Learning Geography Bilingually

A concern with the role of the ‘Other’ in geography in higher education has led to work on the incorporation of marginalized social groups into learning contexts. Recently some authors have discussed the role of language in teaching, and in particular the dominant role of the English language in marginalizing non‐Anglophonic students and subject matter. In this paper an empirical case study of the experiences of bilingual students at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth is developed. This research provides an account of the role of language in bilingual students' engagements with geography, and addresses the practicalities and the politics of enabling students with a diversity of linguistic skills to become full citizens of their geographical education.     

Language,geography and identity: The case of the Welsh in London

This paper explores the role of language in the construction of Welsh identities in London. It begins by mapping out some key theoretical connections between language, geography and identity, and argues that a reading of diaspora theory might be helpful in conceptualizing Welsh identities in the British capital. In particular, diaspora theory stresses that identities are made up of multiple social axes that need to be seen relationally. Diasporic identities make connections with more than one place challenging the notion of culture and language as delimited by the boundaries of particular national spaces. For many Welsh people in London, language is an important part of their attempts to meet others who share a common identity. London-Welsh societies facilitate this need, defining language in different ways, and interweaving the linguistic with other social axes to form powerful senses of belonging. Whilst London is a key migration destination, it is also a space of Welsh identities that draw centrally upon language, but make different geographical connections with Wales. The paper concludes by arguing that a diasporic reading of such processes allows a wider and more progressive understanding of the Welsh language, and highlights the importance of geography in doing so.     

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: CANADIAN GEOGRAPHY IN A MULTILINGUAL WORLD: THE IMPLOSION OF RELEVANCE?

Global social, political, and economic change during the past quarter-century has been profound, particularly in major areas with languages different from those usually employed by Canadian geographers. Surveys by the author suggest that senior Canadian geography graduate students, however, are inadequately prepared to assimilate primary world sources of information, including the relevant research literatures (except those published in this country's two official languages), and that few geography departments any longer require competence in more than one language at any level of study. Nevertheless, geographers and their students could benefit in many ways from foreign language expertise. Suggestions are made whereby geography departments could reinforce their existing rigorous training programs with foreign linguistic and area competence.     

What is worth teaching in geography?

Abstract

To be efficient, geographers must teach not facts, but how to learn. This means teaching theories, methods and models, and also the languages of investigation, which include mathematical languages. These are important because some human knowledge and discourse, including growing conceptual areas in geography, cannot be translated from mathematics. Mathematical languages are tools of inquiry, the teaching of which can quickly open up new lines of thinking. Mathematical geographers can make a unique contribution to applied areas through their ability to model and clarify complex problems. An example of teaching mathematical languages is given using a simple directed connectivity matrix, which in turn can be manipulated to introduce advanced ideas. During this process, students are learning naturally about mathematical languages.     

National élites,national masses: oral history and the (re)production of the Welsh nation

The paper examines the distinction that has been made in the social science literature on nationalism between national élites and national masses. While the distinction is useful as a way of beginning to conceptualize the mechanisms through which nations and nationalisms are (re)produced, it can also underplay the significance of the iterative relationship that exists between national élites and national masses. We argue that detailed empirical research can enable us to complicate the historical geographies that lead to the production and reproduction of nations. As a way of illustrating the saliency of these claims, we focus on the nationalist agitation—with respect to the campaign for a Welsh higher education—that was taking place in the University College and town of Aberystwyth during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Oral history research with members of the national élite and the national masses, who were active within this campaign, enables us to show the poly-vocal production of the Welsh nation at this time.     

Discourse analysis in German-language human geography: integrating theory and method

In the context of various conceptual turns in German-language human geography over the past decades (e.g., linguistic, cultural, and material turns), which have been adopted largely via writings from English-language human geography, theoretical perspectives in these two academic communities have been converging. However, there are still aspects that are quite distinctive for debates in the German-language context. We argue that, for example, in the case of poststructuralist approaches, a distinct development has taken place, which emphasizes the links between theoretical, methodological, and methods-oriented empirical research, e.g., through the operationalization of linguistic methods. Following Michel Foucault's notion of ‘discourse’, these empirical analyses are often referred to as ‘discourse analyses’. This paper gives an overview of the field of discourse analysis in German-language human geography and discusses possible reasons for the different ways in which discourse theories have been emerged and developed in English-language and German-language geography. We argue that there are three developments which make ‘discourse analyses’ in the German context distinct: (1) the significance of theoretical debates on the role of the subject, (2) the intensive interdisciplinary networks within the wider context of German-language social sciences and linguistics, and (3) closely related to the second point, the strong emphasis on questions of methodical implementation.     

