Academia in the Time of Cholera: Raising Generation Symbiocene

“I am grateful for Indigenous and diasporic initiatives that de-center European frames of mind, bringing me closer to the land and my peoples. Becoming land-sensitive has been one constant assemblage, where the plants teach me about resilience when rebounding from thirst or disease, the importance of dormancy before a period of flourishing, and the pride of unfurling a new leaf—being 500 million years old, plants are formidable teachers.

By having a child, I’ve become responsible for future settler habitation on this territory. Although we are not from these lands, we don’t have to be, to want to take care of them. Gathering plant knowledge from various traditions and ecosystems has allowed me and my son to explore the many peoples and plants that we embody, daydreaming about what it means to be connected to a land that naturally produces this kinda heat. These Landguaging lessons are not simply intellectual exercises, they are intentional acts of land-sensitization that are  intended to outlive me, and provide a path for him and his future generations to write and enact a love letter to the land.”

The entire entry can be read here: https://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/academia-in-the-time-of-cholera-raising-generation-symbiocene-by-rhonda-chung/

Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/bild_lida/bild-june-2024wav

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

Landguaging with plants: The Dandelion Project

“…Reimagining language beyond the articulators of a sagittal diagram, however, has not been the traditional focus of applied linguistics. Language acquisition has largely been viewed as a highly individualized psycholinguistic process (Larsen-Freeman, 2020)…Post-humanism opens applied linguistics up to the notion that communication occurs not just between humans, but also with non-human interlocutors (Lau, 2022). This can include forming relationships with technology (van Lier, 2004) or the land itself (Chung & Chung Arsenault, 2023). But what do we really know about land, the place that plants call home?

By Landguaging a territory, we can more clearly identify what is autochthonous (indigenous) or allochthonous (non-indigenous) to our landscape, acknowledging the limitations of our knowledge, and raising ethical questions regarding ecosystem diversity and maintenance. For my own part, I am continually confronting how little I know about the land I live on.”

The entire entry can be read here: https://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/landguaging-with-plants-the-dandelion-project-by-rhonda-chung/

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

From Terra Nullius to Paradise: Landguaging the Caribbean

The imperialism that brought diverse flora, fauna, and bodies to these lands can never be undone. When I reflect on what these thriving non-native plants are teaching me, they remind me that I am made not only of local soursop and avocado, but historically of mango and plantain—they’ve been feeding my ancestors for centuries; my mixed background is as diverse as the fruit trees rooted here.

Through Landguaging’s land sensitivity, I focus on non-human accounts of history and weed out the noise of colonizing tactics that try to alter local histories of land by declaring it terra nullius. In doing so, I understand my ancestors as one of the many flora & fauna elements that were purposely uprooted from their homelands and strategically transplanted to the Americas only to survive and thrive—much to the chagrin of their traffickers. I am not in cultural deficit to my Caribbean heritage; rather, I am the embodiment of the imperial processes that occurred on these lands, reflecting the biodiversity of the Caribbean herself.

The entire entry can be read here: https://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/from-terra-nullius-to-paradise-landguaging-the-caribbean-by-rhonda-chung/

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

The art of Landguaging across borders: Land-sensitive curriculum for imperial language teachers

“By vying for linguistic recognition in spaces to which they are clearly allochthonous (originating from another territory), Canadian L2 teacher training programs enable non-Indigenous languages, like French and English, to plant flags instead of seeds. 

What may, however, be possible in the L2 classroom are de/colonizing efforts, which critically analyze the local and global sprawl of French and English, sensitizing language learners to the socioecological toll that colonialism has brought to the land they currently reside on. 

Landguaging is a series of arts-based teacher-reflection activities designed to support instructors of imperial languages in becoming sensitive to the land by connecting their language-teaching and learning experiences to the territories they occurred on. Using externalization techniques and arts-based portraiture, instructors are guided to reflect upon and confront the allochthonous nature of their French and English-teaching in Canada (and elsewhere), and commit to creating inclusive, plurilingual pedagogies (Chung & Chung Arsenault, in press).”

My entire entry can be read here: https://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/the-art-of-landguaging-across-borders-land-sensitive-curriculum-for-imperial-language-teachers-by-rhonda-chung/

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

Part 2 — Plants Are Our Second Oldest Teachers

I am made of the world’s many people. And it has always been the community of plants that has fed my family even when we were no longer in our native territories. My ancestors’ relationships with plants crosses continents and timelines. When my child and I connect with plants, imagining all the species across those five continents, we get a glimpse of the magnitude of an intelligence that came well before us and will certainly outlive us.

