After reading “From Longhouse to Village” by R. Daniel Shaw, I was able to understand the point that he was trying to make throughout the chapters that I read. In chapter 5: From Micro dialects to Language Identity: Linguistic Synthesis. Shaw states, “The comparison of words on lists spread across a room provides a greater understanding of linguistic connections that, in turn, give us a perspective of cultural similarity as well as variation. Language and culture work closely together; what people do, they talk about. Language use assists in classifying people—identifying them by the way they speak. It also sheds light on the way people classify each other.” (From Longhouse to Village).
I can relate to what Shaw is stating in this chapter. I have seen how many people use language to classify and identify them. I have been classified and identified by the way I speak. I have a Spanish accent since English is my second language. Many people have asked me if I am Spanish since I have an accent and I tell them “yes”. But the way they answer will be by “I knew you was Spanish because of your accent.” This makes me mad because people just make assumptions based on what they hear out of a person mouth.
My friend also experience something similar but her experience was really harsh because she never thought that she would be treated that way. What happen to her was that she was in school and she notice that she was being treated different by a classmate. She thought she was imagining that attitude from that student, but she notice that it got more difficult each time and she talked to that student and asked her why was she treating her like she was invisible. The student answer was “I don’t like people that speak with accents bec...
... middle of paper ...
...e viability of the community and how the Samo will call this individual ayo which meant one with authority. This caught my attention because in their community he was like the president that one that will have the authority to do everything. The only difference was that the Samo leader wouldn’t enforce authority as our president does but he could if he wanted.
R. Daniel Shaw makes relevant statements throughout each chapter that that I have read. The ways that he describes and talks about the Samo is very interesting since he got to live with them and study them I find what he says very accurate. Reading this book has open my mind to understand different aspects of this culture. It has provided me with a different view of my society based on another society way of living.
Works Cited
Shaw, Daniel R 1996 From Longhouse to Village: Samo Social Change
The Europeans changed the land of the home of the Indians, which they renamed New England. In Changes in the Land, Cronon explains all the different aspects in how the Europeans changed the land. Changing by the culture and organization of the Indians lives, the land itself, including the region’s plants and animals. Cronon states, “The shift from Indian to European dominance in New England entailed important changes well known to historians in the ways these peoples organized their lives, but it also involved fundamental reorganizations less well known to historians in the region’s plant and animal communities,” (Cronon, xv). New England went through human development, environmental and ecological change from the Europeans.
Maggie's American Dream is Margaret Comer's inspiring biography written by her son James P. Comer. It also doubles as the autobiography of James P. Comer himself. It a great story of a person overcoming obstacles to reach their goals and dreams.
"You're a human being, not an animal. You have the right to be loved" (262). "Son of the Revolution" by Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro was a book that showed how inhumane many of the aspects of Chinese life were during the Cultural Revolution. The book followed Liang Heng through many of his childhood memories to his departure from China in his twenties. The book applied a real face to the important movements during the Cultural Revolution, the effects that "the cult of Mao" had on society and Heng, and the way the period affected Heng's personal family life.
Joel Salatin is a 57 year old farmer who has been farming full time since 1982 on his farm “Polyface” which is located in Swoope, VA, where he is somewhat of a local legend in farming. “The farm services more than 5,000 families, 10 retail outlets, and 50 restaurants through on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs with salad bar beef, pastured poultry, eggmobile eggs, pigaerator pork, forage-based rabbits, pastured turkey and forestry products using relationship marketing” (Salatin, Polyface.com). Mr. Salatin utilizes a unique method of farming, a fact which makes him so profoundly interesting. The style in which he farms his land is termed “mob grazing”. Mob grazing is the process in which different animals are rotated at different times throughout the farms’ fields. He is an advocate not just for the human well being but for the world’s ecological sustainability and the continuance of growth.
The question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is often asked by teachers, parents, friends, and family addressing younger children. It would seem that most Americans have within them the sense that dreams do have the potential to become reality. People often choose to see the “bright futures” of children in order to reassure them they can be anything they want to be. It seems as though there are no barriers to reach a goal if enough hard work is applied. Does this truth transcend cultural divides? Do people of minority in the United States have the same hope about their futures as the majority does? Sandra Cisneros depicts the unique dreams of Mexican-American women despite cultural depression in her story The House on Mango Street.
People are often viewed differently because of their linguistic differences. It is hard for some people to understand those that speak with accents and that makes those listening having various opinions about that speaker. In the except of “Hunger Of Memory,” it was mentioned that Richard Rodriguez would speak english that he did not
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resorts, and the glitches in the health care system. Kincaid was an established writer for The New Yorker when she wrote this book, and it can be safely assumed that majority of her readers had, at some point in their lives, been tourists. I have been a tourist so many times before and yet, I had never stopped to consider what happens behind the surface of the countries I visit until I read this essay. Kincaid aims to provoke her readers; her style of writing supports her goal and sets both her and her essay apart. To the reader, it sounds like Kincaid is attacking the beautiful island, pin-pointing the very things that we, as tourists, wish to ignore. No tourist wants to think about faeces from the several tourists in the hotel swimming alongside them in the oceans, nor do they want to think about having accidents and having to deal with the hospital. It seems so natural that a tourist would not consider these, and that is exactly what Kincaid has a problem with.
