted and ask in a high voice, “I have an accent? What do you mean I have an accent?” For extra points, be actually insulted by that.

4. Be disgusted by people speaking their local language around you. For extra point, go to them (whether you know them or not) and ask them to speak English instead. After all, they are in America.

5. If you come from a multilingual society, pretend that English is the only language worthy of learning by your children. Punish them if they speak the mother tongue. Don’t speak it to them. For extra points, justify this by saying that “In today’s world, English is the only language worth learning.”

6. Wonder aloud many times why anyone speaks any other language at all no matter where they live. Ask “Why can’t they all learn English?”

7. Fail students who write “spelled” as spelt, learned as learnt, “labor” as labour and “neighbor” as “neighbour”. For extra points, tell them that they have spent enough time in the USA to know how those words should be spelt.

8. When someone tells you that their course of study is linguistics, ask them what the importance of that course of study is. When they tell you, ask them why they didn’t study business instead.

9. When someone tells you that their course of study is Teaching English as a Second Language, tell them without prompting that it is a good idea because they would finally be able to return to their home countries to teach the people there how to speak English.

10. Complain that the reason you did poorly in a class was because the accent of the teacher was too thick for you to understand/process. For extra points, wonder why the university didn’t employ a full-blooded American for the position instead of foreigners.

Polysemy in Politics

Perhaps we all spoke too fast. Certainly not. The man who ran his mouth for several weeks demanding proof when there seemed to have been many available everywhere that a half-black man was born in the US finally got a certain “respite” when the document was released. After all, he played a role in it. And then, a few days later, he got some good bashing from the man he had spent the previous weeks maligning. Like a few other commentators (including Baratunde who made a personal video on youtube decrying the humiliation the “white privileged businessman” brought on the “first black president” by being forced to comply), I also thought it was racist. His further demanding the president’s college transcripts rather than asking more sensible questions about the economy or the direction of the country made it even worse. The whole “birther” escapade reeked of something more than just partisan politics.

A few days ago, former President Bush declined an invitation to go with President Obama to the site of the World Trade Centres where terrorists had knocked down two prominent buildings killing thousands of people. He was, according to reports, keeping up with his desire to stay out of the spotlight. He had lived up to this promise many times by refusing to comment on current topical/political issues in order to keep the focus on the president rather than on himself – obviously aware of the star power of his ex-presidency. Some other reports however saw it as a snub. The current president had refused to give enough credit to the former one for investigation procedures that led to this victory, and thus, he could as well go it all alone.

Last week,, I turned in a final semester paper in my Discourse Analysis class titled “Polysemy in All-Male and All-Female Speech” using evidence from elicited conversations to make judgements about how humans use ambiguous statements and expressions to achieve desired goals, and particularly how innocent and sometimes unintended speech acts are sometimes construed to very specific purposes by hearers and listeners. I guess it is only fitting that all of this news events are happening at this moment when the paper is sufficiently turned in. Yet it left an excess of active brain cells making perhaps needless connections to current affairs in the name of discourse analysis. Sometimes, a speech – or an act – is just what it is, without any underlying intentions.

Photo from http://bit.ly/kR4lyE

East St. Louis (Illinois) Sesquicentennial: Ten Talking Points

by Eugene B. Redmond, February 23, 2011 . . . Re: 150^th Birthday Celebration, April 1.

1. we arrive, we arrive

we cross-fertilize

we derive, we survive

2. For a thousand years, Native Peoples (“mounds” builders) inhabit both sides of the Mississippi River. In “Illinois,” these “Mississippians” build the largest city in “America” (circa 1250 AD)—with a population exceeding that of London at the time. (Fast Forward: “Native” culture survives/pervades Metro East today via mounds, namesakes (sports teams, rivers, streets) museums (lectures/tours), conferences and annual pow wows.)

3. 1600-1800: After French Jesuits settle in “Cahokia” (late 1600’s), other Europeans follow, including Captain James Piggott, who operates the first Mississippi River ferry business (1790’s). A few hundred Africans are among settlers. (Fast Forward: During the 20^th Century, ESL’s “Piggott” Avenue nurtures Scotia Calhoun Thomas (entrepreneur), James Rosser (college president) and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, among others.)

4. 1800-1860: Flood of Immigrants. Belleville incorporates as a city (1850). ESL, evolving through name changes, social and economic processes, is overwhelmed by flooding and a tornado at mid- and late-century. City becomes industrial/commercial center. Fledgling “Negro” self-help groups, one-room schools, churches and settlements (like Brooklyn and Quinn AME Church ) are created. (Fast Forward: Brooklyn is renown for its Harlem Club where Duke Ellington, Shirley Brown and Albert “Blues Boy” King perform.)

5. 1861: From “Illinois City” to “Illinois Town” to “East St. Louis” . . . the “Village” is born on April 1.

