PS - I have an office!

I am so very excited to have an office that I thought it deserved its own post. Here is a picture of me in my office.

Though you can only see one, my office (I derive a great deal of pleasure from describing it thus) has two windows. It is a work in progress, but it already contains a fab ergonomic chair designed to correct my posture, a french memo board and a colorful rug. I shall post another picture when it is finished and which will hopefully contain an antique writing bureau, but for now, this is my lovely, IKEA-fabulous den of reading and writingness.

The third side of the coin…

Each time I take a break from writing here (and let's be honest – there's been significantly more break time than writing time), I always feel the need, upon beginning again, to write some sort of explanation for my absence, accompanied by a new mission statement and pledge to do better. I'm going to break with tradition this time and dispense with the preamble – what's new is that I've moved to Prague for at least a year to work on my thesis and study Czech, meaning that, for the time being anyway, this will be a space to contemplate three contexts - London, Prague and the US – as well as to chronicle my current adventures. In addition to issues of language and human behavior, I'll also take the odd detour in

to fashion and matters artistic.

So, without further ado…

Right now, my life is being dominated by Czech class, specifically Charles University's Letní škola slovanských studíi 2010 (the typing of which reminds me how badly I need to get a Czech keyboard…). As a casual teacher of English, it's fascinating, particularly after my experience teaching summer school at UCL last year, to see the process from the other side of the classroom. I always envied my students at UCL, and elsewhere, who had nothing to do but roll up to class at nine o'clock. No arriving an hour ear

ly to cut out little bits of paper for communication activities, no queuing endlessly for the photocopier or having to maniacally improvise a paperless lesson if the photocopier was broken. My non-stressful student commute is even lovelier than I imaged – I'm living a block from the river, so I leave the house, stroll around the corner, cross Palackého Most and either amble along the river to the Philosophy Faculty (see below) or catch a tram that takes the same route.

As a teacher, I find that I tend freak out before the lesson – I'll change the material five times, convinced it's all horribly boring or patronizing or inappropriate for adult learners or I photocopy two extra grammar activities and a speaking exercise two minutes before class starts in case all else fails – but once I'm actually in front of the class, I calm down rapidly and seem to know what to do without thinking about it. As a student, the stress begins when the class does. I am shocked, daily, but how much I don't understand. I've never had a class entirely in another language before and it amazes me the extent to which I miss things. I don't know how English students cope. In the idiosyncratic and ego-stroking Czech-for-foreigners language leveling system (of which more later – this deserves its own post), I'm considered advanced (about pre-int/int in English levels) and mine is the first level in which students are instructed solely in Czech (unless we are absolutely dying, in which case we can request, in Czech, a translation). I've lived in Prague for over a year altogether and studied in London for a year and a half and I still understand only about 80% of what my main teacher says (not bad) and 30% of what my conversation teacher says (she speaks so fast that I still haven't managed to catch her name). Is this what it was like for my students, all of whom, from beginners up, were instructed only in English? How did their beginner and elementary level heads not just explode? Or is Czech really a great deal more difficult than other languages?

The pedagogical methods employed in teaching Czech fascinate me. In comparison to the wealth of EFL materials available, much of which is, admittedly, redundant and/or of dubious value, teachers of Czech seem to survive on two main textbooks – Communicative Czech and Czech Step By Step – neither of which appear to come with communication activities involving little bits of cut out paper. There's no obsession with the phonetic alphabet a la New English File either, and Communicative Czech in particular appears to delight in thematic and narrative randomness. In the Elementary textbook, we follow the burgeoning romance of Bulgarian student Kristyna and her Czech boyfriend Petr for three chapters, during which they go to the theatre, plan a trip to Bulgaria and visit Petr's family in Brno. Then, just after the Locative Singular, Petr and Kristýna disappear in favor of shopping friends, a middle aged couple arguing about what to wear to the theatre and another man named Petr, who is dissatisfied with his job in Prague and wants to relocate to České Budejovice. Nothing further of K & P. What happened?! Kristýna is studying Czech…so perhaps the locative singular proved too much for her to master? Or possibly their romance will be rekindled in Intermediate Communicative Czech! Watch this space!

