News:Multilingual classes expand cultural insight

Published: Wednesday, January 29, 200

Two UNM linguistics professors, both Fulbright Scholars, are offering courses this semester that emphasize the importance of multilingualism as an instrument to understanding foreign people and cultures.

Visiting Lecturer Zouhair Maalej, a Tunisian native, has previously lectured at a British university and is working on a book titled, "The Contemporary Cognitive Metaphor Theory: Arabic Data."

Maalej, who is fluent in Tunisian Arabic, Modern Arabic, French and English, said that his course, Cognitive Pragmatics, will offer insight into the metaphor of language and how this plays a role in human interaction. By examining cultural differences that exist and their relation to the expression of time, gender, nomenclature, translation and emotion, Maalej hopes to inspire and inform his students.

"I tend to think of a second language as another window to the world," Maalej said. "If you have a house and only one window, the house might not be as bright as it should be."

Maalej started his bilingual education at the age of six.

Professor David Margolin is offering a class on societal bilingualism this semester titled Societal Bilingualism in which students will analyze trends in world languages.

Recently returning from Honduras where he worked with the Tawahkas, an indigenous people, Margolin has periodically taught at UNM for several semesters.

Margolin earned his doctorate in Education Linguistics from UNM and speaks English, Spanish, German, three Scandinavian languages and Faroese, a language spoken in the Faroe Islands, in the northern Atlantic.

Both professors emphasized the importance of learning a second language as a tool to expand the reach of knowledge and personal experience.

Maalej said that the growing population of worldwide English speakers creates a paradox for native English speakers.

"Because English is growing and has international status many people don't think that other modern languages are important to learn unless they need them, unless they're interested at the personal level," Maalej said.