Baptist Chapels as an index of cultural transition in the South Wales coalfield before 1914

“When the Welsh language dies the Welsh Congregational Union of Monmouth will of necessity die. The day of the burial of the Welsh language will be the burial day of the Union, which for centuries has been the means of the hands of God's Spirit to turn many to the Saviour. When the Welsh language expires, the spirituality and sacredness of religion will expire at the same time.”^[1]The cultural transition from Welsh to English in the developing South Wales coalfield before 1914 is reflected in the language used in Baptist chapels. Nonconformist chapels were foci of the emerging industrial culture, and the Baptists had a universal appeal to both Welsh- and English-speaking populations. The geographical distribution of Baptist chapels categorized by language of foundation is analysed in three chronological phases, during which the coalfield was transformed from a uniformly Welsh cultural area before 1860, through an intervening phase of linguistic heterogeneity, to a situation in the final phase after 1890, when the dominance of Welsh was restricted to the western section only. Moreover, the period after the foundation of a Welsh chapel was characterized by linguistic instability, since processes at work in the community created pressures for linguistic change from Welsh to English. The ensuing linguistic transition from monoglot Welsh through bilingualism to monoglot English is examined in the Monmouthshire section of the coalfield, and suggests a progressive “rolling-back” of Welsh from east to west, a rapid and regular process in which bilingualism was only a transient resting-place.     

Teaching mathematics in geography degrees: Motivation,necessities and approach

Abstract

Within the constraints of viewing geography as an applied discipline with a large number of arts‐based students, the primary problem of teaching mathematics in a geography degree is argued to be one of contending the motivation for a symbolic and analytical approach. This paper explores ways in which motivation for mathematics can be impressed on students and then discusses those areas of mathematics necessary in geography. The final section explores an applied approach to mathematics teaching based on the concept of systems.     

Scaling health and healthcare: re‐presenting Thailand's HIV/AIDS epidemic with world regional geography students

Authors of world regional geography textbooks have recently become more interested in the broader theoretical changes that have emerged in human geography. Relying on feminist and other critical perspectives, concepts such as space, place and scale are being re‐imagined in this ‘new world regional geography’. This paper intervenes on behalf of a more critical world regional geography by suggesting how world regional geography teachers can educate students about scale as a social construction through the use of empirical data. Relying on fieldwork conducted in Thailand, this paper lays out a lesson on the HIV/AIDS crisis and how different representations of that crisis, from the national to the individual, offer different ‘ways of knowing’ the epidemic. Furthermore, this paper examines how we can push students to consider the ways in which scales of analysis are constructed and constituted through our own geographic practices.     

Introducing humanistic geography through fieldwork

Abstract

One challenge of teaching humanistic geography is to encourage students’ responses to landscapes in ways which may be different from their previous experience. Conventional wisdom about successful field teaching suggests that students should be prepared beforehand with the skills and techniques to be employed. The author questions how appropriate this is in humanistic geography and the article describes and evaluates an alternative approach using fieldwork as the introductory activity.     

Hot, banal and everyday nationalism: Bilingual road signs in Wales

The paper focuses on Billig's (Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage) notion of banal nationalism. While Billig's work is to be commended for demonstrating the way in which nationalism is an endemic political ideology in all states – and not merely an extreme or hot political ideology that is based upon “blood and belonging” (Ignatieff, M. (1993). Blood and belonging: Journeys into the new nationalism. London: BBC Books) – we suggest that his work tends, perhaps unwittingly, to reinforce an unwarranted separation of the banal and hot processes that reproduce nationalism. Some empirical work has implicitly and explicitly begun to question the distinction between banal and hotter forms of nationalism. We argue that one way in which such an agenda can be furthered is through a promotion of the idea of everyday nationalism, which combines banal and hot elements in more complex and contingent ways. We elaborate on the benefits of adopting such an approach through an empirical discussion of the campaign in favour of bilingual road signs in Wales between 1967 and 1975. We focus, first, on how monolingual English road signs were constructed by Welsh nationalists as part of an everyday landscape of oppression and, second, on the everyday politics of road signs within the spaces of government. We conclude the paper by reaffirming the need to move beyond notions of banal and hot nationalism and to focus on the everyday contexts within which nationalism is reproduced.     