Seriously, though – the methods employed in teaching Czech are the sort of old fashioned drills that delight the perfectionist in me, but which would likely get an EFL teacher a bad evaluation should s/he employ them. Lots of teacher time – my teachers almost never stop talking – and little variation. No controlled language practice moving towards free improvisation – just grammar, grammar, grammar, while the conversation class doesn't pre-teach structure, but instead confronts shell-shocked students emerging from a two and half hour grammar class with "UNESCO, good or bad? Discuss." I'm not saying it doesn't work – already on day two I'm catching significantly more than I did yesterday – but it does make me wonder whether each language requires its own carefully calibrated pedagogy or if the EFL method really is the best – purely as a result of what a big business it is, as compared to the teaching of Slavic languages, which apart from Russian, are a relatively small game. Has all the money invested in EFL resulted in the best of all possible language teaching models, or does the EFL industry just churn out methodologies and textbooks the way Jerry Bruckheimer cranks out blockbusters?

I shall continue to think about this as the course progresses…but should any language teachers or learners read this, do share your opinions on the matter. (This should not, however, be interpreted as an invitation to the online Esperanto lobby to advocate their cause, as they did the last time I posted about language.)

The Odd Multi-Lingual Encounter: A European Tradition?

Once upon a time in the not-so-distant past, I used to write poetry. Every now and then I'd write something that I actually liked. I read the stuff too, my own and other people's, carefully curated, at open mic nights. Somehow, all of this activity stopped when I moved back to Philadelphia in 2006 and hasn't really picked up again, despite ample time and plenty of provocation. Today, however, a simile occurred to me which, while not perhaps poem-worthy, seemed worth noting in more prosaic form.

So I'm at an academic conference at L'Université Libre de Bruxelles, which is conducted in French. This is fine. I can cope with introductory remarks and (to my surprise!) papers on topics I already know quite a lot about. There was a lady speaking a hybrid of Russian and Czech and I could even extract the gist from that. Admittedly, my linguistic skills weren't up for the lady who peppered her paper (in French, on a topic I didn't already know quite a lot about) with Polish and German, as well as some opera singing (really), but on the whole I was pleased with myself.

The trouble came with the coffee breaks, the little pauses between sessions, lunch, etc. I always hate these parts of conferences anyway. I'm too new to this scene to be presenting anything, which means no one knows who I am or what I do and so there's no easy way to lapse into conversation and whole thing makes me horrifically uncomfortable. I suspect this has been acerbated by living in London where people don't talk to each other, which has no doubt aggravated my tendency to paranoia and anti-social behavior (of the hiding in corners, not hitting people, kind). Anyway, during one such coffee break in which no one was speaking English, it occurred to me that speaking a foreign language in a social situation, with intelligent people, is a bit like jumping rope. Bear with me here. It's a classic playground scenario. As there were two languages on the table, let's say there's some serious Double Dutch going on. You're standing there watching the kids who are jumping and you think, "I understand what they're doing, I think I could do that" and you begin to think about jumping in. This in itself is tricky, but you've been practicing in a controlled environment and think you could just about handle it. But just as your feet are about to leave the ground, you realize that jumping in is only half the battle – once you're in, you have to keep up and who knows what those turners, who are really professional-looking, will throw at you. So you end up slinking off to the swings. Again.

I think the jumping-in panic is acerbated by being a native English speaker. Whatever arguments we make about the serendipitous fact that our mother tongue "just happens" to be the world's lingua franca, we are strongly cast in the role of the playground linguistic dunce. Complicating our position on the bottom run of the language ladder is the aplomb and confidence with which foreigners butcher English. All around us, in the cosmopolitan cities of the Anglophone world and beyond, we are accosted with tragic misspellings and mispronunciations. Of course we generate plenty ourselves; while an undergrad, I recall seeing an English department memo that read "Your invited!" An English major and member of the department Honor Society, I contemplated asking for a tuition refund. By in large, though, when we're confronted with these errors, we tend to laugh them off. We may ridicule the source of the error amongst ourselves, but rarely do we dish out the degree of vehement angst directed at me by a Czech sandwich shop employee when I had the audacity to express my wish for a butter-free sandwich with the offensive phrase "bez masla" instead of the correct "bez mas-LEM" (emphasis hers).

