Anzaldua:
- Anzaldua writes that the "home" tongues are the languages spoken among family and friends; according to Gee, what type of discourse is this? Please provide an example of the differences between your particular "home" tongue and the tongue you most frequently adopt when not at "home".
- Anzaldua argues that language is, essentially, twin-skin to culture; that is to say, that language both instantiates and carries culture. Please discuss what it is that she means by this; and, argue for why you agree or disagree with this argument?
- How can linguistic suppression, or worse oppression lead to negative mis-identification? More specifically, how can linguistic oppression lead to the internalization of pejorative associations for linguistically marginalized groups?
As a native Spanish speaker, I can relate to the feeling that Anzaldua describes in her narrative as not really having distinct culture that native Spanish speakers can identify with. As Anzaluda describes, there are various reasons why native Spanish speakers feel the need to suppress their languages. On one side, the these groups of people do not associate entirely with American culture, since after all they cannot change the nationality they were born in by just adopting American culture. But on the other side, these native speakers do not fit into their own culture either. They start losing their sense of nationality since they do not live in their homeland. Their language starts to change and adapt to their environment. IN the end, they are a fuse of both cultures and do not feel entirely at ease embracing one culture or the other. As a result, individuals who experience this can feel inadequate in both cultures. One will never be fully accepted as
ReplyDelete“Americanized,” but one has been too far from their roots for too long. Home no longer feels like home. This limbo state that Anzaluda describes leads to one questioning where one truly belongs and whether they are even good enough to even claim either title.
Gee refers to the primary discourse of children having home tongues as being something that is often problematic because languages do not always overlap and may confuse the child when trying to translate or think amongst various dialects. My home tongue is Mandarin Chinese and my adopted tongue when not at home is American English. I find myself often thinking of words that I can make out in Chinese but can not discern in English. This often causes me to be inarticulate and lack public speaking skills that are necessary to be good in school. Language is without a doubt twin-skin to culture. I believe many languages translate over in their characterized qualities to how the culture of the people who speak these languages is actualized. For instance, Cantonese is a very loud and harsh, raw sounding language. When one stereotypes Cantonese people in Hong Kong, they are people who are busy, rude and rowdy and this is characterized by the language they speak. There are often times different versions of a language. There is ebonic English for instance. This example of a dialect that is often times used as linguistic suppression by contemporary Caucasian Americans to bring down African-Americans is an example of the shortcomings of negative misidentification caused by language.
ReplyDelete