(Fast Forward: ESL, criss-crossed by railroads, is second after Chicago in RR and meat packing industries.)

6. 1861-1900: Civil War begins. U.S. transitions from agriculture to industry, driving a commercial-industrial revolution in ESL. 1871: Creation of National Stock Yards. Eads Bridge opens (1874). First mayor, John Bowman (1865), is assassinated in 1885. Centennial of St. Clair County is celebrated (1890). Captain John Robinson leads battle for schools (for “coloreds” plus Lincoln and Garfield); “Negro” lodges, churches (Macedonia, Mt. Olive, St. John A.M.E.) and professionals increase. ESL’s population rises to nearly 30, 000 (with several hundred African Americans). (Fast Forward: During 19^thand 20^th Centuries, ESL is “transfer” point for goods and soldiers. John Robinson Elementary School and Homes open on Bond Avenue. As a “ premiere avenue for Blacks during the 1920’s,” according to Jeanne Allen Faulkner, Bond is also home to mid-20^th Century Lincoln High School and the Cosmo Club where Chuck Berry’s career is launched.)

7. 1900-1925: More flooding. Meat packing industry moves to town of National City on ESL’s northwest end and, like Monsanto (Sauget) on the southwest flank, incorporates as a separate entity, depriving ESL of a rich tax base. In 1917, a gumbo of social, political, economic and racial factors causes the Race Riot. (St. Louis [MO] Chapter of Urban League is formed the year after the Riot.) Of U.S. cities with populations of 50,000-plus, ESL is the second poorest. Even so, it is among fastest growing cities in the country: Its population doubles every 10 years (reaching 75, 000 in 1930). 1924: ESL NAACP chapter is organized.

8. 1926: Miles Dewey Davis III is born in Alton (IL). The Davises move to East St. Louis in 1927.

9. 1926: In sympathy/empathy re: victims of the Riot of 1917, Duke Ellington co-writes/records “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo.” … The song later appears on a Steely Dan album, Pretzel Logic. [Throughout 20^th and 21^st Centuries, movies, TV shows, books, ballets/stage plays (like Katherine Dunham’s Ode to Taylor Jones III and Frank Nave’s East Boogie Rap) and publications, such as Drumvoices Revue, focus on ESL.]

10. 1926-present: After struggles for jobs and freedom, equal housing and education (Black-based and citywide schools); after “Miles/tones” and “Negro firsts” like the Paramount Democratic Organization and Dr. Aubrey Smith’s election to the Illinois House of Representatives (1930’s); after creation of “Negro” newspapers, being named an All American City (1940’s-1960’s) and more floods, the rest is history . . .

_________

Eugene B. Redmond is the poet laureate of East St. Louis founder of the EBR Writer’s Club and a retired professor of English from SIUE.

Re: “Drumvoices Revue” #17

TO: All Media, Poets & Writers, Readers/Students/Lovers of Poetry, Aspiring Poets, Literati
FROM: “Drumvoices Revue”/SIUE English Dept./EBR Writers Club: 618 650-3991; Email: eredmon@siue.edu; Fax: 618 650-3509

Call: “Kwansabas” for Special 20th Anniversary Issue of Journal

Kwansaba example #1: To Godson Sekou: a Kwansabas for Your 18th Birthday

I entrust to you our past, never
fully passed, dressed in royalty & poverty,
a symfony of koras & Zoras, war-
prepped prayers & def jams of bondage,
Nia-driven duties, a pyramid named Asa,
a motif known as Malcolm &, finally,
Sekou, a land of juju called Medu.
—
EBR/2010, from MS

“Drumvoices Revue: A Confluence of Literary, Cultural & Vision Arts” is issuing a “call” for the “kwansaba,” a 49-word poetic form created in East St. Louis, Illinois during the Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club’s 1995 season. The kwansaba
is a layer of sevens: seven lines, seven words per line, and seven letters (or fewer) per word. (Exceptions to the seven-letter rule are proper nouns and foreign terms.) If used as stanzas in a poem, each kwansaba should also have a
stand-alone life. Accepted kwansabas will appear in Drumvices Revue’s 20th Anniversary issue #17 (Fall 2011). Hundreds of examples/discussions of the form can be accessed via online search engines and previous issues of DR which have featured kwansabas devoted to Katherine Dunham, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, Miles Davis, Jayne Cortez, Quincy Troupe and others.

Kwansaba example #2: Song of Sister Maya

From God’s amazing peace rises a choir
of caged birds, the leader’s private song
flung up to heaven like a paean
on the pulse of morning. Hallelujah, the
heart of this woman, taking nothing for
her journey, says if you’re singin’, wingin’
and swingin’, sit at the welcome table.

