The reading response should be 200-250 words and should include your comments/reflection on the issues addressed in the readings and one question of your own to promote discussion. By Tuesday midnight , please post at least two responses to your classmates’ postings. You may respond to their comments as well as to their questions. It is important that your responses to your classmates’ postings be reflective, thoughtful, and engaging.
Good evening everyone,
This narrative article, From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle, by Min-Zhan Lu, is extremely compelling. It reflects the nature of the relationship between language and who you are as an identity. This complex relationship holds a certain power. Lu states “I thought of English as my family language, comparable to the many strange dialects…until second grade I didn’t feel that my family language was any different than some of my classmates’ family dialects.” In this quote, she mentions her early perceptions when it comes to her relationship between language and herself. She labels it as a family language, spoken at home, between her and her family, alongside the language of her heritage. Each language spoken at home is just another dialect, not another sort of “entity” as a whole. However, later she expresses how in second grade she experienced a sort of revelation when it comes to language. As she began to understand the significance of the English language socially and politically, she started to understand the difference. As a child, she didn’t see the English language as anything different from other languages or in her eyes “dialects”. Later she realized the importance and that her dialect made her stand out. This is very common. I’ve talked to many of my friends and acquaintances whose first language was not English. They’ve shared a similar idea. Even my friends whose first language was English also spoke a second and third language at home, they’ve realized the difference within their speech, as an effect of their second language. Many times they’ve felt very self-conscious of their speech. This is what caught my eye. As someone born and raised with the English language as their sole language, I was find it interesting to hear the view points of others who do not share the same experiences as me.