Language Learning – Ethnography.com

What Happens if Chinese Smartphones Teach English Lessons in Tanzania?

Posted on October 7, 2022November 6, 2022 by Christina Lauren Quigley

English is the dominant global language of the world, it is the language of power, and control. But it is not the only language, and different people have different levels of command over the use of the same language. It is interesting to watch how this happens, often in unexpected ways, for example by the arrival of Chinese cell phones here in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

I recently bought the cheapest smartphone I could find, when it seemed my primary phone had been burned by excess voltage coming out of the electrical sockets in rural/provincial Tanzania (Kigoma).…

What does a Chicken, Drums, Whiskey, Gossip, and International Diplomacy have in common?

Posted on September 29, 2020October 7, 2022 by Christina Lauren Quigley

With the Ethnography.com website’s updated ‘modern’ look and my ‘mysterious’ long-term disappearance from America, you may be wondering about the site’s header photos, and what the heck is going on over here? Maybe call this ‘flash ethnography’ mixed with ethnographic photography. Here are five short stories…

^ THIS IS THE CHURCH COURTYARD at the ethnographer’s primary Fulbright research site. It is an important Pentecostal church in town that is also a small community.…

Life as an Insect Inside a Glass Jar: Language Learning Through Immersion

Posted on July 16, 2019April 3, 2022 by Christina Lauren Quigley

Life as an Insect Inside a Glass Jar:
Language Learning Through Immersion
(Sic Semper, Malinowski and the Tropical Beach…)

What does it feel like to live as an insect inside a glass jar? The praying mantis was removed from its environment suddenly, and plopped into a clean, bright glass vessel, along with other things that resembled its original home– a few sticks, pebbles, and an ant to nibble on. I think people who struggle to learn a language through immersion in a very different culture know best what it might feel like to be the praying mantis you captured when you were a child, or to become that child again.…

The Place That Is Our Home

Posted on January 13, 2019April 3, 2022 by Christina Lauren Quigley

In 1978, Remmy Ongala left his home in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (not far from the city of Bukavu) for Tanzania. He boarded a boat across Lake Tanganyika to Kigoma, Tanzania’s main port city on the great lake. From Kigoma, he then traveled by train to Dar es Salaam to eventually become one of the most famous and well-loved ‘Tanzanian’ songwriter-musicians, Dr. Remmy.

For me, that small city of Kigoma that Dr.…

Language Learning, Stigma, and Protecting a Potentially Spoiled Identity

Posted on April 8, 2017April 7, 2017 by Tony Waters

This blog is about why ethnographer Erving Goffman’s observation of stigma are important not just to ex-cons, but also to professors like me on foreign exchange programs. Goffman, as many sociologists and anthropologists know, observed the maneuvers of the marginalized and stigmatized in society, and then wrote about how they thought about their disability. He saw that the marginalized were constantly managed their spoiled social identities because they feared public exposure of their disability.…

Learning Foreign Languages

Posted on February 8, 2010February 8, 2010 by Tony Waters

I was reminded of the importance of foreign language learning twice in the last week or so. This morning I read a commentary in the New York Times about how poorly Americans do at foreign languages. Several of the authors remind us that Americans have long done poorly at foreign language learning, and that demands for foreign language learning are declining in the United States, despite attempts by the Chinese government (and others) to get Americans into language classes.…