Professor Weaves New Definition Of Foreign Language

By Susan E. Rangel

For six weeks she listened, she watched, she cooked and, gradually Dr. Sally Said became a weaver, of both Navajo rugs and stories.

To compare the roles an audience can play in a student’s writing, the Incarnate Word associate professor in foreign languages gained the trust of the Navajo students at Dinè College in Tsaile, Az. Visiting the college previously with Rebecca Cross, a former English adjunct instructor, Said observed the art of weaving to build a bridge to a still new activity — writing.

Though there are outstanding Dinè authors, such as poet Laura Tohe and novelist Irvin Morris, most Dinè tend to view writing as foreign — the Dine language had not been a written language until educators developed alphabets for its transcription in the last century. Said and Cross hoped Navajo students would come to understand writing as a craft much like their weaving of rugs. Through Beverly Allen’s, a weaving instructor at Dinè college, introduction to weaving, the researchers became aware that Writing Circles, an approach that they developed over the last few years, might be adapted for use with Dinè college classes. The process involves writing to and for an audience, getting feedback, then rewriting for a wider group.

“We became aware of the potential for using Writing Circles to empower not just university students, but also the community weavers, most of them uncomfortable with print literacy, though functionally literate,” said Said, co-chair of the UIW foreign language department.

Showing that the weaving process was a metaphor for life — it took patience to teach weaving — Allen shared much about what she’s learned through its process. “Our own experience and frustration with the early learning to weave affirmed these lessons,” said Said. The lessons about Navajo culture were central to making the writing approach work.

Thanks to funding from Title V, Cross and Said were able to travel to Dinè College in 2002. They found that the blending of strategies through Writing Circles improved the quality of student writing. Though progress has been slow in promoting writing between students at Dinè and at Incarnate Word, Said hopes the process continues to grow. Currently her students read Dinè writing, while structuring their own work according to a Navajo understanding of learning.

“What we’ve discovered along the way is the powerful role that language plays in Navajo life,” Said said of the work with Dinè students. “The power of speech, and thus writing, is the very power of physical creation, according to Navajo cosmology.”

For the seasoned traveler and student of language, the results and process were nothing new. Said did much the same, years before teaching at Incarnate Word, while a professor at the University of Khartoum in Sudan. Traveling to Sudan after completing her doctoral work, she taught English and linguistics while studying the culture’s customs. Her discovery of the wisdom of Sudanese folktales led her teaching students to collect and transcribe stories from their own tribal traditions. Said’s collection became the co-authored bilingual book “Tales of Animals, Magic and Men.” Designed for use in Sudanese schools, the book promotes multicultural understanding among diverse cultures and language groups. “Being immersed in other cultures and languages allows us to become more aware of our own and their place in a diverse world,” Said noted.

Returning to the Middle East in 1999 during a sabbatical, Said again analyzed forms of cultural expression to better understand the societal context of language. While visiting Istanbul, Syria, Lebanon, and Cairo she focused on medieval castles as texts that transmitted messages to residents and surroundings. During her sabbatical, Said was joined by her son, Karim, who photographed the castles, and colleague Cross, a long-time student of medieval military culture, Said gained a renewed sense of the importance of metaphor in culture as physical artifacts, behavior, attitudes, and thus in language.

“What I try to incorporate in all my classes is that language and identity are closely linked,” said Said. “Language defines our sense in the world and our relationship to others who might be different and to the environment we share.”

Said presented her sabbatical work with colleagues at an Incarnate Word conference in 2000, and later officials with the San Antonio Museum of Art approached her to expand the program for them. A year later she and colleagues exhibited the photographic tour of a castle with its changing message through the years.

She returned to her Middle East findings this year in a presentation on literacy education. With 16 years of teaching language at Incarnate Word, Said aimed to contribute to the conversation about literacy and language choice in post-war Sudan during a recent rhetoric conference at Arizona State University.

Said sums up her views on language and culture by proclaiming, “Everything is language and nothing is foreign.”