Féministes tant qu’il le faudra! The multiple possibilities of francophone feminist geographies au Québec/Canada

Abstract

This article offers a brief overview of the development of francophone feminist geography in Canada. We begin by situating the review geographically, in order to explain our focus on francophone feminist geography produced in Québec. We then discuss the origins of feminist francophone geography in the 1980s, highlighting the central role of the student reading group, the Collectif de lecture sur l’espace et les femmes, that was formed during that period at l’Université Laval. Tracing the research trajectories of feminist geographical research since then, we argue that feminist geography has become more diverse, but ironically less visible. We conclude by highlighting the central role that graduate and undergraduate students play in pushing forward a feminist geography agenda as they demonstrate the importance of feminist politics era through their research and activism.     

Benchmarking in Geography: Some implications for assessing dissertations in the undergraduate curriculum

Internationally there is concern about assessment standards and the qualities of graduating students. In the UK this is resulting in the introduction of benchmarking by disciplinary communities, including that of geography. In that context the authors report on a project across social science disciplines, including geography, in one UK university, to examine and improve the assessment of undergraduate dissertations. The project examined what assessment criteria are currently published to students and identified some sources of inconsistency in applying them. It identified some potential core criteria and recommended ways of increasing transparency in applying them, so as to reduce inconsistencies and potential unfairness in marking. Implications for geography departments and the international disciplinary community are suggested and for the benchmarking exercise in British geography.     

Welsh Indians and savage Scots: History,antiquarianism, and Indian languages in 18th-century Britain

This paper compares late eighteenth-century claims for the authenticity of Macpherson's Ossian and for the existence of Welsh Indians. It shows that although both claims were supported in part by appeals to similarities between Celtic and American Indian languages, the appeals in each case were very different. On the one hand, the Edinburgh literati who supported Ossian's authenticity focused on expressive structures shared by all primitive societies. On the other hand, radically Protestant antiquarians and philologists focused on lexical similarities that they argued demonstrate a genetic link between certain American Indians and the Welsh. The paper uses this fundamental difference underlying a superficial similarity, to explore in greater detail the distinction between philosophical historians among the Edinburgh literati, who were religiously moderate, politically conservative, and promoted Scotland's integration into a modern, polite, commercial and English-speaking empire, and the Welsh antiquarians, who were religious and political radicals and whose interest in the Welsh Indians reflected and reinforced their attempts to resurrect a distant golden age of Celtic Britain.

pe’nguin. (1) A bird. This bird was found with this name, as is supposed, by the first discoverers of America; and penguin signifying in Welsh a white head, and the head of this fowl being white, it has been imagined, that America was peopled from Wales …     

Internationalising Learning and Teaching: A European experience

This paper focuses on experiences with international learning and teaching in a European (ERASMUS) programme on geography and gender during the period 1990-1998. This programme forms an example of collaborative work in which the author and colleagues experimented with an array of models to bring geography students and teachers of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds together. International learning and teaching is a confrontation with diversity. Diversity in language, in the mastery of English and the resulting hierarchies, in learning and teaching cultures and in defining geography form both challenges and opportunities to profit. In this paper the author will expound on the different strategies to deal with linguistic and cultural differences and to break down hierarchies. Furthermore the opportunities to "use" the differences as learning and teaching contexts will be discussed. Geography is a discipline concerning diversity. Direct contact between persons with different cultural backgrounds can form an efficient, effective and stimulating method to learn about differences in geographies and in teaching methods.     