You don’t have to be from the land you live on to care about it, but you do have to be from that land to know how to take care of it: “In our [Okanagan] language, the word for our bodies contains the word for land…the land feeds us, but we feed the land as well…we impact the land: we can destroy it, or we can love the land and it can love us back.” (Armstrong, 2021, p.29).

My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/part-2-plants-are-our-second-oldest-teachers-by-rhonda-chung/

Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/bild_lida/part-2-plants-are-our-second-oldest-teachers

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

Welcome to the Chungle: Reconnection as Colonial Defiance

During the project, I asked myself on multiple occasions: Am I doing this right? Am I being respectful enough? Yet my child never seemed bothered by such questions; he only knew how to act. His ebullience for learning the stories and drawing the images never failed our family’s project.

I drew inspiration from his quiet study of figures and his diligent renderings, and suddenly found our roles reversed: I was not the creator nurturing my creation; he was the author, and I was his apprentice.

In outlining his drawings, I revisited the free-flow of his hands across the paper.

By painting his blank spaces, I brought colour to his design.

We may have been learning about our Chinese identity, but he demonstrated total agency over his art, leading the way for us to create something together.

[...]

I refuse to allow my child to forget where we really came from because to do so enables England to forget what she did. I resist my forced membership into an English-speaking world that does not respect or is inclusive of my peoples.

Our acts of cultural reconnection are ones of colonial defiance.

My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/welcome-to-the-chungle-reconnection-as-colonial-defiance-by-rhonda-chung/

Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/bild_lida/welcome-to-the-chungle-reconnection-as-colonial-defiance

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

PART 1 - Rocks Are Our Oldest Teachers

There’s a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh saying that “rocks are our oldest teachers”.

Earthquakes happen when tectonic plates move away from each other to create valleys (divergent), push up against one another to form mountains (convergent), or simply brush past the other (transform). Geologists view the earth as either snapping, sliding or colliding—and, if rocks are our oldest teachers, what are they teaching us?

This art project is an attempt to answer that question. […] Every incision on the paper resurrects the spectre of colonialism, that strategic plucking of people from their lands, and placing them back down to die by extraction for Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

The movements of our people seem complex to many, but they are simple to us. If rocks are our oldest teachers, then the land has taught my son how his ancestors diverged, converged, and transformed together to make him.

My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/rocks-are-our-oldest-teachers-by-rhonda-chung/#more-4508

Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/bild_lida/part-1-rocks-are-our-oldest-teachers#t=0:03

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

Confronting The Academy Within

At no point in my academic career did any instructor prepare me for reading articles that would categorize and objectify aspects of my humanity and call it “science”. This is precisely how the silent curriculum—the very lack of a Chorus of certain Voices—directly harms students, and distorts the entire learning process.

I want an education that is honest about its limitations without trying to limit me or convince me that I need to fit into its gaze. What this means, concretely, is for administrators and the intellectual descendants of the Ivory Tower to collude with their students by pushing against the historical gate-keeping that has defined institutional inclusion and narrow academic inquiry.

My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/confronting-the-academy-within-by-rhonda-chung/

Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/bild_lida/confronting-the-academy-within

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

Turn on, Tune in, and Drop out

“…our linguistic repertoire can no longer be imagined as isolated categories; instead, it is a “chorus of voices” (Tarone, 2007, p. 842), representing the sum of our listening experiences with friends, families, and colleagues. This transforms speech production from being just the intersection of our physiology (e.g., vocal tract size, etc.) with our socialization patterns (Labov, 2006), into a realm where our speech re-enacts and reanimates all the conversations that we’ve entertained over our lifetime. Since our physiology is primarily determined by our ancestral lineages, just as Gibson theorized earlier, our interactions become the embodiment of the lands that we’ve known and the people who have populated them.”

My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/turn-on-tune-in-and-drop-out-by-rhonda-chung/

Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/bild_lida/turn-on-tune-in-drop-out

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

A Love Letter to the Land

"Re-enacting family recipes reminds me just how far across these lands my peoples are spread. I imagine their hands grazing over produce that has taken routes from all corners of the earth to arrive to their plate.

For thousands of years, food and people have travelled across borders.

I am made of the world’s many peoples, but never appreciated that the world has been feeding me all my life.

I have a belly full of the world.

It grew these limbs and these hands—in fact, it’s been nurturing my development my entire life."

My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/a-love-letter-to-the-land-by-rhonda-chung/#more-3510

Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/bild_lida/a-love-letter-to-the-land

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

Descendant of the “Good” Immigrants

“Generation after generation, my ancestors were the “good immigrants” who integrated by believing in one God and in one language.

I have no understanding of or connection to any of the languages, religions, or sociocultural mores of the many ethnic groups which comprise me—they have essentially become foreigners to me.

