ENGAGING CONTROVERSIAL LANGUAGE IN SECOND-LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS.
Ana-Maria Jerca, Staff Writer
In one of my second-language education classes earlier this month, the issue of translating controversial language was brought up.
One teacher candidate in particular, who I will refrain from disclosing, mentioned a reflective experience from practicum. When asked by a student how to translate the word “rape,” they answered: “That’s not a word we use in our class. Maybe you can think of another word you could use.” The TC was congratulated by our professor for not translating this word for the student, which I suspect was the point of the lesson: providing students with the means to look up new vocabulary and allowing them to finish their thought in the target language without being interrupted by the language barrier.
The class moved on. However some students, including myself, did not.
Why can’t I teach my students the word “rape”? Granted, I am unaware of the context in which the TC was asked the question. If they were working on writing jokes in their second language, for instance, I can understand why one would like them to refrain from using the word “rape”. However, that is no reason not to teach it.
Telling students the word “rape” is not to be used in the classroom is only perpetuating the taboo. It’s telling our students that rape is not something we discuss openly; rather it’s something we hide. One of the most obvious consequences of this is that it will further discourage victims of rape from coming forward and talking about it.
We are not helping anybody by avoiding the word “rape.”
In high school, “rape” is a word that is already in students’ vocabularies when they walk into our classrooms. Often used in the wrong context, perhaps as a synonym for “win” or “conquer” (ex: “I totally raped that game.”) or within the context of a joke as mentioned above. What is to blame for the misuse of the word “rape” but ignorance? Our role as educators is to make students sensitive and aware of the world around them and the people in it. Part of this task is to teach them the appropriate context in which to use words like “rape” and precisely what makes the other contexts inappropriate.
This starts with teaching them how to say it in their second language. It starts when we stop perpetuating the taboo. Allowing students to use the word “rape” in a second-language classroom within the appropriate context will provide an environment that increases their sensitivities to victims of trauma.
Furthermore, when we translate the word “rape” and other controversial words, we also translate the appropriate context in which it is used by virtue of the fact that humour, slang, and other inappropriate contexts are practically untranslatable from one language to another. For example, translating the sentence “I totally raped that game” to French would not make any sense. However, the sentence “Countless women were raped during the war” in French is quite meaningful.
Because of the way second-language acquisition improves the way one uses their first language, by teaching students the word “rape” together with the correct context in which to use it in the second language, we can potentially stop the inappropriate use of the word “rape” in their first language.
The main thing that separates “rape” from classroom-oriented words like “desk”, “pencil”, and “tree” is that it carries heavy connotations.
But that serves to make it all the more meaningful and all the more dangerous to ignore. School should not be a place that exchanges ignorance for the comfort of avoiding a touchy subject.
