On making language accessible.

I realise that most days I am not exactly a poster child for the joys of speech pathology, but if there’s one area of my job I really enjoy, it’s Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).

AAC is all about making language accessible in order to help a person communicate better. When speech isn't an option - for example, if a person has a physical disability that makes their speech unclear; or difficulty with putting their thoughts together, or with language itself - and keeping in mind that spoken language is already a symbolic representation of ideas - then AAC solutions often look to further represent symbolically an already symbolic system. This can involve using symbols for input, or output, or both.

That sounds complicated, but the idea is to make it easier, right?

So for example if I can't think of the Welsh word for 'cat' or 'milk' or 'Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust', I can look these up in a dictionary - I'm using a symbolic representation of the word as input to jog my memory and help me speak.

Or as another example if I go to a really loud concert and lose my voice and can only use text messages to get my point across, I'm using a symbolic representation - again, writing - as my output.

Symbols make things easier.

Kind of.

Essentially the problem for AAC users is that the twenty-six letters of the alphabet is a pretty excellent way of representing every word in the English language, ever, but if you can’t spell (and many of my clients are functionally illiterate), then writing is just not a great way of symbolising language. It doesn't make it easier. It doesn't make it accessible.


The Alphabet. Brilliant for writing, not so great if you're illiterate. (source: www.tyf.com)

This is where the great logistical nightmare and emotional joyride (I’m not joking) of developing a pictorial system for language begins.

You could represent each word with a picture, but who has room to store and capacity to learn a million symbols for the English language?

Okay then, a million is a bit over the top; following the 80/20 (or is the 95/5?) rule of language, you could encode 3000 English words into symbols and be able to express most things you want to say. That’s a much more manageable number. In a physical book of 20 pictures per page, that’s about 75 pages, double sided.

If you categorise your pictures, then you speed up the process of trying to find the word you want (as long as you’re capable of using categories). But you have to be thoughtful with this approach. Take a word like “apple”- do you categorise it under ‘food’, or ‘things for home’, or ‘things for school lunch time’ or ‘types of operating system’? Potentially your categories are going to blow out to more than the number of words you started with.

There are more efficient systems, though. Minspeak, for example, doesn’t use scrapbook like categories for words. Instead, it allows each symbol to stand for multiple ideas, and then the particular sequence of symbols determines the meaning produced.

This isn’t an exact example from a device that uses Minspeak but it gives you the idea:

The apple symbol can mean lots of things. When you combine apple with the symbol for noun, you get “apple” ; when you combine it with the symbol for verb you get “eat”; and when you combine it with the symbol for adjective you get “hungry”.

Three words starting from one symbol.

Add a bed symbol and you get:

• bed + noun = “bed”
• bed + verb = “sleep”
• bed + adjective = “tired”

An extra three words and you’ve only added one symbol.

Another example of symbol combination, in Minspeak. The paintbrush symbolises "adjective", I think.

A multi-meaning iconic system like Minspeak reduces the number of symbols you need to generate the largest possible set of ideas. It’s pretty brilliant. I’m in love with it, can you tell?

Unfortunately Minspeak can have – or be perceived to have – quite a steep learning curve, and I wouldn’t often use it with my clients who have particularly limited cognition. It’s much easier when a picture only symbolises one thing, right?

The question then is, if my client has capacity to use only a limited number of words (it may be cognitive capacity to understand; it may be physical capacity to access a device without fatiguing; whatever) – what words are going to be the most important, the most useful for them to say?

No really. If you could only use 100 words to communicate, what would they be? If you could only use 50? 20? 10?

This is a bugger of a question because often I find the most important words for a client are also the ones they’re already pretty good at communicating. Yes, no. Coffee, tea, food. Toilet. Go away. Unless someone has absolutely no way of talking, making sounds, or signing, these high-frequency, high-context words are surprisingly easy to understand.

So how do you organise the billowing mass of low-frequency, low-context words that a client needs to say but has doesn’t have capacity to sort through? To be honest, I’m not sure yet; a combination of a few approaches, I suspect, and something that I keep working on.

The English Behemoth.

(I quite like the word 'behemoth'.)

So I've nearly finished the 5-day in-class foundation course for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL, but you may know it as ESL or EFL or any number of other acronyms), and I'll have lots to say about that over the coming weeks when I've had a chance to work out what I think about it all.

In the mean time, a question of language ethics that was raised in today's class:

"With twenty five languages dying every year, how can we go around teaching English?"

It wasn't actually me who asked that question, believe it or not, but it's definitely one I've been thinking about for a while. Isn't teaching English the same as building a Starbucks on every corner, playing the Top 40 on every radio station, and giving someone an ipod for Christmas?

(Thanks for being incompatible with everything on my computer, ipod! I'm so glad I had to buy into the apple empire to use you and now none of my media work in their original format!)

But it's not a flippant question. Aren't languages, like independent coffee shops, interesting local bands, and original file formats, losing the battle against cultural behemoths? Why give more power to this giant?

The thing I wonder though is if there's such a simple relationship between the English language and other language loss?

I think certainly when English is promoted, whether by colonial force or the economy or world media or whatever, then a perceived need is created to speak the language.

They're English. They're cool. Who doesn't want to be like the Beatles? (image: www.theguardian.com)

This is an argument for teaching English, I think; I haven't personally created the need to speak English to gain viable employment, for example, but if that need exists then by teaching English I am potentially helping people to deal with the situation.