I have an outsider’s perspective of the histories of my ancestors, whose blood runs through my veins.”

My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/descendant-of-the-good-immigrants-by-rhonda-chung/

Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/bild_lida/descendant-of-the-good-immigrants

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

I am not your protoype

"The proof is in the acoustic pudding. Since we were infants, what’s been turning our heads and causing us to suck and salivate at the mouth have been noticeable differences in the acoustic input. It is the variation that naturally exists in our world which drives our learning, because without it, our ‘warped’ perceptions would simply flatline into monotony."

My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/i-am-not-your-prototype-by-rhonda-chung/

Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/bild_lida/searschung_notyourprotypewav

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

Bildungsroman: Sturm und Chung

“Such was the absurdity of British colonial rule: success is commensurate with how well you can verbalize the mores of a culture that has nothing to do with your own; the alternative is certain failure. Although born in Canada, I have felt this British gaze all my life. By all accounts, I should not know English as well as I do; but it is my linguistic blueprint, it is all that they intended for me to know.

As Creators are wont to do, England made me in her own image: I am an island, but I am also comprised of many people. I am the inevitability of cross-Atlantic and cross-continental voyages. I am the consequence of Empire and I have lived for 40 years in her aftermath.”

My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/bildungsroman-sturm-und-chung-by-rhonda-chung/

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

The Myth of Second Language Acquisition

"The tale of becoming bilingual is like that of Tantalus reaching towards that succulent fruit and watching it retreat from his grasp—one never feels quite able to achieve semantic satisfaction. Few know the myth of second language acquisition, but herein lies the tale of how man learned to speak in tongues."

My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/the-myth-of-second-language-acquisition-by-rhonda-chung/

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

Livin' la Vida Monastica

"Long before savoury cheeses and aromatic chocolates, monasteries produced another fine product: academia.

...one cannot deny that the cloistered life of a graduate student is in keeping with the monastic tradition. After all, is the writing of grant applications nothing more than an exercise in begging for alms?"

My entire entry can be read here in the American Association for Applied Linguistics Graduate Students’ newsletter: https://www.aaal-gsc.org/_files/ugd/105c1b_eb8ff78cfaf144289d3093190841f26b.pdf?index=true#page=16

Be I a lily or a rose...

"I belong to this earth.
I’m tethered to this ground.
I’ve grown an impressive network of roots here, but you won’t let me grow—you don’t let me thrive."

My entire entry can be read here: https://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/poetry

A Not-so Null Hypothesis

"Outliers, like myself, tend to upset statisticians. We skew average measurements of how an experience ought to be. But what if…what if that is exactly what they are there for:

—to account for the oddities,

—and to make accountable the factors that cause these oddities to exist.

If the purported value is in pulling us all up towards that golden mean, then how exactly will you unburden us of all the things that mark us as an outlier? Or are you willing to change your mean to meet us?"

My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/a-not-so-null-hypothesis-by-rhonda-chung/#more-2090

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal

Goodbye, 2017!

"...No matter where we found ourselves in life or in academia, we always came together to collectively peck at questions of defining identity and membership to a linguistic community. [...] Language transmits culture, and culture carries language–how can language learning or teaching ever really take place without acknowledging these elements?"

My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/another-semester-done-and-another-year-draws-to-a-close-by-rhonda-chung/

BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.

Astronautes FSL!

Je suis ravie de partager cette vidéo où j'ai aidé mes formidables collègues à tester leur jeu vidéo : Astronautes FSL, une version française de Spaceteam ESL.

Est-il possible d'apprendre le français en criant avec ses amis? Il ne devrait pas y avoir d'autre façon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa0MJDF_Z6U

I am excited to share this video where I helped my wonderful colleagues test out their video game: Astronautes FSL, a French version of Spaceteam ESL.

Is it possible to learn French while screaming with friends? There shouldn't exist any other way!

A picture is worth a thousand identities

"The camera is a temporary space—a portal with two facing doors, if you will.

The shutter click is the moment when both of those doors are open, and when Jackson gets to take a peek into someone else’s world.

“You’ve got people speaking different languages, different dialects of those languages, different religions.” He pauses and sincerely asks: “How do you get a society to work when you’ve got so many different identities taking space in it?”

As Jackson moves through different urban spaces and documents them one photographic still at a time, he finds himself with another lens in his tool kit, one of ethnography. Each city provides its own distinct narrative about how humans have moved through space; in turn, these spaces tell stories that knit a unique psychological tapestry of its inhabitants."

My entire entry can be read here: https://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/a-picture-worth-a-thousand-identities