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.

I am so not writing my proposal. AGAIN.

My proposal hearing earlier this month resulted in a request for revisions! Yay! Which are totally valid but make me think, why am I revising a PROPOSAL? Isn't the point of the proposal to, well, propose something? And then you get feedback and then everyone moves on? Apparently not. Mentally this has made me slightly on strike but it is also the holidays and I know my institution of higher learning will not reconvene until late January, so why do anything now? Except go to the library and get a big stack of books so that it looks like I'm working on something?

Ethnographic fieldwork is a slow, slogging process and unless you are in with your group before the fact don't anyone tell you otherwise. Seriously, it's to the point where I'm considering switching my study to upper middle class mothers on antidepressants, even though it has nothing to do with language. Because I actually know a few of those. I don't know anyone who is a native speaker of Language Z (which is not even endangered, as I recently found out, which just shows how much of an idiot I am) and why should I? And why should they want to know me? And why do I have to spend so much time getting to know them when I'm 36 and want a career already and THIS IS ALL TAKING TOO LONG waah waah waah?

I could continue on in this highly discouraging vein, but I'm doing so well at procrastinating that I really don't need any extra help.

Help a fellow graduate student.

This guy is trying to measure the speed of memes, which apparently has something to do with blogging, although I'm not exactly sure what because I am technologically DUMB. Help him out by copying his link into your blog and pinging Technorati (via the link from his blog), so that the software program he's written can generate his results for him and he can present them to the MLA folks.

APPROVED!

My human subjects protocol was approved by the IRB at my university. This basically means that the powers that be believe that I will not be torturing or otherwise inflicting any unnecessary harm upon my respondents. Which I'm not.

So on with the biggest challenge of my dissertation: Find speakers of Endangered Language Z! A typical cold call goes like this (translated from language B, which I am much more fluent in than Language Z):

Me: Hi, are you Y?
Y: Yes
Me: I'm (insert my name here). I got your name from (insert random contact here, anything from actual human being to web site) I'm doing research on Endangered Language Z and wondered if you knew anyone who spoke it.
Y: Yes, there are people who speak it.
Me: Cool! Wanna meet with a total stranger and discuss this?
Y: (dead silence)
Me: Okay, I didn't really say that. Would you be interested in meeting and discussing this further?
Y: Sure
Me: Where do you live?
Y: (obscure town in Orange County)
Me: Oh, I don't know (obscure town in Orange County). Is there a Starbucks there?
Y: (with some condescension) There are Starbucks everywhere (moron).
Me: (typing away on Starbucks website) oh, there's one at such and such avenue. When's a good time for you?
Y: tomorrow
Me: (crap, I have a doctor's appointment for my son that I've been waiting months for)--No problem! See you there at one. (it should take me an hour to get there which means I really hope we're done with the doctor's appointment, crap crap crap)
Y: (who the hell are you?) okay, see you then.

Whether or not Contact Y will be able to lead me to speakers of Endangered Language Z remains to be seen, but this is how my life is going to go for the next month.

Oh and Contact G is going to Hawaii for two months.

And Contact F is out of the country until the end of January.

Looks like I'm going to be doing a lot more cold calls. And reading.

PROPOSAL DONE. NOW WHAT?

I submitted my proposal, finally, which was 78 pages long including back matter and bibliography because my adviser wanted me to flesh out about three chapters worth of reading material. So I have now foisted this upon my motley committee of five for their reading pleasure. Yippee!!! Once I am given the official blessing from both committee and Institutional Review Board alike, I can finally stop farting around and go find some people who speak or may have at one time in their lives spoken Endangered Language Z and figure out what the impact of transnationalism and additional language acquisition may have had on this.

It's been hard to find people. Especially since I am not looking right now since I was immersed in the proposal stage. That really makes it hard to find respondents, that not looking thing. You know? But now I am ready to go track down some wary indigenous people who, if they are in their right mind, will tell me to fuck off and go bug someone else. Although the people I have gotten in contact with have been very nice although by now they are probably completely confused because I haven't gotten in touch with them BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN WRITING A PROPOSAL. Which I present to the committee on December 8th.

The big question is not: do I do PowerPoint? because of course everyone does PowerPoint, but rather, should I include animation effects? Not the sounds, the sounds, they are oh so unprofessional. The flying letters thing, that would probably be stupid too. But maybe a few melting words would make this crazy project have so much more impact. Ya think?

Okay now I have to go to my other blog and write about my son.

A DREAM DENIED, OR, I GUESS I'LL HAVE TO WRITE MY DISSERTATION AFTER ALL.

Lately, thanks to a professor of mine, I've been flirting with the possibility of going on the job market a year early. Just to apply for one job that happens to be near where I live now (not so rare since I live in THE STATE WITH TOO MANY PEOPLE) and happens to be in my field (quite rare). After various emails between my adviser, this professor, and myself, and after my husband, a/k/a Dr. Cuy, gave me some hard-edged reality checks, I'm realizing this is probably not such a good idea. Number one, because I will never, ever finish my dissertation if I took this job. And it's not like this dissertation is as important as my child, but I do need to have one in order to work in this field. Number two, because if they offered me this job and I decided not to take it after all, that would make both me and my adviser look very bad.

