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.