Language

• On her new album, Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé puts a new spin on Dolly Parton’s classic song, Jolene.
• Some people commenting online were vocal about not liking Beyoncé’s version, often citing its lack of vulnerability when compared to Parton’s version.
• There are upwards of 80 covers of Jolene, but Beyoncé’s is a departure from the rest.
• The Houston native’s Jolene is decidedly Black, and therein lies the crux of the different reactions towards the song.
• It is important to examine the story Dolly Parton tells on Jolene because it, too, is rooted in her racial and gendered identity as much as Beyoncé’s Jolene is.

How is Beyoncé’s story the same but different?

• Towards the end of the song, Beyoncé and her partner turn a corner and offer hope against the disruption that Jolene represents.
• Beyoncé’s Jolene is introduced by Dolly Parton herself in a short interlude.
• Parton makes a clear association between her experience with Jolene and Beyoncé’s experience with “Becky with the good hair” (or “hussy” as Parton says).
• But the term has evolved to encompass racially ambiguous women with European or Asian features, lighter skin and loose curls or straight hair.
• Why would we expect the song to be the same when these two women are far from?

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.
Kadian Pow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Saskatchewan recently became one of four Canadian provinces that recognize sign languages as official languages with the passing of the Accessible Saskatchewan Act or Bill 103 in December.
• The bill states, “Sign languages are recognized as the primary languages for communication by deaf persons in Saskatchewan,” including American Sign Language (ASL) and Indigenous sign languages.
• Nationally, the Accessible Canada Act was passed in 2019 also recognizing ASL, Langue des signes du Québec and Indigenous sign languages in Canada.

Access to services, opportunities

• A historic polarization between adherents of sign language and of auditory-verbal therapy (AVT) has hindered provision of educational services for DHH children.
• Under the belief that sign language would hinder oral development, many DHH individuals were forbidden to learn sign language — an attitude which still lingers among some today.

Human Rights Commission findings

• In a 2016 report, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission (SHRC) documented that some health professionals were telling parents to avoid sign language in favour of cochlear implants, lip reading and AVT to achieve spoken competence.
• Adherents of sign languages argue in favour of giving children sign language instruction as early as possible.
• The lack of language during critical periods of development, some argue, can lead to language deprivation syndrome, isolation and mental health issues.

Parents need full range of options

• Regardless of good intentions on either side of the AVT versus ASL argument, the real need is to ensure DHH children can reach their developmental milestones.
• In an interview, Robyn Holmes, president of the Saskatchewan Deaf Association, who is also an early childhood and family services specialist for Saskatchewan Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, said that rather than an either-AVT-or-ASL approach, parents should have a full range of options and that “sign language as the ‘last’ option is not acceptable.” The SHRC also notes parents of DHH children should be provided with a full list of options.

Compounded systemic failings

• In 2016, a case documented by the office of Saskatchewan’s Advocate for Children and Youth demonstrated how systemic failings in educational services are compounded for DHH Indigenous children and youth whose communities are drastically under-resourced.
• The report details cascading failures at multiple levels including the lack of access to language, barriers to health services and other systemic, procedural and policy issues.

Resources for deaf learners

It remains to be seen how K-12 school divisions will respond to making public plans to accommodate deaf students in light of the Accessibility Act. Some resources for DHH learners in Saskatchewan are appearing. For example:
There is a provincial curriculum available to teach ASL and Deaf Culture for high school.
The Children, Communicating, Connecting in Community (CCCC) preschool was opened in 2018 in Saskatoon that offers full access to ASL and English. The preschool serves children who are deaf or hard of hearing and those who have connections to the Deaf community.
St. Philip, a Catholic School in Saskatoon, offers a bilingual/bicultural program for DHH students and Henry Janzen School in Regina offers educational services for DHH learners from pre-kindergarten to Grade 8.
People can take ASL classes and access DHH-related services at the Saskatchewan Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services (SDHHS).

Accessibility plans needed

• Over the next two years, they must develop an accessibility plan that identifies, removes and prevents barriers.
• The bill currently offers no guidelines for the kinds of services or level of accommodations that need to go into the accessibility plans.

