After taking a Japanese linguistics class, Eileen Rivera '10 began to think about her own linguistic habits. In the process of studying Japanese, Rivera became familiar with the phenomenon of "codeswitching," where a person changes his or her style of speaking in different situations. Codeswitching can involve using entirely different languages, or it can mean moving within the same language between dialects or styles, which is also called "style shifting." After learning about codeswitching, Rivera began to notice it in herself, seeing differences between her speaking style at Hamilton and at home in New York City. "I started to notice the dichotomy between the person I am when I am in school and the person I am when I go home," she says.
Because of this self-discovery, Rivera became interested in studying codeswitching more formally. Assistant Professor Masaaki Kamiya of the East Asian languages and literatures department, Rivera's Japanese linguistics professor, encouraged her to apply for a summer grant to expand on a subject that interested her. Rivera decided to focus on codeswitching. "I was attracted to the notion that I could gain conscious knowledge of the language system in my brain that allows me to speak," she explains. In addition, she hoped that the project would help her become a better student of Japanese and English.
Rivera is one of 18 students this summer who pursued research funded by the Emerson Foundation Grant program. Created in 1997, the program was designed to provide students with significant opportunities to work collaboratively with faculty members, researching an area of interest. The recipients, covering a range of topics, are exploring fieldwork, laboratory and library research, and the development of teaching materials. The students will make public presentations of their research throughout the academic year.
This was Rivera's first summer research project, on which she collaborated with Professor Kamiya. In addition to reading literature on language discourse strategies, she worked part-time with high school seniors and college-age students in New York, who are starting to enter the job market. With the preliminary knowledge of linguistics to be able to examine spoken phrases and make generalizations, the observations she made at her job provided the fieldwork for her research project.
Rivera focused her study on English and Japanese, to see how codeswitching works across cultures as a means of conflict control. She hypothesizes that women are more adept at using style shifts in an effort to be more cooperative, especially to avoid or manage conflict. She is still analyzing hours of audio recordings and transcribing her data, so she has yet to determine the concrete results, but she says that she has seen some trends so far to support her initial hypothesis.
Working a summer job along with doing research was difficult, but Rivera says that in providing her with a way to gather information, her work helped give the summer purpose. Her research has also changed the way she experiences languages, both in others and in herself. "I am constantly thinking about the way people speak nowadays when I was completely oblivious last year," she says. She also notes that she uses language differently than she has in the past. When communicating with her Korean coworkers, Rivera sometimes used words or phrases that they had taught her: "I feel like it helped me grow closer with them," she says. She then realized that she does the same thing in Spanish.
Rivera plans to continue her study when she returns to campus, and is excited to conduct research in the environment where she first noticed her own code-switching. An English major at Hamilton, she says she also plans to be more involved in the writing community this year. After she graduates, she hopes to attend law school.
-- by Laura Bramley
Because of this self-discovery, Rivera became interested in studying codeswitching more formally. Assistant Professor Masaaki Kamiya of the East Asian languages and literatures department, Rivera's Japanese linguistics professor, encouraged her to apply for a summer grant to expand on a subject that interested her. Rivera decided to focus on codeswitching. "I was attracted to the notion that I could gain conscious knowledge of the language system in my brain that allows me to speak," she explains. In addition, she hoped that the project would help her become a better student of Japanese and English.
Rivera is one of 18 students this summer who pursued research funded by the Emerson Foundation Grant program. Created in 1997, the program was designed to provide students with significant opportunities to work collaboratively with faculty members, researching an area of interest. The recipients, covering a range of topics, are exploring fieldwork, laboratory and library research, and the development of teaching materials. The students will make public presentations of their research throughout the academic year.
This was Rivera's first summer research project, on which she collaborated with Professor Kamiya. In addition to reading literature on language discourse strategies, she worked part-time with high school seniors and college-age students in New York, who are starting to enter the job market. With the preliminary knowledge of linguistics to be able to examine spoken phrases and make generalizations, the observations she made at her job provided the fieldwork for her research project.
Rivera focused her study on English and Japanese, to see how codeswitching works across cultures as a means of conflict control. She hypothesizes that women are more adept at using style shifts in an effort to be more cooperative, especially to avoid or manage conflict. She is still analyzing hours of audio recordings and transcribing her data, so she has yet to determine the concrete results, but she says that she has seen some trends so far to support her initial hypothesis.
Working a summer job along with doing research was difficult, but Rivera says that in providing her with a way to gather information, her work helped give the summer purpose. Her research has also changed the way she experiences languages, both in others and in herself. "I am constantly thinking about the way people speak nowadays when I was completely oblivious last year," she says. She also notes that she uses language differently than she has in the past. When communicating with her Korean coworkers, Rivera sometimes used words or phrases that they had taught her: "I feel like it helped me grow closer with them," she says. She then realized that she does the same thing in Spanish.
Rivera plans to continue her study when she returns to campus, and is excited to conduct research in the environment where she first noticed her own code-switching. An English major at Hamilton, she says she also plans to be more involved in the writing community this year. After she graduates, she hopes to attend law school.
-- by Laura Bramley
