11/22/17

Block

Advanced Essay #2

When I first started high school at SLA, I was terrified. I knew going in that I was going to be the only deaf student there and I didn’t know how the other kids would respond. Would they pity me? Would they start to avoid me? I constantly thought about what everyone else would think, and as a result, I completely changed my behavior and attitude to make myself more appealing to everyone, so it would be easier for me to make friends. I often wore nice plaid shirts and jeans, which is not my style at all, and I acted bubbly and friendly. One particular day in the first couple weeks of school, I was in biochem. I was wearing my awkward SLA lab coat, feeling like a geek. We were doing a lab involving changing the color of fire with the Bunsen burner at the back of the room at the lab tables. The lab tables are connected in two’s and our group was focused on working on the lab. Across from our side of the table, one of the group members came up to me. She was curious about my deafness, and by this point, she was the first to ask me about it. Shit, now I gotta explain my whole situation and she’s gonna pull the whole pity act towards me now.

“So, what are those things in your ears?” she said.

“Hearing aids, I’m deaf.” I said, cringing at every word.

“Oh… Were you born deaf?” Here comes the feeling sorry act.

“No, but, I lost it at a pretty young age, 17 months.”

“How’d you lose it?”

A thousand thoughts ran through my mind like buffalos stampeding through the plains, migrating, each of their steps holding the same powerful impact. I didn’t know how to respond to this. I wanted to just say the truth, explain myself and get it over with. But, something bothered me, I felt like if I did, it would just make her feel bad for me. So, I did something I never normally do. I made a joke about it.

“Oh, well, these aliens came and abducted me and performed experiments on me. They messed up with their probing and screwed up my hearing. And now here I am.” She actually fell to the floor laughing. I could feel all of her nervousness exhibit through her laughs. She was nervous asking me about something so touchy. My joke helped relieve all that tension she was feeling about asking me about my hearing aids. I was amused. Her laughing made me laugh and all of a sudden, I didn’t care too much about everyone acknowledging my deafness. All I had to do was joke about it, and no one would take it so deep.

As I’ve grown over the years, I’ve realized that language, extroverted, humorous language has always been a coping mechanism for me. I’ve consistently joked about my pain as if it were a simple trick, a silly story. All the pain that I have with my family, all the pain I have being deaf, all the pain of anxiety, I told to others in a humorous manner. I believe I did this to somehow convince myself that it’s all a joke and that it isn’t at all as serious as it seems. I’ve also did this to convince others that I wasn’t this torn apart kid who felt constant loneliness, scared of being left out of society and being treated as an outcast. I strongly believe in the Whorf linguistic theory, the idea that literature can influence its audience’s perspective, except literature influenced my perspective on my world. Literature is not only words on paper, it’s how we communicate with people. In a way, it’s made me more aware of myself. James Baldwin argues that people use language to “describe and thus control their circumstances.” I agree with this statement because that is the very thought process I have when it comes to talking about pain in my life. I use humorous language to control and release the pain that resides within me. I’ve seen this to have a negative effect on those close to me because they can’t seem to take me seriously and I don’t blame them, I consistently joke around and rarely am I ever serious. Even when I try to be serious, I can’t help but go into my joking nature again. It is a habit that refuses to die. Baldwin has emphasized on the idea that “Language, incontestably reveals the speaker.” My humor reveals a lot of what I go through in life, but it also reveals my attitude towards it, and that tends to throw people off because of the idea that I should care more about the subject. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I have a need to dull the pain. It’s as if it will somehow dull the pain and make me sound more modest about my pain.(Sherman Alexie, 13) I’ve never seen this as necessarily a bad thing because I love making people smile, laugh and just be happy, if my pain can make them feel that way, then why should I cease to do so? I am coping with my pain by expressing it in a positive fashion and as a result, people are entertained. Humor and language is a coping mechanism for me because I’m not speaking to myself or keeping my thoughts restricted in my mind or on paper, but instead I am opening up about it to an audience and receiving a reaction to it. Humor and language is a form of therapy for me.