Classroom considerations, technologies

• Therefore, all teachers should have access to training in how to communicate with DHH students through both the ASL alphabet and basic conversational and classroom-related signs.
• I have used FaceTime and the Video Relay Services (VRS) to communicate with deaf friends, colleagues and fellow learners.

Money, time and effort needed

Teacher training, as well as reviewing, selecting and preparing both digital and non-digital resources for classrooms and for school-DHH community communication will take money, time and effort. Educational institutions will require support and resources to ensure our publicly funded educational institutions can provide the appropriate services and learning technologies.
Marguerite Koole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Who makes the words? Why are trees called trees and why are shoes called shoes and who makes the names? - Elliot, age 5, Eltham, Victoria
Who makes the words? Why are trees called trees and why are shoes called shoes and who makes the names? - Elliot, age 5, Eltham, Victoria

• Let’s start with the first part of the question: who makes words?
• Well, there’s no official person or group that’s responsible for making words.
• Mostly, it’s a matter of reusing words, or parts of words, and transforming them into new products.

Creating words out of ‘tree’ and ‘shoe’

• One is to add things called “suffixes”, which are letters we add to the ends of words to change their meaning slightly.
• It’s also possible to combine whole words to make new ones.
• These types of words are called “compound words” — they are often written as two words (“apple tree”), but sometimes one (“shoelace”).
• This is when we mix words together (sometimes they’re called “frankenwords”, itself a blend of “Frankenstein” and “word”).

Treerific (“tree” has been squished with “terrific” to convey something wonderful that is related to trees)
Shoenicorn (“shoe” has been squished with “unicorn” to mean an unicorn with magical shoes)

• Words and parts of words can combine and recombine to create a never-ending number of new words.
• We can also build words from the first letters of other words.
• Finally, English is also a word pirate that steals words from other languages — more than 350 in fact.
• This term for this is “borrowing” — curious, because English has no intention of ever giving these words back!

Early examples of trees and shoes

• Okay, so what about the second part of the question: why are trees called trees and why are shoes called shoes?
• Here’s a very early example of “tree” from an ancient poem written more than a thousand years ago.

• This was spoken about 2,500 years ago, but unfortunately nothing survives of the language, or perhaps people weren’t into writing things down back then.
• We can go even further back in time to the grandparent of English — a language called “Proto-Indo-European”.

The very beginning of trees and shoes

• For centuries, people have wondered how words like “tree” and “shoe” were invented.
• There are lots of ideas around, but we’ll never know for sure because people have been speaking for more than 30,000 years.
• Remember what we could do earlier with just the two words “tree” and “shoe’!

Kate Burridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the Erasmus+ scheme – a reciprocal exchange process that let UK students study at European universities, and European students come to the UK – is again under the spotlight.
• The scope of the Turing scheme is more narrow, as it focuses on outbound mobility from the UK rather than reciprocal exchanges.
• Participating in international exchange programmes offers a plethora of benefits, ranging from personal growth to academic enrichment and professional development.
• I can attest to its profound role in shaping well-rounded individuals equipped with the skills to thrive in today’s interconnected world.

Benefits on both sides

• There are many benefits enjoyed by students participating in international exchange programmes.
• But welcoming international exchange students to UK campuses also offers huge advantages to universities and broader society.
• International exchange students bring with them unique perspectives, skills and experiences that enrich the learning environment for everyone.
• Language learning and international mobility go hand in hand in fostering essential qualities such as curiosity, empathy and effective communication.

Halting decline

• The ongoing decline in language learning in the UK is concerning.
• Academics and teachers are trying to address this and have been creating initiatives to re-think how we approach language teaching.
• To truly ensure equitable access to language learning, further investment is needed, coupled with a renewed commitment to international mobility.

Sascha Stollhans is affiliated with the Linguistics in Modern Foreign Languages project. The related research mentioned in the article was funded by Language Acts and Worldmaking, part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Open World Research Initiative, an Impact Accelerator Grant from the University of Bristol and a Research Start-up Grant from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Newcastle University.