However, with such a situation in place, parents who are native speakers of other languages may deliberately choose to have their kids speak English only, especially if they don't see the possibility of raising their kids bilingually; or the kids may learn both languages but then make their own choice to speak English, in order to stand out or fit in, whichever one it is that kids want to do. This sort of thing seems particularly common when the kids are being raised in an English speaking country, and so the intergenerational transfer of the native language goes into decline.

On the other hand, I'm not sure - or rather, I'm curious - about the influence of language knowledge by itself, without external forces. Because as a general rule, knowledge of a language does not necessarily lead to it being spoken.

How many people in Wales know Welsh, for example, but never use it on the street, in the shops, or even in their own homes? Or, how many people in France know English, but continue to speak French? And why?

I'm about to go round in a full circle in my head, so just to be clear as mud: if other forces create a situation where English is required, but English language knowledge by itself does not necessarily lead to English language use, then a) what does? and b) where does that leave teaching English as a second language?

So, uh - more thoughts on these questions when I've caught up on some sleep, I think!

The Apparent Invisibility of English.

I had a really interesting conversation with one of my colleagues as we were driving back from a school visit (car trips are the best way to get to know someone quickly and then skip to the good bits) – about Aboriginal Australians, their cultures, the discrimination they face, and how their languages are being passed on but also changed, and in some cases, “eroded”

My colleague is a strong believer in supporting Aboriginal languages, and I found myself saying the usual thing about how languages are so important for sustaining culture, engendering confidence, etc. etc. You know. It was one of those great conversations where we agreed with each other the whole time but also learnt things.

But while I do think that language, culture, individual and community confidence, prosperity, and happiness are all linked in some kind of way thing and support each other and all that, I have absolutely no idea how. Not just intellectually because I don’t have the time right now to sit down and work out all those different connections and stuff. I mean, even if I intellectually understood it, I still wouldn’t personally know how. These kinds of questions just don’t come up when you’re a native English speaker in a predominantly English speaking country in the western (so western) world.

I’ve never had difficulty getting into university or getting a job because I didn’t meet the language requirements. I don’t get teased for speaking English. (Okay, I make some weird vocab choices sometimes but whatever, I’m posh innit.) I’m not the least bit concerned that my language won’t be spoken after one or two generations.

Furthermore from my world viewpoint, English is so widely spoken and printed everywhere that I don't even notice that I'm using it - I'm just getting (or refusing to get) the message being communicated. It's like English is so default, so behemothic and yet so insipid that you can't even see it.

That makes me wonder, then, if English gets to be a part of my culture, confidence, prosperity, and happiness; if being an English speaker is something I can enjoy being or if it’s just like wearing clothes – most people do, and it only becomes an issue when you don’t.

But then I remember that Calvin and Hobbes is written in English and I think yea – I have language pride.

on bilingualism

Those of us who haven't grow up speaking two languages I suspect have all asked ourselves the question "when do I get to call myself bilingual?"

I think this is a very personal question with as many answers as speakers and it's also something that's very important because ultimately we're not just asking about our skill level - we're asking about our identity.

My guess is that ~adult language learners who are primarily learning the language with the hope of one day speaking it - and this includes the majority of high school language learners - have a very high standard of what it means to be bilingual. I speak my first language with this level of (quite frankly extravangant) competency and ease; I can only be bilingual when I speak my second language with the same comptency and ease.

And this is a legit definition of bilingualism because isn't it basically what people who are bilingual from birth (or near enough) do?

Well, maybe. Without doing any empirical research whatsoever or even checking wikipedia I'm pretty sure that lots of bilingual-from-birth-ers do not actually speak both languages equally well. One language gets stronger from being used more often; one language has been used for academic things; one language is spoken with lots of code-switching to the other; etc.

Personally, I would love to be as fluent in Welsh as I am in English - which, let's be honest, is not exactly a perfect level of fluency at the best of times, let alone when I'm tired or excited or a little bit tipsy or wearing new shoes or its raining or I need to go to the toilet.

Nevertheless I am nowhere near that level of perfect dysfluency in Welsh. But, shortly after I came back from The Big Welsh Holiday Of 2013, I decided that I had had too many interesting conversations about a range of topics - regardless of how slowly I spoke, how slowly I was spoken to, how many repetitions I needed, or how many words I fudged - to not call myself bilingual.

My idea of what I considered necessary for bilingualism is different because I have been able to focus on "communicate now" rather than "speak one day".

I think of course there are some situations where you can sort of measure how fluent you are in your second language and there's a standard to be attained - for example, getting a job in your second language, or passing a particular language exam. But if you aren't fluent enough for that standard, it doesn't mean you're not bilingual - it just means you aren't fluent enough for that standard. (Yet.)

You can be bilingual with just a few words in your second language. I work with kids who are considered bilingual and who are pretty rubbish in both their langauges, and that's absolutely fine and it's also really important to acknowledge that they are still bilingual.

I think something happens when you call yourself bilingual - I'm not sure what yet, but it has something to do with how long some of us have been wanting to speak a second language and how it feels to be suddenly a member of the non-monolingual world and how important language is to our lives and given that importance, how we now see our linguistic identity.

So kids, when do you get to call yourself bilingual?