Introduction

The goals of this paper is to elaborate on the fact that there is uniqueness to all languages. It is not simply a form of communication, but also has a value to people. Whether people do not speak the same languages should not be an automatic barrier and separation between them. In this paper, I am proud of being able to show the progression of how I felt toward my language from the beginning to the end. Although, an area that I would be able to improve on is elaborating more on the idea of language holding a value for people, rather than leaving it vague for the readers to determine.

More Than Words

Teochew. That is the name of one of the languages that I speak. If you have never heard of it, that doesn’t come as a surprise. Frankly, I did not know the name of it until only four years ago, despite it being the first language I spoke. Some may even call Teochew one of the forgotten languages, but does that make it any less important? Looking in a positive light, does this actually make the language unique? Language is not just words, in fact, it is filled with values.

In How to Tame a Wild Tongue, Gloria Anzaldúa describes the value of she and her family speaking Chicano Spanish, which is a different dialect of “normal” Spanish. She writes ”Chicano Spanish sprang out of the Chicano’s need to identify ourselves as a distinct people. We needed a secret language”. It’s a language that a certain part of her community speaks, and from her perspective, that distinct dialect was made to serve as a special language for themselves.

Relating the idea of a secret language to my own life, I realize that speaking this unfamiliar language, Teochew, springs up plenty of different conversations. Reality is that everyone has a different view and perspective on it.

Starting off, even though I was born in Cambodia, I lived most of my life in Philadelphia, picking up English as my first language. Although, this is a different story for my mother, since she was actually raised there. When I was old enough to enroll in school, I spoke English all the time, since that is the one language that everyone around me is learning and understands. Even if I wanted to speak Teochew, who would be there to understand? It would be pointless to even try. I always thought of my language to be valuable, but it seems different at school.

This is a normal thing that I am used to, but every time my mom calls, I speak her first language. Always hearing English, my peers around me commented on the unfamiliar words that escaped my mouth. “Woah, what are you saying?” “That sounds so cool!” “It sounds so weird!” “Is that your first language?”

Those are just a small part of the collection of responses that I receive when I am heard speaking another language other than English. Although, the responses are usually said with positive intentions. People see it as something unique and are even able to connect it to them speaking a different language at home. That’s where it brings my peers and I to a common similarity, a feeling of mutual appreciation.

Something to keep in mind is that these responses are from people who have never heard of the language that I spoke. Actually speaking Teochew to my family, people who grew up with this language, the responses are almost completely different. I recall a time where I spoke a majority of English, even at home. Having an open ear, I overheard my grandma pointing out a concern to my mom, that maybe I will drop my knowledge on the Teochew language.

To my family, not being able to speak this language is a very inconvenient thing. Since everyone in my family speaks it, they see it as a necessity, not as something unique. It is something normal that I should automatically store in my head. Surely the language is greatly appreciated if they make such an effort to teach it to the future generations, but it makes me wonder if a difference in language separates people. Do people need to change their view on needing to know the same language to be able to connect?

Obviously, being able to speak the same language as the person that you are talking to allows more room for conversation. Although, the thing is that if people hear that you speak a different language, sometimes they quickly give up and do not try to talk.

Anzaldúa also points out that poeple will in fact separate due to language barriers: “And because we internalize how our language has been used against us by the dominant culture, we use our language differences against each other”.

Actually, knowing this unpopular language is something that I am grateful for. Originally when I was younger, I had this little feeling of embarrassment tingling in the back of my mind when I would be heard speaking a different language. Although now, I am proud that I am able to speak something that makes me feel comfortable. Whether around people who understand or even people who do not, this language will always hold a meaningful value to me.

Works Cited

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands = La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999. Print.