I'm in no way defending widespread Anglophone monolinguism – it's fantastic what worlds open up with even a cursory working knowledge of another language, and there are plenty of notable multi-lingual Anglophones I can think of, including many of my acquaintance. Still, I don't think that weak NNS (non-native speakers, a lovely EFL term) of English realize just how many breaks we give them. Lousy pronunciation, random syllable emphasis, disregard for number agreement, dodgy past participles – we frequently let them slide as long as we get the gist. In dealing with foreigners, your average Anglophone assumes a completely utilitarian approach to language. Has person X communicated what they meant to say? Yes? Cool. Admittedly this has its downside – EFL teaching is horrifically utilitarian and actually painful at times if the teacher happens to love the language, and I also think its fostered an image of English as a less beautiful and expressive language than it actually is. But that's for another day.

I contrast this generally laissez-faire Anglophone-to-NNS attitude with my experiences speaking my second and third languages, the aforementioned French and Czech. While I am frequently surrounded by supportive friends who speak these languages and humor me (it helps if they've had some wine), the following two reactions have been known to occur: 1) An immediate switch to English; 2 ) a blank stare. The second doesn't particularly bother me and is most likely my fault and easily rectifiable if I stop, calm down, and repeat. But the first really gets my goat. It's so completely unhelpful. Here I am , trying, genuinely endeavoring, to communicate with you, in your country, in your language. I know I'm equal to the task of ordering dinner, because I've done it before and have actually had real conversations in this language, so I can't be that incomprehensible. If I barged into your establishment and started ordering in English, that would be rude and you could be justifiably cross with me for my implied cultural imperialism and sense of entitlement. But I haven't done that. I've ordered a sandwich using the genitive and not the instrumental, or I've paused a milli-second longer than is tolerable when asked if I'm going to eat ici ou sortir. The auto-switch to English feels like a dismissal and creates an imbalance in Anglo/non-Anglophone world; when's the last time you heard a barista in London or New York immediately switch to Chinese or French or Russian to help a customer who was perfectly able to conduct the transaction in English? Admittedly English-speakers are likely more used than anyone in the world to adapting to accented versions of their language (just look how many exist among native speakers). But it seems to me that linguistic foreign relations would greatly improve if the other side could make a similar effort to acknowledge that foreign-accented speech, while not perfect, is not actually incomprehensible and might help stem the seemingly unstoppable flow of English into every nook and cranny of everyone's life, everywhere.

These phenomena seem to me to make the assumption of Anglophone monolingualism a self-fulfilling prophesy. Still, I shall soldier on in pursuit of my personal linguistic nirvana – a stress-free conference coffee break.

Konec/Fin/The End

Uncivil discourse? The increased difficulty of conversation.

Recently I've been doing a lot of rather nebulous thinking that can basically be boiled down to a simple question: who's allowed to say what, and, to whom are they allowed to say it? What makes one's opinion or point of view valid? Can you say something provocative if you back it up with research and demonstrate a genuine knowledge of the topic? Is it okay to use the internet to spew random thoughts, or should we be applying academic rigor to the throwaway rants and political statements we all indulge in occasionally on facebook and similar?

The question of the "right" to speak is particularly troubling when one's unavoidably out of context. No matter how long I live here and how politically aware I am, no matter how many books I read or episodes of Panorama I watch, I will never be British. This will never be my country. Does that mean I can't critique it? Can I direct or act in a British play, or should I confine myself to work by American authors? Can I speak to my experience, or do I need to sit silently, because I haven't somehow earned the stripes necessary to chime in? This is an issue, to a degree, of enfranchisement. I pay taxes, but I don't have the right to vote. If something annoys me, I can't take direct action through a ballot. I can't write to my MP, I can't run for any office myself. The only recourse is to generate my own narrative, to say what I see and what I experience.

We all speak – each of us – from a deeply personal position that is the result of our upbringing and life experiences. The idea that anything is ultimately knowable in a completely impartial sense is absurd. There is no via negativa I know of that can completely subtract the subject. And why would we want that, anyway? It's the variety that's interesting in the first place.