Searching for feminist geography in Thailand: mapping trails of inspiration

Abstract

Feminist geography in Thailand is not generally recognized in the academic landscape. Instead, feminist geography is limited to those scholars located in Women’s Studies who have a research or personal interest in the theoretical, conceptual or empirical issues taken up in feminist geography. Although the discipline of geography has been part of the Thai academy since 1935, in both the Thai Geographical Association and its flagship journal, (Geographical Journal), feminist geography has still not made significant inroads into the discipline. However, once Women’s Studies was established, and then expanded its influence, gender and feminism affected every other social science program, including Geography. Even though only a few, if any, students enrolled in feminist geography courses across Thailand, the work that did exist took on a postcolonial form. Thus the feminist geography literature that would introduce (some part of) the theories, concepts and practice of feminist geographers came through both compulsory and elective courses through a postcolonial lens. In this report, we provide a brief history of the challenges around, and progress of, feminist geography across the country through an analysis of key Thai geographical institutional shifts, journal publications and curricular offerings.     

‘Symbols of Justice’: the Welsh Language Society's campaign for bilingual road signs in Wales, 1967–1980

In this paper we provide a critical evaluation of the campaign for bilingual road traffic signs in late 1960s and 1970s Wales, examining how Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society) came to see English language road signs as mundane, ubiquitous and oppressive symbols of anglicisation and of British/English government authority in Wales. We suggest a rethinking of Michael Billig's concept of ‘banal nationalism’, arguing that while English language road signs may appear as banal symbols and technologies of government authority and control, their banality is only ever experienced from particular perspectives by partial constituencies. For Welsh language campaigners, English language road signs were experienced and criticised as eruptive and disruptive symbols of oppression, rule and colonisation, and in the paper we trace the genesis of the bilingual road signs campaign, British government reactions to proposals for bilingual signs, and the shift in policy which followed the very public support of hundreds of respectable Welsh professionals for the campaign from December 1970. We conclude the paper by examining the work of the Welsh Office's Committee of Inquiry into Bilingual Traffic Signs (the Bowen Committee), and the subsequent disagreements between language campaigners, government scientists and politicians on the issue of language order. Throughout the paper we suggest that it was the ubiquity, functionality and materiality of road signs which made this one of the most effective campaigns carried out by the Welsh Language Society.     

Challenges to geography's public and practitioners

Abstract

Economic geography is in a state of flux. This paper argues that there is a need to develop a relevant and theoretically informed economic geography. Some of the more difficult challenges facing both teachers and students are outlined, and the author describes how such difficulties have been tackled through an Enterprise in Higher Education initiative centering on innovative assessment procedures for group research projects. The project is evaluated in terms of potential gains to both staff and students.     

Feminist geographies in Greece: a personal trajectory between ‘local’ and ‘international’

Abstract

Feminist debates in the context of an active women's/feminist movement found their way into the Greek academy in the second half of the 1970s, initially in history. Urban studies and geography were ‘late-comers’ in these debates which took place in different disciplinary environments where geography courses were taught. The article presents a personal account in and through the development of feminist approaches in urban geography, drawing from my teaching and research experience since 1982 in a department of urban and regional planning. This experience has been accumulated as a hard exercise in navigating through the denial and reluctant consent of various levels of administration, students’ changing acceptance, some women’s valuable active support, in the university and beyond, and other colleagues’ opposition or indifference. In this process, recent and longer-term developments have contributed to form a (continuously negotiated and contested) space for feminism, for tolerance, diversity and difference, in which a ‘we’ has been tortuously formed which speaks across worlds, participates in a plurality of communities, communicates in more than one languages and in a plurality of voices between ‘local’ and ‘international’.     

Commensurable language and incommensurable claims among the Greek linguistic minority of Southern Italy

Abstract

More than ever, minorities reflexively engage with global frameworks in their endeavour to promote distinctiveness. Scaling local diversity through specific frameworks has resulted in familiar commensurable languages of international claim recognition. By presenting the case of the Grecanici – a Greek linguistic minority of Southern Italy – this paper critically assesses the creative mingling of global structures and local particularities which effects commensurable languages of representation. These languages in their global dimension reveal a certain degree of commensurate social commentary between global agents and local actors. This commentary is veryoften structured around master tropes such as awareness, victimization and consumption. Despite their global applicability, languages of representation do not necessarily imply commensurability at the local level. Often it is only after careful mediation by skilled rhetors that commensurability on a local level becomes possible.