Introduction:

My goal for this essay is to have others who read it understand me and how it is that I was able to learn how to speak the same language that they do. I’m extremely proud of my first paragraph because it’s the part that describes how I felt when I was 5 years old. I’m proud that my language barrier was demolished and that this allowed me to connect it to literacy. In the future, I plan to go to lit lab in order to have it better peer reviewed.  

The Language Obstacle

It’s difficult to understand and try to learn a new language when you’re accustomed to something else and were taught it growing up. It’s also difficult when at home your family only knows 1 language, so they only speak to you in that tongue. Since they only speak 1 language, they can’t help you with your homework because they themselves don’t know what the paper says. They’re going at the same pace as you because they have to learn it with you because they have to apply it to their daily lives in order for them to be able to communicate as well. The only people you can rely on are your teachers and any additional outside resources, when all of your other classmates can rely on their family members. Once something is taught in class, your classmates can go home and just ask their parents for help because they’ve already learned this. Meanwhile, you go home to be just as confused as your parents, having to go bother your neighbors for help.

This was was I had to go through when I was in Pre-K, about 12 years ago. I was born in California, and there I attended school where people spoke. Once we came here to Philadelphia, school was very different because everyone spoke English. My parents enrolled me into a Catholic School, and when I started school, I had no clue as to what the teachers were saying. Everything they said to me sounded gibberish, I was getting lost in whatever the teachers assigned for homework because I didn’t understand them they taught it in class.

I remember what a typical day after school looked like for me. At 2:50, the bell would ring, announcing to the students that the school day was over and everyone was allowed to go home. I would walk outside, waiting to see my mom’s round face, smiling at me, taking me by the hand and telling me that we would be going to the library. All of my friends would say,

“I can’t wait to go home and watch tv,”

“I can’t wait to go home and play video games!”

Meanwhile, in my mind I would say, “I can’t wait to go to the library,” in a sarcastic tone. My mom and I would walk down to the library, from about 3 to 6:30, staying there just to ask others there for help. I would feel so shy and kind of embarrassed because I felt stupid for not knowing English. I would pick out graphic novels, just because they mainly consisted of pictures, so I could easily follow along with the words. After we got our help, or sometimes didn’t, when the homework helpers weren’t there, we’d go home and ask our neighbor for help. My mom would go knock on her door and with her broken English ask,

“Can you help my daughter?”

Our neighbor would smile and always tried her best to explain it to me and my mom because my dad was often absent because he was always working long hours. At the end it all paid off because I graduated being the only one that knew how to read. At the end a lot of the parents and teachers came up to me to say that they were really proud of me because they’d known how much I’d struggled. All of my hard work and efforts finally paid off, from this, I was able to teach my younger siblings English and when they came to me for help, I was able to help them because in a way, it was my way to giving back to those who helped me.

I would practice the English I was taught, just so that I could prove that I wasn’t the typical Mexican who knew very little English. There’s always been this expectation that in order for someone to succeed here in the U.S they have to know how to speak English, which I believe was a main reason for why my mom was so hard on me when I was little. “‘I want you to speak English. Pa’ hallar buen trabajo tienes que saber hablar el ingles bien. Que vale toda tu educación si todavía hablas ingles con un ‘accent.’’ my mother would say, mortified that I spoke English like a Mexican.” Gloria Anzaldúa writes about how there’s always been something set on us, that if we speak with an accent, then people will judge us and not want to give us a job.

Sometimes I feel insecure with my English because I feel that people will think that since I’m Mexican, it justifies why I can’t speak it well. There’s this expectation that I have for myself which is that I can’t mess up when speaking English because I don’t want to show that “weakness” that I ever had a struggle of understanding/learning English. As Amy Tan says, “Fortunately, I happen to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions made about me.” I believe that my parents influenced me in a way that I was forced to learn this language, they set me up to succeed, because they knew how hard it was for them as adults.

Works Cited:

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands = La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999. Print.