Through the article, "How the School Shortchange Boys," by Gerry Garibaldi implies that the school setting has experienced a transformation towards feminization. In the past, the child faced numerous conditions that vindicated her trouble in a male dominated society. However, after the deceitful discharge processes, the woman was finally free and all institutions welcomed her input seeking to create a fair society. According to Garibaldi (2006), the modern school setting deprives the boy child freedom to interact and relate in a natural environment (Garibaldi 54). Girls are kind, complacent, understanding and conform to salient regulations without emphasis. With these elements, girls comply with school regulations delivering assignments on time. The boy child is inquisitive, rational and desires logical explanations explaining the reason behind every instruction. The modern school setting does shortchange boys as it creates an unequal platform where teachers favor girls and victimize boys because of their inherent traits.
Gabriela Quintanilla Mrs. Allen A.P English 12 12 March 2014 The House on Mango Street Sandra Cisneros once said “'Hispanic' is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. ’ Latino' is the word we have always used for ourselves.” In the novel I read, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, the main character, a twelve-year-old Chicana (Mexican-American girl), Esperanza, saw self-definition as a struggle, this was a major theme in the novel through Esperanza’s actions and the ones around her. Esperanza tries to find identity in herself as a woman as well as an artist throughout the novel through her encounters.
When reflecting and writing on Eiseley’s essay and the “magical element”, I balk. I think to myself, “What magic?”, and then put pen to page. I dubiously choose a kiddie pool to draw inspiration from, and unexpectedly, inspiration flows into me. As I sit here in this little 10x30 foot backyard, the sky is filled with the flowing gaseous form of water, dark patches of moist earth speckle the yard, the plants soak up their scattered watering, and the leaves of bushes and trees imbue the space with a sense of dampness from their foliage. As my senses tune into the moisture that surrounds me, I fill Braedon’s artificial pond with water. I stare at the shimmering surface, contemplating Eiseley’s narrative, and the little bit of life’s wellspring caught in Brae’s pool. I see why Eiseley thought the most abundant compound on the earth’s surface is mystical.
In William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, William Wycherley enlightens the audience to capture several different ironical statements and questionable behaviors. The play fits perfectly into Greenwald’s definition of a comedy of manners: “[Critics] assert that a comedy of manners and the people who inhabit it represent the ostentatiously idle upper-class” (“Social Heirarchy” web). Wycherley also distinguishes several oddities in his characters not typically used to describe the upper-class. For example, Mr. Pinchwife, a wealthy newlywed husband, is so afraid that he is going to become a cuckold, that he does not allow his wife to leave the house (Wycherley act two). One of Wycherley’s goals in writing The Country Wife is to point out the flaws of society (“Q & A” web). Wycherley understands that no one is perfect and that a person’s virtues can be altered if pressures and outside influences become prominent. This is precisely how Wycherley uses Mrs. Margery Pinchwife’s character. Mrs. Pinchwife, a virtuous woman, still succumbs to the immorality of the city of London. Wycherley develops characters who precisely bring out Mrs. Pinchwife’s flaws. Mrs. Pinchwife takes the risks of public shame and a damage reputation to have an affair with Mr. Horner.
The Friday Everything Changed” written by Anne Hart describes how a simple question challenges the
One of the most intriguing and seemingly irrelevant scenes in the play The Way of the World by William Congreve occurs when Lady Wishfort deliberates upon the manner in which she should receive the imposter Sir Rowland. Lady Wishfort is discussing the imminent arrival of Sir Rowland and she says,
Shafak speaks about her opinion on linguistic knowledge, suggesting that people who are only relative to their own language are minimized in terms of communication and have barriers that are set into place when trying to expand the understanding they have for the world’s different cultures. Although superficially this point does seem to be true, understanding a different language does not make one accustomed to the social aspects and certain sayings that comes along with many years of living and breathing it, as well as the culture it surrounds. Shafak views language as something that is easily obtained through study by emphasizing the ability to learn a new language through cultural exposure and personal practice, while that is only the beginning. The art of words is intertwined with centuries and centuries of knowledge and experience, and would take one that wasn’t born into it, a lifetime to fully understand the true depths to the words and how language brings forth power on the individual, and cultural level. Not only do languages differ vastly on a cultivated level, they also contrast heavily in a cognitive aspect. Nicolas Evans and Stephen C. Levinson discuss this thinking in “The Myth of Language Universals: Language Diversity and its Importance for Cognitive Science”. Evans and Levinson recognize the true mental diversity of languages by suggesting that “languages differ so fundamentally from one another at every level of description (sound, grammar, lexicon, [and] meaning) that it is very hard to find any single structural property they share”(429). Shafak appears to advert to the widespread misconception of language uniformity, both on a cognitive and cultural dimension as she fails to recognize not only the intellectual differences that make mastering a language so difficult, but more importantly the heritage
The way people interact with one another effects how they communicate. More specifically, their verbal and nonverbal communication define their social group, which in turn gives them their cultural identity. For instance, since I live in the Midwestern United States, I call a fizzy beverage ‘pop’, while someone in the northeast might call it ‘soda ' and someone from the southern part of the United States would likely refer to it as 'coke '. This shows the people in my area