Newsletter Story 1
“An Afternoon with Nancy Bell” by Roseanne Gatto
The Graduate Studies in Composition and TESOL Program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania was proud to welcome its newest faculty member this fall, Nancy Bell. I was fortunate enough to spend some time with her at the beginning of the semester. Bell received her Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of Oregon. She reflected on the events that led up to her choosing linguistics as her major: “While looking through the catalog, I came across linguistics, and I thought, ‘Man, I don’t know what that is, but it sounds like fun.’ My first class of my freshman year was a linguistics course, and I knew this was what I wanted to major in. Everything I did I thought was cool. “
After receiving her bachelor’s degree, Bell realized she needed a job. Since she didn’t know how to teach ESL at that time, she joined the Peace Corp. She was stationed in Cameroon for a couple of years where she taught English.
Upon returning from Cameroon, Bell spent the next five years pursuing her doctoral degree at Penn State. After finishing her course work, Bell moved to Utah where her husband was working towards his Master of Fine Arts in ceramics. At that point, she had five years worth of data in tow.
You completed your dissertation in 2002 in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Could you tell us a little about your study?
My dissertation was titled Using and Understanding Humor in a Second Language: A Case Study. The dissertation came out of my own experiences living in France and Cameroon…speaking French all the time. Even though I speak French well, and I could pretty much say what I wanted to say, a lot of times I couldn’t get the French humor, and so I felt like, this isn’t really me. I’m funnier than this. And I started talking to other people about it and they also said, ‘It’s extremely difficult.’
How did you avoid burning out on your dissertation topic?
I didn’t really get burned out on it. I did it pretty quick and I think the best thing is to take a semester or a summer or a three to four month period where all you do is work. How possible is that for a lot of people, right? But, I was really lucky to be able to have that opportunity to just work and work and work.
Tell us about your current research.
I am studying native speaker/ nonnative speaker interaction, particularly the second language pragmatics of it. A lot of people were going around saying ‘We need to teach people pragmatics, we need to teach people how to be polite,’ that kind of thing, and ‘these are the kinds of things that are going to cause big problems and errors.’ We already know that that doesn’t really cause problems. Do we know that students get upset if I try to give you a compliment and I say ‘oh, you look so fat today?’ You may be offended, but in my culture you look healthy. Do people really get upset about that or do they negotiate that like they negotiate everything else.
What brought you to IUP?
When I read the ad I just about fell out of my chair…this was me. The wording involved ESL and the politics of language and power, and the negotiation of identity. A perfect fit. IUP was also the only place I saw that seemed to value both teaching and research.
What do you like about teaching?
Oh, gosh. I pretty much like everything about teaching, except for grading. I love making new syllabi. I love figuring out my lesson plans. Walking around campus and thinking oh, we can do that. I love hearing what the students have to say. And I love it when they don’t get it and you have to work. And when they do get something, you’re like yeah. I’m really looking forward to working with graduate students at IUP.