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Hi, my name is George Abraham and welcome to iba conversations. My guest today is Dr. Shireen Irani from Mumbai, she is a linguist, a teacher, a copy editor and a proud pet parent. Hi, Shireen. Welcome.
Hi, George and hello listener.
Many of us may not really understand who a linguist is. So maybe you could begin by telling us who will linguist is, and how did you get interested in linguistics,
you know, the popular notion of a linguist is somebody who knows many, many languages, but that is not true. I mean, that is partly true. But the essentially a linguist is somebody who has studied the subject called linguistics, which is basically the science of language. And, sadly, it is offered only at the university level, and there are just a handful of colleges offering it at the graduation level. But it is a very, very beautiful discipline. It essentially says that every language has a science behind that it is it is a very systematic entity that has, you know, its grammar very, very well organized. And it's, you know, once you start discovering it, which I help people do with English specifically, then, you know, it's like a whole goldmine of stuff that opens up.
As a linguist, if somebody were to pursue the subject of linguistics as a discipline, say, in university, what are the kinds of professional opportunities that
open up so teaching is one option or not only at the level of university, but you can also be an excellent school teacher, then of course, there is the profession that is usually in demand now, which is computational linguistics, where if you have a computer science background, if you know programming languages, then you can become what is called Computational linguist working for huge companies like Google and Amazon, where you know, you help engineers build the kinds of apps that we are using to date. And then you have other very interesting fields such as forensic linguistics, where you know, today, every court at least, you know, abroad, every court has forensic linguist who tries to identify, for example, the language variety that a criminal may have used for, you know, for example, unsolicited calls or any conversation that people have during a crime being committed, things like that. And then, of course, there are various other options related to society and language. There is also Historical Linguistics for people who want to get into the history of languages, who want to also build things like dictionaries, and thesauruses, and things like that.
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Sharon, you are a PhD and you've done a PhD in language. It's an interdisciplinary study of language and music. That's an interesting combination. Can you unpack it for us?
Yeah, sure. So, um, so I was a musician before I started, before I decided I need to study a little more, I have just completed my graduation and I said, you know, I think I should have some other career option, you know, in case you know, when I'm 70 years old, and nobody wants to have me perform as a musician. And so I mean, in a way thank God that I did that because during the pandemic, everything stopped. Right so you know, all the live music just went for a complete toss for those couple of years. And so I decided to study further and did my Master's in linguistics from UGA University. I went to Hyderabad to do my PhD in this interdisciplinary field. So what it is really is that, you know, every language has its own rhythm. So, you know, when you listen, whether you know language or not, sometimes when you listen to people talk, you just know that, okay, this is Malayalam or the system or, or, you know, this is even something like a Chinese variety like Mandarin for that matter, or, you know, like, Italian has its own rhythm, it was none. And so you know, that kind of stuff. So there are, every language has its own rhythms, that is one. And that rhythm is based on a lot of cues that we get a lot of auditory cues that we get, like, you know, loud things becoming loud and soft, or, you know, long and short vowels and things like that. And actually, if you think about it, music also is just full of wisdom, right? We are able to decipher so many various rhythmic structures based on the same kind of cues, loudness, or, let's say, a long, no beat versus a short date and things like that. Yeah. So this is what I was essentially testing that the the perception similarities between language and music,
while you were studying, meaning your academics, your graduation, post graduation as your PhD, being a blind or visually impaired person from childhood, whether any challenges that you had, and if yes, then how did you address them?