It's tempting because I'm OLD and I'm tired of being a freaking graduate student, but I just have to hang in there and finish (hell, start!) this thing if I'm going to have any chance of getting a cool job in the future. Even though I have no idea what the job market will look like next year, I have to take that risk and for the first time in my life not jump at something just because it seems like a cool idea at the time because then what if I actually get it? (hello, Foreign Service! hello, teaching high school Spanish in violent and impoverished neighborhood!).

So, it's back to the drawing board, to get my proposal polished up for the viewing and butchering by my adviser, and to continue to apply for funding that I really hope I get next year because otherwise I am going to sit down and cry for about a year. And then I really won't get any work done.

Searching for participants, part 2

I continue my search for speakers of Endangered Language Z (which you can probably figure out if you look at the sidebar), wandering through the garment district of downtown Los Angeles, dodging pools of urine and $1 toys made in China. After numerous queries I find one person--or rather, I find her spouse, since she has decided to stay home that day. Which means I must haul my academic ass out on the Metrolink again the following day. I find her piled in shipments from Country X, but happy to dedicate forty-five minutes to talking to this strange white girl who comes on a recommendation from Don Consul (who has turned out to be an enthusiastic proponent of my little research project, despite his lateness during our first meeting). Alas, she is leaving the country next month until January. But, her mother is coming to hold down the fort and I'm welcome to go and talk to her.

Which brings up the question from Dr. Cuy; what is my definition of a resident for my study? This woman has been in the U.S. for only two months. I don't think I can put a time limit on my participants. First of all, because there don't seem to be that many of them. Second, it would be interesting to study (assuming I can find more of these folks) people with varying stays in the country, varying levels of English proficiency, etc.

After my conversation I picked my way through the drunks up to a place where people play music (how vague is that?) and found another person from Country X. When I asked him if he spoke Endangered Language Z he went into this long history about how his grandmother moved from the rural areas to the city because his grandfather was an alocholic and, alas, did not take her language with her. I'm not sure what grandfather's alcoholism had to do with that but it makes for an interesting story. And he gave me the name and number of someone who does speak E.L. Z and told me where I might find him. So the hunt continues and I'm optimistic, although I'm thinking now that 50 might be a very large number for the study. I feel like I have a sieve with big holes in it and just about everyone is falling through. I need the big rocks and I may have a couple, but it's mostly sand for now.

And having beaten that metaphor to death, I must go watch Gray's Anatomy.

HOW TO WRITE A DISSERTATION WITH NO MONEY

Right now I am preoccupied with funding, or rather, my husband Dr. Cuy is, since he does not want to be the Dr. Cuy Foundation for Research in Applied Linguistics, Specifically That Research Done by the Wife of Dr. Cuy. As is commonly the case with me, while I was in the full, churning throes of developing my research plan, I wasn't even thinking about how I was going to pay for it. And all of these trips to L.A., copies of the interview guide, taping, etc. etc. are going to cost money. Not as much money as the latest medical research, but it would be nice to have some. Especially if I'm going to go to Country X for a month or two to do some follow up on my participants.

I'm of the (admittedly pessimistic) assumption that there is no funding out there for domestic research in applied linguistics. Dr. Cuy suggests Homeland Security but I just can't stomach approaching them for money. Plus if I told my potential participants that I'm being funded by the Department for Homeland Security, that would pretty much be the end of my research.

So, my goal for the day: find a way to get a couple thousand bucks to do my thing, preferably from an agency that does not persecute undocumented workers.

THE SEARCH BEGINS.

Yesterday I went to the Consulate of Country X to attempt to find some contacts for my research. This required one and a half hours of negotiating LA-area freeways, overpriced parking, and an unfortunate realization that said consulate was housed in the same quarters as Larry Flynt publications. It was only after I saw a busty chick with a Hustler T-shirt that I realized this--I had been blissfully oblivious to the purple flag imprinted with "LFP" flying over the building.

Despite my having made an appointment with the General Consul of Country X, and reconfirmed this appointment via email (reconfirming being an essential component of any formal meeting to take place among members of Country X and other Latin American countries), the person at the window informed me that, lamentably, Sr. Consul was out of the office on a meeting and would I be so kind as to wait ten minutes?

The ten minutes stretched into an hour and a half, at which point I was ready to give up, go home, and fume over some literature. At this point Sr. Consul entered the building with profuse apologies and explanations about the traffic. After brushing me off for another half hour we finally spoke about my dissertation topic. To my great joy, he was interested in the linguistic behavior of indigenous peoples, having received some of these indigenous people in his office. "They are so--clean, so hardworking," he mused. He determined that he and I were going to go next week and track down some clean and hardworking indigenous people for my research. I inwardly winced at the possibility of bringing the Consul General on my first field research opportunity, but who knows, it may help.

Whatever the case, I intend to reconfirm and re-reconfirm with Sr. Consul. And have a plan B, which will involve tracking down indigenous people on my own, even if they are unkempt and enemies of honest labor. And, perhaps, take the Metrolink into town, since by the time I got back on the freeway it was 3:00 and I was forced to descend into the specific kind of hell known to L.A. residents as Rush Hour, which as far as I can tell lasts three hours in the afternoon and usually involves the shutting down of some major transportation artery due to a crash, or, in the case of yesterday, a gas leak and a man in an RV with explosives.

It's going to be a long couple of years.