Talking 'bout my dissertation!

Hi! I'm back. Yes, it's been awhile. I finished my data collection. I made a few mistakes, some of which were very large and ugly and the whole thing turned into a soap opera. Unfortunately I can't talk about any of that here but if you're ever in the L.A. area and want to go out for a drink, please let me know.

I will try to be back (don't know if anyone is even reading this anymore...is this thing on? hello?) with more generic fun about the analysis and writing portion of my diss. Suffice it to say that I am very happy the data collection portion is over, although the Ecuador component was much less painful than the Pacific Northwest portion.

The fieldwork thing, it often is no fun.

Especially when you're watching a band in the cold, cold rain for seven hours as they attempt to eke out a living and you're not feeling like being there, you keep having visions of hot showers, fireplaces and soup. When there's a break for lunch you are shocked and angered to realize that THEY'RE GOING TO EAT STANDING UP OUTSIDE and the nerve of them how dare they not go inside somewhere so that you can both eat and take notes, now you have to keep taking notes, in the rain, and not eat because you only have two hands for Christ's sake. And you go back to the makeshift stage they've set up on the street for this second day of the festival and the sound doesn't work very well and everybody seems pissed off but maybe it's just you and then the Stupid Fan that you Hate decides to show up and make your life even more miserable and after another set it begins to rain even harder and you're drowning under your stupid hat and as usual you have not dressed for the occasion. And the lead guy calls it quits and everyone's helping to put away the equipment but when you try you can't even get the damn cables coiled into a circle because your hands are too cold and you feel like you're getting in the way more than anything and you wonder why anybody even tolerates you, why you even thought you had a clue as to what you were doing when you got into this whole participant observer role, because clearly you are not participating very well. And the lead guy takes you back to your friend's house and you throw your clothes in the dryer and stand under the shower for about 24 years. Then you have a beer because you deserve a beer and write whiny field notes because you deserve to write whiny field notes. And you're not sure it's going to get better but when you get home you realize you have more to work with than you thought you did, to the point where you have a pretty solid outline for all 9 chapters of your dissertation, divided into three potentially awesome publications. Finally, when your super sweet digital voice recorder arrives you are all better and chomping at the bit to get back into the field.

Note to self: Next time, bring a raincoat.

Cultural awareness

My husband, Dr. Cuy, sent me this little gem. I especially love the culturally sensitive comments at the end.

First impressions

They got visas, they're in the great Pacific Northwest, and they are nice people who don't mind some goofy gringa eavesdropping on them. Glory be!

So after my very first real live dissertation-related experience in participant observation I have the following conclusions:

1. I need to really, really work on my not-so Endangered Language Z skills. Because I can carry on a funny little conversation but actually listening to native speakers? Not so good at it.

2. I need money to keep flying up to the Pacific Northwest. I figured this out as a) I got turned down for one grant and b) realized I totally missed the boat on another grant, the application for which is due Friday but needs to be mailed in and if I called up my professors for letters of recommendation they would laugh hysterically.

3. Therefore, I need a job that I don't have to do anything for but which pays me a lot of money. I realize this is normally called a "grant," but see above. Other options include "CEO" but I just don't have the connections.

4. Being away from your family doing research sucks. There is nobody to come home to at night and phone calls just don't cut it.

5. I am probably not spending as much time as I should on writing up my field notes. But I am so brain dead after 3-4 hours in the field (the allotted time for "beginning researchers," according to this book), that it is all I can do to remember what happened.

I would write more but my other obligations (mainly, the thing I am being paid for; that is, teaching) is calling me. To be continued.

I found people. They need visas.

Update on this post: The musical Sobreesdrújulas are playing the waiting game for their visas. Which is really frustrating because they are supposed to be here on Friday. I'm calling in all of the support I can manage on my end. Argh.

After six months of struggle in the greater L.A. area, my quest for informants was (I hope) solved by a five day trip to the Pacific Northwest. All hail the Sobreesdrújulas! Let the data collection begin! In April! I am praying to the visa gods that the group of transnational musicians that I have selfishly and naively claimed mine will get their papers and come to this fine land so that I might ruthlessly watch them speaking not-endangered language Z and acting out their various discursive practices.

When I am not spending excessive amounts of nonexistent cash on airline tickets to the Pacific Northwest, I am reading everything I can get my hands on about the Sobreesdrújulas and their relative uniqueness in country X. So I feel that I am finally making progress and thank God for that.

