Your work last class -- especially in taking up our multilayered analysis and discussion in the second part of class -- led to some realizations about language politics that I couldn't have led you to alone, so ... kudos! Here are some things I took away from our theorists last class:
- Our identity, voice, and language are embedded in other people's expectations.
- Language is a process of negotiation and experimentation.
- Language politics occur in "contact zones," simultaneously a celebration of and a problem of difference.
- Grammars are multiple -- socially constructed and institutionally preserved -- systems of rules tied to action, attitude, belief -- ways of organizing knowledge about something.
- Multiculturalism = liminal space
- "Native" and "non-native" are troubled distinctions, tied to beliefs and assumptions more than to actual practices.
- Voice emerges from grappling with / contending with other voices, ideas, language.
- Voice is marked, usually according to unspoken values or assumptions.
- Voice involves both conforming and resisting, and often shuttling between them.
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I think Gloria Anzaldua's patois throughout her essay reflects a lot of these observations. Nicely done, again.
As you are contending with other theories, methodologies, and terms, please take note of what appears to be a "contact zone" (using Min-Zhan Lu's term). What's the dissonance? What doesn't match up for you? What concepts or ideas appear to invite a clash in assumptions, values, or beliefs? What discussion do you feel ready to enter (or interested enough to try)? What problem has someone identified that you'd like to consider in more depth, regardless of whether you can solve it? What question has come up early in the term that you think you want to take up? What term or concept would you like to develop or investigate? What slight, theoretical intervention do you feel ready to make based on how you're connecting a handful of our theorists? What story of change do you see emerging from these persistent discussions and debates?
By the end of the day next Monday (10/19/15), remember to send me an e-mail message -- a paragraph or so in length -- in which you articulate your idea for the final critical essay in as much detail as you can manage at this point, including your research question or dilemma, tentative sources, and other ideas.
-Prof. Graban