It strikes me that the very people who object to expressions of opinion that differ from theirs tend to react in deeply confused ways, using rhetoric that is identical, if inverted, to that of the speaker they're attacking. Who is this helping? Why are we so terrified of conversation? Why do we want to rob people of the right to their own narratives? Obviously there's a special category for hate speech – Nick Griffin's controversial appearance on Question Time rightly highlighted this issue. But as the vast majority of us are not BNP supporters, or the sort of right-wing fundamentalists attacking the scientific content of Texas textbooks, surely we are capable, as intelligent adults, of civil discourse?

Maybe not. Recently I listened to an interview on NPR with Richard Dawkins. He was discussing his new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, and repeatedly had to fend off callers who wanted to talk to him about a sort of intermediary position, between religiosity and atheism, with a non-interventionist God, or in more abstract terms, some transcendental presence. Many of these callers, after describing what they were talking about, suggested that this might be a different understanding of "god". Dawkins shut them down, refusing to engage in the debate in terms other than his own. God, he argues, is understood by the vast majority to mean an interventionist, omnipotent being in the monotheistic sense, to whom one prays, etc. Using this word to discuss some more general metaphysical dimension is willfully misleading. But since when is language static? Could not deists claim it is unfair to allow religionists to hijack and appropriate the word? Why does a man of Dawkins' indisputable brilliance need to clamp down on the terms of a debate in which he is the leading voice? The same issue comes up with authors – Kundera and Beckett to name a few – who are so preoccupied with protecting their legacy that they cannot relinquish control and allow their works to become part of a general conversation about literature and culture. Why are so many brilliant people scared of letting their work drop into the general flow of discourse?

When I arrived in the UK and began to consume large amounts of British media, I couldn't help but notice the repeated and consistent use of the word "bully" – every newspaper seemed to contain an article about "bullying." I've discussed this with American friends and we generally agree that in the US we talk about harassment where the UK media uses bullying. American bullying is saved for playgrounds and childish, unsubstantiated acts of aggression and cruelty. Harassment, by contrast feels adult, premeditated; you harass a colleague to a particular aim, to make her feel small, to intimidate, etc. As I've observed –and now experienced – the bear pit of British public discourse, it seems to me that bullying is actually quite an apt turn of phrase. The speed with which the political becomes intimately personal is enough to give one whiplash. Look at "In the Loop" and its companion TV show – it's genius and I love it, but I can't help feeling disturbed by it. This deeply personal bullying in environments that should be about contesting issues, not attacking individuals, seems to produce silence or more vitriol, which means that however you shake it, the "bully" has won. Respond, and you stick you jump into the mud bath. Remain silent, and the bully claims victory.

So what's the answer? I don't know, but I'm reminded of the advice of a director I once worked with whose notes frequently included a reminder to "hold on tightly, let go lightly," a suggestion that it's possible to stand firm but not impervious, an acknowledgement of liminality as the space where we really, if we're honest, seem to do most of our living.

A new reason to be.

I've been quiet now for quite some time. There were a variety of reasons for this - first my life was absorbed by teaching English to foreign students, then I went on holiday (Prague-Split-Brac-Split-Zagreb-Ljubljana-Prague) and then I thought I was moving to Dublin, which would have changed the tone and focus of this (admittedly somewhat unfocused) blog, which is supposed to be (chiefly) the reflections of an American in London.

In the end, the great move never happened and I'm now safely installed at Goldsmiths, doing the same PhD topic I'd have done in Dublin. Now that things are settled, I'm ready - and needing - to continue, this time with (hopefully) more focus.

Since the advent of fall and the start of the academic year, I'm found myself reading loads. My PhD (roughly speaking) is dealing with contemporary theatre in Prague and the various contexts that have created it. As a result I've been reading lots of inspiring stuff - Vaclav Havel on the role of culture in civil society and the importance of living in truth, Jill Dolan on the utopian peformative, Iris Marion Young on the "unoppressive city" in its infinite variety - while at the same time I'm back to reading the English press again, with less than inspiring results. Two themes emerge again and again:

1. Strong messages (frequently penned by female journalists), both implicit and explicit that the place of a woman is in the home with ambp (as many babies as possible); and

2. Britain is the best country in the world, not least because British journalists completely understand and can explain any culture in the world - even your own, my fellow foreigners - better than anyone else can. After all, it was probably once part of the British Empire and, if it wasn't, then it can't be worth much, can it? As an American, and one increasingly aware of and deeply thankful for the inherently various nature of country in which I was born, this is especially vexing. Whenever someone speaks about "American culture" my hackles raise - which one? Texas? Seattle? New York? Philadelphia? New Orleans? Iowa? Yet again and again, these multiple experiences are conflated into a monolith (and a culturally inferior one at that).