Oh, yes, there were a lot of challenges. And I mean, eventually, I am thankful for those experiences, because they have just made me a richer person for those experiences. But they were really, really hard at the time, particularly because, like I said that my theory went slightly against, you know, mainstream convention. And so the theory was that, you know, you will not be able to perceive the sounds in music if you don't have them in your life. And my experiments kept giving me the exactly opposite results. And I kept going to my supervisor, and he kept getting frustrated, Kre, why aren't you getting the same results that everybody is getting? Because we have to scratch each other's backs. And we have to say, what the mainstream has been saying, and how can I allow you to publish something that is not mainstream, and I was very upset to hear that because I thought he, you know, science is a very honest thing. And you know, when you have new data, then you have to change your theories in light of that new data. Yeah. But my supervisor kept on insisting and because I wanted to stay stay true to my findings and to to the science that I believed in, I refused to, to kind of, you know, manipulate my data, just because my supervisor wanted me to do something. And when he realized that he tried to dissuade me from publishing my thesis, so he would not give me time, he would not, he would make me wait for like two and a half hours outside his office and not give me the appointment. And then it is it is very difficult judge for a blind person to, you know, make the choice between quitting the PhD tools to sort of retain your own sanity, and not kill yourself versus, you know, just sticking with it, and making sure that you accomplish it, because you believe in its truth, and its authenticity. And also, the other thing that happens is that, you know, ultimately, you're representing the blind community. And so if you quit a PhD in the middle of slides, three, three and a half years, then all that people know is, you know, she was blind, and she quit, because she couldn't do it, you
feel that this, this challenge that you had, while doing your PhD, the discrimination or the the you being singled out, and your your findings not being kind of recognized, wasn't done, because the supervisor felt that you were blind, and therefore your findings may not be accurate, or it was just straightforward, not wanting to make changes.
I think that was one of the reasons that, as you mentioned, that he did not have faith in my finding. The other was also that I had participated in a protest in the university a couple of years before my submission, where it was an all student protests against the vice chancellor who had you know, made really, I mean, she was being really nasty, and she had in quite the fees drastically, and she was being there were a lot of strict rules against girls, you know, not allowing them to come out of the hospital after 11 o'clock and things like that. And we had all participated in a protest and I had gone into a hunger strike and things like that. Were, you know, again, a very interesting dynamic played out there, you know, people were asking me Do you have any disability issue, you know, if you want, we'll we'll deliver your food to your room, if you want, we'll give you a room on the ground ground floor, just tell us what you want to get out of the protests. Yeah. And at that time, the point that I was trying to make is that, okay, I have I am a person with disability, but I'm also a student, and I'm also a girl student who does not want those curfews to be placed on me. And that is I was participating the protests, people just could not understand that. And that is also another thing that, you know, my supervisor kind of held against me,
you mentioned the copy editing. So what's the kind of copy editing you do? Are you working for any particular firm, maybe talk us a little bit about copy editing and the kind of copy editing you do. So, I
work for a company called Cactus Communications, which is a global enterprise that helps people, students all over the world students from China, Japan, Korea, the US, Europe everywhere, to publish articles to find relevant journals to publish their work and you know, even in a lot of such countries English is not their first language. So, the So, they, when they write an article to publish for for a journal, they the article is first sent to us and we copy edited, which means that we check not only for grammatical and spelling mistakes, but also things like whether or not there is a logical flow to the article, whether the scientific the tools, the research methods that they have used, are they in line with their findings in line with their research question, things like that. And it also involves, you know, looking at tables very, very minute really looking to check whether there is there are no extra spaces between the two words, whether you know, nowadays, there are very, very specific journal guidelines that each journal has, you know, in terms of various different referencing styles that you have to use to cite your references, we have to even check minut details like you know, whether the curly apostrophe is used, or the state apostrophe, so the straight apostrophe is just read as tick by a screen reader, whereas curly apostrophes are read as left tick and Right. Right. So you know, things like that. So we have to ensure that there is consistency also throughout. So for example, if the apostrophe appears, let's say 30 times in the whole document, out of which 25 times they have used the curly ones, but five times they have used the state ones by mistake, then those have to be identified. And then we write a detailed report of, you know, the relevance of their work, whether it is in line with the scope of the journal, what are the gaps in their research methodology, things like that. It is something that I really enjoy, although it is a lot of work, because, you know, the way people sighted people who just sort of run their eyes through a document is that the time that they take is much shorter than the time that we would take to read things, sometimes even you know, character by character to see whether a word is not capitalized by mistake. So, you know, there are a lot of nuances that have to be taken care of. So it is a lot of tedious work, but I enjoy every minute of it, I really enjoy doing it. I used to do it informally, even during school and college time for friends. And I'm so happy that I'm doing it professionally.
