Modern Languages at Aberdeen University

Everyone in Languages at Stirling, and beyond, has been very concerned to read about developments across Languages, Translation and Interpreting at the University of Aberdeen and we wanted to express our solidarity with our colleagues there, across French, Gaelic, German and Spanish.

We have a long history of connections and friendship (academic and otherwise) with Aberdeen and we hope to be able to continue to see those connections and friendships thrive over the coming months and years.

We have co-supervised and continue to co-supervise PhDs together: our former student, Fraser McQueen, currently at the University of Bristol where he is a Lecturer in French and Comparative Literature, was jointly supervised by Fiona Barclay (Stirling) and Nadia Kiwan (Aberdeen). Aedín ní Loingsigh (Stirling) is currently co-supervising a SGSAH-funded student in Translation Studies with Nadia and Nicki Hitchcott (St Andrews). Others of us have taught or, indeed, studied at Aberdeen: Cristina Johnston was a Teaching Fellow in French there in 2004-2006 before joining Stirling, while Pete Baker and Fiona Noble (both now in Spanish and Latin American Studies at Stirling) studied there as undergraduates. Pete’s PhD was supervised by mentors who had taught him at Aberdeen, while Fiona stayed on at Aberdeen to complete her MLitt, PhD and PGDE, as well as working there as a Teaching Fellow. Our (now retired) colleague, Alastair Duncan, also did both his undergraduate degree and his PhD at Aberdeen.

We’ve been involved in external examining at each other’s institutions which has often led to research collaborations between colleagues: Trevor Stack (Aberdeen) was one of our externals in Religion at Stirling for many years, Nina Parish (Stirling) is a current external at Aberdeen. And we’ve been delighted to welcome colleagues from Aberdeen to speak at research events over the years, most recently Ed Welch, who is also Chair of the University Council of Modern Languages (Scotland), with Stirling colleagues, including Nina Parish, Pete Baker and Elizabeth Ezra also having given research papers in Aberdeen.

‘Aberdeen 2040’, the University’s strategic plan (available in Arabic, Gaelic, BSL and Braille, as well as in English), proudly asserts that: ‘Through outreach and the exchange of ideas, we will teach and research across borders. We already rank among the best for our global outlook. We will continue to expand our networks and partnerships, and seek new opportunities for international and intercultural exchange.’ These are fantastic aims for any global University to be working towards and achieving them is dependent on Universities being able to support ambitious, resilient, interculturally literate graduates, equipped with the wide range of skills that will allow them to contribute to local and global communities. These skills are precisely those that are fostered through the study of languages, from Gaelic to German, from French to Spanish, and far, far beyond.

We hope that Aberdeen finds ways to support colleagues across Languages as they work on creative solutions to the extremely challenging circumstances they are facing and we look forward to finding more ways to work with them over the months that lie ahead.

European Day of Languages

Happy European Day of Languages to all our blog readers! As we’ve done for the past few years, we decided to use today’s celebrations as an excuse to take stock of the wide range of languages spoken, understood, read… by students and staff across our modules in French and, as ever, the variety is fantastic to see.

So far, this year’s list includes: English, French, Spanish, Irish Gaelic, Korean, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Québécois, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Catalan, Czech, Latin, Italian, Scottish Gaelic, German, Danish, Turkish, Slovak, Russian, Basque, Polish, Arabic…

We’ll keep adding to the list as and when speakers of other languages get in touch but, in the meantime, to everyone who has already replied: Thank you, merci, gracias, go raibh maith agat, 감사합니다, obrigada, takk, 谢谢, ありがとう, дякую, köszönöm, gràcies, děkuji, grātiās tibi agō, grazie, mòran taing, danke schön, tak, teşekkürler, Ďakujem, спасибо, eskerrikasko, dziękuję, شكرًا…

Research News: From Bilingualism to Sciamma

As you’ll have gathered from recent blog posts, these are busy weeks for staff and students in French at Stirling and we wanted to just give you a quick update on a couple of staff research events that have also taken place recently.

First up, a couple of weeks ago, Aedín ní Loingsigh jointly presented a paper with her colleague Ingeborg Birnie at the ‘On the border of art and languages teaching in the multilingual world’ conference. Their work examines ‘Dementia, Bilingualism and the Insights of Performance-Based Research’, with a particularly focus on Gaelic-speakers and a theatre workshop that resulted in a play exploring linguistic relationships in a family where the mother’s dementia results in her returning to Gaelic, having formerly spoken English.

And just this morning, Cristina Johnston gave a lecture (via Zoom) at the University of Passau, talking to the students on their International Culture and Business Studies programme about the films of Céline Sciamma. This was a great opportunity to work with students at one of our long-standing partners and we’re particularly grateful to Christian Dölle at Passau for his invitation.

As ever, keep reading the blog for more updates!

Cuimhnichibh Oirnn – Remember Us

And while we’re posting about French at Stirling-related research, this seems a perfect opportunity to post this article about what our colleague, Aedín ní Loingsigh, has been up to over the past couple of months.

Back in June, Aedín was part of a team of academics and actors who organised a one-day workshop on Dementia and Bilingualism at the Insight Institute in the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. As this BBC Alba film shows, the performance-led day created a very different kind of event to the usual format of academic and voluntary sector conferences.

