Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

Christina Biava

Vulnerability and Tolerance in Adult Second Language Acquisition 

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Abstract

The field of second language acquisition (SLA), an area of applied linguistics, investigates how adults learn languages. For over 35 years, researchers have investigated a variety of area including aspects of the languages themselves (e.g., contrastive grammar), as well as characteristics of the learners themselves (such as learning strategies, personality variables like introversion/extroversion, motivation, etc.), and the social language learning context.

In my paper, I would like to investigate the issue of how the language learner is seen in terms of two characteristics that have both a personal side as well as a social side.  First, the language learner has been identified as someone who must be tolerant of ambiguity, as the new language situation is full of ambiguity yet the learner must be able to still learn aspects of the language from the environment.  Second, as language learning is not just simply learning new words and grammar rules, the second language learner must be able to open the very depths of his/her personality to change—i.e., he/she must be vulnerable not just to a new culture but to having his/her personality changed via the language learning experience. 

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Dr. Christina Biava is a professor of linguistics and applied linguistics in the Dept of English at Missouri State University. There she coordinates the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) program, training English –language teachers. She teaches courses in a broad range of linguistics areas including second language acquisition and sociolinguistics, along with traditional areas of linguistics such as grammatical theory.
She received her PhD in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1991, with a dissertation focusing on the comprehension of metaphorical language by non-native speakers of English. In spring 1999 she was a senior Fulbright lecturer in Budapest, Hungary. Other research interests have included ethical issues in language teaching, second language writing, and Italian-American literature.
Her primary research interest for the past five years, however, has been the Mimetic Theory of Rene Girard as well as the theory of Generative Anthropology as developed by Eric Gans, an early student of Girard’s; in GA, Gans has developed a foundational role for language. Dr. Biava has presented papers linking linguistic topics to both MT and GA at the four previous COV&R conferences: “Mimesis vs. Creativity in Language Acquisition” (2006); “Nature or Convention? Insights from the Tower of Babel Story” (2005); “Human Nature and Language: Sociolinguistic Theory and Mimetic Theory Connect” (2004); “Girardian Theory and Linguistic Theory: Cross Fertilization” (2003).