[Air-l] minorities

[Cristian Berrío Zapata]

Enrique:

Estoy absolutamente de acuerdo contigo, el tema de la barrera de idioma
+ la berrea de visa + las barreras económicas dejan siempre de lado a
aquello que más necesitan de espacios como los de AOIR

I hope that for those not Spanish speakers, the above simple of what
means to have linguistic barriers have not been traumatic ;-). 

I again stress that it is not only about linguistic barriers when
discussing about the place of AOIR next conference. Pls. note that you
all had included political restrictions to moving, and I included
economical budget barriers for logistics.

Then I conclude that if AOIR people wants to be consistent with a
"one-world-for-all" view, it is imperative to put ICT tools to work for
people.  Let the conference be dual virtual and real.

Cristian Berrío Zapata
Profesor PUJ - UNAL
Facultad de Economía
Teléfono (57 3)300 817 9849
cberrioz at cable.net.co
CHAT cristianberrioz at hotmail.com


-----Mensaje original-----
De: air-l-aoir.org-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-aoir.org-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] En nombre de Enrique S
Enviado el: Martes, 05 de Octubre de 2004 12:54 p.m.
Para: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Asunto: Re: [Air-l] minorities

Hi all,

As I'm new at this list, first I'll briefly introduce myself. I'm just
a phd student from Argentina, in USA, studying intercultural -and
multilingual- online communities and I found this debate very
interesting. But as a Spanish-speaking researcher I think I can say a
pair of things about this issue.
Language is an obstacle even for those *very few* fortunate like me
that can read, write, listen and speak English in a more or less
acceptable level. But, even more, there are many excellent researchers
 in the world, specially those older and more experienced, for whom
English is an absolute barrier, and because of that the mainstream
research can't get their outcomes.

I agree with Jarek that priorities are first, budget second. What is a
sustainable project worth for without goals? But priorities are so
difficult to agree with when parts don't share backgrounds, and
perspectives.

Unfortunately, we know there are no easy solutions for the old problem
originated in Babel (talking about the Iraqi region... ;-). But as a
start, I would humbly suggest to all English-speakers to make the
effort of learning at least one foreign language and travel to a
country were they have to use it to survive. That's an excelllent
learning experience for anybody. Feeling what's to be 'minority' for a
moment may help them to understand the need of addressing the language
problem.


Regards, saludos, 

Enrique Stanziola
U of Maryland, Baltimore County

On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 13:12:22 -0400, jeremy hunsinger <jhuns at vt.edu>
wrote:
> > Ok, so we don't have the Pentagon budget. Can we afford the loss? I
> > think that our priorities should be put first, then the money will
> > follow, not the other way around.
> 
> then we go bankrupt:)  no thanks:)  sustainability is the first goal.
> if we don't exist anymore, we can't have goals....
> 
> 
> Jeremy Hunsinger
> Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
> () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail
> /\ - against microsoft attachments
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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