In McWhorters's essay, he states that when a language dies, it is a sign of people coming together. However, I do not believe that Anzaldúa would agree with him. Anzaldúa valued language and its many dialects, and the sacredness and importance of them believing her own language as well of those of others to be unique. She also believes that language should be preserved. Given this information, it is doubtful she would agree with McWhorter in this situation. McWhorter argues that the death of language shows the people coming together through globalization and assimilating into society. He argues that when language dies so does its culture, but a culture meanwhile does not necessarily need language to survive, which his something Anzaldúa would also disagree with as she believed language dialects and culture were very much linked together.
Personally, I find myself leaning to and agreeing with McWhorter. A language dying does not mean the end of a culture, rather I can see how it brings people together. For example, my family on my father's side is from Mexico. Before moving to the United States they spoke a very distinct Mexican Spanish. However when they moved to the border town of Eagle Pass, they began to speak a Tex-Mex dialect of Spanish which allowed them to get along and communicate better with the people there. By speaking Tex-Mex, they were able to develop friendships and establish connections in order to get jobs and eventually become part of the community. We can see from this example, that although Mexican Spanish is still very much spoken to this day, allowing oneself to assimilate and conform to a new language is beneficial in bringing people together.
I absolutely agree that McWhorter and Anzaldua would have some disagreeing to do. In her last paragraph, Anzaldua states, "When other races have given up their tongue, we've kept ours... we, the mestizas and mestizos, will remain." These statement are examples of how Anzaldua considers language to be a very distinct part of culture. Then, we have John, who argues that, “The main loss when a language dies is not cultural but aesthetic.” He even goes on to say that the “aesthetic delight” is only really enjoyed by others in, or relating to, his profession; that others don’t pay any attention to it. Due to her experiences, I feel like Anzaldua would have a very passionate response to McWhorter’s essay; McWhorter, however, would have a more logic-based response.
ReplyDeleteI also find myself agreeing with McWhorter rather than Anzaldua. My family still carries on Mexican traditions regardless of whether or not we all speak the language, and I know plenty of others who don’t speak any Spanish but share the same culture as their relatives who live in Mexico. While I still agree that language shouldn’t be oppressed, it isn’t because I’m expecting oppressed language to result in the death of a culture.
Thank you for your post.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your opinion that Anzaldúa and McWhorter do not share certain perspectives concerning the value of languages and its future. For instance, McWhorter suggested a common language in globalization would be beneficial and language itself merely associate with a culture; however, Anzaldúa forcefully stated: “Chicanos and other people of color suffer economically for not acculturating. This voluntary (yet forced) alienation makes for psychological conflict, a kind of dual identity – we don’t identify with the Anglo-American cultural values and we don’t totally identify with the Mexican cultural values.” According to her statement, Anzadúa does not agree with the linguistically dominant intention of the English language despite its popularity among global economy, culture, scholarship, and international discourse. She would rather keeping the comfort of her “identical language” which she values as the cultural ambassador. Nevertheless, I find myself firmly disagreeing with McWhorter’s point of view and his indifference toward the value of culture rooted in its language. As a matter of fact, he specified: “…, language death is, ironically, a symptom of people coming together. Globalization means hitherto isolated peoples migrating and sharing space. For them to do so and still maintain distinct languages across generations happens only amidst unusually tenacious self-isolation – such as that of the Amish – or brutal segregation.” I believe linguistic dominance or language death is merely a rejoicing but a lament of identity loss. Surely, it would be so convenient to be able to communicate with people using common language but English is too young to understand all. There are lost languages, much older languages that built the foundation of humanity such as Greeks, Hebrews, Coptic, Arabic. which you cannot fully interpreted in English. There are cultures such as Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese with their “borrowed” languages as the proof of million years of colonialism and hardship that distinguished the heroic history of their people; those languages, English cannot replace. Thus, Anzadúa and I would agree that the ambitious plan of linguistic dominance only discards other equally valuable languages in terms of cultures and identity.