The story “Public and Private Language” was written by Richard Rodriguez. He is an American writer and a journalist with many of his publications widely known to the public. He is known for Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, one of the best written creations throughout his career, which resulted him to grow a substantial amount of supporters, even today. In this story, I am well pleased that Rodriguez has written a memento in which many of the Latinx community could well relate to. Overall I concur with this story based on the fact that there may be two different identities a Latinx person could have throughout their life and that having a public identity could mean more achievements made. However I don’t believe that the more Americanization means the decrease of bonding with your family, finding this statement absurd. To summarize the story, Richard Rodriguez is Mexican-American peer coming from his parents who were immigrants and attends a Catholic school. He realizes that his bilingualism wasn’t acceptable in his community and had to conform to having a different identity throughout the course of his life, which …show more content…
This reminds me of Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman's “frontstage” and “backstage” concept, where front stage is your formal, presentable identity to the public and backstage is your laid-back, comfortable self. In this case, Richard only uses his front stage throughout the course of his life and believed it was better to stay that way in order to get better opportunities for his future and to stop being socially disadvantaged like he once was. Any Latinx person could face this in their life. I almost once went through this process but finally thought that having both identities as one is far more better, I love feeling unique and I would never try to conform into the gringo society and abandon my
They are once again plagued by a lack of clarity and cohesion. In his despair, Villanueva discovers a tape by Robert Kaplan. The discussion is about bilinguals, which he is, and how their rhetoric pattern varies. He discovered that he sounded logical to himself but illogical to the average unknowing ear. He had put his race behind himself, he learned what it mean to be “white middle-class.” What he now knows is that “Without a knowledge of history and tradition, we risk running in circle while seeking new paths.” It wasn’t a matter of his disadvantages; his race, his age, his background, his grades. It was a matter of his thinking. Villanueva seeked approval from others yet he didn’t approve of
José Antonio Villarreal’s Pocho does a superb job of dealing with both the common coming of age narrative and the tensions faced by Latino Americans. Richard Rubio attempts to remain individualistic throughout his life but struggles with what that means within the confines that his heritage and society structure him into. Characters ebb and flow through his life, each having certain standards, expectations or ideals predetermined about him. Richard attempts to cast off and ignore the pressures they place on him, and instead forage his own path for what his future is to look like. I believe that the conflict between his family’s Mexican heritage and his American home is what forces Richard to actively pursue, and even fight, for his individuality.
Immigrants have helped shape American identity by the languages they speak from their home country. Richard Rodriguez essay “Blaxicans and Other Reinvented Americans” reveals Rodriguez’s attitudes towards race and ethnicity as they relate to making people know what culture really identifies a person rather than their race. For example, in the essay, it states that Richard Rodriguez “ is Chinese, and this is because he lives in a Chinese City and because he wants to be Chinese. But I have lived in a Chinese City for so long that my eye has taken on the palette, has come to prefer lime greens and rose reds and all the inventions of this Chinese Mediterranean. lines 163-171”.
Throughout Richards early childhood development he quickly understood that in order to succeed in America he would have to learn to confidently speak in English. Richard is Hispanic American and although he was born in America, Spanish was the only language that he was exposed to as a young child. He grew up in a home where Spanish flowed freely, but he soon realized outside of his home the language that he primarily knew was foreign. His parents spoke fluent Spanish along with all of his relatives. The brief encounters he experienced of his parents speaking English were only in public places and the proficiency was very poor. Rodriguez’s home was as a safety net for him and his Spanish speaking family with they are his only real connections to the outside world. It wasn’t until Richards encounter with his teachers that he and his family was heavily impressed on the importance of developing a public language. After the encouragement of the visit home from a teacher as a family
In the essay “Private Language, Public Language” by Richard Rodriguez he made a comparison between public and private language. I believe he made this comparison because of the battle between their family and public languages. Rodriguez grew up in an immigrant family, and depending on the location they were staying in, they had a hard time using the different languages they had to speak at home and in society. In their lives they had two forms a language, the private language only spoken with the family and the public language with people outside the family. Rodriguez struggles to overcome the difference between his home language, Spanish and English. The purpose in this distinction is to illustrate the struggle with the different types of languages that the author had to adapt to in his childhood.
Richard Rodriguez offers an alternate yet equally profound truth: While our heritage and culture may remain forever tied to and expressed in our native or "home" language, only through the dominant language of our country (English in most cases) can we achieve a place in society that gives us a feeling that we belong amongst everyone else. The only way we can truly become a part of our community and fit in is to dominate the current spoken language. In the United States, the dominant language is Standard English. In this excerpt from "Aria," a chapter in his autobiography entitled "Hunger of Memory": The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Rodriguez discusses public and private languages, and agrees that his achievements in English separated him from his Spanish family and culture but also brought him "the belief, the calming assurance that [he] belonged in public." We as human beings want to feel we belong. We search for that place in society where we are most comfortable all our lives. One should consider the benefits of mastering the dominant language of the society they live in, but should also take into account the harm of taking your native language for granted. I will attempt to explore both of these considerations and examine Rodriguez place in life now, by stating the facts of who is now by the childhood decisions that were made.