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Shouldn't you also have been doing workshops with students and teachers both in the urban and rural setup? What is the area of training that you do? And can you talk us through some of your experiences there?
Sure. So like I mentioned, George, I am very, very interested in kind of promoting access to English that is slightly more sort of as in in your words, I think it was available, affordable and accessible, if I'm not mistaken. And that is what I tried to do, really with not only with people with visual impairment, but particularly with school teachers. In and around Maharashtra All school teachers, government employees, anybody who, for example, translators who are dealing with English all the time. And with school teachers, it becomes extremely important because like I said, linguistics is something that they do not have access to very often. And it not only involves access to English, that is, you know, much more, sort of easier and more scientific and more logical. But also, given the emphasis on mother tongue education, in the recent years, it becomes really important to incorporate the child's mother tongue into the teaching of English. Because otherwise very often, people just forced the child to speak in English right from day one without kind of giving them any footing or any kind of background into the language becomes really important for pedagogic practices within the classroom teaching practices within the classroom to be student friendly. And, you know, something that does not kind of also allow for discrimination because very often, what happens is that the very often the teacher says, you you speak in English, or you shut up to speak in the standard variety, or don't say anything, and you have, you know, people growing into adults, just sort of being told to shut up just once in their life who have shut up all their lives and not been able to express themselves because of that. So it is very traumatic for the child to be told to not express herself at such an early age,
you've been taking classes with Tanya computers. Talk a little bit about these classes.
Yes, sure. So we have there are two classes that we run one is a basic English course. And then the others are advanced course in English. And there are three of us women who are handling this under the banner of Talia computer center. So there is Tanya and then there is Shayla D'Souza, who was a banker who helps us with our admin work in the advisory committee. And then there is me who, I'm the teacher. And we have various batches of visually impaired students who want to learn English, these are generally typically three, three and a half month courses where we meet once a week for a two hour class. And then, you know, we have practice sessions in the middle of the week. And like I said, I introduced them to this whole wonderful playground of the science of Englishmen, literally, I just opened the gates out to them. And I said, Go and play and they actually do enjoy exploring the language and figuring out patterns themselves. And just to give you an example of, you know, the kind of science that I'm talking about, for example, you know, we know that, let's say, very often people have a problem with remembering prepositions, for example, to for prom, right. And so one way of looking at prepositions is to say that from is your point A and two is your point B. But that takes care of a lot of things. So you have places like, for example, from Mumbai to Delhi, you also have time, like from 10am, to 5pm. But also, you know, if you look at to, for example, to is actually not just your point B, but it is also your journey. And that's why you have a lot of movement, action verb, words that have to so anything that involves transfer or movement, so give something to somebody, or go or travel to somebody. So a lot of the movement action words, we use to answer that, interestingly, that's why we don't say I reached to Delhi, because reaching is actually your final point. It's just your that is where you become stationary. And so that's when you realize that too, is not just the point B but it is also the whole journey. So these are this is just a trailer of the kind of scientific sort of inquiry that goes into language. And of course, there are other fun things that we do. For example, I have taught tenses using only Bollywood songs. I never teach tenses formally,
Shireen, you started your career as a musician?
Yes, I did perform professionally for a few years at various hotels at the Taj and at the Marriott Hotel in Mumbai. I was a professional pianist for the Trident Oberoi hotel for a couple of years. And I was also part of a few local bands in Mumbai that he performed at you know, these the venues like the blue sock and hardrock cafe and things like that. And that is when you do all the hard work. You carry your keyboard on your shoulders and you go there and you've set up your own stuff and you perform along with you know, Other sighted people. So it's a it's a mainstream scenario where you know, the whole world is looking at you and trying to gauge your ability and you have to be your best at that time. So that is what I did for a few years, I really enjoyed playing at the hotel, people would come and make requests and sit and talk to me, really old people would sometimes become really teary eyed and tell me this is the person that I danced with, with my husband 50 years ago, and things like that, so. And so in doing that, it is also your duty to kind of at least know a little bit of pretty much all the genres that are available classical jazz, a little bit of Bollywood, if the hotel allows it, certain hotels do not allow Bollywood music, pop, rock, all the genres that you possibly can even know a little bit about it, it's always nice to have mixed bag repertoire so that you can sort of please your audiences.
