Welcome Back!

After a month of getting discouraged and stressing about my case studies, I think I'm finally ready to get back into it. I think last semester I was doing way too much and not giving myself any breaks so when break finally rolled around I just completely stopped and wasn't ready to start back up again when January 13th rolled around. That being said I think I've made a little bit of progress over the last month and I kind of know the direction I'm going into. As of our class meeting on Thursday, I wasn't completely solid on what my second case study would be but now that I've had my board meeting I have a direction and lots of emails to send!

As of today I'm planning to use the RMSC and the Strong Museum of Play as my two case studies. I chose these two after some suggestion from my committee. They are both AAM accredited and they market to the same audience. Choosing two Rochester area museums to compare seems like a very achievable project to me and isn't too out of the scope of what I'm capable of with our time limit. I'm excited to get into it because that means I get to visit my favorite museums in the area very often over the next few weeks!

Getting started on writing the 8 pages was pretty terrible. I know Dr. Lent said that the first effort would be bad but right now I feel like i'm just typing word vomit but it still feels good to finally start writing.

Blog Post 6- Topic Evolution

After going back to look at what I was cooking up in September I don't think my topic has changed all that much. In our original posts about potential ideas I said that for a language based thesis I wanted to look at how visitor experience is impacted by language in the museum and how language could be adjusted to be welcoming for the broadest swath of visitors. In my research and our most recent lit review my sources focused on language and power and meaning making in the museum. I feel like I've stayed true to my original idea while drilling down and thinking about what I want the end goal for this project to be.

I currently see myself offering recommendations for language use in the museum with my final submission and that may change as time goes on but I do like the direction my thesis is heading in. I'm hoping to strike a balance between linguistic concepts and museum theory to make the project relevant to both fields. I think my big next step is to decide on if I need to include a specific case study in the project and if so how would I do that? I'm thinking that it would be a group of museums in a city with a diverse population and I would spend winter break going to these museums and documenting their language use. It might be more achievable to do this in Rochester but if I do that I need to start making connections with institutions soon so they know what I'm trying to do and give me the okay on it.

Blog Post 5: Feelin Good!

Hey y'all, long time no see!

It's week 9 and progress is definitely being made. I have both my advisors locked in and I've started my story-board. Right now the story-board is just my research question and and some major topics i'm thinking of hitting on but its something!

I think for the first two weeks of my research I was spending too much time looking at language acquisition studies and discourse analysis studies and then I tried to mold my topic around that. I'm definitely branching out now after writing and revising my lit review. I feel like I have a much better idea of where my topic is going. I'm definitely going to focus less on language acquisition and more on language barriers, power structures, and communication through multiple modes. Within this I will be addressing the ways in which language use can alienate visitors. Two of these ways are high level language use and jargon in label copy, and the ways certain groups are talked about (i.e. are they being voyeuristic, oversimplifying, patronizing, paternalistic, or primitivist in any way). 

After meeting with my secondary advisor and doing my own research, I'm grounding my research in a socio-cultural direction and running with it. I need to do more research on things like code-switching, museum accessibility, and meta-discursive functions. Meta-discursive functions are basically how the language we use is interpreted by other people and then integrated.  An important part of meta-discursive functions is lexical indexing, meaning how we want people to interpret us through the way we speak. Focusing on these parts of linguistics will help me make my recommendations about language use changes that can happen in the museum. I'm excited for the next few weeks and the things I'm gonna learn in them! 

Revised Topic Draft and Citations!

Research Question:

How can museums use language to end visitor alienation and increase engagement?

In this project, I will be looking at how language use in society creates inside groups and establishes a social hierarchy and how this is reflected in museums. Many other types of organizations are already doing this, museums can too. AAM's LGBTQ+ Alliance is already making efforts to make museum language more inclusive for all people, this could be a great case-study on expanded language use in the museum[1]. It is my belief that changing or evolving language use in museums can help to stop alienation of visitors. It is important to create a broader insider group through the way we speak to our visitors. Currently there is a major gap in how museums communicate with their visitors and how visitors and the general public communicate with each other. This includes the languages that are prominent in the museum, as well as the different words that we use regularly, i.e. the slang you use with your friends. Can museums seize upon an opportunity to majorly impact language use and preservation in America today?

