In a perfect world we would all understand each other. We would all get along and we wouldn’t have to worry about adversity. In a perfect world every culture's language and identity would be accepted. But, this is not a perfect world, everyone is not accepted. Due to the fact that society is so judgmental, today, we are forced to change who we are in order to fit the criteria of another group's social norms. In “From the Outside, In”, by Barbara Mellix, Mellix describes how she handled her cultural differences. Mellix explained how she practically spoke two different languages, “black English” and “standard English”. This language barrier among the two cultures caused Mellix to be fragmented between who she really was and who she was trying
to be. As Mellix went on, speaking and writing, in “standard English” she began to feel as if she was losing her true identity. Because of cultural differences, sometimes, we are forced to become something we are not, to be accepted. We all have the right to be who we want to be, we shouldn’t have to change ourselves in order to be accepted by another culture. Mellix goes on to explain, “Speaking standard English to whites was our way of demonstrating that we knew their languages and could use it” (387). This just shows how Mellix and the rest of her black community how to prove themselves to the whites in order to feel superior to them.
In her article “But What Do You Mean” Deborah Tannen, claims that there is a huge difference in the style of communicating between men and women. Tannen breaks these down into seven different categories; apologies, criticism, thank-yous, fighting, praise, complaints, and jokes. With each of these she compares men to women by explaining the common misconceptions that each of the genders do. The different style of communication can cause some problems at the workplace and even affect the environment. The different styles of communication has been around forever and almost becomes a “ritual”(299). Tannen is effective with mainly women and not men. She is primarily successful with women due to the fact that her tone targets women, also the organization
“The Contact Zone”, is defined by Mary Louis Pratt as “the space in which transculturation takes place – where two different cultures meet and inform each other, often in highly asymmetrical ways.” Pratt describes what she calls ‘contact zones’ and elaborates on the pros and cons of these cultural interactions. She sees the contact zone as a place that allows people to exchange cultural ideas and break down the dividing cultural borders. When a contact zone is started, people are able to interact on new levels gaining a new perspective because they are able to collaborate with people from foreign cultures. If you are always with people of the same culture as you, you become used to hearing everything from the same perspective. With a new perspective, you can see your culture from a different point of view and reanalyze the logic behind your cultural traditions. Every ethnic/ religious/ regional/ cultural group has its high and low points, and it is just as important to learn about the low points as it is to learn about the highs. Gloria Anzaldua’s essay, “how to tame a wild tongue”, focuses on the ideas of losing an accent or native language to conform to the dominant culture.
Living in the United States can be hard. People need to deal with racism, sexism, and any other kinds of abuse. Even today, racism, prejudice, and stereotyping still happen. There is no way of stopping it. Immigrants have the hardest time moving to a different country because they need to know the language and the culture the country has to offer. However, the language barrier concerns most immigrants and frightens people. In the movie Crash by Paul Haggis, it displays the clash of different ethnicity and their challenge in the world. People were stereotyped, sexually abused, and judged. In the book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman describes a Hmong family struggling to help with her medical problem, but the language barrier between the family and the hospital causes conflicts. America offers a great challenge to its people because of the vast diversity of ethnicities.
Barbara Jordan, who is a leader of the Civil Rights movement, once believed “we, as human beings must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves.” Discrimination is a topic often found in the literature and is discussed in the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a documentary trailer My So-Called Enemy directed by Lisa Gossels and a short-story “What of this Goldfish, Would You Wish?” by Etgar Keret. Those who believe that accepting others from different racial backgrounds will make the world a better place; meanwhile, there are others who refuse to accept others or being disagreed with the quotes of Barbara Jordan, they think the opposite direction of the people who are agreed with the quotes. I agree with Barbara Jordan that we, as a human beings, can accept others who are different than ourselves because we are sharing a common root of the Mother Earth; thus, we can learn to treat others with kindness and respect, and be more understanding of the differences in others.
