Remixing in the EFL Classroom: The Interlanguage Mash-up

Being Labeled Radical: the “artsy” one  

With my commitment to meaning-making language education comes my cross to bear: I am labeled.

Yes, I am the “artsy” English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instructor at my higher education institution. Art, in this case, is mistaken for poster making by my unenlightened colleagues; aesthetic teaching methods reduced down to the redheaded stepchild of “real” academics and legitimate language instruction.

There is a misconception that art-based methods are less rigorous and/or effective than focusing on correcting student errors and teaching them language/grammar points. (Side note: I most certainly don’t advocate for only having one style of teaching. Students need good instruction on the structure and form of English by instructors who get it. They just also need the balance of instruction based on the creative process of communication.)

My teaching methods admittedly privilege meaning-making over language rules and form. I seek to engage my students in authentic experiences where learners use their creative process to communicate meaningfully in their new language (Chappell and Faltis, 2013). Our (my students and me) classes are dedicated to, not only giving them the tools for creative communication, but providing them opportunities to get dirty using them, as well.

The Re-mix: focusing on the student’s interlanguage

In my last post, remixing and the mash-up were introduced as a natural creative process that human’s use to adapt to an ever-changing environment. I believe an effective language classroom is a microcosm of these bigger mash-ups of life; as students engage in their language-learning environment in creative ways, their perception begins to evolve and morph as they decode the English language/world. Therefore, they need strategies on processing this experience outside of just verbal and written communication.

The creative process as the bridge
between interlanguage and
language production. 

A students’ internal ‘interlanguage’ is the mash-up that my teaching methods focus on bringing to the surface. Chappell and Faltis (2013) summarizes Selinker’s (1972) definition of a student’s ‘interlanguage’ as “an internal system of language constructed by the learner, based on cognitive and linguistic interactions between the first and second language, coupled with how the learner experienced learning” (p. 8).

In an active and engaging learning environment, students’ are working from a continuous remixing as they learn to engage in meaning-making activities and therefore, their production of language in this environment are inherently mash-ups, in every sense of the word (even once they’ve become fluent whether error-free or not).

My goal is to get my students’ mash-up (interlanguage) from the inside out. I want to give my students the tools and strategies to creatively explore remixing and to understand that these moments of collage communication are legitimate. Mistakes are part of the learning process and some of the most profound works of fine art were thought to be mistakes by the artists themselves; an adjustment to real world obstacles that produced more interesting products then the artist’s original intention (here is list of quotes that work with this idea.) 

Visual literacy provides the students with a bridge between their interlanguage and their outer expression. The use of images and cultural symbolic representation provides students with the tools to improve their storytelling in English and to provide a more malleable structure to communicate within.

Students' pictorial autobiographies.
Their written narratives were separate.
Their final project combined them
together in a digital format. 

The use of collage via digital tools provides the students the ability to piece together their narratives with sound, image, and video. By loosening the structure of the acceptable classroom composition assignment, students have more freedom to explore the unknown creative meanings as they work to speak their stories that originate in Korean, but have to travel into effectively being told in English. Collage (mash-ups) gives students the opportunities to add texture to their storytelling that they can’t yet say in full-color via their foreign language(s).

Now, I am not advocating that your students simply stand in front of a video camera and talk. I don’t believe that is storytelling, nor does it apply the rigorous critical thinking that is embedded in the creative arts-based process. Students are still accountable to construct well-thought out compositions. They are just given more creative tools and vocabulary to produce them and the instruction to scaffold them.

Resources

Chappell, Sharon Verner & Faltis, Christian J. (2013) The Arts and Emergent Bilingual Youth: building culturally responsive, critical and creative education in school and community contexts. New York and London: Routledge. 

Cases for Remixing: Girl Talk, Collages, and Hawaiian Pidgin

Have you seen RiP: A Remix Manifesto?  Pop the corn, it is worth the watch. 

RiP: A Remix Manifesto is the brainchild of web activist Brett Gaylor. It is an open-sourced digital film with the mission, and intention, that a plethora of viewers are inspired to remix the movie to intensify the message and continue the community of online collaboration. Check out the website to understand what the real purpose of creative commons is intended to be.

Remixing, Mashups, and Samplings  

RiP: A Remix Manifesto pivots around the renegade mash-up musician known as Girl Talk. Are you like the old naive me who didn't know of what this Girl Talk was all about? Then, check out Oh No. 

I am a now officially a middle-aged (there I said it) Girl Talk convert.

As you listen to Oh No, you will note that you understand all and nothing of the song, at the same time. This is called a mash-up and blends samples of well-known songs with beats of lesser fame; the tempo is speed up, or slowed down, and is mixed together until the collage is uniquely Girl Talk.

A remix is a musical collage.

Cha-ching. 

A musical collage that might cost up to 2 million dollars, or some crazy number, if the copyrights of the samples were enforced.  

Basically, if someone records a song that goes unto the open market then they own that song. If anyone tries to use said song in any commercial fashion (from amateur plays to mash-ups) then the usee has to pay the user, better known as the copyright owner.

Thus far, no one has sued Greg Gillis, the genius better known as Girl Talk. In fact, the artists used in his samples have embraced him, but that wasn’t the case in the early 2000s when copyright ligation was getting hot and heavy and the narrative of the movie is set. 

Are the Rolling Stones for real? 