Recently, the International Council of Museums held a contentious vote on changing the definition of the museum; some important parts of this proposed definition for my project, “Museums are democratizing, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures…safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people… and work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collection, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and enhance understandings of the world.”[2]  Although this definition was not adopted at the 2019 conference, I think it is worthwhile to see how the language we use can help shift meaning for the visitors in this context.

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[1] Anshel, Nancy, Erin Bailey, Johanna Blume, James Burns, Wesley Chenault, Barbara Cohenstratyner, Heather Doggett, et al. 2016. “LGBTQ Alliance Welcoming Guidelines for Museums.” American Alliance of Museums.

[2] “ICOM Announces the Alternative Museum Definition That Will Be Subject to a Vote,” ICOM, accessed October 1, 2019, https://icom.museum/en/news/icom-announces-the-alternative-museum-definition-that-will-be-subject-to-a-vote/.

Resources:

1.     1. Anshel, Nancy, Erin Bailey, Johanna Blume, James Burns, Wesley Chenault, Barbara Cohenstratyner, Heather Doggett, et al. 2016. “LGBTQ Alliance Welcoming Guidelines for Museums.” American Alliance of Museums.

a.       This source is a great example of a museum language guide. It explains its target groups and goes in depth on word usage and how to respectfully address specific people. It provides no harsh judgement of the people it is targeted towards and tries to act as educationally as possible. 10/10 love this one.

2.     2. Eastaugh, Erik. “The Concept of a Linguistic Community.” University of Toronto Law Journal 69, no. 1 (Winter 2019): 117–58.

a.       This source is more on the legal side of language and tries to address how to define a linguistic community in reference to language-based laws and language preservation. One important aspect of this article is how it attempts to define the relationship between language and culture. Eastaugh emphasizes that just because you share a language with someone does not mean that you are participants in a shared “mono-culture”. This article got me thinking about language laws and rights in America; I’m not sure how helpful that will be for my project, but it’ll be interesting to learn about.

3.     3. Huong, Le Pham Hoai. “The More Knowledgeable Peer, Target Language Use, and Group Participation.” The Canadian Modern Language Review 64, no. 2 (December 2007): 333–54.

a.       This source was really great and will be really helpful for me. It talked a lot about educational concepts as they relate to language acquisition. This made me think about language development and progression in children. If museums already act as a secondary source for educational development for children, what are they doing and what more could they do for language acquisition? This doesn’t just apply to children, it is also useful to think about adults, especially adults learning a new language! The concept of the “zone of Proximal development” which deals with your language development and problem solving is interesting for language acquisition regardless of age.

4.    4.  “ICOM Announces the Alternative Museum Definition That Will Be Subject to a Vote.” n.d. ICOM. Accessed October 1, 2019. https://icom.museum/en/news/icom-announces-the-alternative-museum-definition-that-will-be-subject-to-a-vote/.

5.     5. Lee, Thomas, and Linh Cao. “Language Use in Family and Society.” English Journal 89, no. 1 (September 1999): 107–13. https://doi.org/10.2307/821364.

a.       This source is an ethnographic look at a Vietnamese family in America that takes a look at the role of language in families and how that affects their interactions with society. This article got me thinking about translation sources in museum’s because the family in the article speaks 4 languages at varying levels of proficiency that leads to a major communication gap between the older members and the younger members of the family. Is this something that the museum can address? Is it even something museum’s should care about?

6.     6. Reid, Robin. “Philology and Language Studies: Tolkien’s Use of English.” Tolkien Studies 13 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1353/tks.2016.0026.

a.       This source wasn’t all that helpful, it spoke about the specific aspects of Tolkien’s use of language and their literary impact which isn’t very useful for my purposes. Very interesting read if you’re interested in learning about the impact of Tolkien’s naming conventions though!