So, with renewed vigor and in the spirit of living in truth (but without losing my sense of humor and absurdity - both my own and others'), I resurrect Both Sides Now with a new manifesto - to respond to and comment upon the assumptions, generalisations and factually inaccurate ramblings of the British media as I encounter them. Because noting something and interrogating it is always a good thing. To be silent is to be complicit. And I certainly don't wish to be that.

A note before this week's digest: I should mention that I love the British press. I love Radio 4 (almost as much as NPR, though no one will ever shift Ira Glass from his deeply entrenched place in my heart). I love the Guardian (and how I usually agree with it). I love the Times (for its jumbo crossword and its ability to anger me). I love that in this country newspapers still mean something. But that doesn't mean they're exempt from scrutiny - perhaps it even demands it.

So, without further ado, the article that inspired this relaunch, appearing in this Saturday's Guardian under the headline "Marriage tax break will keep more women out of work, says thinktank" by Allegra Stratton, Political correspondent. The article discusses a plan to recognise marriage in the tax structure, introduced by David Cameron in his speech at the Tory conference last week. The digested sense of the proposal is that it would be benefit single-income families, but might actually discourage second earners, which Stratton notes are "usually women" from working, as their earnings would be subjected to a higher tax rate than their partners. After explaining the still-vague nuts and bolts, Stratton offers two responses. First, Tim Horton, research director of the Fabian Society, likes the idea of helping families, but says the plan "would bring about gender discrimination in the tax system...It would be a socially retrograde step." Okay, fine. Next it's Christina Odone's turn. Ms. Odone is listed as a journalist who "published a Centre for Political Studies pamphlet saying many women no longer want to work full-time." Why? According to Stratton, "Odone said many "real women" rejected work-centred culture and "realised themselves" as mothers."

Um...hello? Am I only one who sees this assessment, which goes unchallenged by Stratton (though perhaps her decision to enclose the real in quotes is telling), as problematic? What on earth is the definition of a real woman? What is with the apparent return to absolute definitions of anything, let alone gender roles? Are Odone and Stratton, themselves obviously "work-centred" enough to be published writers, figments of the Guardian's imagination? Are they "unreal" women? Unnatural? How are we still having this discussion in 2009?! Where is the outcry?!

In more trivial news, check out this parenthetical assessment of Aspen, Colorado, from the Sunday Times Magazine's interview with Black Eyed Pea Fergie: "lovely, like Switzerland with fat people". We have Giles Hattersley to thank for that perfect encapsulation of a winter sports capital. The last one I visited was Lake Placid, NY, also located in the alleged tub-o-lard that is the United States, but funnily enough, as home to an Olympic training and countless winter sports athletes and instructors (an attribute it no doubt shares with Aspen), there were plenty of non-fatties in residence. Admittedly, ski-wear isn't the most flattering. But come on, Giles, really? Are there no fat people in Switzerland? A quick google reveals this tidbit from the Portal to the Swiss Federal Goverment:

A third of the Swiss population is overweight. The reasons for excess weight and adiposis (obesity) are often rooted in the social environment, in particular in the “unhealthy” diet, which has negative effects on weight already in childhood. Today, one child out of five is already overweight or obese. (www.ch.ch)

That's right, Giles. Swiss people are fat too. Just like Brits and Americans. Why the inaccurate snarkiness? Why the perpetuation of erroneous myth that attempts to localize what is actually a global first-world problem? And finally, why do you repeatedly quote Fergie talking about her "mum" - Americans don't have "mums". You know we have moms, and we know you have mums - it's exciting, this bilingual English! Let's assume (at least in this case) mutually intelligibility and run with it! Hell, we might all even lose some weight in the process.

Eurostar-lag…a post-continental malaise?

Last weekend, Paul and I went to Paris. We went to attend the wedding of some friends who had very graciously provided us with a lovely excuse to absent ourselves from London (though to be fair, we are never hard to persuade away). 72 hours of loveliness and one departure-lounge breakdown later, I'm back in London and feeling a bit deflated.