Tan, Amy. "Mother Tongue." Dreams and Inward Journeys: A Rhetoric and Reader for Writers, edited by Marjorie Ford and Jon Ford, 7th ed., Pearson, 2010, pp. 34-44.

Introduction

In this paper, I aimed to present similarities between music and common forms of literacy. I am proud of the points I was able to make. I need to work on being more concise because I struggled with the word limit even though I had already cut out a lot of content.

Advanced Essay

Going into middle school, I knew the very basics of music. I could sight read simple pieces, play scales, and recognize some intervals. Over the next four years, I studied music theory, learning about different aspects that go into a seemingly simple musical sentence. The elements of rhythm and melody and what falls underneath them; endless note values and time signatures, overwhelming scales, modes, intervals, and harmonies. Combining these pieces creates infinite possibilities in only one bar. Combining bars together then creates unique lines, which can be used to construct a piece. What Sherman Alexie said of paragraphs in The Joy of Reading and Writing can be said of musical lines; “A paragraph was a fence that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose” (Alexie, 12). If a note with a rhythm and a tone is equal to a word, then a bar is a sentence, a line is a paragraph, and a piece is a story. Music theory is the grammar of musicality.

When one thinks of types of literacy, books, articles, languages, and similar subjects usually come to mind. These sorts of literacy provide examples of the different ways literacy is used. I will be looking at a few different pieces that are used for communicative, personal, or both purposes.

Communication can be argued to be the primary purpose of literacy. Letters, texting, and emails provide simple interactions. Larger pieces of literacy, like papers and books, are meant to be read by other people and are therefore types of communication. In a piece of music, there is a transfer of information, often through a story being told. Such a story or scene is brought to life by emotions and atmosphere that the composer creates. Knowing theory helps a composer use the tools to reach for these emotions more effectively. Communication through music also extends to the way it is performed. Just as a word can have different connotations depending on the way it is said, a single note can be played a multitude of ways that are limited only by the instrument itself. Depending on the way a piece is written, certain liberties are up to the performer, bringing forth unique versions of the same piece, as the performer chooses how they want to interpret it.

In Mother Tongue, Amy Tan speaks on the power of language, that it can “evoke emotion, a visual image, a complex, idea, or a simple truth” (Tan, 1). I would say that The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi does all of these things. The Four Seasons is a well-known work, comprised of four concertos, each representing a different season. When listening, one can actually feel each season. In Spring, Vivaldi begins with bouncy and clear melodies played by a lead violin. Summer is fuller, with more of the orchestra and harpsichord filling in and creating an adventurous feeling, which progresses into Autumn, featuring a slightly brighter and more neutral theme. There is no way to describe the sound of Winter other than crisp, like the feeling of stepping on fresh snow. The way Vivaldi and the performers use music brings forth a quite clear narrative of changing nature through each distinct section.

Besides communication, another common use of literacy is personal. Many people choose to keep journals or diaries to record their thoughts and emotions. Some use creative forms of writing, like poetry, to express their feelings, or get something off of their chest. Listening to music can have the same effect. Some people listen to music to fall asleep or relax. Some use it to get fired up for a workout. Some depend on music that they can relate to. When I was in middle school, I spent a lot of time listening to the alternative band Twenty One Pilots. Their music largely focuses on living with illnesses like anxiety and depression, and I was drawn to them because of this. I remember spending nights shut in my room in the dark, listening exclusively to TOP on repeat. Although it seems crazy and cliche, their music made me feel safe at a time in my life when very little did. I depended on their songs for comfort and something to connect with when I was too timid to talk to anyone about my problems.

Music is a versatile form of literacy that everyone uses in various ways to accompany various aspects of life. When considering concept albums like Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, that are chock full of social commentary, masterpieces like Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, that showcase musical creativity and talent, or historical songs like Hirsh Glik’s Zog Nit Keynmol, (inspired by the Warsaw Ghetto uprising), that document suffering and pain, it is easy to see the many forms music can take and the functions it can have. These functions differ more than they overlap with those of The Four Seasons or the songs of Twenty One Pilots, and thus it becomes apparent that music is one of the most multifaceted and important literacies we know.

Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman, “Superman and Me: The Joy of Reading and Writing.”

Tan, Amy, “Mother Tongue”

Introduction

The goal of my essay is to explain how one’s identity is a literacy and how stereotypes based on predictions affect how one views their own identity as well as other people's identity. The essay goes more into depth about sexuality specifically.  The part of the essay that I am most proud of is the third paragraph down. I could improve on allowing my ideas to flow better.

Don’t Judge a Book by It’s Cover

My hands were swinging by my side, the air was cold and there was snow on the ground. The street was loud, booming with crowds of people. I thought that maybe I had heard it wrong. My mind raced with the possibilities of what he could have said, hoping he said something different, praying, as I heard the words run through my brain. The words he spoke tainted the image that I had of him, more than I could have ever imagined.

I was happy not knowing the gleeful ignorance of his misunderstanding when he exclaimed the words “I would not have sex with a bisexual person because of sexually transmitted diseases.” My stunned response led to more rude comments that I would have never expected, unveiling ridiculous stereotypes of a bisexual person, statements such as bi people are whores, and questioning why bisexual people can not commit, or why they cannot choose between heterosexuality and homosexuality.  This is normal for me; my friends and people around me making homophobic, or just generally offensive, jokes at my expense and expecting me to laugh as if my feelings do not matter. It was a few years ago, but the voice still stings in my head, the words, while not important to him, changed the way that I spoke my language.  

The stereotypes that are ingrained in our society allow people to judge a book by its cover, determining one’s value by looking at the outside cover without reading the inside.  People give these stereotypes no second thought, living and breathing based on the judgements that they make.   There is nothing wrong with the judgements, but people can go above and beyond those two dimensional images. It is when you force any one person into the stereotypes where the problem comes up. Forcing people into set images separates them from their identity.

Each person's identity is a language that each person speaks, but it's more than the actual words, it is also made up of the actions, the ideas, and the visual representations of the person. The combination of these aspects is what makes up a person's individual language.

The following quote by James Baldwin in his work, If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? reinforces the idea that people’s language is what makes up their identity and creates the image that people see.  “It goes without saying, then, that language is also a political instrument, means, and proof of power. It is the most vivid and crucial key to identify: It reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity.”  The way people communicate and interact  are tainted by the outside world, the way people look at them and the way you look at yourself are shaped by the the words and views of other people. They can not speak their language because people do not understand it.  

Sexualty is not on a lever where you can switch it from straight to gay, there is a sliding bar of sexualities. Each person fits somewhere on the scale. The people who do not see and understand this look at the world as a black and white image, the vivid color of each person's identity is drained from their view.  It is no different than the different languages people speak. Some people speak English, others speak Spanish and people are judged by how they speak by different groups.

Some people believe that repeated slurs can change a person's perspective of themselves. This can be seen in Gloria Anzaldua’s work, How to Tame a Wild Tongue in the quote,  “Repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self.”  It is acceptable to speak a commonly known language that people can learn and understand, but as soon as it's not easy for the majority of people to understand, it is deemed wrong. People may correct those mistakes and attach negative ideas to that correction. Being prejudged and berated erodes a person’s identity of themselves, it creates a society where people are ashamed to speak a language that is not seen as normal. That feeling of the lack of normality leads to the more negative effects, creating a never ending cycle.

Work Cited

James Baldwin,nytimes,New York Times,July 29, 1979,http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-english.html,

Accessed Dember 8. 2017

Gloria Anzaldua,everettsd,Borderlands = La Frontera.,1987,https://www.everettsd.org/cms/lib07/WA01920133/Centricity/Domain/965/Anzaldua-Wild-Tongue.pdf,Accessed December 8. 2017