For her article "The Making of an American...", Aneta Pavlenko analyzed several autobiographies by American immigrants from both the turn of the 20th century and from the modern era. Pavlenko compared the topics and rhetoric of these documents and examined them within their cultural context to determine in what ways, if any, the experiences of the two immigrant groups were similar or different. She also sought to determine what effect language acquisition had on the immigrants' cultural identity. The most interesting difference that Pavlenko discovered in her study was that having to do with language acquisition. It seemed, based on the autobiographies under study, that the turn-of-the-century immigrants had much quicker, easier, and less painful experiences with new language acquisition. Many of these immigrants seemed to learn English simply by studying dictionaries and the Bible, and most expressed confidence in their English skills within six months of their immigration. On the other hand, modern day immigrants describe a very stressful, lengthy, and excrutiating experience with English-acquisition. For many of them, according to Pavlenko, it took as much as several years to gain what they considered to be proficiency in the language.
The assumptions that Pavlenko makes as to the reasons for these differences are more interesting than the differences themselves. Pavlenko concluded that earlier immigrants had an easier time learning English for several reasons: many were already multi-lingual, so learning a new language was a familiar process; the types of jobs acquired by these immigrant often required limited English-speaking skills, so they assumed proficiency while really having a basic understanding of the language; laws at the time required the learning of English, so by learning English, they were only doing what was expected of them and what all of their compatriots were doing or had already done. Modern day immigrants have a more difficult time gaining English proficiency because the expectations for "proficiency" are higher, there is a general feeling of nationalism that leads many immigrants to resist formerly common forms of assimilation, and they feel that learning the new language will mean abandoning their own. It is this last assumption that I do not quite agree with, although I know this conclusion is based on what seems to be quite extensive research. I'm not sure I agree because the school at which I teach, while maintaining a generally homogeneous population, did experience for a few years a sporadic influx of Hispanic migrant workers. The experiences I've had with these families reflect more what Pavlenko described of the turn-of-the-century immigrants than the modern ones, particularly with regard to their lack of abandonment of their native language. These families almost uniformly had learned a basic level of English, as their jobs required, yet they maintained a use of both languages when speaking with friends and families. These families did not seem reluctant in the least to learn (more) English, but they also kept a strong hold on their first language.
This is already quite long, so I'll try to discuss the Holliday readings briefly. These readings were valuable particularly because of their function if defining terms that I was last week completely confused about, such as "thick description". I was happy to learn more about this concept. The anecdote about the Iranian woman's peers potentially creating a thick description of her culture was very useful, but I hope it's a made-up story, because the way her peers behaved seemed quite shocking and not any way I would expect most of my acquaintances to behave. At the same time, it made me wonder (if it is a true story) if perhaps the subject of the story was perceiving attitudes that weren't really there. That is the only way I could make sense of such an ignorant display.
As I read about it, I realized that creating a thick description of a culture would be a great way to gather information to educate students about various cultures, but the problem is that this process seems to require actually having experiences with the cultures under study, and those experiences are rarely available to me.
The most interesting part of these readings was the example of the Chinese student generalizing, and perhaps even exaggerating, his country's culture for some unknown culture-shock reason of his own. The suggestion that individuals describe their culture to "outsiders" not as it truly is but as they wish it to be seen is an interesting one. However, I also think that an individual's generalization about his own culture is no different from another's generalization about some other culture; in both cases, I think it's more often just a simplified way of explaining something rather than an intentional misrepresentation - for whatever reason. What would have made the anecdote even more valuable than it already was would be to have asked the Chinese student why he exaggerated his country's Confucianism, rather than just making an assumption.
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