Latinos who were raised in the United States of America have a dual identity. They were influenced by both their parents' ancestry and culture in addition to the American culture in which they live. Growing up in between two very different cultures creates a great problem, because they cannot identify completely with either culture and are also caught between the Spanish and English languages. Further more they struggle to connect with their roots. The duality in Latino identity and their search for their own personal identity is strongly represented in their writing. The following is a quote that expresses this idea in the words of Lucha Corpi, a Latina writer: "We Chicanos are like the abandoned children of divorced cultures. We are forever longing to be loved by an absent neglectful parent - Mexico - and also to be truly accepted by the other parent - the United States. We want bicultural harmony. We need it to survive. We struggle to achieve it. That struggle keeps us alive" ( Griwold ).
Rodriguez discusses in his piece. In his childhood, he spoke Spanish at home and English in his
Although our society is slowly developing a more accepting attitude toward differences, several minority groups continue to suffer from cultural oppression. In her essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” Gloria Anzaldúa explores the challenges encountered by these groups. She especially focuses on her people, the Chicanos, and describes the difficulties she faced because of her cultural background. She argues that for many years, the dominant American culture has silenced their language. By forcing them to speak English and attempting to get rid of their accents, the Americans have robbed the Chicanos of their identity. She also addresses the issue of low self-esteem that arises from this process of acculturation. Growing up in the United States,
As a traditional, collectivistic cultural group, the Latino population is believed to adhere deeply to the value of familismo. (Arditti, 2006; Calzada, 2014). Familism is an emphasis on the importance of the family unit over values of autonomy and individualism”. (Santistaben, 2012). Family is considered to be the top priority in the Latino culture. Comparatively, at times, this isn’t true of our busy, work devoted western culture. In western culture we think of our family in a nuclear sense made up of a: mom, dad, and siblings. Conversely, Hispanic culture focuses on the whole extended family including aunts, uncles, grandparent, and cousins. Their culture believes having close connections with the entire extended family benefits the development of their children. The entire family helps the child by giving them differing levels of social and emotional support. (American Home Resolutions,
Rodriguez, Richard. ?Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Education.? Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez. New York: Bantam, 1982. 11-40.
Rodriguez views the same as a public and private language. He explains that the term “private” relates to Spanish language, while the term “public” is the kind of English language he speaks outside home. As he writes “… I wrongly imagined that English was intrinsically a public language and Spanish an intrinsically private one…” (513). In addition, Rodriguez’s reference to the English language as a gringo sound gives an impression of a child’s resentment towards said language. The term gringo in Spanish means los gringos which is a “derogatory term for English-speaking Americans” (512). When Rodriguez parents stopped communicating at home in Spanish, the laughter at home faded along with his private language. This further supports Rodriguez’s statement that “… as we learned more and more English, we shared fewer and fewer words with our parents” (515). Thus the end of a once full of laughter home, yet the beginning of Rodriguez’s mastery of the English language. Similar to Tan’s experience, the writer’s rebellious nature challenged her critics by proving that Asian’s skills are not limited to Math and Science. Thus, the decision behind to shift from pre-med to English major. As Tan writes, “I happen to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions made about me” (510). Hence Tan’s strong conviction to resist the convention of
In this summary the author Tanya Barrientos is explaining how hard it is be different. In the beginning of the summary Barrientos explained how people automatically assume that she is Latina. She grew up in an English-speaking world. Her parents are born and raised in Guatemala but she moved to the United States at the age of three. When her parents came to the United States of America they stopped speaking English immediately. Her parents wanted her to read, talk, and write only in English. She felt like she was the only one who needed to learn how to speak Latino, even though she looks like she can already. In the summary she went on saying that she was trying to fit in and become a regular person so other Latinas won’t judge her. All she
In the article, “Public and Private Language”, Richard Rodriguez argues that bilingual education delays learning a “public language” and developing a public identity”. I can relate to Richard’s story because my family and me moved to America when I was young and we also had the same struggle learning a new language. I agreed with Rodriguez when he expressed that he didn’t feel like a true American until he mastered the English language because English is the first and main language in America.
The frustratingly reminiscent tone encompassed in Julia Alvarez’s “Bilingual Sestina” works to emphasize the author’s difficulties of assimilating into a new culture. When she looks back and reflects on her past memories in her hometown, she yearns for the same simplistic lifestyle. Correspondingly, the constant repetition of the six end words further expresses her conflictions as she must fuse together two different cultures to truly find her identity.