So you also have Nora, who's a pet of yours,
I had a friend of mine who I used to keep telling because she used to foster she still pastured animals, she keeps them till you know, they are adopted. So she told me that, you know, you take this lovely dog home, she's a beautiful in the, what we call as an indie dog, an Indian breed. And she said, You take her own keeper for two, three days. And if if you're comfortable, and you can keep her if you're not, then you can always give her back. There is no problem. And I said, Okay, this sounds really awesome, because there is no obligation. Yeah, but if you're an animal lover at all, you know that once you get an animal home, you can't really give it back. You just instantly fall in love with it. And then the rest is just miracles, one after another. You know, the moment I thought of getting a dog and I sort of articulated it to sighted people, their first reaction was, Oh, my God, how is she gonna be able to look after a dog when she can barely look after herself, not realizing that I'm running a home or on my own, I live alone, I am a professional. You know, I've had no issues with living alone for all of these years. And in fact, Touchwood the same is the case even after Nora has come I now people kind of look at me and tell me how well behaved she is. And you know, if you know anything about dogs, you would know that animals generally show their unhappiness and show that frustration through misbehavior, you know, so if they, for example, if they don't get attention, or if they are not well kept, then they will show some destructive behavior. I have trained Nora to kind of obey certain basic commands like come and sit and you know, lie down. And there is a very interesting command, for example, to stay. So if I can, I put like a very tempting food in front of her mouth. And if I tell her to stay, then she's not supposed to take the food till I say three, things like that. So that you know if there is something dangerous on the road, and if she goes to grab it, all I have to do is tell her to stay and that can prevent her from taking that thing. And so that's what I then started doing. I started playing and training her playing with her and training her and that's how we became friends. And now we are inseparable. I literally feel like mom with a baby even now when I send her to a pet sitter, sometimes I'm always thinking of, you know, what she's doing? Has she eaten an issue, okay, things like that, which is a very, it's a strange experience, but it's also very beautiful experience. And now she's been with me for about a little more than two years, and she has now started realizing that I can't see. So she also you know, sometimes when I'm looking for her and I'm pointing my hand in another direction, she will come and put her head in my hand like, you know, that I'm here kind of thing. Present, she asked her to bring something she will come and put it down near my feet with to like, she'll make some noise and put it down to show me where it is. So I mean, it's just incredible. Because coming in that sense, language is no barrier, because, I mean, imagine somebody who cannot see any of my nonverbal cues and yet we communicate so beautifully that there is no sort of, there's literally no Miss Kim communication. It's just so smooth and so organic, and it's just wonderful. I wish more people considered keeping pets but having said that, it is a lot of work and it is very challenging. There are times where you know, she has sort of pooped in a place where I don't know where it is. And I have actually had to video call my friends and ask them where it is and then clean it up. Or sometimes I literally you know, you have you get these plastic gloves that you wear. And so I wear that and then I go for the treasure hunt. You know, looking with my hands So there are workarounds. But it is it is a fabulous experience. And again it has made me all the richer for I'm just really blessed to be able to do that for another beam. And I'm so grateful for the routine and the discipline that she brings into my life. You know, like I just cannot get up late anymore because she wants her food and she wants her pay time and there is no lazing around for me. thing with her is like a full complete workout. Because you know, you have to run like in my own house, I am able to do all of that not on the road and not outside but in the house, then able to play with her really well which gives me also my share of exercise and playfulness, which very often we forget as adults. So yes, it's a fabulous experience.
lovely, wonderful talking to you Sharon, thank you very much for making the time and you have
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