[Sigiii-l] Plaza

[S.Webber]

Just a few thoughts - of a personal rather than a professional nature.

In terms of globalisation, there seems to be too much in terms of 
corporations/ governments taking opportunities to create or exploit 
markets, and too little in terms of growth of understanding of other 
cultures, languages etc. As someone fortunate enough to be 
brought up in a country (i.e. the UK) where the main language is a 
dominant language (i.e. English) I become ashamed of the extent 
to which others can speak my language, and disappointed 
because knowledge of other languages has *not* become prized as 
I feel it should in the UK. OK, I'm biased here because I studied 
German at University. However, studying German did make me 
more aware of what you miss of culture, discourse etc. by not 
knowing the language (and how you saw a different side of people 
when you conversed with them in their own language!) Carrying 
over to one of my current professional obsessions, i.e. information 
literacy, it has been pointed out by international colleagues that to 
"be information literate in the information society" as well as being 
*literate* you also need to be able to *speak English* in those 
circumstances where there is a restricted amount of information on 
the internet in your own language, where key textbooks and 
journals are mostly in English, where you want to be able to 
communicate with English-speaking experts to get information etc. 
etc.

Sheila
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Sheila Webber, Lecturer, Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK.
Email s.webber at sheffield.ac.uk
Tel. (0044) 0114 222 2641
Fax 0114 278 0300
The Information Literacy Place: http://dis.shef.ac.uk/literacy/
... and now the Weblog! http://ciquest.shef.ac.uk/infolit/