OK, I know I have blogged about this on numerous occasions but this really, really, really bugs me, and I have reached the point of complete saturation with this topic in everybody I know in RL.
So my department has decided that we will proceed with the name change in a way that will mollify both the PC idiots and the Anthropology losers. We will now transform from a nobly and beautifully named “Department of Foreign Languages and Literature” to the idiotically and kookily named “Department of World Languages.”
I can’t imagine introducing myself as somebody from “World Languages.” I also fear that signing an article submission with this departmental name will make people decide I’m an idiot from a department of New-Agey fools who do nothing but create language textbooks.
If somebody has two identical job offers and one is from a “Department of World Languages” while another one is from a department with a normal name, would anybody choose “World Languages”? I wouldn’t have even applied to this university if this had been the departmental name in 2008!
This will be an expensive change at a time when we constantly have our funding for legitimate research and teaching expenses frozen. We couldn’t even afford to buy a Christmas-time pizza to show our gratitude to our lab workers. But servicing people’s weird PC needs can always be funded.
Yes, PC police exists but it is located exclusively inside people’s heads. And I guess I’m just too foreign ever to stop feeling annoyed by this sad fact.
Clarissa's Blog 
Well if it makes you feel any better, many schools with good reputations use the term “World Languages” so you aren’t going to stick out in any way. Nobody in your professional world is going to think any less of you or your school. 🙂 I agree with you though: “World Languages” is strange because it seems to assume that English isn’t a “world language.”
I don’t mind “Foriegn Language” but I do have a small quibble with it.Since English isn’t the declared language of the US and since many Americans learn Spanish as their first language, I would argue that Spanish isn’t a foreign language.
I know I’ve said this before but I personally think perhaps “Modern Language” is best. Or perhaps “Classical and Modern Languages” for departments that offer Latin.
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“I know I’ve said this before but I personally think perhaps “Modern Language” is best. Or perhaps “Classical and Modern Languages” for departments that offer Latin.”
What? Latin is far from the only classical language. Ancient Greek and Sanskrit come to mind immediately. I suspect that a few moments reflection would lead me to a dozen more.
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“Latin is far from the only classical language. Ancient Greek and Sanskrit come to mind immediately. I suspect that a few moments reflection would lead me to a dozen more.”
Oh sure. Latin was just the first example that came to my mind. Clumsy wording on my part. 🙂
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Latin is the only classical language universities that are not extremely rich are still somehow managing to offer (not for long, though.)
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I am pretty sure that a number of universities also offer classical Hebrew. It is difficult to see how you can have any type of religious studies focusing on the Old Testament if nobody can read it in the original language.
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Hebrew is always a separate department (Jewish Studies). Not at my university, of course, where students don’t know the word “Jews.”
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When I applied to jobs in 2012, about half the departments were world languages, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
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Gosh, really? So the silly PC disease has infected many places. 😦 How sad.
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Oh Clarissa, you’re not too foreign! That would be so offensive. What you mean to say is that you are too um…..worldly!
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No, I’m plenty foreign, and I insist. 🙂 I had to google Superbowl to see what sport I was being invited to watch. Can you get any more foreign than that?
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Well, I’m American, and my son in law had to inform me that this was a football match, not baseball.
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Good! I feel less alone now. 🙂
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Wait. Not exactly right. I knew the finals game was between San Francisco and Seattle, and I knew it was football. What I did not know was that they were playing the 49ers, not the Giants. The Giants is a baseball team. My son in law had to set me straight on that.
Anyway, I find all spectator sports excruciatingly boring, as does my husband, thank god.
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When I want to scare my husband, I suggest we watch a game of sports. He gets this really terrified look that is really funny. 🙂
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“Department of World Languages”
I’m sorry that’s a really stupid fucking name and pretending it isn’t doesn’t help any. There’s no way to sugar coat it with ‘oh, other people are calling it that’ it sounds as stupid as something the mega-weenies at shakesville or feministing would come up with.
It also has ‘eliminate this program!’ written into the very name’ since when people think of ‘world languages’ they think of English and so the very name conditions people to think of your department as silly and irrelevant and prime for pruning.
You have my sympathies if you have to pretend in public that the name isn’t nauseating.
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“I’m sorry that’s a really stupid fucking name and pretending it isn’t doesn’t help any. There’s no way to sugar coat it with ‘oh, other people are calling it that’ it sounds as stupid as something the mega-weenies at shakesville or feministing would come up with.”
– Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for saying this. I’ve been feeling like “una voz clamante en el desierto” on this subject. And nobody seems to understand why it bothers me so much. But it’s exactly what you say: it’s like we are apologizing for our existence, or something.
“It also has ‘eliminate this program!’ written into the very name’ since when people think of ‘world languages’ they think of English and so the very name conditions people to think of your department as silly and irrelevant and prime for pruning.”
– That’s exactly what I’m saying! We were told directly by the administration, “If you see yourselves as nothing but a service department, we are not sure we need you.” And in response, we go and name ourselves like a total service department.
“You have my sympathies if you have to pretend in public that the name isn’t nauseating.”
– You know me, I’m not pretending. I tried to argue against the change as much as I could, but people just made huge scared eyes at me. Like, “OMG, she is defending the word foreign, what a total immigrant hater.” Given that I seem to be the only person sitting at those meetings without a US passport, that’s rich.
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Also, people have started to suggest that my limited command of English is preventing me from seeing the negative connotations of “foreign.” I see the connotations well enough, but that’s why I like this word in our name. If the name itself makes people question their assumptions, if the word sticks in their craw and makes them pause to think, that’s good. The anodyne “world languages” doesn’t have that potential.
We are philologists, God damn it, let’s stop being scared by words!!!
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“Also, people have started to suggest that my limited command of English is preventing me from seeing the negative connotations of “foreign.””
I think it’s only negative to people who don’t like foreigners or foreign languages.
“We are philologists”
I recently heard of a philology department where I work wanting to rename themselves (in Polish) because ‘philology’ isn’t used much in English. Why should that matter?
The world is going insane….
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Yesterday I listened to some people on TV who lived in Latvia and were speaking a language I could not understand. I said to Mike, “Their English is really poor. I can’t understand a word.”
Later, a right-wing German immigrant, who happens to be in government spoke about his political agenda. “Deport him to Venezuela!” I shouted.
My beliefs are very firm about things.
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I just came back from “Electives Night” at the high school that my eldest kid is supposed to start attending in the fall. They offer Spanish, French, German, and Chinese. The department is called “The Department of World Languages.”
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That’s a great school! But we do much more than teach languages at our department. At least, for now.
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