HOW TO NOT WRITE A DISSERTATION IN TWO YEARS

1. First of all, do not apply for funding. Funding is for chumps. Your husband, Dr. Cuy, will provide you with all of the largesse you need. Plus you can teach but that won't really take up much time.

2. When your advisor tells you to spend your time reading, ignore him. Reading, like funding, is for chumps. You want to collect data. Like yesterday. Forge your own path, without having developed a background on your potential participants.

3. Take a teaching job. Preferably one in a subject you have never taught, have limited knowledge about, and makes you feel like a total impostor every time you stand in front of the class. Spend your time trying to make the students like you instead of working on, you know, that dissertation thing.

4. Try to find participants in one large, diverse and completely uncohesive metropolitan area, where you don't even live and have to commute to via snarly freeways, once a week, due to the fact that you teach three days a week and that has suddenly taken over your life. Repeat ad nauseum.

5. Bitch incessantly on your blog about how hard this dissertation thing is, boo hoo hoo.

6. Embarrass yourself in front of your proposal committee when they basically tear you a new asshole, pointing out most notably that you have not read the most important literature on your potential participants.

7. Spend a few months agonizing over your proposal revisions, which absolutely nobody in your proposal committee will comment on, perhaps because they already think you are a loser.

8. Give up on large, diverse and uncohesive metropolitan area. Start reading. Realize that reading is valuable and if you'd read something to begin with you wouldn't have wasted six months of your life in the useless metropolitan area. Weep copiously.

9. Start over. You now have one year and one quarter left. Hoo hoo hahahahaha!!!

SO LONG, L.A.

I have officially given up on finding a community of speakers of not-really-endangered language Z in my immediate vicinity and must therefore start commuting far, far, away to Relatively Large City in Pacific Northwest, where there is a more cohesive community of speakers. At least, there is one guy who is interested in talking to me and I am hoping he will open the gates to his 20 other friends and relatives. Keep your fingers crossed for me, and let the data collecting begin (finally, because I really, really want to get this dissertation thing on the road, in case you had any doubt from my previous entries).

MY DISSERTATION IS MAKING ME CRAZY.

Has this ever happened to you?

1. You get a great idea, or rather, you have an idea you've been slobbering over for a few years and you think, hey, why don't I turn this into a dissertation?

2. Your advisor can't quite seem to get your great idea out of the proposal stage. Meanwhile you're one year away from the job market and you still don't have any participants. Or no group of participants, anyway. You have a few scattered speakers of Not-Really-Endangered Language Z but no network means no diss.

3. Your advisor keeps telling you to read stuff. You want to go and find speakers of Not-Really-But-Almost Endangered Language Z so that you can justify even having the dissertation you claim you want to write.

4. At the same time, you are teaching a class in Portuguese (which is a relatively minor language but not Not-Really-But-Could-Be-Within-A-Few-Years Endangered Language Z), you are sort of holding down a household, trying to put pants on your child, who refuses to wear pants except under duress, trying to cook vegetables but often just resorting to fish sticks, and trying to give your husband a reason or two not to just abandon you and preserve his own sanity once and for all. All of which kind of cuts down on the time you should really be working on your dissertation.

5. In a word, argh.

I go to the wilds of Los Angeles tomorrow to find speakers of Not-Really-and-Who-Gives-A- Crap-Anyway Endangered Language Z. Wish me luck because I'm this close to just throwing the whole goddamn plan out the window.

Responses to feedback, some smart-assed

The dissertation committee has spoken and I have spoken back. Here are my current issues, based on their feedback, as I struggle to put together an acceptable version of my proposal. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. I think those who speak Spanish will especially like the pseudonym for my possible community.

Community

There doesn’t seem to be a community of Language Z speakers in LA, and in any case those which you have contacted appear to be Sobreesdrújulas, a distinct group from other Country Xers. We think that you need to address this issue because community and social network are a major force affecting language maintenance and change. We encourage you to discuss the issue of sampling both of members of the community and language samples.

What if I found say five people who use their Language Z but have no immediate social network? And they’ve lived in LA for 10-20 years? Would that defeat the whole network theory? Would I win the linguistics equivalent of the Nobel Prize? Or at least get a good job? I really need a job. I’m a good worker. Someone please just hire me ABD.

Language

We encourage you to review more carefully the work of Haboud on minoritized languages because it seems to us that it is not the language but the socioeconomic status of the speakers that render a language minoritized.

