Cited: Anzaldua, Gloria. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Stuart Green and April Lidinsky. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martins, 2012. 322-36. Print.…
After talking to students in classroom who were assigned to do a project on Pratt, getting a frequent response “I didn’t read it, it’s too hard to comprehend” was an ordinary thing. Therefore, writing a response to Pratt’s essay in a language that is comprehendible by regular people can be very helpful to those struggling students. In "Arts of the Contact Zone" Pratt discusses the mix of two different cultures in one area. Where one person is born and lives in a "contact zone" he/she is surrounded by two different conflicting cultures, and there are two different languages. She also introduces us with a new word "autoethnography", which means the way in which subordinate peoples present themselves in ways that their dominants have represented them. Therefore, autoethnography is not self-representation, but a collaboration of mixed ideas and values form both the dominant and subordinate cultures. Pratt provides many examples of autoethnography throughout her essay, including two texts by Guaman Poma and her son, Manuel. Although very different in setting, ideas, and time periods, they both accomplish the difficult goal of cross-cultural communication.…
Rita Mae Brown ‘Writing as a Moral Act’ says that speaking is a social contract. The unspoken truth is that we are unequal. All communication rest upon inequality. She fought against the tendency by portraying that language is the thread that will bring us to a form of agreement and understanding such as writing. Writing to her is more treacherous and it displays more serious act than speaking. She said that the writers are the moral purifiers of the culture. Writers are gonna be the one who will spill the truth.…
Throughout our lives we communicate to a vast array of people on a daily basis from teachers to friends to family. Each time we speak to these individuals there tends to be a different “slang” that is used with each yet at the same time still portraying the same message. In groups of different cultures they have a similar voice through language. Even though the languages they speak are different the meanings can be the same. Through this everyone has the ability to show love, anger, sadness, and the ability to teach right from wrong. Two authors from different ethnic backgrounds show how language affects them personally and the ones around them. Kingston, a Chinese author, writes about stories based on the things she heard from her mother and…
There are countless genres of literature throughout the world. From fiction, to nonfiction, biographies and autobiographies, they are all different. Yet they all share a common purpose which is to convey a message. Some pieces of literature known as autoethnographic texts are written to illustrate the hardships of people in contact zones. Contact zones are areas in which two different cultures meet and live in very different ways. This often creates an uneven power relationship between the two cultures. One culture will almost always have a greater legitimacy and is seen as dominant. The other, in contrast, is much less significant and is seen as marginalized. A few examples of autoethnographic texts are Pocho by Jose Antonio Villarreal, …And the Earth Did Not Devour Him by Tomas Rivera and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. In all three texts, the protagonists are a part of a marginalized culture of Mexican Americans in the United States. In order to survive, the marginalized group must adapt and take on the ideals of the U.S. dominant culture. This presents many essential themes and gives a greater understanding of the protagonists ' lives as members of a marginalized group. The primary themes portrayed in the novels Pocho by Jose Antonio Villarreal, …And the Earth Did Not Devour Him by Tomas Rivera and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros are machismo, religion and education.…
2. Occasion: The author wrote this piece in 1965 to inform the readers of his imminent desire to learn how to read and write because he was embarrassed by his lack of knowledge and of the things he had learned about the white man's actions to nonwhites.…
Throughout society’s development, individuals have grown to make connections based off of past experiences. Connections can have various meanings such as association with development, or a relationship between groups of people. In Azar Nafisi’s writing of, “Selection from Reading Lolita in Tehran,” she describes the creation of her reading group, and how it provides the type of education she desired to provide as an educator but was restricted based on the Iranian regime. Similarly, in Susan Faludi’s “The Naked Citadel,” Faludi examines the unique culture of a nonaffiliated military school, which highlights the clash between The Citadel’s historical cultures and its present conflicts. Lastly, in Sherry Turkle’s, “Selections from Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other” she comments on how children learn to make unrealistic personal connections with technology. Evolution of society and tradition, seen within the readings allows for the changes seen within the environment. The environment in which one lives in either inhibits or creates the ability to experience new connections within society. Through the discussion of reality versus fantasy, the ability to make connections is inevitably controlled by one’s surroundings.…
According to Pratt, the two distinctive phenomenon of the contact zone are auto ethnographic text and transculturation. One of the characteristics of auto ethnographic text is that it usually involves some extensive collaborating process, between individuals of different social and intellectual classes. Writing classes can offer some significance with the contact zone because of this group effort process. During this process every subject discussed can uncover hidden voices, not to mention every individual member can learn how to form and negotiate an opinion. It is usually in these formats that an outbreak of all the conflicting opinions of group members in different cultural backgrounds, and beliefs arise. In addition, transculturation is defined as “processes where by members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominated culture”. An example would be that they adopt some characteristics of the dominant culture as their own. The text of “The Contact Zone” will inevitably be interpreted differently by people in different positions within the “Contact Zone”. I see culture as a monolingual structure…
My thesis statement is grounded on the ideas of the SROTL Resolution, Garrard McClendon, and Ruthellen Crews. The authors of “Students’ Rights to Their Own Language” argue that students should be able to speak and write in their native language because it is more suitable for them and it is easier for them to identify who they are. In addition, they argued that saying the “dialect of one student being unacceptable is like saying that one group is better than the other” (SRTOL Resolution). I agree that as students we should be able to write in our native language because it defines who we are, however, I believe that we should only write in our native language during our years in elementary and high school. What I learned from personal experiences with the English language is that my teachers during elementary and high school never focused on my oral and written skills. Any written assignments during my four years in high school I was never told that my writing was not…
Oxford Dictionaries (2014) Language matters. Oxford University Press [online]. [Accessed 8 April 2014]. Available at: .…
|Module B: Texts and Society: |Non-Fiction |4. A student uses language relevant to the study of English. |…
With detailed reference to Text H and to relevant ideas from language study, explore how written language is used to assert power…
In “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics,” James Paul Gee attempts to explain “a way of talking about literacy” and “literacy studies.” He describes how a Discourse is not the same as discourse, details the different types of Discourses, and introduces several new terms to strengthen his argument. Gee’s overall claims, in his own words, is “the focus of literacy studies or applied linguistics should not be language, or literacy, but social practices.”…
“There is more pleasure to building castles in the air than on the ground.” This quote by Edward Gibbon illustrates the intensity of writing and what gratification it can hold. When one writes, they are not confined to one certain formula. A person is able to express their thoughts and feelings in any way they choose. Language is a border for many people in that some cannot comprehend a certain language, understand how to use it, or recognize what is being said to them. On the other side of the border, they are not viewed as equals or as important compared to those who are not competing with this barrier. In his essay “Coming into Language,” Jimmy Santiago Baca uses his personal experiences to demonstrate how much crossing the border of language can change a person and show them new ways of expressing themselves.…
Samovar, Larry A and Richard E, Porter. 2004. Communication between Cultures. 5th ed. Belmont, California: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.…