Note: Please refer below to the below section on Necessary Background Information.

Some corporations, formerly known as musical artists, such as the Rolling Stones have made a good chunk of their living on owning copyright such as that landmark case of the Stones vs the Verve… yet, RiP: A Remix Manifesto traces some of the biggest Stones’ hits to direct rip-offs of lesser known African-American artists and there is no evidence that those artists were fairly compensated for their original copyright. 

Who are we kidding? This isn’t about the artist, making money, or maintaining their rights over their works (except for the handful that were able to control their own destiny like the Rollings Stones and Metallica).

This is about a power country (U.S.A.) that is attempting to maintain their/our economy on the ownership and control of intellectual property (see below for the definition of intellectual property and the Clinton administration).

p.s. be inspired by Radiohead's business and distribution models that encourages remixing and open source (that I can only refer you to, but can't get into as I am still getting to my point AND the movie does a much better job than I will). 

Get Your Hands Off My Creative Process. 

What these conglomerates are really trying to control is the creative process (p.s.s. don't let them). 

The creative process isn’t just about art and music making; it is how we adapt and adjust to our ever changing environment. The creative process is how we survive.

Human Mash S**t Up

While watching the movie, I kept thinking of how natural it is for humans to have the desire to mix and remix things -that which is the most familiar to us- out of a necessity to communicate and adapt.

Conceptually, Girl Talk, a pidgin language, and a collage are the same human creative outputs.

Some of the daily remixing is out of necessity, for example, the development of pidgin and creole languages. Here is an excellent short youtube documentary explaining the development of the Hawaiian pidgin, which is the blending of Hawaiian, Cantonese, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and English to create a unique, fully functional language of its own. 

Note the blending is more sophisticated than a Girl Talk song, but the pidgin still functions on the same creative principles. 

While others mash-up out of a desire to express thought as physical thing. 

Pablo Picasso is attributed for introducing collage, as fine art, into the public conscious at the turn of the twentieth century. A litany of artists followed with collage and photomontage narratives of their own.

These collages are political and social functions. They communicate what a single image or language cannot. It is the creative process by which we organize and reorganize. Adapt and re-adapt.

So, what is the price tag on survival?

Too utilitarian to copyright... clothes, not music. 

Joanna Blakley’s TED Talk explains that the litigation for “borrowing” in fashion design is simply unsuccessful. No one owns any copyrights or patents. 

It would seem that items thought to be too utilitarian to copyright (shirt collars, pant cuffs, button up shirts, or shoe heels) are not able to hold a patent. No one entity in the marketplace can own something that might make making something -as the necessary as clothes- impossible to manufacture at a reasonable cost.

And so, why is music any less necessary to human life? 

Why, the RiP: A Remix Manifesto shows that a single Rolling Stones guitar rift can be traced back to the Mississippi cotton fields and the early sounds of African-American blues.

Isn’t the music that gets us through the day as utilitarian as the clothes that we wear? Who really decides the difference? And why? What do the decision-makers get out of it? And what does the average Joe(sphine)? Who is holding the power over the people's creative process? 

INSERT SIDEBAR HERE

RiP: A Remix Manifesto is:

1.       Culture always builds on the past.
2.       The past always tries to control the future.
3.        Our future is becoming less free.
4.       To build free societies you must limit the control of the past.  

RiP: A Remix Manifesto reminds us that the creative process is more than business and it is the core of our human existence and expression. Know your human rights.

Necessary Background Information

One of the points made late in the movie is that the Clinton administration (1993-2001) decided to exchange an economy based on manufacturing for one based on the ownership of intellectual property.

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization(WIPO), “intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literacy and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce” (www.wipo.int).

Intellectual property has two basic categories: industrial property (inventions, trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications of source) and copyright.

RiP: A Remix Manifesto focuses on the current litigation and conversation around copyright.

Copyright includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems, plays, films, musical works, artistic works such as drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures, and architectural designs (cite goes to www.wipo.int).

How does an economy on intellectual property work?

Completely oversimplified version goes like this… The conglomerates that own and control the intellectual property will hypothetically own and control the global economy from creativity to production to consumerism.

A successful U.S.
economy based on intellectual property completely depends on the entire world buying into the same kind of government regulation of copyright and industrial property. Patent trolls are the latest rage.

Here is an excellent Forbes article, titled India’s War on Intellectual Property RightsMay Bring With It A Body Count, giving just one example of how the world regulation of US copyright and industrial property is going.  Basically, India wants its citizens to be able to access cancer medications, but due to the high cost of manufacturing that results for US owned patents, many people of India can't afford the medications. 

So, India ousted the U.S. corporation owning the patents to manufacture generic medications that make cancer treatment affordable. This article outlines why this is bad for the US economy and the people who own the patent. 

Another more familiar example might be all the people sued for downloading music from napster.com in the early 2000s. Jammie Thomas-Rasset is the poster child for this lovely money-making corporate scheme. Thomas-Rasset fought the initial offer of settlement. All she had to do was pay $4500 for $8.99 worth of illegally downloaded music. The courts initial ruling was that the Minnesota Mom should pay $220,000 for copyright infringement, but the ruling was since overturned and is back in the court system.

Yeah, so would Ballantine Ale sue Jasper over the rights of this piece of Pop Art in the current political climate?