A dramatic reading of the play ‘Five to Midnight’ (provisional title) portrayed the experiences of ‘Mary’ who, with the onset of dementia begins to lose her ability to speak in English and returns to Scottish Gaelic, her mother tongue. The play, performed in separate parts, was interspersed with audience reflection and three panel discussions on bilingualism in the medical context, dementia’s impact on the family and the bilingual community and bilingualism and the arts.

The play prompted much discussion about changing roles and relationships in families affected by dementia. Mary’s husband ‘John’ does not speak Gaelic. Meanwhile, Mary’s adult son finds himself being pulled into the not always comfortable role of interpreter between his parents and those around Mary who do not understand Gaelic.

As Mary’s dementia progresses, she becomes increasingly cut off from the English-speaking world. Audience members without Gaelic language skills are exposed to more and more Gaelic monologues and conversations as the play unrolls, mirroring John’s experience of being increasingly locked out of his wife’s world. This experience fosters audience empathy with characters in the play who are separated by language divides.

Dementia’s impact on language is a key clinical and care issue, and science has shown that monolingual and bilingual individuals are affected differently.

Of course, the play focuses on a very specific linguistic context. However, students of French may be interested in this interview with the Canadian actress Louise Pitre who speaks about the struggles she had to find linguistically cognate care for her native French-speaking parents in anglophone Canada. As the project continues, it is hoped that it will highlight the need for wider recognition of the role of language and cultural understanding for the care needs of bilingual individuals living with dementia.

Aedín has also been busy on the publication front with entries on ‘Anthropology’, ‘Coevalness’, ‘Ethnicity’, ‘Primitivism’ and ‘Translation’ in Key Words for Travel Writing Studies: A Critical Glossary and a chapter on ‘Migrant Travel Narratives’ in The Routledge Research Companion to Travel Writing.

Many thanks to Aedín for this update and keep an eye on the blog for more news over the weeks ahead.

Primary Education and Modern Languages: “The staff are genuinely inspiring!”

Following on from yesterday’s account of life since graduation from Emma, it’s time for a profile of one of our current students. Jennifer is in her 2^nd semester of our BA Hons in Professional Education (Primary) with a Specialism in Modern Languages, studying both French and Spanish with us:

“Living in a small Scottish village on the North West coast of Scotland in the early 90s I definitely lacked exposure to other cultures. I think my first inkling that another language besides English existed was from Sebastian on Playdays, who, for anyone who hasn’t come across this ingenious example of engaging children’s television, was a stereotypical Frenchman made of cardboard or wood or something, who was wheeled about the set and ‘spoke’ the odd French word. Actually, he did intrigue me although I’m still not really sure why.

French in Primary School was great – songs, games and a teacher who loved everything French. I fully credit this teacher for the way that my studies have panned out so far. It was her love of France that tilted my education away from Gaelic, which was much more central to language education in the other local Primary Schools, and towards modern languages. In 1998 I started high school along with the five other pupils in my class, all of us with a confidence in French that was definitely not about to elevate our social standing among our peers. We all very quickly dropped our French accents while reading aloud in class.

Fast-forward eleven years to 2010. I’ve done three years of French and Spanish at Strathclyde University and I’ve just completed my year abroad working as an English Language Assistant in Verdun in France.

I’m pregnant.

Incomplete degree, no job, living in the South Side of Glasgow with friends and a cat. Not an ideal situation. I felt like I had been put on a swivel chair that had spun around and set me on a completely different path to the one I had been so sure I was set to follow. Now I have a six-year-old daughter who (you’ll permit me a small brag) delights in showing off her skills in French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian and Polish. When she started school, I started getting itchy. I wanted to finish what I had started, and do it better than I had the first time.

I love working with children and young people and so I applied for the Primary Education with Modern Languages course at Stirling University (this choice mainly came down to logistics. I live near Falkirk and Stirling is by far the easiest university to access and gives me the best chance of being able to make school drop off and pick up). Had I not been accepted I’m not sure what I would be doing just now, most likely still working full time in the Italian restaurant I’ve worked in for the past two years. Now I’m working part-time, mum full time and studying in the cracks that fall in-between. I’m not sure how long I can keep it up and soon something will have to give. It will inevitably be the job as I’m extremely determined now. I’m very different to the student I was – doing the minimum amount of work and living the maximum amount of student life.

My logistics-based choice of Stirling University has paid off: the campus is beautiful, the staff are fantastic, the facilities and layout of the university are great. I’ve found the enthusiasm of the staff genuinely inspiring. My greatest fear, as a slightly older student, was (is!) the amount of reliance on technology. Although it’s nice to sit at home and organise your student life, I found it quite isolating at the beginning. Choosing all my modules and seminar times online, receiving my timetable online, all of it automatic, was quite nerve-wracking as there seemed to be no assurance from a human being that I was actually doing everything properly. Honestly, in the days leading up to the first week of the first semester I was very, very nervous. Scared, really. I’ve never been frightened of technology before but I really was worried about not being able to prepare for my classes and looking like an idiot. I got through it though.

To round things up, I don’t think anyone can, or should, get through a degree without a fair amount of struggle. And it is a struggle. I’ve forgotten so much and I have a lot of new things to learn that I didn’t bother to learn the first time around. But I’m here and I’m doing it. My once stagnant brain is getting warmed up again and it’s hungry for irregular verbs. (Ha!)”

Many, many thanks to Jennifer for having taken the time to send us this post. We look forward to following your progress throughout the rest of your degree… and good luck with the irregular verbs!