It is essential to understand the differences and similarities that people have within other people, to just try to accept the fact that some people may be different. However conversation often leads to social change because people tend to want to fit in where most people are the same. Appiah explains “Depending on the circumstances, conversations across boundaries can be delightful, or just vexing” (Page 73). That is why Appiah believes people need to be more accepting, more globalized. He initially feels that conversation can lead people to create change and can hinder their reasons to fit in because they are different. However, conversation is not enough because people are still changing to fit in, people are constantly feeling left out, not valued for their customs or beliefs. He also asserts “We can’t hope to reach a final consensus on how to rank and order such values. That’s why the model i 'll be returning to is that of conversation” (Appiah 73). With this being said it is clearly stated how Appiah is a firm believer that conversation is the number one key for understanding of others. This can be very controversial because Munoz may disagree. He asserts “The English- only way of life partly explains the quiet erasure of cultural difference that assimilation has attempted to accomplish” (Munoz 308). Conversation is leading to a change that is creating to erase the differences among people. For instance, Munoz asserts how people are changing their names because they feel comfortable and different. People are erasing their names and putting American names and forgetting where their names came from and how much it means to their culture. This is a major issue when conversation is changing but not necessarily for the better. It does create and effect in many people whom they are talked into how they are different and due to because people just don’t accept and understand the different cultures. It is
Language is an important part of who we are. It influences the way we think and behave on a great scale. However, sometimes it is forced upon us to go in different directions just so we can physically and mentally feel as if we belong to the society in which we live in. Just as we see in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez’s “A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, both authors faced some challenges along the way by coping with two different languages, while still trying to achieve the social position which they desired.
America is a presumptuous country; its citizens don’t feel like learning any other language so they make everyone else learn English. White Americans are the average human being and act as the standard of living, acting, and nearly all aspects of life. In her essay “White Privilege: The Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh talks about how being white has never been discussed as a race/culture before because that identity has been pushed on everyone else, and being white subsequently carries its own set of advantages. Gloria Anzaldua is a Chicana, a person of mixed identities. In an excerpt titled “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” she discusses how the languages she speaks identifies who she is in certain situations and how, throughout her life, she has been pushed to speak and act more “American” like. McIntosh’s idea of whiteness as a subconscious race that carries its own advantages can enlighten why Anzaldua feels like she
Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker expresses prominent themes of language and racial identity. Chang-Rae Lee focuses on the struggles that Asian Americans have to face and endure in American society. He illustrates and shows readers throughout the novel of what it really means to be native of America; that true nativity of a person does not simply entail the fact that they are from a certain place, but rather, the fluency of a language verifies one’s defense of where they are native. What is meant by possessing nativity of America would be one’s citizenship and legality of the country. Native Speaker suggests that if one looks different or has the slightest indication that one should have an accent, they will be viewed not as a native of America, but instead as an alien, outsider, and the like. Therefore, Asian Americans and other immigrants feel the need to mask their true identity and imitate the native language as an attempt to fit into the mold that makes up what people would define how a native of America is like. Throughout the novel, Henry Park attempts to mask his Korean accent in hopes to blend in as an American native. Chang-Rae Lee suggests that a person who appears to have an accent is automatically marked as someone who is not native to America. Language directly reveals where a person is native of and people can immediately identify one as an alien, immigrant, or simply, one who is not American. Asian Americans as well as other immigrants feel the need to try and hide their cultural identity in order to be deemed as a native of America in the eyes of others. Since one’s language gives away the place where one is native to, immigrants feel the need to attempt to mask their accents in hopes that they sound fluent ...