It's sunny here, which is nothing to quibble with, especially as it lasts so long (which is something I personally quibble with, though it seems churlish to do so – one should never insult the sun in a country which sees it as infrequently as the UK), but the sun has got me missing Prague. Paris, with its carriage doors, squares and hilliness, reminds me of Prague, which gets me thinking about lovely summer days sitting on the balcony terrace at Grand Café Orient, drinking Gambrinus at the river bar and white wine in Letna park, and sunbathing at various lakes …

My thoughts have been running in this direction all day, making it slightly challenging to focus on anything I should be doing, such as working, studying Czech, unpacking from Paris or preparing to go to Copenhagen on Thursday. I can come to no other conclusion but that I am suffering from Eurostar-lag, a psycho-physical manifestation designed to impress upon the UK-based sufferer the superiority of life on the continental landmass. In my case, such preaching is hardly necessary – count me in as a card-carrying member of the choir, such a zealot, in fact that, as with my last four trips to the UK, I couldn't keep myself from tearing up in the Gare du Nord departures lounge. I'm starting to think that the extreme counterintuitiveness (counterintuitivity?) of repeated trips "home" to London has induced in me a sort of breath-restricting, back-pain-inducing case of PTSD. No surprises there, really. After all, repeating an action but hoping for different results is a tried and true litmus test for madness. If anything, it's worse in Paris, where you go through UK customs while you're still in France!

But enough malaise! Here, a list of things to celebrate about Continental Europe:

• Café culture: an affordably priced pitcher of wine or a latte, the day's papers, a comrade with whom one is equally happy to chat to or to sit with in mutual contemplation; also my personal antidote to shopping and rampant consumerism
  
• The architecture: 17^th and 18^th century buildings look so good in the sun
  
• The absence/diminished presence of English: a chance to practice one's language skills or just ignore anything that you don't feel like dealing with
  
• Human-sized cities: places it's possible to travel to all four corners in the daily living of one's life
  
• Music and dancing: somehow more accessible
  
• Rivers: the kind you actually see every day, without having to make a special trip
  
• Intellectualism: hand-in-hand with café culture, the idea that it's cool to be smart and thinking is for everyone
  
• Antique book stores: they sell post-cards too – in Prague, I found one of PA Amish country once
  
• Expat communities: so what if it's a bit like never-ending university? I'm through caring. And I loved university!
  
• Train stations: Belgrade, Sofia, Bucharest, Budapest, Ljubljana, Trieste, Milan, Krakow, Moscow: oh, the possibilities, and not an airplane (or UK border control officer) in sight.
  

An Open Letter to Zoë Heller

Dear Zoë Heller,

How lovely to open my copy of the Times Weekend Magazine and discover an excerpt from your contribution to the Ox-Tales Short Stories Collection for Oxfam! And how serendipitous! You see, normally I read the Saturday Guardian and forgo Sunday papers entirely – there's really no substitute for the New York Times, is there? – but since I spent Saturday discussing post-Communist liberalism, I didn't have time to pick up the Guardian. I don't particularly relish the Observer, so London Times it was and (quelle surprise!) there IT was – your story.

I must congratulate you on the sparkling wit, the incisive, detailed observations – in your portrayal of an American family on vacation (forgive me, holiday) in the Caribbean, I think you may have attained a previously unglimpsed apotheosis of meta-parody. Everything was on display: provincialism, puritanical attitudes to sex, bad taste in resort wear, souvenir consumption, over-emotionalism, over-eating! Only one thing would have made it better – if only you could have set it somewhere reachable by ferry from mainland America. Not only does the island setting give Americans credit for a) owning passports and b) flying (though, to be fair, we could be in Puerto Rico, which would negate point a), a location to which Cheyenne (the perfect name!) and her family could have driven would have allowed the introduction of an iconic pièce de résistance – a McCain/Palin bumper sticker. How could you not?

But, Zoë, perhaps you did. I'll just have to run to Oxfam and buy your story as soon as I mail off a contribution check to the RNC, hoist the Stars & Stripes over my London flat, cover my davenport with plastic slipcovers and make another batch of freedom fries.

Yours, etc.

Becka McFadden

Preorder Ox-tales at: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/content/books/books_oxtales.html