–Marie A. Celestin (Young), from “Drumvoices” #15, 2007

Themes/focuses: 1. “2011” as it arches East St. Louis’ Sesquicentennial (150th year) re: the city’s historical impact on the bi-state area (Illinois/Missouri), Midwest, nation and globe (e.g., the 1917 race riots). 2. The 25th birthday of the EBR Writers Club, which has co-published “Drumvoices” with Southern Illinois University Edwardsville since 1991 (Club namesake has been poet laureate of ESL for 35 years). 3. “1926,” year of ESL Native Son Miles Davis’ birth (he’s 85!) and the co-writing/recording of “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” by Duke Ellington, one of MD’s idols. 4. Other East St. Louisans who created their way out of “no way,” including Harry Edwards, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, LaFonso Ellis, Dawn Harper, William Holden, Leon Thomas, Darryl Phinnessee, Donald McHenry, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Katherine Dunham, Sherman Fowler, Barbara Ann Teer, James Rosser, the Hudlin Brothers, Ike & Tina Turner. (See attached “TALKIING POINTS” re: East St. Louis Sesquicentennial.) 5. The Sesquicentennial of the beginning of the Civil War. 6. The Centennial of Romare Bearden. 7. The 80th birth year of Toni Morrison. 8. The 45th birthday of Kwanzaa. 9. Writers Club patron saint Henry Lee Dumas (1934-1968) whose fiction and poetry Morrison helped champion into posthumous print—and whom she and critic Clyde Taylor referred to a “genius.” 10. Any of the Club Trustees
(listed below) or combination of themes/focuses noted above.

Kwansaba example #3: Kwansaba for Quincy

Come from a place of truth widdit
Smoke it lika fast ball neath dachin
Bringit bringit high & hard, wit command,
Cause it all depends u being on
Yr game, strut yo stuff, but be
Down widdit, baby, bringit high, low, calm
Come from a place of truth widdit
–Michael Castro, “Drumvoices” #15, 2007

Send kwansabas via Email—MS Word (.doc file type)–to eredmon@siue.edu–by JULY 1. Hard copies may also be sent to Editor: “Drumvoices Revue,” English Dept./Box 1431, SIUE, Edwardsville, Illinois 62026; or to EBR Writers Club, P.O. Box 6165, East St. Louis, Illinois 62202. Telephone: (618) 650-3991. (Include a two-sentence bio and a physical mailing address.) Trustees of the Club, which meets September-May, include Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Avery Brooks, Haki R. Madhubuti, Walter Mosley, Quincy Troupe, Jerry Ward Jr., and Lena J. Weathers. The late Margaret Walker Alexander (1915-1998), Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), Raymond Patterson (1929-2001) and Barbara Ann Teer (1937- 2008) were also trustees. Founded in 1986, the group was chartered by Fowler,Roy and EBR.

Kwansaba example #4: Calling your name

for richard wright

rich in the sadness of our times
harsh again the dark storms we weather
our boys, our men hemmed by hate—
your black rites call across these years.
your hand sure in calling forth truth
writes black boys into men of honor
makes us richer, guides us toward light
–devorah major, “Drumvoices” #16, 2008

Kwansaba example #5: For Katherine Dunham

(Inspired by “A Touch of Innocence” and “Island Possessed”)

Come here lost child of Nan Guinee
Come away, spin free of the dust
Away from Bluff Street, and the wheel
Move arms, move legs, coax bad knees
Dance in wedded union with the earth
Carry Thunder, carry Shango, carry me—Home
To Haiti on breath freer than air.
–Mali Newman, “Drumvoices” #12, 2004

Caught: Osama: Dead!

The first thoughts in my mind is that the family of victims of 9/11 may finally get some deserved closure. And then the thought of what may have happened if evil didn’t exist, if there was no need to blow up the US embassies in Nairobi, or the WTC in 1993, or the twin towers in 2001. I still remember where I was then – in the dormitories of the University campus in Ibadan – as friends scurried to bring me to the television. It was evening in Ibadan and CNN was breaking the news, along with footage, of planes hitting the world trade centre.

What would have happened if a rich Saudi son had used his strength, industry, leadership and organizational style to a more productive use, say, trade. Or entertainment. Or even just a normal spiritual or educational leadership. How different would the world have been? There is nothing extraordinary about living in caves. Men have done it for centuries. The idea intrigues, even. A set of men with deeply held beliefs living out of the box of their privileged upbringing in search of spiritual, or mainly normadic, experience. I know I would have loved to go on one of such expedition.

How did violence against innocent people on a large scale even become such a worthwhile venture? And how did the man supposedly smart enough to have evaded capture all this while not have been smart enough to see the big picture: that the world is bigger than the little thoughts in the mind of a handful of hateful nomads riding in the desert. As slowly as the wheel of justice grinds, it always catches up in the end, somehow. His death is not a victory for America as it is a victory for humanity, and justice for all. It is perhaps also a call to introspection, although the cynic in me still nags on the futility of such news as this – as significant as it is – to eradicate evil on the surface of the earth. I’m glad he got what he had coming to him, Osama. Can’t we all now just get along?

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