The biggest difficulties Tan described in her reading are the ones related to her mother’s “broken English,” Tan felt ashamed of her mother’s English. She believed that “[her mother’s] English reflected the quality of what [her mother] had to say.” Native English speaker pretended not to understand nor even one word from Tan’s mother. In her reading, Tan describes a situation where her mom went to the doctor to pick up some test results and the doctors told Tan’s mother they lost her results, the doctors didn’t even apologize to Tan’s mother. After a while asking the doctors to call her daughter, Tan’s mother made Tan ask for the results, and magically the doctors apologize and told Tan they were going to do their best to find the results. If Anzaldua would have a chance to read Tan’s essay, Anzaldua would described Tan’s mother situation as a “linguistic terrorism.” According to Anzaldua “linguistic terrorism” is the “repeated attacks on our native language diminish our sense of self.” Again, tolerance and immigrants seem not to fit in the same sentence, but what is interesting is that Domenico Maceri, a U.S writer, in his essay “America’s Languages: Tower of Babel or Asset?” he claims that “Learning English is important
Over the years, after wars and famine, peace-time and floods, few things have persisted to survive. Society, art, and other intangible objects as these are survivors of two millennia of human “progress”. Intelligent concepts and premises have also survived, as have emotions and morals. Even as these outstanding examples of humanity have survived, so have some less affirmative ideals lived on through our fore-bearers. Cultural, ideological, religious, and political supremacy are still abound today, as much as they were 50, 100, and even 5,000 years ago. In a shorter context, racism, the “cockroach” of human mentality, is still alive. It is the immortal insect that will live on as long as people tell their children to stay away from strangers, and others as equally unknown and different from the norm. Actively, society attempts to do away with it, while unconsciously, and quite willingly, hand feed its mandibles ourselves. There are, however, ever so few individuals in the world, that work to illustrate these infesting notions, and bring them to light, utilizing some of the constructive assets of the psyche, mainly arts and literature. One such person is Leslie Marmon Silko, a Native American author, and a target of such racist practices. In her book Ceremony, the topic of race and culture differences are dealt with thoroughly, as are the views that humanity should band together, or should accept that they are already tied together by fate, and face the problems that face every man. She utilizes inherent prejudices to draw lines between specific character groups, such as half-breeds, full-bloods, and quite otherworldly personalities, and then turns the readers intolerances about, bring to their notice that there are all characters are important to the “web”. Quite simply, Silko re-educates the reader by displaying equality through inequality and interconnection, while carrying them across time, planes of existence, and through their own minds.
Both the brains and the hearts of the audience have been convinced. She also used many rhetorical strategies, like emotional appeal to convey her rough childhood to the reader. She gave numerous examples of being discriminated, and stereotyped because of their race. Tan’s audience reaches out to family members who speak broken English. Amy Tan also comprehends that although people may not be able to speak perfect English, they can comprehend what others are saying, and that you shouldn't discriminate others because of their race. A persons understanding of someone who speaks “broken-English” could be very limited, but the wisdom of the “broken English” speaker is
...inferior cultures are always able to adapt and learn things from larger groups, in contact zone environments the larger groups are finally able to draw things from the smaller cultures as well, and thus transculturation becomes a two-way street. Only when people are made aware of the marginal diversity that surrounds them in everyday life are they able to gain a wider understanding and deeper knowledge of the world around them. They are then able to apply that knowledge to shape and benefit the way they interact with others and operate as a part of a society that is more open, leaving behind the mistake of imagined communities and applying inaccurate definitions to groups of people.
English is an invisible gate. Immigrants are the outsiders. And native speakers are the gatekeepers. Whether the gate is wide open to welcome the broken English speakers depends on their perceptions. Sadly, most of the times, the gate is shut tight, like the case of Tan’s mother as she discusses in her essay, "the mother tongue." People treat her mother with attitudes because of her improper English before they get to know her. Tan sympathizes for her mother as well as other immigrants. Tan, once embarrassed by her mother, now begins her writing journal through a brand-new kaleidoscope. She sees the beauty behind the "broken" English, even though it is different. Tan combines repetition, cause and effect, and exemplification to emphasize her belief that there are more than one proper way (proper English) to communicate with each other. Tan hopes her audience to understand that the power of language- “the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth”- purposes to connect societies, cultures, and individuals, rather than to rank our intelligence.
In the essay, “How To Tame A Wild Tongue”, by Gloria Anzaldua and the essay, Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan, the ignorance shown by many people is highlighted. Amy Tan’s essay focuses on how some people look down on others who do not speak English without an accent. Anzaldua’s essay focuses on how people do not have a broad view of language and often look down upon others who do not speak the language that they speak. Both of the essays address language, but the broader topic that they acknowledge is more important. The essays both acknowledge how humans feel uncomfortable around people that are different from them, and often demean others. People demean others due to people wanting to look more powerful by giving their views correctness while discrediting
Language can be a difficult task to foreigners who have already achieved a first language. In “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, “Mute in an English-only World” by Chang-Rae Lee, and “Leave your Name at the Border” by Manuel Munoz, the authors explain how people are judged by their “broken language”, and their lack of understanding the English language. Tan, Lee, and Munoz admits that by not being fluent in English, it was hard to adjust to the new world that they lived in. The authors explained that throughout their life-time, English was very important to them; they also felt embarrassed in front of others who could not understand what they were saying. By having an accent in America can be a burden on individuals whether it is due to a feeling of being unwelcomed or alienated by others.