I agree and so would Haboud. I don’t know where in my proposal I hinted otherwise. Please see page one.

We would appreciate clearer indications with examples from conversational data of your understanding of language alternation because of the massive incorporation into Language Z of Spanish loan words.

Okay. I can do that. I think.

We would like to see a clearer indication of strategic language choice by the speakers beyond use of ‘nishka’ and certain vocabulary items.

Please see examples on the section titled data analysis. As you can see by the examples, items such as pauses/hesitations and the co-construction of conversational flow (indicated by ña) also indicate strategic or non-strategic language choice. I will make this more explicit in the dissertation.

Researcher’s Role

We encourage you to take a more organic role in the lives of her participants, and to focus on a smaller number of participants than the 50 that you envisage. We also encourage you to ask yourself who your work is relevant for, and to conceive your dissertation research as a product and a process that may benefit the people that you study.

I am having a huge problem with this and I feel like if I DO try to be ethical I will become a sociologist and not a linguist! The problem is my work will most likely not benefit the people I study. The best I can do is to do no harm and try to be as unobtrusive as possible. I think the current discussion on ethics in SLA is valid and relevant but come on folks, let’s be realistic about who we are benefiting here. We are benefiting me so I can get a JOB. I acknowledge that might not be the most PC thing to say, but academia seems to spend a lot of time pondering how they can benefit the people they study and then they go out and study them without benefit. I think what we need to be is honest about our intentions and the (lack of) benefits to our so-called participants. He dicho.

Identity

Your discussion of identity ranges widely, but we encourage you to consider means other than language through which identity is constructed: Crafts, music, employment, commerce, and marriage practices are some.

The point of focusing on identity as it pertains to language was precisely because it is perceived as static in most literature on language maintenance. Part of the goal of my dissertation is to figure out whether or not this perception really applies or if new theories could shed light on perceptions of identity. I could put some sentences about how identity can be constructed on other ways but isn’t this supposed to be a diss about LANGUAGE?

We also encourage more discussion of ways of ascription, co-construction, and altercasting of identity.

Okey-dokey.

Sobreesdrújulas

You should be aware that Sobreesdrújulas are a distinct group from other Language Z-speaking Country Xers, and you should consult the writings of Meisch and Colluredo for an introduction to Sobreesdrújula society.

Okay, but I’m not really sure at this point who I am going to get. It seems like everyone focuses on sobreesdrújulas in the lit. Would like to find a different group if possible but we’ll see how the recruiting goes.

Operationalization

We would like to see a sketch of how theoretical concepts like language and identity are realized in specific practices.

I will do that once I get examples of the ACTUAL DAMN PRACTICES. Because I have no fucking community!!! Argh!!! Sorry, it’s not you, it’s me. Really.

But at the same time, how can I show you how they are realized in specific practices when this is supposed to be a PROPOSAL, which means I have NO DATA, and therefore no specific practices, at this time?

Discursive Practice

We encourage you to look beyond a research site such as home or work to the practices that speakers do because it is through the interactions of practice that identities are achieved.

This is so my advisor talking. I love how he puts the last part as if it were irrefutable fact. Especially since that’s part of what I’m trying to find confirmation for in my diss.

Theoretical Perspective

We encourage you not to worry about the labels for your research methods. We noticed that you seem to shy away from ‘Conversation Analysis’ and ‘Grounded Theory’ perhaps because of the epistemological and methodological baggage that those terms imply. We recognize that you need to do a close CA transcription of her data, but perhaps the most appropriate term for what you plan to do is Erickson’s ‘ethnographic microanalysis.’

Finally, a label for what the hell I’m doing. I’m glad because I was really tired of saying what I was not doing. I hope Erickson’s work is relevant. Have I started reading it yet? Hell, no! It’s still the holidays, as far as me and my supply of White Russians are concerned.

Rhetorical Organization

We encourage you to rethink the organization of your proposal so that one topic leads convincingly to the next; and motivating your research questions does not mean leaving them until the very end of the proposal.

Was there anything besides the research questions at the end (which my advisor told me to do) that wasn’t convincingly leading enough?

Transnationalism

Since this is a key concept for you, we encourage you to read the work of Alastair Pennycook and Arjun Appadurai and to discuss the implications of their writing for your study.

Any suggestions for Pennycook? I’m coming up kind of blank. Not like I’ve looked all that hard. Because I’m an underachiever. But I still think I deserve a good job.