jueves, 14 de noviembre de 2013

Bilingualism vs. Biculturalism?


BY OLENA CENTENO


Mama, am I bilin­gual or bicul­tural? Or am I both?


Bilin­gual­ism and bicul­tur­al­ism are related, but they are not the same thing.


Some peo­ple assume that if you raise a child to be bilin­gual, that child will auto­mat­i­cally have access to another cul­ture. While it helps, it’s not quite that easy — bilin­gual­ism is more of a door into biculturalism.


First, the definitions:


Bilin­gual­ism is the abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate in two lan­guages. It gen­er­ally implies writ­ing, read­ing, and speak­ing flu­ently, although the term is also some­times applied to indi­vid­u­als who are only bilin­gual speak­ers, and not lit­er­ate in a sec­ond language.


Bicul­tur­al­ism is an immer­sion in two dis­tinct cul­tures, imply­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in tra­di­tional her­itage prac­tices like food, dress, fam­ily tra­di­tions, folk­lore and folk art, etc.


Speak­ing a her­itage lan­guage is often an impor­tant part of bicul­tur­al­ism. How­ever, the immer­sion goes beyond that. Bicul­tur­al­ism is often, but not always, the prod­uct of a bicul­tural fam­ily, usu­ally one made from a cross-cultural marriage.


Bilin­gual indi­vid­u­als will have an eas­ier time sam­pling expe­ri­ences from other cul­tures even with­out a fam­ily tra­di­tion of it, how­ever — the sec­ond lan­guage gives them access to peo­ple from that language’s cul­ture or cultures.


Aspects of Cul­ture Beyond Language


Here are a few of the things a bicul­tural indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences from more than one per­spec­tive, in addi­tion to lan­guage and speech itself:


1. Food


Typ­i­cal Ukrain­ian cel­e­bra­tion. What is on your table?


Cul­tural or “her­itage” dishes are gen­er­ally influ­enced by the sta­ples that were avail­able wher­ever that par­tic­u­lar cul­ture and lan­guage was established.


Din­ing cross-culturally can be a lin­guis­tic expe­ri­ence — most Amer­i­cans, for exam­ple, know that “con arroz” means “with rice” in Span­ish, sim­ply from the preva­lence of Latin Amer­i­can foods in the United States.


How­ever, it is pos­si­ble to eat culturally-influenced meals with­out know­ing any of the par­ent lan­guage, and many chil­dren do, par­tic­u­larly in house­holds where immi­grant par­ents or grand­par­ents cook, but chil­dren are raised speak­ing the local language.


Some tra­di­tions go beyond just the kinds of food used, and affect how they are eaten as well — the dif­fer­ence between using chop­sticks and forks, for exam­ple, or between eat­ing omelets and other egg dishes for break­fast (United States) and for evening meals (East­ern Europe and parts of Latin America).


One of the advan­tages of intro­duc­ing chil­dren to bicul­tural eat­ing as well as lan­guage when they’re young is that it becomes less of a cul­ture shock when they travel later in life. They’re already famil­iar with the tra­di­tional foods of their her­itage coun­try. And, as an added bonus, it gets them used to the idea of a var­ied diet in gen­eral — a good way to help dis­cour­age picky eat­ing habits!


2. Folk Art


The broad cat­e­gory of “folk art” includes music, dance, folk­lore, and tra­di­tional cul­tural crafts.


Some cul­tures have very spe­cific and guarded ones — Japan­ese flower arrang­ing and cal­lig­ra­phy, for exam­ple. Oth­ers are prac­ticed all over the world in dif­fer­ent styles, such as pot­tery or even things as com­mon as paint­ing and stringed instruments.


Expos­ing a bilin­gual child to cul­tural art as well can be use­ful in a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent ways. Obvi­ously, it gives them some­thing to appre­ci­ate that they wouldn’t nor­mally encounter, but it can also open up new vocab­u­lary, and it can be very reveal­ing about a cul­ture as well. Some­thing as sim­ple as lis­ten­ing to a piece of music by a Russ­ian com­poser and then one by a con­tem­po­rary Ger­man com­poser gives even a casual observer a good under­stand­ing of some of the dif­fer­ences between the two cultures.


3. Cel­e­bra­tions


Chil­dren like this one, because it usu­ally means at least twice as many hol­i­days in the household!


Bring­ing in hol­i­days from other cul­ture is a start to explain­ing every­thing from reli­gious plu­ral­ity to the dif­fer­ences in cal­en­dar systems.


It’s also good moti­va­tion, espe­cially when you can explain that Russian-speakers have their own Santa, who only brings presents for Russian-speaking chil­dren. You’ll be amazed how pro­lific the Russ­ian use gets around Christ­mas time…


4. Jokes


Humor is very dif­fi­cult to translate.


Even after years of liv­ing together, bicul­tural cou­ples can strug­gle to under­stand one another’s humor. But don’t let that dif­fi­culty scare you away from it — instead, ask to have jokes explained, and work through why they’re funny in their orig­i­nal cul­tures. If you under­stand a culture’s humor, you’re very well-immersed!


Intro­duc­ing chil­dren to mul­ti­cul­tural humor is sur­pris­ingly easy. Most toys, books, and TV shows mar­keted toward kids is humor-based already. If you want to give them a ground­ing in another culture’s humor, just let them watch some silly car­toons — the things that cul­ture finds amus­ing will become appar­ent very quickly. You may even learn some­thing yourself.


5. Man­ners


via Bilin­gual­ism vs. Bicul­tur­al­ism? The Curi­ous Case of the Japan­ese Brazil­ians.


Related Posts:

  • No Related Posts

Bilingualism vs. Biculturalism?

Traductor del blog / Blog's translator